“Run!” ordered Bannerman. “Head up the slope!”
Thrashing through the snow, they’d covered some two hundred yards before the men boiled out of a rear door of the chalet. Shouts showed they’d been seen; two pistol shots barked wildly at them from below. Startled, Mark stumbled and fell, and as Bannerman helped him up again, Gelling and his men toiled towards them.
A sudden intervention came from a rock ledge only twenty feet or so above Bannerman’s head.
“Attenzione, stay down there!” Carlo Belzoni was standing out in the open. In one hand he held a lightweight grenade. He gave Bannerman a grin, then shouted again. “You can see what I’m holding, Gelling. Behave!”
The men had halted as if frozen. A long, broad overhang of snow loomed above them, yet Belzoni was safe on a jutting outcrop of rock. The same outcrop could protect Bannerman and Adams. The Italian smuggler beckoned, and first Bannerman, then Adams, joined him on the ledge.
“Belzoni—” John Gelling took a few steps forward on his own, his voice echoing upwards “—we could do a deal.”
“A deal like you handed to my good friend Guido — who wasn’t ready for dying?” countered Belzoni curtly.
“Guido!” Mark Adams gave a gasp. “You knew him?”
“He was my partner,” said Belzoni softly, keeping one eye on the men below. “He was watching Gelling, knowing he was moving into our territory.” He sighed. “It’s good to see you again, Signor Adams. Do you know what happened to Guido?”
“Yes. Except I didn’t know his name until afterwards.” Adams gave an unhappy nod. “It was when I took the Volvo to the chalet to have the fake fuel tank fitted. They spotted someone sneaking around. Once they’d changed fuel tanks, I was told to drive the Volvo back to the service station—”
Guido had followed him. But Gelling and his men came along, too, using Mark Adams as bait. In the struggle that followed, Belzoni’s partner was shot and killed by Gelling. Adams was seized because he’d seen too much.
“They said they’d dump the body and fake an avalanche. Then they locked me in the cellar.” The rescued bridegroom stopped and gave a warning gasp. “Watch out—”
Below, Gelling and his men were running, making a dash for safety. Unemotionally Carlo Belzoni flicked the safety pin from the grenade and threw the grenade in an arc. Briefly it was a black speck curving above the snow.
A loud blast sounded, and seconds later a gathering, growling slide of white was on the move, sweeping its way downhill. One moment Gelling and his men were still running, still trying for safety. The next, they had vanished.
And all that was left was silence.
“Only a baby-sized avalanche,” said Belzoni almost apologetically. “If people insist, I expect these three can be dug out alive.” He brushed some snow from his jacket. “Signor Adams, you were lucky not to end up dead beside my friend Guido — except that maybe they thought a live hostage might be useful.”
“Particularly if they had to persuade Susan Adams to drive the Volvo back to Britain,” Bannerman said. “She’d be a gift. Who’d want to make things awkward for a tragic widow traveling home?” He paused. “Belzoni, how the hell did you get here anyway?”
“I’ve been following you since first thing this morning,” said the onetime footballer cheerfully. “But now I’ll leave you. Too much publicity is bad in my business.” He gave a dry smile. “Signor Adams, this I know. It wouldn’t have been watches you carried for John Gelling.”
“Definitely not watches,” said Sub-inspector Josef Bart some time later.
Belzoni was gone before a three-car convoy of police reached the old chalet. The police quickly extracted their three prisoners from the snow, men too glad to be alive to have any fight left in them.
“You were foolish, Herr Adams,” said the sub-inspector once there was time to check. “Your Volvo’s altered fuel tank had acquired a new compartment that contained four kilos of heroin — a small fortune for any dealer.”
Susan Adams had also arrived and was holding onto her husband as if she’d never let go.
“I wish I could have thanked Belzoni,” she murmured.
Mark Adams shook his head. “I don’t think he’ll come near us again.”
He was wrong.
First there were family celebrations on both sides of the Atlantic — with an extra celebration as the news helped Mark Adams’ mother to recover. Then, a week after the Adamses finished their honeymoon break and returned home, a visitor limped into the Banner Agency office in Edinburgh.
Inevitably, it was Belzoni.
“Exactly what are you after?” asked David Bannerman suspiciously.
“Me?” Carlo Belzoni frowned and turned to Helen. “Do I deserve that, signorina?”
“Probably.” She winked at her brother. “Carlo, if you’re looking for any kind of a reward—”
“No need,” smiled Belzoni. He put an envelope in front of David. “The young lovebirds had their Volvo... ah... borrowed last night. This tells them where to find it, with only some incidentals removed.”
“Watches?” Bannerman groaned.
“What else?” Belzoni chuckled. “And an excellent profit for everyone — including the bride, of course. She deserved her share. We came to an agreement immediately after she got her husband back.”
Helen nursed her head in her hands for a moment and tried not to laugh. “Her husband doesn’t know?”
“Husbands should never know,” said Belzoni. He blinked as the daily one o’clock gun fired from Edinburgh Castle with a bang that vibrated through the room. “The unexpected is always best.” He considered Helen with an undisguised interest. “Now I would like to take both of you to lunch. Somewhere suitably expensive, eh?”
“My brother has a meeting.” said Helen Bannerman firmly. Her eyes twinkled. “But I haven’t — and I’m hungry. Lead on!”
Dragons
by Sharon Mackey
I held my breath and ducked into the upstairs eaves of Prudence Geasley’s Victorian, unable to suppress the feeling.
It was shock, I suppose, then sheer anger, when I first discovered my late husband Jeb and Eva Wadsell in the catacombs of his law office “looking for something” as Jeb had so eloquently put it. I tried not to remember the scene: Eva giggling, scrambling for her Chinese mother-of-pearl comb and Jeb, shoeless with a face full of frosted-pink smears.
After that Jeb swore he’d never venture there again, although I suspected he’d carried on in other dark and sundry places with other reckless and irrelevant women.
I whacked at a cobweb, bumping my head on the slanted ceiling, my shins grazing cardboard boxes stacked in the vicinity of alphabetical order.
Years ago Prudie had raised the rent five dollars when Jeb had asked permission to store “dead” files in what he’d dubbed “the catacombs.” Lawyers had to keep everything, he’d said. Malpractice claims were rampant. You get rid of something today, and the next day they want it on a silver platter with a serving of smoked salmon and dill sauce.
I rooted toward some peeling magnolia wallpaper around the chimney, grabbed the entire carton of M’s, and ducked back through the doorway, smacking my crown on the way out.
I dropped the box on Jeb’s pressed pecan desk thinking a lawyer’s s work was never done, especially a dead lawyer’s work. I knew lawsuits weren’t limited to the living, that malpractice claims could also be brought against the paltry estate of a formerly careless, now deceased lawyer like Jeb. That’s why I wasn’t exactly waxing nostalgic. As far as I knew, he’d left me with no will whatsoever, his law office rent, and an address book full of Tammies and Mimis and Darlas.
I couldn’t find the deed. Ernest Minks’ vulture neighbors were putting up chain-link faster than an uphill semi could chum exhaust, and I had to find the deed to his sixty acres, the deed my late husband had failed to record at the Poke County Clerk’s office twelve years ago.