Forever (34 page)

Frau Ludwig snatched it from her. She opened
it with shaking hands, extracted a tiny pill, and placed it under
his tongue.

'Es ist schon gu
t, Maestro,' she
murmured to the gasping man, cradling his head in her hands as if
he were a child in need of comfort.
'Ja, ja. Es wird
jetztschnell wieder besser
. . . '

God, he can't die!
Stephanie thought.
I'll never forgive myself if he does.

'Look! He is calming down already.' Frau
Ludwig heaved a sigh of relief and sketched a quick sign of the
cross with her thumb. 'Gott sei Dank!' she said fervently. Then,
obviously shielding the old man's head with her arm, she turned
slowly to Stephanie. 'What did you say to make him so upset?'

Stephanie could feel her face breaking out
in a prickly flush. 'I . . . we . . . just talked . . . ' she
supplied lamely.

'Er hat ein schwaches Herz
- a weak
heart.'

'I. . . didn't know

'You didn't know?' Now that it looked as if
he might pull through, Frau Ludwig's anxiety converted itself into
rage. Her face was hard, glazed, accusing. 'You nearly killed him!'
she hissed from between her teeth.

'We were just talking about the past,'
Stephanie said tightly. 'And then I put on that tape -'

But Frau Ludwig's mind was already made up.
'You are a troublemaker!' she decreed triumphantly. 'I knew it from
the first instant I set eyes on you!' Her face had a crimson shine
to it. 'Well, you have made your trouble. You can be happy and go
home. Just leave poor Maestro in peace!'

Stephanie fought to keep her anger in check.
'He is going to be all right?' she wanted to know.

"
Ja
, and no thanks to you!' Frau
Ludwig's eyes narrowed. 'Besides, why should you care?'

Stephanie knew it was pointless to argue
with this ogre of a woman, and she watched in disturbed fascination
as Frau Ludwig lovingly moved von Ohlendorf s head to her lap.

'Well?' Frau Ludwig demanded. 'Do you intend
to stay here forever? Go!
Verschwinden Sie!
'

Stephanie got to her feet and looked down at
her. 'Despite what you may wish to think,' she said with supreme
dignity, 'I did not come here to make him ill.'

'No? Well - you almost succeeded in
murdering him!'

That said, Frau Ludwig dismissed Stephanie's
presence and luxuriated in giving the old man all the benefit of
her unrequited love. She rocked his head gently in her arms.

'Istschon gut, Maestro,' she cooed softly in
a sing-song nursery voice
. 'Sie geht schon weg
. She is
leaving . . . she will not be allowed back . . .
ist schon gut .
. . ja, ja. Ist schon gut, mein Liebling . . .'

Stephanie gathered up her briefcase and
notebook and walked over to where the cracked cassette recorder was
hissing static. She picked it up, punched the OFF button, and cut
around the side of the house. But before she turned the corner, she
paused beneath the flower-laden fretwork balcony and turned her
head to have one last look.

Frau Ludwig and her Maestro were still in
the pieta pose - the very picture of worshipful suffering and
love.

Stephanie nodded to herself. There was
nothing more to be learned from him. He knew nothing. Her mission
here was accomplished. She could go now.

'Strike two,' she said to herself, and
disappeared around the corner.

Salzburg, Austria • Elsewhere

Room service brought her a steaming pot of
coffee, two crescent rolls with butter and jam and, best of all,
the
International Herald Tribune
. Stephanie pulled open the
curtains. The pale morning sunlight spilling across the carpet
dispelled the remnants of last night's gloom.

Now, blowing on the cup of hot coffee she'd
poured herself, she sat and sipped it slowly, catching up on the
news.

She found it impossible to concentrate on
reading, and frowned thoughtfully into space. Yesterday's telephone
conversation with Sammy kept nagging at her.

It just didn't make sense. According to
Uncle Sammy, Vinette Jones had died of a drug overdose. Yet, the
woman I spoke to didn 't sound at all like a junkie, she
thought.

Frowning, Stephanie drummed her fingers on
the table. If things were not what they seemed, then what really
had transpired? Could a lethal dose of drugs have been administered
to Vinette Jones against her will?

Or was Vinette's drug-induced death a red
herring, and she had been murdered with an overdose in order to
focus suspicion away from some far greater, no/idrug conspiracy -
and what kind of conspiracy could that be?

Impatient, troubled, she got to her feet and
paced the room. She clasped her hands in front of her, playing that
old child's game with her fingers. Here's the church and here's the
steeple. Open the roof and see the -

People! The congregation! Men, women,
children - babies.

Babies!

She unlaced her fingers and snapped them.
Now she was cooking! Only, it wasn't babies. No. It had something
to do with -

- Missing babies!

Of course! That had to be it!

Unconsciously, she paced even faster, her
mind whirling like a dervish.

Vinette Jones had been searching for her
baby - a baby the CRY Orphanage in Washington, D.C. had ostensibly
'lost'!

Excitement swelled Stephanie's chest to
bursting, caused her blood to tingle with effervescence. She felt
nearly manic with triumph. Eyes alight, she raked a hand through
her hair as she strode back and forth along the length of the room
like a tigress. Ideas, scenarios, inspiration, motives - all burst
inside her head like snowflakes spattering against a windshield at
sixty miles per hour.

Vinette Jones had been searching for her
baby.

Vinette Jones had been murdered. Not only
that. She'd been silenced!

'Holy Moses!' Stephanie exclaimed, suddenly
standing stock still. As though to help her think, she pressed a
thumb and index finger against her forehead.

But why had Vinette Jones been silenced?
Because of the missing child? Or had the woman been shaking the
bushes too hard?

Damn! It made sense. It really did!

She continued her rapid prowl across the
room, her journalist's instinct telling her that with Vinette's
death, at least, she'd hit the nail right on the head. No matter
how she played it in her mind, she was unable to shoot it down. The
scenario played, and played well.

Now all she needed was irrefutable proof -
which was easier thought than done. Not to mention the two whoppers
which were still waiting to be solved.

First: What on earth had directed her
grandfather to CRY?

It was a question she'd been agonising over
ever since the night Vinette had telephoned, and she still hadn't
been able to come up with a satisfactory answer. There had been
nothing in her grandfather's notes about CRY; not so much as a
word. Was it because whatever lead he had was still so fresh he
hadn't even had a chance to write it down?

She wondered now: had he, like Vinette
Jones, been silenced: and if so, for what? Discovering that Lili
Schneider was still alive? Or for snooping around CRY?

She had no inkling which it might be. For
all she knew, he could have been silenced for both!

Which led her to the second whopper of a
question: How were CRY and Lili Schneider connected?

For in Stephanie's mind, they had to be.
She, better than anyone, had known her grandfather's work habits.
He had been a one-project-at-a-time man, doggedly pursuing whatever
he was working on. Never once had she known him to get side-tracked
by something else, no matter how interesting or tantalising it
might have proved. Now, she was willing to stake her life on the
fact that he would never, ever, not in a million years have gone
sniffing around CRY if it hadn't had something to do with the Lili
Schneider biography.

Somehow the diva and the nonprofit agency
were connected. Had to be!

But how? How and why?

Questions. Stephanie sighed to herself.
There were so many questions and so few answers -

The telephone rang, startling her. When she
picked it up, it was Sammy. 'How's my Girlie?'

'To tell the truth, wide awake.'

'Good,' Sammy said brightly. 'A sleepy mind
we don't need.'

She carried the telephone over to the
armchair, whipped the cord around, and plopped herself sideways
into the seat, her legs dangling over one of the upholstered arms.
'By the way,' she said. 'Igot to thinking.'

'About Vinette Jones?'

'Yes. For some reason, she just didn't
strike me as the type to have shot herself up with dope.'

'My thinking exactly, Girlie.'

'And yet she OD'd.'

'So we are led to believe. Yes.'

'So what I figure,' Stephanie said, 'is
this. Vinette had to have been murdered ... or silenced, if you
will... for stirring up too much interest in her "lost" baby.'

'Could be,' Sammy remarked carefully.

Stephanie got to her feet and carried the
telephone over to the open window and looked out. Across the
picturesque orange rooftops, distant church bells were pealing and
sunshine bathed aged ochre walls. Below, in the narrow street, the
tourists were already out in full force, armed with cameras and
videocams and pocketfuls of currency.

'And, if you ask me,' she continued, 'in
Vinette's case, drugs, instead of bullets, were the weapon of
choice. Not only to kill her, but to throw the police off the scent
so they wouldn't investigate her death as murder.' She paused. 'How
am I doing?'

Sammy was momentarily silent. 'Much as I
hate to say it, Girlie,' he said quietly, 'I think you've got
something there.'

'Yes,' she sighed. 'The only trouble is, I
can't for the life of me figure out how Lili Schneider, Grandpa,
CRY, Vinette, and a missing baby are connected. But somehow,
they've got to be! They've simply got to!' She paused and her voice
dropped an octave. 'Uncle Sammy . .

'Yes, my darling?'

The sun was starting to creep higher into
the sky and she walked away from the window and went back to her
chair.

'Have you managed to have a talk with this
Mr Kleinfelder? The one Ms Jones mentioned to me worked at
CRY?'

'Really, Girlie, give me some credit!'

'Then you've been to see him?' she asked
excitedly.

'No, but I called him at work yesterday. He
is, I was told, not in his office, nor is he expected to come in
any time in the near future.'

'Oh, no!' She took a deep breath. 'Oh,
Christ no! Uncle Sammy, is he -'

'No, Girlie,' Sammy told her gently, 'he is
not dead. He is, however, in a critical condition at St.
Luke's-Roosevelt.'

She felt a wave of relief wash over her.
'Then he will be all right?' she asked hopefully.

'According to his doctors, it's still too
early to tell.'

'What happened?'

'The poor man's in a coma, and he may never
come out of it. That's the bottom line. He was apparently the
victim of a particularly nasty hit-and-run.'

The news was like a blow to her stomach. 'Aw
. . . shit!' she gloomed. "Shit!"

'My . . . er . . . sentiments exactly.'

She asked, 'Can you try to find out the
details of the accident?'

'I already did, and if it was an accident
I'll eat my boutonniere.'

'All right,' she said wearily. 'You might as
well give it to me straight.'

'You aren't going to like it,' he
warned.

'So tell me something I don't already
know.'

'Okay,' he said, drawing a deep breath. 'But
it's not pleasant. According to the police report, it happened at
Riverside Drive and West Eighty-first Street. Mr Kleinfelder, on
foot, had the green light and was in the middle of the street,
walking north. Eyewitnesses agree that the driver of a delivery van
not only seemed to be taking aim at him, but must have stepped on
the gas. At the last moment, Kleinfelder turned, saw what was
happening, and apparently threw his arms up in front of his face to
protect himself. Not that it helped any. He was hit head-on and
thrown about twenty feet. Then, brakes squealing, the van careened
around the corner and took off.'

'Oh, Jesus, Uncle Sammy! Jesus God, that
poor man!'

Sammy's voice was grim. 'It was no accident,
Girlie. No way.'

'Did they catch the driver?' she asked,
although in her heart she already knew the answer.

'No. But they found the van right away. It
was parked in a No Stopping zone not two blocks from the scene of
the crime. It had been reported stolen. If you ask me, it was a
very neat and professional job.'

The pain in Stephanie's gut burned like
indigestion. Another innocent victim silenced, she thought,
shivering. And once again there's a CRY connection; Kleinfelder had
worked for them. But what could he have discovered that had
warranted his death?

'I suppose,' she muttered bitterly, 'that
unless Mr Kleinfelder comes out of his coma, we have nothing to go
on?'

Sammy sighed in reluctant agreement. 'I'm
afraid so, my darling.' He paused and added, 'Oh, and before I
forget: one last thing. I saw in the papers - the de Veiga yacht?
The
Chrysalis
? The one on which that pirated recording was
allegedly made?'

'What about it?'

'It's arrived in Marbella with the reclusive
Ernesto de Veiga and his equally reclusive mistress on board.
Eduardo, their son, is supposed to join them either today or
tomorrow.'

'Mmm,' she said slowly. 'I wonder how
difficult it will be to crash that party.'

'Girlie, you wouldn't!'

'You know me better than that, Uncle Sammy!
Of course I would!'