The lobby exploded. Veronica sprang to her feet. Loren Avery appeared from nowhere muttering a fervent “Thank God!” With a cry of joy, someone shot past me. It was the plainly clothed woman who’d been peering out from the hall.
“Oh, this will be a much better study in luggage conveyance,” said Ione innocently. Filming. Her subject appeared to be the items being carried in by Smith and another bellman, but I knew it was the newcomer, who without a doubt was Mitzi Cassingham.
To describe the actress as blonde was an understatement. Her newly freed hair was a cloud of spun sugar around an oval face. She spread her arms wide for the woman in the navy dress who hurtled into them.
“Oh, Miss! I’ve been so afraid for you!”
“I know you have, Till, and I’m sorry I put you through it. I had no idea I’d get stuck. Is your room okay? Are you okay?”
Something caught my eye on the balcony. Bartoz. Surveying the activity.
“You’ll be doing a lot of shopping for me these next few days,” Mitzi was telling her maid. “I barely have a change of clothes. For now, can you unpack my suitcase? And draw me a lovely, lovely bath.”
As the maid hurried off, Veronica stepped close to drape an arm around Mitzi’s shoulder.
“Late because you couldn’t tear yourself away from cavorting with all those Greek sailors? That’s how I heard it.”
“Something like that.” Mitzi laughed and nudged her with an elbow. “Good to see you, kid.”
“Likewise.”
Mitzi shook Loren’s hand and apologized for delaying things. He said he was glad she was safe.
Ione lowered her camera.
“Have we gotten everything on your list?” she asked for any listeners.
I clicked the stopwatch off, then flipped some pages on my clipboard. I nodded. The elevator disgorged a stern looking Archie Clarke.
“Why don’t you pack up? I want to make a few notes here while things are still fresh in my mind,” I said.
Bartoz had vanished, but Lena Shields had appeared. She sat on one arm of the couch vacated by Veronica. Her gaze, however, wasn’t on Mitzi. Hard to tell whether it was on the trio that had arrived with Mitzi or on the luggage behind them.
Mitzi’s maid had shepherded Smith up with her single suitcase. What remained belonged to the threesome who’d come in with Mitzi. Three ordinary suitcases. Another one, child sized. And four very sturdy unfinished wooden crates. Two were nearly the height of the front desk. The others looked about as high as where my garter belt clipped to my stockings. Their width varied, but none of the crates was more than ten inches deep.
The owners of the luggage moved without animation, as if dazed or exhausted or both. The younger of the women was signing the register. She gripped the little boy with a ferocity that warned against trying to separate them.
Eulahbelle and the two male dancers ran up to join the throng around Mitzi. Archie Clarke was booming away. To my surprise, I saw Count Szarenski and his bunch making their way toward the new arrivals.
Their destination, however, wasn’t the actress. As those with him halted a few paces back, the aloof Szarenski spoke to the woman clutching the little boy. She turned from the desk. Stopping in front of her, the count clicked his heels together, took her hand, and bowed low to kiss it.
As dazed as she seemed, the woman gave a small bow in return. They exchanged a few words in French, or maybe Polish, with him doing most of the talking. She took a lace-trimmed hanky from her pocket and dabbed at her eyes. One of the Szarenski women stepped forward and murmured something and bussed her on both cheeks. Meanwhile, the count leaned low on his cane to speak to the little boy.
Had he used a cane before? When they excluded me from the elevator?
I looked up to find Bartoz’s single eye looking at me.
* * *
“Matt’s going to be too excited to sleep.”
“As long as he’s too excited to renege on our deal.”
Ione and I were on our way to the parking lot, but my mind was still on the scene in the lobby. The quieter one. The woman must be the young widow Tucker had told me about the day he hired me, the one whose husband had died fighting with the French resistance. Apparently he’d been well enough known, or his widow was, for a count from another country to pay respects.
“Can he have that film ready to watch tomorrow?” I asked Ione.
“Oh, I doubt it. This morning he said something about it having to go to Cincinnati.”
“Cincinnati!”
She looked at me shrewdly.
“I’ll tell him you need to see it pronto for whatever you’re working on.”
“Thanks, Ione.”
“Which I now speculate has to do with those crated up paintings.”
So that was what the crates contained. I’d supposed they held clothes. Since Ione moved in the sort of circles to know about such things, I decided she was probably right. I smiled noncommittally.
When we’d said our good-byes, as I started back in, I noticed the scowling Szarenski girl. She sat on the hood of a car parked under a spindly tree that was managing to hold its own in a far corner of the parking lot. As she caught sight of me, her expression grew almost civil. Then a voice spoke behind me and I realized she’d been looking over my shoulder.
It was Bartoz, and the words that passed between them were incomprehensible. Moving toward her, he spoke again, this time with a jerk of the head. I didn’t need a translator to tell me it meant, roughly, ‘Get inside and don’t wander off again.’
The girl slid reluctantly from the car. For half a second I felt sorry for her. If her father was a count, the kid had probably had the run of a big yard with plenty of trees and things to do. Now she was stuck in a strange place with adults afraid to let her out of their sight.
I walked back to the hotel to find out what the jewelry appraiser had discovered. And how long Count Szarenski had been using a cane.