“Hair color?” asked Wegener.
“There was a light show going on, strobes in all colors. It was hard to tell.”
“Is this the man?” She showed her a picture of Viktor.
“No.” K.D. swept Aphrodite up in her arms and cuddled her. It amazed Dinah that she could make the little beast purr. “The jerk she met wore glasses. Anyhow, I told Geert what he said to me. Geert wanted to punch him out, but I’m like no, we should wait and see what goes down between him and Lena. We watched and after like, a half-hour, the dude gets up and leaves. I went back to talk to Lena, but she’d had another drink and she was wasted. She definitely couldn’t go home by herself and we brought her here. She was hallucinating in the car and thought Geert was Viktor. She does not want to go home. She said she’s crashing at her sister’s place.”
“What kind of glasses did the man wear,” asked Dinah.
“I don’t know. Ordinary.”
That eliminated Baer. Amsel had a face like an unbaked biscuit, which met the ugly test. He had thinning hair and wore ordinary bifocals. Farber was equally unattractive, had a skimpy mohawk and wore black wire rims. She said as much to Wegener. “With Alwin dead and Viktor set against her, Lena may have needed money. Maybe somebody hired her to set the fire and afterward, she felt guilty and got drunk. The man who met her at the White Noise could have shown up for the payoff.”
Wegener’s eyes sparkled with scorn. “It is not yet certain that Herr Bischoff was murdered. It is more likely that he killed Pohl and felt so guilty that he killed himself.”
“If Viktor was going to commit suicide, I think he would have done it a long time ago,” said Dinah. “The man who met Lena has to be found and questioned.”
“Naturally, we will locate this person, but there are many men who wear eyeglasses.”
“I’ve simply suggested two,” said Dinah. “Could you show K.D. pictures of Farber and Amsel?”
“If Lena doesn’t give Inspector Lohendorf the name of the man, I will have their driver’s license photos sent to my phone.”
“My bad,” said K.D. “I should have taken a picture. Guess I was overwound from all that wickedness with you earlier in the night.”
“What wickedness?” asked Wegener.
“A chocolate cream pie,” said Dinah. She had made a clean breast of her break-in at the Happy Hunting Ground, but she had prevailed on Thor to keep K.D.’s name out of that adventure and she’d warned K.D. to keep her mouth shut. If things worked out and she stayed on in Berlin, there was no sense starting out with a rap sheet. “Is that what you mean, K.D.”
“Yeah. I was crunked on sugar.”
Dinah needed to get back to the Adlon to make sure Swan hadn’t committed any additional crimes. She and Winheller had met with Lohendorf this morning and Swan was no longer the prime suspect in Pohl’s murder, but Dinah wouldn’t feel safe until her passport had been returned and she was winging her way back to the States. “Have you finished with your questions, Sergeant Wegener?”
“That is all for now.”
“Then if it’s permitted, I have to go out for a while.”
“Don’t leave town.”
Dinah couldn’t decide if she was making a joke. If so, she had forgotten to smile. Dinah gave K.D. a final warning. “Remember our agreement, K.D. I’ll see you later.”
She had left her purse in the office and had no choice but to forge through the living room past Lohendorf, Lena, and Thor. Lena sat forward on the sofa with her hands over her eyes. Lohendorf stood directly over her. Thor leaned against the office door. No one was speaking. Dinah met Thor’s eyes briefly. He stepped aside and she slipped into the office. Jack was doing a headstand on the air mattress while watching TV, Charlie’s Angels dubbed in German.
She laughed. “Upside-down and in German. You must be bored.”
“Can I come out now?”
“Not yet. There’s some heavy adult conversation going on out there.”
“Another murder?”
“You’ll have to ask your dad. The inspector won’t allow me to sit in and listen.”
“Me either.” He rolled into a ball and somersaulted to his feet. “K.D. says Margaret murdered somebody. Is that right?”
Dinah took her phone off the charger and put it in her purse. “Yes, technically.”
“She seems nice, but K.D. says she’s evil.”
“Sometimes nice people find themselves in not-so-nice situations they can’t see their way out of. They may not always do the right thing. That doesn’t make them evil.”
“Isn’t all murder evil?”
“Yes, but…” She’d given Thor grief for splitting philosophical hairs and here she was espousing moral relativism to a nine-year-old. “Yes of course it is.”
“Dad’s job is to keep people from getting murdered.”
“I’ll bet that makes you proud of him.”
“Yes. If I don’t race cars, I’ll probably be a secret agent and do what he does. I like it when he tells me stories, but Mom says he talks about his job too much and he shouldn’t talk about it at all with me.”
“What does Thor say?”
“He says I should know what he does, but he doesn’t tell me the gory stuff.”
She felt marginally less guilty about discussing Pohl’s murder in front of Jack, although Jennifer had a point about overdoing things. Thor seemed to have insinuated himself into Lohendorf’s investigation and might be discussing murder all day. Being as how Dinah didn’t plan to talk about any gory stuff with Swan, it wouldn’t hurt if Jack tagged along with her to the Adlon. He’d probably enjoy a break from TV, and she’d like to know more about Jennifer. “Would you like to get out of the apartment for a while, Jack?”
“Jøss!”
“Are you a good walker?”
“I ran a five k race with Dad last spring.”
“Then let’s ask him if it’s okay for you to come along with me.”
“It’s okay. Mom said I should do what you say, same as Dad.”
“Let’s at least tell him where we’re going.”
As they walked out of the office, Lohendorf was helping Lena to her feet. She looked bewildered and scared and terribly young. It would be next to impossible to convince a jury that she killed her husband. If Dinah hadn’t seen first-hand evidence of her destructive temper, she wouldn’t believe it.
“Thor, is it okay with you if Jack and I go for a walk and visit my Mom?”
“Good idea. I have work to do, but I’ll pick you up at the hotel in a couple of hours.”
While Lohendorf conferred with Wegener, Dinah whispered, “Who did Lena say came to meet her at the White Noise?”
“Later.”
It would have been as easy to say the man’s name as “later” and she was champing at the bit to learn what kind of bullet killed Pohl. The mystery of Swan’s missing gun still chafed. Until she knew for certain that the murder weapon wasn’t a .22, she couldn’t breathe easy. But Lohendorf motioned Thor to join the conversation across the room and there was nothing she could do but worry and wait. She jogged down the stairs behind Jack, pointed him toward Hausvogteiplatz, and did her best to keep up.
At least it wasn’t raining. She glanced up at the Einstein quote. “When concerning oneself with matters of truth, there’s no difference between small and big problems.” Einstein had also said that it was important to see old problems from a new angle, but the only angle she could see for Viktor’s murder was a falling-out among thieves. He worked in the gallery. He had to know about the illicit art and probably doctored his histories of the pieces to make them saleable to collectors. Or did he? There was something so, so guileless about him.
“Left on Taubenstrasse,” she called out to Jack.
Jack was an entirely new problem and one that Einstein couldn’t help her with. She thought
about what her life would be like if she stayed with Thor. He could never be sure when he might be sent to Kenya or some other hot spot. If he were called away during one of Jack’s visits, she would become the de facto parent. She loved Thor, but she hadn’t signed up for the full domestic package. And what if she grew to love Jack and then she and Thor split up? He obviously didn’t mate for life. She had yet to ask if it was he who grew tired of Jennifer, or the other way around.
Brimming with energy, Jack roared up to an intersection. “Stop,” she called. “Mind the cars.”
While they waited for the little green man, she asked, “How long did your mom and dad live together before they separated?”
“What do you mean ‘separated’?
“Lived apart from each other?”
“They’ve lived apart as long as I can remember.”
The light changed and Dinah gnawed on that for several blocks. She was so engrossed in her thoughts that the verdigris horses atop the Brandenburg Gate came into view before she realized it.
Arms outstretched, Jack banked and air-planed through the gate and Dinah followed. There were no demonstrations today, just the clown on the unicycle. Jack spiraled a few times, forcing the cyclist to pedal backwards.
“Achtung!”
“Excuse us.” She caught Jack by the collar and propelled him down the boulevard and into the lobby of the Adlon.
They were waiting for an elevator when he turned and pointed. “It’s Baer.”
He was standing at the reception desk talking with Stefan Amsel. The elevator doors opened. Dinah held back, her imagination bubbling with dark possibilities. But there was nothing furtive or criminal about two members of the same club meeting at the hotel where one of them worked. She pushed Jack into the elevator wondering what the Indians would make of the latest death.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Swan appeared unusually cautious when she opened the door. Her eyes swept the hall. “I didn’t expect you until later today. And who might you be, young man?”
Dinah answered for him. “He’s Thor’s son. Jack Ramberg, this is my mother. I’m sure she won’t mind if you call her Swan.”
“Not at all. Y’all come on in.” She looked up and down the hall again and closed the door. “Have a seat. Help yourself to the fruit basket, Jack. They put everything but the kitchen sink in that thing. Cheese and chocolate bars and little wrapped weiners.”
“Thank you.” He went to explore what was on offer.
Dinah breathed in the fragrance of Chanel, but she scented an unpleasant surprise in the offing. “You’re awfully edgy, Mom. Is something wrong?”
“Not as wrong as yesterday. Klaus and I spoke with Inspector Lohendorf this mornin’ in his office. Klaus is just a wonderful lawyer. Very protective and very professional. I can’t say that Lohendorf was any too gracious. He badgered me about why I had agreed to meet Pohl and what I knew about Reiner. But in the end, he acted like he’d been persuaded that I wasn’t a killer.” She put a finger to her lips. “Maybe Jack shouldn’t be hearing this kind of talk.”
He looked up from the fruit basket. “I know about Pohl’s murder. There was another murder today.”
“No! Who?” Swan blanched white under her blusher.
“Viktor Bischoff,” said Dinah. “He was Florian Farber’s assistant at the gallery. Did you meet him in person or on Facebook?”
“No. What happened to him?”
“We don’t know for sure that it was murder.” Dinah hadn’t intended to talk about murder and she didn’t want to think about the gory details of Viktor’s death, whether or not it was murder. She picked an apple out of the basket and dropped into an armchair. “You said that Florian had friended a number of Indians on Facebook.”
“That’s right. He said he had friends from almost all of the five-hundred-and-sixty-six registered tribes.”
“Did he or Pohl ever ask you about Seminole art or archaeological artifacts?”
“Not Pohl. Florian asked me about the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum on the Big Cypress Reservation, but I don’t know anything about it and told him so. Why? Is that important?” Her eyes flitted back to the door.
“Maybe. Are you expecting someone else?”
“Yes, I guess he’ll be back soon.”
“Who?”
“Mr. Amsel. He evicted me this morning. He was here, inside my room sitting in this very chair when I got back from the meeting with Lohendorf.”
“He just let himself in?”
“And he was nasty about it, too. He said he could no longer allow me to stay at the Adlon, not even if I paid. He said he had a duty to protect the hotel and all of its guests and I was ‘bad medicine.’ That last was kind of a slur, don’t you think? I mean, it sounds like lingo from an old cowboy movie.”
“Maybe he thinks somebody will try to blow up this hotel like they did Margaret’s,” said Jack.
Swan gasped. “Somebody blew up the guest house?”
“With a grenade,” said Jack. “Margaret had to go to the hospital, but they didn’t keep her.”
Swan’s hands flew to her face. “Mercy! Is Margaret all right?”
“She’s fine, Mom. She inhaled a lot of smoke, which aggravated her cough, but otherwise she’s okay. And most of the damage to the guest house was confined to your, to her room.”
“Thank the Lord.”
So much for keeping Jack shut up behind closed doors, thought Dinah. Margaret could have told him about the fire, but he must have eavesdropped on Thor and Lohendorf in order to have heard about the grenade. She wondered what other information he’d gleaned. “Did you hear what Lena said to Inspector Lohendorf, Jack?”
“I only heard her crying. She said she didn’t know Viktor was dead and then Dad saw the office door was cracked and he closed it and made me turn on the TV.”
She bit into the apple and thought about the grenade. Viktor must have kept them as souvenirs along with the old gas mask and the binoculars she’d seen next to his grandfather’s photo. But what possible reason could he have to try to kill Margaret unless somebody—Hess?—sent him to do it? Or was Margaret who they were after?
“Where is Margaret?” asked Swan.
“She’s staying at our apartment temporarily, until we can get her some clothes and a new passport.”
“Poor woman. I tricked her into coming to Berlin and almost got her killed.”
“You weren’t the only deceiver, Mom. Margaret spoke with Reiner Hess before she left Georgia. She’s met with him at least once here in Berlin.”
“But why didn’t she call me out sooner?”
“Come over here and sit close. Jack, turn on the TV, and up the volume.”
He made a face, but did as he was told. Swan balanced on the arm of Dinah’s chair and leaned in.
While Jack channel-surfed, Dinah tried to interpret Margaret’s motives to her mother. “You’re the other woman, the black swan that changed her life. In part, she wanted to see what made you tick and in part, she wanted to see you humiliated. She needs money and at first I thought she might have told Pohl and Hess about Cleon’s secret account and put them up to blackmailing you, knowing that I’d give you the money. But she denies it and I want to believe her. She’s broke and lonely and depressed. She may not know, herself, why she did it.”
Swan sighed. “Margaret and I are bound together by history and bad luck and circumstance. We ought to make peace before we die. If she knew the heartache Cleon’s so-called love has brought me over the years, her envy would turn to pity.”
Dinah marshaled her courage. This was it, the time to ask the big question, to go over the wall or live behind it forever. “Mom, I’ve never had the nerve to ask you before, but did you have any idea that Cleon killed—”
The room phone rang. “It’s that awful man.” Swan jumped up and tottered into the middle
of the room. “What should I say?”
“I’ll speak with him,” said Dinah. “Jack, you can turn the TV down now.” She answered the phone in an assertive voice. “This is Dinah Pelerin.”
“Hi, kjære. You sound very forceful.”
“If wishes were horses. Where are you?”
“Downstairs. I have news.”
“Why didn’t you call my cell?”
“Because I’m here. Shall I come up?”
“Sure.” She hung up and chucked the apple in the wastebasket.
“That wasn’t Amsel?”
“No. I don’t know why you’re so worried about him. We’ll find you another hotel this afternoon. Something inexpensive and closer to our place. Thor is on his way up. Please act natural.”
Thor arrived and Swan opened the door with melodramatic panache. “Good heavens, you didn’t tell me he was so handsome.”
Here we go, thought Dinah. Feeling awkward as a teen on prom night, she made the introduction.
Thor smiled and held out his hand, but Swan leaned up for a kiss. He planted one on her cheek. “I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time, Mrs. Calms.”
“Call me Swan.” She turned to Dinah. “I love him already. It’s plain as day that you were meant for each other.”
Thor grinned at Dinah. “It’s that obvious?”
“You’re the first Thor I’ve ever met. Such a fascinating name. Sort of swashbuckling. Come in, come in and sit down.”
I should have told her to act unnatural, thought Dinah.
Thor kept his face remarkably straight. “I can’t stay. I’m on my way to the Embassy, but I wanted to stop by and fill you in.”
“The sooner the better,” said Dinah. “What did Lena say? And no need to stuff cotton in Jack’s ears. He’ll find out anyway.”
“It was Lena who threw the grenade. When she left Viktor, she took two grenades from his collection. She found out you were staying at the Wunderbar, Swan. She didn’t know you had moved and I guess the hotel’s front desk didn’t know either. It was you she wanted to hurt. She believes you killed Alwin Pohl and she wanted revenge.”
Where the Bones are Buried Page 20
