Mean Evergreen (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Twelve)

by A W Hartoin

  Moe and Grandma ran down the whole case for Isolda once the restaurant settled down to their respective dinners and she became as somber as I felt.

  “Can you get it back?” she asked.

  “I don’t see how,” I said. “She lost it all. We’re just trying to figure out how.”

  Moe cracked his knuckles and said, “That boyfriend of hers is behind it. He got her to do it and then cooked up the plan to kidnap Mercy to make up the loss.”

  Isolda’s eyes went wide and she reached for my hand. “Do you really think so?”

  “The dates line up. The money was lost and then Madison started asking for more hours at work. She started blackmailing Anton and stopped the extra work.”

  “She thought a payday was coming in,” said Isolda. “Do you think that she would’ve given the money back to her mother?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t thought about it.”

  “She did try to sell her purse,” said Grandma.

  “Maybe she needed to give the money to the boyfriend,” said Moe.

  “There’s no way of knowing until we ask her,” I said.

  The three of them got bright-eyed.

  “When will you do that?” Isolda asked.

  I took a big drink of an excellent primitivo and said, “When we know where the money went. I want all that info before I confront her.”

  “Tomorrow?” Grandma asked reluctantly.

  “Probably. Depending on how much Novak can work. He’s got a bit of a headache and I didn’t want him working at all, but he’s a dog with a bone. He can’t let go until he’s got the answer.”

  “My kind of guy,” said Moe. “But let’s talk about something else. Mercy needs a different puzzle to think about.”

  “Do I though?” I asked.

  He shot me a look and I clammed up.

  “So Isolda, I’m fascinated by the research you’re doing,” he said.

  Oh, that puzzle. On board.

  “I had no idea that you thought your father was German,” I said.

  “Well, it’s something I haven’t wanted to talk about,” said Isolda. “But I’m getting up there now and it’s time to know the truth if it can be known.”

  “Who told you he was German?” Moe asked.

  “My mother did. She was dying and…” Isolda’s voice got thick and throaty.

  Grandma gave her a hug and said, “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

  Isolda took a breath and a good slug of wine before smiling. “I want to. It’s just that you’re the first people I’ve discussed it with.”

  “Really?” I asked. “What about The Girls? You could tell them.”

  “Oh, my dear, they have such guilt about it I’ve never wanted to make them feel worse.”

  “Why would they?” Moe asked. “It’s not their fault.”

  “Of course not, but Nicolai and Florence always blamed themselves for my mother’s disappearance. They never got over it, especially Florence. She felt she’d let the family down and my mother, in particular. It’s ridiculous, but that’s how she felt.”

  “Why is it ridiculous?” I asked, garnering a sharp look from Grandma. “I’m not accusing Florence of neglect or anything, but ridiculous is a strong word.”

  Isolda smiled at me and squeezed my hand. “Because Florence wasn’t at fault. My mother wasn’t kidnapped. She wasn’t lost or confused. She knew exactly what she was doing. Almost everyone at the mansion was sick, my mother saw her chance and she took it. In her words, she escaped.”

  Imelda lay on her deathbed in the Bled Mansion when she made her confession. It happened in my bedroom in my bed. Information I totally could’ve done without. I hope they changed the mattress. That’s not a lot better, but I’m going to say it is.

  Isolda thought her mother was in a coma. She had been for several days and the doctors didn’t expect her to last the night and she didn’t. But Imelda did wake up to everyone’s surprise at eight in the evening and told everyone but her daughter to leave the room. They did and that’s when in a hoarse whisper she told Isolda what she’d done.

  It was love, she said, and regretted nothing, least of all Isolda, her beloved only child. She claimed to have met a German prisoner of war and they had fallen madly in love, emphasis on the madly part, in my opinion. We were at war, for crying out loud. But that didn’t matter to Imelda. Her beloved was perfect and beautiful. He thought the same of her. That’s what she said anyway.

  I didn’t know that there were German prisoners of war in Missouri, but apparently there were several camps and one of them was at Jefferson Barracks, where her beloved was imprisoned. Isolda asked how they met and her mother said that he was a bricklayer and mason and the camp was fairly loose about the prisoners, allowing them to work. Some helped farmers and others were living on riverboats and repairing the levees. He had been doing that for a time before being sent to Jefferson Barracks where he was put on a detail, tuckpointing the brick buildings and shoring up foundations. Later, he was sort of rented out with other POWs to work on businesses around St. Louis. Imelda didn’t say which ones, but Isolda assumed that the Bled Brewery was on the list.

  The two lovers met as often as possible and wrote almost every day. Imelda’s caretaker Rose was in on it. She mailed and received letters for Imelda. Rose didn’t know that her charge planned on running off. They had cooked up a plan and when Imelda saw the flu showing up in the house, she sent a letter for him to escape, which he did. Then on the day that Rose got ill, she simply walked out the door while everyone was busy. He was waiting for her on the corner next to the gatehouse and off they went.

  Imelda told her daughter it was the best time of her life. They traveled around the country, seeing the Grand Canyon and San Francisco, but it couldn’t last and Imelda always knew that. She would have a downturn eventually and she did. It happened in New York City and it was bad. She’d found out she was pregnant and that might have been the trigger. Imelda knew her illness well enough to know that certain things set her off. Pregnancy would fit the bill with the excitement and stress of being on the run. To make matters worse, someone had heard them talking at their hotel and they realized he was German. He’d been careful the whole time to let Imelda do the talking in public, but the cops were alerted and came looking for him.

  Imelda tearfully told of their parting. She had to go home and be cared for. He said he would try to get back to Germany to help his family. He left minutes before the authorities arrived. Imelda convinced them that she didn’t know any Germans. How could she? It was ridiculous. They were persuaded to believe her even though she was currently in a mental ward because they didn’t know she was pregnant at the time. She didn’t reveal that until she was back in St. Louis safe and sound and she never told anyone until the night of her death what really happened.

  “Why not?” Grandma asked. “He was long gone. They weren’t going to catch him.”

  “Yes, but the war was intensifying. Having an affair with a German would’ve been a scandal for the family and Florence already felt bad enough.”

  “And there was you,” said Moe. “She made you a Bled, not a child of a Nazi.”

  Isolda nodded. “My mother suffered greatly with her illness. I saw it all my life, but she was a kind, thoughtful person. She thought it through. She protected me.”

  I’d stayed quiet throughout her story and it was plausible, I guess. Imelda did disappear. She did turn up pregnant. It happened.

  “What did they do for money?” Grandma asked.

  Isolda shook her head and chuckled, “Well, my mother took quite a bit with her. She’d been saving up her pin money and she wasn’t a prisoner. Some of the newspapers acted like she was, but she did go out shopping and dancing. She was very pretty with those blue eyes and lovely legs. When she went to restaurants, she said men always wanted to buy her dinner or a drink. She’d ask for money from her trust and got it, but she didn’t spend it. She had it hidden under
her bed, taped to the headboard.”

  “She was a thinker,” said Moe.

  Isolda teared up again. “She was and such fun when she was well.”

  “How did you end up here?” Grandma asked. “Do you have a lead?”

  “I do. I got all the POW records and I started going through them, cross-referencing with the men who were on the prisoner boats and by occupation. There were 400 men at Jefferson Barracks and a few did escape, only to be brought back later. Some were gone for months before being recaptured.”

  “All of them were recaptured?” Moe asked.

  “Yes and when the war was over they were returned to Germany.”

  “Imelda never heard from him again?” Grandma asked.

  “No. She never did. She told me she thought he probably did get back to Germany and died during the war. She didn’t think anything but death could keep him from her.”

  We sat in silence for a moment and the owner brought our food. I got a wild boar goulash with wonderful house-made pasta. I lost myself in it for a while and then found a way to ask the question that had been percolating in the back of my mind. “What was his name?”

  “Oh,” said Isolda. “Didn’t I say?”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “It was Jens.”

  I set down my fork. “But that wasn’t his real name.”

  Isolda’s mouth dropped open and then she said, “How did you know that?”

  I told her about The Klinefeld Group’s odd use of the name Jens Waldemar Hoff as a kind of cover for different men through different generations.

  “Does your father know about this?” Grandma asked.

  “Mom does.”

  Her pretty face darkened. “Then that’s the way we’ll keep it.”

  “Excellent,” I said. “So, Isolda, what reason did he give for not using his real name?”

  Isolda reached down and picked up her purse, a big one, the kind moms liked to carry so they can have an arsenal of crap with them at all times. In her case, it was an arsenal of information. She pulled out a fat file folder and laid it on the table. “He said it was to protect her in case they were caught. She could say she didn’t know who he was.”

  “And she couldn’t put them on his trail if he got away,” said Moe.

  “That’s not the way she thought about it, but I suppose so,” said Isolda. “Do you think that my father might have been someone from that group? The same group that sued The Girls over the collection?”

  “It could be a coincidence,” I said.

  “But you don’t think so.”

  “Coincidences aren’t big with me. What’s with the file?”

  “I was going to hire you to find him,” said Isolda. “Get a professional on the job. I knew you would keep it quiet.”

  Moe turned to Grandma and said, “Pay up.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, you greedy buzzard.” Grandma slapped twenty euro in his palm. Being super gracious, Moe kissed the bill, snapped it straight a couple of times, and then put it in his wallet.

  “Thank you very much,” he said. “Nice doing business with you.”

  “You can still hire me,” I said. “I’ll do my best.”

  She handed me the folder. “This is everything I have, but now I’m wondering if it’s worthless. He might not have been a prisoner at all.”

  “Fats told me about this group,” said Moe. “I didn’t know it went that far back though.”

  “Neither did I, but there were some break-ins in the 1940s that I think were them,” I said.

  Isolda shook her head and then ordered another bottle of wine. “I knew about them, of course, but I didn’t know how bad it was until Lester was killed. To think my father…”

  Grandma sniffed and said, “I hate to say this, Isolda, but maybe he was pulling her leg on the German thing.”

  “No. I’m sure she was right. Positive, in fact,” said Isolda.

  “How?” I asked.

  “I had my DNA done. I’m half German. Whatever he lied about he didn’t lie about that.”

  DNA. Yes. Thank you.

  “Did you do it privately?” I asked. Please say no.

  “I did an Ancestry kit on a whim and lo and behold sixty-two percent German,” she said.

  Ancestry. Sweet.

  “Sixty-two?” Moe asked.

  “I have some German from several ancestors on the Bled side,” said Isolda.

  “Can I have the folder?” I asked.

  “Certainly.” She handed it over and I opened it to see a list of German prisoners of war.

  “Do you have anything on your mother’s disappearance?”

  She reached in the purse and came out with another folder, not as fat but good-sized. “I do. I’ve got all the news coverage. Honestly, I didn’t realize what big deal it was until I saw the headlines. There were articles in the New York Times and the San Francisco Bee.”

  “There was a big reward,” said Moe.

  “How did you know?” Isolda asked.

  “My grandpa got pulled in over it.”

  “No!”

  Moe smiled. “He had associations.”

  “The Fibonaccis?”

  “You got it.”

  The two old folks looked at each other and then smiled.

  “Looks like we have a history we didn’t even know about,” said Isolda. “I’m sorry about your grandfather.”

  “He was a rough customer so he was okay.”

  They started talking about the kidnapping, or rather the escape as Imelda put it, and I went through the second file. Plenty of newsprint and lots of photos of the pretty Imelda. She looked a lot like Stella, although not quite as delicate looking as the spy, but they both had the Bled eyes, high cheekbones, and small pouty mouths.

  Moe leaned over and gave out a whistle. “What a looker.”

  “Too bad I didn’t take after her in the looks department,” said Isolda.

  “You do,” I said. “You’ve got the eyes.”

  “I do, but the rest is him, whoever he is.”

  “He was a big guy,” said Moe.

  She nodded. “Over six foot and very strong, but she said he was very gentle with her. Mercy?”

  I looked up from the newsprint. “Yes?”

  “I think it was real. He might’ve connected with my mother to get entrance to the Bled Mansion, but something else happened when he did. I’d like to know why he never came back.”

  Probably not the reason you think.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “Tiny’s heading the new DNA stuff for my dad. He’s got a head for it and he’ll be a big help.”

  “Oh, your cousin. I forgot he’s working on that. The Girls told me. They called it reverse-engineering the bloodlines for all those adopted babies.”

  “That’s a great way to start,” I said. “Did you get matches in Ancestry?”

  “I don’t know. I just got the profile before we came,” said Isolda. “There could be matches. It’s so exciting.”

  We went back to eating and then ordered dessert. Tiramisu. It had to happen. Isolda insisted on a dessert wine and also cappuccinos. The three of them talked about the DNA and family history. Midnight trips to Steak-n-Shake and skating at Steinberg. Drive-in movies and sledding on Art Hill. They hadn’t known each other growing up, but it seemed like they had been within arm’s length their whole lives.

  I went through everything Isolda had on her mother’s disappearance and the German POWs, although that was probably a no-go. Then I circled back around. I’d seen something. Familiar. A face. I smiled.

  There you are. Just where I knew you’d be.

  “Isolda?” I asked.

  She set down her coffee cup and wiped tears from her eyes from all the laughter. “Yes, dear.”

  I turned the news story from the Post-Dispatch around and pointed at the face of a police officer standing guard in front of the Bled Mansion. “Do you recognize him?”

  She looked and then got out her reading
glasses, red with lots of bling. “Let me see. No, I don’t think so. Who is he?”

  “Grandma?” I gave the paper to her and she borrowed Isolda’s glasses.

  “Would you look at that,” she said. “It’s Elijah. You were right, Mercy. Look at that.”

  “Who is it?” Isolda asked, and I watched her closely in case she tried to fudge the truth, but I got nothing off her but curiosity.

  “Elijah Watts,” said Grandma. “Ace’s father.”

  “Of course, it is.” She threw up her hands. “I should’ve recognized him.”

  “You knew him?” I asked.

  “Well, yes,” said Isolda. “Ace’s father was lovely.”

  “How did you know him?” Grandma asked. “From this? The kidnapping.”

  “Florence talked about him. The wonderful policeman who was so kind when it was all happening. Elijah Watts. He came to guard the house in case someone came for The Girls and he was so nice, they requested he stay until the whole thing was over.” She wrinkled her nose. “Some of the other policemen weren’t so kind because my mother was ill. They thought she killed herself and they wanted to stop looking. Elijah was a great favorite.”

  The first favorite.

  “And you knew that was Ace’s dad?” I asked.

  “Well, yes. Shouldn’t I have?” she asked.

  “Not really,” said Grandma. “I just never heard anything about him knowing the Bleds.”

  “The way Florence and The Girls told it he was very gentle and quiet. I don’t think he would’ve talked about the family out of turn,” said Isolda.

  “You’re right about that,” said Grandma. “He would’ve considered it bragging.”

  “What about when Grandad got to know the Bleds?” I asked. “What did he think about that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. He didn’t say anything about it to me. Ace might not have told him.”

  “Elijah knew all about it,” said Isolda.