Chapter 3 – Chapter 3

Jimmy and Terry Winter weren't the last ones to get down to the lounge. Drago Corvius came in soon after Terry and his chauffeur, his arm around a still-groggy Madeleine. He had the effrontery to smile at Terry, while brazenly cooing to Madeleine. Next was the older military-bearing man who had been fucking the maid, Katie. The baron introduced him to Terry as another baron, with the military bearing being explained as him being retired German general Baron Otto Merkel, who now was an arms industrialist and a backer of the brown shirt movement. He also dabbled in the stage arts, and Baron Luderman was cajoling him to be a financial backer for the ballet-opera Luderman was trying to put together. That no doubt was why Merkel was feeling he had a free pass to spike the house staff. Terry had already determined that if the man was bi, he certainly could discipline Terry if he wanted to. He showed every indication that he would be militant and cruel. Although Terry would never willingly join the military, he would have no trouble serving under a military man.

A Spanish couple showed up next. The wife was introduced to Terry as an opera contralto, Maria Alonso, who Luderman wished to sing in his opera. She was pushing fifty and was a small, flighty woman but with a rich commanding voice. She was as pale as Madeleine was and seemed to be walking in a fog. She could probably be made to look a lot younger on stage, but not young. She was always turning her profile to what she continued her best side, and as the evening wore on and she slipped in and out of focused attention, she had little to say unless she was ticked off and then she was explosive—very Spanish.

Her husband, Rodrigo's, claim to relevance here was that he was his wife's manager. He was of undetermined age, but he looked to be in his low thirties, and thus Maria's boy toy when they had first met and married. He was foxy, always with a piercing look and a bit of a sneer. Terry, of course, checked him out immediately as a possible sex partner and found him to be trim, with almost a gaunt body, but he wore tight pants, and Terry determined he dressed right and was admirably long. Yes, Terry would lie down for him if there was no better prospect on the offing.

When their eyes met, a recognition passed between them, and Terry knew that the man would bed him, given the opportunity.

The voluptuous woman who had been sucking on Madeleine's throat and fingering her cunt was the last of the guests to appear. Now that he could see her well, Terry recognized her as a notorious lesbian who wrote erotic novels. She was a claimed Polish countess, Caroline Radiswal, and her age was anywhere in the forties range, although it seemed like her novels had been in the marketplace for a century or more. Perhaps she'd taken over some older writer's franchise and name. She was sultry, voluptuous, dark, mysterious, sarcastic, and quick with the stinging quip. After she'd been introduced, had given Terry a condescending sneer, and wafted on the drinks cart, Baron Luderman confided to Terry that he was trying to get her to write the storyline for his ballet-opera, "Laugh at Death."

"What is this unspoken threat from the external world to those attending your masked ball in your opera?" Terry asked. "Is the ball beset with vampires or something as nefarious and shocking? Is that what you wish to convey about this Hitler fellow and his brown shirts—that they are vampires setting upon us all to suck us dry of moral integrity."

"Shh, it's not safe, even here, to speak such of the brown shirts," the baron hissed. He nodded toward Otto Merkel as a likely threat in this vein. "And why do you ask about vampires?"

"Radiswal writes books about vampires and the theme seems to fit your production." That wasn't the only reference he was making to the woman novelist, though. "You don't believe in vampires?"

"No, of course not. Do you, Terry?"

"Sometimes I almost do, yes. There have been times and places . . . a word to the wise. Does your bedroom have a dressing room with a divan, like mine does?"

"My bedroom is a two-room bedroom suite. My wife and I shared a suite but we had separate bedrooms. Why do you ask?"

"Tonight, and until you become comfortable with whatever arrangement there is with your daughter, I suggest you have her sleep under your supervision and without informing any of the other guests that she is there."

"She sleeps with Drago Corvius. You aren't saying you've already made a determination on his suitability for her, are you?"

Terry just grinned at him.

The baron snorted. "You aren't saying he's already laid you and you think he's just a gay gold digger?"

"He's at least bisexual, yes. And I think he wants to be the lead male singer in your opera—very much. That may be the gold he's after. I also think your daughter is looking entirely too pale." Winter wouldn't go further on his suspicions along those lines until the baron had a chance to acquire some belief and understanding.

Other guests had already been in the lounge when Terry and Jimmy arrived. The middle-aged man the housekeeper had been dominating in a bedroom upstairs turned out to be a stage set designer, Charles Frankel, a quiet, mousy American Jew in his forties, who looked perpetually embarrassed—beyond realizing what Terry had seen him in a compromised position upstairs. He was drinking a lot and seemingly was on the edge of drunkenness. Art was his escape, though. Rather than socializing with others in the lounge, he clung to a sketch pad, sketching other guests as they really were in his perceptive observation. Terry was both amused and surprised when he got a look at the pad to see that the man was sketching the other guests, rendering them as animals who were both clearly identifiable as them and as quite accurate about their basic nature. He had drawn Frau Vetterman, his dominatrix, as an allegator. Frankel was too mousy for Terry to develop any sexual interest in. He was just another submissive—and not a particularly interesting one.

The young man Jimmy had been fucking on the divan in Terry's dressing room was also there, standing by the piano, looking through some sheet music. The baron introduced him as a twenty-six-year-old Italian opera tenor, Guido Salvitore. He was small, effeminate, and more pretty than handsome. "His voice is quite good," the baron said, as they approached him at the piano. "I want him for my opera."

"I think from the looks of him that you want him for your bed or bent over a sawhorse with you mounted on him," Terry said, having already discounted the young man as a determined submissive and therefore not a fit with Terry and of no further sexual interest personally.

"I already have him for my bed," the baron said, "and I've ridden him as a mare. I want him for the high tenor roles in the opera. I've told him you will accompany him. To keep these people in order, I've said that you will play and he will sing for our happy hour."

"I'd be happy to," Terry said, with a smile. He said a few words to a blushing Guido, who apparently didn't realize that Terry had seen him bottoming for Terry's chauffeur, and the guests settled and the two put on a show for much of the time before the police arrived. They stopped, though, when the baron came to Terry and said, "Everyone's accounted for except for one of the maids. And the staff is shorthanded with Andre dead and Mustafa sitting with the body. We could use Katie to help serve and the cook says she has to leave off service here now and go start preparing our dinner."

Indeed, when the cook left, only the other maid, Ingrid, and the butler, Joseph, remained to replenish drinks, serve canapes, and, at the baron's request, keep the guests from wanting to leave the lounge.

Frau Vetterman was, of course, of no help in the service. Her role was to stand stern guard to the doorway to the service wing and command and control.

"OK, I'll run her down," Winter said. "I'll take Jimmy with me, though." The baron's servants hadn't asked the exotic and, to them, strange and foreboding Asian man to help with the service, and Jimmy had not volunteered to do so. He covered several functions, but serving at table wasn't one of them.

Their search was extensive, but they finally found the maid, Katie. They found her in the attic, where the servant's rooms were, but in what appeared to be a box room, but one with a mattress on the floor. She was stretched out on it, looking quite content and peaceful, but very, very pale, in death. Terry only touched her enough to turn her head, her luxurious hair fanning out from her head like angel wings, to the side to see if there were bite marks on her throat.

There were.

As he and Jimmy were coming back downstairs, the police from Garmisch were, at last, arriving.