“Some of your pottery looks as if it came from another century. Do you and your partner import from dealers in the U.S.?”
“That is not my responsibility. I write histories and take pictures and present the pieces to our clients.”
She wondered again about the provenance of some of the items for sale in the Happy Hunting Ground, and the idea of blackmail reasserted itself. “Do your histories include information about where and how the pieces were acquired?”
He stared at her. She wasn’t sure how much the alcohol had dulled his thinking, but his eyes appeared sharp.
She took a chance. “I think Pohl was blackmailing someone in der Indianer club. Do you have any idea who? Or why?”
“Erpressung?”
“Press sounds right. Was Pohl pressuring anyone? Demanding money for his silence?”
“Blackmail.” The word seemed to have a profound effect. Either he was a great pretender or the possibility genuinely startled him. He grimaced and waved her away. “Who are you to come into my house and ask these questions?”
“I’m the daughter of a Native American woman who was invited to your Indian show and got a very nasty surprise. I know that Lena thinks Swan murdered Alwin, but she didn’t. I’m hoping to prevent the German police from charging her with a crime she didn’t commit.”
He took a deep drag and exhaled a cloud of pungent smoke. “Reiner Hess came to the gallery with Pohl six months ago. At the next meeting, Florian presented Pohl as a new member. It is possible that Pohl knew of an American law Hess broke.”
“When did you last see Hess?”
“The first time I saw Pohl was the last time I saw Hess.”
Dinah cranked this detail through the mill. Had Hess put Pohl up to blackmailing Swan? As Cleon’s lawyer, he would have been more likely than Pohl to know about Cleon’s various bank accounts. Maybe he thought he could glom onto the Panama money by threatening Cleon’s favorite ex-wife. But surely he would have demanded more than a half million dollars. “Where is Lena, Viktor? I’d like to talk with her.”
“On her way to hell. I don’t care.”
Dinah cared. Viktor might hate killing in general, but he made Lena sound like a special case. She couldn’t decide if “on her way to hell” was hyperbole or confession. Before she left, she had to make sure that Lena’s body wasn’t decomposing in a back room. Viktor stared into the fire, seemingly absorbed by his private sorrows. Dinah latched her hands behind her back, affected an air of aimless curiosity, and moseyed into the rear hallway.
There were two bedrooms, lights left on. She slipped into the larger one and looked inside the closet, which was two-thirds empty. The only clothes on hangers were men’s shirts and suits and a man’s overcoat. She reconnoitered the dresser drawers, but all she saw were Viktor’s socks and skivvies. She peeked under the bed and scoped out the adjacent bathroom. There were no cosmetics on the double vanity, no perfumes, no jewelry. And no blood. A woman could be murdered bloodlessly and her belongings deep-sixed, but Dinah’s provisional assessment suggested the Lena had packed up and decamped under her own steam.
She gave the smaller bedroom a look-see. There was nothing suspicious and she ambled back into the living room. Sweat streamed down her sides and she felt as if her bones were melting. She had to get out of here or she’d dissolve into a puddle. “Do you have any idea where Lena has gone, Viktor? Does she have family in Berlin, or a best friend?”
He staggered to his feet and pulled the knife out of the rawhide drumhead. “Baer was lucky his wife died young. A man is lucky who never knows the falseness of his Frau.”
She would have asked if he owned a gun, but the time didn’t feel right. She bid him Auf Wiedersehen and hurried out into the rain.
Chapter Nineteen
On the ride home, the orchestral music didn’t soothe Dinah’s nerves. Viktor was drunk, stoned, and in a misogynistic frame of mind. The more he drank, the more likely he was to take out his hatred on Lena or some other poor frau who knocked on his door. Belatedly, she thought how easily he could have gone to work carving her up with that knife. She should phone Lohendorf to give him a heads-up, but he would probably read her the riot act for meddling in his investigation or, worse, place her under house arrest. For the time being, Lena was out of range of Viktor’s knife and, after her rampage, she probably wouldn’t risk an encore appearance any time soon.
Dinah hunched her shoulders and buried her hands deep in her pockets. After being half-roasted, the dash to the car in the cold rain had chilled her. Her hair and jacket were damp and the smell of wet wool made her nose wrinkle. She wished she could curl up in her bed, pull the covers over her head, and sleep until Thor got home. If he were here, she wouldn’t feel so vulnerable and alone. If he had spoken with Lohendorf, he would know already that her mother was a suspect in a murder case.
Her head seethed with questions. Was Hess behind the blackmailing scheme? Were they all in it together? Pohl? Farber? Stefan Amsel? It was a bit much to believe that Swan just happened to book a room at the hotel where Amsel was the senior executive. Had Hess hatched the plot and directed it from afar? Now that his name had cropped up in connection with Pohl’s murder, the police had probably intensified their search for him. He was the ghost in the machination. He might be the mastermind, or he might be moldering at the bottom of Müggelsee, as dead as Pohl.
“We are here,” announced the driver.
She snapped out of her reverie, tipped him an extra ten Euros, and hurried to her door. She entered her security code and slipped inside, shaking the water out of her hair. More than anything, she yearned for a hot shower and a hot toddy. She felt the onset of a sore throat. Either she had breathed too much wood smoke or she was coming down with Margaret’s cold.
She climbed the stairs, turned the key in the door and walked in on a little boy, eight or nine years old, lying on the floor on his stomach playing with a fleet of model cars. There was something disconcertingly familiar about him. His wide-set brown eyes regarded her with a penetrating frankness.
“Hi,” she managed after a minute. “I’m Dinah. Who are you?”
“I’m Jack.”
“Is K.D…?” she started to say babysitting, but Jack didn’t impress her as the kind of kid who thought of himself as needing a sitter. “Is K.D. here?”
“Here I am.” She sashayed into the room and pushed a letter into Dinah’s hand. “Dinah Pelerin, meet Jack Ramberg.”
Dinah stared, speechless.
“Thor’s my dad,” said Jack. “He told me all about you. You’re his new girlfriend.”
“His mother had a medical emergency,” explained K.D. “Her dad is about to undergo heart surgery in California, where she’s from, and her boyfriend works on an oil rig somewhere miles out in the North Sea.”
“Erik’s a mud man,” said Jack. “He monitors the drilling fluid as the hole gets deeper.”
“Ah,” said Dinah.
“Did Dad tell you a lot about me?”
“Not, not nearly as much as I’d like to hear.”
K.D. was flush with information. “Erik can’t get off the rig to look after Jack and Jennifer doesn’t have any relatives in Norway to leave him with. She said it would be Thor’s turn to have Jack at Christmas and this way, he’ll get him for a couple of extra months. She left his school records and says Thor will have to find him a private school so he doesn’t fall behind.”
Jack said, “I speak English and Norwegian, but not German. Anyway, I don’t think it would be so bad to miss two months of school. I can catch up when I go back after the Christmas holiday.”
Dinah wasn’t ready to wade into the practicalities of school. “How long have your mother and Thor been divorced, Jack?”
“I don’t think they got married.” He spun the wheels on his toy car. “If they did, they never told me.”
“Well,” said Dinah. “What
a very great, fine surprise it is to have you here. I’m sure your dad will be over the moon. I guess your mom let him know that she’d be dropping you off here in Berlin?”
“Yes. She wanted to leave me with him in Oslo, but he was meeting with some undercover guys from E-Fourteen and couldn’t break away. He’s told her all about you, but she was sorry she missed seeing you. She says you sound like a good listener for all of Dad’s stories.”
Oh, I’m a first-rate listener when the man talks to me, thought Dinah. It seemed however that Jennifer was his primary audience for the important stories. At least he kept her informed as to what was going on in his life. “Have you had supper, Jack?”
“Just a snack. K.D. said you’d be home for dinner so we waited.”
“Do you like pizza?”
“Sure. I eat a lot of frozen pizza at home.”
“Let’s do a fresh-baked one tonight. K.D., will you call Joey’s and place the order? They speak English and they deliver. The number’s in the napkin holder on the kitchen table. You and Jack choose the toppings you like. I’m going to take a hot shower before hypothermia sets in.”
***
She held her face under the steaming water and reached deep inside herself for an adult response. It wasn’t there.
Thor was thirty-eight. She knew he had had lovers. But a child? How could he have failed to mention a child? Were there others? Did Jack have siblings or half-siblings? It was no secret that Scandinavians had a different outlook from Americans about marriage. Many disregarded the formality of a ceremony, and having a child or several children out of wedlock carried no stigma. But the failure to disclose a child? How could Thor not share that biographical tidbit with the woman he claimed to love?
It felt as if she had lived her whole life engulfed in lies and deceit. Thor was the rock she’d grabbed onto, the solid, unbudging granite of truth and reliability. Now that rock had been dislodged.
She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. What a crock of…irony. She had been beating herself up for not telling him about a secret bank account, which was a crime and an embarrassment, while he didn’t have the courage to tell her about his son, who seemed like a peach of a kid. That phone call about trusting each other, imploring her not to make any snap decisions if something should happen that made her want to run away. Ha!
K.D.’s voice cut through the steam. “You’ve been in here a really long time.”
“The bathroom is occupied. Go away.”
“Don’t you want to know what she looked like?”
“Okay.”
“Taller than you, long sandy blond hair, good figure.”
“Thanks.”
“She was kind of a sad sack, if that makes you feel any better.”
“Her father’s facing major surgery. She could hardly feel jolly.” Dinah shut off the water. “Hand me a towel.”
K.D. tossed it over the top of the shower. “What are you going to do?”
“Dry my hair. Eat pizza.”
“About Thor, I mean. It’s pretty obvious he didn’t tell you about Jack. Your face out there was like, boom! Epic burn.”
Dinah wrapped the towel around herself and stepped out onto the mat. “I appreciate your sympathy, K.D., but it’s none of your concern. It’s not Jack’s concern, either. This has nothing to do with him. He doesn’t need to worry that he’s caused a problem, so don’t roll your eyes and make this into a drama. Just leave me alone for a few minutes. Knock on the door when the pizza gets here.”
“’Tis not mine to reason why,” K.D. said, and flounced out of the room.
Dinah dried her hair, pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt, and dusted off her suit of armor. If she’d let down her guard and taken a hit, it was her own fault. The one constant in her thirty-four years on this earth was that everybody lies. No exceptions. No Truthful Whitefeet. Just liars like her, with an agenda to push. She applied a touch of concealer to her red eyes and walked out of the bathroom. Fortified. Hungry.
The smell of warm pizza pervaded the apartment. Jack and K.D. had already helped themselves. Dinah sliced off a triangle piled with sausage and pepperoni, slid it onto a plate, and sat down at the table. Jack seemed unfazed at being dropped off in the care of strangers. She wondered how many of Thor’s girlfriends he’d been fobbed off on in the course of his short life.
“How old are you, Jack?”
“Nine-and-a-half.”
“Do you see your dad often?”
“Mom and Dad usually trade off every six months, but that was before the Service transferred him to Berlin. It’ll probably be just at the holidays now unless I learn to speak German.”
“You certainly speak English very well.”
“That’s what I speak at home. Mom hasn’t ever really learned Norwegian. She says it’s too sing-songy and there are too many dialects. Erik and I speak it sometimes. Dad would mostly rather speak English.”
Dinah’s phone rang and she flinched when Thor’s name appeared. “Speak of the devil. Jack, why don’t you answer and tell your dad that you arrived safely and we’re feeding you and looking after you until he gets home? Talk as long as you like.”
He picked up the phone and Dinah poured herself a glass of wine and repaired to the living room. K.D. followed. She set her plate on the coffee table and ensconced herself on the sofa, tucking her long legs under her like a yogi.
“Are you going to talk to him?”
“Yes, of course. But I can’t think of anything he needs to hear from me tonight.”
“You’re going to screw it up, aren’t you, Dinah? You’ll be like, all lofty and holier-than-thou and in ten years you’ll end up the crazy old-maid aunt who only goes out on bingo night and carpet bombs the relatives with Claxton fruitcakes at Christmas.”
“You’re a bright girl, K.D., and I’ve grown fond of you over the last year. But we are not gal pals and my love life is not open to discussion. And my closet isn’t your personal shopping mall. If you get grease on that shirt, I will…” she broke off. What disciplinary options did she have? She wasn’t cut out for minding children. Thor had never said he wanted any, and she certainly didn’t. She would be a terrible mother, or step-girlfriend. Less suited to the job than even her own mother.
“You’ll what?” taunted K.D.
“I will padlock the closet,” she finished, feeling incompetent.
“He says he wants to speak to you,” said Jack, walking into the room and holding out the phone to her.
She eked out a weak smile. Not taking it would only confuse Jack and provoke more psychologizing from K.D. Better to get it over with. She took the phone and went into the bedroom. “I’m here.”
“Dinah, I’m sorry to spring the news on you this way. I thought I could be back with you in Berlin before Jen had to leave for America, but her father’s condition worsened. Her parents are divorced, she has no siblings, and I’m in a bind here in Oslo.”
“You’ve had a year to break the news to me, Thor.”
“I wanted to tell you, but there never seemed to be a right time. You’ve said you don’t want children of your own. I wasn’t sure how you’d take the idea of being a part-time mother to somebody else’s child, although you’ve been great with K.D.”
“Did you arrange your custodial visits, or whatever you call them, when I went back to Hawaii after we met in Norway? And later, when I was finishing my dig in Turkey?”
“That’s how the timing worked out, yes. I thought you and I could settle in, get comfortable with each other and by Christmas, when I was scheduled to have Jack again, you’d be prepared and excited to meet him.”
“It’s late September, Thor. We’re settled in. At least, I thought we were. Now I’m not so sure.”
“Don’t be childish. We love each other.”
“That makes everything hunky-dory.”
“And don’t be flippant. We didn’t find each other brand new. Both of us had lives before Longyearbyen. What did you expect?”
“Honesty.”
“The way you’re honest with me?”
“You don’t have to tell me I’m a hypocrite. I detour around the truth sometimes. I leave out things that are hard to say. I thought you were the exception to the rule.”
“What rule is that?”
“The Everybody Lies rule. I could understand you not getting down into the weeds, providing an inventory of your ex-girlfriends and ex-roommates and ex-wives.”
“I don’t have an ex-wife.”
“You should have, but be that as it may. I could rationalize an ex-wife. An undisclosed child is beyond the pale.”
“Well, he’s disclosed now and I love him very much.” His voice carried a rare charge of anger.
She self-censored. She was punishing him because she was hurt, but what was done was done and hurting him wouldn’t make her feel any better. She remembered her mother’s admonition to show a little grace. “He seems like a very lovable kid. Smart and sociable and independent. I know you must be proud of him.”
“I am.”
“The thing is,” she said, “I’ve been steeped in secrets all my life. Granted, I have some I should have disclosed, but I’m not in a mood to be fair right now. The situation is going to take some time to put into perspective.”
“I know that. Dinah, listen—”
“I’m sure Jack told you about K.D. She’s back in Berlin and between the two of us, we’ll take good care of him, so please don’t worry. Would you like to speak to him again?”
“No. The reason I called was to warn you. You need to start looking for an attorney.”
“What?”
“Forensics found your mother’s DNA on the body of that murder victim you forgot to tell me about, and the vic’s blood on her clothes.”
She drew in a choppy breath. “Is Lohendorf going to arrest her?”
“If no other leads are found, he’ll have no choice. He didn’t go exactly by the book when he passed the information on to me. It was his roundabout way of giving you notice of what’s to come.”
Where the Bones are Buried Page 13
