“So, what are we going to do about Ludmilla?” Noud asked.
“What do you mean?”
Noud put the lid on the pot and turned off the electric stove under the thick sauce. He slowly turned around and looked Bernard straight in the eye, sitting at the kitchen table.
“Come on, how do you think I mean it?”
Bernard didn’t want to hold his sharp gaze, so he simply turned his head away and watched Fabian running around by the pool outside the window.
“We’re talking about an old, fussy lady.”
“So she’s allowed to make threats?” Noud snapped.
“No. No one is. But I don’t think we need to take her seriously. She just wanted to piss us off.”
“Well, what pisses me off is that there are more and more grandmas and grandpas buzzing around us and making our lives difficult—people we supposedly don’t need to take seriously.”
“Yeah, you’re right about that,” Bernard muttered. “There really are too many troublemakers per square meter. And we haven’t even mentioned Ted yet.”
“If we wanted to, Ludmilla could vanish by morning and wake up two days later in the middle of a Vietnamese rainforest in nothing but her slippers.”
“But we don’t want that.”
“We could send Carlos with her…”
“Oh, come on, Noud,” Bernard smiled. “You’ve got way too vivid an imagination. We need to find some other way to put these rascals in their place.”
“Ted too?”
“Ted too,” Bernard laughed. “But for now, calm down, will you?”
“You know, when Ludmilla complimented your overalls, you didn’t exactly look relaxed either.”
“Of course not. I was pretty annoyed to feel yet another splinter stuck under our nails, as you can imagine.”
“So? What now?”
“Give me a few days, Noud. I’ll put together a nice little educational program for all three of them.”
His partner listened, his eyes sparkling. Finally—something truly exciting was about to happen!
“Do you think they freaked out?” María José giggled.
The rum-laced coffee had already kicked in.
“You should’ve seen his face!” Ludmilla laughed, her mouth full of colorful crumbs.
“What a slap in the face for those two pretty boys—to be brought to their knees by an old lady.”
“They must be sweating, wondering what I want from them,” the German woman boasted.
“Aren’t you afraid they might take you out?”
“They wouldn’t dare,” Ludmilla said confidently. “First, they have to figure out how much I know and what my silence will cost. Besides, they couldn’t cover that up.”
“Honestly, I don’t think they’re capable of that anyway. They bugged the Slovakians, big deal. Someone hired them to snoop on Adrian and the others. It’s not a huge scandal. I don’t like them either.”
“That’s what I think too. Private investigators, just a bit clumsy.”
“More like completely clumsy. Even Heidi knows you don’t let your guard down – not even at night. Do you think Ted’s already put the squeeze on them?”
“Now, that’s something I’d love to find out!”
“That prick certainly won’t tell us.”
“Oh, that’s not quite what I had in mind,” Ludmilla said, her voice thick with suggestion.
María José shifted in her chair, flushed, her nostrils flaring as she leaned in, trying to read her friend’s thoughts.
“What are you thinking about this time?”
“If you bring me another round of macarons and rum, I’ll tell you.”
It was a miracle María José didn’t crash right through the glass of the closed terrace door in her rush to fetch the requested treats.