Where the Bones are Buried

by Jeanne Matthews

  Dinah wasn’t at all sure the driver was crazy or drunk. What if he had been aiming at Swan and Margaret? That story about the tax cheat they had come to find—had they contacted him? Did he know when and where they would arrive? What if he had followed them from the airport? Their trip made no sense unless they had some idea of his whereabouts. It occurred to her that there might be a connection between the man they were after and the powwow Swan had mentioned. She cleared off a spot to set her wineglass, sat down at her computer, and logged on.

  The name Florian Farber, the man who collected Indian friends, had a Facebook page, but she couldn’t access it. She expanded her search to “American Indians and Germany.” The deluge of information astonished her. Evidently, Germans really were infatuated with American Indians. There were clubs, Wild West shows, books, magazines, study programs, dozens of powwows, and a profusion of Indian-inspired products for sale. Deerskin moccasins, turquoise jewelry, buffalo heads, sheets and towels printed with tribal symbols, and “authentic” hand-woven blankets. She put aside thoughts about the car attack and immersed herself in the Indian phenomenon.

  It all began with a German writer named Karl May. Between 1865 and 1874, while serving time in prison for theft and fraud, May read a lot of travel books about the American West and fantasized about its wide-open spaces and untamed landscape. He read James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales and adopted a romantic view of the red man. After his release, May published a number of novels that portrayed Indians as wise and compassionate people, innately noble and courageous, yet constantly assailed by enemies and intruders intent upon stealing their land. He wore a necklace of bear teeth and claimed that he had lived among the Indians of the Western Plains. As it turned out, he was a prodigious liar or, as some believed, a victim of associative personality disorder. He didn’t visit America until 1908, and never made it farther west than Massachusetts, but his books created the popular image of America in the minds of Germans and made “playing Indian” a deeply ingrained part of German culture.

  Despite May’s admitted fabrications, his novels sold over a hundred million copies and his fictional Apache Chief Winnetou became synonymous with virtue and heroism. In fact, he remained the quintessential German hero. According to what she was reading, this made-up Apache symbolized the very heart and soul of German identity. Over the years, his devotees had included Albert Einstein, Albert Schweitzer, Franz Kafka, and Adolph Hitler, who issued copies of May’s books to his troops for moral guidance in spite of Winnetou’s non-Aryan roots and pacifist leanings.

  Dinah could see that she had a good deal of cultural boning-up to do. It crossed her mind that the offer to teach at Humboldt University might have had more to do with her Seminole cheekbones than Thor’s connections or her sketchy credentials.

  Aphrodite emitted a wild, direful yowl. Dinah remembered that she hadn’t filled her food bowl this morning. She polished off her wine and scudded back through the living room. Aphrodite was lying on her side, pawing at something under the door. Dinah hoped it wasn’t a spider. She had been extra skittish since last week when a local supermarket descried a venomous Brazilian arachnid crawling out of a crate of bananas. The free exchange of poisonous insects was an aspect of globalization she disliked.

  “Quiet, cat. It’s the wee hours.”

  In the kitchen pantry she found a can of tuna, peeled off the lid, and dumped it into the cat’s bowl. “Here, kitty. Come and get it.” She ticked her fingernails on the side of the bowl. “Come on, kitty, kitty.” She fanned a hand over the tuna to spread the aroma.

  Aphrodite didn’t respond. She kept yowling and gnarring and pawing under the front door. Dinah set the bowl on the counter, folded a newspaper, and tried to shoo her toward the kitchen. If this were a normal cat, she would simply scoop her up and plop her down in front of her food. But Aphrodite had claws like needles and she didn’t scruple at biting the hands that fed her.

  What was she playing with anyway? It looked like…she took a step back…a lock of human hair.

  She swatted Aphrodite with the newspaper. The cat sprang to her feet and streaked into the kitchen. Dinah bent close to look at the snarled strands of black. Aphrodite had raked them through the gap under the door, but couldn’t pull them free. Dinah touched her fingers to the tangled hair, then pinched up a tuft and tugged. It was attached to something.

  Was someone lying outside the door? Jesus, Joseph, and Mary. The hair was the same color as her mother’s.

  She fumbled with the lock and yanked open the door. Spread-eagled at her feet was a doll dressed in a ruffled cape and patchwork skirt, the traditional garb of Seminole women since the 1920s. Someone had jabbed a knife into its midsection.

  She peered down the hall, which was empty, then knelt and picked up the doll. It wasn’t like the palmetto dolls the Seminoles made and sold to tourists in Florida. The body was cloth, the head hard plastic with lifelike hair and the wide, fixed stare of a belladonna victim. It was an effigy of an Indian woman. Her mother?

  She flung the door shut with a bang and ran to her phone. Hands trembling, she dialed her mother’s cell.

  On the fifth ring, a sleepy voice said, “Hey, baby. Is it time for breakfast already?”

  Chapter Five

  “What have you gotten yourself into, Mom?”

  “Don’t scold so, honey. Here. Drink some of this delicious coffee and calm yourself.” She poured a bit of fresh coffee into Dinah’s cup, emptied half a pitcher of cream into her own, and reclined against a plump pink chair pillow. She wore a perfectly pressed white cotton blouse, smartly creased tan trousers, and an exasperating smile.

  They were eating breakfast in the dining nook of the Gasthaus Wunderbar, which overlooked a tree-lined park equipped with children’s slides and play tunnels. The sky was overcast, but young mothers pushed a caravan of baby strollers along the sidewalk and a steady stream of joggers passed by. They were probably training for the annual BMW Berlin Marathon at the end of the month. Thor had registered and planned to run unless the job interfered, which now seemed likely.

  “How do you suppose they make their coffee taste so good?” Swan asked.

  “It just tastes hot to me,” said Margaret. Her clothes hung on her like a dipped flag and she looked as if she’d slept as poorly as Dinah. She seemed more interested in the newspaper than the food. “I see here that hunters in Texas killed an eight hundred-pound gator last week. Why is what happens in Texas news here?”

  Swan knitted her brows. “I told you, the Germans love the Wild West, though I’d think they’d be more interested in rattlesnakes and Indian paint ponies than gators. However can you read that teeny-weeny print?”

  Margaret pushed her glasses up her nose and folded the paper. “You could read it if you weren’t too vain to wear glasses.”

  “I wear glasses when there’s something worth my while to read about.”

  Their table was laden with Schlackwurst, Bratwurst, and Weisswurst, a variety of cheeses, boiled eggs, a basket of freshly baked bread from the bakery next door, and three jars of jam.

  Swan sliced and buttered a roll. “What did our hostess call these little doohickeys? Is this the Dinkelbrot or the Brotchen? It smells divine.”

  “None of your beating about the bush, Mom. My apartment’s just across the street, but I walked ten blocks out of my way looking over my shoulder to be sure I wasn’t followed. Every time a man passes the window, I jump. I need answers.”

  Margaret thwacked an egg with the side of her fork and began to flake off the shell. “Tell her, Swan. If you don’t, I will.”

  “Y’all sure are grouchy this mornin’.”

  Dinah took a breath and reined in her temper. “I get that way when I think somebody’s trying to kill me. Or the people I care about. I get even grouchier when the people I care about are trying to pull the wool over my eyes.” She pulled the doll out of her purse by one
leg and slapped it down on the table. She had removed the knife and bagged it to preserve any possible fingerprints. “Somebody left this at my door with a knife stuck in it. What do you think the message is?”

  “Why, that tacky thing looks nothing at all like a Seminole woman,” said Swan. “The stuffing’s not even palmetto.”

  “Stop being a manic digressive, Mom. Spit it out. Is the man that you’re chasing…chasing you?”

  “What makes you think one of those skinheads we’re always hearing about didn’t drop the thing at your door?”

  “Because she’s got a brain,” said Margaret. “Tell her about Hess.”

  “Well.” Swan steepled her fingers under her chin, a customary prelude to any explanation she found difficult. “Reiner Hess was one of Cleon’s cronies, very high up the ladder, some sort of a lawyer like Cleon.”

  “And like Cleon, he was a lying sack of shit,” added Margaret.

  “I want to hear this from Mom, Margaret. Let her talk.”

  “It’s kind of complicated,” said Swan. “An employee of a Swiss bank sold the Germans a CD containing the names of people who own secret accounts, and Reiner Hess was one of them. The German authorities raided hundreds of houses belonging to the people on the list, but when they got to Reiner’s, he’d flown the coop.”

  “How did you learn all this? Surely the Germans didn’t publish the names before they had completed their investigation.”

  “Swan has a source,” said Margaret. “One of the studs on her string of ponies.”

  Dinah glared. “Zip it, Margaret.”

  Swan flicked a crumb off the tablecloth and spoke only to Dinah. “You remember Lenzie, don’t you, honey?”

  “The one before Bill. Italian or Swiss.”

  “Swiss Italian. We’re still on friendly terms and stay in touch. When Lenzie left Georgia, he moved back to Switzerland and socked his money away in a real safe bank in Bern where one of his buddies works. His buddy happened to mention he had another client, a German lawyer, who used to live in the U.S., in Georgia.”

  “Reiner Hess,” said Dinah.

  “Uh-huh. They gossiped a bit, like men do, you know. And this buddy told him that somebody at the bank told him that Reiner’s name was out there as a tax dodger.”

  “So much for the myth of Swiss banking secrecy,” said Dinah.

  Margaret humphed. “I wouldn’t be too sure about Panamanian secrecy. A hacker got into their database and exposed a slew of Germans with offshore accounts there. You’d best be on your toes, Dinah.”

  Swan nodded. “The Germans are just bearcats about taxes.”

  “Anyway,” said Margaret, “I bet it was Lenzie’s buddy who sold them that CD.”

  Swan continued. “Soon after I talked with Lenzie, Florian sent me a digital picture album of his last powwow. Lo and behold, who did I see got-up in a buffalo horn headdress and wavin’ a tomahawk? Reiner Hess, big as life.”

  “I still don’t understand,” said Dinah. “Even if the man was in cahoots with Cleon, even if he cheated the Federal Republic of Germany, why do you think he owes you anything?” She bored deep into her mother’s eyes. “You weren’t part of Cleon’s drug operation, were you?”

  “I’ve answered that question before, Dinah. I was as shocked as you were. Margaret and I trusted Cleon just like you did. But that didn’t stop the government from suspectin’ us. IRS agents, DEA agents, FBI agents. Why, even today, every time I look out the front door, another one’s on the porch with a briefcase and a list of questions. What’s that old saying? The wife’s the last to know? Well, it’s true, but the feds have never believed me.”

  Dinah wanted to believe her. Swan had been a benign and indulgent parent, abstracted in a fuzzy, endearing way. Maybe she had been blissfully unaware of her first husband’s crimes, but Dinah still had doubts. “Didn’t you ever ask Cleon how a lawyer from Needmore, Georgia, wound up making such an obscene amount of money?”

  “After he affiliated with that big Atlanta firm, his practice became international. All of his partners made scads of money and he made plenty of legitimate money, if you can call what lawyers do legitimate. Anyhow, Cleon handled our finances. I never asked for an accounting. How about you, Margaret?”

  Margaret’s left eyebrow spiked up. “I asked for one when he filed for a divorce to marry you. If he had money then, he kept it hidden from me and my attorney.”

  Swan made a sympathetic face. “He left you rather a lot in the end, Margaret.”

  “It took Dinah weeks to hunt it down in Panama and when I got it, I had to spend it all on defense lawyers.”

  “It would be drawin’ interest today if you hadn’t shot Cleon dead and got yourself arrested.”

  Margaret’s jaws worked as if she were grinding rocks, but she held herself in.

  Swan poured hot coffee all around and they sipped in silence for a minute. Dinah wished she’d taken notes. This Hess business sounded like an impossible muddle, and the news that a Panamanian bank had been hacked made her stomach roil.

  The fire in Margaret’s eyes cooled and Swan went on with her story. “I hate to be vulgar, but the fact is, Margaret and I need money. Poor Bill lost most of his retirement savings after the real estate market collapsed, and Margaret wants to get on with her life, do nice things for herself and her grandchildren. Reiner squirreled away millions, most of which he and Cleon made from their drug deals, which Margaret and I knew nothing about. How they made the money isn’t important anymore. We want a share and Reiner’s not going to scare us off.”

  “Why do you need money so desperately, Mom? Are you sick? Is Lucien or Bill sick? Does somebody need an organ transplant?”

  “No, no. Nothing like that. Of course, your Aunt Shelly catches everything that goes around. The last was the shingles, I think. And Bill’s mama is crippled up pretty bad with arthur-itis. But then, she’s ninety-two. Other than that, we’re hale and hearty.”

  So, then, this was about greed and some warped sense of entitlement. “Why haven’t you hit me up for a cut of the money Cleon left me to dole out to his kids?”

  “Because they need every dollar of help it will buy them,” said Swan.

  “No kidding,” agreed Margaret. “Shrinks don’t come cheap. The boy will probably wind up in the pen, but the girl, K.D., might yet be salvaged. She’s probably got that PTSD syndrome. If I have any regret, it’s that she had to go through the ordeal of her daddy being killed.”

  “Wasn’t she tagging around Greece with you this summer?” asked Swan.

  “Yes. Thor and I both became fond of K.D. She adored her father and she’s wrestling with the knowledge that he wasn’t what she thought he was. She’s kind of a hard case, but since the summer she’s been trending toward a healthier attitude. We invited her to live with us in Berlin for a few months, but she decided to go home and finish high school.”

  “Thor is either a saint or a fool,” said Margaret, and sneezed into a handkerchief.

  Swan patted Dinah’s hand. “We know you wouldn’t take a dime of the kids’ money for yourself, honey. And neither would we. Goodness gracious, what kind of heartless monsters do you think we are?”

  “Heart’s got nothing to do with it,” said Margaret. “That Panama money’s radioactive. I wouldn’t want the risk. Like Swan says, we still have feds nosing around our doors. It surprises me you haven’t been caught, Dinah.”

  Swan dissected a boiled egg as tenderly as if it might hold a living chick. “Just out of curiosity, how much is in the account now?”

  “Something over two million.”

  “That much.” Her eyes went dreamy and crinkled at the corners.

  Dinah forced a smile. Conversations with her mother had a tendency to leave her feeling seasick. She thought she could make out pieces of the truth bobbing here and there like flotsam, but it was hard to construct a narrati
ve with all the froth foaming in between. “Did you warn Hess that you were coming to Berlin?”

  “Not directly,” said Swan. “We relied on Florian to tell him.”

  “You wanted Hess to know?”

  “Can’t negotiate with somebody if he’s not around to negotiate,” said Margaret.

  Dinah massaged her temples. Why would Hess risk coming out of hiding to intimidate two elderly American women with no legal claim to his money? Why did they think he would part with a single Euro? She cut to the crux. “What possible reason would Hess have to shoot at you or try to scare you off?”

  “One of those little computer doodads that store data,” said Swan. “What did you call it, Margaret?”

  “A thumb drive.”

  “Cleon called it an insurance policy,” said Swan. “He said if I ever needed anything at all, I should show it to Hess and he’d be more than glad to help. I tucked it away in a box and forgot about it ’til I found out Reiner was sittin’ on a pile of money.”

  “What’s on this thumb drive?”

  “Enough to have him extradited to the U.S. and charged with the murder of two federal agents.”

  “Jerusalem! Are you batshit crazy? Blackmail is a crime and even if it weren’t, you can’t threaten a double murderer.”

  Swan made a chastening little moue. “We’re not gonna threaten him, honey. We’ll negotiate a fair price for the thumb drive and be on our merry way.”

  Maybe she really was insane. She had made a career out of being fey and charmingly inscrutable, but insanity would explain her equally well. “Mother, you can’t go through with this plan. It’s cockeyed, it’s criminal, and it’s dangerous. You saw what happened last night. You have to pack your bags and hop the next plane home before you get yourselves killed.”