She wondered how long it would be until they came for her, unaware it was already too late.
— 26 —Sechsundzwanzig
Rain began a few hours before the funeral. The city wept. Chunks of half-melted snow slid toward the gutters, with a winter’s worth of soot streaked across the ice like smudged mascara. All the ladies of the evening came out into the gray light of day and let their makeup run too.
The harlots gathered beneath the steeple of St. Peter’s, faces veiled but décolletage on display. Sterling hid across the street in a normal hotel lobby, obscured behind a luggage cart. From there, she had a clean sight line to the church and watched, breath held, as Madame Weiss strutted inside, wearing a giant veiled hat more befitting a derby than a funeral. Rosemary, ever her loyal minion, wore the same.
Sterling waited long enough for Madame to be seated plus a few minutes to stoke her courage. Once distant organ music began, she darted across the street, pulling her collar high and her veil low, and slipped inside.
The baroque cathedral sparkled like Hedy’s hair in sunlight. Extravagant lavender floral arrangements decorated each pew. Itcould have been a wedding, save for the attendees’ black attire and the urn displayed on the altar. It had to be empty. No way the police had released Hedy’s body. This funeral was a circus, Madame its ringmaster.
Sterling located Madame’s hat in the front left pew, then headed for a spot as far from her as possible, in a confessional booth. There were four of them, all dark wood and gold filigree, and even if all were going full steam, manned with Vatican cardinals, they couldn’t make a dent in the wealth of accumulated sin inside the church that day.
She spied Andreas’s shiny black shoes peeking out from beneath one confessional’s purple curtain. She took the seat intended for a priest, leaned her lips to the grille between them, and whispered, “How many days since your last confession,baby?”
Andreas sighed. She couldn’t see through the window but imagined him shaking his head.
“Typically, I’d ask the questions, you’d confess, and we’d do it face-to-face at the station,” he whispered.
She tiptoed around the booth to Andreas’s side,purelybecause it had a better view. He stood, trying to bar her entry. She slid in, shushing him with a finger to his mouth as she closed the curtain.
“You said you’d prefer to do it face-to-face,” she whispered.
“Hush before I charge you for disturbance of a funeral service,” he said.
“Oh, not going to tell me the section number? Come on, you love that.”
He scratched his mustache, muttering about section 191 behind his hand.
They faced each other in the cramped space. Frankincense smoke from swinging thuribles mingled with the mint on his breath. She rose to her toes, pressed her chest against his, and looked up at him with her chin cocked.
“Who are you hiding from, Detective?”
“You,” he said, sighing. “But I’m not doing a great job. Who are you hiding from, Sterling?”
“Oh, you know, God, my own thoughts, the law. Seems I’m not doing a great job either.” She pressed her hips against his thigh. “Is that a gun in your pocket or—”
“It’s a gun.”
“You didn’t let me finish.”
“And no, I’m not happy to see you.”
The music quieted. Sterling turned and peered through the curtain’s slit, pressing her back to his front with a purposeful curve of her spine. The dreary haze from the rainy day filtered through stained glass, drawing halos around the bowed heads of the ladies of the evening, reposed like saints. The sermon began.
“Yeah, I see her,” said Andreas.
“Who?”
He shushed her, pointing at his earpiece. “Beate sends her greetings.”
Sterling cringed, realizing she’d been listening the entire time.
Verena gave a stuttered reading of a poem and dissolved into sniffling sobs before she could finish. She was escorted from the pulpit to her seat. The organist performed a version of “The Very Thought of You,” Hedy’s signature song when she was too drunk to stand without leaning against a piano. It sounded better when Hedy sang it.
Sterling’s longing left a cozy weight on her chest. She took comfort in grief’s familiar burden. The ember of ache burned pleasantly, it glowed. But it was too much to control. A jagged sob escaped her throat, which she muffled. Andreas laid a reticentthere, therehand on her shoulder, patting her like a dog he was allergic to. Another sob sputtered through her fingers. She held her breath to restrain it.
Andreas ran his thumb back and forth on her shoulder. Her sobbing stopped. Her desire throbbed.
