KALI: Sorry!
BEX: Always fucking up my attempt at setting a mood, Thompson, I swear.
KALI: I’m just pointing out that the very nature of podcasting doesn’t really allow for surprises when it comes to the subject of said podcast.
BEX: [pause] Okay, that’s fair. Anyway! What you just heard was a snippet from a song called “Sister Mine,” by one Lara Larchmont, and it’s from the album Aestas.
KALI: If you have never heard or seen the album Aestas, please go to your mom or grandmother’s house right now, because it’s there. Promise.
BEX: If you ever came home from fifth grade and found your mom listening to music and crying in her den, it was probably Aestas.
KALI: [laughs] Who did not come home from fifth grade to find their mom crying in the den, I ask you?
BEX: [laughs] Well, now that we’ve made things sufficiently dark, let’s continue with the official breakdown, shall we? [clears throat] Here we go, the formal bit. “In the nearly fifty years since the so-called ‘Villa Rosato Horror’”—
KALI: Jesus Christ, did people really call it that?
BEX: They did! Everyone was, like, extremely extra in the seventies, I guess. Anyway! “In the nearly fifty years since the so-called ‘Villa Rosato Horror,’ there have been other, more shocking crimes involving famous people, enough so that the events of July 29, 1974, are almost forgotten. There were no splashy prestige TV miniseries about it or true-crime classics written detailing what happened outside of Orvieto that summer.
MAYBE it’s because the murder itself was so grubby and unglamorous, or maybe it’s because the people involved all went on to much bigger things. Mari Godwick wrote Lilith Rising, one of the most famous horror novels of all time”—
KALI: Scary as shit.
BEX: And Lara Larchmont’s Aestas is a folk-rock classic on par with Tapestry.
KALI: Sad as shit, as established.
BEX: [laughs] And of course Noel Gordon, despite being dead for decades, is still one of the most recognizable rock stars in the world.
KALI: Hot as shit.
BEX: Facts.
KALI: No printers, just fax.
BEX: [laughs, clears throat again] “But the Villa Rosato Horror, or, as some insist it should be called, the Villa Rosato Tragedy, is worth revisiting. The major players all agreed they could barely remember that night, and the accused murderer swore he was innocent. There were lurid tales of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll mixed in with darker rumors of the occult.”
KALI: Oh yeah, people in the seventies and eighties fucking loved to think the devil was involved.
BEX: Loved! It! Could not get enough of that devil guy.
KALI: And Mari wrote a devil book.
BEX: Oh my god, you are stepping on me again, we’re gonna get to that!
KALI: I prematurely deviled, and I’m sorry.
BEX: You should be! Okay, let me finish with my big line and thesis of today’s episode: “With all that tension, all that drama in one house, is it really so far-fetched to think that maybe the Italian courts didn’t get this one right?”
KALI: Ooooh.
BEX: I know! I’m making big claims right up front!
KALI: I am intrigued by your thesis, and wish to know more.
BEX: And so you shall. So, as always, let’s start with the victim and the ten-second backstory. Victim! One Pierce Sheldon, age twenty-three, musician, apparently really talented, but something of a douche.
KALI: What level of Summer’s Eve are we on here?
BEX: Extra strength, for sure. In 1971, he’s married, he’s already got a kid, and then he meets Mari Godwick because he … I don’t fucking know, he just meets her, and, like, he is sprung. Just immediately sprung, totally crazy about her, and she feels the same way about him because she is sixteen fucking years old.
KALI: Ew.
BEX: I mean, I, too, would have run off with a married man when I was sixteen provided that married man was, like, on a fucking CW show or something. Tenth-grade me, absolutely risking it all for Jensen Ackles, so I get it for Mari, but still, Pierce, ya gross.
KALI: I kind of like this actually. It’ll be less sad when he dies at least? Won’t bum out our listeners too much?
BEX: Exactly. Also, not only did he leave his wife and, like, abscond to Europe with a literal child, he also took her stepsister with them! Who was also sixteen! Pierce! What the fuck!
KALI: I get that we can’t exactly endorse murder on this show, but I’m not gonna lie, hearing about this dude makes me feel … a little murder-y?
BEX: For. Sure. Which is now where our murderer comes in.
KALI: Our alleged murderer.
BEX: Right, our alleg—but he was convicted? So, I don’t think we have to say alleged?
KALI: Good point. Our convicted murderer, then.
BEX: Yes, our convicted murderer, one John Dorchester who apparently everyone called Johnnie.
KALI: Awww, Johnnie. Like he was in the T-Birds.
BEX: [laughs] Yes, Johnnie. Poor Johnnie. This was a bad summer for you, bro!
KALI: Just a real shit show of a summer vacation for good ol’ Johnnie.
—transcript of Episode 206 of Two Girls, One Murder: “When in Rome （Don’t Do Murder）”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“You have to admit, long as we’ve been friends, this is a first for us.”
I pull one earbud out of my ear, pausing the podcast I was listening to. “What?”
Chess sits next to me on a wooden bench seat, draped in yet more bizarrely unwrinkled linen. Her hair frames her face, setting off a pair of jade statement earrings, and I wish I’d thrown on something a little nicer than the cotton floral jumpsuit and ballet flats I’d chosen.
“I said,” Chess says, reaching over to take out my other earbud, “This is a first! In our friendship.”
I look around me as we climb higher and higher toward the walled part of Orvieto. We’d decided that after nearly two weeks bumming around the villa and the local countryside, it was finally time to tackle the city itself.
“Doing touristy things?” I ask. “Because we did Panama City Beach for spring break in 2006, although I can’t blame you for not remembering that given the sheer amount of Jose Cuervo consumed.”
Nudging my foot with the toe of one leather sandal, Chess pushes her sunglasses up on top of her head. “I’m referring to this,” she says, gesturing out the window. “Riding a funicular.”
“That is true,” I agree, nodding. “Whole new mode of transport for us.”
“Planes, trains, automobiles, and funiculars,” Chess adds, and I laugh.
“Maybe you can use that as one of your new book titles. Ride That Funicular, Girl!”
“A Funicular That Only Goes Up.”
“Girls Just Wanna Have Funiculars.”
Chess laughs at that, a real laugh, and I lean against her for a second, feeling relieved. Things had mostly gone back to normal after that tense moment at the table the other day, but I’ve felt the memory of it hanging there between us, a dark cloud neither of us wants to mention. Today is the first day I’ve finally started to feel like we’re back on track, back to being Em and Chess.
“So, what have you been listening to so intently?” she asks now, gesturing at my phone, and I sheepishly hold it up.
“Murder podcast.”
She reads the title—Two Girls, One Murder—and rolls her eyes. “Oh my god, I know those women. We were at the same women in tech conference once. Completely obnoxious, deeply L.A.”