A Modern Viking: Sveyn & Hollis: Part Three (The Hansen Series - Sveyn & Hollis Book 3)

by Kris Tualla

He flashed a crooked grin. “If I did not learn from their many obvious mistakes, then in the end I would be the biggest fool of them all.”

  He made a good point. “That must why you seem so wise all the time,” she murmured.

  “Not all the time, I am afraid.” Sveyn kissed her forehead. “Even so we will be married soon, Hollis. That is the utmost desire of my heart.”

  Hollis snuggled against Sveyn’s bulk. “You make me feel safe and cared for.”

  “I will always keep you safe and cared for,” he murmured.

  One of Sveyn’s hands cupped her breast, the other her bottom. She felt his physical reaction swell against her thigh.

  She slid her hand down and took hold of its length. “Does it still hurt?”

  He moaned softly. “Pleasure and pain are so intertwined, that I cannot distinguish one from the other.”

  Hollis smiled into the dark.

  Soon indeed.

  Wednesday

  February 10

  Hollis’s meeting with the family who filed the claim for the missing painting was scheduled for eleven o’clock at the Milwaukee Museum of History. Though she slept for several hours in Sveyn’s arms, Hollis woke up in her own room as a show of respect for her parents.

  “I’m sorry you can’t be in the meeting,” she told Sveyn at breakfast. “But you can explore the museum while I’m in the interview and then we can go out for lunch afterwards.”

  Brianne set a plate of scrambled eggs and a rasher of bacon on the table. Her eyes were puffy and her smile nonexistent.

  She didn’t look at either Sveyn or Hollis, but quietly said, “The toast is in the toaster.”

  Hollis reached for her mother’s hand. “Mom, I’m so sorry.”

  Brianne lifted her eyes. “No, Hollis. We’re sorry and you’ve a right to be angry. Your father and I talked about it until late last night, and we decided that, in spite of our friends’ request, we were wrong. We really should’ve told you the truth years ago.”

  Hollis squeezed her hand. “I want to hear the whole story tonight at dinner. Every detail. Promise?”

  “Yes.” Brianne gave her daughter a watery smile. “Every single one.”

  “Once Hollis realized that you could not have birthed her, she did tell me what wonderful parents you were to her,” Sveyn said. “You do not know me yet, but I do not lie.”

  Hollis glanced his way.

  Thank you.

  “Your father said he’d be home early. He’s going to grill brats for supper.”

  Sveyn’s eyes moved to the thickly white-coated back yard. “It’s a fine day for cooking, I think.”

  Hollis giggled. “Do you know what brats are?”

  “Meat that will be grilled,” he replied. “That is all I need to know.”

  “They are German sausages that we boil in beer and onions first, then brown over the flames,” Brianne explained.

  Hollis winked at the Viking. “And then we drink beer when we eat them.”

  Sveyn grinned. “I will look forward to this all day.”

  *****

  Hollis carried the disputed painting into the museum lobby and approached the front desk. “Could you let Mary Oberman know that Hollis McKenna is here?”

  The girl behind the desk didn’t look like she heard a word. Her eyes were fixed on Sveyn, who admittedly looked really, really good in his fitted jeans and the Nordic sweater which Hollis bought him for this frigid trip.

  “Hi. I’m over here.”

  “Oh!” The girl’s gaze shifted to Hollis. “Sorry. How can I help you?”

  “I’m here to see Mary Oberman.”

  She picked up the phone. “And you are?”

  Hollis spoke slowly. “Hollis. McKenna.”

  “Is she expecting you?”

  “Yes.”

  Hollis turned around and rolled her eyes. Sveyn covered his mouth but his eyes were laughing.

  “Ms. McKenna!”

  Gerhardt’s voice boomed through the lobby as he strode toward her. Daughter Amelia struggled to keep up in her high-heels. Obviously the woman had not come prepared for a frozen environment.

  “Mr. Kunst.” Hollis smiled stiffly. “I see you made it.”

  “I said I would, didn’t I?” The older man’s consideration moved to Sveyn. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  “This is my fiancé, Sveyn Hansen.” Hollis heard a little grunt of disappoint from the girl behind the desk. “He’s going to explore the museum while we have our meeting.”

  Sveyn held out his hand.

  Gerhardt shook it. “Do you know what you’re getting into with this one?”

  Sveyn laughed. “Yes. And very well.”

  “Good luck to you then.” Gerhardt returned his attention to Hollis. He pointed to the satchel under her arm. “Is that my Rachel?”

  Hollis had to give the stubborn German credit for tenacity. “It’s somebody’s Rachel. Whose Rachel it is will be determined soon, I hope.”

  Mary Oberman walked around the corner behind the lobby desk. The bubbly brunette looked exactly the same as the last time Hollis saw her.

  “Hollis! It’s so good to see you again.” She gave Hollis a quick hug, and then turned to Gerhardt. “And you must be Mr. Kunst.”

  “Yes.” He shook Mary’s hand. “This is my daughter Amelia.”

  “Pleased to meet you.” Mary moved her appreciative regard to Sveyn. “And you are?”

  He gave a little bow. “I am Sveyn Hansen, Hollis’s fiancé.”

  Mary’s jaw dropped and she scowled at Hollis. “You didn’t tell me!”

  “Trust me, there’s a lot I haven’t had the chance to tell you,” Hollis said. “But let’s not waste Mr. Kunst’s time.”

  “Mary, would you join Hollis and me for lunch after your business is finished?” Sveyn offered.

  Mary looked like she might actually swoon. “Sure!”

  “I told him he could explore the museum in the meantime.” Hollis looked at Sveyn and held up her phone. “I’ll text you when we’re done.”

  He nodded.

  Mary gathered herself and turned back to the business at hand. “The Meyer family is already in the conference room. Follow me.”

  *****

  Eli Meyer was a soft-spoken man in his eighties with thinning hair that might have been red once. Large wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose and hearing aids hung over his ears.

  “I am pleased to meet you, Miss McKenna,” he said in thickly accented words. “And may God bless you for finding our painting.”

  Gerhardt grunted.

  Hollis ignored him. “You can thank a man named Ezra Kensington the Fifth, who we believe bought the painting at an estate sale about twenty years ago.”

  Eli looked confused. “Then how did you get it?”

  “When he passed, Mr. Kensington willed his entire estate to the Arizona History and Cultural Museum. I’m the Collections Manager for his bequest.”

  Mary stepped forward. “As I told you on the phone, Mr. Meyer, we do have another claim of provenance regarding the painting.”

  Eli turned to the taller, younger man. “Would that be you?”

  “Gerhardt Kunst, son of Wilhelm Kunst.”

  “I know that name…” Eli rubbed his forehead. “Wilhelm was our neighbor, I think. In Berlin.”

  A man who looked very much like Eli and was about the same age as Gerhardt spoke up. “So you remember that, Papa?”

  “Is this your son?” Hollis asked.

  He nodded. “Samuel Meyer. I drove my father here from Tomah.”

  Hollis looked around the room. “Shall we all take our seats before I reveal the painting?”

  Mary sat at the head of the oblong conference table. Gerhardt and his daughter Amelia sat on one side, Eli and his son Samuel sat on the other.

  Hollis unlatched the leather case and pulled out the painting, wrapped in cotton cloth. She turned around and set it on the easel someone had thought to provide.

  “Here she is
,” Hollis said softly. “Here is Rachel.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Rachel...” Eli began to weep. “My beloved sister…”

  Hollis looked at Mary, shocked.

  “Mr. Meyer, are you Benjamin Meyer’s son?” Mary asked.

  “He is,” Samuel answered for his overcome father. “And I am Benjamin’s grandson.”

  Gerhardt looked panicked and opened his mouth to speak.

  Hollis held up a hand to silence him. “Mr. Kunst, you will have your chance to tell your side once Mr. Meyer is finished, I promise. Until then, Mr. Meyer has the floor. Please don’t interrupt him.”

  Eli rose from his chair and walked slowly to the easel. “I watched my father paint this. It took him weeks before he was satisfied.”

  Hollis’s eyes welled as she watched the elder Jew stare so reverently at this poignant piece from his past.

  “Why don’t you start at the beginning, Mr. Meyer,” she suggested. “Tell us the whole story, and don’t leave anything out.

  Eli nodded. He began his tale, still facing the painting.

  “My father, Benjamin Meyer, worked as an art restorer for the Neues Museum in Berlin. All day long he repaired priceless masterpieces.” Eli turned to Hollis. “He was so honored to be trusted with these paintings, do you understand?”

  She nodded. “We work in museums. We do understand.”

  “Of course you do.”

  Eli sighed and faced the rest of the people in the room. “But things in Germany were going very badly. We all know this now, but I was only seven when my father painted this, and I did not understand what was coming.”

  “No one did, Papa,” Samuel reminded him. “How old was Rachel?”

  Eli blinked. “Fifteen. Sixteen. I’m not sure. The one thing I do know is that I never saw him paint anything before this.” He drew a shuddering sigh. “I think he wanted to leave something of himself behind, something original that came from his hand.”

  “Did he paint anything else afterward?” Hollis asked.

  “I don’t know. If I did, I would have listed them as well.” Eli looked at Hollis over the rim of his glasses. “Do you know if he did?”

  Hollis gave him an apologetic smile. “No, I don’t.”

  Eli nodded and walked slowly back to his chair. “Anyway, some weeks after he painted the portrait, my six-year-old brother David and I were sent to England for our safety. Rachel was already too old, no family would take her in.”

  “England was bombed,” Mary stated, her surprise evident. “How was that safe?”

  Eli pinned a gimlet eye on the woman. “They weren’t killing Jews there.”

  Hollis pressed her lips together. Eli made a tragically valid point.

  He resettled in his seat. “We were out in the northwestern English countryside, in a little village on a farm. We stayed there until after the war ended and a cousin from Belgium came to collect us.”

  “Then you moved to America with him,” Samuel said. “To Wisconsin.”

  “I did. But David chose to stay in England.” Eli waved an arthritic hand. “He had just turned six when we left Germany in nineteen-thirty-seven, and our cousin came for us nine years later. David didn’t remember Berlin, or even our parents, probably. He was happy to stay where we were.”

  Hollis gave Eli a knowing look. “But you remembered.”

  He met her gaze. “I did. I was nearly seventeen by then. And I knew what horrific things had happened. I wanted to get as far from the war as I could. Wisconsin was a fine choice for me.”

  “What happened to your family?” Mary asked.

  Eli removed his glasses and wiped his eyes.

  Samuel handed him a tissue. “When you’re ready, Papa.”

  Eli sniffed and settled the frames back on his nose.

  “Someone in the neighborhood got word to my foster family, I don’t know how. They wrote that my parents and Rachel were taken away in the middle of the night on August fourth, nineteen-thirty-eight, and they were never seen again.”

  Hollis reached into her purse for a tissue of her own. She glanced at Gerhardt, wondering how he was taking the story, but the man’s face might have been carved in stone.

  “Did you ever find out what happened to them?” Mary asked.

  Eli nodded. “I found my parents’ names, Benjamin and Rose, on a list of known dead at Flossenburg. But I never found out what happened to Rachel.”

  “And David?”

  Eli pounded a fist softly against his chest. “My brother, still in England, died last year of lung cancer.”

  Gerhardt leaned forward and glared at Hollis. “Can he prove any of this story?”

  Samuel’s fist hit the table. “Why would anyone lie about something like that? The painting isn’t worth anything to anyone except my father!”

  “It’s worth something to me!” Gerhardt barked.

  “Time out!” Hollis leaned on the end of the conference table. “You’ll get your chance to speak, but not until we have heard everything Eli has to say.”

  Gerhardt flopped back in his chair.

  Hollis faced Samuel next. “I’m not calling your father a liar. But since ownership is in question, any additional evidence would be helpful.”

  Eli pulled a worn envelope from the breast pocket of his tweed jacket and held it out toward Hollis. “I have this.”

  Hollis walked around the table to accept it.

  “My mother packed a few things for David and me as remembrances when they sent us away,” Eli explained. “For all those years in England, I looked at this photo every night before I went to sleep.”

  Hollis pulled the rough-edged photograph from the envelope. “Oh my God.”

  “What is it?” Mary asked. She jumped to her feet and ran to Hollis’s side. “I can’t believe it, not after all these years...”

  Hollis walked to the other side of the table and laid the photo in front of Gerhardt.

  “There is Rachel posing on the stool, and that is Benjamin looking back at the camera.” She looked at Eli, the spitting image of his father. “Am I right?”

  He shrugged. “Hold it up to the painting.”

  There was no need. The pose was identical.

  “This photograph does prove that this man’s father made the painting,” Gerhardt allowed. “But he was just a boy and he can’t know what happened to it after he was gone from Berlin.”

  Eli looked at Samuel. “What is he talking about?”

  Hollis spoke as gently as she could. “The question of provenance is not whether or not your father painted the portrait, but whether he made a gift of it to Wilhelm Kunst.”

  Eli stared at Gerhardt. “Is that what you think?”

  “It’s what I know,” he answered.

  Hollis took control of the conversation yet again. “Mr. Meyer, do you have anything else to say before we listen to Mr. Kunst?”

  The old man shook his head, his eyes tearing once again.

  “Only that this simple painting, made by my own father of my beloved sister, is the only thing left of my family and our life in Germany. I want her back for these reasons.”

  “Fair enough.” Hollis sighed. “Let’s take a ten-minute break, and then Mr. Kunst will tell us his story.”

  As the occupants of the conference room rose and wandered out in search of water or a restroom, Mary sidled up to Hollis.

  “He doesn’t know about the writing on the back.”

  “And we aren’t going to say anything about it.” Hollis tapped her chin. “Gerhardt will bring it up, of course. Let’s see how that plays out.”

  *****

  Fifteen minutes later, all the family members had reconvened in the conference room.

  “It’s your turn, now,” Hollis said to Gerhardt. “Tell us about what happened to the painting after Eli left Berlin.”

  “Benjamin Meyer gave the painting to my father, Wilhelm Kunst.” Gerhardt cleared his throat. “The painting was a gift, because my father—all of seven
teen at the time—was deeply in love with Rachel.”

  “But your father wasn’t Jewish,” Eli blurted.

  “No,” Gerhardt said carefully. “My father was a reasonable man and never believed the racist lies.”

  “But my father would never have allowed Rachel to be with a man who wasn’t Jewish,” Eli countered.

  “Can we please move on?” Hollis interrupted. “We can’t speculate today on what might have happened, only what did happen.”

  “When the painting was finished, it hung in the Meyer’s drawing room.” He looked at Eli. “It was the room connected to the dining room, and on the wall farthest from the window.”

  Eli paled. “I do not doubt that your father was our neighbor Wilhelm, and I do not doubt that he visited the house. But that does not make the painting yours.”

  Hollis turned to Gerhardt. “So how did your father get the painting, Mr. Kunst?”

  Gerhardt twisted his hands together on the smooth tabletop.

  “As Mr. Meyer has said, one night the Meyer family disappeared.”

  Though she heard this before, Hollis felt the sting of tears once again. “Your father was devastated.”

  Gerhardt nodded somberly. “Yes. He went into the Meyer’s house and it was completely torn apart. Anything that looked valuable was gone.”

  “But the painting of Rachel was still there?” Hollis prompted.

  Gerhardt looked at Eli. “They tossed it in the fireplace because it was unimportant.”

  Eli gave a little groan. “Thank God it was summer and there was no fire.”

  “My father took the painting because he loved Rachel.”

  Samuel leaned forward and spoke to Hollis. “Wilhelm took the painting after Benjamin was gone. It was never a gift. He stole it.”

  Gerhardt spread his hands, a cocky expression on his face. “So you must understand his surprise, then, when he turned the painting over and saw the inscription.”

  Eli straightened. “What inscription?”

  Gerhardt’s gaze cut to Hollis. “They don’t know?”

  She shook her head.

  “What inscription?” Samuel demanded.

  Hollis turned the painting over and set it back on the easel.