He pulled his hand away.
Through teary eyes, Sterling saw Madame at one end of the front pew, her assistant, Rosemary, at the other. Both hid under wide hats, faces obscured by lace veils. Madame reached a handkerchief under her veil every so often. Sterling was too far back to see, but she bet there wasn’t a single tear staining the cloth.
The funeral ended, and the gargantuan brim of Weiss’s hat joined the procession following Hedy’s urn. Her performative wailing shrill as a hired mourner at a Sicilian funeral. After the last guests exited, Sterling, Andreas, and Beate emerged from their hiding spots.
Andreas ordered Sterling to go ahead. As she did, she caught snippets of their conversation.
“What the hell’s she doing here?” asked Beate.
Sterling assumed they meant her. The creak of the closing church door drowned out their voices just as Andreas said, “I don’t know how she got the address. Maybe she wanted to see what David saw?”
Apsstcame from behind a column to her left, and Fernando beckoned her to join him. Together, they watched the last limousines drive towards the cemetery.
“You see Madame’s hat? What an eyesore,” she said.
“You see all the flowers she bought?” he said.
“She’s paying off her guilt.”
“God, you’ll never let it go. Madame’s grieving too.”
“Only for her lost income.”
“I heard her say she was overwhelmed, so Rosemary took her home to rest,” he said.
“Hmm. Since she’s gone, I’ll attend the burial but stay in the back.”
They walked to Fernando’s moped, purple as his pocket square. He kept a green helmet especially for her.
They were frozen by the time they reached the burial in the Zentralfriedhof. Late. Fernando joined the crowd while she hid behind the broad trunk of a bare tree.
One by one, mourners lined up, trudging through mud in leopard-print platform heels, touching Hedy’s urn in a final farewell, laying their hands on her body one last time, unaware the urn must be empty. They each poured a scoop of dirt into the grave, followed by a handful of rose petals. After which, they wiped their hands clean of Hedy.
Sterling gazed across the vast expanse of headstones towards her family’s plot, in the old Jewish cemetery, where Serafina was buried. She squinted. A small package wrapped in white paper sat on her aunt’s grave.
She snuck off through weary headstones that leaned into the embrace of eager vines. Each step crunched on frozen overgrowth. She reached Serafina’s grave, slipped the parcel into her coat, then returned to the crowd. Fernando looked up from his feigned prayer, one questioning eye trained on her. She tightened her lips to sayI’ll explain later.Beate loomed behind him, the tip of her nose close enough to graze his shoulder.
She wondered where Andreas was.
A hand lit on the small of her back.
She’d found him. He moved beside her, keeping his head bowed.
“What’s that package? If you think you’re getting out of here with evidence, you should know better by now.”
“This? I dropped it earlier. Silly me, so clumsy, always losing things. Actually, I had a wallet stolen the other night.”
“Damn. Pickpockets at St. Stephen’s Square are out of control lately,” he said, smirking.
“So, Officer, who taught you how to have such sticky fingers?”
He kept his eyes forward. “I’m not as uptight as you think.”
“No, you are, but I could help you loosen up if you want.”
“So. Hand over the package or I’ll arrest you.”
“Cuffs and all?”
