She walked into the living room and stopped short. What if it wasn’t her mother and Margaret at the door? What if it was the shooter or the phantom who’d left the doll? She eyed her purse with the Smith & Wesson still inside.
The caller buzzed again, longer and more insistently. She pushed the button on the intercom. “Yes?”
“Reiner Hess. I am here to speak with Frau Calms.”
She caught her breath. Now what?
“Hello? Is this the apartment of Dinah Pelerin?”
“Yes. Wait, please.”
She went out into the hall and pounded on Geert’s door.
After a minute, he materialized in a cloud of smoke.
“Geert, I have company downstairs. I don’t know what he wants and I don’t want to meet him alone. Will you come over and stay for a few minutes? Just in case?”
“Ja, sure. If you don’t like, I will bounce him.” He stubbed out his cigarette and followed her across the hall.
She spoke into the intercom. “Come up now, Mr. Hess.” She buzzed him in and held her apartment door open.
Geert slouched onto the sofa and hitched his pipe-stem arms across the back.
Hess took the steps to the second floor two at a time. He had chiseled features, arrogant blue eyes, and a bristly head of pale hair that reminded her of a hedgehog. Geert would be no match for this well-muscled hunk if he became threatening.
“You are Frau Pelerin?”
“Yes. Won’t you step inside?”
“Danke.” He projected a brash sexuality and looked too young to have been one of Cleon’s contemporaries. Then again, the drug business was an equal opportunity employer and Cleon had probably recruited plenty of muscle from Generation X. As he entered the room, he slung a sidelong glance at Geert. “Who are you?”
Geert didn’t rise or offer to shake hands. “I am Geert Hendrik. Do not try nothing funny, I am warning you.”
Hess frowned. So did Dinah. She had expected a touch more discretion from Geert.
Hess leveled his blue eyes on Dinah. “Is Frau Calms here?”
“No, she isn’t.”
“Hendrik, I would like to speak with Frau Pelerin in private.”
“I am not going noplace.” Geert unhitched his skinny arms from behind the sofa and rocked forward. “I have seen you before. At one of the massagesalon brothels in Oranienburger Strasse, nicht wahr?”
The veins in Hess’ neck bulged.
Dinah reconsidered the wisdom of inviting Geert’s help. “Will you have a seat, Herr Hess?” She moved away from the foyer table and motioned him toward a chair. “Would you care for coffee, or a glass of iced tea?”
“I’ve come to bargain with your mother. She said she would be here.”
“She’s on her way home to Georgia, actually. I took her to the airport this morning.”
“You are lying. She came to Berlin to bargain. She will not leave until she has what she came for.”
“You’re wrong. Someone tried to kill her and she left.”
“You can’t fool me. She is like Cleon Dobbs, greedy and cunning. She will have what she wants.”
It was one thing for Dinah privately to question her mother’s integrity, quite another to hear this gorilla insult her. “My mother said you were a lawyer, but you don’t act like one. You act like a thug. What exactly did you do for Cleon Dobbs?”
“Ask your mother, why don’t you?”
“I will, if and when she returns to Germany.”
His lip curled. “I have no time for games. She has something I want and I am willing to pay. Four hundred thousand Euros, no more. This is not the Orient. In Germany, we don’t haggle. Tell her to be at the Müggelturm tonight at nine o’clock and bring the item she wishes to sell.” He lobbed a menacing look over his shoulder at Geert and stalked out the door, slamming it behind him.
“Das Arschloch,” said Geert, pushing himself off the sofa.
If it meant what Dinah thought it did, she couldn’t agree more. “What’s the Müggelterm?”
“An old, falling-down tower in the hills above Müggelsee, a lake east of the city.”
Müggelsee was where the powwow had been scheduled. So there was a connection after all.
In her mind’s eye, Dinah saw Hess lurking in the dark behind a dilapidated tower. He had killed two federal agents and God only knew how many others while he was running drugs for Cleon. How likely was it that he would meekly turn over a suitcase full of cash to Swan and let her walk away? He’d never be sure she hadn’t made copies of the incriminating material and try to bleed him again. Where was Swan now?
Her stomach growled and she was beset by a gnawing hunger. It was as if that cheese sandwich and ice cream never happened. She couldn’t think straight until she got something else to eat. “Would you like a sandwich, Geert? I’m starving.”
“You have now the Kummerspeck.”
“The what?”
“When you feel trouble in your gut, it is like hunger. In German, we call it Kummerspeck. Grief bacon.”
Chapter Nine
It wasn’t dark yet, but the lights were winking on along Bölschestrasse, the main drag in the village of Friedrichshagen. A few blocks ahead, the street dead-ended at the lake. The sky had cleared and a horned moon hovered low over the water. Dinah rolled down the car window and breathed in the mingled smells of sausages, brewer’s yeast and, if her nose wasn’t mistaken, rotting mulberries.
Her driver said, “My sergeant will meet us on the trail to Kleiner Müggelberg. If Hess is here, we will arrest him. Besides threatening you and your mother, he is the subject of a large tax evasion probe.”
“Really?” Hours of unanswered calls to her mother’s and Margaret’s phones and to Farber’s gallery had stoked her anxiety to the point of desperation and she had broken down and called Thor’s friend, Inspector Jens Lohendorf. She had spieled off some malarkey about Hess being a former boyfriend of her mother’s who learned about her trip to Berlin through a mutual acquaintance in der Indianer club. But the more she thought about it, the more panicky she became. Lohendorf didn’t know he was going after a double murderer and Dinah couldn’t think of a way to warn him without embroiling her mother in an international police investigation.
She said, “I don’t think you should assume that he’s just a non-violent tax evader. He may have fired a gun into my car as I drove my mother from the airport. I couldn’t get a license plate number, but I filed a report.”
“Yes, I’ve read it.”
“You have?”
“Thor called me. He wasn’t sure you would follow up.”
The news that Thor had gone behind her back threw her off balance. She knew he’d done it out of concern for her safety, but he’d put her in a precarious situation with Lohendorf. He would have told the inspector about the doll with the knife in its chest, which she hadn’t mentioned. And Lohendorf would have told Thor about the tax-dodging former boyfriend. When the two men got together to compare notes, she would no doubt be asked to account for the holes and disparities in her story.
They had reached the landing dock. Lohendorf parked the car and walked around to open the door for her. “We’re in time to catch the last ferry. Sergeant Vogel and his men have cars in Rahnsdorf at the other end of the lake.”
She squared her shoulders and snugged her shoulder bag close under her arm. If needed, she had her gun. She had shot it many times at the shooting range. Thor had insisted she take lessons. But designated lanes and paper targets hadn’t prepared her for a real-life encounter.
They stepped aboard a flat-bottomed, open-air foot ferry with rows of benches occupied mostly by young couples taking advantage of what would probably be one of the last mild evenings before winter set in. They cuddled and necked in the gathering dusk. Lohendorf made his way toward the stern and she followed. They sat down toge
ther on a vacant bench and he reached inside his jacket. “Care for a cigarette?”
“No, thanks. I’m trying to quit.”
He lit one for himself. “Smoking is banned on public transport, but in the open air, I don’t think it will offend.” He had a clean-cut, angular face with a sharp nose and a Dick Tracy chin. His physiognomy telegraphed his occupation in spite of his plain, but obviously expensive, clothes. He exhaled a brume of smoke across the slate-colored water. “How long have you known the woman who is traveling with your mother?”
“Margaret?” She’d been so wrought up about her mother that she’d almost forgotten about Margaret. “I’ve known her since I was a child. She and my mother were married to the same man, at different times, of course. Cleon Dobbs. He left Margaret to marry my mother and a few years later, my mother left Cleon to marry my father.”
“Like an American soap opera.”
“You’ve got that right. Lots of intersecting storylines, bare-fisted discord, and sexual dramas.”
He laughed. “Not a boring family.”
“I used to pray for boring. We all lived in the same small town, shopped at the same stores, went to the same beaches, attended the same football games, socialized on holidays.” She was babbling. If she didn’t shut up, she’d start running on about the pet rabbit she got when she was ten, the same year Cleon murdered her father hoping to get Swan back. Shit, and she shouldn’t have mentioned Cleon by name, although he obviously knew. He probably had a dossier on the old devil. She said, “I’ve changed my mind about that cigarette.”
He reached into his pocket, shook out a Lucky Strike, and lit it with his Bic.
She took a drag and quieted down.
“Mr. Dobbs must have been a remarkable man.”
“You could say that.”
“Margaret Dobbs killed him in two thousand and ten in Australia. Do have any concern that she might also wish to harm your mother?”
Dinah flinched. He really did have a dossier. “Margaret was tried and acquitted. She poses no danger to my mother or anyone else.”
“I mean no disrespect. As I’m sure Thor has told you, the police have a duty to be aware of persons with reckless pasts.”
She offered no reply.
The ferry lurched away from the dock and she braced one hand against the rail. Somebody at the other end turned on a boom box and a pulsating electro beat drowned out conversation. She was glad for the interruption. All she could think about was her mother, who could broaden Lohendorf’s definition of recklessness by an order of magnitude. That she would try to blackmail a man like Hess defied all reason. Dinah prayed that she could latch onto her at the powwow before Hess found her. She ground out her cigarette and focused on the fringe of trees in the distance.
Lohendorf pulled a photograph out of his pocket. “Do you recognize this man?”
It was a bland, middle-aged face, nothing unusual or out of proportion except for a rather narrow, ridge-like nose. His mouth was set in a grim line—the mouth of a man who didn’t laugh much. “No. Who is he?”
“A person of interest. I thought you might have seen him in your neighborhood.”
Perhaps he was a known racist and Lohendorf suspected him of planting the doll. She was up to her eyeballs in “persons of interest.” She couldn’t worry about another just now.
The wind had picked up. It rippled the darkening waters of Müggelsee and sent small wavelets toward the shore. She knew that see was the German word for lake, but what was Müggel? In the Harry Potter books, a muggle referred to someone who had no magical powers. But surely Müggelsee was named long before J.K. Rowling began writing about wizards. There was a hiatus in the music and she asked Lohendorf, “What does Müggel mean in English? Müggel lake?”
“I’ve read that it derives from the Slavic word for grave. And Berg is hill. Müggelberg is grave hill.”
Not everything is an omen, she told herself. “Is someone famous buried there?”
“Not that I know.”
The music blasted again and she brooded until the ferry bumped stern-first into tire fenders on the dock and the ferryman opened the gate. She had assumed they would be the first ones off, but they were elbowed aside. Berliners had many fine qualities, but they did not queue. They disembarked en mass and dispersed along the shore to picnic tables and a row of bars and eateries.
When she and Lohendorf made it off the boat, he pointed her toward a sign: Müggelberg Spur. “That is the trail to the area where the powwow has been authorized. It is a short climb. A little muddy, perhaps, but not strenuous.” He drew two flashlights out of a shoulder pack and handed her one. “It will be dark in another hour.”
She took her light and walked ahead of him through the forest. The trail was wide and smooth, groomed like a suburban park, but to her, it felt creepy and ominous. Even if she weren’t en route to save her mother from a murderer, the name Grave Hill wouldn’t have lightened her step. She looked back to make sure Lohendorf was there. He walked five or six feet behind, his phone to his ear. Without attracting his notice, she lifted the flap on her purse and touched the gun inside.
The smell of wet leaves and wood smoke permeated the air. After they’d gone about three quarters of a mile, the modern music the young people were playing on the beach below faded, replaced by the percussive, primitive beat of Indian drums and chanting. She wondered if Hess would dress up in Indian garb and paint his face. He couldn’t disguise himself completely. His looks were too distinctive.
The drumming and chanting grew louder. Ahead, she could see a clearing in the trees and the spectral glow of a fire. She quickened her pace. Five minutes more of walking and she entered a scene she could only describe as surreal. A dozen Indians decked out in a motley of tribal clothing assembled around a fake bonfire. White silk streamers had been attached to glow logs and as a small fan caused them to flutter, orange and yellow and blue lights created the illusion of flickering flames. A barbecue grill seemed to be the source of the wood smoke. An Apache sporting a red cloth headband and an ammunition belt fed wood chips into the bowl of the grill. Several men sat around a table chanting and a circle of drummers, including Drumming Man in his braids and buckskin, beat out the rhythm on a large drum.
A man in a yellow tunic and porcupine hair roach was selling das feuerwasser. Dinah’s German was minimal, but she knew the words for fire and water. The liquid being siphoned from a keg into the clear plastic cups appeared to be ordinary beer, but it seemed to be amping up the party mood.
She scrutinized the faces and builds of the revelers. She didn’t see Hess. The only familiar figure was Drumming Man.
Lohendorf joined her at the edge of the clearing. “Do you see your mother?”
“No.” She scanned the clearing. “She’s not here.”
“Are you sure? There are women sitting in the shadows by the grill.”
She looked them over and recognized Little Deer, who wore the same buckskin dress accessorized by a pair of glittering diamond shoulder-dusters. “My mother’s not one of them. I’d know her hide in a tannery.” It was an old Southern saying, a cliché that tumbled out without thought. Suddenly, the gruesome image made her shudder.
Lohendorf said, “Wait here. I’ll make inquiries.”
He moved off and spoke with a man in an eagle-feather war bonnet that dangled all the way to his moccasins. She wondered when and how he had acquired it. Eagles had been a protected species in the States since the early sixties and anyone who bought or sold their feathers faced a stiff fine, perhaps even prison.
It was after seven. Hess’ message had been for Swan to meet him at nine, but she should be here, charming the loincloths off these Indian braves. Farber and the others were expecting her. Had Hess found her already? Had he thrown her and her incriminating thumb drive into Grave Lake? That foolishness about a “dead man’s switch” and the evidence going
to the Drug Enforcement Agency if anything happened to the blackmailers would make a man like Hess laugh.
“Willkommen.”
She spun around to see a bare-chested Baer Eichen staring at her over the tops of his wooden glasses. His was strung with multiple tiers of beads and a small stuffed bird peeked out of his long, black wig. “Herr Eichen, what a transformation.”
“Tonight, you may call me Takoda. It’s a delight to see you.” He initiated another handshake.
She couldn’t help but notice that his Indian name, which he had said was taken from the Siouan language, clashed with his Crow costume. Looking around at the others, she marveled at the casual blending of native cultures.
“Did you come with your mother?”
“No. She isn’t here. I’m trying to find her.”
“You seem always to be searching for her.”
If Dinah weren’t so worried, the observation would have irked her. She surveyed the clearing again. Lohendorf was now talking with Little Deer and three other women clustered around a camp stove.
Eichen’s eyes followed hers to where Lohendorf stood. “Who is your friend?”
“Inspector Lohendorf of the Berlin Police. He’s trying to help me find my mother.”
“Police?” He appeared taken aback. “Is there a reason for you to be so concerned?”
“No.”
If he was stung by her curt response, he didn’t show it. He smiled. “It’s early yet. The S-bahn doesn’t run as often as the U-bahn, and if she missed the seven o’clock ferry, she would have to take a taxi to Rahnsdorf and follow the trail through the forest from there. May I get you a beer or a curry wurst? I believe there’s also schnapps.”
“Maybe later.” She saw that Lohendorf was now talking on his cell.
“I shall look forward to it.” Eichen nodded and moved off toward the keg.
She spotted Florian Farber, alias Thunder Moon, with his black hand war paint, which she thought was an Iowan symbol of victory in combat. She crossed the clearing and touched his arm. “Herr Farber, have you seen or heard from my mother today?”
Where the Bones are Buried Page 6
