Mean Evergreen (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Twelve)

by A W Hartoin

  “Were there any students that he was particularly close to?” I asked.

  “There were so many he helped with recommendation letters to colleges and with student council, but I never saw anyone as standing out.”

  “Who did he spend the most time on?”

  “That would be the AP Gov students. That’s a tough AP and he put in a tremendous amount of time with those kids.”

  “Did he mention any names repeatedly?”

  “You don’t really think one of our students was a part of this,” she said. “They’re kids. The biggest thing on their minds is getting into college.”

  “I bring it up because of that rumor about Anton meeting a student at a café in Sindelfingen.”

  Sherri thought the rumor was nuts. The only thing she knew him to do in Sindelfingen was to eat at the Greek restaurant there and occasionally hit the mall. I showed her the ATM he took money out of on my phone and she shook her head. “I’ve probably been by there. My hair salon is down the street, but I was never with Anton.”

  “Do you know a student named Sergio Tarantina?” I asked.

  “Sure. He’s a great kid. He’s in my class and I think he was in Anton’s AP Gov. I saw him in the study group when they were in the library. Why do you ask?”

  “I heard that he was one of the first kids to start talking about the café rumor.”

  “Really? Anton had no problems with him that I know of.”

  “Do you know how I can get in touch with Sergio?” I asked.

  “You can’t,” she said. “He’s gone.”

  Crap on a cracker.

  “He moved?”

  “Oh, no,” said Sherri. “He’s in Austria skiing with his family. Sometimes people pull their kids out early at Christmas. They’re here for a limited time and it’s Europe after all. We were supposed to go to Norway next week, but I’m too upset. Keith’s not happy. He doesn’t understand.”

  Before I could respond, Keith walked back in, panting and covered in sweat. “I’m sorry. I just had to take a breather.”

  “By breather do you mean run six miles?” I asked.

  “It’s how I do,” he said with a laugh.

  “Keith loves to work out,” said Sherri, frowning.

  Those two had issues and they weren’t all Anton.

  “Sherri’s been helping me out,” I said.

  “Good,” said Keith.

  “What were your impressions of Anton?”

  Keith glanced at his wife and then laid it out. “He was weird.”

  “He was not weird,” protested Sherri.

  Her husband rolled his eyes. “You didn’t notice because he knitted, liked The Real Housewives of whatever, and loved museums, but the guy was weird.”

  The handwringing started again, and she said, “He was not.”

  Keith went on to describe the Anton that I recognized, a guy that wouldn’t answer direct questions and was insanely private.

  “Private isn’t a bad thing,” said Sherri.

  “He was hiding things and someone found out.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Keith threw up his hands again. “He was hiding his screwed-up family and God knows what else.”

  “There was nothing else!”

  “What about that café thing everyone’s talking about?”

  Sherri stood up and burst into tears before running out. Keith put his head in his hands. “Sorry. I just keep losing my temper. I didn’t like him when he was alive. Now that he’s dead, I hate him.”

  “Why didn’t you like him?” I asked. “Most people did. Actually, you’re the first person I’ve met that didn’t.”

  Keith sat back and thought it over. “I’m a simple man. You take care of your family. You protect your country. You tell the truth. That’s it. You live your life with those things in mind, things work out.”

  “So?”

  “Anton Thooft was a liar and I’ve got a problem with a guy who lies to my wife, especially when she adores him.”

  I had a pretty good idea of where this was going, but I asked, “What did he lie about?”

  “Being gay,” he said. “He told my little sweetheart in there that it was some huge secret and that nobody knew. He made it out like she was so special that he could tell her. I didn’t get the big deal. He was gay. So what?”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “He told other people, too.”

  Keith shot a finger at me. “Bingo.”

  “How many?”

  “Two that I know of. Miss Watts, this is a small community. We know each other, especially if you live on post. Word gets around. I heard it from a friend of Anton’s that works at the gym. Kelly volunteers at Sister Margaret’s food pantry in downtown Stuttgart. Anton volunteered there, too. Anyway, she and Anton were tight. He pulled the same crap with her.”

  I smiled. “She wasn’t very good with the secret.”

  “It just slipped out. I mentioned that Sherri was going to Greece with Anton last summer for a week. I wasn’t thrilled. He was always going places with my wife. Anyway, Kelly just laughed and I guessed that she was in on it. After she confirmed, she swore me to secrecy.”

  “But Sherri had already told you?”

  “She did, but when I told her that Kelly knew she blew it off.”

  “Who else did you hear it from?”

  Keith went on to detail an interaction with a woman named Joanne in something called Outdoor Rec. She was tuning up his skis and they got to talking. Joanne knew Anton and had gone skiing with him several times. Her husband was the jealous type and didn’t want her going anymore. Keith told her Anton was gay, thinking that might help out the situation, but she knew. She’d also heard it from a coordinator at the USO.

  “That guy had issues,” said Keith. “I was so sick of him. Anton this. Anton that. I might not be the greatest husband, but I don’t lie about who I am.” He spread his meaty arms wide. “This is it.”

  “It was a pattern with Anton,” I said. “I don’t really know why he did it.”

  “Screw that guy.”

  “I’m with you.”

  “I bet you are,” said Keith. “You know who you should talk to?”

  “Hit me,” I said.

  “One of the school counselors is all up in this Thooft crap.”

  A sense of calm came over me. Keith was straightforward. It was so refreshing. “Will you intro me?” I asked.

  “It’s Jackson Hobbes. He’s one of my gym partners. I can call him right now.”

  “You’re my favorite person in Germany.”

  Keith grinned at me. “I’m gonna want to take a picture with you for Instagram.”

  “Not a problem as long as you hold off on posting until I get a handle on this investigation.” I posed with fish lips and he laughed a deep-throated laugh that reminded me of Grandad’s Vietnam buddies. Good-humored guys that had seen some stuff and dealt with it the best they could. Sherri might be disappointed with her non-knitting husband, but I sure wasn’t.

  Keith dialed and then said, “Hobbes. La Roche. Guess who I’ve got sitting on my sofa right now?”

  He waited a second and then laughed. “I wish. No. It’s Mercy Watts.”

  A pause.

  “I shit you not,” he said. “No, I’m not gonna say that, man. Are you out of your mind?”

  A longer pause and then a burst of laughter while I waited, still super relaxed. Keith mixed with wine was a good thing.

  “She wants to meet up and ask about that Thooft douchebag,” said Keith. “Have you still got all his stuff at the school?”

  I raised a brow and he nodded.

  “Great. Got time or are you hitting every Christmas market in Bavaria this weekend?”

  He waited and then asked me, “Tomorrow at the school at nine?”

  I gave him a thumbs-up.

  “She’ll be there,” Keith said and then sighed. “Yeah, she’s still crying. I’m hoping Miss Watts can find something out that will shut it down. Tha
nks.”

  Keith hung up. “He’s going to try to talk to Sherri, but he scares her, so I don’t think it’ll work.”

  Oh, no.

  “Why does he scare her?” I asked.

  “Hobbes is old school. A marine from back in the day. He suffers no fools.”

  “And he’s a high school counselor?”

  “Second career and he’s good. Students like the no-bullshit approach,” he said. “Here’s the thing with Hobbes. Don’t mess around. You gotta come in hot. Do you understand what I mean?”

  “My Grandad was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. I get it.”

  “Those guys saw some shit. The stories I’ve heard will blow your mind. I’ve seen combat, but that was a totally different animal.”

  I thought of Grandad’s burns and nodded. “He won’t talk about it, but it was bad.”

  “No doubt.” He nodded solemnly. “Any other questions for me?”

  “Just a couple. Know anything about a kid named Sergio Tarantina?”

  He shook his head. “Sherri might’ve mentioned him. Sounds vaguely familiar. Why?”

  I told him about the rumors and he nodded, but said, “Can’t help you with that.”

  “How about Alison? Any mention of that name?”

  “I have to tell you Sherri loves her kids and she knows an ass-ton of them. I can’t keep them straight,” he said. “There are pictures. You want to see those.”

  “You continue to be my favorite person in Germany,” I said.

  Keith went into what he called the office and came out with a stack of photos. “Sherri got these prints before it all went down. They’re for the yearbook. They were working on picking which one to choose before that asshole ran off and attacked you.”

  He sat next to me and we went through the stack. Mostly student council and the fall play. Natalie’s son Daniel was in the student council photos, looking spindly and goofy compared to the older students. He was kind of adorable in a pimply and not-knowing-what-the-hell-is-going-on way.

  “You can’t name any of these kids?” I asked.

  He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Sorry. I’ve seen them at functions, but I can’t name names. Hobbes will be able to do that.”

  “Mind if I take some pictures of these?”

  “Be my guest,” said Keith.

  When I was done, I stood up and said, “I have one more question. It’s not related to the investigation though.”

  “How’d I get so massive?” he asked with a laugh.

  “You got me,” I said. “My boyfriend is trying to put on mass and it’s not going well.”

  “For you or him?”

  “Both.”

  “What’s he doing?” Keith asked.

  “Working out as much as humanly possible and eating boiled eggs and drinking disgusting shakes,” I said.

  “How many eggs?”

  “A dozen, but he wants to up that.”

  Keith shook his head. “That’ll just give him gas.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  He asked to see a picture and I showed him one of Chuck at the beach in Honduras. Hot as hell, but he wasn’t bulky.

  “Can’t be done without steroids,” said Keith.

  “No?”

  “No. He hasn’t got the structure for it.” He went over and pulled a photo album off a shelf. “This is my dad.”

  The picture was of a middle-aged dude that could’ve been Keith, just with less hair and a potbelly.

  “My dad wasn’t a workout guy. He always just had the muscle. The belly came with it. I gotta work my ass off not to have that belly. The muscle comes easy. Your man is always gonna be cut and slim. That’s how it is. I’d kill for that body. If I put on a sweater, I look morbidly obese.”

  “Can’t fight nature,” I said.

  He cocked his head to the side. “Did you try?”

  “I did, but I just looked weird. This is what I look like. Unless I want to go the surgery route, this is it.”

  “You got to accept who you are and enjoy,” said Keith.

  “I wish my boyfriend could understand that.”

  “He will in about six months when all he is is gassy and more cut.”

  I groaned. “Six months.”

  He laughed and we went to the door. “Is he worth it?”

  “God, I hope so,” I said.

  “Merry Christmas, Miss Watts.”

  “Merry Christmas.”

  I left the apartment building into a clear night. The drizzle had stopped and everything was now bright and beautiful. Christmas lights everywhere that I hadn’t noticed before. Trees in windows. It was lovely. It was enough Christmas for me and I walked back to Natalie’s apartment with a plan, a real thought-out plan. I know. Shocking.

  Chapter Nine

  I curled up in bed, basking in the quiet after a boiling shower and a bar of chocolate Aaron had donated to my cause before he went off to the Stuttgart Christmas market with Moe and Grandma. It took some doing to get them to leave me, but I did have a plan and I couldn’t be moved off it.

  The pictures Keith gave me were spread out on the bed and I opened my laptop to Google a map of Sindelfingen. The ATM Anton used was in the center of town not far from the Marktplatz. There were three cafés close by and two had small hotels in the vicinity.

  There was a knock on the door, forcing me out of bed. Novak stood in the hall, wearing pink and green striped pajamas and what looked like a shower cap.

  I flung open the door and yanked him inside. “What are you doing out there like that?”

  “Like what?” Novak asked.

  “Like a weirdo. Germans don’t wander the halls of hotels like that.”

  “Do Americans?”

  He had me there. Novak wasn’t normal in any society.

  “No, but we have Walmart, so there’s that,” I said.

  “I’ve heard about Walmart and I am not that odd.”

  I poked the shower cap. “Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

  “I’m doing my hair mask. You don’t expect me to dry out just because I’m traveling, do you?” He touched one of my ringlets. “You really need a mask. Your hair isn’t happy.”

  “That is its natural state in Germany.” And Paris, and Honduras, and New Orleans.

  “I thought it was only Paris,” he said.

  “It’s worse there.”

  He did a circuit around me. “What are you sleeping in? Did you rob a bag lady?”

  “It’s a tee shirt. Leave me alone.” I marched back to the bed and got in while stuffing chocolate in my face. “Do you have something or do you just want to criticize me?”

  “I can do both,” said Novak.

  “Swell.”

  “I have good news and bad news.”

  “Bad news first,” I said.

  “The plants on Anton’s laptop originated from a laptop in Berlin,” he said.

  “Crap.”

  He pulled out his phone and laid it all out. The plants came from a laptop used in one location, a small library. The user accessed Anton’s computer from that location and only that location. Remotely, the user went into the Incel sites and 4chan. The pictures that were found on Anton’s computer were downloaded at the library and uploaded from there, too. There was no set pattern to when Anton’s computer was accessed. Novak couldn’t find the user’s IP address anywhere else and he put some associates on it. He concluded that the laptop was purchased for one use only and then trashed when the job was done.

  “That’s less amateur than I would’ve thought,” I said.

  Novak nodded. “I agree. They knew how to do it and cover it up, but they didn’t put much effort into the actual plants. It wouldn’t have been hard to comment on posts and deep dive into those sickos fantasies, but they kept it surface. In and out.”

  “They…wanted it to be discovered?” I asked.

  “I considered that, but they did bother to go to quite a few sites. I think they just couldn’t be bothered or were in a hurry. If
I had to guess it was a woman.”

  I pulled back. “Why?”

  “A man would spend more time,” he said.

  “Because dudes are so detail-oriented? Come on.”

  “No, because a man would’ve looked out of curiosity if nothing else.”

  “Did you?”

  He sat down on the bed and stole some of my chocolate. “Yes, I did. I’m not into that stuff, even a little, but I looked out of curiosity.”

  “Gross,” I said.

  “Very. I think a woman would be less likely to look at that kind of thing than a man. Like I said, it was very surface.”

  “Like they didn’t want to see it.”

  “Correct.”

  “Interesting.” I took a bite of super dark chocolate and then said, “I might be off base here, but that sounds less pro and more favor.”

  Novak smiled. “I think so, too.”

  “So not The Klinefeld Group?”

  “We can’t rule them out, but they are nothing if not pros. This did take skill. They knew what they were doing.”

  “How skilled?” I asked.

  “Impossible to tell. Not their best effort.” He took a look at my screen and asked, “What’s this about? Did you get something?”

  I told him about Sergio Tarantina possibly being the origin of the rumor and the girl named Alison.

  “Those are the pictures I got,” I said.

  Novak picked them up and said, “I’ll scan them and see what I can find out.”

  “Are there cameras in Sindelfingen? I wonder if we can see if one of these kids was out and about when Anton was getting his money.”

  “Might be a bit of a long shot, but we can give that a try,” said Novak.

  “Did you happen to access the ATM footage?” I crossed my fingers.

  “I did, but Anton was always alone.”

  “Can you go back in?”

  He sat back against the pillows. “I can. What are you looking for?”

  “Direction. He met someone and handed over the money. It’d be nice to know which way he headed,” I said, looking at my screen. “I’m thinking he met them in one of those three cafés. They’re close and I can’t think of a reason he’d go farther afield since he was on foot.”