Angel Face_ Sex, Murder and the Inside Story of Amanda Knox - Barbie Latza Nadeau [12]
While Raf appeared to have a bottomless bank account, Amanda had always struggled to pay her own way. She worked three jobs while attending university back in Washington and scrimped to save the money for a year abroad. She worked every night but Monday at Patrick Lumumba’s Le Chic bar, waiting tables and handing out flyers for the bar’s events. But Patrick had been heard to complain that Amanda spent more time talking and flirting with customers than she did selling drinks. He was about to fire her and was considering hiring Meredith for her job. Amanda was scheduled to work on November 1, the night after Halloween.
Italians do not celebrate Halloween, but the next day, All Souls’, is an important holiday. That’s the day when the spirits of the dead come to visit the living, and family members light candles and leave flowers at the graves of their loved ones. Perugia emptied out for the long holiday weekend. Both Laura and Filomena, eager to avoid the debauchery sure to accompany the foreign students’ Halloween parties, made plans to stay away. Filomena went to her boyfriend’s house, and Laura went home to Viterbo. Giacomo and the guys downstairs all went home to visit the graves of their aunts, uncles, and grandparents. Both Amanda and Meredith stayed out late on Halloween. Amanda worked at Le Chic and then went to a party until 5 A.M.; Meredith party-hopped until 6:30 A.M. Amanda then went to bed at Raffaele’s and returned home around 11 A.M. the next day to take a shower and change clothes. Meredith was there alone, and they chatted briefly. Amanda later recounted that Meredith’s jowls were still stained with the fake blood of her vampire costume. Raffaele arrived soon after Amanda got out of the shower, and the two went off to Amanda’s bedroom, where they say they had sex and took a nap.
Giacomo had left a key to the lower apartment with Meredith and asked her to look out for their adopted stray cat and water the marijuana plants he kept under fluorescent lights in a narrow hallway. Meredith studied for a few hours, trying to finish a paper that was due on Monday, and then went downstairs to water the pot. When she finished, she sent Giacomo a flirty text message saying how excited she was to see him when he got back.
Around 3 P.M., too tired to study, Meredith left via della Pergola to visit her friend Robyn Butterworth, then twenty-two. She did not say good-bye to Amanda and Raffaele, who were still in Amanda’s room. Amanda and Raffaele say that an hour later, they went out for a classic passeggiata, the late afternoon stroll Italians take around the center of town, returning to Raffaele’s before Amanda was scheduled to work at Le Chic. They had sex one more time, and then, Amanda says, she left around 8 P.M. to go home and get ready for work. At 8:18 P.M., Patrick sent Amanda a text message to tell her that business was slow and that she did not have to come in that night. She wrote back, in Italian: “Ci vediamo più tardi. Buona serata—We’ll see you a little later. Good evening.” Both Raffaele’s and Amanda’s cell phones were turned off around 8:30 P.M. and turned on again just after 6 A.M. the next day. Amanda would later tell police that she went back to Raffaele’s house, where they downloaded the movie Stardust and watched Amélie, made some dinner, smoked pot, and had sex. She described how they then took a shower together and how Raffaele dried her hair. But police computer technicians would determine that