Pickled (An Alex Harris Mystery)

by Elaine Macko

  Shirley turned on the flashlight and looked at me. “Are you okay?”

  “Claustrophobic.”

  She placed a hand on my arm. “Just take slow deep breaths and think about something nice. I have to turn off the light. Are you going to be okay?”

  I smiled weakly and gave her a quick nod, and with a flick of Shirley’s finger we were plunged back into total darkness.

  Chapter 72

  I felt panic closing in and then I locked on an image of Henry at three. Sam had taken Kendall to a dance class and dropped Henry off at my house. It was a beautiful spring day and I took him for a walk around my neighborhood. We had to stop at every flower while he dramatically bent down and took a whiff. His little body walked down the street right in front of me admiring the flowers and stepping on any sprinkler head that might be poking up from the ground. He called them sprinkers and to this day, I call them that as well, dropping the L like little children do. The image changed to Henry at eight, chasing his sister around my parents’ backyard with Riley quick on his heels.

  And then I heard a noise and was brought back to my living hell. It was so dark I had no idea if Shirley was still with me or not, but where could she have gone? And then I felt her hand touch my arm and her face close to my ear.

  “They’re in the study,” she whispered. “Did you make sure everyone knew about the secret door?”

  I nodded but then remembered we were in total darkness and Shirley couldn’t see me. I grabbed onto her arm, pulled her close and whispered yes.

  We sat there for what seemed like hours. Total silence and total darkness. What if they had gone? What if they never found out how to open the door? And if they did, who would be on the other side? I knew there would be two, but which two? That I hadn’t quite figured out. And maybe I was wrong on that count. Maybe there would be three.

  At any moment the hidden door would be pulled open and light—and hopefully answers—would come flooding in. It never had anything at all to do with pickleball or jealousy over the calendar boys or affairs or cancelled contracts or competition for the town council or any of the other things I had chased all week long. And it really had nothing to do with the art either.

  I suddenly heard a noise overhead. It sounded like someone was upstairs. I strained to listen but my heart was still thumping. How long could it thump before it gave up and quit altogether? I couldn’t think about that right now or I would start to panic again. Shirley was back near my ear.

  “I don’t think they can find the door. They’re looking all over the house.”

  “Should we open it from inside and leave it ajar so they can see?” I whispered back.

  “No. One of them may still be in the study. I think we need to sit tight. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. What if they never find us?”

  “We just wait for now and see what happens. I don’t think they’ll leave before they get what they came for.”

  I sat there listening and still heard nothing. I hoped to hell they hurried up and opened the door because pretty soon that thermos of tea was going to catch up with me and I would need to use the powder room, which was just right next door, yet so far away.

  The closet was suddenly bathed in a soft light. At first I had no idea where it was coming from and then realized it was Shirley’s phone.

  “I want to see what’s going on with the hostage situation. If it’s over we can text your husband and tell him the killer is in the house.” Shirley turned her back to the door and tucked the phone into her cardigan so the light couldn’t be seen from the study. “It says that Detective John Van der Burg has successfully negotiated the release of all the hostages and now he’s trying to talk the father out before he harms himself. Your husband’s a hero.”

  I just hoped John’s patience extended to a wife who never listened and got herself stuck in a small room that was getting tinier by the minute.

  Something dropped in the study causing me to jerk. Shirley shoved the cell phone back in her pocket and once again we were thrown into a black pit. I could sense Shirley turning herself to get ready for the big reveal. Outside the secret room I heard movement and what sounded like a patting sound. They must be walking around the room along the wall feeling for a slight recess or other deviation that would lead them to the opening. The patting was coming from the right. They were now behind the desk moving toward the door. And then they passed it. I heard the pat-pat moving left away from us. What the heck hell. It took Magellan less time to go around the world.

  The patting stopped. I heard muffled voices and then it started again, this time coming back our way. They were right outside the door. My heart was thumping again. I felt Shirley’s hand on my arm and then she grabbed my hand. I could hear what sounded like fingers trying to pry the door open and then nothing. We waited another few seconds and then the sound of the click releasing the door made my heart stop.

  Chapter 73

  The small room flooded with light causing both Shirley and me to shield our eyes with our hands. When I finally focused Astrid Kaufman and her brother Norbert Meyer stood in the doorway. They looked confused, and then Astrid smiled.

  “It was all a set up, you coming into the shop this morning to get all that strudel.”

  I stood up and wiped my hands on my pants. “Well, I did want strudel, but yes, it was a set up. Though I didn’t know it was you until later, at the pickleball tournament. Our plan was to spread the news about the secret room and see who showed up, but then you raised your arm to take an overhead shot, a lob shot, I believe it’s called, and I saw something that gave you away.

  Astrid clutched her arm in a self-conscious way. “You saw the tattoo.”

  “I did. You took off your sweatshirt and when you raised your arm I saw it.”

  Shirley stood up. “I’m Shirley Reynolds by the way. Why don’t we all take a seat in the study while we wait for the police. I’m a private investigator and have a license to carry a gun so let’s not make any stupid decisions.”

  “I think we’ve already covered stupid decisions,” Norbert said, cutting his eyes at his sister.

  Astrid turned to her brother. “No we didn’t. We did what had to be done.”

  Norbert and Astrid sat down in the two chairs opposite the desk. I sat behind it, in the only other chair and Shirley leaned against the desk. I saw her reach into her pocket and I had a feeling she was recording the conversation. At least I hoped she was. I had no idea if whatever they said would hold up in court, but it was better than nothing.

  “Help me understand what happened. Was Humphrey a Nazi?” I asked.

  “First of all his name wasn’t Humphrey. It was Hubert Brenchley. And no, I don’t think he was a Nazi. I have no idea. We didn’t know him in Germany. It was after, in London, that we met him,” Norbert explained.

  Astrid looked at her brother and reached across and took his hand. “Our parents were Jews. My father was an accountant and liked investing in art. He liked new, upcoming artist and started to buy up their works whenever he had extra money. Hitler didn’t like the new wave of artist. He thought them disgusting and started rounding up anything he could get his hands on. Eventually, my family was taken away. We never saw our parents again.” Astrid touched her arm where the Nazis had marked her. “It was almost the end of the war and when it was finally over Norbert and I had nowhere to go, but somehow found a relative in London, a cousin of my mother’s. He had a wife and a baby and owned a small grocery store. He didn’t have much but he took us in and never made us feel like we were two burdens, which of course we were.”

  Astrid had a story to tell and I wanted to hear every word of it. I told Shirley I was going to make tea for everyone and asked if she could check on the status of John’s stake out. I made my way down the hall to the kitchen with a stop at the powder room first.

  “John’s still trying to talk the man out of the house,” Shirley said a short while later when I came back with a tray and four cups of tea.r />
  I looked at Astrid and Norbert. Two killers who didn’t look like killers.

  “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea,” I said. “As soon as my husband is free, I’ll let him know what’s going on here.”

  Astrid took a long sip of her tea and raised her eyes to me over the brim of her cup. “Of course. I knew it would come to this eventually, but I’m not sorry. Hubert Brenchley deserved to die for what he did.”

  “Tell me. I want to hear it.”

  “Thank you, Alex. We found ourselves in a strange new place. We didn’t speak the language, but were able to help out in our cousin’s store. It seemed a small price to pay for staying with them. You would think after the war everything would be better, but it wasn’t. Food was scarce and everyone was hungry. But my cousin never complained that he had two more mouths to feed. Never. He was a kind, happy man. It’s very important you know this, what a good man he was.”

  Astrid paused to take another sip of tea and I took the opportunity to look at Norbert. I had to wonder if he was a willing participant in what seemed to be his sister’s plan, or did he just go along out of some sort of obligation?

  “Where was I? Oh, yes, my cousin. We helped him out and sometimes we wandered the area were we lived and came upon this wonderful little shop filled with beautiful things. I loved to look in the window, and one day I had the nerve to go in. The owner was a little man with a large nose and a prominent chin. I didn’t understand a word he said, but I think most of the time he was laughing at us. Our clothes, our language.

  “It didn’t matter. I just liked standing in front of his shop looking at all the pretty things; vases, perfume bottles, small paintings, the like.” Once again Astrid raised the cup to her lips, only this time her hands were trembling.

  “I started to spend all my free time at that store. If he had customers he paid no attention to me, but if no one was there, which was the case more often than not, he would follow me, always jingling coins in his pocket. He expected me to steal something, but I just wanted to be around those things. He had a display case with jewelry and I loved to look at the rings and necklaces. They reminded me of my mother getting ready to go out with my father.” Astrid brushed away a tear.

  “One day I walked passed and something caught my eye. He always had new things and I saw a bowl. My mother had one just like it that she got on a trip to Italy with my father. At some point my father started to mark things. He would make a little x on the back of a painting or piece of pottery. He would take out this little knife he had and make an x.”

  “I watched him do it,” Norbert said. “He showed me how to make it small so no one would see, but to identify it later, he would tell me.”

  “Yes, so I went into the shop. Mr. Brenchley was talking with some man and they paid me no attention. I turned over the bowl and there was my father’s x. I found several more items on that day, and when I returned to our little apartment above my cousin’s shop, I told him what I found. I was beside myself. I wanted that bowl. I had nothing left of my mother. We had no money to buy it, but my cousin, Godfrey, promised to go and talk to the man, explain the situation.”

  “And did you get it back?” Shirley asked.

  Astrid shook her head so violently the braid came undone. She let it fall down her back and continued. “No. He laughed and told my cousin if we wanted it he could buy it like anyone else.”

  It certainly sounded like the Humphrey I had come to know over the past week.

  “Then what happened?” I asked.

  “Over the next few weeks I found more items that had belonged to my family. Even some of the paintings my father had bought, the ones that were confiscated, started to show up in the shop. I begged my cousin to get them back. So one night after he closed the store, he told me to go upstairs and he would go and talk to Mr. Brenchley one more time.”

  “And?” Shirley and I said at the same time.

  Both Astrid and Norbert had tears coming down their face.

  “And,” Astrid choked out, “we never saw our cousin again.”

  Chapter 74

  Astrid needed to use the rest room. I took her down the hall while Shirley sent John a text.

  “He said he’s on his way,” Shirley said when I came back to the study.

  Once John arrived I’d probably be carted off along with Astrid and Norbert. I looked at my watch. I figured I had about twenty-five minutes to hear the rest of the story.

  “You never saw your cousin again? How can that be? What happened to him?”

  “What happened to him is that Humphrey killed him. My cousin planned to get the bowl back and if Humphrey refused to return it, Godfrey would go to the police. Do you know what Godfrey means?”

  “No. Tell me,” I said.

  “It means peaceful God. That was our cousin. It wasn’t about the bowl. I wanted something of my mother, of my parents. I didn’t care about the value. We had nothing left. If not for Godfrey and his wonderful wife, Lila, I don’t know what would have become of Norbert and me. We went to the police of course, but everyone had troubles, and we were these two little German children who didn’t speak the language. A month or so later, Humphrey was gone. I thought the police finally caught him. That was that. We helped our cousin Lila with the grocery store and the baby. We went to school. We learned English. And then we came here. All of us. To start a better life and get away from the memories.”

  “And then you found Humphrey,” I said.

  Astrid looked down at her hands. “Yes. But it took a while. There was no recognition when we first met him, but then he started coming into the deli. At first I just thought he was an annoying little man, though something about him seemed to stick with me. He loved our pickles and Hubert Brenchley loved my cousin’s pickles, too. But still, I never thought anything about it. Then one day he was in a hurry and he started to pace in the store, jingling coins in his pocket. I remember looking at him, really looking at him. The size was right but the face, no, it wasn’t the same. Norbert was helping me in the shop that day and I sent him out to help Humphrey. We weren’t on the pickleball team yet and had only met him when we rented his store when we first came to town, and of course when he came into the deli.”

  “So I went out to the front,” Norbert said, picking up the story. “My sister never said anything to me, just told me to go help Mr. Bryson. When I got out front, there he was pacing, being rude to everyone and jingling those damn coins. Something clicked. I knew it was Hubert Brenchley.”

  “But that was quite a while ago. What made you suddenly decide to kill him?” I asked.

  “It was at the BBQ at his house last summer. I saw one of the paintings and a vase. They belonged to our family,” Astrid said. “I wanted them back and figured the next time I was invited I would just take what I could fit in my bag. But then we heard him talking at the pickleball games. He was talking about coming into some money and I knew he was planning to run. Somehow I think he figured out who we were. When I was little I used to sing a little German song my mother taught me. Sometimes I sing it around the shop. I think he may have heard it and remembered it from when I would walk through his shop.”

  I remembered Seymour told me Humphrey had asked about tattoos and how long they lasted. I told Astrid about that conversation.

  “That must be it, together with the little song. We were just little children when he knew us in London. There was no way he could possibly recognize us, but, yes, if he saw the tattoos and heard me sing, and then in the last couple of months he started asking me about the pickles. He wanted to know exactly where I learned to make them like that. He was going to sell whatever he had, take the money and leave. The last little bit of what belonged to my family would be gone.”

  Shirley shook her head. “Why didn’t you just report him to the police?’

  “For what?” Norbert’s voice sounded angry. “For something he did in London many years ago? Something for which we had no proof? No.”

  “Whi
le Carl cleaned up, I drove to the other side of the building the night of the supper and went in through the side door. Carl knew nothing of what Norbert and I had planned,” Astrid said. “I had put some drugs in Humphrey’s dinner. I took them out of the purse of one of the young woman who worked for us that night. She had hurt her back during a sporting event at school and the doctor gave them to her.”

  It made sense. Astrid had told me Humphrey always complained about the size of his portion and that they gave him extra to keep him quiet. It would be very easy to know which plate was meant for him.

  “We planned to have Norbert lure him to the back, but there he was coming out of the men’s room looking for his glasses,” she continued, “so we pushed him into the women’s room. We made sure he knew who we were and why he was about to die. I asked him what he did to Godfrey and he just smiled. Norbert held him while I gave him the pickle. I told him that because he liked them so much, he could have one for all eternity. I pinched his nose so he couldn’t breathe. He kept fighting, but Norbert held tight. I stared into his eyes and almost felt sorry for him, but then I remembered the kind eyes of my cousin and I didn’t care about Humphrey anymore.”

  Astrid’s tears were streaming down her face. She was inconsolable, but I wasn’t sure if it was for her family or what she had done to Humphrey. I looked up and John and Jim Maroni, his partner, stood in the doorway.

  They took Astrid and Norbert away, and Shirley and I closed up and walked back to her car.

  “Are you going to be alright?”

  I leaned against the car and sighed. “So much hate. Is it wrong that I understand why they did it?”