Cut and Run

by Carla Neggers

  A note of exasperation crept into Martin Dekker’s voice. “Miss Peperkamp, if you’re not concerned—”

  “I didn’t say that.” Wilhelmina was used to people taking offense at her. Although she wasn’t a cruel or uncaring woman, she lacked subtlety and had long ago quit pretending to have any. She was a direct woman, and that was that. “Have you checked his apartment? He isn’t dead in his bed, is he?”

  The Belgian was taken aback by her bluntness. “I checked. He isn’t there.”

  “Humph. He hasn’t missed a day of work in years, I’m sure.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  She sighed, and once more she found herself fighting images of Hendrik de Geer. She’d been fighting them for forty years. Did Johannes’s disappearance have anything to do with Hendrik’s presence at Lincoln’s Center, Rachel’s death, this business with Senator Ryder? Achh, she thought, annoyed, and threw the crumpled leaf into the trash.

  “Well, perhaps I should come to Antwerp and see what my brother’s about.”

  The landlord agreed and hung up, much cheered to have the matter resting on someone else’s shoulders. It’s so often that way, Wilhelmina thought, and so often the shoulders are mine.

  Juliana walked down the quiet, narrow streets of Delftshaven, trying to let the crisp air dispel the all-too-familiar numbness and disorientation of jet lag. She had decided to follow Matthew Stark to Antwerp, but via Rotterdam and Aunt Willie. She didn’t know her way around Antwerp, didn’t speak the language, and didn’t have the slightest idea how to get to Uncle Johannes’s apartment—all, certainly, handicaps shared by Matthew. But she preferred to be one step ahead of him, not shoulder to shoulder and definitely not two or three behind. She wanted to get to Uncle Johannes before he did.

  She’d headed straight from her mother’s bakeshop to the airport and had gotten a flight to Schiphol Airport, arriving early that morning. It was a simple matter to get a taxi to Delftshaven, where she’d decided to walk a couple of blocks to clear her head before knocking on her aunt’s door. She’d slept some on the plane, having done what she could about her pink hair in its stainless steel bathroom. If anyone had recognized her, her reputation would have been shot to hell, but, as Matthew Stark could tell her, odds were she wouldn’t be.

  She put him out of her mind as she rang her aunt’s doorbell. Wilhelmina Peperkamp wasn’t the most lovable person, but Juliana sensed she was utterly reliable.

  The old Dutchwoman answered her door in a shapeless wool dress, heavy socks, and sturdy shoes. Her hair was cut short in no particular style, and she wore no cosmetics.

  “Juliana?” Her blue eyes crinkled as she squinted at her niece standing on the front stoop. “That’s you, isn’t it? What’s happened to your hair?”

  Juliana dragged her fingers through her hair, stiff with mousse and sticking out in odd places after the long flight, but she didn’t bother to indulge Aunt Willie with an explanation. Wilhelmina was stubborn, sour, difficult, and critical. Nothing ever pleased her. Without any effort, she could make people feel frivolous and silly. She would never understand J.J. Pepper. Suddenly Juliana had her doubts about having come. Aunt Willie could easily tell her she was being ridiculous and send her home.

  “Yes, it’s me,” Juliana said, and let it go at that. What the hell, she thought. She was here.

  “Come in, then,” Wilhelmina replied without surprise, and opened the door, eyeing her niece’s green velvet dress and the smudged eye makeup. “I had a dress like that when I was younger. But I think it suits you better.”

  A compliment? Juliana didn’t know what to make of that, remembering how her aunt had snored through her Dutch premiere seven years ago and afterward had admitted as much.

  “Of course,” Aunt Willie went on, “that was fifty years ago or more. But I suppose if we old women hadn’t turned in our clothes to the secondhand shops when we were younger, what would crazy young people have to wear today?”

  Juliana surprised herself by laughing. “I was waiting for the other shoe to fall.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Never mind.”

  According to her mother and Juliana’s own limited experience with her aunt, Wilhelmina Peperkamp seldom gave a compliment without some kind of stab. It seemed she didn’t want a person to think she was actually being nice—or maybe she just worried about giving anyone a swelled head. Juliana supposed it was just as well that the world’s second largest ocean separated the Falls and Aunt Willie, although the distance hadn’t prevented her from criticizing her younger sister. She’d expressed in no uncertain terms her irritation with Catharina for not teaching her daughter Dutch. That Juliana had had little interest in learning Dutch—something she regretted later, but not at age eight—didn’t faze Aunt Willie.

  “You don’t seem surprised to see me,” Juliana said.

  “Surprise is for the young.”

  Aunt Willie’s apartment was small and tidy, consisting of a living room, a kitchen, and a bedroom. The furniture was old but well-kept, and there were plants in most of the windows. Juliana followed her stocky old aunt, so familiar and yet a stranger, into the little kitchen.

  “I’m packing cheese sandwiches,” Wilhelmina said, going to the counter. She sliced some thin pieces of cheese off a wedge of aged Gouda.

  Juliana sat at the table, covered with a faded but still serviceable white cloth, and fingered one of a line of scrubbed clay pots. They were old but immaculate.

  “Are you going somewhere?” she asked.

  “Antwerp.”

  “But that’s where I’m—” Catching herself, Juliana didn’t finish.

  Wihelmina nibbled on a slice of cheese. “That’s where you’re what? Juliana, I don’t like playing games. I prefer directness.”

  Avoiding an answer, Juliana took a slice of cheese when her aunt offered it on the end of her knife. She wasn’t fond of aged Gouda; it was too strong, too much like eating mold. But it gave her a moment to think: if she told Aunt Willie everything straight off, she might in turn not tell her niece a damn thing. She was, after all, her mother’s older sister.

  “Why are you going to Antwerp?” she asked casually. “You told me you haven’t been to New York to visit because you hate to travel.”

  “Antwerp isn’t as far as New York.” Wilhelmina carefully wrapped the cheese back up and returned it to the refrigerator. “But it’s true, I don’t care to travel. Once a year I visit friends in Aalsmeer, and they take me to the flower festivals and feed me too much because they pity me.”

  Juliana couldn’t hide her surprise. “Why would they pity you?”

  Wilhelmina laughed. “Because I’m old and alone. Always when I return home, one of my plants is wilted or dead. Do you have plants?”

  “No. Goldfish.”

  “Fish? Do you eat them?”

  “Of course not. They’re pets.”

  “Sentimental Americans,” Wilhelmina muttered, and resumed her lunch-making. She got a half-dozen cookies from a tin and fixed a thermos of hot tea.

  Juliana watched, fascinated. “Isn’t Antwerp just a couple of hours from Rotterdam by train?”

  “About ninety minutes.” She screwed the top down on the thermos. “Since the war, I always carry food with me. Once you’ve known hunger…” She waved a hand, not completing the thought. “Does your mother know you’re here?”

  “No,” Juliana said guiltily. “I came sort of on the spur of the moment.”

  “You should call her and tell her where you are.”

  “She won’t like it.”

  “Of course not, she’s your mother.”

  Juliana looked up at her old aunt and winced suddenly at her own rudeness. It had only just occurred to her that she should have offered to help pack lunch. But Aunt Willie always seemed so self-sufficient. “Have you talked to Mother recently?”

  “Yes. She called to tell me about Rachel Stein.”

  “Did she also tell you—”

  “Our conv
ersation was a private one, Juliana. Now go call her. You may use my phone, but be quick about it. Calls are expensive.”

  With Aunt Willie looking on, Juliana dialed her parents’ Park Avenue home. As expected, she got the housekeeper, who promised to relay to Catharina and Adrian Fall that their daughter was out of town and had called to say hello.

  “You didn’t tell her where you were,” Wilhelmina pointed out when Juliana hung up.

  “I’m thirty years old. Aunt Willie, aren’t you even curious as to why I’m here?”

  She swept the lunch into a paper bag. “You’ll tell me soon enough. Come, let’s go to Antwerp.”

  “But how do you know I’m going—”

  “Juliana, I’m not a fool.” The old Dutchwoman put on her wool coat and tucked the lunch bag under her arm. Juliana followed her out of the apartment, putting her own coat back on. “I like the raccoon,” Wilhelmina said. “I’m used to you in your cashmere and silk.”

  “You’ve only seen me a few times.”

  “So?”

  Juliana gave up.

  Naturally Aunt Willie didn’t drive. They took the underground tram to Central Station, where trains to Antwerp were frequent and on time. Juliana had always enjoyed her trips to The Netherlands. A crowded nation with one of the highest standards of living in the world, it depended on a modern, well-run system of mass transportation. Even Aunt Willie had no complaints. They found a seat on the train, and she insisted Juliana go in first so she could sit by the window for the view.

  “It’s good that you’re here,” Aunt Willie said. “We can see about your uncle together.”

  Juliana was instantly alert—even, given the events of the last few days, afraid. “What do you mean? What’s wrong?”

  “Sit down and don’t fall to pieces on me.”

  Stiff and insulted, Juliana sat down, but her heart was pounding painfully. She thought about the unanswered phone calls to Uncle Johannes. If Matthew Start could get his name and be on his way to Antwerp, so could others.

  But how? Who? Why?

  Crazily, she thought of Shuji. Would he say she was in a full-fledged funk?

  “Good,” Aunt Willie said, satisfied. “I was afraid you were going to do something silly like faint. I’ve always considered playing the piano a frivolous career, but perhaps your training has prepared you better for life than I’d anticipated.”

  “What about Uncle Johannes?” Juliana asked.

  Wilhelmina nodded and said stoically, “Johannes is missing.”

  Someone at the exclusive Diamantclub at 62 Pelikaanstraat gave Matthew the address of Johannes Peperkamp’s shop and pointed him in the direction of Schupstraat. As he walked down the busy, gray streets of the diamond district, he appreciated the chilly breeze and the bright sun, both of which helped him to chase off the fatigue that gnawed at his eyes and muscles. He hadn’t slept on the flight over. He couldn’t relax in the air unless he was doing the flying, but even if he’d been at his townhouse in Georgetown, he doubted he’d have slept.

  He wasn’t thrilled with himself for the way he’d treated Juliana. She was a musician, and she had different priorities. Whatever happened to the Weaze, it wasn’t her fault, even if she was holding back information—which, goddamnit, he knew she was. But Weaze could have gotten out the day he’d shown up in Washington. He could have let Sam Ryder sink in his own shit (as Otis Raymond had so effectively put it), instead of risking himself to try and pull Ryder out. Stark sometimes forgot Otis had a mind of his own. He was a trained, experienced combat soldier who knew how to assess danger. Matthew was no longer his helicopter pilot; he no longer had to feel responsible for SP-4 Otis Raymond.

  But he did.

  Dammit, he thought, you just don’t want anything to happen to the little jackass.

  In the dreary, gray building on Schupstraat, a thickset, middle-aged security guard told Matthew in heavily accented English that he was very, very sorry, but he had bad news to relate about Johannes Peperkamp.

  Stark automatically clicked into this distanced journalist/distanced soldier mode. He’d never met Johannes Peperkamp. He’s Juliana’s uncle. So what. You’re just the fact collector.

  He asked in a steady voice, “What do you mean?”

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you,” the guard said, “but Mr. Peperkamp has died. We got the news just a few minutes ago.” He pronounced just shoost. Thumping his broad chest, he continued, “Bad heart. He was an old man, you know. He died in Amsterdam.” Stark pushed away the image of Juliana’s gooped-up beautiful eyes, shining with concern for her uncle and with determination to protect him from a relentless American reporter. He had to stay focused on his job. “When?”

  “We don’t know how long he’s dead. A day or two, no more.”

  Matthew held his frustration in check: had he come to the wrong fucking city? He asked neutrally, “When did he go to Amsterdam?”

  “Day before yesterday. He leaves in the afternoon with another man, but they don’t say when they will be back. I don’t know if they went to Amsterdam together.”

  “Did you see the man?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you describe him for me?”

  The guard regarded Matthew with sudden suspicion. “Why?”

  “I’m a friend of the Peperkamp family,” Matthew said quickly. “I know his niece, Juliana Fall.”

  “Ahh, the pianist. Yes, the man with Mr. Peperkamp was perhaps sixty-five or seventy, fair; he spoke Dutch, I remember. I don’t recall any name.”

  “Hendrik de Geer?”

  “It’s possible. As I say, I don’t recall.”

  It had to be, Stark thought. The elusive Dutchman…and another link to the Peperkamps. “Do you know if Mr. Peperkamp was working on or aware of any information on an uncut diamond called the Minstrel’s Rough?”

  The guard smiled, indulging the ignorant American. “The Minstrel does not exist, in my opinion. It’s a myth.” The smile turned supercilious. “No one here treats it seriously.”

  I’ll bet the hell they would, Stark thought, if someone had the fast track on it. Then, guiltily, he remembered Juliana’s fierce protectiveness toward her uncle. Here he’d been screaming at her about his buddy ending up dead, and her uncle was the one being zipped up in a body bag.

  “Has anyone told the family?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  After some persuasion, Matthew was able to get the old diamond cutter’s home address, but he had little hope of finding anything useful there. Still, he thought, he might as well finish the job and have a look. Anything to delay his having to look into the pale, beautiful face of Juliana Fall and see what happened to it after she found out the fun was over, her adventure over before it got started, her uncle dead.

  Aunt Willie insisted that Juliana eat. “You’re too skinny,” she said. Exhausted as she was from her mad dash out of New York—it was always so much harder to fly west to east than east to west—Juliana had to admit the cheese sandwich and hot tea tasted good. They helped fill that dead, empty spot inside her that kept reminding her she was in Europe chasing after a reporter who undoubtedly wouldn’t take kindly to being chased. What would Matthew Stark do if he found out she had the Minstrel’s Rough? What would any of them do? Her mother and Aunt Willie didn’t know. She’d kept her promise to her uncle that she wouldn’t tell them.

  Aunt Willie seemed to have no dead, empty spot to hold her back. She ate her lunch calmly, without comment, but held onto the cookies. Juliana decided she must be waiting for an emergency. An earthquake or a nuclear attack. Wilhelmina Peperkamp’s natural competence had a way of making the people around her—and even her own sister across an ocean—feel inadequate. But Juliana dealt on a regular basis with some of the most ambitious and competitive people in the world, and she was more fascinated by her aunt’s manner than intimidated.

  “Now,” Aunt Willie said when they’d finished lunch, “you must tell me everything about why you are here.”


  “Why me first?”

  Aunt Willie picked crumbs off her skirt. “Don’t you trust me?”

  “Of course I trust you. It’s not that.”

  “Then what? Juliana, I’m not like your mother. You’re her daughter, and she doesn’t talk because she feels she must protect you.” Wilhelmina put her little collection of crumbs on her tongue. “You’re not my daughter, and even if you were, I don’t think people can be protected from the past.”

  Juliana agreed, having long been frustrated with her mother’s reticence, but she said, “You won’t get very far with me by criticizing my mother.”

  “I don’t criticize, I just tell the truth.” She looked past Juliana, out the window. “Talk if you want to.”

  “I do want to, Aunt Willie, but why do you have to make everything so difficult? Oh, never mind. Look, I’ll tell you right now I don’t know very much and what I do know has me confused.”

  “One thing at a time,” her aunt said.

  Sighing, Juliana began with meeting Rachel Stein over tea with her mother and proceeded from there, neglecting only to mention her knowledge of what the Minstrel was, where it was, and all its mystery and legend. Aunt Willie listened without interruption, and when Juliana had finished the old Dutchwoman leaned back against her seat and closed her eyes. For the first time, Juliana noticed how lined and dried her aunt’s fair skin was.

  “It doesn’t look very good for Johannes, I’m afraid,” Aunt Willie said. “Did this Matthew Stark tell you how he’d gotten his name?”

  “No,” Juliana replied, feeling a pang of fear for her uncle, whom she recalled with affection as a gentle, cultured man. She’d get rid of the Minstrel now, immediately, if it meant helping him—or anyone. But he’d warned her, seven years ago, against such temptations. He’d told her to hold her knowledge of the Minstrel close and never, never to act without knowing precisely what the risks were. Don’t look only at the consequences of not acting, he’d said. Look, too, at the consequences of acting. With whom would you be dealing? What would those people do if they knew you had the stone—if they got it? Is saving one life worth the loss of many others?