Where the Bones are Buried (3 page)

Chapter Five

“What have you gotten yourself into, Mom?”

“Don't scold so, honey. Here. Drink some of this delicious coffee and calm yourself.” She poured a bit of fresh coffee into Dinah's cup, emptied half a pitcher of cream into her own, and reclined against a plump pink chair pillow. She wore a perfectly pressed white cotton blouse, smartly creased tan trousers, and an exasperating smile.

They were eating breakfast in the dining nook of the Gasthaus Wunderbar, which overlooked a tree-lined park equipped with children's slides and play tunnels. The sky was overcast, but young mothers pushed a caravan of baby strollers along the sidewalk and a steady stream of joggers passed by. They were probably training for the annual BMW Berlin Marathon at the end of the month. Thor had registered and planned to run unless the job interfered, which now seemed likely.

“How do you suppose they make their coffee taste so good?” Swan asked.

“It just tastes hot to me,” said Margaret. Her clothes hung on her like a dipped flag and she looked as if she'd slept as poorly as Dinah. She seemed more interested in the newspaper than the food. “I see here that hunters in Texas killed an eight hundred-pound gator last week. Why is what happens in Texas news here?”

Swan knitted her brows. “I told you, the Germans love the Wild West, though I'd think they'd be more interested in rattlesnakes and Indian paint ponies than gators. However can you read that teeny-weeny print?”

Margaret pushed her glasses up her nose and folded the paper. “You could read it if you weren't too vain to wear glasses.”

“I wear glasses when there's something worth my while to read about.”

Their table was laden with
Schlackwurst, Bratwurst
, and
Weisswurst
, a variety of cheeses, boiled eggs, a basket of freshly baked bread from the bakery next door, and three jars of jam.

Swan sliced and buttered a roll. “What did our hostess call these little doohickeys? Is this the
Dinkelbrot
or the
Brotchen
? It smells divine.”

“None of your beating about the bush, Mom. My apartment's just across the street, but I walked ten blocks out of my way looking over my shoulder to be sure I wasn't followed. Every time a man passes the window, I jump. I need answers.”

Margaret thwacked an egg with the side of her fork and began to flake off the shell. “Tell her, Swan. If you don't, I will.”

“Y'all sure are grouchy this mornin'.”

Dinah took a breath and reined in her temper. “I get that way when I think somebody's trying to kill me. Or the people I care about. I get even grouchier when the people I care about are trying to pull the wool over my eyes.” She pulled the doll out of her purse by one leg and slapped it down on the table. She had removed the knife and bagged it to preserve any possible fingerprints. “Somebody left this at my door with a knife stuck in it. What do you think the message is?”

“Why, that tacky thing looks nothing at all like a Seminole woman,” said Swan. “The stuffing's not even palmetto.”

“Stop being a manic digressive, Mom. Spit it out. Is the man that you're chasing…chasing you?”

“What makes you think one of those skinheads we're always hearing about didn't drop the thing at your door?”

“Because she's got a brain,” said Margaret. “Tell her about Hess.”

“Well.” Swan steepled her fingers under her chin, a customary prelude to any explanation she found difficult. “Reiner Hess was one of Cleon's cronies, very high up the ladder, some sort of a lawyer like Cleon.”

“And like Cleon, he was a lying sack of shit,” added Margaret.

“I want to hear this from Mom, Margaret. Let her talk.”

“It's kind of complicated,” said Swan. “An employee of a Swiss bank sold the Germans a CD containing the names of people who own secret accounts, and Reiner Hess was one of them. The German authorities raided hundreds of houses belonging to the people on the list, but when they got to Reiner's, he'd flown the coop.”

“How did you learn all this? Surely the Germans didn't publish the names before they had completed their investigation.”

“Swan has a source,” said Margaret. “One of the studs on her string of ponies.”

Dinah glared. “Zip it, Margaret.”

Swan flicked a crumb off the tablecloth and spoke only to Dinah. “You remember Lenzie, don't you, honey?”

“The one before Bill. Italian or Swiss.”

“Swiss Italian. We're still on friendly terms and stay in touch. When Lenzie left Georgia, he moved back to Switzerland and socked his money away in a real safe bank in Bern where one of his buddies works. His buddy happened to mention he had another client, a German lawyer, who used to live in the U.S., in Georgia.”

“Reiner Hess,” said Dinah.

“Uh-huh. They gossiped a bit, like men do, you know. And this buddy told him that somebody at the bank told
him
that Reiner's name was
out there
as a tax dodger.”

“So much for the myth of Swiss banking secrecy,” said Dinah.

Margaret humphed. “I wouldn't be too sure about Panamanian secrecy. A hacker got into their database and exposed a slew of Germans with offshore accounts there. You'd best be on your toes, Dinah.”

Swan nodded. “The Germans are just bearcats about taxes.”

“Anyway,” said Margaret, “I bet it was Lenzie's buddy who sold them that CD.”

Swan continued. “Soon after I talked with Lenzie, Florian sent me a digital picture album of his last powwow. Lo and behold, who did I see got-up in a buffalo horn headdress and wavin' a tomahawk? Reiner Hess, big as life.”

“I still don't understand,” said Dinah. “Even if the man was in cahoots with Cleon, even if he cheated the Federal Republic of Germany, why do you think he owes you anything?” She bored deep into her mother's eyes. “You weren't part of Cleon's drug operation, were you?”

“I've answered that question before, Dinah. I was as shocked as you were. Margaret and I trusted Cleon just like you did. But that didn't stop the government from suspectin' us. IRS agents, DEA agents, FBI agents. Why, even today, every time I look out the front door, another one's on the porch with a briefcase and a list of questions. What's that old saying? The wife's the last to know? Well, it's true, but the feds have never believed me.”

Dinah wanted to believe her. Swan had been a benign and indulgent parent, abstracted in a fuzzy, endearing way. Maybe she had been blissfully unaware of her first husband's crimes, but Dinah still had doubts. “Didn't you ever ask Cleon how a lawyer from Needmore, Georgia, wound up making such an obscene amount of money?”

“After he affiliated with that big Atlanta firm, his practice became international. All of his partners made scads of money and he made plenty of legitimate money, if you can call what lawyers do legitimate. Anyhow, Cleon handled our finances. I never asked for an accounting. How about you, Margaret?”

Margaret's left eyebrow spiked up. “I asked for one when he filed for a divorce to marry you. If he had money then, he kept it hidden from me and my attorney.”

Swan made a sympathetic face. “He left you rather a lot in the end, Margaret.”

“It took Dinah weeks to hunt it down in Panama and when I got it, I had to spend it all on defense lawyers.”

“It would be drawin' interest today if you hadn't shot Cleon dead and got yourself arrested.”

Margaret's jaws worked as if she were grinding rocks, but she held herself in.

Swan poured hot coffee all around and they sipped in silence for a minute. Dinah wished she'd taken notes. This Hess business sounded like an impossible muddle, and the news that a Panamanian bank had been hacked made her stomach roil.

The fire in Margaret's eyes cooled and Swan went on with her story. “I hate to be vulgar, but the fact is, Margaret and I need money. Poor Bill lost most of his retirement savings after the real estate market collapsed, and Margaret wants to get on with her life, do nice things for herself and her grandchildren. Reiner squirreled away millions, most of which he and Cleon made from their drug deals, which Margaret and I knew nothing about. How they made the money isn't important anymore. We want a share and Reiner's not going to scare us off.”

“Why do you need money so desperately, Mom? Are you sick? Is Lucien or Bill sick? Does somebody need an organ transplant?”

“No, no. Nothing like that. Of course, your Aunt Shelly catches everything that goes around. The last was the shingles, I think. And Bill's mama is crippled up pretty bad with arthur-itis. But then, she's ninety-two. Other than that, we're hale and hearty.”

So, then, this was about greed and some warped sense of entitlement. “Why haven't you hit me up for a cut of the money Cleon left me to dole out to his kids?”

“Because they need every dollar of help it will buy them,” said Swan.

“No kidding,” agreed Margaret. “Shrinks don't come cheap. The boy will probably wind up in the pen, but the girl, K.D., might yet be salvaged. She's probably got that PTSD syndrome. If I have any regret, it's that she had to go through the ordeal of her daddy being killed.”

“Wasn't she tagging around Greece with you this summer?” asked Swan.

“Yes. Thor and I both became fond of K.D. She adored her father and she's wrestling with the knowledge that he wasn't what she thought he was. She's kind of a hard case, but since the summer she's been trending toward a healthier attitude. We invited her to live with us in Berlin for a few months, but she decided to go home and finish high school.”

“Thor is either a saint or a fool,” said Margaret, and sneezed into a handkerchief.

Swan patted Dinah's hand. “We know you wouldn't take a dime of the kids' money for yourself, honey. And neither would we. Goodness gracious, what kind of heartless monsters do you think we are?”

“Heart's got nothing to do with it,” said Margaret. “That Panama money's radioactive. I wouldn't want the risk. Like Swan says, we still have feds nosing around our doors. It surprises me you haven't been caught, Dinah.”

Swan dissected a boiled egg as tenderly as if it might hold a living chick. “Just out of curiosity, how much is in the account now?”

“Something over two million.”

“That much.” Her eyes went dreamy and crinkled at the corners.

Dinah forced a smile. Conversations with her mother had a tendency to leave her feeling seasick. She thought she could make out pieces of the truth bobbing here and there like flotsam, but it was hard to construct a narrative with all the froth foaming in between. “Did you warn Hess that you were coming to Berlin?”

“Not directly,” said Swan. “We relied on Florian to tell him.”

“You
wanted
Hess to know?”

“Can't negotiate with somebody if he's not around to negotiate,” said Margaret.

Dinah massaged her temples. Why would Hess risk coming out of hiding to intimidate two elderly American women with no legal claim to his money? Why did they think he would part with a single Euro? She cut to the crux. “What possible reason would Hess have to shoot at you or try to scare you off?”

“One of those little computer doodads that store data,” said Swan. “What did you call it, Margaret?”

“A thumb drive.”

“Cleon called it an insurance policy,” said Swan. “He said if I ever needed anything at all, I should show it to Hess and he'd be more than glad to help. I tucked it away in a box and forgot about it 'til I found out Reiner was sittin' on a pile of money.”

“What's on this thumb drive?”

“Enough to have him extradited to the U.S. and charged with the murder of two federal agents.”

“Jerusalem! Are you batshit crazy? Blackmail is a crime and even if it weren't, you can't threaten a double murderer.”

Swan made a chastening little moue. “We're not gonna
threaten
him, honey. We'll negotiate a fair price for the thumb drive and be on our merry way.”

Maybe she really was insane. She had made a career out of being fey and charmingly inscrutable, but insanity would explain her equally well. “Mother, you can't go through with this plan. It's cockeyed, it's criminal, and it's dangerous. You saw what happened last night. You have to pack your bags and hop the next plane home before you get yourselves killed.”

“You needn't worry about us. What was that thing you said we had, Margaret?”

“A dead man's switch. If anything happens to us, the proof will automatically be sent to the Drug Enforcement Agency. We've got everything figured out, Dinah. All you have to do is put us on the right train. The subway map in our Frommer's guide looks confusing as a basket of two-headed snakes. God's sakes, how do people decide which direction to go?”

Chapter Six

Dinah stuffed the doll back in her purse and, feeling slightly nauseated, went downstairs to the
toiletten
. The conversation she'd just had was an object lesson in the anthropology of lying. She felt fated, born into a cult where the only certainty was the knowledge that everyone lied, but inconsistently. Occasionally they told the truth so you could never know for sure. Margaret didn't give off any signals, but her mother transmitted a highly dubious vibe. The question was whether they were in imminent physical danger from this Hess character and, if so, what to do about it. The answer to all of her what-to-do's lately had been to call Thor. Her queasiness passed and she sat down in a rickety wicker chair in front of the basin, took out her cell, and dialed his number.

“Ramberg.”

“Hey, Ramberg, I hope I didn't catch you in the middle of dismantling a bomb or foiling a plot for world domination.”

He laughed. “I'm waiting for the Kenyan ambassador to get off the phone so I can take him to lunch.”

The reassuring sound of his voice lifted her spirits immediately. “I miss you, Thor. I feel like I've fallen down the rabbit hole and you're my lifeline to reality.”

“You sound miserable. What's wrong?”

“Me, my family, my whole life.”

“Tell me.”

And in that moment, she knew that she couldn't. Not yet. Not over the phone. Not the whole truth. She would give him an abbreviated version—the critical facts now and fill in the non-urgent ones later. “The thing is…” she cast about for a way to present “the thing” without emptying the entire bucket of worms. “The thing is, someone may be trying to kill my mother.”

“
Kristus
! What happened?”

She described the hit-and-run and the mutilated Indian doll left outside the apartment door. “I've begged her to go home, but she has other…she says she won't.”

“But you're all right? She and your friend Margaret are all right? No injuries?”

“Just to the Golf. It's drivable, but the left rear door is smushed and the right side is scratched and dented.” She wavered. She didn't want him to overreact and fly home. “The driver of the other car fired a bullet into the Golf.”

“
Sheisse
!”

“It didn't come close to anyone,” she lied.

“Does your mother know anyone in Berlin? An ex-husband or jilted lover?”

Before they moved in together, Dinah had confided her mother's checkered marital history to Thor. She worried that she had inherited her mother's inability to sustain a long-term commitment, and felt he deserved fair warning. “Mom has a Facebook friend whose hobby is playing cowboys and Indians, and another man who attends the powwows was a business partner of one of her ex-husbands.” The nature of Cleon's business was one of the non-urgent details she'd rather omit for the time being.

“Where is the ex-husband now?” asked Thor.

“Dead. He died four years ago.”

“Was there a beef between the ex and this partner? Any reason why he'd try to take revenge on your mother?”

“No. I mean, I don't think so.”

“I want you to call Jens Lohendorf. He's a detective working out of Directorate Three. I've worked with him once or twice. He knows Berlin, underbelly and all, and he'll treat the situation seriously. Hold on. I'll give you his number.” There was a pause.

Dinah fidgeted. How seriously did she want the situation treated?

“Here it is.” He read off the number. “You're sure you're all right? Say the word and I'll come home this afternoon,
kjære
.”

“No. The police are already involved. They think the driver was a drunk and the doll was probably some harmless initiation rite, put there by one of the Facebook Indians.” Had she left the impression that she'd reported the doll? That the police thought it was harmless?

Thor wasn't buying it. “Whoever's responsible, the knife wasn't harmless. Give it to Lohendorf. He may be able to lift fingerprints.”

“Yes, I will.” Another lie. She would toss that knife and forget about it if she could persuade her mother to abandon her scheme and go home. To sic the police on Hess would only stir up questions about his connection to Cleon and, by declension, Cleon's connection to her. She said, “I think the safest thing is to get my mother and Margaret out of town pronto. I'll put them on a train to Paris this afternoon and maybe ballistics can turn up a lead.”

“I thought you said they had refused to leave.”

“They don't want me to feel slighted if they cut short their visit. They'll leave.”

“Okay.” His tone was skeptical. “But in the meantime, promise me you'll call Jens.”

“I promise.” She didn't know what she had expected him to say other than “go to the police.” It was the only smart thing to do, for someone with nothing to hide.

He said, “The ambassador's walking out of his office. I'll call you later today.”

They swapped a few quick intimacies and said good-bye. She pondered her reflection in the mirror above the basin. How many lies could she tell before she wouldn't be able to look at herself? Before she turned into a dyed-in-the-wool convert to the cult of Cleon Dobbs? She despised herself for not coming clean with Thor at the start of their affair, but the more she felt for him, the harder it became. The fear of losing him had paralyzed her. But she couldn't carry this guilt any longer. She stood up and, in a determined voice, announced, “I will tell him about that damned dirty money the very next time we talk, so help me God.”

The toilet flushed behind the stall door and she nearly jumped out of her skin. The anger she'd been holding back spilled over. She said, “You should be ashamed of yourself,” and marched out of the room and up the stairs to have it out with her mother.

Margaret was alone at the table, dabbing at her eyes.

“Are you crying?”

“Damn cold makes my eyes water.”

“Where's Mom?”

“She went back to the room. She wants to preen her feathers before we visit her friend, Florian.”

Dinah sat down and tore off a piece of
Dinkelbrot
. “It's not like you to do something crazy like this, Margaret. You've always had more sense. More aplomb.”

“Aplomb?” She crimped her mouth. “What the hell is that?”

“You know perfectly well what it is. Balance and self-control and—”

She snorted. “Sangfroid? That's what Cleon called it and he didn't mean it in a good way. He meant it literally. Cold blood. As it turned out, I was more cold-blooded than he imagined.”

Dinah recalled every detail of that day. The glare of the sun, the roar of the gunshot, the smell of her own fear and Cleon's blood. She said, “He tried to kill himself, but he didn't have the
cojones
. You did him a favor, Margaret.”

“The prosecutor said I did it for revenge.”

“You had cause for revenge. But I think you did it to help him escape, to get away clean. I think you still loved him. I think you love him even now and that's why you resent my mother.”

“Love. What a trap.” Margaret covered her face and erupted into a series of violent sneezes. When the fit passed, she said, “At the trial, you testified that he would have shot you if I hadn't shot him first. I appreciated the lie, but you know he would never have hurt you. He loved Swan far too much to hurt one of her cygnets.”

Dinah could only marvel that Cleon's sick obsession with Swan still galled Margaret. “I don't know what he'd have done. They say murder gets easier after the first one or two.”

“Ya' think?” One corner of her mouth quirked up like a grapefruit knife. “Life is strange. I never thought I'd join forces with your mother to shake down one of Cleon's old gang.”

“Are you broke, Margaret? Are things so bad you have to resort to extortion?”

“Bad enough. The benefits from thirty years of teaching school in Echols County, Georgia, are strikingly slim.”

“If you're so gung-ho to become an outlaw, you can take control of the Panama money. I'll sign it over to you today. It's a curse, but it's yours if you'll take it. I know you'd be fair to the children. Help me convince my mother to forget this crackbrained idea to blackmail Reiner Hess and it's all yours. Is it a deal?”

“No. That money scares me more than Hess.” She pressed a handkerchief to her nose and mopped her eyes. “Swan and I talked this over for a long time before we made up our minds. For every con I thought of, she came up with two pros. If you ask my opinion, I think she has more in mind than Reiner's money.”

“What do you mean?”

“She never speaks Bill's name except in pity. Poor Bill this and poor Bill that. He's had some setbacks. I don't know anything about their finances or their marriage, but it wouldn't surprise me if your mama is on the prowl for a new man.”

“Hess?” Dinah felt queasy all over again.

“Him, or maybe that Thunder Moon bird. Farber.”

Dinah bit her tongue. Swan's track record with men might not comport with the Christian concept of family values, but she wasn't the tramp Margaret made her out to be. In fact, Dinah would bet that her mother had never once had extramarital sex. She was a stickler for marriage, even if the marriages didn't last. The only reason she'd given for divorcing Cleon was his habit of leaving her alone so often while he traveled on business. Dinah suspected there was more to it than that, but Swan had married Hart Pelerin soon after the divorce. He undoubtedly had a hand in wooing her away from Cleon.

Margaret must have sensed her annoyance. She said, “I shouldn't dis Swan. She paid my way over here and she's trying to help me get back on my feet with a cut of Reiner's money. I'm sorry if I was out of line.”

“Forget it.” Dinah glanced at her watch. Swan ought to be finished with her primping by now. She dropped the ropes of uneaten
Dinkelbrot
onto her plate and wiped her hands. “Let's go up to your room and discuss some more pros and cons.”

They took the elevator to the second floor. Margaret stuck the key card into the slot and opened the door. The curtains were open and the room dappled with splotches of tenuous sunlight. A vase of dahlias rested on the table between two queen beds and the hum of a hairdryer emanated from the bathroom.

“Come out and talk to us, Mom. You're spiffy enough.”

She didn't answer and Dinah tapped on the door. “Mom?”

Still no answer.

She turned the knob and peeped inside. The hairdryer lay humming on the side of the basin, but Swan was gone.