Where the Bones are Buried

by Jeanne Matthews

  Lena’s expression turned wary. Was she present at this alleged meeting or, holy moly, had she placed Swan at the crime scene?

  Dinah’s heart was in her throat. “Did you see what happened at the tower? Was my mother there?”

  “No.”

  “No, she wasn’t there or no, you didn’t see what happened?”

  “Because I didn’t see doesn’t mean she didn’t kill him. Only a savage would do such a thing.” Tears welled in her eyes.

  “Alwin must have been a very special friend. Was he your lover?”

  She let out a sob and simultaneously, K.D. appeared in the door, encased in Thor’s outsized robe with a towel turbaned around her head.

  “You!” Lena ran at her.

  Dinah tackled her with an outthrust shoulder and tried to trip her, but couldn’t bring her down. She grabbed Lena around her middle and pinned her arms. “Use your eyes, damn it. Does this girl look like my mother?”

  “Nein.” Her body slackened and she began to sob. “I loved him and now he is dead.”

  Dinah let go of her and she sagged onto the sofa.

  K.D. sat down and put her arm around her. “Aw, that’s terrible. Is it Lena? I’m K.D., Lena, and I know what it feels like when someone you love is murdered. It’s the worst feeling in the world.” She loosened Lena’s scarf and fussed with the cushions behind her back. “My Daddy was shot in the heart by one of his ex-wives, and even though he had done some bad things and hurt some people, it was shattering. I know he loved me way more than my mother ever has. Anyway, it happened like, four years ago and I still have nightmares.”

  Dinah watched K.D. stroke and coddle and empathize and thought again how much emotional trauma the girl had undergone in her short life and how resilient and perceptive she was in spite of her foibles. She and K.D. were similar, if not in personality, in experience. They both lived with the pain of murdered fathers and the deep-down insecurity of unreliable mothers.

  K.D. pulled a tissue out of her pocket and handed it to Lena. “I was in counseling for a while, but I just hate the way those people talk. Like, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can never put you back together again? And you wouldn’t believe all the drugs they give out. They make you feel spaced out, like a science experiment. But you’ll be okay eventually, Lena. You will.”

  Dinah didn’t think Lena was absorbing much of what K.D. said, but the stroking and the soft words seemed to settle her down. She lifted her face and K.D. took out another tissue and blotted her smeared mascara. “How long had you and Alwin been together? Not that the length of time makes any difference. If you’d known each other only a few days, it would still be shattering.”

  Dinah remembered Lena’s arms flailing at her husband and grasped at the possibility of another suspect. “Does your husband know about you and Alwin? Did he know before tonight?”

  “You cannot confuse me. Swan Calms is a fatal woman.” She shrugged off K.D.’s arm and stood up, red-faced and angry. “Because she is American and rich, she thinks she can get away with it. Tell her that I will see her dead first.”

  Dinah’s temper flared. “You’re hysterical, so I’m going to let that threat pass for now. But come near my mother, and I will make sure you’re locked up, either in jail or in the loony bin.”

  “Zur Hölle fahren.”

  “Whatever. I’m sure you’ve provided the police with a full statement of what you know, or claim to know. There’s nothing more you can do now but wait until they’ve gathered all the evidence.”

  K.D. said, “The killer probably left behind DNA evidence, Lena. There’s always DNA.”

  “Ja, like the Phantom of Heilbronn.” She swished her scarf around her neck and stormed out the door.

  “Who do you suppose the Phantom of Heilbronn is?” asked K.D.

  “I don’t know. But Lena just supplied her husband with an excellent motive for murder.”

  “I know where you’re coming from. You want to convince yourself that Swan’s innocent.” She got up and fished for something behind the cushions. “You’d like to believe that one member of the family isn’t pathological, especially the one whose DNA you share.”

  “You’re quite the little psychologist,” said Dinah. “But I can’t think about this anymore tonight or I’ll go crackers. All I want is to wash my face, brush my teeth, and fall unconscious.” She locked and chained the door and turned off the overhead light. “Let’s call it a day.”

  “Whoa, not yet. Turn the light back on.”

  “You can stay up if you want, but I’m beat.”

  “You’ll cheer up when you see this.”

  Dinah switched on the light and K.D. held up an elongated, periwinkle blue wallet.

  “You swiped her purse?”

  “It must have fallen out of her little clutch.”

  Dinah had seen K.D.’s sleight of hand before. She was a criminal prodigy, and in the circumstances, far too useful to discourage. “What’s inside?”

  K.D. opened the wallet and took out a Lufthansa ticket jacket. “Alwin and Lena were scheduled to leave for BCN tonight. Where’s BCN?”

  “Barcelona,” said Dinah, taking the tickets out of her hand. It was one-way, first-class, and stamped handgepaeck, which was one of the few German words Dinah knew. It indicated that they would be traveling with hand luggage only.

  “I count a thousand Euros here,” said K.D. “There’s also a bank card, an identity card, what looks like a German driver’s license and, I don’t know, maybe a health card.”

  “Don’t get sticky fingers with the cash,” warned Dinah.

  “Do you think she’ll come back for it tonight?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ve buzzed in my last visitor for one day. I’ll give it to Inspector Lohendorf tomorrow, and he can return it. Did you find anything else of interest?”

  “See for yourself.” She handed the wallet to Dinah, leaned back with a smug little smile, and folded her arms behind her turban. “Maybe Lena did the dirty. Maybe Alwin backed out of their trip to Spain, they fought, and she canceled his ticket permanently. That could explain why she’s so hot to pin the blame on Swan.”

  Dinah filed that hypothetical under the heading Unlikely, but Lena’s accusations about Swan had unnerved her. An extended roster of suspects would get her through the night. She gave K.D. an affectionate fist bump and headed off to bed.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Dinah woke up from a dream about a funeral where she could see the body inside the coffin, but not the face. No morning that entails a trip to the morgue can be called pleasant, but she had a feeling that this day would only get worse. She rolled over and buried her face in Thor’s pillow, breathing in the lingering pheromones and feeling sorry for herself. It would be easy to lie here all day and wallow in misery. But she had a date with Inspector Lohendorf, who asked that she abide by the rules, and her mother, who assumed that she would break them.

  She wondered what the penalty for obstruction of justice was in Germany. Stiff, she imagined. But she’d read somewhere that most prisoners are eligible for parole after fifteen years. Maybe Thor would wait for her.

  She sat up and rallied. Aphrodite was boxing with the curtains, which billowed in the airflow from the furnace grate. Her claws snagged in the fabric and she jigged about furiously and made gnarly jungle noises. Dinah wished K.D. hadn’t made such an eloquent case against having the creature declawed.

  She left K.D. asleep on the floor in Thor’s sleeping bag and went to the kitchen. The rain spatted against the window and the furnace roared without generating any heat. She should tell Geert, but it was almost nine o’clock. He had probably just gotten home from his bartending job and she hated to disturb him. She cinched her robe tighter and turned on the oven. Only in jest did she consider sticking her head inside. A snatch of Mother Goose doggerel floated into her mind. It�
�s like a lion at the door, and when the door begins to crack, it’s like a stick across your back, and when your heart begins to smart, it’s like a penknife in your heart, and when your heart begins to bleed…

  Eat something. She filled the coffeepot, fixed herself a bowl of granola, and sat down to mope. The unthinkable had wormed its way into her head. It was arranged. She knew him. Was it true? Did Swan know Pohl? Did she know that it was he and not Hess they’d be viewing on a morgue table this morning?

  Aphrodite came in, growling and grumbling. Dinah scraped a can of tuna into her bowl and then the cuckoo started in. She snapped. She grabbed a roll of duct tape out of the cupboard, stuffed the obnoxious pest back into his box, and taped him in. The clock still made a noise, something like the suppressed moan of a torture victim. It matched her mood. She went back to the kitchen and dumped the granola, which tasted like bird pellets.

  The coffeepot gurgled. She poured herself a cup and went into the office. Last night’s mention of the Phantom of Heilbronn nagged at her. It sounded macabre, probably a German opera or movie or something. She sat down at the computer, typed in the phrase, and Google came back with the answer immediately. The Phantom was the name the German police had assigned to an unknown female serial killer of Eastern European extraction whose DNA had turned up at a half-dozen murder scenes in France, Austria, and Heilbronn, Germany. They had searched for this “woman without a face” for sixteen years only to discover her working in the factory that manufactured the cotton swabs used by the police to collect DNA. Somehow, her DNA had been transferred to the swabs. Dinah made a mental note that German efficiency was not infallible. If, for example, they were to find her mother’s DNA at the scene of the crime, there might be an innocent explanation. Or if not innocent, an explanation that didn’t prove murder. Swan had her defects, but she simply could not do what was done to Pohl.

  Dinah took a break from conjuring up worst-case scenarios involving her mother and conjured worst-case scenarios about Thor. What was that phone call about? Did he expect something to happen that would drive her to “drastic action”? The stress was giving her a sour stomach and the granola definitely hadn’t agreed with her. She squelched her forebodings about Thor and went to shower and dress.

  At ten o’clock she was pacing up and down the living room like a nervous sentry. When K.D. dawdled in, yawning, at ten-thirty, Dinah unloaded the last two hours of needles and pins on her. “I’ll be gone for most of the day and I swear, if you give me one ounce of grief, one ounce, I will ship you back to Georgia in a heartbeat.”

  K.D. flumped onto the sofa and sprawled like a seal. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help.”

  Dinah laughed, which deserved its own thank you. “You did help, K.D. You always do, although I could be prosecuted for encouraging you. Thank you, and I apologize for taking my surly mood out on you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Dinah checked her watch. “Inspector Lohendorf will be here in a few minutes. I don’t know if he’ll have Swan and Margaret in tow, but I need you to be discreet and speak only if spoken to. Please.”

  “Got it.”

  “However you feel about Margaret or your father or the police, just suck it up, K.D. I mean it. Let me tell Lohendorf about Lena and her lover.”

  “Too bad you have to throw a grenade into her marriage.”

  “Lena’s marriage was defunct the day she decided to abscond with her lover. Anyway, the police will already have questioned her and if she didn’t fess up to her extramarital shenanigans, that air ticket will tell the tale.” Dinah browsed through the wallet for the umpteenth time. Lena had sounded as if she knew a lot more than she was willing to say about Pohl, but there was nothing informative in the wallet.

  K.D. said, “She acted all emo, like ‘boo-hoo, my poor heart’s breaking.’ But underneath, I think she’s afraid that maybe she said or did something that got Alwin killed. Maybe she bragged that he was better in bed or something, and in her heart of hearts, she believes her husband offed the dude.”

  In addition to her talents for breaking and entering, picking pockets, and spycraft, K.D. had developed a knack for psychoanalysis. Maybe it stemmed from all the expensive counseling she’d had. Dinah said, “The Bischoffs do seem to have the most credible motives.”

  “Sex rules.”

  “I guess. By the way, the police may have seen you leave and come back last night. If they ask, don’t deny it.”

  “If anyone saw me, they’ll think I’m Geert’s live-in.”

  “You’ve met Geert?”

  “Yeah, I was having a smoke in the hall when he got home this morning around five. He’s kind of cool and swaggy, and his German accent slays me. He’s going to take me clubbing one night.”

  “I don’t think that’s such a…” Dinah looked at the set of K.D.’s mouth. It was futile to preach caution to her. It would make her all the more determined.

  “Such a what?”

  “Never mind.”

  The buzzer signaled the start of the main event. Dinah took a breath and went to answer. “Yes?”

  “Inspector Lohendorf.”

  “Shall I come down?”

  “No. I’d like to come up and meet your new houseguest.”

  Dinah buzzed him in and shot K.D. a look.

  She shrugged. “No biggie.”

  Dinah opened the door and Lohendorf walked into the apartment with Swan at his side. She was dressed in a teal turtleneck, tailored brown trousers, and her blue kitten heels. The powdery fragrance of Chanel clung to her and she carried off a semblance of serene self-assurance. “K.D., what a surprise! I thought you’d gone home to Georgia.”

  Dinah saw Lohendorf’s eyebrows lift.

  “Hi, Swan.” K.D. executed a deft double-cheek kiss, as if she’d just blown in from France. “You haven’t aged at all.”

  “Bless your heart. You have. You look all grownup and sophisticated.”

  The charade embarrassed Dinah. Lohendorf had to know that K.D. had been to see Swan at the Gasthaus last night. She said, “Where’s Margaret?”

  “With Sergeant Wegener. They will meet us at the morgue.” Lohendorf held out his hand to K.D. “I am Inspector Jens Lohendorf. You are a family friend of Frau Pelerin?”

  “Oh, hi.” She shook his hand. “I’m K.D. Dobbs, Cleon Dobbs’ daughter. Dinah was with my father when he died and, afterward, we sort of bonded. She’s like my adopted big sister.”

  Dinah grabbed Lena’s wallet off the table and handed it to Lohendorf. “Lena Bischoff was here last night. She seems to have had an intimate relationship with the deceased. She left in a hurry and forgot this.”

  Lohendorf opened it and read the ticket. “Thank you. I’ll see that it’s returned.” If it altered his view of the case, he covered it well. “We should be going now.”

  “Don’t worry if I’m not here when you get home,” said K.D. “I think I’ll rent a bike and go for a ride around the Tiergarten.”

  “Bis später,” said Lohendorf, and shepherded Swan and Dinah into the hall. Dinah flashed K.D. a slit-eyed look and followed her mother down the stairs.

  ***

  The Leichenhaus was no different from the morgues Dinah had seen on American TV shows except this one engaged her sense of smell. She tried to convince herself that the whiff of death was only in her imagination and the antiseptic odors were the same as those in a hospital. It was hard. She had an overwhelming sense of whiteness—the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Backless white benches had been distributed along the hall at intervals, she supposed in case a visitor was overcome by grief. Or guilt. She kept her eyes on her mother. Lohendorf had walked on ahead and the closer they got to the room where Alwin Pohl lay, the farther behind Swan lagged.

  Orderlies in light blue scrubs hastened past in silent hospital clogs, as if they were on their way to an emergency.
They left a backwash of bleach in the air as they passed. At a T in the hallway, Lohendorf turned right. On a bench across from a swinging metal door, Margaret slumped with her head between her knees.

  Wegener stood over her holding a bottle of water. She said to Lohendorf, “We have viewed the body already.”

  Dinah swallowed hard. It must have been horrific to get to Margaret like that.

  “Was she distressed by the viewing or is she ill?” Lohendorf asked.

  “She has the grippe,” said Swan. She joggled Margaret’s arm. “You all right, honey?”

  Margaret looked up, gimlet-eyed. Her skin had a greenish cast and her lips quivered. “I need a drink.”

  Swan jostled Wegener out of her way and reached into Margaret’s bag on the seat beside her. She took out her flask, unscrewed the cap, and put it in Margaret’s hand. “Have yourself a good long swig.”

  She had two.

  Lohendorf exchanged a look with Wegener. “Were you acquainted with the deceased, Mrs. Dobbs?”

  “He didn’t look familiar,” said Margaret.

  “I see.” He turned to Swan. “I’m sure you want to get this difficult business over with as quickly as possible, Mrs. Calms.”

  She smiled. “By all means. I know I can count on you to catch me if I faint, Inspector.”

  Her put-on charm rankled Dinah, but she couldn’t help but wonder if there was a trace of sadism behind Lohendorf’s determination to bring them face-to-face with the dead man.

  “This way, please.” Lohendorf pushed open the metal doors and motioned them inside.

  And when your heart begins to bleed, you’re dead and dead and dead, indeed. Dinah linked arms with Swan, not sure who was supporting whom.

  A row of shiny metal gurneys stretched from one end of the room to the other. On the one nearest the door, a white sheet covered a human shape. Swan did a little stutter-step and let go of Dinah’s arm.

  “Mom?”