Trojan Gold - Elizabeth Peters [61]
“The blessings of the good God to you, Fräulein.” I didn’t kiss John. District inspectors don’t get fresh with their superiors.
That was one load off my mind. Grudgingly I gave John credit, not only for seeing the obvious without explanation, but for caring enough about the old boy to get him to a safe place. I’d have given him even more credit if I had not known he had an ulterior motive. Why he thought he could find a clue the searchers had overlooked, I could not imagine; but if anyone could, it was John. His natural bent toward chicanery had been developed by years of experience.
The lower end of the alley debouched into the Marktplatz. When I reached the hotel, I found Tony lying in wait. “Where the hell did you go?” he demanded.
“Out,” I said shortly. “What’s the matter, couldn’t you get a room?”
“I got a room all right.” He took my arm and pulled me aside. People passed us, going in and out and giving us curious looks as we stood nose to nose glaring at each other. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Tony snapped.
“Tell you what?”
“Anything. Something. That Friedl was the new owner—”
“You know Friedl?”
“Well, sure. We all…” He grinned self-consciously. “Not me, of course.”
“Of course. I’m sure she would have worked all of you in if she had had time.”
Once again I had been caught with my pants down, figuratively speaking. (Obviously the metaphor applied more accurately to some of my former colleagues.) I had only been gone for half an hour; it was symptomatic of the luck I was having that Tony should have latched onto Friedl during that brief interval. Hoping against hope she hadn’t spilled her guts, I murmured, “I didn’t think you’d be interested, Tony.”
“Not interested in somebody trying to kill you?”
“Oh, Schiesse,” I said. “What did she tell you?”
A Bavarian teenager trying to stash his skis in the rack beside the door narrowly missed decapitating Tony. Bawling the boy out relieved some of Tony’s spleen; he turned back to me and said in a milder voice, “Suppose we have a beer and a little heart-to-heart talk. Friedl is anxious to see you, but not as anxious as I am.”
The bar was crowded; we wedged ourselves into a quiet corner, mugs in hand. Sunset reddened the slopes of the Zugspitze and draped the sky with gaudy cloths of scarlet and purple, but Tony wasn’t moved by the beauty of the scenery. I let him talk. I wanted to find out how much he knew before I contributed to his store of information. That was fine with Tony, who seldom got a chance to conduct a monologue when he was with me. As I recall, the lecture went something like this:
“I don’t mind participating in these mad extravaganzas of yours. Not at all. I’m always happy to give a friend the benefit of my superior expertise. A lesser man might resent being shoved into a mess like the one you’ve obviously got yourself into without some warning; I mean, the words ‘sitting duck’ come to mind. Or possibly ‘decoy.’ What I really resent is the insult to my intelligence. I knew something was going on. You and Schmidt and that—that effeminate character, with your heads together…who is that guy? Never mind, don’t tell me, I’m not finished. You might at least warn a person that he’s putting his head in a noose instead of pretending this was just a social visit—”
“Now wait a minute,” I said, indignantly. “I didn’t invite you to come. It was your idea.”
“You could have warned me off.”
“I could have,” I admitted. “At the time I didn’t know—”
“Is that the truth?” Tony scowled at me over his mug. “Nobody tried to mug you, murder you, or burglarize you until the day before yesterday?”
I was glad he had phrased the question that way, because I could look him straight in the eye and say firmly, “No. Nobody.” Not that I wouldn’t have looked him straight in the eye and denied anything he accused me of.
“Oh. All the same, you might have mentioned it.”
“It could have been an accident. Some drunken hunter.”
“Yeah. But Friedl seems to think not. Are you sure you never got a letter or a package or anything from her husband?”
I looked him straight