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4730 Avenida del Libertador Buenos Aires, Argentina 2030 31 July 1943
“In the best of worlds,” Dorotea said as the Horch rolled up to the massive iron gates of the house across the street from the hipódromo, “we would be living here, and your beloved Tío Juan would be living somewhere, anywhere, else.”
“That thought has run through my mind,” Clete said.
“I am really offended at what he does in what I think of as our first bedroom, ” Dorotea said. “And I suspect he suspects that.”
“Why?”
“When I called to tell him we would be coming over to get the painting, he said that he was so sorry he would not be here to receive us; that he had a dinner engagement.”
“Maybe he just had a dinner engagement.”
“Ha!”
The gates were opened and the Horch drove into the basement garage. There in the garage was a 1940 Ford station wagon and a 1938 Ford coupe, but Perón’s official Mercedes was nowhere in sight.
“Good!” Dorotea said. “He’s not here. Now I won’t have to smile and pretend to be charmed.”
“You’re sure it’s here? The portrait?”
“I called and checked on that, too. I also told the housekeeper to find a well-worn comforter or two and some twine to pack it.
“And while you and Enrico are doing that, I think I might have a glass of my nice wine. Presuming he left me some.”
“Would you be shocked to hear, my darling, that I was just now trying to think of some reasonably tactful way to keep you from offering your expert advice as to how I might better pack the portrait?”
“You want a glass?”
“I’ll wait, I think, until we’re in the house we have to live in because Guess Who is living here. But thank you just the same.”
“Cletus! I think you’d better come up here!”
“Yes, my love.”
He was sitting, his legs stretched out before him, on one of the eight high-backed chairs that lined the walls of the foyer. He pushed himself out of the chair, drained his glass of merlot, set the empty glass on a side table, then trotted up the wide stairs to the second floor.
When he got there, he saw a large flat object leaning against the wall. It was cushioned with what had to be at least two well-worn comforters held in place by what looked like three hundred feet of sturdy twine.
Dorotea and Enrico were nowhere in sight.
Uh-oh! She’s in the bedroom!
Two significant things had happened to Clete in the master bedroom of the mansion.
The first involved two Argentine assassins-for-hire who had tried to eliminate Cletus Howell Frade on behalf of the German government while he slept in his granduncle’s bed. They had failed—and died for their efforts—but not before killing the housekeeper, who happened to be Enrico’s sister.
And shortly thereafter, in the same bed, the former Señorita Dorotea Mallín had not only lost her right to the title of the Virgin Princess but had become with child.
It was this last that made Clete worry about what she was up to in the bedroom—now Tío Juan’s bedroom. Clete would not have been surprised to find her doing something really outrageous.
Or, more likely, she has already done something outrageous—and now I have to make it right.
At first, Clete didn’t fully comprehend what he was looking at.
Dorothea was standing at the head of bed and Enrico at the foot. She was holding the Leica I-C 35mm camera in one hand.
Dorotea said, “Maybe you better do this, darling, and I’ll hold the map flat.”
