A Vision of Murder

by Victoria Laurie

  As the doors closed on Jean-Luke, Dutch left Milo and Dave and beat a steady path to me. “Uh-oh . . .” I croaked into the silence, then regretted it as I rubbed my throat.

  He stopped in front of my door and eyed me through the glass, his look a mixture of worry and fury, and all I could do was hope that the worry won out. To help him along, I rubbed at my neck a few more times, and made an extra big grimace.

  Dutch rolled his eyes and opened the car door. Bending down he sighed heavily and said, “I don’t know whether to kill you or hug you.”

  I smiled and extended my arms. “Hug please,” I whispered.

  The ice broke on Dutch’s face as he looked at me, and with a chuckle he leaned in and gave me a bear hug that seemed to calm my shivers. After a moment he leaned back and asked, “How you doin’, Edgar?”

  I answered him with a so-so movement with my hand.

  “You wanna get outta here?” he asked me.

  I nodded furiously and he pulled me gently from the squad car. With his arm wrapped protectively around me, we walked to my SUV and just before we got in my intuition went haywire. I paused as Dutch held open the passenger side door for me and stared off into space, then looked at Dutch and said, “James,” in a croaky whisper.

  “You know where he is?” Dutch asked.

  I nodded as the vision in my head replayed and I pointed to the car keys in his hand. Reluctantly he gave them to me and we changed places. We drove in silence and before long pulled up in front of James’s house. I got out and Dutch was close on my heels. Heading to the back of the house I reached a window that allowed me to peer into the basement, and there was James, just as my vision had described, chained to a pipe and looking much the worse for wear. I backed away from the window and pointed, and Dutch moved in for a closer view. He peered through the pane and within a few seconds he had moved away from the window and headed to the basement door. With a move that combined a hard kick with a body shove the door splintered, giving way, and Dutch threw me his cell phone before he ducked through the opening. “Speed dial two,” he said. “That’s Milo, just whisper the address and tell him we need an ambulance.”

  I nodded and flipped open the phone hitting the number he’d indicated. Milo answered and I croaked out the address and said the word, “ambulance.”

  “Sit tight, Abby, we’re on our way,” Milo replied.

  I closed the phone and headed into James’s basement, and the scene I encountered made me come up short. James had been cruelly chained to a pipe under a sink in the basement. The skin around his wrists and ankles was bruised and bleeding. Even more disturbing was his emaciated appearance, as his clothes hung loosely on him, and I noticed with alarm that he was wearing the same clothes I’d seen him in the day I’d confronted him about his grandfather, almost a week and a half earlier.

  “Is he all right?” I whispered as I came to Dutch’s side.

  Dutch looked over his shoulder as he continued to try to work the chain around James’s hands. “He’s in rough shape. Did you call Milo?”

  I nodded.

  “Good. Can you head upstairs and get me a glass of water? I’m not sure he’s had anything to drink in a long time, and he’s barely conscious now. The water might help.”

  I darted up the stairs into the kitchen and stopped short, my breath catching as I gazed at a beautiful woman standing serenely at the kitchen sink. She was petite, bordering on tiny, and she wore a white gown that puddled at her feet. Her eyes were large and blue, her face a perfect heart shape and her hair a shade of platinum that was so beautiful it looked luminescent. As I watched with stunned fascination she pointed to my chest, and reflexively my hand came up to touch where she pointed. I felt the bulk of the diamonds that I’d hidden in my jacket pocket and until this moment had forgotten about. She smiled at me and mouthed, “Thank you,” then simply vanished from sight. I stood there for a moment with my mouth hanging open, not quite sure I’d actually seen what I thought I’d seen.

  “Abby?” I heard Dutch call from the basement. “You coming with that water?”

  I shook my head to clear it and hurried forward to get the water, figuring I’d deal with that experience later. When I got back downstairs, James was coming to, and I noticed that Dutch had managed to get his hands free and was now trying to make him more comfortable by taking off his own coat and wadding it up to rest behind James’s head. I extended the water to James and he took it hungrily, drinking it with shaking hands.

  I accepted the empty glass he handed me and stood up to get more from the tap above his head. I handed that glass to him and he drained most of it as well. In the distance we heard the sound of sirens approaching, and Dutch said, “Hang in there, pal. Help is on the way.”

  James smiled at him and nodded, then seemed to drift back into unconsciousness.

  A few minutes later the cavalry arrived, and James was carted off to Beaumont Hospital. Dutch, Milo and I followed the ambulance and hung out in the waiting room while James was treated for his injuries, malnutrition and dehydration.

  Behind my back, Dutch also managed to corner a doctor to take a look at my throat, and as I suspected, it was only severely bruised. The advice from the doc was the same as the EMT so I was allowed to get away with paying only a fifty-dollar co-pay for a big fat waste of time.

  “You owe me fifty bucks,” I whispered when I’d been released from the checkout counter and came back to sit grumpily next to Dutch.

  “Let’s call it even for sneaking out on me this morning at the PT’s office,” came his smart reply.

  I decided to count my blessings and shut my mouth. Just then James’s doctor appeared and said that we could go in to see him. “He’s weak, so don’t stay long. Take a short statement and get the rest later, okay?” the doctor warned.

  “You got it,” Dutch replied as we headed to James’s room.

  A much thinner version of the man I’d first met at the jewelry store lay propped up on pillows, his wrists bandaged and a pained expression on his face. I waved at him when we had all filed in and he gave me a small smile. His smile faded as he seemed to notice the bruise at my throat. “Did my brother do that to you?” I nodded, and James said, “I’m really sorry.”

  I shrugged my shoulders and smiled at him, then pointed to my throat and said, “Can’t talk much,” which came out barely a whisper.

  “I understand,” he said. Turning to Milo and Dutch, he added, “I suppose you want to know what happened?”

  Milo nodded and said, “Yeah, and start about 1940 for us, would ya?”

  James looked only slightly surprised, then sighed and began, “My grandfather was an evil man.”

  “We figured that out,” Dutch said.

  “You know, when I was a boy, I thought the world of him. I thought he was a hero, but then, one day when I was sixteen he came home drunk and sat down next to me and started telling me things that I wished I’d never heard.

  “He said that he’d been a hero in France, an active member of the French Resistance, and was responsible for saving thousands of lives. So what if there had been sacrifices, he’d said, so what if a few had to be offered up for slaughter so that the rest could live. And then he explained how he’d acquired the inventory for his jewelry store. How he’d carefully made himself out to be a friend of the Jews, and according to him, he’d helped just enough of them to garner the community’s trust. But those Jews within the diamond trade were a different story. These poor people had believed my grandfather would save them, but instead he deceived, stole from and eventually, turned them over to the Nazis.

  “Realizing that his business was built on murder, I left home shortly after that. Something my brother never forgave me for,” James said, pausing to massage one wrist.

  “That’s why you went into opals,” I whispered.

  James smiled painfully at me. “Yes. They were the one gem my grandfather never carried. He considered them bad luck, and refused to deal in them. When he died, and left t
he store to me, I considered just giving away the inventory to charity, but there was something so awful about what he did that I needed to make amends on behalf of my family for it. My father was a good man, and if he had known the truth about his own father, I’m sure he would have done the same. So I took all of my savings and began Opalescence. It took a few years, but eventually the store caught on, and I began to turn a profit.”

  “So that’s why you donated half of your proceeds to the Holocaust Survivors’ Fund.”

  “Yes,” James said. “I couldn’t take back what my grandfather had done, but at least I could try and make amends.”

  “So, what about Liza,” Milo asked, throwing out the name to see James’s reaction.

  “The only thing I know about her was that she was the girlfriend of my grandfather, and one day she simply disappeared. I had already left home when she came around, and other than what my brother told me, which was some bizarre story about how she had stolen some rare diamonds from our grandfather and that he had dealt with her accordingly, I didn’t know anything about her. I suppose I was just too appalled by him at that point to ask many questions. I guess I didn’t want to know.”

  “So, you knew nothing about the puzzle box, or its contents?”

  “Only what Jean-Luke told me when he showed up at my shop a week ago. I wasn’t going to let him in at first, but he gave me this sad story about how he’d been living on the streets, and he looked very much the worse for it. His clothing was torn and his hair was long and matted, and his beard was overgrown. I guess I felt sorry for him, especially when he told me some awful man had beaten him with a cane when he’d begged for food on a street corner. I almost didn’t believe that part until he showed me the welts on his back, and, like a fool, I let him into the shop. The moment the door was closed he went crazy, and started accusing me of giving away Grandfather’s treasure. He said that the treasure had been in a box hidden in the house, and after I’d sold it I’d allowed someone else to steal our family’s legacy. I tried to calm him down, talk some sense into him, but he wouldn’t listen and he became so enraged he began to beat me.

  “I tried to convince him that I knew nothing about any hidden treasure, that I’d sold the house because it represented a part of my past I wanted to forget. My real estate agent was one of those touchy-feely types, and she spoke about getting creeped out in the house whenever she showed it to a prospective client, but I never paid any attention to that. I’d never seen any ghost of the kind you told me about, Abby, and I guess when you showed up at my shop and began demonstrating your abilities, I knew you were for real. That’s why it upset me so much when you told me my grandfather was still around, terrorizing people much like he did in real life. I’m sorry I was so rude, but when you shoved that box at me and said that my grandfather had murdered someone over it, I figured you knew the whole story and you probably wanted to blame me. At that point I just wanted to find my brother and get him back to Mashburn, and I figured I’d come clean to you later.”

  I nodded at him and gave him a peace sign. I knew more than most about being overprotective when it came to a sibling.

  “So, what happened with you and Jean-Luke, I mean, how’d you end up chained in the basement?” Dutch asked.

  “The night after the robbery I got home late, and I noticed Jean-Luke sitting out in the cold on my front stoop. He wanted to talk about turning himself back in to Mashburn, and he seemed lucid and calm, and so I stupidly invited him in out of the cold. Once inside he immediately excused himself to go the bathroom, and while I was taking my coat off, he hit me over the head with something heavy. When I woke up I was chained to a pipe in the basement. To add insult to injury, Jean-Luke was freshly showered and groomed and wearing my glasses and clothes and, to my astonishment, it was like looking in a mirror.”

  I nodded as he said that and thought back to my grandmother’s warning about being careful of the twins. Now it made sense. James continued, “He would have left me for dead, you know,” he said sadly, and I saw a tear gather in his eye and slowly leak its way down his cheek. “And the worst is that I don’t know what happened to Chloe,” James said as another tear gathered and fell.

  “Chloe?” Dutch asked.

  “My golden lab puppy. I haven’t seen or heard her in two weeks, and I’m afraid of what he’s done to her,” he moaned.

  Just then my intuition chimed in, and I grabbed the pen and paper Milo had been taking notes with. I didn’t want to push my voice, and I needed to tell him about the messages in my head. On the paper I wrote, Who’s the little girl with the pink Big Wheel?

  I handed the paper to James and he read it, his brow furrowing slightly. Suddenly he looked up at me and said, “Briana Brady. She’s a little girl who lives about four houses away from me. She’s this little terror on her pink Big Wheel and she rides up and down the street as fast as her legs can pedal. All the neighbors think it’s hilarious to watch her zoom back and forth.”

  I smiled as I grabbed the pad of paper back and wrote, She’s got your dog.

  When James read that he looked up at me, his eyes full of hope. “Really?” he asked.

  I nodded, and gave him a thumbs-up. I knew that Chloe was safe and sound.

  Just then a nurse stepped into our area and cleared her throat. “Doctor Papas would like you to let Mr. Carlier rest now,” she said sternly.

  We all smiled sheepishly at her; we’d clearly overstayed our welcome. Milo turned back to James and asked, “How about I come back tomorrow and talk to you a little more about your brother, okay James?”

  “He’s really in trouble now, isn’t he?” James asked, and it dawned on all of us that he didn’t yet know his brother was dead.

  The nurse cleared her throat again, and gave Milo a stern look. There was some news that was best delivered when the patient was strong enough to take it, and Milo got the message. “We’ll talk in the morning, James. You need to rest now.”

  “Okay,” James said tiredly as he leaned back against his pillows and closed his eyes.

  I followed the fellas out to the lobby again, and noticed the clock on the wall. I was surprised it read only two o’clock because it felt later than that. Milo turned to Dutch and asked, “So what now?”

  Dutch wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. “Now I take Abby out of Dodge and treat her to a little vacation. We’ll be in Canada if you need us.” And with that he walked me to the door.

  We arrived in Windsor a little after three, and found our way to Eliza von Halpstadt’s cousin, Helsa Otzeck, who resided in a lovely medium-sized Tudor on the west side of town. We walked to the door and rang the bell and after a minute it was opened by a petite woman with light blond hair and brilliant blue eyes set in a heart-shaped face. My breath caught in my throat as I looked at her because the resemblance to the ghost I’d seen in James’s kitchen was remarkable.

  “Miss Otzeck?” Dutch asked.

  Helsa cocked her head at the two of us on her front porch, clearly at a loss as to what we wanted with her. “Oh my,” she said after a moment. “You two must be here about Eliza.”

  I looked at Dutch and he looked at me, then we both turned back to Helsa and he said, “Yes, how did you know?”

  Helsa chuckled and said, “I got the strangest e-mail yesterday from a professor at the University of Michigan. He asked me all kinds of questions about a cousin of mine who disappeared some thirty years ago, and then said that I may get a visit from the American Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  Dutch smiled and flipped open his badge. “Professor Robins is an old friend of mine,” he explained. “May we come in?”

  “Yes, of course,” she said and made room for us to pass into her front hallway.

  Taking our coats her breath caught when she noticed the condition of my throat. “Oh my goodness!” she said as she leaned in to inspect the bruises forming at my neck. “Who did that to you?”

  Subconsciously my hand came up to my neck and I tr
ied to hide the bruising before Helsa made too big a deal about it. Dutch put a warm hand on my back and said, “She got that trying to protect something that belongs to you.”

  Helsa looked at him quizzically, then ushered us into a lovely living room where we sat on overstuffed couches and sipped iced tea, and explained to Helsa what happened to her cousin long ago.

  When Dutch was done telling her what he knew, Helsa wiped her eyes, the truth of what had become of her cousin bringing her to tears. After collecting herself, she managed to fill us in on the rest of Liza’s story. “Eliza found us when I was seven years old, and she was by that time, I think, around twenty. She had made her way back from Lyon to Lausanne and told my mother the whole sordid tale. One night, when her father, my uncle, had made arrangements with a local Frenchman for new identity papers, the Germans came and knocked on the door. Eliza’s mother hid her in the pantry of the house where they were hiding, and before she could hide Pieter, Eliza’s brother, the door burst open and her whole family was taken away and never seen again.

  “As Eliza hid in the pantry, too afraid to come out, she was able to see through a crack in the door, and, as she watched, a man walked in just as her parents and brother were taken away and he began to search the small home. Eliza recognized the man as someone who had been to their home on several occasions. Her father had introduced him as someone who would ensure their safety; he had even called him a hero.

  “But this man was no hero, he was a murderer. In horror and fear Eliza watched as he combed every inch of that home, twice opening the pantry. Luckily he did not see her there as she hid behind a bin of flour. He looked and looked until he found what he was searching for, my uncle’s legacy, the Schwalbe Eier diamonds. Eliza saw him take the box with the diamonds, and as he left the home, she saw him give the Germans some money, and the men laughed at their own treachery.

  “Two days later a neighbor heard Eliza crying through the window and found her in the pantry. The woman took pity on her and brought her home to live with her, caring for her through the rest of the war and raising her until she was old enough to find her way back to us.”