“Wait.” She put her sandwich down. “What are you talking about, eight nights of Advent? It’s four weeks of Advent.”
He was getting testy. “I told you I’m not in church much! Don’t ask me about the minutiae. Ask my grandmother!”
She wanted to say more. Instead Dinah picked up her sandwich. “Thank you for lunch. Brew City Subs is one of my favorites.”
The small talk continued to skirt the topic of candles and ornaments as they finished eating. None of the elderly ladies were back yet. Dinah wanted badly to scavenge the attic but still felt the reluctance of her place. This home didn’t belong to her. And she’d promised she’d keep an eye on the house until the window was covered. Tough to do if she were in the attic.
There was plenty to keep her occupied. Helen had placed the clean ornaments in a box used to ship oranges, and Dinah carried it to the living room. She bullied Mick into helping her with the Christmas tree stand. He complained about scratches from the branches and crooked trunks but when he finished, the tree stood in dignified splendor. Without another word he disappeared upstairs. Dinah assumed he would be gone for some time, but before she could dab ointment on her own spruce-inflicted scratches, Mick clattered down the stairs and Dinah met him in the hall. He was a mess. Cobwebs coated his hair and his face was smudged. But he brandished a small packing crate.
“Found it.” The packing crate had no lid, but its contents were wrapped in a blanket. At least it resembled a blanket. The coating of dust made it impossible to determine fabric or color. Mick reached inside, but Dinah squawked and dragged him to the front porch before he or the box could deposit any more dust in the house.
“What is it?” Dinah asked, peering over his arm as he folded back the blanket.
“The Advent candleholder, of course.”
He pulled it out with great panache. The candleholder was brass; its base resembled a bell. Atop this was mounted a section shaped like the bottom half of a neatly cut daisy, and marching along the top were small cups, four on each side flanking a slightly elevated one in the center. “See? Our Advent candleholder.”
Dinah, with growing comprehension, once again held her tongue. Not her house, not her history. “What was your great-grandmother Wagner’s maiden name?”
“Nice non sequitur. Still, I can’t believe I know the answer to that. It was Mikkelson. I’m named in her honor, you could say.”
“And you remember her?”
“I do. She died when I was a kid, at a very ripe age, because she was born in 1902. Emigrated from Europe with her sister soon after the First World War.”
Dinah’s mind whirled with at least a half dozen questions she wanted to ask but shouldn’t. If she could sit on her tongue she would have done so. Mick saved her the agony.
“Can you excuse me a minute? I want to call Grandmother with a couple of questions.” At her nod he went into the house.
Dinah waited on the porch. Mick returned in moments, looking perplexed.
“This is the holder, all right, and she says she remembers the bright-colored candles. But she was only continuing her mother’s tradition. That’s who told Grandmother it was for Advent. A few years after my great-grandmother died, the store of candles ran out and Grandmother let the practice die out, too. She’s thought of it from time to time but didn’t remember where the candleholder was stored. Her main concern was that the candle wax didn’t damage the ornaments. They belonged to her father, Walter, and he loved them.”
Dinah started.
“No, not those. She described some of these.” He pointed at the orange box filled with the luminous ornaments. “Even though they never set up a tree, she told me her father kept them in a bowl on the sideboard. When I described them, she recalled admiring the shapes and colors. She said nothing about our other nasty little find. I’ll bet she never set eyes on them. If she did, she would have ground them under her heel. She hated Nazis as much as her mother did and wouldn’t have taken the time to check if they were actually in honor of some ancient religious symbol.”
Mick started to shake out the blanket on the porch, took one look at Dinah’s obvious horror, and ran it around the corner. When he returned to tuck it around the candleholder, she couldn’t see any discernible difference. Gray dust still coated it. “Grandmother does want to see this before I show it to anyone else, though. Excuse me again, please.”
Dinah waited while Mick stashed the crate in his car, hoping he would find something less dust-infused to protect the candleholder. She wanted to discuss it with him. “Mick.” She hesitated, then plunged in. “I’m pretty certain that candleholder is a menorah. Used at Chanukah. And so were the candles.”
7
Mick stroked his chin but didn’t look as skeptical as Dinah thought he would. “Chanukah is the festival of lights celebrating an ancient victory in Israel. Right? There was some miraculous oil that kept burning…miraculously?” He paused. “It would explain a lot. Except those swastika ornaments. What explains those?”
That one Dinah couldn’t answer. A black luxury car pulled into the driveway. A handsome, middle-aged man leapt out and nodded toward Dinah and Mick as he rounded the car to open the passenger door. Helen emerged, holding onto his arm. Dinah assumed this was her son, the state Supreme Court candidate. Helen’s beauty was reproduced here in masculine lines. If a justice could be elected based on outward appearance, Judge Konig would win by a landslide. He kissed his mother, nodded again toward the porch, and pulled away with the purr of a powerful, well-behaved engine.
Helen watched her son drive away before turning to greet them, pride lingering on her face. “I didn’t expect you both to be here. Not that it isn’t a lovely day to be outdoors. We’re hoping that people will be in the Christmas spirit in spite of the unseasonable temperatures.”
Mick said he was going down to the hardware store to get lumber and nails to cover the broken window opening. He flashed Dinah an apologetic grin. “Would you mind following through on that window replacement?” He dug out his wallet and handed her a credit card. “Use this.” His smile was winsome as he gave her back the slip of paper with the phone number of the salvage yard. “And this. Sorry, I guess I got distracted and forgot to call.”
It was a good thing Helen, poised at the door listening, couldn’t read Dinah’s mind. The woman would be shocked at the unladylike names running through it. This was the side of Mick he’d never lavished on Dinah in their grade school days. But the “charm the girls into submission” aspect to his nature was as bad as the mocking and derisive one. Telling herself she was doing this for the society and not Mick, Dinah placed the call. Yes, they had that window in stock—at cost that shocked her—and could deliver it to the Wagner House before noon tomorrow. They would text her with arrival time. With a shrug that would have impressed Mick, Dinah gave them his credit card information.
The call to the caterers was reassuring. Plum puddings and stuffed olives, sweet potato puffs and spiced applesauce, marmalades, and mince pies would all be ready by the reception next Saturday.
“They were waiting for confirmation. It’s a good thing we called,” she told Helen, who, after assigning the newly arrived Listers the task of washing the china, came into the dining room as Dinah ended the call. “I took a chance and asked if the servers at the opening night wouldn’t mind wearing the type of wait-staff uniforms common in that era.” She added, suddenly shy at her presumption, “I think I can get a variety of sizes from the drama department at the community college. They put on a musical from the thirties last year and one of the dance numbers took place in a restaurant.”
Helen’s smile encouraged her.
“While they don’t do Christmas cookies, they gave me the number of a bakery and recommend it highly for the open houses.”
“You are a wonder, dear.” Helen sat at the polished mahogany table and took a stack of linens from a box. “No, you needn’t help fold these. I’m sure you’d do a perfectly fine job, but this is a task I lo
ve.”
Dinah watched Helen fold the poinsettia-bordered napkins into perfectly shaped pyramids. This seemed as good a time as any to broach a topic that kept tickling the edges of her brain. “Helen, can I ask you about the Wagners?”
“Certainly.”
“This is called the Wagner House and Miriam’s parents, the Wagners, built it. Since Miriam was married, why is she still Miriam Wagner? Did some women keep their maiden names?”
“Not in my day.” Helen smoothed a napkin and then smoothed it again. “Miriam married a second cousin once removed. Also a Wagner. Her father rejoiced that the family name would be carried from his bloodline, because Miriam was an only child. Her husband was perfectly happy to live in this home.”
“I don’t blame him.”
“Miriam has several children, and many grandchildren, but Michael was the first male, and the house is meant to go to the eldest male Wagner. So he is the legal beneficiary.” Helen glanced up. “And he’s done the family name proud.”
Dinah preferred to skip the topic of Mick Wagner. “You knew the family well?”
“Oh, yes. Our families were friends. My husband knew the Wagners because he grew up in the home where we live now.” Her gaze was far away. “Ralph did odd jobs for Miriam’s father. They got along almost like father and son. But I didn’t know Ralph before we met at summer camp—” She stopped abruptly. “Oh dear, oh dear.”
Dinah looked at her in alarm. “Helen? Mrs. Konig? Are you all right?”
“Certainly.” The older woman snapped, but subsided abruptly. “Forgive me. That irritation was for myself. I was going to pick up a needle for the record player. It slipped my mind.”
“I thought there was going to be a pianist for the reception.” Dinah wanted to tell Helen her idea to string popcorn and cranberries in the kitchen and use wireless technology to play music through the radio. However, the older woman again seemed irritated.
“I am aware of that. But someone donated old Christmas records. The kind with only a single song on each side. They haven’t been around for decades.”
Dinah was familiar with 78-speed-records, but this didn’t seem the time to tell Helen so.
“Winter Wonderland is on one of them. I’m sure the record is almost priceless. The song was released in the thirties.” The napkin she’d just folded must not have met her approval because Helen snapped it open and started over. “That gave us our theme. Of course, we assumed there would be snow by now.” She stopped, and examined Dinah’s face. “You’ve done enough for today. The girls and I can wait for Michael to come board up the window.”
“All right. Could you tell him the replacement window should be here in the morning and give him back his credit card?” Dinah fished it out of her pocket. “The salvage yard gives first choice to homes listed on a national register, and thankfully, this is one.”
“Yes. I’m the one who convinced Miriam to register it.” Helen continued to flaunt her easily ruffled feathers. The elegant old hands remained tensed as she smoothed a napkin. “Will you be able to stop by tomorrow?”
“Of course.” Dinah sounded cooler than she intended. She wasn’t certain what precipitated this low-level bout of irritation. “Can I take a few more photos before I go?”
“Naturally.” Helen’s grace succeeded prickliness with dizzying speed. “I look forward to seeing your work.”
Dinah took pictures of the tree in its new base and of Helen folding napkins. But she really wanted photos of the attic. The ladder was still in place. These wouldn’t go on social media since that would violate privacy. She moved quietly since Helen might not approve of her being in this off-limits area without Mick. But the attic caught her imagination.
Sun filtered the dust in shafts and Dinah took panoramic shots and wide-angle ones and closeups. All too soon, the sun slipped away from the windows, and she stood in a gloomy, vaguely forbidding area. Still silent, she crept down the ladder and made sure she’d carried no dust or cobwebs with her. She found a vacuum in the large hall closet and cleaned the mess around the ladder, in the bedroom, and the hallway.
Back downstairs, Dinah tried to remember where she’d set her purse. It wasn’t in the kitchen and neither were the Listers. Voices came from the front of the house. One was Helen, the other unfamiliar. She didn’t want to snoop but was quite certain her purse was still in the living room.
A man came out of the dining room as she headed down the hall toward the front of the house. For a moment, he was visible only in silhouette. The light from the broken window outlined him. He was tall and straight and moved toward her with a brisk step. Helen followed him out of the dining room into the hallway, and introduced him as her husband, Ralph.
While the years sat well on Helen’s classic bone structure, this man seemed ageless. Pewter gray hair, thick and perfectly groomed, topped a square face with only a hint of jowl. Eyes still bright blue twinkled from under thick brows. His skin, even in December, had the color of a man who spent time outdoors every day. He reached to take her hand and the grip of his pleasantly dry fingers was firm.
“You’re the talented young lady rescuing my wife’s pet project! What a delight to meet you. I’m familiar with your family, of course. Helmut Braun and I were in the German-American Club together.”
“My grandfather’s older brother.”
“Of course. I’m acquainted with others of your family, but why should I bore you with a list of people you already know? You favor the Braun side of the family. A very attractive people and you are the epitome of Braun beauty.”
Direct compliments could be unnerving, but this man was so charming, so lacking in superficial suavity, and so utterly devoid of wolfish undertones, that Dinah could accept his admiration without embarrassment. “How kind of you to say. It’s delightful to meet you.”
She turned to Helen, who was leaning on his arm. The strain was still on her face but so was adoration for her charismatic husband.
“I vacuumed up the dust from our trip to the attic.”
“I told you she was almost too good to be true,” Helen told Ralph, and then there seemed nothing to say.
Dinah nodded another farewell to Helen, retrieved her purse, and went home.
Her apartment was small and old but full of character and so safe that her parents didn’t worry. Best of all, if she stood on a chair, she could catch a glimpse of Lake Michigan out her front window. She loaded the photos onto her laptop and surveyed them critically. Her skill level was improving but still decidedly amateur. With a bit of artistic editing the pictures would be nice additions to the website. Maybe she could do a fake falling snow effect for the exterior ones.
Not until she finished editing and uploading website photos did she allow herself to work on the attic shots. She lightened, enhanced, and upped contrast. Something seemed disproportionate. Only after zooming in and out could she identify the difference. Boards had been nailed between the rafters that sloped from ceiling to floor, presumably covering insulation. But along one section of the rear wall the boards were at a less acute angle. The gradient changed gradually so that the bottom board ended several inches ahead of its neighbors at floor level. Dinah frowned. It wasn’t noticeable when one panned the large space from the inside, and she doubted it had been noticeable until they’d shifted all those trunks and furniture.
Not her house. Not her attic. But she was curious. The Wagner House was a catalogue kit home—built to exact specifications. This was just…off.
She could ask Helen. But it wasn’t Helen’s home any more than it was hers. She’d tell Mick. It was probably nothing. Or maybe it was a secret room. A shiver of sheer delight engulfed Dinah even as logic told her it would be a very small room indeed.
Sunset was hours ago, but it was only seven thirty when Dinah shut down the computer. She stood and stretched. The sandwich from Mick was long gone. Her refrigerator held raw carrots she’d planned to cook because it boosted their nutritional value, some apples she’d pick
ed at an organic orchard that were going soft, and a drier-than-dirt chicken breast she’d overcooked in an attempt to avoid contracting salmonella.
But her mother was making chicken pot pie, and her chicken was always cooked to perfection. And she’d used her apples for apple crisp. Dinah called her mom who told her that yes, they’d already eaten and yes, there were leftovers, and since they hadn’t seen Dinah since church Sunday, they’d love her to come for dinner and watch cheesy television Christmas movies.
It was almost eight when, heading home, she turned onto the street that led past the Wagner House. At first she couldn’t locate it. The front light was off. That was unusual. Austerity measures of the previous decades meant only every other street light was lit. The Wagner House sat in a pool of dark. Dinah slowed and angled toward the driveway. Her headlights illumined the gaping hole in the front window. Mick hadn’t even bothered to board up the opening? Her frustration mounted, and she pulled into the driveway, left her headlights on, and flew up the front sidewalk.
A piece of plywood was tossed on the bushes, crushing several large Christmas bulbs beneath it. Frustration turned to concern. Mick had boarded it up.
It was too dark for her to see anything inside. Dinah dithered, an unusual activity for her. She was perfectly aware what awaited young women who entered dark houses by themselves. But she didn’t want the police called to the address for the second time in one day. Publicity would be horrific. She’d call Mick but didn’t have his number. Could she hope Helen was home and explain without alarming the older woman? The day’s events had been stressful enough.
With no intention of leaving or waiting on the dark front porch, Dinah decided the wisest option would be to sit in her car and figure out who to call. With doors locked and headlights on, of course. She turned, and was grabbed roughly from behind.
8
“Hold it!”
Christmas Passed Page 4