The Indigo Brothers Trilogy Boxed Set

by Vickie McKeehan

  “Are you Hugo Reiner?”

  “Who wants to know?” he replied, still in German.

  Mitch didn’t understand the comeback so he stated, “Look, we know you speak English, so cut the German. We aren’t here to harm you.”

  “Get off my boat! Now!” Hugo demanded in English, laden with a German accent.

  Mitch put his hands on his hips. “Let’s try this again. Walker Buchanan was my brother-in-law. He ended up beaten to death and stuffed in a barrel along with his little boy, our nephew. Same thing happened to our sister, Livvy Buchanan, and her six-year-old daughter, our niece. We’re here to ask you what you know about it. And don’t bother denying you knew Walker. That’s not gonna fly. We have witnesses that place you in Mattito’s Bar talking to him on numerous occasions. So we can do this here, on your boat, or we can yank you off this tub and take you back to talk to the cops in Indigo Key. Your choice. But we aren’t leaving here without some information out of you.”

  Hugo’s eyes went big as saucers. He swung his legs out of his bunk and staggered to his feet. “I tried to tell your stupid brother-in-law to stay away from Werner Dietrich. But he refused to listen to me. It’s not my fault he ended up like he did. Before I say more, I need a drink.”

  Mitch grabbed the old man’s arm. “After. You talk and I’ll get you a case of whatever it is you drink but right now I want you sober while you’re telling the story. You got that?”

  Hugo nodded. “Three against one. Not so fair.” He raised his shoulders. “No choice.”

  “Let’s go up on deck. Maybe take the launch over to The Black Rum. What do you say to that? We’ll get some food in you. When’s the last time you ate?”

  “Yesterday.” Hugo tapped his chest. “I catch my own supper. Always.”

  Mitch wasn’t sure how he did that, as wobbly on his feet as the man appeared. But he had to take the man’s word for it, since Hugo was obviously still kicking.

  Garret led the way up on deck while Hugo followed. Jackson and Mitch lagged behind to make sure the old sailor made it up the stairs.

  It took another thirty minutes to persuade Hugo to get in the raft and another hour before he agreed to a hot shower on board The Black Rum. After providing him with a decent pair of pants and a clean shirt, he finally felt like talking. And that was after a pot of coffee and a feast of scrambled eggs, hash browns, and five sausages, two of which he wrapped up and put in his pocket for later.

  “Good sausages,” the old sailor declared.

  Impatient, Garret had been biting his tongue. Now that Hugo’s belly was full, the questions poured out of him. “How did you meet Walker?”

  “Mattito’s Bar, like you say. I always go in there when I have a little money left at the end of the month.”

  “Why Nazi gold? Of all the made-up stories, why would you try to push that one off on a married man with two kids?”

  “Push? I did not push him into anything. He made up his own mind.”

  “How did you convince him of such a harebrained scheme?”

  “You think Nazi gold is rubbish? It’s there, just waiting to be found, waiting for someone to pluck it off the sea floor. But just as I warned Walker—and I’ll tell you the same thing—it’s guarded by the ghosts of brave U-boat heroes. You won’t steal it without cost. Walker looked at all my maps and decided for himself it was worth going after it. He even stole one of my maps from me. Stole what belonged to me. The thief, he steals my diary, he steals my papers. Schmutzig schwein!”

  Hugo translated the insult without being asked. “But the filthy pig didn’t get everything.” He tapped the side of his head. “The rest is up here. Your Walker thinks he will get me drunk and I will tell him everything. Hugo is much smarter than that!”

  The old man took a wheezy deep breath. “That idiot of yours went to Dietrich and that’s what got him killed. No one blackmails Dietrich and lives to tell about it later. And Dietrich, he will kill me for what I know if he ever finds me.”

  “How do you know this guy so well?” Mitch asked.

  “I know all Werner’s secrets. If you have the heart to kill this man, I will help you. If not, you are like everyone else, too scared of him. And we will go our separate ways.”

  The old man’s eyes darted around the galley. “This is a fine boat. You should use it and I will lead you to the gold. All I ask is that you return the bullion to Germany. They will give you a large finder’s fee. It is true. And if we find my father’s bones inside the sub, we will bring all who rest there back to their native country for burial. I want my father resting next to my mother’s grave in their little village.”

  “Touching story. You ask a lot for an old man,” Walsh said from across the room. “Walker listened to you, and now his entire family is gone.”

  “No. Walker tried to blackmail Dietrich using my papers, papers he stole. Stupid, stupid man.”

  Hugo’s rapt audience traded looks.

  Garret remembered what they’d found in the safe. “By any chance is this diary bound in faded black leather?”

  Hugo’s rheumy blue eyes glistened with interest. “Ja. Have you seen it?”

  Sensing this was the way to get Hugo back to the Key, Garret replied, “Not only did we see it, we have it in our possession. We thought it was an old family Bible.”

  “No Bible. It is my father’s account of where to find the gold. If you have it, then there is nothing stopping us from getting to it first. And then we will finish Dietrich off, once and for all, ja?”

  “What took you so long to go after this fortune?”

  “No one believed me.”

  “Okay, if we buy into this story, you need to start from the beginning.”

  Hugo stopped to sip from his cup. He eyed the bottle of bourbon on the counter. “Maybe something to flavor my kaffee before I go on?”

  Walsh picked up the whiskey, tipped it into the man’s mug. “There. Now keep the stories coming.”

  Hugo licked his lips and began, “My father was a twenty-five-year-old lieutenant assigned to U-boat 492 in the final days of the war. This was between December 1944 and April 1945. When I was a much younger man I went looking for information about him. Of course, I already knew his sub had gone down along the US coastline in April just before the war ended. After that time, my father was presumed missing at sea. But I didn’t know much more than that. I searched the war archives and discovered among other things my father was involved in ferrying high-ranking Nazis out of Germany on their way to South America to start a brand-new life. On one of his trips, there was a high-ranking SS Colonel traveling with his five-year-old son. My father made notes about how revered this man was for committing major crimes during the war. That man’s name was Dietrich, and Werner was the boy.”

  Garret took out his phone and used the Internet to look up information about U-492. “But this site claims 492 was scrubbed in 1943.”

  Hugo shook his head. “Nein. Fake documentation. There were five subs left intact so that the Allies would never know they still existed. 492 was one of those.” He held out his cup for more of the bourbon.

  Again, Walsh obliged. “Go on.”

  “It was much, much later when my mother went to see a friend of hers in the little town of Bariloche. She hadn’t seen this woman in twenty years.”

  Once more, Garret used the search engine to look up the town to verify Hugo’s claim. “This website says Bariloche is located at the foothills of the Andes in Argentina. It’s reputed to have been a haven for fugitive Nazi officers and their families.”

  “See, I tell the truth,” Hugo declared. “My mother’s friend had the cancer in the breast and was near death by the time she reached the town. She gave my mother a packet filled with photographs of my father standing next to those he ferried to South America. Many, many photos. I have pictures of Werner as a boy and his father standing proud in his SS uniform.”

  Hugo leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “And old Nazi ID cards with more
pictures that belonged to Dietrich’s family. I also keep the passports and logbooks with the coded messages about gold bullion carried in the belly of my father’s U-boat. Not only locations but also the routes they took to get to Argentina. Walker stole these from me. Until I met him, I had been waiting for someone to believe me. But people dismiss my story as just coming from a drunk looking for someone to buy him many drinks.”

  Mitch was unconvinced. It was unimaginable to him that kind of valuable documentation would be kept on the stinking tub he’d just left. “So Walker stole all of it?”

  Hugo shook his head. “Nein, not everything. I have a few documents left.”

  Mitch exchanged looks with his brothers. “Make me believe it,” he said in challenge. “Show me what you have.”

  Back on the Schneewind, Hugo left the brothers on deck while he scurried below to retrieve his incriminating stash.

  Garret heard noises coming from the cabin. Thirty minutes went by before Hugo reappeared carrying a waterproof, German-issued trunk, circa 1939, about the size of a large metal briefcase.

  “Let’s see this trove of documentation,” Mitch demanded.

  But Mitch found Hugo Reiner had a feisty side to him.

  “I’m not going with you. I won’t leave my boat.”

  “I’m not leaving you here. And we can’t tow this tub back to Sugar Bay. We can’t,” Mitch emphasized. “It’d be like sending up a giant red flag. Too many people know we’ve been looking for you. The Schneewind shows up in port and Dietrich will be all over it.”

  “Nein, I won’t leave my boat,” Hugo insisted again. “Someone will steal everything I own. I won’t part with my trunk.”

  “Hugo, be reasonable,” Jackson pleaded. “Mitch is right. You want to avoid Dietrich’s detection, this is the only way.”

  Mitch stabbed a finger at the old guy. “I didn’t want to say this earlier, didn’t want to scare you. But do you realize all those nights you sat in Mattito’s Bar, bragging about gold bullion, you were talking to Dietrich’s men directly?”

  “What do you mean? I was talking to Walker.”

  Mitch cut a lethal glare Hugo’s way. “I’m telling you everyone in that place heard you. Roger Baskin works for Dietrich, and so does probably half the town, too many to count. You ran your mouth and now we can’t just drag this tub back to Indigo and let it sit in the harbor on display.”

  Garret knew how stubborn his brothers could be. Since it seemed they were at an impasse, he intervened. “Look, we could tow it to Shock Island. I have a friend there. I’ll call ahead and see if Gary has a place to dock it where it’s completely out of sight.”

  “Whatever,” Mitch finally said. “Let’s just make it happen and get moving.” He turned to Jackson but pointed his finger at Hugo again. “I’m putting you in charge of that. Don’t let him out of your sight for five minutes.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two - Heat

  While Garret was busy with the mysterious Hugo, Anniston had plenty of work to keep her busy. There were calls to make, research to finish. She’d set up a command center in her hotel room where she and Sebastian could monitor the surveillance on Baskin and Dandridge. If nothing else, it might be the only way they’d gather the evidence they needed to take it to the state police.

  They’d already gone through hours and hours of video at two workstations. One near the window, the other at the little desk Anniston had set up on the smidgen of counter space. In addition to that, she’d enlisted Tessa and Raine to help her go through the rest of the security videos from various business owners around town. More eyes meant better to find what they were looking for.

  Tessa sat down ready to get to work. “When’s Raine due?”

  “Any time now.”

  Tessa went on, “With the storm moving through, the streets are flooding in some places. I hope she isn’t having trouble with that old roadster she drives.”

  “I’ll give her a call, ask her if she needs us to swing by and…” The knock at the door got Anniston to her feet. “Let’s hope that’s her.”

  Raine came into the room carrying her umbrella, drenched from the downpour. She nodded toward Anniston. “Sorry I’m late. But I had to persuade Charlotte into covering my afternoon shift.”

  “We were worried you had car trouble,” Tessa said.

  “That too. I walked over from the restaurant.”

  “You should’ve called me or Sebastian for a ride. There’s hot coffee on the counter. But first, you need to get out of those wet clothes.” She went to the dresser, found a pair of sweatpants and a top. “Here. Bathroom’s in there.”

  Raine hung up her raincoat and umbrella over the tub, changed into the dry clothes, and came out fluffing her damp hair with a towel. “I found something online I think you should see. But I need to borrow your laptop.”

  Anniston rubbed her hands together. “I love it when a protégé hits her stride.” She relinquished her MacBook and said, “Help yourself.”

  Raine went over and sat down at the computer and switched windows. She typed the name into the search engine to bring up another site. “First of all I need to give you the backstory on the keywords I used. Do you remember when Garret found that Day-Timer belonging to Livvy? A couple of days ago I asked Mitch if I could look through it, mostly out of curiosity. I noticed that Livvy used this catchphrase over and over again that she wrote in the margins, at least ten times.”

  “What was the phrase?” Tessa asked.

  “‘Faith is belief that turns into bravery.’ I found it odd, yet strangely familiar. Sure enough, I went online, typed in the phrase and basically got two hits. One was Boone’s sermon he’d posted on the church website in the archives section. I remember the day Boone delivered it. I was there. And so was Livvy. The other was posted on a religious blog written by a man by the name of Willis Hartman over twenty years ago. It seems this Hartman wrote a post about what he called foundational life concepts. Turns out, it matches almost word for word the archived sermon Boone delivered five years ago to his congregation. Which means, either Boone plagiarized this Hartman guy off the Internet, or the two men are one and the same and Boone simply dragged out an old homily from the past.”

  Sebastian, who’d been focused on his computer screen, spared a glance toward Raine. “Let me see that.” He went over to the laptop, read the blog post and then the archived document from Life Stone Church. “This is brilliant work, Raine.”

  Anniston looked on proudly at Raine before turning to her brother. “I told you these people were motivated and talented. You didn’t believe me when I told you Tessa had the foresight to snap pictures of all those license plates.”

  “I’m a believer now,” Sebastian said as he reread the blog post. He angled toward Raine, kissed her on the forehead. “Do you realize you may have just popped this case over the fence? Anniston and I have been agonizing over how to uncover Dandridge’s true identity.”

  Anniston clarified. “The lab texted me this morning and said they ran the DNA profile through CODIS and got zip. Not a single hit from that wad of tissues I sent them. Sebastian and I know the man reinvented himself just before he arrived on the Key. But if Dandridge hasn’t been picked up for anything, we’re dead in the water.”

  “And now this.” Sebastian sat back down at his laptop and began a series of rapid keystrokes. “I’ll hunt down Willis Hartman while you guys keep at the surveillance.”

  “There has to be something in those videos that we’ve overlooked,” Anniston stated.

  Raine switched gears and tapped into the videos Tessa hadn’t yet viewed. “After getting my neighbor to give up her camera feed from the houseboat next to me, I’m beginning to agree with you. With the angle from where Deidra located her camera, I see a straight shot to Walker’s yacht. If only we could get lucky and catch a glimpse of Ryan getting on that boat.”

  “Maybe we’d learn who Ryan was with besides Walker,” Tessa finished. “Persistence has to pay off sometime,” she said as she
moved through more videotape from the string of shops downtown.

  When Anniston’s cell phone dinged she turned to check the readout. “It’s Dack’s boss back in Tallahassee.”

  She put her fingers to her lips for quiet. “Hello, Captain Briggs. Thanks for returning my call. I won’t keep you long. I just need to know a couple of things about Dack’s murder. The night he died, what did the police find in his car at the rest stop?”

  “Nothing of evidentiary value if that’s what you’re asking. Why? What was supposed to be there? What was Hawkins doing meeting you at that rest stop anyhow? Where were you when it happened? I’ve read your statement and the one your client gave. I’m pissed off about that.”

  Anniston recounted the plan to meet up and the reason for it. “I was about four minutes late. If I’d been on time Dack might still be alive.”

  “Why was Hawkins giving you information? He knew that was against policy.”

  Anniston balked at revealing anything more. “Look, Sebastian and I go way back with him. We’re determined to find out who killed him. So did they find anything in the car? That’s the question.”

  “I can tell you one thing. Whoever killed him took his cell phone. Bastards. What the hell’s going on in this little town, anyway?”

  “Six people dead and counting,” Anniston fired back. “Did Dack ask for help while he was here?”

  “All my detectives in the field ask for help, Marcelli. It’s a daily request. I’m shorthanded as it is, due to budget cuts. I only have so many detectives to send out.”

  Same old song and dance, thought Anniston. “Do you know what caliber gun was used?”

  Briggs didn’t hesitate. “The state troopers agree it’s some type of large caliber 9mm.”

  “Could it have been a SIG-made P210?”

  “I guess. I’d need to talk to ballistics. Why?”

  “Because that’s the same caliber that killed Ryan Connelly.”