by Loretta Ross
“A painting? That don’t make sense. What’s a painting got in common with an angel crown?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Now, the information I have about your angel crown said that the woman whose pillow it was found in was your ancestor, is that right?”
“Many-greats-meemaw. That’s right.”
“Right. And it says here that she immigrated from Germany in the 1890s?”
“Yup. Came over with her brother and his wife. Married twice. Had a slew of kids. Ran her own business. Made moonshine during the Depression and sold it out of the trunk of her car and lived to be almost a hundred.”
“She sounds like a remarkable woman.”
“She was mean as a snake and tough as old shoe-leather.”
“Like I said, a remarkable woman. And it was definitely Germany that she came here from?”
“Yeah, Germany,” the woman said. “Well, it’s Germany now. Back when she lived there, it was still part of Prussia.”
Death felt a little tingle run up his spine. He had the genealogy PDF open on his desktop computer and touched one finger gently to the short list of names at the top of the document. According to this, the three sisters had come to the US before getting married, but Death was betting that the distinctions had blurred somewhere along the line and the supposed brother that many-greats-meemaw Mean-As-A-Snake had traveled with was in reality one of Mimi Appelbaum’s brothers-in-law.
“Okay,” he said. “So this is my next question. Mrs. Eichenwald, was your great-grandmother’s maiden name Bering? Or Derkin?”
“What? No. It was Warner. Claudia Warner.”
“Your uncle missed you,” Wren’s mother told her. “He asked where you were.”
“Really?” Wren was skeptical. “Usually he asks who I am.”
Her father, sitting at the table to her right, cut off a chunk of meatloaf and speared it with his fork, but he stopped to speak before putting it in his mouth.
“She prompted him,” he said.
“I did not. You hush,” Emily told him.
Edgar raised an eyebrow.
“I just mentioned that you were planning to get married and he said, ‘Where’s she?’ ”
Edgar swallowed his food and took a drink of coffee. He drank it black, like Death did. “Or he might have said, ‘Who’s she,’” he muttered.
His wife glared at him. “He did not. Stop. You’re not helping.”
Death gave Wren a questioning glance.
“Uncle Teddy is … unusual,” she explained. “He works as a toll-taker and collects bottle caps and in between visits he forgets that I exist.”
“That’s not true.”
“He came to our house for Christmas every year from the time I was born until I left for college and every year he brought all the children presents but me.”
“He’s just a little bit scatter-brained. Besides, you always got something. One of your cousins would always give you theirs.”
“Yeah, because they were teenage boys and he’d bring them teddy bears and fashion dolls. But that isn’t the point. The point is, he forgot me. He still forgets me. Every time he sees me he gives me an odd look and asks me who I am.”
Emily made a face and helped herself to another roll. “So what did you do today, since you didn’t go with us?”
“Randy and I went out and looked at where they found Bob.”
“Bob?”
“You know. The body in the rosebushes at the house we’re trying to buy.”
“We looked for random body parts,” Randy said helpfully, “but we didn’t find any. You need some more mashed potatoes, Pop?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
Now it was Randy toward whom Death directed his questioning look. Randy grinned back and offered no explanation.
Emily turned to Death. “What about you, dear? What did you do today?”
Death quickly swallowed his food so he could answer. “I’m still working on the investigation into the forged painting. I went up to the city to question the lab techs who were hired to steal it—I didn’t learn anything new from them—and then I made some phone calls. And then I did some shopping for Thanksgiving.”
“Did you make any progress on your case?” Wren asked.
Death considered. “Maybe? We know there’ve been four instances in the past two years where a collectible that wasn’t particularly valuable was stolen and replaced with a forgery. The cases have several similarities and I’m certain they’re connected.” He explained, for the elder Morgans’ benefit, about the missing items and the history of the painting.
“I was thinking it was possibly a member of Mr. Appelbaum’s extended family that took the painting,” he went on. “I have a whole list of relatives that one of his cousins compiled. But I couldn’t find any connection between them and the people associated with the other missing objects. I finally called the owner of the missing angel crown, Mrs. Eichenwald, and asked her for her however-many-times-great-grandmother’s maiden name. And it was a name I recognized, though not one I was expecting. The lady whose pillow contained the angel crown was named Warner, like the director of the museum that the painting was stolen from. I tried to get ahold of Chase Warner so I could ask him if he’s related to those Warners, but he’s gone to the opera and won’t be available until tomorrow.”
“Now let me get this straight,” Emily said. “Appelbaum’s great-
grandmother—I’m not going to try to remember all the greats—Appelbaum’s great-grandmother came here from Prussia in the 1890s.”
“Right.”
“And the angel crown lady also came here from Prussia in the 1890s?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“And the museum man, his ancestors came here from Prussia in the 1890s too?”
“Right. And Appelbaum and Warner—the museum Warner, that is—both told me that their families had been friends for decades. So now I’m wondering if they were friends before they came to America. They came from the same country. Maybe they traveled together on the same ship. I don’t know. It just feels like I’m getting close to a solution. But I don’t have all the pieces yet.”
While they were talking, Wren’s phone rang in the other room. She got up from the table to answer it and everyone else fell silent, waiting for her to return and openly eavesdropping on her end of the conversation.
“Yes? She did? Okay, great … can we come in tomorrow afternoon to discuss it? Okay, wonderful. No, not at all. Thank you for calling to let us know. I appreciate it. We’ll see you tomorrow. Thank you again.”
She hung up the phone, came up behind Death’s chair, and put her arms around him.
“Was that what I think it was?” he asked.
She nodded, still hugging him, and kissed his cheek.
“That was the realtor,” she said. “Mrs. Sandburg has accepted our offer on the house.”
sixteen
“There’s a ring on your ring finger! Is that an engagement ring? Are you engaged? Oh my God! Are you engaged?”
Cameron Michaels jumped up from his desk in the big main room at the local newspaper and grabbed Wren’s wrist so he could look more closely at her ring. Wren grinned at her old friend and one-time sweetheart and wiggled her hand in front of his face. “You see?” she crowed. “The first time I see you, and you immediately noticed. You’re the only person who’s immediately noticed.”
“Of course I noticed. I gave you one of those myself once upon a time. Oh, Wren! That’s awesome! I’m so happy for you, I could hug you. Can I hug you?” Cam hugged her, lifting her off her feet. “Where’s Death? Can I hug Death? I’ve always wanted to hug Death.”
“He’s not here, but when you see him you can hug him. Just this once.”
“Great! Can I kiss him?”
She glared at him. “Don’t push
it, sunshine.”
Cam laughed, then looked past her to her companion. “Mrs. M! You’re back. Hi!” He leaned down and she reached up to give him a quick hug and a peck on the cheek.
“Hello, Cam. How are you doing, sweetheart?”
“I’m good. I’m really doing well. Not as well as Wren is, obviously …”
“Jealous?” Wren teased.
“Absolutely.”
“You like Death, then?” Emily asked.
“Well, yeah. What’s not to like? He’s adorable.”
Wren smirked at her mother and Emily rolled her eyes.
“So are you here to do the engagement announcement, then? Let me see your pictures. Who did them?”
“Um, no. What pictures?”
“Your engagement pictures. Haven’t you taken engagement pictures?”
“No, we haven’t really thought about it yet. Everything’s kind of been a whirlwind, to be honest. Cam, we’re buying a bigger house! The seller just accepted our offer. We’re meeting the realtor to start the paperwork this afternoon.”
“Oh, that’s exciting. What house? Where?”
“It’s the last house out at the end of CC. The Sandburg place.”
“No, it’s the old Duvall place,” her mother said. “The Sandburgs bought it in the early seventies, but it was built by the Duvalls in the nineteen teens, or maybe the twenties.”
“Oh, I know that place,” Cam said. “The house with the little tower, right? It’s gorgeous. Did you know that there’s a—”
“Body buried in the rosebushes?” Wren asked. “Yeah, we know. In fact, that’s kind of why we’re here today.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We’re trying to figure out who Bob was.”
“Bob?”
“The dead guy in the rosebushes. The Sandburgs call him Bob. He was found in the woods across the lake from the old yacht club out at Cold Creek Harbor.” She explained about the location of the body and her speculation that he may have been traveling between the abandoned house and the club. “So now we’re trying to find out exactly when the yacht club opened and when it closed.”
“You want to check our morgue for stories?”
“Yeah, if we could.”
“Sure.”
Wren and her mother started for the basement, but turned back when they realized Cameron wasn’t following. He was sitting at his desk grinning at them.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“The morgue?”
“Why?” He punched a button on his computer. “It’s all on the computer now.”
“All of it?”
Cameron shrugged. “Ernie Johnson has no life. It’s not very elegant and the articles aren’t searchable, but you don’t have to dig around in the basement to find things anymore. He scanned in images of the articles and uploaded them into a file system that duplicates the physical file system downstairs.”
Wren returned to perch on his desk and Cam snagged the chair from a neighboring desk for Emily. “We’re looking for anything about the Ozark Hills Supper Club,” Wren told him. “The owner was Claudio Bender.”
Cameron pulled up a database and checked the index. “I have the Ozark Hills Supper Club, the Cold Creek Harbor Supper Club, and two Benders, Claudio and Henry.”
“Henry is his son, I think,” Wren said. “I’ve never heard the club called the Cold Creek Harbor Supper Club. Maybe that was a name that the people who bought it from Bender were going to use?”
“I’ll just give you everything,” Cam said, pulling a thumb drive from a drawer. He made short work of copying it all, and, when it finished, removed the thumb drive from the port and handed it to her. “Let me know when you’re ready to do an engagement photo shoot. I know a great photographer. It will be amazing.”
“Okay, sweetie,” Wren said. “Thank you. And thank you for this, too.” She waved the thumb drive.
“No problem,” Cam said. “Just remember to warn Death about the hug, okay?”
At nine o’clock sharp Death phoned Warner’s private line at the museum. The older man picked up on the second ring.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Warner? This is Death Bogart. There’s something I need to ask you about.”
“Shoot.”
Death took a sip of his coffee, leaned back in his chair, and kicked his feet up on his desk. “You remember I told you about the stolen angel crown that I thought might be somehow connected to your missing painting?”
“Sure. The superstitious feather pillow thing. What about it?”
“I tracked down some information on the woman whose pillow it came out of. I was thinking it might have been one of Mr. Appelbaum’s ancestors.”
“Yeah. It wasn’t?”
“She doesn’t seem to have been. Mr. Warner, her name was Warner.”
Warner made a bemused noise over the phone. “Really?”
“Her maiden name, yeah. Claudia Warner. Does that ring a bell?”
“Not right off the bat. You know,” Warner said, “it is a pretty common name.”
“Yeah. I know. But she came to America from Prussia in the 1890s.”
“Okay, now that’s just weird. Do you know anything else about her?”
Death shrugged, reminding himself even as he did that Warner couldn’t see him through the telephone. “She married twice. I believe her second husband’s name was Eichenwald. She had a large family. She sold moonshine out of her car trunk during the Depression and, according to one of her descendants, she was mean as a snake.”
Warner laughed. He sounded incredulous. “I’ll be damned. I wonder if you could be talking about Aunt Cici?”
“Aunt Cici?”
“Something of a family legend. She was part of the group that immigrated here together at the end of the nineteenth century.”
“Your family and Mr. Appelbaum’s family?” Death guessed.
“Yeah. We told you our families go way back. There were three families, actually, that all came over together and pretty much stuck together once they got here.”
“Three families?”
“Yeah. The Warners, the Appelbaums, and the Benders.”
Death put his feet on the floor and sat up slowly.
“In fact,” Warner said, “Cici married one of the Benders. She left him after she caught him cheating on her. Well, actually she tried to emasculate him with a meat cleaver, but her brother wrestled it away from her and then she left him.”
“Are there still descendants of the Bender family around, do you know?”
“You know, I don’t. If there are, they’re not part of my circle anymore. Have you asked Frank Appelbaum?”
“No, not yet.”
“Well, let me call him. I think one of Aunt Cici’s sons married into the Appelbaum family, come to think of it, so he might know something about them that I don’t.”
“Mice have been at this box of T-shirts,” Robin Keystone said. He held up a virulent green shirt riddled with holes and caked with molded rodent droppings.
Wren made a face. “Where were those?”
“Under the eaves up in the top of the boathouse. This is the last of the stuff from up there. Gramps wants to lock the boathouse up tonight so no one can get inside.”
“Yeah. The last thing we need is someone falling in the lake. Hey, that reminds me, I wanted to ask the twins what it looked like when they unlocked it in the first place.”
“It looked locked. What do you think it looked like?”
“We were just wondering if anyone could have broken in after the club closed down and the boathouse was locked.”
“You mean other than by swimming under the dock doors?” Robin asked.
Wren gaped at him. Robin smirked.
“Some of the time you’re smart,”
he said.
“Randy didn’t think of that either,” she defended herself.
“So what do you want to do with these disgusting T-shirts?”
“Burn them?”
Robin laughed and took the box over to dump it into the nearest big trash can. “There are a few of these the mice didn’t get to,” he said, fishing one shirt back out. “The fabric is still rotting, though. And it was kind of hideous to begin with anyway.” He held it up. The front had a design of martini glasses against a background of palm trees, with oversized bubbles rising from them and the words Ozark Hills Supper Club in an elaborate font.
Wren frowned at it. “Were there a lot of shirts like that up in the loft?”
“Six or seven boxes,” Robin said. “This was the only one the mice got to. My theory is that they got into this box first and ugly shirt poisoning killed them all off before they could take over the building. That or I understand the Vikings keep barn cats. One or the other. Why? What are you thinking?”
“I was wondering why someone would choose to hide their bloody Viking costume up in the top of the boathouse. What if they knew there were other clothes up there?”
“That makes sense, I guess,” Robin said. “There weren’t any pants, though. Only shirts and jackets. Do Vikings wear pants under their dresses?”
“I don’t know. I suppose we could go ask them.”
Wren picked up her jacket from the counter of the coat check booth by the door and she and Robin wandered outside.
Friday afternoon was cool but bright and shiny. Sunlight sparkled off the ripples on the lake and the sky was deep blue with only a few fluffy white clouds drifting across it. At the yacht club, they’d filled half the rooms with neat rows of furniture and large appliances. The garish room at the front was lined with trestle tables and they’d set out the small items on them. They’d reserved the entryway for Leona and Doris and their cash operation, and Sam’s middle son, Dylan, and his wife would set up their barbecue grill and food truck in the parking lot, right outside the door.
With the auction as ready as they could make it, the Keystone company members were milling around out front, chatting and watching carloads of Vikings arrive at the parking lot next door. The school kids Leona had picked up from various bus stops and brought to hand
