“Aha,” said Schmidt. “Cherchez I’homme!”

“I think you’ve got it, Schmidt. A woman like that always has to have a man around. Oh, hell. I don’t want to discuss it here. Let’s go.”

Schmidt swept a measuring glance over the table, popped an overlooked morsel of cheese into his mouth, and nodded agreement. “The lunch, it is on me,” he announced, summoning the waitress with a lordly gesture.

“It sure is,” I agreed, surveying his bulging tummy.

Not until Schmidt had risen and was waddling toward the door did I get the full effect of his costume—bright red, fitting him like a second skin. It was so appalling I let out a yelp. “Schmidt!”

“Was? Was ist los? Was ist’s?” Schmidt spun around like a top, bellowing in alarm.

A hush had fallen over the restaurant and every eye in the place was focused on us. I grabbed Schmidt by the seat of the pants (there was very little slack to grab) and the scruff of the neck and propelled him out the door.

We stood by his car arguing. Schmidt was hurt because I didn’t like his outfit—”so fitting for the season of Weihnachten”—and he didn’t want to go home. He was having fun.

We were still arguing when someone came running out of the hotel, calling my name. It was Freddy. “I am so glad I caught you up,” he exclaimed. “Frau Hoffman hoped you would return; she said to tell you a message. There was a bridal chest, very old, belonging to Herr Hoffman, that was given to a friend of his. Perhaps he will be willing to sell to you.”

Schmidt began bobbing up and down and gesturing at me. His face was almost as crimson as his suit, he was so excited. The word “chest” suggested an accompanying adjective—“treasure”—and he was reacting like a child reading Edgar Allan Poe.

“Where does the friend live?” I asked, hoping it was someplace like Paris or Lhasa, and that I could talk Schmidt into catching the first plane.

“Not far from here. I can tell you….”

He rattled off directions, adding helpfully, “It is only several miles from the town.”

“I know it, I know it,” Schmidt cried. “Thank you, my friend—vielen Dank.”

Freddy went running back to the hotel and Schmidt unlocked the Mercedes. “You are following me,” he insisted, forgetting his grammar in his excitement. “I the way am knowing.”

“Wait a minute, Schmidt—”

It was too late. He almost ran over my foot.

I got in my car and took off after the old lunatic, cursing aloud. If I had been on my own, I would have deliberated long and hard about pursuing that oh-so-convenient lead. I probably would have ended up pursuing it, if only for the sake of the chest, which I remembered well. It was a beauty. But I seriously doubted that it contained the gold of Troy.

The first few miles weren’t bad going. Then Schmidt, who drove with an assurance that suggested he really did know where he was going, turned abruptly into a side road that plunged steeply up the mountainside. After a while I shifted into four-wheel drive. I’d have signaled him to stop if there had been anyplace to turn around, which there wasn’t. Snowplows had carved out a single narrow lane; banks of glistening white rose high on both sides. I prayed he wouldn’t meet a car coming down. Occasionally a sidetrack would wind off through clustered pines or up rocky banks toward an isolated dwelling. Otherwise there was no sign of human life.