“Thanks—”
Harry interrupted her, kissing her hand, biting the tip of Sterling’s glove, removing it with her teeth. Sterling followed her into the shadows. As they kissed, Sterling ran her hands under Harry’s coat and up her back. The fog of their combined breath curled around them like a smoke signal.
“I… don’t know. I don’t know what I want…,” said Sterling.
“Shhh, let me make you feel good.”
Harry traced her hand under Sterling’s skirt. Cold nibbled the bare skin above her thigh-high stockings. Harry’s kiss swallowed Sterling’s moans of half-hearted protest. She bit her neck. She grasped her inner thigh. She unzipped her pants. They became a tangle of limbs so knotted that at a certain point it wasn’t even clear to them who was touching, licking, or kissing whom.
She grasped Harry’s hair, knocking her hat to the ground. The back of Harry’s neck was chilled by the air, damp from snow. Cold as the white marble tiles on the floor of Room 5 had been. Cold as Hedy’s body.
Sterling suddenly pulled away, gasping. “I can’t, not tonight,” she said.
She could, and she wanted to. But her body needed sleep more than release, and for once she’d listen to it.
Harry stared. “Wow, this is really getting to you. I’ve never seen younotin the mood. Come here, love, I’ll take your mind off things.”
“I said not tonight.”
Harry gave a low chuckle and collected her hat from the snow.
Sterling’s exasperated breaths fogged the air as she stormed out of the park, tossing the key over the fence. Walking away was the right choice. More or less.
— 23 —Dreiundzwanzig
Two days later, Sterling found the next guest on her suspect list, Mrs. Boring. The chairwoman of the National Breast Cancer Research Fund paced Hofburg Palace’s grand front hall, scolding a trio of assistants about rearranging the silent-auction donations. Princess Boring, her teacup poodle, growled at her feet in support. TheBrustkrebsfundraising ball was in a few hours, and the planning committee was in full panic mode.
Mrs. Boring had married into her regrettable alias.Mr.Boring was a Hotel regular, usually there disappointing one of Madame Weiss’s girls with subpar descriptions of his golf game. But on the night of the murder, he’d broken pattern and taken his wife to the Orient for a romantic evening of for-better-or-for-worse bickering.
Mrs. Boring’s hands had been the clue that led Sterling here. The Chanel-suited charity chairwoman was Austrian but wore her wedding ring on her left hand, in the English and American fashion. On the night of the murder, as she’d rifled through her designer bag, flipping past a pink-ribbon-speckled flyer, Sterling recognized the distinct swelling on her right arm. How lymphedema puffedthe delicate skin on her freckled fingers. Sterling had seen the lasting effects of breast cancer treatments before. And what happened when they failed.
With help from Fernando, a library computer, and the Google, Sterling found the Brustkrebs Ball’s website, where the committee-member page confirmed Mrs. Boring was on the board.
Sterling waltzed in, gown trailing behind her, and grabbed a champagne coupe from the pyramid stacked by the entrance. As she perused the silent-auction items, she adjusted her neckline, pulling it lower.
Mrs. Boring was deep in shallow conversation with a crowd of well-educated doctors and their well-married husbands. As she tilted her head back in feigned laughter, her eye caught Sterling, the scandal in peacock blue standing by the auction table. After excusing herself, she beelined for Sterling. Princess Boring followed at her heels.
While adjusting bidding forms she muttered sternly, “I don’t recall invitingyou.”
“The issue isn’t what you recall, but what I remember. If you’ll kindly join me at the Orient, I’ll share certain memories with you. In particular, those concerning your husband,” said Sterling, nonchalantly opening a pamphlet for luxury-boat tours. “Where is he? Shouldn’t he be here for the big event?”
“He’s away on business in Moscow,” said Mrs. Boring, plucking Sterling’s pamphlet away, and returning it to its stack, which she neatly fanned out on the pink tablecloth.
“Moscow? How intriguing.” Sterling guessed Russia and Austria didn’t have an extradition agreement. Maybe Weiss had tipped him off about the investigation, seeing as he was a client. Or Mr. Boring had murdered Hedy and was on the run. Leaving his wife behind. How chivalrous.
“Go before I have security remove you,” said Mrs. Boring.
“You’re bluffing. It would cause a scene, and you can’t have any distractions from the big event. I’m not leaving without you.”
Half an hour later, Sterling escorted Mrs. Boring, sans poodle, into the Orient. The detectives soon joined them. The Hotel was in the midst of a tantrum over the lack of guests, expressing her rage by running the heat on full blast and ignoring the staff’s pleas with the radiator to relent. Fernando was in the basement with Mr. K, attempting to fix it. Occasional bursts of hissing, clanging, and swearing drifted upstairs.
Sterling escorted Mrs. Boring and the detectives to the first floor, gesturing them towards Room 10. The Infantin Suite was named for its painting of a young girl, whose eerie eyes seemed to follow you. It was a tight squeeze, made claustrophobic by dark walls. It offered a respite from the noise but not the heat. Andreas glistened. He removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves.
Sterling watched him, fanning herself with the stack of cocktail napkins she’d been using to blot her forehead, and calculating how long it’d been since she’d last gotten properly laid. Ages. Eons. Nearly seventy-two hours by now. If this persisted, she’d surely die.
Beate cleared her throat.
Sterling and the detectives toed the line of their uneasy alliance as they questioned Mrs. Boring together. Andreas started the interrogation, inquiring about her knowledge of the victims.
