by Vreni Fox
I stood in front of Moritz Mahler’s Hotel room, gathering my courage. I wasn’t truly afraid of him; he wasn’t much bigger than I was and I felt safe in the hotel, but I knew in my heart that I would only get one chance to do this right.
I was never a confrontational person by nature. I had a tendency to try to smooth things over, even when it was obvious that I was being taken advantage of by someone. That’s how I got myself into this situation in the first place… I let Mandy Unterwegs bully me.
The more I investigated the matter, however, the more apparent it became that I wasn’t the only one letting Mandy treat me like a door mat. This girl had been all over town extorting money from honest business people, insulting people who took pride in their work, stealing hand made goods from people who spent hours working, and even threatening people with false police accusations.
The entire village of Drachenfels was full of people who had very good reasons to dislike her, but I found it hard to believe that any of my neighbors -- people I had known my entire life -- were capable of hurting her.
Everything I had learned about Mandy had led me to this door, but I didn’t feel confident that I had the right man. Was Moritz Mandy’s murderer or was he another one of her victims? Or was he her accomplice? Any of these scenarios still seemed very possible to me.
At any rate, I knew that even if Moritz wasn’t the murderer, he had information that I needed.
I hated the idea of accusing an innocent man with very little evidence, but the official investigation was going nowhere. If I kept sitting at home waiting for something to happen, I was going to end up in prison. I knew from the orbuculum that my loved ones were in danger and my family recipe book was gone. It was time for me to act.
I took a deep breath, knocked on the door, and waited.
No answer.
I knocked again.
Still no answer.
Now this was frustrating. I knew that Moritz kept a low profile at night; no one ever mentioned seeing him in either of Drachenfels’ two night time hang out spots. I had assumed that meant that he holed up in his room at night, but maybe I was wrong.
I knocked again anyway, since I didn’t know what else to do at that point. I wasn’t ready to give up, but I couldn’t confront Moritz if he just wasn’t there.
“Brunhilde?”
I was caught off guard by someone addressing me from behind.
“Moritz!”
I spun around to find myself face to face with Moritz, who was wearing nothing but a fluffy white bathrobe and a pair of green plastic shower shoes.
“I was just looking for you!”
I had meant to sound as tough as possible when confronting him, but he managed to sneak up on me unawares. Also he looked kind of silly with no clothes on. I couldn’t go full bad cop against a man in a bathrobe and flip flops.
“Really?” he sounded surprised. “Well, okay, I was just at the sauna. This place has a really nice spa.”
“Yeah, it’s great,” my plan to intimidate him into spilling his guts was fizzling out. “I got a gift certificate for a day pass for my birthday last year. It was super relaxing.”
Great, now I was somehow making small talk with this guy instead of making a murder accusation. How was I even going to get this conversation back on track?
“I guess you can come in then,” he said, opening his door. “Just let me grab some clothes and get dressed.”
“Thanks Moritz. I’ll just take a seat--”
“Don’t touch that!” Moritz dashed across the room to grab the laundry out of my hands.
I had planned to just clear off a space on the bed to sit down but Moritz practically shoved me aside and carefully rebuilt the nest he had formed of dirty laundry on his bed.
“You can just sit on that chair if you need a place to sit,” he indicated the chair at the desk, which was also draped with laundry, his voice much colder than it had been just a minute ago.
I didn’t bother to ask if it was okay if I moved the dirty clothes off the back of the chair before I sat down. I just took a seat and tried not to touch them.
“I’m going to get some pants on,” Moritz looked me over. “Please try not to touch anything at all. I have everything… very carefully organized.”
“Okay,” I indicated that I wouldn’t touch a thing by raising my hands.
Moritz left me alone in the room for a second and I took the opportunity to glance around.
It definitely did not look like he had everything very carefully organized.
The piles of clothes and handbags and stuff were still everywhere. I could also see moldy food and several empty bottles of Club Mate. Worst of all, the room stank. I could still smell what I assumed was Mandy’s perfume, plus what was now a much stronger odor of sweat, and something sickly sweet.
I desperately wanted to open a window but I was afraid that Moritz would get upset so I just tried to visualize open meadows and ocean breezes until he returned.
“So what is it?” Moritz asked, emerging from the bathroom wearing jeans and a thin, navy blue V neck T shirt. “That you needed to talk to me about? That was so important that it couldn’t wait until tomorrow?” He sat across from me on the clear space in the bed where I presume he slept at night.
This was it. My big moment. I summoned my courage and stared directly at him, trying to look tough.
“I know what you did, Moritz.”
Moritz stared back at me with a blank expression on his face.
“Okay?” he prompted as though waiting for me to continue.
This wasn’t going as smoothly as I had hoped.
“I know about the pictures,” I tried another tack.
Moritz’s face dropped in alarm. Bingo. Got him.
“Hundreds of them, maybe thousands. I saw them.”
A cloud passed over Moritz’s expression. “I knew it,” he finally answered. “I knew that someone was in here, touching her things. At first I thought it was the maids, looking for something to steal. Chantal had a lot of nice things. Then I stopped letting the maids in the room and it happened again. I knew it had to be someone who was obsessed with her. I thought it was that thug Detlef. I never would have guessed you,” he shook his head in disbelief.
“I had no choice. I had to find out what you did to her. Especially after you stole my book.”
“What I did to her?” Moritz was clearly shocked. His brows raised and his back tensed. “What do you mean what I did to her? And what book?”
“My family recipe book, the one you grabbed from my kitchen. And Moritz, come on. We both know what you did. And I can’t say that I don’t have any sympathy for you. Mandy used you and led you on for years. I’m sure that it wasn’t easy for you. But there were other ways for you to solve your problems with her. Ways that didn’t involve dumping her body in my pig pen.”
“What the hell do you mean dumping her body?” Moritz leapt to his feet and I instinctively shrank back on my seat. “That’s a disgusting accusation. How dare you? I loved Chantal, and yes, we may have had our problems, but we were happy together. We had an arrangement that worked for us.”
“An arrangement?” I asked incredulous. “Was taking all of those pictures she didn’t know about part of your arrangement? Did she even know about this arrangement you supposedly had?”
Moritz moved closer to me and I could feel sweat prickling on the back of my neck. He was so angry that I was beginning to get scared that he would do something crazy.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about. No, okay, she didn’t know about some of the pictures. But I did it for her. I had to. Those pictures only made her brand hotter, plus, we needed the money. Chantal’s earnings went entirely to funding the lifestyle she portrayed on her Instagram. It’s not cheap living on permanent holiday and eating Insta worthy meals three times per day. She never even ate most of that stuff; she had to order it and then throw it out to maintain her weight. She did her best to get stuff comped, but she wasn’t always succes
sful. One of us had to make the money that paid our bills.”
Moritz ran his hand through his long hair and caught his breath.
“How did you even get into my computer? You know that’s illegal, right? I should call the cops right now. And you think that I stole your cookbook? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Why would I steal your cookbook?”
He kind of had a point there. Moritz was entirely human and there was no way for him to understand the value of my family recipe book. I was beginning to suspect that I may have had the wrong man.
“I just walked in,” I bluffed. “The room was open and you left your laptop open with your photo editing software. Moritz, that was not a healthy relationship. She treated you like crap and you obsessed over her. Did you hurt her?”
“I’m not going to tell you again. I lost everything when Chantal died. I lost my life partner, and I lost my career. I don’t even know what I’m going to do with my life now.”
“How did you lose your career? I thought that she was keeping all of her earnings.”
“That’s it,” Moritz sighed and sat back down on the bed, resigned. “The pictures you saw. My life’s work was photographing Chantal. You know about the Instagram. I spend countless hours helping her to perfect it, I’m sure you’re seen our work. But that’s not how I supported us. Those pictures you saw… that was my entire income.”
“What?” I just flat out did not understand what he was saying.
“Look, you know what a paparazzi is, right?”
“Like a skeezy photographer who shows up outside of restaurants and takes candid shots of celebrities trying to enjoy their private lives with their families?”
Moritz glared at me. “Yes. Something like that. Well, anyway, there are websites that pay for shots like that of internet celebrities. Instagram models, YouTube celebrities, there are gossip websites just about them and their fans eat that stuff up. They love it, especially embarrassing stuff. Remember I once told you that Chantal’s fans loved to see her fail? Well these ‘fan’ sites exist just to give people a glimpse into internet celebrities’ private lives, and the sites are willing to pay for candid shots. Not as much as real tabloids pay for shots of movie stars, but not exactly chump change either.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
I was speechless. I was beginning to think I understood what Moritz was telling me, but I waited for him to continue anyways.
Instead he just stared at me.
“So there you have it,” he finally broke the silence. “Now that Chantal’s gone, I’ve lost everything and I have no idea how I’m going to go on. I don’t even know where to go from here. I don’t know any other famous people, internet famous or otherwise. I’m all alone”
“Wait,” I stopped him. “Can we just backtrack here a little? I’m not one hundred percent sure that I’m following you. Your job was to photograph Chantal?”
“Yes.”
“But you made money selling pictures that she didn’t know about? Like, embarrassing pictures that she wouldn’t like?”
Moritz took a deep breath. “Yes. It sounds bad when you put it that way.”
“What way could I put it that sounded good?” I was skeptical and also more than a little disgusted on Chantal’s behalf.
“I sold intimate portraits of her to people who desperately wanted to get to know her better.”
“How intimate are we talking here? Like… intimate or like intimate-intimate?”
“Not that intimate,” Moritz assured me. “Well, not like intimate-intimate-intimate.”
“What does that even mean?”
“The most intimate was probably a nip slip. That was big money. Biiiiig money. Not easy to get a candid like that without her noticing though. It’s not often that one’s boob falls out of one’s clothing in public. I also got several of her at the beach adjusting her swimsuit so that her butt was visible.”
“Ew,” I couldn’t contain my contempt. Poor Chantal. As far as I could tell, she didn’t have a single person on Earth who didn’t mean her harm. “Why would you sell pictures like that of someone that you supposedly loved?”
“Because I wanted to be able to pay our electric bill?” Moritz snapped back. “Besides, she didn’t mind those ones so much. In fact, she secretly liked the ones that made her look good.”
“I take it there were others that she didn’t like?”
“There were,” Moritz admitted, “but she was too hard on herself. I think she looked cute in all of them. The ones that showed her vulnerabilities just served to humanize her.”
“What kind of pictures are we talking about here?”
“I’ll just show you.” Moritz sidled up to me and opened his laptop. He logged in and opened up an email account whose address seemed to be a random sequence of letters and numbers.
“Here,” he opened an email.
I could see that it was an invoice for five hundred euros and there was a photograph attached. It was Chantal walking down a city street holding a fancy iced coffee drink.
“She hated this kind of stuff,” Moritz pointed at the picture.
“Pictures of her buying coffee?” I couldn’t even see what was wrong with the picture.
“No,” Moritz pointed at the picture again, “this. The muffin top. This picture makes her look fat.”
I looked where he was pointing and noticed that the waistband of her jeans was squeezing her a little bit so her hips were pouring over the edge just a tiny amount.
“This one is a good one,” Moritz explained, “because she’s got this ice cream coffee drink and she’s looking a little chubby so the gossip sites can lead with headlines like ‘Is Mandy Unterwegs Letting Herself Go?’ and people like to click on that kind of stuff.”
“That’s ridiculous. She looks fine in this picture.”
The prospect of a horde of random strangers judging Mandy as too fat in this picture was making me self conscious. If she was fat, then I was a giantess.
“I know. But people like this stuff. And they’re willing to pay. Or here’s another one,” Moritz opened another email.
This one was an invoice for seven hundred and fifty euros. Attached was a photograph of Mandy Unterwegs exiting a taxi cab so that her underwear was visible.
“Ew, Moritz, this is so gross. How were you even taking and selling these pictures without her knowing it was you selling them? It had to be obvious to her, right?”
“Oh no,” Moritz boasted. “I had a whole system in place to keep her from figuring it out. I only ever snapped shots when there were other people with cameras out, plus, whenever possible, I took them from a distance or slightly obstructed so it wasn’t obvious that they were taken by someone close to her. She never even suspected me.”
I now completely believed that Moritz Mahler was innocent of Mandy Unterwegs’ murder. He may have been one of the most repulsive men I had ever met, and probably the worst boyfriend ever, but I didn’t think he was a murderer.
“Okay, Moritz, I get it,” I had seen enough. “I’m sorry that I thought that you murdered Chantal and stole my book. You two seemed to have some kind of weird codependency going on. I’m also sorry that you lost her.”
“It’s okay,” Moritz’s voice softened. “I know I probably seemed suspicious. Everyone seems suspicious right now. I thought it was you. Sorry to hear about your book. I’ll let you know if I see or hear anything about it.”
“Thanks Moritz. I’m going to head home for the night. Stay safe here; we’ve still got a murderer on the loose.”
I left Moritz to his own devices, probably to spend the evening editing creep shots of his deceased lover, and got back into my van.
I rested my head on my steering wheel and took a deep breath. Once again, I was back to square one. I’d eliminated my strongest suspect and now I was lost again.
Night had fallen and I was one day closer to losing everything. I was probably the most likely suspect in someone’s murder, my loved ones were in danger,
my book was gone, and my business was failing. And now, I had no idea what action I could possibly take in order to solve this thing and save my own butt.
I didn’t even have the energy to review my suspects again. None of them seemed like particularly strong leads; I just didn’t have enough evidence to pursue any of them. I also no longer had the energy. I felt like I had run into so many brick walls that I just didn’t have the fortitude to keep on trying.
I needed to get home and tell Pudding about my latest failure. At least he would probably be relieved that my career breaking and entering into Moritz’s room was over.
I pulled into my usual parking spot in front of my bakery and made note of Conrad’s bike, still parked in the same spot in front of Mitzi’s place. I could see the lights on in her bedroom window and I resisted any urge to imagine what was going on up there. I got a little bit of relief from the thought that, at least if someone did try to harm my uncle, he was currently under the protection of the strongest woman on the mountain. Maybe the strongest woman in Bavaria.
I got to my front door and my blood froze.
It was unlocked. Again.
I knew for a fact that this time I didn’t leave it unlocked myself. I had double and triple checked before I left, just to be safe. I didn’t want a repeat experience of the morning.
I hesitated in front of the door. What if the person who had unlocked my door was still inside? I was sure that it was the murderer. What more could he want from me, other than to stop my investigation? And what better way to get me to stop than to murder me too?
I waffled back and forth between feeling afraid and feeling angry. I didn’t want to get murdered, but I was outraged at the prospect of some jerk making me afraid to enter my own home and business. I contemplated calling Horst, but in the end I just couldn’t wait.
If the person was still inside, I’d try a binding spell to keep him there until the police arrived. If the person was gone, I needed to see what damage he’d done this time.
I let myself in, opening the door as slowly as possible to keep the jingle bells from alerting anyone of my presence. It felt like it took me an eternity to get the door closed silently.