Chapter Fifteen
The best way to get into an old folks’ home is to be old folks. We were a few years shy of needing assistance with our living, so we knew at least one of us was going to have to age up by a decade to get in the door.
“Not it,” Natalie hollered. “Mary Alice and I suffered enough in our incontinence pants on that ship.”
I looked at her over the top of my glasses. “Natalie, if you are not incontinent, then why in the name of all that is holy and good were you wearing the pants?”
“They pad out your butt,” she explained, twitching her ass from side to side. “Nothing else gives you quite that lumpy look.”
Mary Alice raised her hand. “They make slimmer versions now, but I’d like to point out that I did not, in fact, wear the pants.”
“You should have,” Natalie told her. “They make a nice cushion when you’re sitting on a hard chair. Prevents hemorrhoids.”
“I shall make a note of that,” Mary Alice said solemnly. “But Natalie is right. We had to wear all the old-lady gear last time. We are definitely not it this time.”
I looked at Helen and she shrugged. “I’ll do it.”
“Really?” I was surprised. I’d seen enough social media posts to know that #ageisjustanumber and #sixtyissexy. To be older and stylish meant turbans, crimson lipstick, velvet caftans—everything from Elton John sunglasses to Chinese parasols heavy with fringe. Anything to make you stand out in vivid Technicolor. And Helen had always been the best dressed of us all. Over the years she’d traded her Bobbie Brooks and Oscar de la Renta for more daring pieces. In the last photo she’d sent she’d been wearing a pink boiler suit and turquoise Chuck Taylors because she’d been repainting a stone wall at Benscombe. Her hair had been tied up in an Hermès scarf, and I knew she’d have been wearing her signature Chanel perfume. But the point of disguising yourself as an elderly woman is blending in, nothing but bifocal lenses and elastic waists, and you couldn’t smell like anything more alluring than Bengay.
It seemed like a stretch for her, but she lifted her chin and smiled. “Yes,” she said, nodding to Mary Alice. “I’ll sit in a wheelchair and make Mary Alice push me around as my private secretary.”
“Sold,” Mary Alice said. She twisted her lavish blond hair into a tight knot and perched her glasses on the end of her nose. “How’s this?”
“Sexy as shit,” Akiko told her. “Hot librarian suits you.”
Mary Alice grinned at her wife as Natalie spoke up. “I can be the devoted niece who comes with to make sure you are getting the best care.”
Helen arched a plucked brow at her. “I think sister-in-law would be more believable than niece.”
“Bitch,” Natalie said, pulling a face. But there wasn’t any heat in it, and I was just glad the roles had been assigned without drama. Nat turned to me. “And what exactly will you be doing?”
“Driver,” I said succinctly. “I’ll poke around as much as I can when I’m ‘looking for the bathroom,’?” I added, making obnoxious air quotes with my fingers.
Taverner spoke up. “I’d make a more convincing chauffeur.”
“That’s sexist,” Natalie countered.
“No, it’s expected,” he replied. “More men are professional drivers. I would be less remarkable in the role than Billie.”
I held up a hand. “You’re both right. Taverner, you would be less noticeable, but the reason for that is sexist, so Natalie scores there. But your points are also moot since Taverner isn’t going.”
He rolled his neck slowly. “Pardon me?”
“You’re not going. Neither is Akiko,” I said, spearing her with a look. Minka didn’t even glance up from her phone.
Akiko held up her hands. “No arguments here. The view is nice and the food is good. The cats and I will hold down the fort.”
“Good,” I said, pushing back from the table.
Taverner pushed back too and I stopped him. “We are not fighting about this. You are in a safe house because of me. I’m not going to endanger you further.”
“Endanger me?” A note of humor threaded through his voice. “The only thing in danger of getting killed here is my sourdough starter. Billie, you’re overreacting.”
“Maybe. But it’s my call, not yours.”
We squared off, facing each other with our arms folded over our chests in identical postures.
“Jesus,” Natalie breathed. “Is this what passes for foreplay with you two?”
“If so, Taverner is in for a raging case of blue balls because he’s not coming to Switzerland,” I answered flatly.
He took a half step closer to me. “So that’s how it is.”
“That’s how it is,” I said.
Nobody said anything for a long moment. I don’t even think the cats let out a breath. We stood locked in opposition, waiting for the other to blink. Finally, Taverner put his hands up, palms out.
“Fine.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You never give in that easily. I don’t trust it.”
He shrugged, his expression unreadable. “Why would you trust it? You don’t trust anything else.”
It was a good line, so I didn’t blame him for using it as an exit. He didn’t even bang the door as he went out. Instead, he closed it quietly, as if shutting something in the past. I’d have liked it a hell of a lot better if he’d slammed it.
—
The four of us left the next morning. Mikeli taxied us to the ferry port where we took the first boat to Ajaccio. Somewhere on mainland France would have been more logical, so we opted for Corsica instead as the less expected option in case anybody was watching. From there it was a quick hour and a half to Basel by plane. By lunchtime we were in a rented Mercedes, speeding east. We’d stopped at a pharmacy long enough to collect a top-of-the-line wheelchair for Helen and spent the rest of the trip going over everything Minka had dug up online about the facility we were visiting.
“Discreet and expensive,” Mary Alice said, reading from her notes. “It’s actually two separate wings, one for elder care if you’re rich and connected. The other is for recovery, also for the rich and connected.”
“What kind of recovery?” Helen asked, peering over her shoulder at the screen of Mary Alice’s smartphone.
“It doesn’t say, but if you read between the lines, it sounds like everything from plastic surgery to Oxy addiction.”
“A full-service facility,” Natalie mused. “You know, Helen, you don’t have to pretend to be old. We could wrap you up in bandages and tell them your facelift was botched.”
“Or we could tell them you need help with a sex addiction,” Helen replied coolly. “Your collection of dildos is frankly alarming.”
I nearly drove into a hedge. It wasn’t like Helen to bite back, and I wasn’t entirely sure she was joking. Neither was Mary Alice. She shot me a surprised look, but Natalie hooted all the way to the facility.
We pulled up to a set of gates that wouldn’t have looked out of place at Buckingham Palace. There was an intercom and camera, and I managed to pantomime through a series of apologetic gestures that I didn’t speak German. A lie, but they didn’t need to know it. I heard the voice on the other side mutter a few choice Teutonic insults—mostly disparaging my mother, but it was nothing I wouldn’t have said about her myself. After a second another voice came on, smoother and more diplomatic. “Please follow the signs and park to the right.”
The gates opened onto a drive, wide and curving and lined with sternly clipped, geometrically precise hedges. “Damn, the gardener must use a protractor,” Natalie remarked.
Beyond the hedges, the grounds were just as tidy—broad expanses of grass punctuated here and there with well-behaved trees. A few benches were scattered around, but the morning was chilly and nobody was using them. The building was a grey stone mansion, old-fashioned but impeccably clean. Just behind it, I could make out a more recent addition of glass, silvery and cold. Stone terraces were set with outdoor furniture in conversation groupings with all the pieces arranged at right angles. Even the potted trees stood at attention.
“You have to love the Swiss,” I muttered. The sign directing traffic to the parking lot was discreet, set low to the ground and lettered in tasteful grey. I pulled into a vacant spot and hopped out to set up the wheelchair, taking care to roll it around to Helen’s side of the car in case anybody was watching. She settled herself, and Nat draped a cashmere blanket over her knees, tucking it carefully.
“Showtime,” Mary Alice said, taking charge of the chair. The front door opened as they approached and a middle-aged woman appeared, smiling the tight, slightly insincere smile of someone who is irritated by an interruption but can’t let it show for fear of offending a potential client with a fat checkbook. I waited long enough to hear her greet them and gesture for them to enter before I hotfooted it around the side of the building. The terrace on this side had an occupant—an old fellow tucked into a wheelchair, so swaddled in blankets and quilts that only his face was visible. Even his wrinkles had wrinkles, but the eyes were sharp. He flicked them open as I trotted up.
“Guten Tag,” he said, raising a finger out of the bundle of blankets to wave hello. He was wheezing like he’d just run a mile, and I remembered the fashion for sending tubercular patients to the mountains in centuries past. The cold clear air is supposed to be good for lung complaints, but by the sounds coming out of him, it wasn’t helping. I’d heard healthier noises from recently castrated cattle.
“Guten Tag, mein Herr,” I replied. “Es ist ein schoner Tag.”
He shrugged. “Die Tage sind für mich alle gleich.” He leaned forward a bit, looking me over from head to toe in a way that was frankly a little gross, even in someone who probably had a cocktail date arranged with death somewhere in the near future. “Du hast schone Titten.”
No matter how many times a strange man tells you that you have nice tits, it’s always creepy. I sighed. I wasn’t going to kill him—we had rules about that sort of thing—but damn, I was tempted. It wouldn’t take much, just a quick release of his brake and a friendly shove towards the edge of the terrace. From there, it was a steep drop-off to a handy ravine with lots of nice sturdy pine trees and some rock outcroppings that wouldn’t do him any favors. I glanced up at the eaves of the building. There weren’t even cameras mounted outside. It was practically an invitation.
But I was better than that. Instead, I cocked my head, thinking. The facility was old-fashioned with its personal greeter at the front door and lack of obvious security. They would have client information locked up nice and tight, thanks to all their Swiss training. It would be a miracle if the other three managed to learn anything useful about Auntie Evgenia. They’d get a tour and a bundle of brochures, but we had a short amount of time, and I was feeling impatient. I didn’t like how I’d left things with Taverner and I didn’t trust him to stay put. I knew the sooner I made it back to Sardinia, the better. And that annoyed me even more. I didn’t like being responsible for anybody, even somebody I was sleeping with.
Especially someone I was sleeping with. It felt too much like commitment, something I’d always run away from. I suppose I could have gone to therapy, but what was the point? I knew exactly where I’d picked up my issues. Unknown father, abandoned by my mother at age twelve, the rest of my youth spent in an unlicensed foster home. You might think the last part sounds the worst, but at least in that place I had someone making sure I ate my vegetables and did my homework. I left town the day after my high school graduation and never looked back. Add all of that to the steamer trunk of the job I’d chosen, and I had enough baggage to sink a battleship.
But regardless of why I was feeling irritable, we were under pressure. We needed results from this trip so we could figure out who was still targeting us, finish the business, and get back to our lives.
I leaned down a little, giving the old fellow a glimpse at my cleavage. If he was going to die, he’d do it with a smile on his face. “Kennen Sie Evgenia Dashkova?”
He wheezed and bounced a little, and from his excitement, I guessed she had nice tits too. He pointed to the terrace door. “213.”
“Danke,” I said, moving towards the door. He mumbled something—either an invitation or a come-on, I couldn’t hear which—and snaked a hand out to pat my ass as I passed.
“I could break your neck with a toothpick,” I told him in English. “Cool it, Adolf.”
I slipped through the terrace door into a sort of breakfast room. It was empty, but the smell of coffee and incontinence pants hung in the air, overlaid with the lingering smell of an expensive commercial air freshener. I sniffed deeply. Freesia, I decided. I eased into the hall where the air was cooler. A wide wooden staircase wound upwards. Leading off the hall were half a dozen doors and an old-fashioned elevator cage. From the rattling, I guessed Helen and the others were currently inside the lift, on their way to tour a guest room. I’d just have to take my chances and hope they weren’t headed to the same floor.
I took the stairs two at a time since nobody was around. The floors were numbered European style—ground on the level where we’d entered, the first floor above, and the second one higher still. I wasn’t surprised that Auntie Evgenia had bagged a room at the top. The views would be best up there.
Number 213 was near the stairs, and as I moved across the wide, carpeted corridor, I heard the lift stopping on the floor below. I could just make out Helen’s voice, sharp and a little annoyed as she spoke. Good. A bit of visible irritation out of a potential client would keep their guide focused on making them happy and less likely to notice anything I might get up to.
I paused with my ear to the door. I couldn’t hear anything, but the carpets were thick and the door was heavy oak. I pushed it open a crack and peered inside. The room was furnished like a posh hotel, with floral wallpaper and what looked like either very good antiques or very expensive reproductions. There was even a fireplace, tiny and unlit, with a mantel of green marble carved into Art Nouveau curves. A long window was framed by chintz curtains and I was right; the view was spectacular—long rolling hills fringed with thick pine forests and in the distance the peak of an alp just to remind you where you were. A bed had been positioned to make the most of it, and that bed was the only odd note in the room. It was a proper piece of hospital equipment, fitted with all the levers and switches, but it had been made up with flowered sheets and a satin quilt. To make it cozier, I guessed. Propped up against the pillows was a woman in a jade green velvet bed jacket. I nearly had a heart attack when I realized she was staring directly at me.
“Are you coming in?” She addressed me in German, but I had an idea.
“May I?” I inquired in politely old-fashioned Russian.
Her eyes lit up and she gestured. “You are Russian?”
I shrugged as I closed the door behind me. “For today I am. I am visiting my uncle Feodor, and he said there was another Russian here.”
She frowned. “Feodor? I do not know him.”
Considering the fact that I had just invented him, I was certain she didn’t. But the place was big and it was an old folks’ home; there was bound to be some turnover.
“He’s new,” I said, coming near to the bed. On the nightstand was a crystal pitcher of orange juice with a small glass. There was a remote control for a television that must be hidden somewhere—probably behind a painting of a depressed clown that would haunt my dreams—but no other personal effects, no address book or letters. The only other decorative item was a large vase of lilies. Some had dropped their pollen, staining the creamy marble top of the nightstand. It was the sole bit of untidiness I’d seen since I had arrived.
“Those are lovely,” I said. Actually, I hated lilies. To me they always smelled like funeral homes, but she smiled.
“From my nephew, Pasha,” she said with a little purr. There was no grief there, only pride, and I realized suddenly that she had no idea he was currently reposing in a mortuary somewhere in England.
“Does he visit often?” I asked.
She shook her head. “He is a very important and busy man of international affairs.”
International affairs? Either that was code these days for club drugs and art smuggling, or Auntie Evgenia didn’t know the illegalities Pasha dabbled in.
“But he sends me flowers. Expensive ones,” she added loftily. “He comes every year for my birthday in August.” Her face puckered a little. “I wish he would marry. It is not good for a man to be alone.” She gestured towards the mantelpiece. “There is a photograph of him. He is a handsome boy. You will see.”
I went to look. In pride of place on the mantel was a heavy silver frame, the kind you see only in antiques stores or the most exclusive French flea markets. It was engraved with a Cyrillic monogram in elegant script. The picture inside was Pasha in one of his superbly tailored English suits, an arm around his teddy bear. I wondered if they’d send it to Aunt Evgenia along with his suits.
“Nice bear,” I said, returning the frame to its place. There were a few other pictures on the mantelpiece, arranged with military precision in order of size. One was a double portrait of two identical young women facing one another. They were wearing matching full white satin dresses, each holding an armful of creamy roses. Evgenia and Irina, Pasha’s mother, I guessed.
“My sister and I at our coming out,” Evgenia told me proudly. “There was a ball at the George V in Paris. Very exclusive, you understand.”
Next to the debut portrait was another photograph of them together, this time with one dressed in a fluffy cloud of white organza with her sister in green tulle.
“Her wedding,” she said in a distinctly cooler tone. I noticed there was no image of Boris Lazarov anywhere in sight. Instead, there were portraits of the two sisters and several of Irina’s children, Pasha and his little sister, Galina. Assorted other pictures filled in the spaces between the larger studio portraits—some candid yachting photos, family picnics, even a distinctly tsarist-looking one that seemed to have been taken at an imperial function in St. Petersburg. The good old days for the Dashkovs, I guessed. They must have had a ball, trampling on serfs and organizing pogroms.
I moved on, and the last photo in the line caught my attention. It was one of the pictures taken on a boat, probably Pasha’s, given the way he was preening. In the background was a woman, not even a whole woman, just a slender profile. There was something elusive about her, as if the photo had been snapped right as she was turning away from the camera and that she’d done so on purpose. Her hair had whipped across her features, obscuring most of her face, but I thought I detected a resemblance to Pasha. The idea that crept into my mind was one I didn’t want to consider, but I had to know.
I carried the frame to Evgenia’s bedside. “Who is this?”
She peered. “I don’t know her.” She looked up at me, blinking hard, her expression suddenly blank. “Who are you?”
The whole time I’d been in her room, she had been curious but not suspicious. Now she looked at me with a little fear, as if she had just awakened in a room full of strangers.
“I am nobody,” I told her. “Just a friend passing by.” I made sure to keep my voice soft and back up a step so she wouldn’t feel threatened.
But I had to know. I held up the frame again. “Are you sure you don’t know her?” I pressed.
She shook her head stubbornly, pushing out her lower lip, her tone querulous. “Why do you ask me questions? I want you to go now.”
“Sure,” I said. But I didn’t leave. Instead I poured her a glass of orange juice from the pitcher on the nightstand and handed it over.
She didn’t thank me, just drank greedily, a little of the juice running out the side of her mouth. I reached out and wiped the juice from her chin with my fingers.
“Evgenia,” I said, pushing gently, “is this Galina?”
Her entire face lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree. “Irina!” she cried happily. She took the frame from me and kissed the glass a few times, leaving damp smudges.
I tried again. “This isn’t your sister,” I told her. “It’s not Irina. Is it her daughter? Is it Galina?”
I could almost hear the gears turning as she stared from me to the photo and back again, thinking hard. After a long moment, she gestured towards the nightstand and I opened the drawer. Inside was a small bakery box, fuchsia pink. A name was scrolled on the top in gilt lettering with a flourish. She gestured again, imperiously this time. I opened the box and inside were half a dozen cookies, dark gold and shaped like diamonds.
Evgenia held out her hand, clicking her fingers impatiently, and I passed her the box. She took one of the pastries before pressing the box back into my grasp. I watched as she took a dainty bite, sighing in contentment. When she looked up at me, some of her sharpness seemed to have returned. “Take one,” she ordered. “Very special and very delicious. Galina brings me a box every time she comes.”
“Does she now?”
The cookies were speckled with some kind of dark dried fruit—never a favorite of mine—but Evgenia was watching me closely, so I took one and nodded my thanks. I nibbled a tiny bit from the corner. It was sandy with a pronounced taste of butter, and I might have had another bite if I could be sure I wouldn’t get a piece of raisin or currant at the same time.
“Lovely, thanks,” I told Evgenia, and I meant it. The cookies were fresh which meant Galina had paid a recent visit—before she heard about Pasha’s death, I was guessing, since the old woman didn’t know he was dead.
Evgenia motioned for me to replace the box and I studied the name lettered across the top—Malvestio. There was nothing to indicate an address or phone number, and I wondered if the bakery was in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. While Evgenia finished her cookie, I slipped mine into my pocket.
“Does Galina live near here?” I asked in a casual voice.
But she’d gone vague again. She shook her head as if she didn’t understand the question or didn’t like it. Instead she smiled blankly and began to hum a tune, a snatch of something operatic. Classical music isn’t exactly my forte but just about everybody has heard the “Flower Duet” from Lakmé thanks to British Airways and The Simpsons .
Evgenia’s voice cracked as she warbled higher, but I smiled at her encouragingly, humming along to the end. “That’s very pretty. Delibes, right?”
She started the melody over from the beginning, as if she were stuck on a loop. I checked the time. I was pushing my luck staying so long. Some nurse or orderly was bound to show up soon. I tried one more time.
“Evgenia, does that song remind you of Galina?”
She stopped short, her expression turning suddenly sly. “Galina loves opera. She loves opera singers ,” she added in a malicious whisper.
“Oh, is that right?” I gave her a small, conspiratorial smile. I had her pegged as the kind of woman who loved a good bitchfest, and I was right. Her smile deepened, and she gestured for me to come closer.
“Do you know what she is?” I shook my head and she told me. There are a lot of words in Russian for “slut” and she used one of the nastier ones.
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“She does not always wear underpants,” Evgenia said firmly.
Jesus, if that was all it took to be a slut in Evgenia’s book, we were all doomed, I thought. Especially Natalie.
She went on. “She was always a bad seed. Not like my Pasha, such a lovely boy.” I could tell she was about to launch into another panegyric about her beloved nephew, and if I had to sit through that, I’d have smothered her with her bed jacket.
“What makes Galina a bad seed?” I asked. A question that direct might have spooked her, but she was too eager to talk shit about her niece.
“She was in a terrible accident with my sister, and my sister did not live. Galina did.”
Shit. It was good to have confirmation of my hunch, but the fact that Galina Lazarov was alive was not good news.
I kept up my end of the conversation. “And you blame Galina for surviving the accident that killed your sister? Why?”
She shrugged her bony shoulders. “She is probably the reason for the accident. My sister was a nervous driver, and Galina was always singing and shouting. She was very loud. That is the Bulgarian in her.”
“She sounds like a normal kid,” I replied.
Evgenia flapped a hand. “Galina was a nuisance. I took her because she was my sister’s child, but she was always difficult, always sulking in her room, crying.”
“Yeah, grieving children will do that,” I said. “What a hardship for you.”
The thing about rich narcissists is they almost never smell sarcasm. Evgenia took the remark at face value and simpered under what she mistook for sympathy.
“It was very hard,” she said. “Only boarding school made it bearable. I sent her away as soon as I could. It was for the best.”
“For you,” I shot back before I could stop myself. If Evgenia kept telling tales from Galina’s childhood, she was going to have me feeling sorry for a Lazarov.
“Where is Galina now?”
Her brows snapped together, and she reached out and twitched my arm into a pinch. Those bony old fingers were sharp and I jumped back, rubbing my arm.
“That’s going to bruise,” I told her irritably. “Why did you do that?”
“You ask too many questions.”
And then she was gone again, humming, a vacant expression in her eyes. When she finished her tune, she snapped her fingers and pointed to the pitcher. “Drink.”
“I hear your family was White Russian,” I said pleasantly. “I’m beginning to sympathize with the Bolsheviks.”
I poured another glass of juice and handed it over, neatly extracting the frame from her hand as I did so.
“Enjoy your juice,” I told her. I replaced the frame on the mantelpiece on my way out of the room. But now there was a blank square of cardboard where the photograph of Galina Lazarov had been.
—
I hustled down to the car the way I’d come. The little perv on the terrace was gone and the only person I passed was a mildly surprised orderly carrying a batch of clean linens. He just looked on as I called a friendly greeting and continued on my way. Generally, you can get away with being just about anywhere you aren’t supposed to be if you carry yourself with confidence and don’t stop long enough for anyone to ask you questions. (That’s a useful tip in case you’re taking notes.)
I got to the car just as the others were arriving. We saved the debrief for the drive back to Basel. “Find anything?” I asked.
Helen waved a brochure. “For starters, the facility charges three hundred thousand euros a year for a private room.”
I snorted. “For a place with the security of a public kindergarten?”
Natalie spoke up from the back seat. “I managed to get a peek at Evgenia’s file. Her next of kin is Pavel ‘Pasha’ Lazarov who resides in London. I dialed the phone number they have for him, but it just went to an answering service in the UK. They offered to take a message, so if they know he’s dead, they’re not talking about it.”
“Anything else?”
“They spend a lot of time in enforced crafts,” Mary Alice said sourly. “I swear to god, if I ever need that kind of supervision, I’m just going to have Akiko push me off a cliff. Nice and quick.”
“A cliff?” Natalie was skeptical. “You might get snagged on a tree on the way down. If that happens, you could survive, only you’d be all banged up. Maybe paralyzed.”
“Alright then, what would you choose?” Mary Alice demanded.
Natalie started naming her preferred methods for self-destruction while I took one hand off the wheel and fished in my pocket for the photo. I handed it to Helen. She studied it as Mary Alice began rebutting Natalie’s suggestions.
“What am I looking at?” Helen asked.
“Proof that Galina Lazarov is still alive,” I said. The bickering in the back seat skidded to a halt.
“The hell did you just say?” Mary Alice asked, reaching for the photo.
“Galina Lazarov, a person with just as much motive to kill us as Pasha, is not dead as we were led to believe,” I told her. “She’s alive and well, or at least she was a few days ago. She brought Evgenia cookies.”
Natalie snatched the picture from Mary Alice. “You have got to be shitting me.”
“Nope.”
Helen turned to me. “We weren’t ‘led to believe’ anything. Naomi told us straight out that Galina and her mother were killed in the same accident years after we assassinated Boris Lazarov.”
I shrugged. “Naomi was doing this off the books which means she had to prepare the report with no help,” I reminded her. “She probably saw the story about the accident and took it at face value without checking.”
“Sloppy,” Helen said with a sniff.
I had been just as furious when I had realized the truth, but I found myself defending Naomi. “She was working on her own, with few resources, on a tight schedule. All while trying to also figure out the identity of the mole who turned over the files in the first place.”
“I suppose.” Helen still looked sulky, but she’d get over it. She was always fair.
“Do we have any idea where Galina is?” Mary Alice asked.
“Nope. I took a quick peek in the nightstand drawer. Aunt Evgenia doesn’t seem to have anything like an address book, and I suspect Galina likes it that way.”
In the rearview mirror, I saw Natalie cock her head. “Why?”
“She’s been playing dead for thirty years. The obvious conclusion is she likes being a ghost. There was nothing in that room to give away anything about her whereabouts.”
“Careless of Galina to let Aunt Evgenia keep a photo up,” Natalie observed.
“It’s a picture of Pasha,” Mary Alice pointed out. “Galina is barely a profile. She probably thought nobody would ever spot it and put the pieces together.”
“But if she’s monitoring Aunt Evgenia, she’ll know someone was there,” Helen said suddenly. “It won’t take her long to find out there were four of us. She’ll be putting some pieces together herself.”
I pushed the accelerator towards the floor. “Then it’s time we got the hell out of Switzerland.”