He nodded. “How could I forget?”
Of course, he had been one of the first there, in the canyon, after the accident. “She’s gone,” I said. “Disappeared. Just went into the house and then … gone.”
“I imagine she went to the restroom.” The Colonel spoke mildly, at the same time removing my hand from his coat sleeve.
“You don’t understand.” I was panicking now. “Verity is not here. Chad went looking for her. She’s nowhere to be found. We saw her go into the house half an hour ago. She never came out.”
“But we are in the garden at the back of the house,” the Colonel explained, exasperated. He obviously thought women like me got endlessly into trouble. “Does it not occur to you she might have left of her own accord by the front door, which I assume is the way she came in?”
“And does it not occur to you that my aunt was murdered almost next door, by person or persons as yet unknown? Is it that there’s a curse on the Villa Romantica, Colonel? Do you believe in mumbo jumbo like that? Well, I can tell you, I for one, do not. Unless Chad is able to find her, we have to believe somebody took Verity, some madman…”
The Colonel put a calming hand on my shoulder. “You are jumping to ridiculous conclusions. Why would anybody want to ‘take’ Verity as you put it? She’s simply a guest, and I’m betting she’d had a little too much to drink and decided bed was the place for her. Someone would have driven her home.”
“How can you say that? How can you just stand there and not do something?”
The Colonel’s eyes were suddenly unsmiling. “Tell me why you think anything should have happened to her.”
I stared back at him, wondering why I should. But Chad was uneasy too; he’d felt something was wrong.
“Gut instinct,” I said.
Our eyes linked for a second. “I’ve always been a believer in that.” The Colonel took my hand in its silver crochet glove, with the large sapphire on the right middle finger. His hand was warm, strong, comforting.
“Let’s go find her,” he said.
26
The Boss
At the edge of the party crowd the Boss observed the sudden whispering, the hands across mouths as the story of the missing girl spread from woman to woman. The men seemed unconcerned, still busy with men-talk: golf and boats, cars and the stock market. So, Verity’s disappearance had been noted. Time now for him to take over, to become the crusader, the man intent on finding the lost girl, the man who would become her savior. Even if ultimately it did prove too late to find her alive.
The fact was, it had not been Verity that had been his original target. It was the elusive Mirabella, who had escaped twice already, and now another time. Of course Verity was a lovely substitute. Such a nice young woman, still a girl really, all blond bounciness and wide smile and those amazing round boobs that were unmissable—her greatest asset in fact, and one he appreciated. He was about to let her know that. The thought of the sharp point of his knife between Verity’s breasts excited him and he stepped quickly behind the bar to hide the evidence. He was a well-endowed man, as many women had told him. Which was fine, in the right place at the right time. In public it was not correct and he would be taken as a pervert.
“Pervert.” An odd word for a state of mind, of body, that to him was acceptable. How else would a man enjoy himself if not for a few perversions? There were women that catered to his brand of sexuality; the dominatrix in London was a favorite, as was the Russian housewife in his old hometown of Minsk, where it had all started. She had known instinctively what he liked, the whip, the knife, the threat, the danger. The knife edge of danger was what he called it, with a knowing smile. God, how he enjoyed it. The only thing he enjoyed more was money.
A quick sprinkling of Rohypnol had disappeared in Verity’s third glass of champagne, sufficient to send her wobbling away, into the arms of his handlers who’d caught her before she made it to the bathroom.
He’d watched from the library door, heard her quick cry of surprise when they came from behind; saw one throw an arm around her neck, the other lift her feet off the ground, then both run with her out through the sliding glass doors, into the darkness.