In the Worst Way (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book 5) (55 page)

Spidermonkey called back a minute later and I told him what happened. I took pictures of Flincher’s pictures and asked him to see if there were any missing person reports matching the description. I didn’t have much hope considering the number of missing people in the U.S., but Spidermonkey said he had a couple of guys that were good in such cases and he’d have them give it a shot.
 

“Are you in much pain?” he asked.

“It’s not too bad and, before you ask, I’m eating.”
 

“Really?”
 

“Yep. Did you get anywhere with the first Jens Waldemar Hoff?” I asked.
 

“I did, not as much as I would’ve liked, but the picture is somewhat clearer.”
 

Spidermonkey told me what he found out and I forgot about my ankle, Chuck, Tiny, and everything else for a bit. Through some business contacts, he’d gotten access to the Berlin records. Most were a dead end, except for the coroner’s report. Hoff had no arrests, tickets, or trouble with anyone before he turned up dead in his office in October 1963. The death certificate said death by misadventure, but the coroner, Dr. Johan Traub, took notes and filed them. Spidermonkey had to sift through hundreds of Traub’s reports in the moldy basement of a neglected office building that was near the former Berlin Wall.
 

Hoff’s so-called misadventure was actually autoerotic asphyxiation. He was found hanging, nude, in his office surrounded by sex toys and magazines, but the doctor had his doubts. Hoff died at approximately ten o’clock the night before he was discovered. Dr. Traub noted that the drapes weren’t drawn and the windows were open, leaving the body in full view of the neighboring office, which was how the body was discovered first thing the next morning. The doctor made a comment that this was odd. The behavior that Hoff was supposed to have engaged in was normally hidden, not put on exhibition. Also, the lights were on and anyone could’ve seen him at night. It was amazing that no one did. Plus, the toys and magazines were completely clean with no fingerprints or body fluids. Hoff had cuts, scrapes, and bruises on his upper torso and arms that couldn’t be explained by the hanging.
 

Traub’s notes were factual, but, reading between the lines, it was easy to see that he doubted that Hoff did this to himself. There was an interoffice memo tucked in the file informing Dr. Traub that no more inquiries from him would be tolerated. He was ordered to finish the paperwork and move on. Dr. Traub named the cause of death on the same date as the memo and made no more notes. Message received.
 

“So he was murdered,” I said.
 

“Traub thought so.”
 

“Did you get into the police files?”
 

“I did, but Hoff’s file is missing,” said Spidermonkey.
 

“Fantastic. A big fat dead end.”
 

“Not exactly.” Spidermonkey was lucky. His wife, Loretta, was very tired after so many museums and her naps were long so he was able to dig into the cops. Traub named Frederik Meyer and Werner Richter as the lead investigators. Both were dead and childless. Werner Richter was killed by a hit and run driver in1965. No one was ever prosecuted. Meyer quit his job three days after the funeral and became an alpine goat herder, only to die six years later of throat cancer. Spidermonkey had a feeling that something was off about Werner Richter’s death, but he couldn’t find anything to connect the accident to the Hoff suicide. Richter’s twin brother, Paul, had inherited his worldly goods, including what was called work files in his will. Paul was alive and living in Paris.
 

“Are you going to Paris?” I asked.
 

“Not on this trip. I’ll leave that to you.”
 

Paris. I could be talked into that.
 

I looked at my cast. “I don’t know when I can get over there.”

“There’s no hurry. Paul Richter may have trashed his brother’s files or they may have nothing in them.”
 

“But you think there’s something there.”
 

“I think the police knew Hoff was murdered and they knew who did it.”
 

I put another pillow under my foot and slid down six inches, trying to get comfortable. “If they didn’t, there was no point in covering it up. What does your Israeli contact say?” I asked.
 

“He wasn’t active at that time and he’s never heard of Hoff, but he has found out that there was an operation in Berlin in 1963.”
 

“Nothing more specific?”
 

“Not yet.”
 

“If Hoff was a Nazi and the Mossad killed him, why would the German police cover it up?”
 

“I’m not the detective. You’ll be the one to discover the motivations. I deal in facts.”
 

“You do much more than that.”
 

“Mercy, you flatter me. Are you ready for the rest?” he asked.
 

“There’s more?”
 

“Always.” Spidermonkey decided to look into Hoff’s wife when his trail petered out. Her name was Claudine Schmidt Hoff. She fell off the map shortly after her husband died. Their apartment was abandoned and their landlord filed paperwork to take possession of their goods after months of missing rental payments. On a hunch, Spidermonkey decided to check flight manifests and he found Claudine or a least a woman with her exact birth date and birth place flying to Argentina one week after Hoff died.
 

I smiled. “The Nazis liked Argentina.”
 

“Yes, they did.”
 

“Am I supposed to go to Argentina?” I wasn’t sure if I wanted the answer to be yes or no. I’d never been to Argentina. It could be interesting.
 

“At this point, no. Claudine Hoff aka Geraldine Homburg committed suicide in 1967.”
 

“Autoerotic asphyxiation?” I asked.
 

“She jumped out a window. Nothing suspicious about it.”
 

“This makes my head hurt.”
 

Spidermonkey laughed. “Mine, too, but we are getting somewhere.”
 

Are we? I can’t tell.
 

“If you say so,” I said.
 

Spidermonkey did say so, but I wasn’t persuaded, especially after he told me what he found out about the break-in at the Bled Mansion. Some computer nerd along the lines of Spidermonkey and Uncle Morty breached the security company from a cybercafé in Bangalore, India.
 

Please don’t make me go to Bangalore. It takes forever to get there and diarrhea is mandatory.
 

“So who is it?” I asked.
 

“We’re not going to find out and it’s pointless to try. I doubt he knows who hired him or why. He just opened a door in St. Louis. That’s it.”
 

“It could be a girl, you know,” I said.

“Absolutely, but this particular subject searched for ‘hot girls’ while he was routing his commands through multiple IP addresses. He likes you by the way.”
 

“Ew. What about the guys who went in the mansion?” I asked.
 

“No luck there either. One of the neighbors saw the car and got the plate number. The men rented the car under a fake name at the airport and somebody has a sense of humor. The name was Mr. Nichts Hier.”

“Wait,” I said. “Not here. The name was Mr. Not Here?”
 

“Or Nothing Here. Very funny.”
 

“Hilarious,” I said. “What about descriptions? The renter must’ve been seen.”
 

Another dead end. The clerk didn’t remember the man that called himself Mr. Nichts Hier, according to the police report. The car was dropped at the airport forty-five minutes after the break-in at the Bled’s and the men in suits vanished. The general consensus was that they got on a plane, using different identification, but no one knew for sure. The case was at a standstill and, barring new evidence, it would stay that way.
 

“Do you know how Lester’s doing?” asked Spidermonkey.
 

“Not well. I doubt he’ll survive. They murdered him to get the inventory. It seems so pointless. Lester would’ve slept through the whole thing. They didn’t have to kill him.” My eyes filled and got hot.
 

“I didn’t see anything in the police report about it but have the families been warned?” asked Spidermonkey.
 

“Families?”
 

“Some of the objects Stella smuggled out were returned to their owners, right?”
 

“Yes.”
 

“How many?”
 

“Oh my god.” I hadn’t thought about that. Very few people survived the Nazis, but the Bleds had returned objects to those that did or to their relatives.
 

“Was that information on the inventory?” asked Spidermonkey.
 

I shook my head. “No, it’s not. I used a copy to check the house. I never thought about those other pieces. What they’re looking for could’ve been returned to one of the families. I’ll tell Dad.”
 

“Do that. Then we’ll have to wait and see what they do next.”
 

“Unless we can figure out what they’re after. What are you going to do?”
 

Spidermonkey sighed. “I’m going to Salzburg.”
 

“Are you looking into my dad and Josiah while you’re there?”
 

“Yes.” He sounded glum.

I looked at the clock. Almost time for a painkiller. Hooray. “You don’t think you’ll find anything?”
 

“I might, but I have to pay a significant price for this side trip. Loretta wants to do
The
Sound of Music
tour. I’d rather get a root canal.”
 

I laughed and felt like I could hold off on the painkiller a while longer. I told Spidermonkey that the tour was fun in a way, but he wasn’t any more convinced about the tour than I was about The Klinefeld situation.
 

I hung up as just as Tiny knocked and came in. “How’re you doing?” he asked, a little shame-faced.
 

“Fine. What’s up with you?” I asked.
 

“Sorry about earlier.”
 

“Er…what happened earlier?”
 

He stared at his belly. “You don’t remember?”
 

And that’s when my ankle started really hurting again. “You’re going to have to give me a hint and a glass of water.”
 

Tiny got me water and I took my pills. “So?”
 

He held up his phone. “You gotta call your dad.” Tiny’s screen showed about sixteen million missed calls and texts from Tommy Watts. Great.
 

“What’d you tell him?” I asked.
 

“Nothing,” said Tiny, still not meeting my eyes. “I told him to ask you about that whole river thing. He didn’t like that.”
 

“No kidding.” I bit the bullet and called Dad, ready for some serious yelling, but I didn’t get it.
 

“So,” said Dad. “Up to your old tricks, I hear.”
 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said using my innocent-as-the-driven-snow voice.
 

Dad snorted. “Haven’t I taught you anything?”
 

Nothing I wanted to learn.
 

“Mercy, why do you insist on doing this for free?”
 

This?
 

“We own a small family business.”
 

I don’t own anything. What’s this we?
 

“Do you hear me?” he asked.
 

I grimaced at Tiny and he shrugged. “Sort of. What did I do wrong?”
 

“You didn’t charge. Small family business. Think, Mercy,” said Dad.
 

“First of all, your business isn’t small and, second, charge for what?”
 

“Detectives don’t come cheap. You caught three, count ‘em, three criminals. Do you know what we could’ve charged for that?”
 

“Dad, there’s nobody to charge. Cherie’s family’s broke and I’m not a detective. I don’t work for you.”
 

Dad ignored the facts he didn’t like as usual. “How about John and Leslie?”
 

“You want me to charge them? I thought they’re your friends. I never noticed you charging friends for your services before.”
 

“We have a particular kind of friendship. Never mind. It’s all settled. They’re comping the weekend for you all.”
 

“Why are we even talking about this then?” I asked, praying that the pills would kick in and make talking to my father less excruciating.