Hung Out to Dry: The Misadventures of the Laundry Hag, #4

by Jennifer L. Hart

  “I was just going to call you,” McKenzie’s soft Bostonian accent answered on the first ring. “I’ve figured out what Theresa Dale has going on—”

  “Sylvia’s missing,” I interrupted.

  “How long has she been gone?” McKenzie switched gears immediately.

  “She had a doctor’s appointment yesterday morning. I’ve been trying to call her since about four and she never returned my call. Neil thinks I should go to the police and tell them about the abduction.”

  McKenzie cursed but then said, “He’s right. If she’s been scooped up you need to loop them in right away. They can put out an APB on her and her car. They won’t be happy you didn’t report the first attempted abduction, but I can take the heat for that one, since I asked you not to mention it. Give your detective my number. I can get started on this end, check and see if she made her doctor’s appointment, but you’ll get results faster with the cops. Start making up a list of anyone she would have gone to see and I can check addresses too.”

  The seriousness in her tone spurred me to action. “All right. I’ll go to the police station as soon as I’m done here.” Briefly, I explained where Neil and I were and why. Then I recalled what she had said. “So you discovered something about Theresa Dale?”

  “Yeah,” McKenzie said and her tone changed to one of amusement. “She a professional Dominatrix.”

  I held the phone away from my ear, looked down at it, and then put it back up. “Come again?”

  “Mistress Teri, to be exact. I found her website and some of the services she offers…” she whistled low. “It’s crazy lucrative, too. Her clients pay for her lifestyle. The apartment, the cars, her wardrobe, all gifts, tributes even, which exempts her from income tax. Kinda wish I’d known that was an option on career day. I could have rocked a leather catsuit.”

  No doubt in my mind. “So tell me, would any of Mistress Teri’s devoted followers be willing to kidnap if she commanded them to?”

  Neil looked at me strangely but I held up a hand to hold him off as McKenzie replied, “I guess it’s possible, worth mentioning to the police. They can run background checks if they get her client list. I’ll keep you posted about Sylvia.”

  I hung up and related her findings to Neil.

  “So one daughter’s a dominatrix, one’s a swinger, and the son is just pushing the envelope on cradle robbing. That is one messed up family.”

  I started, not having seen the pattern until he put it so succinctly. “Could it be coincidental that all of Chester Dale’s children have unusual sexual identities?”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, but I doubt it’s likely. Are you thinking sexual abuse?”

  “It’s a possibility. Then again, it could be a biological thing. From what Sarah told me, the man had control issues. Come on, let’s talk to Aloysius Finn and the others. Maybe they can shed some light on it all.”

  We went through the same door I had the day Sarah and I went, but the room was empty.

  “Guess we should find a nurse’s station,” I peeked around the corner.

  The sound of running feet and shouts came from down the hallway. Neil and I exchanged a look. That wasn’t a good sign.

  Of course, it was a retirement community, people were older and had health issues. It could be one of any number of emergencies that had nothing to do with the icy fingers that slid up and down my spine.

  The frenetic energy was centered around a room on the right-hand side. We stood back, me on my tiptoes to get a gander on whatever was going on in there. “Can you see anything?” I whispered to my much taller husband.

  “They’re doing chest compressions on whoever’s in the bed. Can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman.”

  “It’s Charles.”

  I turned to see Bartholomew Grayson, A.K.A Bert, staring blindly at the room. The horrific fluorescent lighting shone on his liver-spotted scalp.

  “Do you know what happened?” I asked.

  “He missed lunch. Al and I came looking for him.”

  I looked from side to side but saw no sign of Aloysius Finn or his wheelchair. “Where is he?”

  Sometime in the last few moments, the energy level had dropped. People filed out of the room slowly. Neil’s warm palm slid into mine as a woman in purple scrubs put a hand on Bert’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry Bert. His heart gave out. He’s gone.”

  Bert nodded and swallowed. “And we’re next.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “What do you mean, you’re next?” Neil asked Bert. We’d retreated to the TV room where an orderly had parked an irate Aloysius Finn to keep him “out of trouble”.

  I was glad he’d offered to take point on this. I was upset about Charles, worried for Sylvia and about two minutes away from losing my mind.

  Aloysius sighed heavily. “Did you ever hear about the hidden caches in Nazi Germany?”

  I shook my head but Neil jerked as though someone had stuck a live wire in his ear. “You mean the Reichsbank gold and art?”

  Bert nodded. “April of ’45, our unit was told about the hidden stores the SS bastards had hidden away in salt mines like a squirrel storing nuts for the winter. Our CO was determined to find all of the missing Reichsbank wealth, so the Nazi party could never use it to fund themselves. He’d heard whispers of smaller caches in the outlying cities and towns. One day in May, he pulled me, Al, Chuck, and Chester aside and ordered the four of us to travel to the city of Dresden to check on a lead he’d obtained. Our mission was to search for and secure any hidden property before the Nazis could.”

  “But Dresden was destroyed,” Neil’s brow furrowed. “The bombing happened between February 13th and 14th earlier that year. There was nothing left there.”

  At my blank look he enlightened me. “Dresden was the last stronghold of German weapons, the seventh-largest German city. The allies firebombed it to put a quick end to the war. But the city was full of refugees at the time, with very few public air raid shelters. It’s one of the most controversial events in the war, on the Allies side anyway.”

  “It was horrible,” Aloysius eyes were distant, focused on something only he could see. “It was months after the air raids—but the devastation there was still raw.”

  “We didn’t have a notion of where to start.” Bert took up the story. “The tipster just said Dresden so that was all we had to go on. Anything above ground or near the city center was leveled. They were still trying to count bodies.”

  “My God,” I breathed. Neil looked thunderstruck, which was saying something. As a professional soldier and a man who had seen the destruction of war up close, he would have a sharper sense of the damage.

  “We’d left our uniforms behind in order to travel more covertly,” Aloysius said. “I spoke German and Charles and Chester knew a bit of French so we could pass if challenged. But no one bothered giving us a second look. The entire countryside was in a state of shock. We sought shelter in a burned out-building on the outskirts of the city. We’d just lain down to sleep when I heard something, like a scuffling sound. Chester and Bert helped me move some debris and that was where we found her.”

  “Found them.” Bert corrected

  “Found who?” I prompted, leaning forward.

  Neil took my hand, squeezing it, though I couldn’t tell if it was in warning or reassurance.

  “Her name was Alaina, and she was dying. And eight months pregnant.” Aloysius closed his eyes. “She was a refugee from France, looking for her husband, who she hadn’t heard from since the bombing.”

  My stomach hollowed out at the thought. I could all too easily conjure the image of the desperate French woman searching for any sign of her husband and understood the driving need that had carried her miles through the war-torn countryside to hunt for her lost love.

  “She’d been searching the wreckage, but it had been unstable and she was trapped inside a fallen building,” Bert picked up the story. “One look at her arm and we knew it’d gone septic. Even if we could ge
t her to the nearest thing we had to a hospital, it wouldn’t have helped. Charlie was the closest thing we had to a medic, and he did his best for her, but she knew she was done for. She was panicked because she hadn’t felt the baby move. She asked us, begged us to help her deliver her child and then put her out of her misery.”

  Was there a reason everything I’d heard lately circled back to babies? Had the universe been sending me signs? If so, this one was more blatant and heartbreaking than most. I wiped at my moist eyes, trying not to break down completely.

  “I remember that night more clearly than the birth of my own children.” Aloysius murmured. “She wasn’t in labor, so we had to do a C section, a crude one in the field with nothing but a flask of whiskey to use for antiseptic and anesthetic both. She didn’t scream, didn’t cry out. She was a soldier, just like us and she was on a mission. Thank all that is Holy for Charlie, because the rest of us couldn’t do more than hold her good hand and pray.”

  “Charlie handed me the baby and there was this moment where we were sure it was dead, that we’d done something wrong, or had been too late. But then he screamed, the little boy. Louder than an air raid siren. He had some set of lungs on him.” Bert chuckled at the memory.

  Aloysius nodded. “We cleaned him off as best we could and wrapped him in one of Chester’s clean shirts. She called him Sebastian, for his father, but then asked all of our names as well. I still don’t understand how she could have been so aware, cut open and shaking. But she asked so we told her and she looked at her son and said his full name was Sebastian Charles Aloysius Bartholomew Chester Eisenberg.”

  There was a pause then and a sense of foreboding washed through me. Bert met my eyes and lowered his voice. “We all knew what would happen next. None of us wanted to finish it. We’d never killed a woman before. Never thought we would. Charlie flat out refused. He’d just delivered her son, he wasn’t prepared to make the baby an orphan. But she was suffering, bleeding out, too weak to hold the infant by herself. It wasn’t right to let her suffer neither.”

  Neil’s knuckles had turned white, he was gripping my hand so hard. “So you did it?”

  “Chester did.” Aloysius leaned his head back, his features pale. “He told us to take Sebastian away, so he could do it. He was so damn young but the bravest of us all, taking charge like that.”

  “It was a piece of mercy.” Bert nodded. “To Alaina and to the rest of us. So we moved off, away from that city full of death and despair. We found a farm a ways out and they had goats. I milked one of the nannies and used a rag to feed little Sebastian as best we could until we found a wet nurse for him.”

  “But you made it,” I said, jumping ahead in the telling, needing a happy ending. “You got Sebastian back to his mother’s family?”

  “No,” Bert said sadly. “He only lasted two days. Poor little mite never stood a chance. Charlie took him on to his family, so they would at least know what had happened.”

  “But what about the rest of you?” I asked. “Why didn’t you all go?”

  “They were under orders,” Neil said.

  Aloysius shifted uneasily and shot a look at Bert. “We’ve gone and said too much already.”

  Bert’s chin lifted. “Dar gone it all Al, you know the end is near. I don’t wanna die with this damn secret gnawing on me. Do you?”

  “You found something,” Neil said. It wasn’t a question, he looked from one man to another. “Didn’t you?”

  Al harrumphed but then his shoulders slumped. “Chester found us the next morning, he had news of a new cache. Our prick of a CO had been right, there was more hidden wealth. Whether the Nazi’s had hidden it or civilians we didn’t know. But Alania had found it while searching for her husband and told Chester the location. He’d gone there and discovered a chest filled with gemstones and gold coins.”

  Neil was still as a statue by my side.

  “We were under orders,” Aloysius said, his eyes bright in his withered face. “To keep anything of value out of Nazi hands. We didn’t know who knew about the chest, or if anyone was coming for it. So the three of us decided to move it to a secure location.”

  “And then we got to talking about it on the way back to meet up with our company.” Bert put in. “About all the hell we’d seen and all the political bullshit that would gobble that money up without a trace. Men who had blood on their hands but had never slept in the mud or carried a sidearm, who didn’t see the carnage of war or the innocents like Sebastian and Alaina and that baby who hadn’t made it through the night and died with all our names. It wasn’t ours, we wouldn’t feel right just taking it for ourselves. So we made a pact. The last one of us left alive would give the money to his family.”

  “A tontine you mean,” Neil said with disgust. Then he strung together a slew of curses the likes of which I’d never heard before ending with, “That’s completely illegal.”

  Not to mention a solid motive for murder.

  I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry to break it to you guys, but Chester Dale’s death was from congestive heart failure. He wasn’t murdered.”

  Bert and Aloysius exchanged a look. “Who did the autopsy?” Bert said.

  I frowned. “I don’t think there was one. His doctor was with him at the time of death.”

  “Did you tell your grandson about the hidden treasure?” Neil asked. “Or anyone else?”

  Both men shook their heads.

  “My grandson’s a cop and a good one. If I’d told him about the tontine, he’d have been forced to report us.” Aloysius muttered. “Better he find out when I’m gone.”

  Bert cleared his throat. “I never told no one neither and I’d bet my best shirt that Chester kept it to himself. He was always a tight-lipped son of a bitch.”

  “I know Charlie told his wife about all of it, maybe his kids, too. That silly so and so never could keep a secret.” Aloysius dropped his head. “God rest his soul.”

  “But if the money is supposed to go to the family of the last living participant, Chester’s family would have nothing to gain by his death,” I drummed my fingers on the tabletop. “Same can be said for Sarah Dale.”

  “Not that any of Chester’s kids needed the money. They have plenty of their own.” Aloysius remarked.

  Neil shook his head from side to side. “What a mess.”

  Bert’s eyes went wide. “You believe us, don’tcha?”

  “I do,” I said. “I’m just not sure what to do with it.”

  My husband cleared his throat. “Nothing either of us can do. I’ve got to get back to work and you need to go talk to Capri.”

  I noticed that he didn’t call her Detective in front of the others. Was the omission intentional? Considering they’d entered into an illegal agreement and were convinced someone was picking them off for their money, I couldn’t blame him for playing it casual.

  Bert appeared crestfallen. “What can we do though, about the killer?”

  Neil thought about that for a minute. “If you’re really concerned about it, tell the police. They’re in the best position to protect you and track down the murderer.”

  “But they’ll send us to jail and take the money.” Aloysius protested.

  “It was never yours to begin with.” I put a gentle hand on his arm and squeezed.

  “They ain’t gonna help us, Al.” Bert’s rheumy eyes were bleak. “No one can.”

  “You’re kidding,” Detective Capri said flatly. “You were kidnapped and you didn’t tell me?”

  “I’m telling you now.” This was probably payback for all the times I’d grown exasperated with Kenny and Josh and looked at them the same way the good detective was looking at me. “I’m worried about Sylvia, all right? Please, do something.”

  Capri rose and leaned across her desk, staring me down. “It would serve you right if I charged you with obstruction of justice.”

  “You won’t,” the words sounded confident, though I was half convinced she would throw the book at me just for being
a pain in the ass. “Can you find her car? The doctor’s office told McKenzie that Sylvia never showed up for her appointment. I’m really worried about her.”

  “You should be,” Capri’s tone was sharp, no-nonsense. “And for yourself as well. Give me your PI’s information and I’ll put out an APB on Ms. Wright and her car. Do you know if she took anything with her, like she was planning on a trip?”

  I shook my head. “I can check, but Sylvie would have told me if she was heading out of town. We’ve been working together and she wouldn’t just up and vanish without a word.”

  “I still want you to look. See if she packed a bag or left a note.” Capri stared at me, her thoughts carefully hidden under a bland expression. Finally, she straightened, tugging her shirt flat to dispel the wrinkles that had formed as she sat. “Stay here. I have more questions.”

  I wondered suddenly if this was how Aloysius and Bert felt as they revealed their story to me and Neil. If they thought we believed they were getting what they deserved.

  Could there be a murderer out for the missing treasure? Neil had assured me that all the facts of the German wealth being hidden away had been right and there were portions that had never been recovered. Gold and jewels would be worth much more in 2015 than they were seventy years earlier, a fortune. But was someone really killing a bunch of octogenarians? Neither Chester nor Charles had been tortured for information. Their deaths were due to seemingly natural causes. What was the point in killing them? Why wouldn’t anyone who knew about the cache just take it and be done with it?

  My knee bounced as I thought about my earlier conversation with McKenzie. Sarah and the Dale siblings all had issues, seemingly due to Chester’s controlling nature. Aloysius and Bert had been all praise for the senior Dale though, noting his bravery and his courage. They’d been friends for decades and had been bonded together through an incredible secret. He was a different sort of man to them than he was to his family. Neil was like that too, a hardass with his SEAL buddies, but a big old softie to the people he loved. He called it compartmentalizing, a trick he’d learned while being treated for PTSD.