Killers of a Certain Age(58)

“Had to,” he gasped. “Vance—”

“Don’t worry,” I said brightly. “We’ll deal with him too.”

Mary Alice checked her watch again. “He’s taking too long. Did you make the poison strong enough?” she asked, frowning.

“Yes, Mary Alice. At least I think so. I didn’t exactly have a lab, did I? We’re doing this old-school, remember? Down and dirty. I did the best I could with what I had.” I didn’t mention the fact that she was usually our poison expert but she’d been too preoccupied with her marital trouble to be of much help.

“Well, maybe we need to speed things along,” she suggested. “We have a train to catch and we still have to clean him up.”

He made a mewling sound then, followed by a rattle, but he kept breathing and I stuffed the apple core in my pocket. “Fine. Shoot you for it. Odds.”

She sighed and we each made a fist. “One. Two. Three. Shoot.”

We held out our hands and Mary Alice grinned. “Even. You lose. Finish him.”

He bucked a little then, although I would have thought he was past hearing. I pulled off a fresh length of plastic wrap and held it tightly over his face. It didn’t take long. When it was over, I peeled away the plastic and stuck it in my pocket with the apple core. Together we unwrapped him and hauled him into the shower, using loofahs to scrub the mud off. There were a few red spots on his face—petechiae, the classic symptom of asphyxiation.

“That’s not part of the plan,” Mary Alice pointed out sourly.

“I’ll handle it,” I promised. We dried him and tucked him into bed before scrubbing down the bathroom to remove all traces of the mud. Everything—sheets, loofahs, plastic wrap, gloves, mud and poison containers, spoon—went into a garbage bag. I found the note from Ji-Woo and added it to the rest before tying it neatly.

As a final flourish, I grabbed another apple with the hem of my shirt. I put it into his hand, pressing it firmly to get good fingerprints onto it. Then I lifted it to his mouth, manipulating his jaw to take a hefty bite with his toothmarks in it. It took a little maneuvering to get the bite stuffed down in his throat, but it was a pretty touch. At first glance, anybody would think he’d died of a heart attack or stroke, but anyone taking a closer look would assume he’d choked—and that would square with the modest amount of petechiae.

“Handled,” I told Mary Alice. She rolled her eyes and made a final sweep of the room.

“That’s everything.” She ushered me out, and I looked at the time.

“It’s 6:04. Not bad for a couple of old broads,” I said with a grin. We left the treatment table in the stairwell—some poor spa employee would probably get an ass chewing for that, but it was better than hauling it around. Back in our rooms we changed and bagged up our black uniforms and wigs. We resumed the clothes we’d traveled in and the four of us headed down with our bags.

A girl with thick bangs was arguing tearfully with Ji-Woo. “But I wouldn’t have canceled—it’s my hen do! What do you mean you don’t have any rooms left?”

Ji-Woo’s jaw was tight as she tried to placate the girl, who was surrounded by a clutch of annoyed-looking bridesmaids.

Helen strode through them and dropped our keys on the front desk. “I am afraid the rooms are not to our satisfaction,” she said loftily. “Kindly arrange for a taxi. We will be leaving.”

Ji-Woo snapped her fingers for a porter to flag a taxi and turned to the weeping bride. “Good news, Miss Williams. Two rooms have just come available.”

The bridesmaids cheered and we tottered out into the early evening. Natalie had been carrying the garbage bag in her suitcase, so we dumped it in the first trash bin we saw at the station. We caught the next train to Geneva, where we had booked into a small, discreet hotel and made late reservations at the Taverne du Valais for charbonnade and red wine. We toasted our success with a single glass each and turned in by midnight. By seven the next morning, we were on a train, headed back to England via Amsterdam.

One down. Two to go.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE


JULY 1981


“Zanzibar,” Mary Alice says, letting her breath hang on the last syllable. “Can you imagine? I’ve never heard of anything so romantic in my life.”

“Romantic? We’re going to kill an old woman,” Billie reminds her, but she is smiling. It is the first time they have worked together since killing the bishop in Rome fifteen months before, and it feels good to be reunited even if they have been relegated to supporting roles. They are backing up Vance Gilchrist and Thierry Carapaz, a Frenchman they met up with at the airport in London. Carapaz carried their documents identifying them as a group of graduate archaeological students excavating the ruins of an old clove plantation in Zanzibar. The plantation is adjacent to the house of their target—Baroness Elisabeth von Waldenheim, a prominent Nazi whose whereabouts have been unknown for the better part of forty years.

But the Provenance department has done its job well, positively identifying the reclusive baroness through the hairdresser who comes once a week to wash and set her hair. The baroness lives with her art collection and a pair of servants who have worked for her since she sat at the center of the Führer’s inner circle. The art collection—pieces purloined with the help of Hermann G?ring—is to be saved but the servants are not. The dossier prepared by Provenance is thorough, and the Volkmars’ guilt is never in question. Their crimes, and those of the baroness, are detailed at length. Included in the dossier are maps of the house and its grounds and photographs of the targets and the art collection.