“Depends if you resist.”
“Hmm, you don’t strike me as the type who likes a woman who fights back.”
He took a sharp breath, “I like a woman who—” He shook his head, stopping himself. “I like a woman who doesn’t impede my investigations. Meet me in the mausoleum. Show me what you found,” he said.
“Will Beate be joining us for a little ménage à trois? Or is she going to keep haunting Fernando? I hate to break it to her, but she’s not his type,” said Sterling.
“We’ll keep bothering you as long as the investigation requires it.”
“Admit it, you’d miss me if you had to stop.”
He said nothing.
Sterling and Andreas stepped into a nearby mausoleum, an intricate stone monument for a long-dead member of the idle rich. Sterling swiped dead leaves off the altar and laid the package down.
“So. Who’s S. Eagle and why are you stealing gifts from their grave?” asked Andreas.
“Serafina, my aunt. Our family plot’s in the old cemetery. Someone left this there. I assume it’s for me.”
“Eagle? That’s an unusual family name for Austria.”
“It’s a literal translation of our original family name, Adler. They changed it when they fled to the States in 1937.”
Between the mention of the year and the fact that Serafina’s grave was in the Jewish burial ground, she knew he wouldn’t ask more. She examined the envelope. The emerald-green wax seal looked straight out of her aunt’s stationery set. The seal bore the logo of a bird circled by a crown of leaves.
“Nightingale,” she said without thinking.
“What?”
She took a deep breath. “Some clandestine group that’s leaving love notes like this all over Vienna. All I know is their name, their symbol, and that I’ve been warned to stay away.”
“I’m guessing you didn’t listen,” he said.
He withdrew evidence gloves from his pocket, and passed her a pair.
“You brought protection. How gentlemanly,” she said.
He broke the seal with a pocketknife then opened the package with care. Something about how he spread the wrinkled paper open with his thumb and forefinger distracted Sterling from the task at hand. She needed to focus. To do that, she needed to get laid.
Inside were two photographs. The first was blurry but recognizable: the two of them, around the corner from the Loos Bar, faces pressed together.
She stared at Andreas. He stared at the photo. His mouth set in a hard line. The second picture showed the arch of the bridge over Tiefer Graben. Fernando was underneath it, gazing into the tunneled staircase across the street, scared eyes trained on something or someone in its dark maw.
“If Nightingale left me this, they might be watching now,” she said.
Andreas grumbled his agreement. “We both know one place we can talk. Can you bring in your next suspect tomorrow?”
“I can, I have a strong lead.”
They waited until the service ended to leave. As Fernando escorted her away, he darted a protective glare back at Andreas, placing his hand on Sterling’s bum.
As Fernando straddled his Vespa, he asked, “What was that package?”
“A gift from Nightingale.”
Fernando froze, holding his helmet suspended in the air, the weight of an unspoken sentence pressing his throat. Something he couldn’t say yet. He swallowed.
Nightingale. He’d recognized the name.
