“It’s okay.” Alex smiled at me to show she wasn’t offended. “He didn’t say much, to be honest. He said he’d heard rumors that Tomas was in trouble financially, but he didn’t know whether that was true.”
“Eline never said anything to me about any money problems,” Karen said. “But she seemed to think that Tomas was having problems with this Zeckendorf fellow.”
“Zeckendorf?” Alex asked.
Sam put his hand over hers. “Are you feeling okay? You look a bit pale.”
Alex conjured up a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Of course. I’m super tired. I got home late last night, and then this thing with my aunt… I’m worried about her. But I’m fine.”
“You know that name, Zeckendorf?” Karen leaned forward across the table. “You looked as though you recognized it?”
“Willem mentioned him over dinner, but I can’t really remember the context. He might be another wealthy client or something like that.” Alex tapped her lip, thinking. “Yes, I think that was it. He’s a client of Willem’s. What did he do to upset Tomas so much?”
“We don’t know,” Karen said. “Eline just overheard a phone conversation and the name came up. She mentioned it in a letter she left in the safety deposit box.”
Our waiter came by and asked if we needed more coffee. We all said yes. While he collected our cups, I played with my unused knife, spinning it in circles on the table. Its silvery blade caught our reflections, our faces ghostly circles. I shivered and put my hand down on the knife handle, stopping it dead. Sam talked quietly with Alex, gripping her hand in his.
My thoughts whirled, reflecting the swirling air over his head. The puzzling thing to me was that he still had an aura. If my theory was correct, that the danger was linked to the house, he should be safe now that we’d given back the keys and put the project on hold.
But his aura was still there, and now there was Alex’s aura to worry about. The two had to be linked somehow. I stared at the space over her head, thinking of possible connections. Things were not going well.
Karen nudged my arm. Alex was looking at me, eyes wide with alarm. Sam was, too.
“Don’t tell me Alex has an aura,” he said.
Damn. I’d been staring too hard. Swallowing, I nodded. “I’m very sorry, Alex. I don’t understand why. It means that something has changed since we saw you yesterday. Can you think of anything that happened that might have put you in danger?”
“Something that made the invisible wheel of death appear over my head? No.” She looked at Karen and then at me.
“Karen doesn’t have an aura,” I confirmed. “And, no, I don’t know if I have one.”
Alex sat up straight. “Well, I don’t intend to shuffle off this mortal coil any time soon, so what are we going to do about it?”
“It’s not fair.” Sam’s voice was rough with emotion. “Alex shouldn’t have been caught up in any of this. It has to be the project, right? I should have pulled out days ago. It’s just one stupid consulting gig, not worth anyone’s life.”
“It’s not your fault.” I rushed to assure him. “We didn’t understand the scope of the threat. We’ve hardly had time to absorb the reality of Eline’s murder and we only just found the secret office.”
“Do you think that whoever owns that space is going to come after us?” Alex asked.
“Maybe.”
“Why would they?” Sam asked. “They must know that we’d have reported it to the police. It’s not exactly a secret anymore.”
“But you and Alex are still in danger. So there has to be more to it,” I said. “Something else they think we know, or that we’re going to discover somehow.”
“They?” Alex asked.
“They, he, whoever is using the office.”
Alex nodded. “What do we do then?”
“I think we should disappear for a while. Until the lawyer tells us what’s going to happen to the house, and the police have chance to pursue their investigation.”
We fell silent while the waiter set down our coffees.
“I have an idea,” Karen said when he’d left. “A friend of mine has a houseboat on the Brouwersgracht, a canal in a quiet neighborhood. He wouldn’t mind if you camped there. I’ve got the key, I think.” She dug around in her oversized bag and pulled out a laden keychain. She sorted through them and held one up. “That’s it.”
I raised an eyebrow at Sam. He nodded. “Thank you, Karen.” He turned to Alex. “What about you? Will you come?”
“Of course.”
“What about your aunt?” I asked. “Aren’t you worried about leaving her? Won’t she wonder where you’ve gone?”
Alex shrugged. “I’ll let her know I need to work for a while. She’ll understand.”
I wasn’t convinced about Alex’s story of a sick aunt but decided to let it go for now. She’d just learned she had an aura. Self-protection was probably kicking in, and the prospect of her own death almost certainly overruled any concerns about a relative’s headache.
“Good,” Sam said. “I’ll feel better if we all stay together. So we’ll go to the boat and lay low there while we get this thing sorted out.” For a moment, he sounded determined, almost forceful, but then his face slackened, and he looked at me. “Right?”
“I hate to whine,” Alex said. “But this goddamned aura is weighing heavily on me.” She glanced at Sam. “And I’m afraid for Sam. Is hiding going to keep us safe? What about that man with the goatee you thought was watching us?”
“He is watching us. He followed us to the bank this morning.” I looked out through the cafe windows at the crowded street beyond. Was he out there right now? “I don’t know how safe we can be, but we’ll do what Karen suggested. We’ll check out of the hotel, maybe even take a taxi to the airport to make it look as though we’re leaving. Then we double back to the houseboat. After that, we’ll work it out as we go along.”
My stomach started to churn even as I said it. I liked to plan ahead, to weigh and minimize the risks. Running headlong into a dangerous situation without a proper strategy was terrifying, like leaving a life jacket on the beach before wading into rough water.
“Let’s go,” I said, standing and picking up my bag before I could change my mind.
Karen gave us the location of the houseboat and said she’d meet us there in an hour. Unease fluttered in my chest like a trapped butterfly. Karen was going out of her way to help us, claiming she wanted to find Eline’s killer. What if that wasn’t her real goal? She had been Eline’s best friend. Eline was dead. I pushed the cafe door open and was slapped with a sharp blast of cold air. Pulling my scarf tighter around my neck, I followed Karen outside.
I had to trust someone.
21
Sam, Alex and I walked in silence past canal houses that stood straight and tall, their myriad windows like blank eyes watching us. I shivered in the chill of the late winter sun, aware of the water that ran alongside our path, flat and dark and hiding secrets of its own.
It only took us twenty minutes to pack our bags and check out of the hotel. From there we took a taxi to the airport and got out at Departures. After mingling with the crowds inside the terminal for ten minutes, we walked to the Arrivals hall, where we exited and got into another taxi.
By the time we reached the houseboat, Karen was there waiting. Her cheeks were ashen, the dark circles under her eyes more pronounced. Still, she waved cheerily when our taxi pulled up alongside the canal where the boat was berthed. It was a beautiful little vessel, its wooden hull gleaming. A few shy winter pansies bloomed in pots on the deck and red gingham curtains adorned the windows.
We hurried inside and carefully descended a short flight of wooden steps. Below, the interior was far bigger than I’d imagined. Beyond a well-fitted kitchen with a table and four chairs was a roomy seating area.
“The couches turn into beds at night,” Karen said. “There’s bedding in the overhead lockers.”
She set a kettle of water o
n the gas hob and pulled out some cups while Sam and I stashed our luggage in a cupboard under the beds. Alex settled at the table.
“It’s cozy,” I said, “So nice of your friend to let us stay here.”
Karen nodded. “He’s a good man and he’ll be very discreet. I didn’t tell him your names or why you’re here. He trusts me to look after his little treasure.”
Once we were seated around the table, Karen brought over mugs of tea and sat down.
“Time to take a look in here,” she said, picking up the big white envelope with Tomas’s writing on the front. “I’ll read and translate as I go, if that’s all right.”
First, she showed us a three-page typed document with Tomas Janssen’s signature on each page and a notary seal stamped in blue. “This is an addendum to Tomas’s will,” she said. “And it’s all related to the house.”
Sam shifted on his chair. There wasn’t much space for him to stand or pace around. That would drive him mad after a while. He chewed on a fingernail.
Karen murmured to herself as she read through the document. “All right. The summary is that Tomas wrote this up to give the house jointly to Eline and to his nephew Pieter. It says that this will supersedes all other documents including the addendum dated October 17, 2018.” She rustled through the papers in the envelope. “I don’t see that addendum here, though.”
She picked up another sheet of paper. “This is a photocopy of a handwritten letter from Tomas.” She held her hand against her chest as though she had a pain there. “What did poor Eline get mixed up in?” She looked up at us. “I’ll just translate it out loud.”
“Gezagvoerder,
Accept this letter as proof of my good intentions regarding the property…”
“Who’s Gezagvoerder?” Sam asked.
“It’s not a name, it’s a title,” Karen replied. “It usually means captain of a ship or commander.”
“Weird,” he muttered.
Karen continued.
“I am protecting it as you directed me to. It no longer sits empty, the object of speculation among the neighbors. It has become a home, and as such, my wife deserves to have the option of continuing to live it in should I pre-decease her. While I hope that to be an event in the distant future, I feel compelled to make arrangements now to be sure Eline is provided for.
“Following our recent discussion, I now agree to add my nephew, Pieter, to the will as co-inheritor. He will ensure that the property’s interests are always protected. Nothing will change with regard to the upper floors. I deeply respect the property’s centuries of history and its association with Zeckendorf. My wife knows nothing of that. Those secrets remain yours and mine alone. I am sending this letter by trusted courier for you to share with those who need to know. I hope this will bring an end to the recent unpleasantness.”
In the ensuing silence, the boat creaked and rocked gently in the wake of a tour boat chugging by. The amplified voice of a tour guide echoed over the water. Sam couldn’t sit still any longer. He jumped to his feet and leaned against the fridge door. Alex was staring down at the table.
“Bloody hell,” Sam said. Like me, he seemed stunned by the revelations.
“Zeckendorf sounds more like a company than an individual,” I said. “But what do they do?”
“Obviously something to do with those computers on the top floor,” Karen said.
“Hang on,” Sam said. “This implies that the house belongs to Zeckendorf. So, who is Martin Eyghels? His name was on the purchase document.”
I explained the research I’d done. “Eyghels might be an assumed name,” I said. “Or maybe just someone that works for them. So, the house belongs to the company, but they put an individual’s name on it, maybe for tax reasons?” Flummoxed, I stared at the papers on the table. “If Zeckendorf cared so much about the building, why didn’t they just buy it back from Eline once she put it on the market?”
Alex lifted her head. “Maybe they don’t have ten million euros.”
Karen snorted. “They have hundreds of millions in gold up in that vault. I’m sure they could afford it.”
“Because they knew that if they got rid of Eline, Pieter would inherit,” I was thinking out loud. “Pieter must work for them? He’ll hand the house back to them. Why would they want to give Eline all that money if they could get it back for free?”
“More to the point, why did they let Tomas buy it in the first place?” Sam asked.
“Perhaps they were short of money back then,” Karen suggested. “They needed the two million Tomas paid for it.”
“I don’t think so.” The details were becoming clear in my mind. “The sale was a sham,” I said. “Henk told Alex that the neighbors were complaining about the house sitting empty for all those years, right? The last thing Zeckendorf would want was for the house to draw attention to itself. So, they moved someone— Tomas— into it to stop the complaints. And to make it look official, they created a fake sale document with Eyghels’ name on it.”
“Which means that Tomas was really just a tenant,” Karen tapped her fingers on the letter. “But then he decided he wanted to actually buy the house so Eline could stay in the event of his death.”
“That would have upset the apple cart,” Sam said. “To the point where Zeckendorf insisted that Pieter be named as a co-inheritor.”
Karen laid the letter on the table with trembling hands. “So Zeckendorf killed Eline. Pieter inherits and the house is safely back in Zeckendorf’s hands.”
“Do we have any proof though? Alex asked. “Anything we can take to the police?”
Karen slipped several more sheets of paper out of the envelope. “Maybe this,” she said. “It’s a letter to Tomas, accepting his arrangement that Pieter inherit the entire estate in the event of anything happening to Eline.”
“Who is the letter from? Is it signed?” Sam asked.
“There’s no letterhead, no name.”
Karen held up the paper and Sam leaned forward to take it from her. He stood and went to lean against the counter before peering at the piece of paper. “Just a squiggle of ink as a signature,” he said. “That doesn’t help much. In fact, I’d say that none of this paperwork gives much away. No addresses, phone numbers, or names. But maybe the police can make something of it all.”
“Did Zeckendorf kill Tomas?” I wondered out loud.
Karen thought for a moment. “I doubt it. If his death had been expected, don’t you think these people would have had a plan in place? It seems to me that he had a heart attack, died suddenly, and they were all taken by surprise. And then Eline had the house on the market before they could come up with a strategy.”
I looked at Alex. “Remember when Pieter said they didn’t have time to plan? Maybe this is what he meant.”
She nodded. “It seems like it.”
I stood up to make more tea, nudging Sam aside so I could get milk out of the fridge. “We should talk to Detective Nouwen,” I said. “And show him that letter, if that’s okay, Karen?”
“Of course.”
As I held my hand out for it, I changed my mind. “I’ll just take a photo of it for now. I can show that to Nouwen and he can come here if he wants to see the original. I don’t fancy walking around in public with it.”
“But I still don’t understand why they continue to threaten us,” Sam said. “We’ve stopped the project. The sale may never happen. Haven’t they won already?”
“Maybe they think we know too much. That we’ve worked it all out,” I said as I took my mobile from my bag and snapped a shot of the letter to Tomas.
Karen stowed it back in the envelope and looked around. “Where’s the best place to keep this safe?”
“I keep my jewelry in my sock drawer,” Alex said. “But how about the microwave? No one would think to look in there.”
While Karen closed the envelope, I dialed the number Nouwen had given us. He picked up on the second ring and agreed to meet me at a coffee house nearby. I’d alrea
dy decided to go by myself. I needed to tell the detective that Sam and Alex were in danger. If that meant telling him about my strange ability, then I’d have to, but I’d rather have that conversation with him alone. Who knew how he would react to stories of auras?
“I’m seeing Nouwen in fifteen minutes,” I said. “Alex, you look exhausted. Maybe you can take a nap? Sam should stay with you.”
“I’ll stay too,” Karen said. “I can keep an eye open for anyone loitering nearby.”
With a last glance at Sam and the aura that spiraled over his head, I hurried up the steps and unlocked the door that led to the deck. I was careful to close it behind me before clambering off the boat on to the cobbled road that ran alongside the canal.
A herd of tourists meandered past, following a guide with a rolled umbrella held high. Tagging along at the back, I examined the street in every direction to check whether the man with the goatee was around. When I saw no sign of him or of anyone else paying me any attention, I relaxed a little and hurried to the coffee shop Nouwen had suggested, thankful that he would see me on short notice.
The cafe felt like an English pub with its paneled walls and smoke-stained beamed ceiling. A boisterous group of young Americans crowded around a table in the center, with large glasses of Heineken lined up in front of them. I found a seat in a corner and ordered a coffee. The waitress soon came back with a mug of dark roast. “It’s Douwe Egberts,” she said in English. “We grind the beans ourselves.”
The coffee was good and kept me company for ten minutes until Nouwen strode in through the front door. The animated conversation at the middle table calmed suddenly. Even in jeans and his leather jacket, Nouwen exuded authority. I wondered if that was a disadvantage at times when he might prefer to go unnoticed.
Within a few seconds, though, the hubbub resumed. Nouwen spoke to the bartender and came over to join me. He nodded at the mug in front of me. “Another?”
“No, thanks. This is fine.”
Assignment in Amsterdam Page 18