Inherit the Past

by Susan Finlay

  Inherit the Past

  Inherit the Past

  A Bavarian Woods Mystery

  By

  Susan Finlay

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Inherit the Past is Copyright © 2014 by Susan Finlay.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written approval of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  First Edition

  Cover Design by Ken Dawson

  Paperback ISBN-13:978-1503004009

  Published in the USA

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction, and all the characters and places and events are inventions. The walled city of Riesen, Germany, does not exist, although some may recognize different aspects of it in the medieval towns of Bavaria. The Ries Crater which is mentioned in the book is real. Oddly, I chose the name of my fictitious town before I did any research. When I learned about the crater, I was delighted because it fit so well. I did a significant amount of research for this book and series, and although I have been to Germany, it was very long ago, and I therefore used author creativity to fill in the gaps.

  CHAPTER ONE

  MAY 26, 2009—

  THE COPPER TEA kettle’s whistle turned shrill from neglect, steam hissing from its gooseneck spout like smoke from an old man’s pipe. Lotte, unable to ignore the cacophony any longer, gave her hostess a pained sideways glance.

  “Mein Gott!” Margrit said, seeing her friend’s look of distress and finally taking notice of the screaming kettle. “I forgot about the kettle. I will get our tea.” She made a feeble attempt to get up, but landed back on the seat of her wooden chair with a heavy thud and with strands of her flyaway white hair coming loose from her bun and flopping over her eyes. She blew at her errant hair and when that didn’t help, she pulled the wayward strands aside with her hand.

  Lotte shook her head in disgust. “Nein. I will get it. You rest.”

  Margrit nodded, folded her hands on her apron, and closed her eyes.

  Three oil lanterns provided sufficient lighting for Lotte to maneuver around Margrit’s kitchen without any problems, but she grumbled under her breath all the same, removing two ancient porcelain teacups from the pale blue cupboards near the stove, and shaking her head again. The dishes as well as the house had been in Margrit’s husband’s family for generations. Some pieces of the dish set had been destroyed during bombing raids in World War II more than sixty years ago when Karl’s family had temporarily lived in Berlin. The remaining dishes were covered with cracks and crazing from age and years of use. Karl, having been devoted to Margrit whether or not she deserved it, had once bought her new dishes—beautiful fine china that Lotte would have been grateful to receive—but not Margrit. Margrit had refused to use the new set of dishes, the same way she’d refused then and now to use electricity that Karl had installed in the old cottage. Hmph. Would she give the unused set to her only friend? Of course she would not. She’d packed it away in a crate in the cellar where it would remain until she died.

  Lotte filled the cups with boiling water and tea bags. She opened the antique ice box, which wasn’t all that cold, and took out a jug of fresh cow’s milk from Margrit’s own cows, pouring a generous amount into both cups. “You really must paint these cupboards. Soon there will not be any paint left on them. They really look dreadful.” She refrained from mentioning the slivers of lead-paint dropping into food and drink, or that eating and drinking from these old dishes made with lead could be deadly.

  “What did you say, dear?”

  Raising her voice an octave, Lotte repeated, “I said you need to paint your cupboards. They look dreadful.”

  “I do not have money to waste on paint. I am not rich like you. Besides, I am old and tired and no one other than you and I see it, anyway. Why do you care? You only come around once in a fortnight, if that much.”

  After that exchange, they sat in silence for several minutes. Lotte stared at the lantern on the countertop beside the stove, then lowered her gaze to the pile of small logs on the floor. Hairy spiders crawled around on them. A worm wiggled out from between two of the logs. She shuddered, turned her head, and looked up. Tarnished copper pots and pans hung under a shelf attached to the wall. Margrit never bothered to clean or polish them, yet she wondered why Lotte always brought food prepared at her own home when she came for dinners. Tonight, she’d brought her specialty, a beef rouladen stuffed with a mixture of smoked pork belly, chopped onion, and chopped cucumber.

  Between bites of food, Lotte asked, “How did you get those bruises?”

  Margrit raised and looked at her right arm. “It is nothing. I fell down.”

  “Again? On the stairs? How many times in the past three months have you done that?”

  She shrugged.

  “That is not good, Margrit. Not good at all. Why not make a bed on the settee downstairs?”

  Margrit didn’t answer, instead taking another bite of the pork belly. Lotte clenched her jaw, wondering how she would ever broach the subject she’d come here to talk about. She ate a bite of food herself and then said, as casually as she could, “Did you ever find the addresses you were looking for? The ones for your grandchildren. The last time I was here you mentioned you wanted to write to them.”

  “Ja. I found some of Monika’s old letters. She wrote her children’s addresses in one of them.”

  “Fortuitous for you that you are a packrat and kept those letters, though you do realize those addresses are probably outdated. It has been twenty years.”

  Margrit scrunched her eyes, as if thinking, but then waved her hand dismissively. “People do not move around much.”

  “Maybe not here in Germany, but I have heard people move around a lot in the U.S.” Margrit didn’t respond. “So, you are still planning to write to them and tell what we did to Karl and Monika?”

  “Ja. Lotte, I cannot go to my grave without confessing my sins to someone. I am not going to last much longer. I can feel it in my bones.”

  Lotte didn’t doubt that her friend’s bones were correct. Her long-time friend’s hair had completely gone white and was thinning badly. She looked at least ten years older than Lotte, although they were near the same age.

  “Do not do it, Margrit. You will be gone, but I will still be here. I will have to pay the consequences. And . . . well, think about the dangers if people found out about . . . .”

  “It is my decision. I already wrote the letters. I will take them to town tomorrow and put them in the post.”

  Thinking quickly, Lotte replied, “Of course you are assuming your grandchildren know German and can read your old-style German handwriting.”

  That seemed to give Margrit pause for a moment, a frown wrinkling Margrit’s wrinkles. “Oh, dear. I did not think . . . oh wait, I remember Monika used to talk of scholars who could decipher ancient tablets and such. Surely the children can take the letters to someone to translate, if they cannot read them.”

  Children? Heavens, Margrit’s grandchildren must be pushing forty. Lotte shook her head. “All right, I suppose you are right. But you only go into town on Wednesdays. That is four days from now. You can give the letters to me and I will see them safely to the post office. It will save you the extra trip.”

  Margrit squinted at her. “You would throw the letters away. I am old, but I am not stupid.”

  Lotte clenched her jaw. The whole conversation was giving her a headache and making her heart race. Stubborn old hag. Wh
y can she not leave it alone? She took a deep breath and held it, then she blew it out and closed her eyes for a few seconds, trying to calm down. That is better. No need to panic. Those grandchildren of hers will not bother coming here. They showed us years ago that they are not interested in family. She opened her eyes and sat up straight. “You could not even get up to pour water into teacups a little while ago. How are you going to walk into town tomorrow? Better give me the letters.”

  Margrit crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head.

  JUNE 16, 2009—

  “HOLY COW! THIS city looks like a Hollywood movie-set.” Almost the second the words were out of his mouth Max Hollander noticed his son Ryan turn away and pretend he didn’t know him. A German couple standing nearby either didn’t hear or didn’t understand English. He sighed and continued admiring the scene in front of him in silence.

  In his mind he pictured giant movie cameras and lights, costumed peasants, a German king—Ludwig perhaps—and directors yelling ‘Cut’. But this wasn’t some make-believe place. Max shook his head and smiled. He would have been impressed at the detail if it were actually a movie set, but the fact that it was a real city filled with twenty-first century people who happened to be living in a centuries-old backdrop made it all the more incredible.

  God, what a sight! Why hadn’t his mother ever told him what her hometown was like? Seeing this scene spread before him suddenly made him curious about his family’s past. Was he descended from royalty or peasants? Highway robbers or noblemen? How could anyone not let their imagination run wild in a place such as this?

  Of course, it didn’t take much to set Max’s imagination in motion. His mother had often told him, when he was a kid, that he had too vivid an imagination and lived with his head in the clouds.

  Max and Ryan were currently standing on the old bricked sentry walk on Riesen’s town wall, gazing over a sea of red-tiled rooftops. Max could now visually understand why they’d gotten lost as they’d walked through the cobbled streets. Not only was the Bavarian city completely surrounded by the ancient brick wall, but the whole damn town appeared to be circular and, if he was correct, was quite literally a maze. That’s what it looked like from this vantage point, anyway. Who in their right mind would do such a thing?

  With streets—many still cobbled—branching out in all directions from a city center, some straight and some zigzagging, others dead-ending, no wonder they’d been walking in circles and gotten quickly lost. After getting off the train from Stuttgart, he and Ryan had searched for rental car services, taxis, or buses, which they’d assumed would be readily available here as they were in California. Boy, were they mistaken. Consequently, they had ended up starting off on foot and eventually had climbed onto the wall to try to get their bearings.

  Of course, he thought, none of this would have been a problem if he’d used his head and bought maps before leaving the states, or even once he’d arrived in Stuttgart. He should have charted out the route to the house ahead of time. He didn’t like surprises. Never had. So why hadn’t he planned? He shook his head, wanting to blame somebody else, but he already knew the answer. Jenny had always been the organizer in the family, and he’d divorced her, or she’d divorced him if people listened to her tell it.

  Oh, well. On the positive side, he now saw that they could walk all the way around the city on this walkway above which someone had conveniently provided it with a wood roof held up by old but apparently still sturdy hand hewn wooden beams. Yes! No more mid-morning sun blazing down on their heads.

  As they’d approached Riesen an hour earlier on the train, he’d estimated the brick city wall to be about twenty-five feet high. The inside covered sentry walk platform, though, was only around fifteen feet high above ground level, giving him a convenient shaded panorama of the city on one side and ten feet of thick brick facing away from the city. Evenly spaced in the brick wall were slits where he could look out and see the green grass outside the city. Immediately underneath the walkway on the city side, ugly brown roofs slanted downward. He couldn’t tell if they were houses or businesses.

  He took out his cell phone and snapped a few pictures of the overall scene. Maybe these would entice his daughter, Ryan’s twin, to come here with him over Christmas break. Ryan had agreed to come on this trip with him, but only after Max had bribed him with chaperone-free travel after they took care of business. The way the boy acted, Max almost wished Ryan hadn’t come with him. On the long international flight to Germany, Max had tried to catch up on his son’s life and make up for their estrangement caused by Max’s divorce from Ryan’s mother, Jenny. But no, the boy had kept his ear buds stuck in his ears the whole time—even when he was sleeping. Since they’d gotten off the plane, mostly what Max heard out of Ryan was grumbling and complaining. And the boy was always trying to take off on his own, and never helping. Max clenched his jaw, a habit he’d picked up from his mother back when he was a kid. Shoulda known better. The kids don’t love me any more than Jenny does. What does that say about me? It says I’m a failure. Nobody ever sticks around me for long. He sighed.

  After putting his cell phone back in his pocket, Max picked up his duffel bag and slung it back over his shoulders the way he’d done a half dozen times this morning and set out walking again. At least he had some kind of destination in mind now.

  As he walked, he looked up at the sky in the distance. Five airplane contrails, vapor trails that sometimes formed behind aircraft, were streaming above the town. He glanced over his shoulder at Ryan. The boy was keeping a safe distance from him—safe from a teenager’s perspective. Max slowed down to a snail’s pace to see what would happen.

  A few minutes later, Ryan finally clomped up alongside Max in his heavy hiking shoes. The kid was Max’s height, something that still seemed strange to Max. It seemed like only yesterday Ryan was a little boy. He still had the same innocent face with light blue-gray eyes and the same curly light brown hair, but he now had a stubble of beard and mustache.

  Ryan whined, “Where are we going, Dad? This is getting boring.”

  “I saw what I think is the central plaza, or city center, or whatever they call it here in Riesen. I’m thinking that’s the most likely place to find a book store—and a map. Look for another staircase going down.”

  A couple minutes later, Ryan said, “Hey, I think I see one up ahead.”

  Max glanced sideways at him. Those eight words were the most helpful things he’d said the whole trip.

  They sped up, then rushed down the steps, Ryan taking them two at a time. Max tried to keep up with his son and missed his footing momentarily, instantly picturing his crumpled body at the foot of the stairs, but managed to grab the hand rail and halt his fall. Ryan stopped a moment and looked back, smirking at his father’s lame move. Twenty minutes into peeking through numerous storefront windows, resisting the alluring smell of cinnamon, baked apple, and sugar coming from two bakeries, they found what could be a book store. Max opened the door and waited, but Ryan didn’t enter.

  “Aren’t you going inside?”

  He didn’t answer. Max turned to see what had distracted his son. The eighteen year old had spied a group of teenage girls. That figured.

  Max entered the shop and approached the shop clerk. “Excuse me. I need a map of Riesen.”

  The middle aged man with shaggy graying hair gave him a blank look.

  “Eine Karte,” Max said in his awkward German. “Uh, Ich suche eine Karte von Riesen.”

  The man turned up his nose at Max, and for a moment Max saw himself as the clerk must see him: foreigner, stumbling over peculiar words, dependent on a map even in a small city. Max was tempted to say forget it, feeling self-conscious and a bit irritated, but what was the word for ‘forget’? And anyway, the guy was walking away.

  Max sighed, then noticed that the clerk had turned his head to look back at him as if saying, “Aren’t you going to follow?” He rushed to catch up, and when they got to an aisle in the back of the sh
op, a whole wall of maps practically jumped out at him.

  The clerk walked away without a word, but able to convey his disdain. Did these people dislike all Americans or was it only him? Sure, his German was poor, but who’d have thought he’d need German skills? Spanish— now that was something every Californian needed.

  After he paid for his map, he sat on a bench outside, laying the procured map open across his lap. Now where had Ryan gotten to? Max looked around the bustling sidewalk. He soon spotted Ryan walking back toward the bookstore with a dour look on his face. Returning to his immediate task, Max reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the piece of paper the estate attorney had given him, and searched the map’s street index.

  No Wengenhausen Straße. How could that be? The house he’d inherited from his grandmother three weeks ago was supposedly almost two-hundred-and-eighteen-years-old. He put his hands on his head and smoothed down his hair. Lost in a goddamn foreign city and it had to be one too darn small for a visitor’s center or a U.S. embassy. Just wonderful! What had he done to deserve this? He needed to find the house and sell it. He needed the money.

  Ryan sat down next to Max. “Did you find the street, Dad?”

  “No. I don’t know what to do. Any ideas?”

  “Nope.”

  Max sighed. “I guess we keep walking until we find the street or someone who speaks English who can help.”

  “I’ll wait here. Come get me if you find it.”

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Max said. “If anyone should sit on his ass and wait, it’s me. You have a lot more energy than I do. I’m forty goddam years old.”

  Ryan’s face reddened. He stood up, turned away, and took a few steps, then looked over his shoulder at his father. Max got up and they started walking together. Looking off to his left and right, Max tried to get his bearings. If the main gate was to his right, he should go left this time, shouldn’t he? But hadn’t he already passed by that enormous cathedral on the left at least twice? He walked toward it and saw the number ‘1778’ engraved in the stone, confirming it was the same building. Sighing, he turned around and faced one of the fortress walls again. He shaded his eyes against the bright sunlight and looked in all directions again.