I went on. “Wolfie, you didn’t tell us anything when we met yesterday. You didn’t betray Galina. There was no reason whatsoever for her to give the order to kill you—except that she’s a sadistic bitch. And she’s not going to stop until she’s dead. Or you are.”
I think he’d have caved then, but before he could speak, Taverner brought out another pan of cinnamon rolls dripping in cardamom cream cheese frosting. Wolfie looked up, sniffingthe air like a dog. Taverner handed him the entire pan and a fork, and Wolfie gave him a worshipful look. Wolfie busied himself for a few minutes, and just when I was about to try again, he looked up, cream cheese wreathing his mouth.
“What do you want to know?”
I smiled. “Everything, Wolfie. Everything.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Once Wolfie made up hismind to work with us, he sang like the canary he was. He didn’t know much about Galina’s professional life, but he told us everything he’d picked up over their few months together. Taverner kept him supplied with coffee thickened with cream and plates of food, and as long as Wolfie was eating, he was talking. He chomped his way through sandwiches of mortadella and provolone, apple turnovers, a bowl of Greek yogurt with cherry compote, and a pear tart.
“Let’s start with her associates,” I suggested. “Who does she see? Who hangs around her?”
“Tamara,” he said with a shudder. “She is the bodyguard. Very small, very mean. But I only see her once or twice. She stays outside when Galina comes to see me.”
“Anyone else?”
He waved away the idea. “Nobody. Galina is private. I never meet family or friends.”
“What do you know about her business? About her brother’s, Pasha’s, business?”
He thought for a moment as he chewed. “I heard Galina yell at him on the phone once about being too lazy, about not working hard enough. That too much was left to her. She says they must spend money to make money, but Pasha was living too well, keeping profits she wanted to put into the business.”
“But you don’t know what kind of business?” I pressed.
“No, but sometimes she changes phone numbers or hotels without warning. This is not the sign of someone who is doing legitimate business. Galina is a woman with many secrets.”
“Are you lovers?” I asked.
He shook his head so vehemently, little crumbs of pastry went flying. “No, no! I earned my role at La Fenice,” he said stoutly.
“Of course you did,” Helen told him in a soothing tone. She darted a look at me and I shrugged. She was welcome to take over.
“Has she helped other protégés like you?” Helen asked.
He shrugged. “Some. But none with as good a voice as me.” He thumped his chest for emphasis.
“How did you meet?” was Helen’s follow-up.
“I was singing at a music festival in Nürnberg,” he answered through a mouthful of mortadella. “She travels much to such places, small festivals to find undiscovered talent, she says.” His eyes welled and he stopped chewing. “She says Iam the find of a lifetime.” He folded his hands in his lap and his expression was tragic. “She is so private, so careful of her little secrets. She never tells me where she travels but often she leaves for short trips a few days here and there, sometimes a week. She is so secretive, I tease her about bodies buried in the garden.” He broke off with a shudder. “I thought it was a joke.” He dropped his face into his hands and began to cry.
We let him sniffle for a few minutes before Akiko spoke to Mary Alice in a low voice. “Why don’t you just ask him where she lives? She has to have a house or favorite hotel here.”
“Because she won’t go back there,” Natalie put in. “She knows we’ve got Wolfie, so she’ll burn her connection to any place he knew about. She’ll be on the run now. All the more reason for her to kill him, actually. The sooner he’s dead, the sooner she can get her life back to normal.”
Wolfie moaned and dropped his hands. His face was a mess of tears and snot and a few streaks of dried blood I’d missed.
Taverner took a handkerchief from his pocket. He always carried a handkerchief, handy for makeshift tourniquets or bandages—or even a white flag of surrender, except Taverner had never given up on anything in his life. We usually used our own initials for cover identities, so he could have had them monogrammed, but his were stitched with a tiny oak leaf in one corner instead.
Taverner handed the handkerchief over and Wolfie mopped his face. When he looked up, he seemed a little calmer and about a thousand years older.
“Come on in the kitchen,” Taverner urged. “I’m going toput on a fresh pot of coffee. And I think there are some more cinnamon rolls.”
Wolfie shambled after him, looking dead on his feet as he followed Taverner into the kitchen, meek as a lamb. Adrenaline takes some people like that. He’d had a massive shot of it and then an even bigger crash. He would probably be out of it for a few hours which was fine by me. Wolfie might have become another target on Galina’s list, which should have made him our natural ally, but that didn’t mean I completely trusted him.
Minka, who’d been notably quiet through it all as she tapped away on her screen, gave me a narrow look. “The shooting at him, it was real? Not just a ruse for getting him here so Galina could follow and ambush you?”
I shook my head, remembering all the crying and shaking he’d done as well as the expression of abject disbelief in his eyes. “Nope. He’s not that good of an actor.”