Trojan Gold - Elizabeth Peters [101]
The sight of her distress jolted Tony out of his. He took a step toward her. She screamed and fled. She went on screaming all the way down the hall.
“No, wait,” I gabbled, grabbing at Tony as he stumped toward the door. “It’s too late. This is what he wants….”
I could see the scheme in its entirety. I should have known the person who had set Tony up wouldn’t neglect to provide a witness. Running away now would be the worst thing Tony could do. Not only would it be taken as an admission of guilt, but if he was a fugitive, pursued by the police, one well-placed shot would give the authorities their murderer—dead and unable to defend himself. The safest place for Tony now was the slammer.
There was no time to explain. Already I could hear running footsteps and cries of alarm. I held on to Tony. “Wait, no time,” I insisted. “Wait.”
He didn’t struggle. All his natural, law-abiding instincts demanded that he stand like a man and face the music.
What I did was a dirty, low-down trick, but I had no choice. The crowd surged in—guests, waiters, busboys—all shouting in horror and distress—and surrounded Tony and the corpse. His poor white bewildered face was the last thing I saw as I slid quietly out the door.
I had to risk going to my room. I met no one on the stairs or in the hall, but when I opened the door, I saw Clara lying on my bed in a welter of tangled ribbon and shredded wrapping paper.
“Dammit,” I exclaimed. “How did you get in here? You’re not supposed to eat ribbons; they can block your intestines.”
Clara raised her head. A curl of scarlet ribbon dangled from her mouth like an outré mustache, and it seemed to me that there was a distinctly critical look in her eyes.
“Right,” I muttered. “Right. No time…” I snatched up my jacket and backpack and ran out.
How had she gotten into my room? The window was closed. John had locked her in the shop….
As I trotted through the lobby, I heard Schmidt’s well-known voice in the distance. He’d keep an eye on Tony. I wished I could have had him arrested, too. But the danger was not in the hotel, I was sure of that; it was heading up the mountain, to the same place I was going.
The twinkling Christmas lights and warmly lit windows of the houses I passed were poignant reminders of a misspent life. If I had settled down to domesticity, I’d be in just such a pleasant cottage, baking cookies and patting the dog and kissing the kiddies, instead of skidding along icy roads under a sky dark as death, on my way to a rendezvous with a murderer.
The traffic was surprisingly light. Not so surprising, actually; it was Christmas Eve, sensible people were safe at home. I swore—at myself—and swerved to avoid some idiot who was standing in the middle of the road waving his arms. As I turned sharply into the narrow track leading up the mountain, it occurred to me that the idiot had been wearing a uniform of some kind.
The wheels hit a stretch of ice and the car went into a skid. Despite the cold, I was sweating when I pulled out of it, and I forced myself to let up on the gas. There was no hurry. He couldn’t be more than fifteen minutes ahead of me, half an hour at the most. And what he had to do would take a long time, even if he had thought to bring the proper equipment. Needless to say, I had not. It wasn’t the gold I was after, it was the man. Not that I had the slightest idea of what I was going to do if I found him.
With a sharp stab of relief I remembered that Schmidt’s gun was in my backpack. Good old Schmidt.
The road was bad. I had to concentrate on keeping a steady pace, fast enough so the car wouldn’t stall on the slope, slow enough so I could handle the frequent skids. Only my own headlights broke the darkness ahead of me. I must have gone half the distance before a flash of light in my rearview mirror