Dying For Siena by Elizabeth Jennings

the drawing of the lottery, the partiti began—that ever more slippery series of formal and informal deals with the enemy of one’s enemy contrada , forming temporary coalitions with other contradas to ensure that one’s enemy not win, approaching a rival contrada’s jockey…
    There was a discreet knock on his door.
    “Stay on top of the situation,” he said to his brother and hung up.
    “ Avanti ,” he called out.
    The door opened and an elegant man slipped in, closing the door quietly behind him.
    Dante rose, all affability. “Professor Ball?”
    “Griffin Ball,” the man confirmed with a nod. “I understand you’re Commissario Dante Rossi. I also understand you’re Lorenzo Rossi’s nephew. Your uncle is a very dear friend of mine. He’s a wonderful man.”
    “That he is,” Dante said as he indicated the chair for Ball to sit in, and sat down himself. “If you know Uncle Lorenzo, I imagine you also know my cousins, Niccolò and Lucrezia.”
    Ball frowned a moment, then smiled. “Nick and Lou. Sure. They’re great. My partner, Charles, and I had them over for dinner recently. We had to be really inventive with the menu because Nick had just broken a finger.”
    “Niccolò has always just broken a bone,” Dante replied. “I’m surprised he can stand upright.”
    While they were having their little chitchat, Dante studied the man carefully. He’d seen the man’s passport. If he hadn’t read the birth date, he wouldn’t have put the man’s age at much more than forty, but he was approaching sixty.
    Ball was immaculately dressed in light tan chinos and a cream-colored, short-sleeved linen shirt. Despite the heat and the fact it was afternoon, his clothes were crisp and spotless. Ball straightened his trousers carefully so they wouldn’t crease and Dante noticed the skin on his hands was smooth and unspotted.
    Clearly, the man had made a pact with the devil. Or with an extremely clever plastic surgeon and very talented hairdresser. His dark brown hair was well-cut and showed no signs of white hairs. His skin was clear with only a few smile lines around his eyes.
    Actually, Dante thought uneasily as he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the window, Griffin Ball looks younger than I do.
    Dante had been meaning to make it to the barber for weeks now and his hair touched the back of his collar. It wasn’t fashionably long, just slovenly long.
    It was against the natural order of things for an American to be more elegant than an Italian. Unthinkable.
    Dante brought his mind back to the business at hand. “So, Professor Ball, I wonder if you could go over the last twenty-four hours with me.”
    Ball folded his hands calmly. “Certainly, Commissario .”
    Griffin Ball’s recollections of the trip and the dinner dovetailed with Madeleine Kobbel’s. And he, too, had heard nothing, seen nothing and knew nothing.
    Ball wound down and Dante sat back in his chair, carefully aligning his pen with the side of the notepad.
    The two men looked at each other. Griffin Ball, like Faith Murphy and Madeleine Kobbel, was cool and apparently unflappable. Dante decided to see if he could conjure up a response.
    “What was your relationship with the dead man, Professor Ball?”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    It wasn’t a difficult question. “I said, what was your relationship with Roland Kane like? You worked together in the same department for…” Dante made a show of looking at the sheet of paper in front of him, though he knew the answer, “for eight years. That’s long enough to get to know someone very well. Were the two of you friends?”
    Ball smiled. “Clearly, you never met Roland Kane, Captain Rossi. I doubt whether Roland Kane ever had a friend. I doubt he even fully realized what friendship was. The man was so emotionally stunted I wouldn’t hesitate to define him a sociopath.”
    “Harsh words, professor,” Dante said mildly.
    “And one never speaks ill of the dead, right? Well, in Roland