Mean Evergreen (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Twelve)

by A W Hartoin

  “Junior or senior year,” said Hobbes.

  “Did Sergio have any classes with Anton?”

  They clammed up and Moe laughed. “Look through the papers, Mercy.”

  “Spidermonkey probably already knows,” I said.

  “Spidermonkey?” Meredith asked.

  “A friend with a keyboard.” I looked around. “Do you have some boxes?”

  Hobbes went out and got some. We dismantled Anton’s room in ten minutes flat and even considering what the guy had done to me, I kind of felt bad about it. His life’s work fit into four cardboard boxes that nobody was going to know what to do with.

  “I guess that’s it.” Hobbes glanced at the door, anxious to get out.

  “It is for now.” I gave them both my card. “If you think of anything else, please, let me know.”

  I walked out of Anton’s room and the pressure lifted. I could breathe again. Whatever that was, it didn’t come along with the boxes, which was a serious relief. I had to put those things in my hotel room. Talk about unpleasant.

  Meredith went to get Aaron and we walked out to the car, putting the boxes in the trunk. We shook hands and I closed the trunk.

  “Thanks for your help,” I said.

  “Did it help?” Meredith asked.

  “It did, but I have one more question.”

  They looked apprehensive but nodded.

  “Does the Café Goethe mean anything to you?”

  Hobbes frowned. “Sounds familiar.”

  “I think it’s in Sindelfingen,” said Meredith. “But I’ve never been there. Why?”

  “Because I’m pretty sure that’s where Anton met his blackmailer,” I said.

  “I still don’t think that it has anything to do with the school,” said Hobbes.

  “Me either,” said Meredith.

  And you would be wrong.

  Chapter Eleven

  We drove into downtown Sindelfingen fifteen minutes later in search of a parking space. There were none to be had since it was a Saturday and there was a market with everything from fruit to seafood. We ended up driving down into an underground parking garage that was also nearly full. Moe checked his phone when we emerged up top. “ATM first?”

  “Sure,” I said, and we walked into the Altstadt, chock full of half-timbered buildings and Christmas decorations. The cobblestoned streets were a bit frosty, although there was no snow. It was a lot colder than the day before and everyone was bundled up with the biggest scarves you’ve ever seen in your life. They were more like small blankets tucked up around the ears. My scarf was so skinny it looked like a joke and I have to admit it wasn’t doing much for my neck.

  “There it is,” said Moe.

  “Good,” I said. “I need cash.”

  I documented the ATM, like my photo-obsessed father taught me, and got out a couple hundred euros. Then we followed in Anton’s footsteps, past the camera Novak had found and then stopped by a small vendor on a street corner. Moe got a paper cone of roasted chestnuts and shared them with Aaron, who started writing a recipe idea in his notebook as we started walking again.

  “I don’t know about you,” said Moe, taking pictures of the houses with their lights, wreaths, and ribbons, “but this is about the most Christmassy I’ve ever felt in my life. Fats is going to be pissed.”

  “Send her pictures. I’m going to,” I said.

  “Not on your life. I don’t poke the bear, even when it’s my niece,” he said. “We will be saying it was stressful and bland.”

  “She won’t buy that.”

  “Worth a try.”

  We passed a particularly beautiful building so covered in slats of wood it was practically paneled and then made it into the square with a fountain. The café was across the square and we headed in past children playing tag and shrieking with delight as they caught one another.

  The Café Goethe was toasty warm and about half full. It was more like a coffeeshop than a café with ordering at the counter. Their sign said they baked everything in house and they did have a gorgeous array of sandwiches, breads, and desserts. When I got to the counter, I ordered lattes and Aaron insisted on getting two kinds of fluffy rolled cakes. Then he started writing notes for future cake recipes and I left him to it.

  The young woman behind the counter gave me my total, which I didn’t quite get except that it was fifteen euros and something cents.

  I held up my phone and tried to ask her in German if she’d ever seen Anton in there.”

  She eyed my face for a second and decided not to comment before looking at the photo of Anton that I’d gotten from Kimberly. “Yes, I have seen this man,” she said in perfect English.

  “When did you last see him?” I asked.

  She pursed her lips and then leaned forward. “A few weeks ago. He was the American who attacked a woman in America.”

  “Yes, he was,” I said. “He attacked me.”

  She brightened up. “I thought so, but I didn’t want to say it. Are you alright?”

  “Mostly. Can you tell me anything about him?”

  “He was nice and polite. He ordered an Americano and that is all.”

  “The same every time he came in?”

  “Yes, but I’m not always here.”

  The other woman behind the counter loaded our tray and pushed it over to me. Moe took it and went to a table in the corner.

  “Was he with anyone else?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so. He only bought one coffee,” she said.

  Another customer came in and I stood aside so they could order. Once they’d left the counter, I asked, “Did you notice him sit down with someone?”

  “I didn’t, but I wasn’t looking. We are always busy.”

  “Of course. Was there anyone you can remember that was always here at the same time? A teenager perhaps?”

  She frowned. “I don’t know. Maybe—”

  An older woman came out of the back and gave the young woman what for, shaking a finger and the whole deal. I tried to apologize for getting in the way of her work, but my German is weak at best.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay,” the young woman said.

  “Doesn’t look that way,” I said.

  “She’s always mad.”

  The older woman came back out and started again, but then Aaron wandered over to speak German so fast I could only make out an apology and my name, which is pretty pathetic when I think about it.

  When Aaron got done, the older woman shook his hand and apologized herself.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Your friend is a baker?” asked the young woman. “He doesn’t look like one.”

  “What does he look like?”

  She bit her lip and I laughed. Aaron kept talking and the older woman started pointing at the dining area. She wasn’t happy and I expected some finger shaking to come in my direction, but then she threw up her hands and crossed her arms.

  “Oh,” said the young woman. “Marta saw him. The man in your photo.”

  I held up my phone again and she nodded emphatically. Then the anger started again. I caught a few words like woman and pretty, but that wasn’t much help. Then Aaron thanked her and went off to a table without saying a word to me.

  “Alrighty then,” I said. “Can you help me out because he’s not doing it?”

  “Marta saw that man meet with a young woman several times. He was too old for her. She didn’t think it was good.”

  “How old?” I asked and she relayed the question to Marta.

  “My age.”

  “Twenty?” I guessed.

  She smiled. “Yes, exactly.”

  “What did she look like?”

  Marta described the young woman as blonde, pretty, and, most importantly, American.

  “Did he give her anything?” I asked.

  She asked Marta, who said that he gave her a paper once.

  “A paper? Like a piece of paper?”

  “A newspaper.”

 
The money must’ve been inside.

  “Just the one time?” I asked.

  Marta said she only saw it that one time, but she said they were busy. I asked if the two of them seemed upset or relaxed. Marta said they barely talked at all. The girl would leave her latte half-finished. One time, she saw Anton reach out to the girl and touch her hand, which she jerked away. Marta took that as a romantic gesture, but given what I knew about him, I thought it was more likely a plea for understanding or forgiveness.

  “That is all she remembers,” said the young woman.

  “Did Marta tell this all to the Polizei?” I asked.

  The young woman asked and Marta shook her head. The Polizei hadn’t come in and asked. The young woman had recognized him from the photos on the news and the internet, but she didn’t think him having coffee had anything to do with it.

  “Was I wrong?” she asked. “Should I have called them?”

  “There was no reason to think that at the time,” I said.

  “But it does have something to do with it?”

  “I think so, but I can’t be sure yet.”

  “You are investigating? They said on the news that you are a nurse.”

  “They weren’t wrong. I am a nurse.”

  “Then why do you investigate crimes?”

  “I ask myself that all the time.” I wanted to explain it, but there wasn’t a straightforward answer to give her. Things happened and you do what you have to do.

  I gave her my card and turned back to the dining room. That’s when I saw him, standing outside the café and looking in through the window and staring right at me. He was young and thin to the point of being gaunt. No spark of recognition lit up and then our eyes met. Just for a second. But that’s all it took and he took off, running full out.

  I darted to the door and flung it open.

  “Mercy!” yelled Moe, but I was already gone.

  “Wait!” I yelled and ran down the street, just catching a glimpse of his red jacket as it disappeared between two market stands. I ran through the warren of sellers and patrons, trying to keep up with my lungs burning. We ended up back on the main drag near the parking garage where there were even more stands. I hoped he would go for a car. That would slow him down, but he passed the garage and barreled through a group of women doing their shopping. Baskets and bags went flying with shouts of “Scheiße!”

  I jumped over a basket and tripped on a cobblestone, but I didn’t go down by some miracle. I chased him up a street lined with small shops and crowded with people. It was a hill, not a big one, but my head was thumping. There was no way I could catch him on my little legs. I collapsed against a building, cursing my dislike of aerobic exercise and Chuck for being right.

  “I’ll get him!” Moe ran past me and I stared slack-jawed as he darted up the street like a man half his age. Heck, like a man a third his age.

  It was a new low. I’d been outrun by a seventy-year-old man with a hump. I didn’t think it could get any worse, but, of course, it could, so it did.

  The women that the boy had barreled into descended on me, making Marta look good-humored. I tried to say it wasn’t my fault, but the only language that came to mind was French and I don’t really speak French. My stupid attempts in the wrong language only made them madder and my head hurt more. Where was Aaron when I needed him?

  The next thing I knew, a Polizei was coming through the crowd of women looking about as friendly as you’d imagine German policeman to look in a dark blue uniform and armed to the teeth. I didn’t know you could get that many things on one belt. It must’ve weighed a ton, but he wasn’t slowed down. He asked the women what was going on and I got pointed at repeatedly.

  Slowly, the women calmed down and the Polizei turned to me, asking in German what happened. At least, I think that’s what he said.

  Say I’m sorry. In German. You know that. Say that.

  “Je suis désolé,” I said.

  Goddammit!

  “Je suis désolé.”

  Something is seriously wrong with me.

  The Polizei tilted his head and I half expected him to snap something off his tool belt and whack me with it, but he said, “I thought you were American.”

  “I am.”

  Was that English? I think so.

  “I am an American,” I said.

  Yes. Nailed it.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t run into these ladies. I was chasing the person who did.”

  “Yes, I see. You chased him into them and knocked them over,” he said.

  “That’s…a dark spin on what happened.”

  “That is not what happened?”

  I explained that I had seen the boy and he ran. I chased him to find out who he was. That was all.

  “Do you chase people a lot?” he asked.

  Lie.

  “Not every day,” I said.

  What is wrong with you?

  “I only wanted to find out who he was. I didn’t make him run. I don’t know why he did.”

  The Polizei hooked his thumbs into his shoulder holster and said something soothing to the ladies. They gave me the stink eye and left with many angry backward glances.

  “You should not chase people,” he said.

  “Is there a rule against it?”

  “I will have to check.”

  “I was joking,” I said.

  “Don’t do that. This is a serious matter.”

  Is it really?

  “I’m sorry. Hey, look, I said it in English.”

  “Have you been drinking?” he asked.

  “I could use some Glühwein actually.”

  He gazed at me in a way that only Germans do, very focused and unblinking. It was disconcerting, but I just stared right back.

  “Why did you want to know who he was?” he asked.

  This is going to sound so stupid.

  “I saw him looking at me through the window of the Café Goethe and I thought he might have some information.”

  Hey, not so bad.

  “That makes no sense,” he said.

  Wrong again.

  I sighed and said, “I’m investigating a crime and I’m trying to get a lead.”

  “A crime in America?”

  “Yes.”

  He frowned deeply and said, “You think a German did it?”

  “The kid wasn’t German,” I said.

  “How do you know?”

  “The same way you knew I was an American.”

  He looked at my skinny scarf and North Face jacket and said, “I think you look like Marilyn Monroe.”

  “And American.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I go?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Are you going to arrest me?”

  “Are you armed?”

  “No.”

  He eyed my purse, so I obligingly opened it. I should’ve been armed, but I usually forget. Plus, I had Moe the speedy septuagenarian and he probably had four on him.

  “I’m surprised,” he said and extended a hand. “Viktor Koch.”

  “Mercy Watts.” I shook his hand and wondered where this was going. My track record wasn’t great.

  “Why didn’t you inform us you were coming?”

  “Er…inform you?”

  “That you would be coming to our jurisdiction and investigating,” said Koch.

  “It didn’t occur to me,” I said truthfully.

  “That would be polite.”

  “I guess so.”

  “How can I help you?” Koch asked and I stood silent for a moment not sure he was serious. After all, I was impolite and causing problems.

  “I will help,” he said.

  “Alright.” I told him about the café and Marta seeing Anton Thooft meeting someone. I thought he might be impressed that I got that far in twenty-four hours, but he just did that stare and listened.

  “I would like to be in on the arrest,” he said when I finished.

  “If there is one, sure.”
/>   “Blackmail is illegal.”

  “I know, and you’re welcome to whoever did it,” I said. “I just want to know why it happened and who was behind it.”

  “I will have to inform my command of your presence,” Koch said.

  “Go for it.” I rubbed my forehead and asked, “Can we go back to the café? My head is killing me.”

  Koch agreed, but when we turned to go, I heard Moe yell, “Mercy! I lost him.”

  We turned around and there came my geezer bodyguard limping down toward us.

  “Who is this?” Koch asked.

  I told him who Moe was and to say he didn’t believe me was an understatement. But then Moe hobbled up, extended his hand, and confirmed it. “The little bastard got away. Jumped on a bus. I was this close.”

  Koch eyed Moe’s sweaty face and bulging moist eyes and I could see a change in attitude. A kind of respect. I guess Koch figured if Moe was watching me he had to have skills and he wasn’t wrong, although Moe hid them pretty damn well.

  “What was the bus?” Koch asked, taking out a pad and pen.

  “It said Böblingen on it,” said Moe and he went on to describe the bus.

  Koch wrote it down and I encouraged them to walk and talk. I could see the boy’s face in my mind. So clear. His description meant nothing at the moment, but I kept seeing his expression. At first, it was terribly sad, weepy even, and then he saw me. Recognition and then shock. Total shock and he ran.

  “What time is it?” I asked, fumbling for my phone in my zipped pocket.

  “Eleven fifty,” said Koch. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No. I just…I’m trying to remember what time…”

  We got back to the café and the young woman behind the counter went pink the second we walked in. I glanced over at Koch, but he was oblivious. Men. I went over and said, “Do you know Officer Koch?”

  She blushed harder and began wiping the spotless counter. “I have seen him.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “What’s your name?”

  “Claudia.”

  “Officer Koch, you should interview Claudia. She and Marta saw Anton here.”

  He nodded and flipped a page on his notebook before starting to question her in German. I gave Claudia a smile behind Koch’s back and beat it back to where Aaron was scraping whipped cream off the last plate.