“Or he located someone who saw me leaving town last night. I almost ran over a policeman when I turned into the road leading to the cemetery; I’ll bet that’s the only place it leads to.” I glanced toward the door. “Where do you suppose Schmidt is? It isn’t like him to stay away from food for more than an hour at a stretch. Maybe he’s taking a nap.” I put my napkin on the table and stood up.
“It’s the best possible place for him,” John said, sipping coffee. “If I were you, I’d leave him there.”
“No, I need him to help me convince the police to dig up that grave. He’s got more clout than I have.”
“Oh, very well.” John reached in his pocket. “Er—I seem to have lost my wallet somewhere…”
“Back to your old form,” I said, scribbling my name and room number on the check.
I knocked on Schmidt’s door. The mumbled grunt was the reply I had expected. The door wasn’t locked, so I opened it and walked in.
Schmidt was napping, all right, hands folded on his stomach, mustache vibrating with the intensity of his snores. I didn’t see Dieter until I was well inside the room. He had been behind the door.
John put his hands in his pockets and let his shoulders sag. “Stupid,” he said critically. “I should have anticipated this.”
“Neither of us is at our best this morning,” I agreed. “I wonder where he got the gun?”
“It isn’t his,” John said. “Unless he was carrying it on him the whole time. I searched his luggage—”
The barrel of the gun slashed across the side of his face and sent him reeling back against the closed door.
“Lie down!” Dieter shouted, his face suffused. “On the floor schnell, or I will knock you down.”
John spread the fingers of the hand he had clapped to his face and peered at Dieter. “Don’t you want to boast about your cleverness before you shoot me?” he asked in wavering but encouraging tones.
“You talk about me as if I were a child,” Dieter cried. “You taunt me—you dare make fun of me! I will kill you, I will kill all of you—”
“He might at that,” I said, before John could come back with another of those cute, provocative, dangerous little quips. “Dieter, calm down. You’ve won. You are the winner, número uno, top dog, and top cheese of all time—”
“‘…the bravest by far in the ranks of the Shah,’” murmured a faint voice from behind the bloody hand.
“It would serve you right if he did shoot you,” I snarled. “Dieter, what have you done to Schmidt?”
Dieter relaxed visibly. “A few sleeping pills. It is easy to drug that fat gourmand; he will eat anything and he eats constantly.” He added in self-congratulatory tones, “It is his gun. He took it from the drawer when he felt himself succumbing to the Valium, but he was so sleepy I think he would have shot himself in the stomach if I had not taken it from him.”
I felt my throat closing up. Poor brave little Schmidt. Damn the courageous old galoot anyway. The fact that he hadn’t tried to steal the Colt back should have warned me that he had another gun.
“I was going to take him as a hostage.” Dieter gave Schmidt’s rotund and recumbent form a resentful look. “But he is too heavy to carry. So I decided to wait here for you. I knew you would come sooner or later.”
“It’s later,” I said, as John continued to watch Dieter through his first and second fingers. “We’ve already been to the police. They’ll be looking for you.”
“Not soon,” Dieter said coolly. “It is Weihnacht, and the storm has made for some confusion. But you will come with me, Vicky, and then if anyone tries to interfere with me, I will kill you.”
“Take him,” I said, indicating John.
“Right,” John said. “Take me….” And then the idiot spread both arms wide and sang, “Please do take me—’m all yours if you—”
Dieter was too smart to risk it a second time. He had caught John off guard with the first blow, but he must have seen the flexed hands, poised and ready. He stepped back.
“Over by the bed. Lie down on the floor. Hands under you.”
The barrel of the gun shifted toward me and John said, “Calm down, old chap. You don’t want to shoot anyone.”
“No, I don’t. I would rather not attract attention. But if I am forced to shoot, it will be all of you. This gun is a very nice gun.”
It was, too. Nothing but the best for Schmidt—an automatic pistol—a Beretta, as I later discovered—the kind that fires the whole clip so long as the finger remains on the trigger.
John obeyed. “Face down,” Dieter ordered.
With an expressive look at me, John rolled over. He must have known what was coming. I didn’t. I suppose I expected Dieter would bend over and bang him on the back of the head with the gun. Instead, Dieter swung his foot. He didn’t hold back, as John had done with him; his toe connected with a sickening soggy crunch that spilled John over onto his back, his head and shoulders under the high antique bed. This time he wasn’t faking. His twisted body and outflung hands were as limp as dead fish.
I rocked to a halt as Dieter wriggled the gun admonishingly. He glanced longingly at John’s body, but decided not to risk another kick, much as he obviously wanted to. “Come,” he said. “We will go now.”
Lovingly entwined, we went down the stairs and through the lobby. Dieter’s left arm was around my shoulders, his fingers caressing my throat, his thumb nudging the nerve ending behind the ear. His right hand was inside his jacket, Napoleonstyle. I could feel the muzzle of the gun through both our jackets.
We had emerged from the hotel before I got my voice under control. “You’ll never make it up there, Dieter. The road is too icy.”
“I think of everything,” Dieter said. His thumb jabbed deep, and pain lanced through my head. Reflexively my head turned, away from the pressure. He forced my face down toward his and kissed me on the mouth.
“You son of a bitch,” I said, licking blood off my lower lip.
“But a romantic son of a bitch,” said Dieter, grinning and nodding at an elderly couple who had paused to smile at the young lovers. He pushed me toward a sleigh strung with bells and bright ribbons. “See what I have hired to take my sweetheart for a drive. I think there will be time for more romance while we wait for the ground to soften. How would you like that, eh?” He went on to enumerate all the “romantic” things he was going to do to me. The lad had quite a vocabulary.
I gritted my teeth and yearned for the moment when he would help me into the sleigh. He’d have to take the gun out of my ribs for a second, and that was all I would need. Boots, fists, teeth…
I should have learned by then not to underestimate him. The moment my foot touched the high step, he gave me a shove that sent me sprawling forward across the seat, my breath stifled by a fuzzy fur wrap. With a hearty chuckle at my clumsiness, he hauled me upright, folded me in a fond embrace, and hit me on the chin.
I don’t know what happened after that, but I’ll bet we made a charming picture as we drove out of town—bells chiming, horses trotting, and me wrapped cozily in the fur rug with my head on Dieter’s shoulder and his arm around me.
He must have hit me again or I wouldn’t have stayed unconscious so long. I didn’t wake up until we had reached our destination and Dieter had had his way with me. No, not that; but I found myself flat on my back with my wrists and ankles tied to stakes, all ready and waiting as soon as Dieter found time to attend to me. My jaw hurt and my back was so cold it felt as if it were stuck to the frozen ground, and the arch of bright blue sky, which was all I could see at first, made my eyes ache.