by A W Hartoin
“Okay. Love you,” I said.
Moe turned to me, holding an enormous Mercedes key, his eyes huge and distorted. “All set.”
I do not feel better.
Chapter Six
I was scared to death that Moe would kill us with his stellar eyesight and the fact that he remained hunched over while he drove didn’t help. But Moe knew Mercedes and had learned to drive in Italy, so he was both aggressive and reacted quickly. We made it to the hotel near the main train station in record time. Grandma insisted we share a room as a cost-cutting measure, even though German hotels don’t do the American thing of two beds per room. We’d be sharing.
“Slumber party,” she declared to the desk clerk. “We will get to know each other better.”
The clerk looked at me and I said, “I guess that’s a thing we’re doing.”
We dropped our bags and were out the door in record time since Moe was Christmas market motivated. The faster we got working the sooner we got to a market was his plan, so we sped out of Stuttgart proper and raced through the dreary countryside that was both cold and somehow still very green. No snow, unfortunately. Grandma started to complain about the lack of snow but fell asleep mid-sentence. She and Aaron sat in the back. Grandma had her nose pressed against the window and Aaron was eating a sandwich that he’d produced from somewhere. I could’ve used some coffee, but there was no way I was chancing it with Grandma finally settled down.
“So what do we know about this guy Thooft?” Moe asked.
“Other than he was a teacher and pretty normal until he tried to kidnap me, nothing much.”
“He didn’t try. He succeeded. You need to work on your reaction time. I can help you with that.”
“I got out of the trunk, didn’t I?”
“The idea is to never get in the trunk,” said Moe, so hunched that he was practically looking through the steering wheel instead of over it.
“I think I did pretty good,” I said.
“Pretty good against a middle-aged teacher isn’t good enough. What are we looking for in this guy’s apartment?”
“I don’t know. Something from whoever was blackmailing him. Anything that shows who he was in contact with. Friends we don’t know about. Receipts for hotels.”
“The sister didn’t know the friends?”
“Kimberly knew about his teacher friends, but my guys have been keeping track of their financial activities,” I said. “It looks like Anton was paying someone off, but none of the friends from the school have any suspicious deposits or unusual spending.”
“How much did they take him for?” Moe asked.
“About seven thousand over the two months,” I said.
“Was he drained?”
“No. He had another two in savings. Most of his money went into his retirement funds and wasn’t liquid.”
Moe nodded. “They wanted cash.”
“But I don’t think it was his money they were after,” I said.
“They were after you.”
I looked out at the beautiful rolling hills, dotted with farms. “But they took that money. It was pretty penny-ante considering they had a jet on standby to fly me out of Missouri. I don’t get it. If you’ve got a jet and goons to fly it…”
“Why blackmail a teacher?” Moe finished for me.
“Yeah and why bother with the little sums of money at first. Anton was taking out just a hundred euros here and there at first, then it went up to three hundred every other day.”
“Something escalated them. Any ideas what it was?”
I shook my head, but I knew. The withdrawals cranked up a couple days after I found out about the liquor cabinet in my parents’ butler’s pantry. It was the secret I’d been searching for, the object that Stella Bled Lawrence sent back from Europe in 1938. We got the shipping receipt from my great-grandmother Agatha’s purse. It survived the crash that killed her and her husband Daniel.
We’d searched the liquor cabinet, only to discover it was empty of anything from 1938. Josiah Bled had left a page out of Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein inside. There were some clues associated with that page and the book it came out of, but I had no idea what they meant.
Moe gave me a sidelong glance and I knew he knew that I knew what happened, but he didn’t push it. “What else have you got?”
“He bought books on negotiation.”
Moe snorted. “You can’t negotiate with a requirement.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“They, whoever they are, required you. Nothing else was going to do.”
“Do people try to negotiate with you?”
“Sure and I’m flexible to a point,” said Moe.
“What’s the point?”
“Different for every situation. If they owe money, I want it. I’d be willing to go on installments if it gets me where I want to go. But you can’t be taking the wife to the Bahamas and slipping me five hundred bucks, acting like it’s breaking you. If you owe, it’s bologna and hot dogs till you’re paid up.”
“And there are no installments of me,” I said, feeling exhausted and icky. All that was going on as I was living my life. I had no idea Anton Thooft was trying to wriggle out of something that could cost me my life.
“My feeling is that they took the money because they could,” said Moe. “Probably making him feel like he had hope when he didn’t. Then they hit him with the big guns.”
“Big guns?”
“Whatever they used to get him to do it.”
“But they must’ve already used Kimberly’s adoption to get the money,” I said. “Why else would he start paying them?”
“So why’d it take two months?” Moe asked as we passed a dairy farm and sped around a long curve into the little town of Waldenbuch, passing a car dealer and some nondescript buildings. The town wouldn’t have been charming in the least if you didn’t bother to look up. High over the town was a small castle and medieval wall. Charming didn’t quite cover it.
“They had to work Anton up to it or get the plan going with the plane and whatnot,” I said.
Moe shook his head. “Possibly.”
“You don’t like it?”
“I think Anton didn’t like it and they had something else that got him moving.”
“There’s nothing else,” I said. “Anton’s mother switched his sister at birth and gave away her son to strangers so she could have a daughter. You don’t think that was enough to get Anton going? He spent his whole life hiding that secret. He gave up his dream of politics for it and he made Kimberly give up singing, too.”
Moe drove through a traffic circle and we headed to the old part of town. “Maybe. I’m just wondering why it took so long. You blackmail someone you want results. If it’s money, you get the money. If it’s a kidnapping, why wait around?”
“I don’t know,” I said with a yawn. “But when we find them, we’ll ask.”
Moe nodded grimly and I got a bad feeling. Fats was one thing. Moe was another. I didn’t know what he’d do. I didn’t know what he really was. A low-level enforcer for the Fibonaccis? Did he run a business for money laundering? The possibilities were endless.
We drove slowly into the Altstadt and Moe whistled. “Would you look at that? Beautiful. Not Italy. But beautiful.”
It was beautiful. I looked up a street and there were half-timbered buildings and a church steeple rising behind the roofs. Very picture postcard, even with the drizzle. We passed a building that looked like it had been there since the Middle Ages and went down a street to a more modern section, passing a tiny police station and alteration shop to find an ancient mill that was apparently still in business.
“The parking is terrible.” Moe drove around the block for ten minutes until a spot in front of Anton’s building opened up. The Mercedes parked itself and I looked back at Grandma. I could let her sleep, but she’d miss the investigation and not get on the right time zone. But then again, she wouldn’t run off and buy gallons of
espresso.
“She’ll leave the car,” said Moe. “This town’s too adorable to resist.”
“Good point.”
I woke her up and found the keyring Kimberly gave me in the bottom of my purse. I pictured her face when she pulled the keys out of the evidence bag. The cops gave all of Anton’s effects back when the case was closed and they released the body. There was blood on them. She didn’t see it until it was too late.
“Is this it?” Grandma asked, looking up at the plain, fairly modern building.
“This is it.”
Aaron put a hand on my shoulder. If he’d had hot chocolate, he’d have given it to me. Since he didn’t, I went to the apartment building door, passing the mailboxes. The name Thooft was still on one. I was kinda surprised nobody took it off.
I led the way up the stairs to the top floor and found Anton’s apartment on the left. I was so tired and jet-lagged. The thoughts of Kimberly’s sorrow wasn’t helping and I prayed that there would be something inside my assailant’s apartment that would make this easy.
I hesitated. My hands wouldn’t quite go to the lock. I wanted them to, but they didn’t go. He was in there. Anton. The man rushing at me and putting a smelly, wet rag on my face. I’d kept him at bay so far, but I couldn’t in there. I’d be surrounded.
Aaron took the keys and opened the door, revealing a dining room with a high timbered ceiling. We walked in and before I could say that it didn’t look like a kidnapper’s apartment, a scream burst out from nowhere and Moe pulled a Glock.
She was sitting on the sofa in Anton’s living room, eyes wide in shock and clutching an enormous tuxedo cat. A torrent of German burst out of the girl and I understood a little. Something like who the hell are you or something along those lines. Before I could formulate a rudimentary reply, two streams of German came from behind me, Aaron and Grandma. I didn’t know what they were saying, but the girl relaxed.
“Since when do you speak German?” I asked Grandma.
She shrugged. “I guess my high school German stuck. I wonder if I can speak French.”
What the…?
“Oh, you’re Americans,” said the girl with relief.
I pushed down Moe’s Glock and asked, “Are you? Your English is flawless.”
“My dad’s American and my mom’s German.” She stood up and it wasn’t that far to go. The girl was about five feet tall and maybe fourteen years old. She seemed faintly Asian with beautiful almond eyes and flawless skin. If she was worried about Moe’s weapon, she hid it well. “You’re the one, aren’t you?”
“The one what?” I asked.
“Mercy Watts. The one Mr. Thooft…” Her face changed from bright and beautiful to sad and wilted.
“Yes. I’m the one.”
“I didn’t know you were coming. I’m Ella by the way.” Ella sat, pulling the fat cat onto her lap again and he began a loud purr.
Grandma went past me, walking down a couple of steps into the sunken living room. “We must’ve given you quite a shock. I’m sorry about that. We didn’t know anyone would be here.”
“I’m the cat sitter. Mr. Thooft said I only had to watch Porky Boy for a few days, but then he died and I couldn’t just not feed him.”
“Of course not. Thank you for doing that,” said Grandma.
“Did you know someone was coming?” I asked.
“My dad said Mrs. La Roche said someone was coming about the apartment, but it was after Christmas,” said Ella.
I went down into the living room and went to the large bookcases by a beehive-shaped fireplace, checking out the books. “There was a change of plans. You should call your dad and let him know we’re here.”
“Oh, yeah. He freaks easy.” Ella texted her father and then said he was coming.
“Who’s your father?” I asked.
“Simon McWilliams. He’s a teacher. That’s how we know Mr. Thooft.”
“Do you know Sherri La Roche?”
“Oh, sure. Mrs. La Roche is my English teacher. I’m a Freshman,” said Ella.
“Why aren’t you at school?” Grandma asked.
“Teacher workday.”
“So I’ve heard that Mrs. La Roche and Anton were good friends,” I said. “I’d like to talk to her.”
Ella looked out the windows at the cloudy skies over suburban Waldenbuch and clutched Porky Boy tighter. “Why? Aren’t you just coming for his stuff?”
“No. There’s a company that’s going to do that. I’m investigating what happened.”
Her eyes flashed back to me. “I don’t believe any of that stuff. It’s not true.”
I sat down on a cushy armchair and glanced up at Moe, who’d holstered his weapon and was gazing out the window, seemingly disinterested. “You don’t believe the stuff about me?”
“I know he did that but not that other stuff. There’s no way. Mr. Thooft was super nice.”
“What other stuff?” Grandma asked, giving the cat a scratch.
“That he was some kind of 4chan freak that hated women. There’s no freaking way,” said Ella and a pink tinge lit up her cheeks. “He was always super nice. He never did anything to me. It’s all lies.”
Wait what?
“So there are a lot of rumors going around,” I said. “And…something about you?”
“And other people.” Her fists were balled up and the pink had turned to rose. “Aren’t you a detective or something? It’s not true. You know that, don’t you?”
“Well, I know he wasn’t a 4chan freak as you say,” I said. “He didn’t hate women. All that stuff was planted on his computer.”
Ella’s lower lip quivered and she burst into tears. “I knew it, but nobody believed me. He wouldn’t hurt me.” There was a loud buzzing sound and she said, “That’s my dad at the door.”
Moe went over and buzzed Mr. McWilliams in. The father was up the stairs in a flash and practically flew in the door when Aaron opened it. “It really is you,” he said and then bent over breathing hard.
“You didn’t have to run, Dad.” Ella rolled her eyes and then hastily wiped the tears off her cheeks, but not hastily enough.
“Why are you crying?” Mr. McWilliams asked. “What’s going on?”
I gave him my card and introduced Moe and Grandma. Aaron was in the kitchen rustling around and I decided to leave him out of it.
Mr. McWilliams said hello to everyone and looked down, his high forehead wrinkling. He resembled Ella, only more Asian with darker hair but the same lovely complexion.
“So you’re…”
“Investigating Mr. Thooft’s case,” I said.
“I heard about that on the news,” said Mr. McWilliams. “Why would you want to do that?”
“I wanted to find out what happened and Anton’s sister did, too. She hired me.”
He kept looking at my card. “But that’s over. You found out why he did it. The adoption thing, right?”
“Somebody blackmailed him, Dad,” said Ella. “He didn’t want to hurt her.”
“That’s what the news said.” He looked at me. “Is it true? You never know with the news.”
“It’s true,” I said.
“Then why are you here?”
“To find out who blackmailed him.”
Mr. McWilliams went down into the living room and stood in front of the fireplace. “We don’t know anything about that.”
Mr. McWilliams didn’t know Anton well, which didn’t surprise me. Nobody did. His was a life lived in hiding, doing his best not to let anyone see what his mother had done. Mr. McWilliams liked Anton but knew absolutely nothing personal about him, not that he had a sister or even a family period.
“He was a great teacher. Totally dedicated,” he said. “I don’t know what else I can tell you.”
“How about the rumors?” Moe asked and Ella flinched.
Mr. McWilliams frowned. “Rumors about what?”
Ella pushed the cat off her lap and stood up. “I need to go home. Kelsey’s coming ove
r.”
“Hold on,” said her dad. “Rumors about what? Anton?”
“Just that 4chan stuff, Dad,” said Ella. “She said it’s not true.”
Her dad turned to me. “It wasn’t?”
“No, but I’m more interested in the rumors about your daughter,” I said.
Ella made a break for it, but her dad turned all stern. “Stop. What are we talking about? Ella?”
The girl returned to the sofa and sat noticeably closer to my grandmother. I didn’t blame her. Mr. McWilliams looked like he was ready to bite someone.
“Nothing,” she complained. “Just stupid stuff.”
It was not stupid stuff. My stomach hadn’t felt so knotted since I first heard Anton was on 4chan. That turned out to be a plant. This might not. Rumors were rife in the high school about Anton Thooft and kids. He was a little too interested in them. Ella had been a prime target because she knew him in his personal life and spent time in his apartment.
“Ella?” Mr. McWilliams looked like his stomach was in knots, too.
“No, Dad.” Ella did the hardest and longest eye roll I’d ever witnessed. “He didn’t do anything to me. There’s no way.”
“You’re sure?”
“Like I wouldn’t know. I’m not an idiot, Dad. I’d know if some guy tried to diddle me. Jeez.”
Her dad’s shoulders relaxed. “Thank God for that. Does that answer your question, Miss Watts?”
“Not really,” I said. “Where’d that rumor come from?”
“I don’t know,” said Ella. “It started going around right after he died.”
“What did they say?”
She pursed her lips and thought about it. “Just that he was doing too much tutoring and meeting kids in coffee shops next to hotels. Stuff like that. It was stupid.”
“That’s not true,” said Mr. McWilliams. “Anton tutored in the school library or the hotel if it was being used.”
I raised an eyebrow and Moe asked, “Somebody let their kid get tutored by a guy in a hotel?”
“It’s not like that. It’s the post hotel, right down the road from the school. People use the breakfast room for all kinds of stuff, book clubs, meetings. It’s convenient and has free coffee. Ella got her French tutoring there because nobody wants to come all the way out to Waldenbuch to tutor.”