Andreas returned to the article. Beneath a photo of David Goldfinch onstage was a quote: “There’s nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide.”
In the photo, David’s left hand pointed towards his presentation. A band of gold peeked from under his cuff. Like the bracelet the Concierge had described.
“So, if he was announcing plans to put cameras all over the city, that gives motive to every creep, criminal, and cheater in Vienna,” said Andreas.
“And every guest at a certain no-tell hotel. Our suspect pool just grew.”
“Jetzt ist ois im Oasch,” he said, slipping into indelicate dialect he could get away with only around Beate. A delightful, almost romantic phrase that literally meant “Everything is in the ass.” Ah, Austrian-German, the language of poets.
“Losn amol,” said Beate, demanding his focus in her own Tyrolean dialect. “The background check was incomplete, but we got some stuff. David’s grandfather designed half the modern buildings around Millennium City. His father’s a big developer. This family had money toburn.David’s unmarried, has no kids, and his only legal address is at home with his parents.”
“Weird for a CEO in his thirties. Where do they live?”
“The Nineteenth, of course.”
“Grab your fur coat, then.”
— 18 —Achtzehn
The telephone ringing on Sterling’s nightstand jolted her from slumber, back to the night of the murder, when the office phone’s shrill chime wouldn’t cease.
Evidently, she’d elected to sleep on the floor beside her gramophone. It was midafternoon on Friday the thirteenth, and it damned well felt like it.
She crawled to the nightstand and lifted the receiver.
“Your uncle’s here,” said the day Concierge, bored. Sterling couldn’t blame her. The Hotel was closed until further notice, with most staff on forced vacation. They kept one person per shift to stand guard. Apart from that, two residents remained: Sterling and Rita. The hollow quiet broken only by tinny warbling from Rita’s record playing down the hall and wind rattling the windows.
“Send him up.”
She vaguely remembered calling Uncle Christoph sometime after she’d uncapped the bourbon but before she’d searched through her old 78 records, which now lay scattered across the Persian carpet.
She’d returned from her rendezvous with Andreas around oneand found a bundle of firemen outside. Normally, she welcomed any excuse to wink at muscular men in uniform. Unfortunately, they were there on business, checking for a carbon monoxide leak. They’d found nothing. The basement boiler was old and crotchety but worked well enough. Alas, the young firemen didn’t appreciate the antique’s vintage charm. They wrote an official warning to repair it before the Hotel reopened, then left without even the politeness of removing their shirts. Whatever happened to chivalry?
After that, she’d retired to her room, drunk-dialed her uncle, then slumped on the floor beside her Victrola, cranking the gramophone arm to repeat Hedy’s favorite song, “Guilty.” An Al Bowlly ditty about the crime of adoring the wrong woman. The song was a staple request of brokenhearted barflies at Viennese piano bars. Each spin of the shellac record wore it down, degrading its quality. Sometime after sunrise, when the song would no longer play, she’d fallen asleep.
Sterling rarely dreamed of the dead. On those occasions when her subconscious welcomed guests from the grave, it was never a pleasant visit. She’d see Aunt Serafina floating in the canal, eyes black as the river at midnight. Or her mother in the wasted shape of her final days, when she’d become all hard edges and vacant, morphine-drip stares. In the dreams they were always at the kitchen table, arguing. Her mother’s bald head turned from the spoon shaking in Sterling’s hand, which spilled blobs of soup onto the table, as she ignored her daughter’s pleas to eat.
When Sterling drank, she forgot her dreams.
She and “Uncle” Christoph had a standing monthly appointment for tea, though the next one wasn’t supposed to be for a few weeks. But she needed to be around family now. She longed for the typical American accoutrements of grief. To make small talk and eat cold leftovers of casseroles dropped at her doorstep by neighbors. Her only neighbor was Rita, who wasn’t the type to cook a lasagna.
When she pried the curtains aside, a resentful sunbeam stabbed her eyes. A black sedan was parked across the street. Engine running. Police.
Sterling opened the French windows, the cold air nipping her bare skin. She’d undressed in her sleep. She waved, shouting, “Morning, Officers!”
The glowing tip of a cigar lit the crack of the car’s tinted window. The leather-gloved hand holding it flicked ash onto the road, then disappeared. The window rolled up.
Maybe not police. Madame’s cronies were fond of cigars. Sterling closed the curtains.
Her eyes were raw, her throat dry. She poured water in her tiny kitchenette and took a single sip, congratulating herself for treating her body like a temple. The elevator rumbled upstairs, lurching the floor like a sour stomach. Evidently it had decided to work today. She grabbed her robe, forgoing the satin one for a shaggy number with bunny ears that Fernando had tried to burn countless times.
She opened the door, and Uncle Christoph bowed, presenting a plate ofMohnkipferl, crescent-shaped poppy-seed pastries. They looked like croissants, but don’t dare say that around locals.
She kissed the shiny surface of his head, glad he’d accepted his balding and shaved it. “I like the new style.”
He rose to his usual beanstalk height, scanning her outfit, lips pursed.
“It’s worse than I realized. Dearie, you look as dreadful as you sounded on the phone last night. I could barely understand you,” he said.
