“She sounds like a normal kid,” I replied.
Evgenia flapped a hand. “Galina was a nuisance. I took her because she was my sister’s child, but she was always difficult, always sulking in her room, crying.”
“Yeah, grieving children will do that,” I said. “What a hardship for you.”
The thing about rich narcissists is they almost never smell sarcasm. Evgenia took the remark at face value and simpered under what she mistook for sympathy.
“It was very hard,” she said. “Only boarding school made it bearable. I sent her away as soon as I could. It was for the best.”
“For you,” I shot back before I could stop myself. IfEvgenia kept telling tales from Galina’s childhood, she was going to have me feeling sorry for a Lazarov.
“Where is Galina now?”
Her brows snapped together, and she reached out and twitched my arm into a pinch. Those bony old fingers were sharp and I jumped back, rubbing my arm.
“That’s going to bruise,” I told her irritably. “Why did you do that?”
“You ask too many questions.”
And then she was gone again, humming, a vacant expression in her eyes. When she finished her tune, she snapped her fingers and pointed to the pitcher. “Drink.”
“I hear your family was White Russian,” I said pleasantly. “I’m beginning to sympathize with the Bolsheviks.”
I poured another glass of juice and handed it over, neatly extracting the frame from her hand as I did so.
“Enjoy your juice,” I told her. I replaced the frame on the mantelpiece on my way out of the room. But now there was a blank square of cardboard where the photograph of Galina Lazarov had been.
—
I hustled down to thecar the way I’d come. The little perv on the terrace was gone and the only person I passed was a mildly surprised orderly carrying a batch of clean linens. He just looked on as I called a friendly greeting and continued on my way. Generally, you can get away with being just about anywhere you aren’t supposed to be if you carry yourself withconfidence and don’t stop long enough for anyone to ask you questions. (That’s a useful tip in case you’re taking notes.)
I got to the car just as the others were arriving. We saved the debrief for the drive back to Basel. “Find anything?” I asked.
Helen waved a brochure. “For starters, the facility charges three hundred thousand euros a year for a private room.”
I snorted. “For a place with the security of a public kindergarten?”
Natalie spoke up from the back seat. “I managed to get a peek at Evgenia’s file. Her next of kin is Pavel ‘Pasha’ Lazarov who resides in London. I dialed the phone number they have for him, but it just went to an answering service in the UK. They offered to take a message, so if they know he’s dead, they’re not talking about it.”
“Anything else?”
“They spend a lot of time in enforced crafts,” Mary Alice said sourly. “I swear to god, if I ever need that kind of supervision, I’m just going to have Akiko push me off a cliff. Nice and quick.”
“A cliff?” Natalie was skeptical. “You might get snagged on a tree on the way down. If that happens, you could survive, only you’d be all banged up. Maybe paralyzed.”
“Alright then, what would you choose?” Mary Alice demanded.
Natalie started naming her preferred methods for self-destruction while I took one hand off the wheel and fished in my pocket for the photo. I handed it to Helen. She studied it as Mary Alice began rebutting Natalie’s suggestions.
“What am I looking at?” Helen asked.
“Proof that Galina Lazarov is still alive,” I said. The bickering in the back seat skidded to a halt.
“The hell did you just say?” Mary Alice asked, reaching for the photo.
“Galina Lazarov, a person with just as much motive to kill us as Pasha, is not dead as we were led to believe,” I told her. “She’s alive and well, or at least she was a few days ago. She brought Evgenia cookies.”
Natalie snatched the picture from Mary Alice. “You have got to be shitting me.”