Carlos wasn’t particularly surprised to see the two elderly women. Terror and excitement flickered across their wrinkled faces as the moonlight lit them up while they fidgeted on his terrace. They didn’t even wait for him to invite them in—within seconds, they were already in the living room.
“Did you hear that awful groan?” Ludmilla panted.
“Impossible not to,” the man grumbled.
“Who do you think they killed?”
Carlos’s eyes narrowed. Ludmilla looked more thrilled than frightened, hardly like a helpless retiree in need of protection.
“No one was killed,” he calmed her. “Somebody cried out in pain, that’s all. You really shouldn’t let your imagination run this wild.”
But Ludmilla couldn’t contain herself. She leaned so close to Carlos’s face that their noses nearly touched.
“That wasn’t a cry. It was a desperate, final scream—just before that poor soul gave up the ghost.”
“Who?”
“Ted.”
“Ted?”
“Yes. And I’m certain it was those two damned Dutchmen who did him in,” she hissed.
The color drained from Carlos’s face. To cover his horror, he buried it in his hands, as if merely scandalized by Ludmilla’s words.
“We know perfectly well what they’re capable of,” María José whispered faintly.
Strangely, that sentence comforted Carlos. He lowered his hands and gently rested them on María José’s shoulder.
“Exactly,” he said, locking eyes with her meaningfully. “And we also know what they’re not…”
Meanwhile, Ludmilla had made herself comfortable on the sofa, as though settling in for a pleasant chat.
“Well then, let’s gather what we know. First: we can be sure that whoever those two Dutchmen are, they’re dangerous, and they want Ted. Second: Ted hasn’t shown his face for days. Third: the shutter in his bedroom is down—something we’ve never seen before.”
She threw a challenging look at the other two pensioners.
Carlos tried to appear indifferent, but deep down he agreed with every word the German woman said. He had noticed the shutter, Ted’s disappearance, and although he’d put his surveillance of Bernard and Noud on hold after the Bangkok incident, he suspected they were involved in all of this.
María José, on the other hand, would have preferred to stay out of the whole affair. Yes, she had heard that terrifying scream, but she wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened. She was simply glad she’d made it home safely from Bangkok, and the last thing she wanted was to get into trouble again. Why should she care how Bernard, Noud, and Ted finished each other off? And if Carlos got tangled up in it too, so be it. Just leave her out of it. Ludmilla could play detective with someone else—Esteban, for instance—especially since she seemed to have forgotten her own husband even existed in her state of excitement.
“I think…” the elderly pastry chef began timidly, “we shouldn’t meddle in other people’s business.”
“But we may have just witnessed a murder!” Ludmilla protested.
“Then call the police,” María José snapped. “Go on, call them and tell them what you saw about the shutter.”
Ludmilla leapt off the sofa in irritation.
“Fine! If you two are such cowards, I’ll call the police myself.”
She yanked her phone from her pocket, but the next moment it slipped from her hands as her face turned ashen.
“Noud…” she breathed, staring at the Dutchman who had just appeared in the doorway.