Double Entendre

by Heather Graham

  At length, though, she pulled a pen from her purse and began to draw on her napkin. She definitely wasn’t an artist, she decided; her mountain looked like an upside-down U, and her ski lift wasn’t much better. But no matter what she drew, she couldn’t get anywhere. Earth Is the Mother meant nothing more than what it said. And N’Oubliez Pas…

  That meant even less than nothing to her. Austria might be a small country, but not when you were looking for buried diamonds. It was ridiculous to keep trying to make sense of it all.

  But when she didn’t, her thoughts reverted to Bret. And she would find herself growing angry and aching terribly. She had to learn to stay away from him. Had to! She couldn’t keep going through this….

  A paper suddenly landed on the table. Startled, Colleen looked up.

  There was a man standing in front of her. Tall, blue-eyed and shockingly blond, with handsome, well-defined features.

  She gasped. He smiled, drawing his gloves from his hands and taking the seat opposite her.

  “Hello, Frau McAllistair. I told you that I would find you.”

  She couldn’t move; for a moment she panicked. Rutger was dead. And Eli. And James MacHowell. And this man, the son of Rudolph Holfer, had very calmly and righteously sat down beside her, almost touching her.

  When she could move, she looked around in desperation. He lifted a hand scornfully. “What is it that you are thinking? That I shall reach across the table to strangle you in full view of so many others? Perhaps then I shall leap down three floors to escape?”

  “I—I don’t suppose you would,” she managed to say.

  He leaned closer to her, still smiling a little grimly. “I have no wish to harm anyone. Neither has my father. I know you cannot accept that, yet I must persist. You have come to our front door as it is.”

  “Your front door?” Colleen repeated, dazed.

  He pointed to the schloss far up on the mountain. “It is my father’s home. He seldom sees anyone. He seldom goes anywhere. He entombed himself many years ago. But he would like to see you.”

  This was it! Colleen thought excitedly. He was here, right in front of her.

  “That’s wonderful,” she told him. “We’re all going to meet up here at ten. We’ll be happy to meet your father.”

  “Nein, nein!” Wilhelm Holfer said impatiently. “Don’t you understand? No one can be trusted!”

  Colleen sighed. “Mr. Holfer, I’d be an idiot, under the circumstances, to go running off with you alone.”

  He stood, reaching for his gloves. “Then I have done what I can for you. I shall persist, yet I must wait until you trust me, yes? For now, we have given what we can. Guten Tag, Frau McAllistair.”

  “Wait…”

  She tried to call him back, but he was already gone, not over the balcony, but into the breakfast room. Colleen stared after him in turmoil; then her eyes fell to the paper he had dropped, and she gasped out loud.

  It was the fourth piece of the puzzle. Worn, yellowed and frayed, but in her trembling hands.

  She spread the page out. The drawing seemed to be of a box with a roughly drawn figure inside it. Above the box was a desk, with another stick man sitting at it. Colleen strained to make out more, and she realized that a swastika had been drawn on the shirt of the figure at the desk.

  “Would you like more coffee?”

  “What?” Colleen almost screamed the word, she was so startled. She looked up to find Emil standing over her with a coffeepot.

  “I beg your pardon. I just wanted—”

  “Oh, yes, Emil. I’m sorry. You, ah, startled me.”

  “Did I? I’m sorry.”

  “I’d love more coffee, Emil. Thank you.”

  The Austrian filled her cup, gazing idly at her drawing. “Where did you get that? It looks like a bunker.”

  “Bunker?”

  “Ja, bunker. What is another word? You know, offices, rooms, dug into the earth.” She must have gazed at him blankly because he continued with a little exasperation. “You know, such as Hitler had in Berlin.”

  She felt a streak of excitement rip through her, as if she were on to something, if she could just reach it. “Emil, are there any bunkers around here?”

  “Oh, no,” Emil said, and her heart seemed to drop. But then he paused. “Well, yes, maybe.”

  She tried not to scream again. “Emil, what do you mean, maybe?”

  “There is the oubliette. But that was sealed before the war was over.” He laughed. “Oubliette! How perfect. Everyone has forgotten it.”

  Colleen caught his hand and dragged him down into the chair next to her. “Emil, what is the oubliette?”

  He stared at her as if she were mad, then shrugged as if all mad female Americans should be humored. “I remember it only from school, really. And, of course, because I grew up here. It was a cabinet room, you understand? A place for high-ranking German officials. But many Austrians were working with an—an underground, you understand?”

  “Working for the Allies? Like partisans?”

  “More like spies, yes?” Emil said. “They would be taken for interrogation. And if they did not answer, they went to the oubliette.”

  “Which was?”

  Emil pointed at the paper. “Like this. A small square room. Very deep. There would be only a hatch door, high above. If they answered, they might be brought up. If not…” He shrugged. “Most talked after endless days without water. They would be brought up, interrogated again, then probably shot.”

  Colleen gasped for breath. The sense of excitement, of discovery, was with her so strongly that she was shaking. “Emil, where is this place? Can it be found?”

  “Certainly. Well, I think, anyway. The entrance was boarded up long, long ago. And the lift closed.”

  “The lift?”

  “Ja. The mountain itself used to be a wonderful ski slope. But then…” He shrugged. “More lodges were built, slopes were refined and the lift was outdated. It closed down. Look.” He took her napkin and began to draw on it. “This is Esk. It is a tiny village along the road. From Esk there is another road. You cannot miss the old ski lift. The oubliette is somewhere nearby.”

  Colleen leaned across the table and kissed him. “Bless you, Emil. Bless you!”

  She dug quickly through her purse and found a note for a thousand schillings and stuck it in his hand. He looked at the bill, then at her. “What…?”

  “You’re a doll!” she told him.

  She tore through the ugly breakfast room and didn’t bother with the elevator, just raced down the stairs. She almost ripped the handle off the door to her room in her excitement, but despite her fervor and wild energy, the door remained locked. “Damn it,” she muttered and pounded on it. Bret didn’t answer. Impatiently she looked at her watch. It was almost ten! Bret couldn’t still be asleep.

  “Bret! Open the door.”

  He didn’t. Muttering oaths against him, she found her key, opened the door, then stopped dead still. The bed had been made; Bret wasn’t in it.

  “Bret!” She rushed into the bathroom and even checked in the closet. He wasn’t there.

  “What’s the matter?”

  Colleen spun around to see Bill Dwyer smiling at her from the doorway.

  “I seem to have lost my husband,” Colleen said dryly.

  Bill lowered his head. “What is it?” Colleen asked sharply.

  “Well, uh, actually, I was on my way upstairs to find you. Your husband is out.”

  “Out? We were all supposed to meet at ten.”

  “Yes, I know. But your boss had to run over to another hotel. The phones went out here right after someone tried to reach him from the States. There was a bit of a storm here this morning.” Bill spoke apologetically, as if it were his fault.

  Colleen shook her head. “So where is Bret?”

  Again he looked embarrassed. “Miss Tyrell was still very upset this morning. Your husband decided that since the ski trip had to be delayed, he would take her with him to ch
eck with the local police. They should be back by this afternoon.”

  Colleen sank down on the foot of the bed, almost blinded by the moisture that swam into her eyes. How could he? She had been trying so hard to convince herself that it was ridiculous to worry about Sandy, but now it seemed that she’d been right all along. Bret was so concerned with Sandy that he couldn’t even bother to tell Colleen anything himself.

  “Can I help you?” Bill asked anxiously.

  Colleen laughed. “I think I’ve just solved the whole damned thing, and no one is even around!”

  “What?”

  “It’s a long story. I think I at least know where to look for the diamonds.”

  Bill moved into the room, his eyes shining with excitement, like a little boy’s.

  “Well…” He caught his breath, sitting down beside her. “Why don’t we go look?”

  Colleen caught something of his childlike thrill. Her blood seemed to race. She should go without Bret. He had gone without her. She shook her head. “Bill, thanks, but so much has happened….”

  He sighed, apparently hurt. “I may not look like Ali or Frazier, but I’m not all that incompetent! Besides, I’ve got a gun I can bring.”

  “A gun?”

  “Licensed!” he assured her. “And I’m a top marksman. Colleen, who knows when they’ll all be back? Just think! We could do it. We could do it ourselves! They could come back, and we could be sitting here, sipping Scotch on the rocks, a solved mystery right before us!”

  He kept talking. It didn’t really matter. She had already made her decision. She cut across him. “I’ll just see if I can’t find Ben.”

  “Ben went with your boss. I’ll leave a note on Sandy’s door. They’ll probably go back to her room first.”

  Probably go back to her room. Did everyone know something that Colleen didn’t?

  “I’ll be right back. And I’ll have that gun, just in case Holfer tries anything.”

  “Holfer?” Colleen murmured.

  “Yes, Holfer. He has to be the murderer, doesn’t he?”

  She shook her head. “It’s thanks to Holfer that I know where the diamonds are. Or at least, I think I know where they are. His son gave me the last of the puzzle pieces.”

  Dwyer hesitated. “That doesn’t mean anything except that he wants you to lead him to the diamonds. After all, his piece alone wouldn’t mean much. I’ll be right back.”

  Colleen nodded. Her excitement was fading, though, just as the sun faded at twilight. She wasn’t so sure she cared about the diamonds anymore. They were rocks. Someone else’s rocks. They were only important because they could lead to the finale of a human drama.

  But that would mean another finale. Hers and Bret’s.

  Still, she thought miserably, maybe the finale had been happening all along. Maybe she just hadn’t wanted to see it.

  “Let’s go!”

  Bill was at the door again, his eyes sparkling with energy and enthusiasm. She smiled, stuffed some money and her room key into her pocket and followed him. In thirty minutes they reached Esk. In another fifteen minutes they were halfway up the snowcapped mountain. In another five they saw the deserted ski lift.

  Bill started to laugh as they tramped through the snow toward it. “I know this place! I came up here a couple of years ago. There were some complaints about the lift. People were afraid that someone would try to ride it. The cables are ready to snap, but the controls still work. They still haven’t demolished it or fenced it off.”

  Colleen gazed at the ski lift and shivered. It was old and built like a rusty cage. Bill was right; it was a hazard. The controls were right beside it. If some crazy kid took a ride on a dare, it could be a disaster. The cables were visibly frayed to almost nothing. At first it moved out not far above the snow, but then there was a drop to the valley far below, where the village of Esk huddled.

  “You should work on that,” she told Bill.

  “I will,” he said determinedly.

  They kept tramping through the snow, several feet of it, white and pretty, but deep. Colleen wished she’d worn more than a sweater. The sun was bright, but the air was crisp and clean and cold, and her breath steamed in the chilly air.

  “What are we looking for?” Bill asked politely.

  “Boards. There is supposedly an entrance to a bunker here. It was called the oubliette because prisoners were—”

  “I can imagine what they were,” Bill interrupted her. He was huffing, too; they had left the car far behind. “It must have been boarded up a long time ago.”

  “Before the end of the war,” Colleen agreed. They were up against the mountain and a wall of snow.

  “That would explain why I’ve never heard of it,” Bill murmured. “I think we’re going to have to start dusting the whole mountain to get beneath the snow.”

  Colleen grimaced. “I guess so.” She didn’t even have gloves with her. She started pushing at the snow anyway; her hands burned with the cold, and she kept having to stop. “I think I’m going to wind up with frostbite,” she moaned.

  “You watch. I’ll dig,” Bill said cheerfully. He grinned at her. “No one was following us here. I kept an eye out. But I don’t suppose it would be a bad idea to have a lookout anyway, do you?”

  She shook her head. “You’ve got your gun.”

  “Oh, yes! I have it. But keep your eyes on the road, okay?”

  Colleen nodded. She watched the road, and she started thinking about Bret again. If only he were here. If only they were in on this together. If only she had the nerve—yes, the nerve!—to corner him and tell him that she loved him and demand to know why on earth he couldn’t love her, too, when they could be so good together if they only tried. Damn him! What was this thing he had going with Sandy?

  * * *

  Bret himself didn’t quite know what it was. She had been at his door, frightened and beautiful, when he’d barely stepped out of the shower. And he’d wondered why he was the one she had decided to put all her trust and faith in.

  There was something funny somewhere. Something that he was just missing. Something not quite right. She wanted to be with him, but not so much to talk as to hear him talk. And she was just as avid when they were alone as when they were with the others.

  Was she enjoying it all? he wondered. The excitement of it? Or what…?

  He couldn’t explain it, but Bret was convinced that if he remained around her long enough, she would say something that would clarify the vague feeling he had, the uneasiness. It had something to do with MacHowell. There was a clue there; someone just wasn’t saying the right word.

  He glanced her way as he drove the VW back toward the Ch;afateau Moreau. The police hadn’t been much help. They had seemed to think it was mad to believe in treasure maps. The Second World War was history; Austria looked to the future because the past was painful.

  No matter how useless the quest, Bret was glad they had at least been to the local authorities. And Sandy had been pleasant and calm. Right now she had her window open, and her hair was blowing in the cool breeze.

  She gazed at him and smiled, relaxed. “I have complete faith, you know,” she told him huskily.

  “In what?”

  “In your ability to find the diamonds.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the murderer?”

  She looked at him again wide-eyed. “Of course.”

  Bret smiled pleasantly and returned his attention to the road. “Tell me about MacHowell again, Sandy.”

  Her lower lip trembled. “I’ve told you everything, over and over again.”

  “Have you? How far did you and Bill wander away from him? Were you with Bill all the time?”

  “I think so—oh, please!” She covered her face with her hands. “Don’t make me go on and on with this….”

  Bret sighed. He didn’t really understand what he was feeling, what his intuition was all about. Everything rested with Sandy.

  He shook h
is head. Another dead end. What had he been expecting her to say?

  “Well, here we are,” he murmured as they reached the ch;afateau. “Let’s see if we can find the others. Maybe we’ve got time left today to reach the slopes, if Carly and Ben have made it back.”

  They parked the car, walked through the lobby and found the elevator on the ground floor, as if it were awaiting them. The door closed, and Bret found Sandy’s eyes on him. She smiled slowly. “It’s really a pity…” Her voice trailed away huskily.

  It’s really a pity what? he wondered. Egotistically, it would be nice to assume she meant that it was a pity he was married, except that she knew that he and Colleen were in the process of a divorce. Maybe she thought they were back together.

  But his gut reaction told him that something was out of key. Sandy was out of key.

  “I’ll see if Colleen’s in our room,” he muttered as the elevator door opened.

  “Bret, walk me to my room first, please?” she asked, the fearful little tremor back in her voice.

  He obliged so he was with her when she found the note that had been slipped under her door.

  “Oh! It’s a map to where they’ve gone!” Sandy cried ecstatically.

  “Who?”

  “Bill and your wife! They’re on to something, and we’re supposed to follow them. Let’s go!”

  Bret felt his heart begin to beat a little too quickly. He didn’t like the idea of Colleen going anywhere without him. Why had she run off? He mentally berated himself for not taking the time to find her earlier. She had been so damned cold and distant last night, not even giving him a chance to try to describe the uneasiness he’d been feeling.

  “Let’s go,” he said, agreeing with Sandy. His palms were wet, his knees shaking. Something was wrong; he just wasn’t sure what. “Uh, I’m just going to grab a sweater, okay?”

  He left her in the hallway. She didn’t seem frightened anymore.

  Bret wrote a hasty note. He wanted to slip it beneath Carly’s door, but instinct warned him not to let Sandy see him.

  Ben’s door was closer to his own. He managed to get the note beneath it, wondering if it would matter anyway. He had to be wrong; Holfer had to be the bad guy in this thing.