Naked Cruelty

She paused halfway down the path. “Yes, I think I would… Kurt’s not secretive. I don’t mean that he runs off at the mouth, but a trust fund is an important thing. Yes, he’d discuss it.”

“Which means one of two things: that he wasn’t told, or that the idea is a very recent one. Does Dagmar tend to cut Kurt out because he’s elected to live in a foreign country and pursue a foreign career?” Carmine asked.

“I think Dagmar loves Kurt very much,” Helen said slowly, “but I also think that a part of her condemns him for leaving the Fatherland. When Kurt talks of her, there’s always an underlying tone of sadness. Once he told me that the family felt that if he was brilliant enough to be a Nobel contender in physics, he could have done the same in chemistry.”

“And could he?”

“No!” she said scornfully. “Kurt’s narrow, and his gifts are mathematical. Chemistry is terra incognita to him.”

“They should have had a Prunella Balducci when Kurt was less than two years old,” said Carmine.

“Eh?”

“No matter.”

“How intensive is the search for Kurt going to be, Captain?”

“That depends on the FBI. They take the lead in kidnappings.”

“Are they on their way?”

“They’ll be at County Services by the time we get back.”

Robert and Gordon Warburton came galloping down the path from their house just as Carmine and Helen were about to climb into the Fairlane.

“Captain, Captain!” said Robbie breathlessly, “is it true?”

“Is what true?”

“That Kurt’s been kidnapped.”

“Yes, it is. Did you see him last night?”

“Not see,” said Gordie. “Heard.”

“What did you hear, Gordon?” Carmine asked.

“The Porsche coming home about one in the morning-Wednesday to Thursday, that is. Late for Kurt!”

“Why did you hear it and not Robert?”

“I’m on Kurt’s side of the house. Robbie hears Mason Novak come and go-his garage is in his backyard.”

“Are you sure you didn’t look, Gordon?” Carmine pressed.

“Wellll… When he grated his gears, I confess I did get up to have a look, Captain. I mean, Kurt never grates his gears!”

“An observation I confirm, Gordon,” said Helen.

“What did you see?” Carmine asked.

“Not Kurt, for sure! Two people, a woman and a man. They got out of the Porsche and played with the remote as if they’d never seen one before. When the door went up, they got back into the car and drove in. I went back to bed,” said Gordie.

“Did you get a look at them?” Helen asked eagerly.

“Since there’s a lamp post there, yes. The woman was about forty, the man younger. She wore what looked like dark red, but she had a hat with a veil on her head, so her features were a mystery. I think her hair was dark. Certainly she had a good figure. The man deferred to her. He had thick, wavy dark hair and a handsome face, but don’t ask me to identify him in a line-up because I couldn’t do it.” He giggled. “Handsome is as handsome does, Captain.”

Carmine growled. “Keep on like this, Gordon, and you won’t be half as handsome.”

“Ooo-aa!”

“Did either of you see Kurt on Wednesday?” Helen asked.

“Yes, around five-thirty. The Porsche was parked on the kerb and he came running out of the house dressed for a date, we thought,” said Robbie. “Very smart!”

“They’re weirdos,” said Carmine as he and Helen drove away. “At first I thought they were bent. Now I don’t think the homo act is real. Though they’re not straight.”

“Think of pretzels,” said Helen, grinning.

“Let’s both write reports, huh? That way, yours will end up with Corey Marshall, who’ll shove it at the Feds.”

“Anything you say, Captain.”

“Your journals are excellent, by the way.”

She went pink. “Truly?”

“Oh, yes. I especially like the colored inks.”

“Well, I’m long-winded, so having different colors makes it easier to find a specific passage.”

“I may adopt it myself.”

She went pinker.

Of course the case was huge, not to mention very complicated. The person kidnapped was a foreign national resident in the United States; his father, who was paying the ransom, lived in West Germany; and the ten million dollars were bypassing the United States on a much shorter journey between Munich and Zurich. Worse, none of the police forces involved had any jurisdiction over a large and prestigious Swiss bank.

“It’s brilliant,” said Carmine to Desdemona that night as they got ready for bed. His eyes, at once appreciative and caring, had noted that his wife looked calmer, fresher, more alive.

“If you put that nightie on, it’s only going to get ripped off,” he said, climbing into his side of the big bed.

She giggled and draped it over a convenient chair. “There! I can grab it in an emergency. Having children rather inhibits nudity.” She slid into bed and gave a luxurious stretch that had him wanting her more urgently than he had planned; he groaned, rolled over and buried his face in her neck.

“Carmine, stop! You know that drives me wild! I want to say something,” she said in a low voice, yanking at his head until he gave up and lay still to listen. “Now I understand why the second child can be perilous. You were right to want to wait a year or two longer. Prunella says some women need quite an amount of time to get their hormones back to normal, and she thinks I am one such. I’ve been-I’ve been down in the dumps since Alex was born, and I got myself in a terrible muddle. It all went to Julian, I haven’t given Alex the attention he should have. But, you know, I couldn’t see it! Not until I had a few heart-to-hearts with Prunella, anyway. Normally I’m efficient enough to cope with whatever comes along, so these past six months have been a shock. But I’m getting better now, dear love, I truly am. With Prunella to take the brunt of Julian and teach him a routine, I have enough time and energy to love Alex the way he has to be loved. He’s not a scrap like Julian, and this time with him is vital.” She sighed, stroking Carmine’s hair. “Our elder son is a handful, and I now understand that old saying better-there’s no training for politics or parenthood.”

“Well, it’s not hard to see that you’re feeling much better,” he said, zeroing in on her neck again.

“No, no, wait! I want to thank you, Carmine, for being not only understanding, but finding the answer to my depression. East Holloman is one vast extended family, you have access to all sorts of people. And I thank you for setting the network in motion. How else would I ever have found a Prunella?”

“Finished?”

“Yes.”

He went back to driving her wild by kissing her neck, his arms around her, her legs around him. How great it was to make love to a six-foot-three wife!

Though wives of any kind were far from Carmine’s mind the next morning, when the FBI hit town. No Ted Kelly this time, of course, as espionage was not on the menu; this team was led by Special Agent Hunter Wyatt, a very different kind of man and investigator. Of medium height and build, he moved well; his face was studious down to a pair of wire-rimmed glasses behind which genuinely grey eyes regarded the world with what appeared to be a deep-rooted skepticism. Carmine liked him, and took him off to Malvolio’s for coffee.

“Beats cop coffee,” he explained, “and you’ll be getting plenty of that. Unless you have an expense account bigger than a Holloman cop’s, Malvolio’s is the best place to eat.”

“This suits me fine. Fill me in,” said Hunter Wyatt.

Privately deciding that if you had a name like Hunter Wyatt you were a shoo-in for a career in law enforcement, Carmine filled him in. “Tell me my bones are wrong,” he ended.