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“Dressage. That’s fancy people doing horses, right?” He barked a laugh, startling her. She was stupidly pleased to have drawn such an explosive laugh from such a serious person. It was as if he couldn’t control his reaction, and she had the sense that there wasn’t much in Mr. Benz’s life that he couldn’t control. “And polo. That’s horses, too, right?” It was hard to square that with the notion that he’d grown up sharing a room with his brother in an apartment. It was a nice apartment—much larger than any of the ones she’d grown up in—but still.
“You are wondering about the discrepancy between what you saw of my family and the idea of us owning horses,” he said, reading her mind. “My family used to be ‘fancier,’ to use your term, when I was younger.”
“What happened?”
“Let’s just say there was a fall from grace.”
ThePride and Prejudicestuff was starting to make sense. She desperately wanted to know more, but she left it at that.
The conversation turned to Noar. Mr. Benz filled her in on what he knew about the man, which wasn’t much beyond what Cara herself had already known or had turned up in her recent investigations. Morneau had hired a headhunting firm who’d presented him as a candidate—he’d been a senior executive at Blancpain in Switzerland before moving to Eldovia to take the top job at Morneau.
“I can find out more, though,” Mr. Benz said.
“You can? Do you moonlight as a private investigator?”
“I have a great many connections.”
She’d just bet he did.
They moved on to Daniel Hauser. It sounded like he was your classic rich kid who treated his inherited wealth as an entitlement. His tenure on the Morneau board had been uneventful.
“The way you talked us into his house was amazing,” Cara said.
“False flattery works almost every time,” he said dismissively. “I did go to school with his wife’s cousin for a year but played it up to sound like more than it was.”
“Well, thank you,” she said, and she meant it. “We wouldn’t have gotten in there otherwise.”
“Yes, but we didn’t find out anything we didn’t already know.”
“True, but at least he knows we know. Though to be honest, I’m now questioning whether that’s a good thing. If there is something shady going on, we may have succeeded only in giving him incentive to hurry it up and/or drive it further into the shadows.”
“Not to worry,” Mr. Benz said with that same low, sure voice he’d used to wish her good night last night, the voice that sort of felt like he was touching her, which she realized made no sense. “I will get to the bottom of it.”
The main street of Biel was more crowded than Anderlaken’s had been. There was a lineup to get into the spa, and lots of people seemed to have come on snowshoes and skis. There was a festive air to the proceedings as they waited. A spa attendant came out and took orders for hot drinks.
“Oh my god, this is good,” Cara said, taking a sip of her drink. She’d taken Mr. Benz’s recommendation and ordered a local specialty that was half coffee, half hot chocolate. It was like a mocha, but not the sickly sweet Starbucks kind. It was piping hot and bittersweet, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever tasted anything better, especially after their long tromp through the snow.
Listen to her. She sounded like she had drunk the Eldovian Kool-Aid. Well, the Eldovian hot chocolate.
“High-quality ingredients,” Mr. Benz said. “A proper half-and-half—that’s the literal translation; as far as I know there isn’t an English word for this drink—is made with freshly pulled espresso with a little hot water—so, what you would call an Americano. But then in a separate pot, cream is mixed with melted dark chocolate. The two are then combined. It’s a... very old recipe.
“You were going to say ‘traditional,’ weren’t you?”
His lips quirked. They came to the front of the line and paid their entry fees. Cara had been assured she could buy a bathing suit in the gift shop, and sure enough, there was a small selection of sensible one-pieces.
She changed in the locker room, and on the other side a berobed Mr. Benz was waiting for her.
“Oh, this is lovely!” The grounds were dotted with a series of steaming pools. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected. Not mud pits full of water, but perhaps something more naturalistic. “I didn’t expect them to look like... regular hot tubs.” She stumbled in finishing her sentence because she was belatedly realizing that most people here were naked.
She tried to be cool. She tried not to stare at the parade of naked bodies of all sizes and shapes and ages. But damn.
“There are some hot springs in the countryside that are little more than holes in the ground, but here they’ve built infrastructure around the naturally occurring springs.”
Mr. Benz was lecturing her about hot springs. She forced herself to tune in.
“The pools are fed from the earth, but they’re treated with salt for hygienic purposes—and there’s some meddling with temperatures. Most of the pools are just the temperature they are, but at the front here you’ll find some that are artificially cooled so they’re suitable for children or pregnant women or anyone who can’t tolerate heat.” He led her past a large, crowded pool immediately in front of them. “And in the summer, they have a few cold plunge pools. That’s not possible in the winter, of course, since they would freeze. Most Eldovians prefer to roll around in the snow, anyway.” His lip quirk was back. “It’s the traditional way.”
“Don’t they get... cold?” She was still looking around. She couldn’t help it, but she was trying to be subtle about it.
