Abrams turned on a floor lamp, while Mason led her to the foot of the bed and helped her sit. “Why do you think men were coming to kill you?”
She looked at him as if confused by the question. “Because of what happened to Mr. Winstone and Hilda.”
“Adelle, we’re still not sure it was anything more than Agent Winstone murdering Hilda and committing suicide.”
“You don’t . . . You can’t believe that.”
“I don’t, but there’s no evidence to say otherwise.”
“It’s because of what Winstone and Hilda found out.”
“What did they find out?” Mason asked.
“I don’t know. They wouldn’t tell me. But whatever it was, Hilda was frightened. Agent Winstone thought she was overreacting, but Hilda claimed they were being followed by some Americans. She told me that’s why they wanted you to come home with them. If the men saw a policeman was with them, it would discourage them from doing anything.”
“And that’s why they asked you to come along? To persuade me to stay the night?”
Adelle nodded and lowered her eyes. “That was Hilda’s idea. She called me from the restaurant and asked me to come. I told her no, but Hilda sounded so frightened and desperate. I did it for her. I would have done anything to keep her safe. Hilda was my sister.”
“Your sister?”
Adelle nodded. “I’m sorry I deceived you. That was another one of Hilda’s ideas, not to tell you we were sisters, because you would have figured out the deception right away. I was going to just keep dancing and talking with you until morning, but I guess I got too drunk, and I liked you.”
Mason laid his anger and embarrassment aside until later. He looked at Abrams, who still stood near the door. “You don’t have to hear any of this. The more you know, the more it could get you in a jam.”
“I’m staying, if that’s all right with you.”
Mason turned back to Adelle. “Did Hilda tell you who the men were, or what they looked like?”
Adelle shook her head.
“You still haven’t told me why men would want to kill you.”
“They might know what Hilda told me.”
Mason knew that, more than likely, Hilda had told them everything under their knives.
“And what did Hilda tell you?”
“Before they fell in love, Hilda was an informant for Agent Winstone. . . .” She paused to fight back tears. Mason remained quiet to let her gather her thoughts. “She was supposed to report on the activities and movements of Herr Giessen, Bachmann, and Plöbsch. What they said, everything. Later, maybe two weeks ago, Agent Winstone had her trying to get information on a man named Lester Abbott.”
“Abbott? That doesn’t sound German.”
Adelle shook her head. “I only overheard her mention his name once or twice. Agent Winstone believed that Abbott had some kind of business relationship with Herr Giessen and was somehow associated with your American intelligence corps.”
A gang-related agent in the CIC? Mason looked at Abrams, then turned back to Adelle. “She said nothing else about this man Abbott?”
“No. Then Giessen and Bachmann were killed, and Hilda murdered. I’m sure the murders are connected somehow.”
“And she said nothing about what Agent Winstone had discovered?”
“Only that some very scary people are trying to take over all the black market operations.”
“Who? Germans? Americans?”
“I think both,” Adelle said. She suddenly turned pale and held on to Mason for support. “Please. That is all I know. I’m so afraid they’ll come for me now.”
“You can stay with me tonight. But it’s probably best if you make some arrangements to leave town.”
“And go where? I have no family left, and I barely have any money.”
“We’ll figure it out.” He turned to Abrams. “Bring the car around close to the door. Someone could still be watching this place.”
* * *
Abrams pulled the sedan onto Frühlingstrasse, a ridiculously picturesque street running alongside the near-frozen Loisach River. It had much smaller houses than in Winstone’s neighborhood, but they were nevertheless lovely, and, of course, gingerbread.
Abrams slowed the car to a stop a block and a half from Mason’s house.
“Why are you stopping?” Mason asked.
“You said to be careful from now on.”
Mason nodded. “All right. I’d rather you be overly cautious.”
“Do you really expect trouble?”
“Whenever there’s a lot to gain or lose, there’s always trouble.”
“Maybe we should get some help.”
“Do you know who to go to? Seems like everyone in this town has something to gain or something to lose.”
“Including you.”
Mason nodded. “Including me.” He looked back at Adelle, who lay splayed across the backseat, sleeping. He pointed toward his house. “Go ahead. I don’t see anything suspicious.”
Abrams parked the car, and Adelle woke up with a start when the car doors opened. Abrams waited until Mason had escorted Adelle safely onto the porch before driving off.
The house had once belonged to a German major in the Gebirgsjäger, the elite mountain troops, stationed in Garmisch. It was a half-timbered two-bedroom home of white stucco, with a pitched roof, arched windows, and a wide front porch. Spindly weeds had taken over the window flower boxes. The house had been abandoned after the major’s death and showed signs of neglect, but it still felt palatial compared to the places Mason had hung his hat in the last number of years.
Mason unlocked the door after one last visual sweep of the neighborhood. Inside, Mason helped Adelle remove her overcoat as she looked around the living room. “Everything in its place. I bet you don’t even let the dust settle.”
“I’m only here to sleep.”
Mason had left the furnishings as he found them. The major had been a widower in his final years, and the furniture and decorations exuded a man with conventional tastes: If it had no function, it had no place. The exception was the man’s extensive and eclectic collection of 78 records, from French ballads to Croatian folk music. The only things Mason had removed were the once-ubiquitous portrait of Hitler and family photos. Though Mason had not bothered to replace them with any of his own.
“The dedicated officer,” Adelle said as she sauntered around the furniture. Her vulnerability had vanished. The lithe, sensual movements had returned. She walked up to Mason and stopped, her face inches from his. He could smell her lipstick and old tears and, below that, a wisp of body odor, which, on her at least, he found erotic.
“You like collecting little birds with broken wings,” Adelle said.
“You don’t look so broken to me.”
“Yes, I am. And your partner: another one you’ve taken under your wing.”
“He can take care of himself.”
“Just don’t let him fall out of the nest too soon,” she said and leaned in to kiss him.
Mason pulled his head back and locked his eyes on her. “Is this another calculated maneuver of yours?”
“What would I gain? You’re not the type to keep me around as your house pet to feed scraps of food and throw coins at for tricks. You rescued me and brought me to your home, my knight in shining armor. I haven’t met a man who’s done that for me in years. I want to kiss you. You can enjoy it . . . or not.”
Mason did kiss her. Deeply. There was little emotion behind it. It was all pure passion, and she knew where to push, where to touch, where to kiss. Their connection lay in knowing just what each of them needed and desired, what intensified each sensation in turn. Normally Mason preferred at least a shared affection behind the lust, but Adelle had a bewitching ability to enflame his desires, and for a second time he gave in to it with u
tter abandon.
* * *
They made love again in the morning, though it failed to reach the same heights of abandonment as the night before. They spoke little over coffee, which Mason appreciated, since his brain was the last organ to wake up in the morning. Adelle ate ravenously, so talking took a backseat to the toast and jam, the cereal, several pieces of fruit, and a quart of milk.
She noticed him watching her eat. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to eat you out of house and home. I’ve hardly had anything for the last day and a half.”
“I’ll bring more food home tonight. I want you to stay out of sight, at least for a few days.”
“You don’t have to ask me twice.” She took a break from gorging to look at him. “Why are you doing this?”
“You don’t think you deserve saving?”
She shrugged, then dug into her cereal again.
“What did you do during the war?” Mason asked.
“Like everybody else: tried to survive.”
“Did you skate? Dance? Rob banks?”
Adelle stopped chewing a mouthful of food and looked at him as if she were going to spit in his direction. “You screw me, then you want to make sure I wasn’t a Nazi? Is that it? Do you want to see my denazification papers?”
“A sensitive subject, I see.”
“I’m sick of every American asking me the same questions with that smug look of superiority.”
“Then skip it. I don’t want to know.”
“Because you’re sure I was a sieg-heiling Nazi fanatic.”
Mason found himself on the defensive, which made his temper flare. “Hilda told me your mom was part Jewish, and your family was persecuted because of it. I found Hilda’s story compelling, and I simply wondered if you had a similar experience. You don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. We’ll keep it strictly business: food and shelter for information.”
Adelle dropped her spoon in the cereal and sat back in her chair with her arms crossed. “That was a heartless thing to say.”
“You’re right. I apologize.”
Adelle looked at him for a moment, then said, “Hilda was the really talented one. She was eight when she started exhibition skating. I’m five years older than Hilda, and I started about the same time as her. I was good, but too interested in boys to be serious. Then I got pregnant at seventeen.”
“You have a child?”
Adelle shook her head. “I lost her in childbirth.” She swallowed hard and looked away. “Anyway, the boy who got me pregnant married me. His father was a powerful local Nazi. He loved his son, so he covered up that my mother was part Jewish. My husband . . .” She made a crooked smile. “He joined the Waffen-SS two years later. I was the upstanding Hausfrau to my little Nazi Soldat. It kept me out of trouble . . . for a while.” She stopped, and looked as if the remembering was painful. “Then I was impetuous enough to petition for the release of my father. That was just before my husband was killed in ’43 in Russia, and my father-in-law died of a heart attack a month later. There went my only protection, and I was arrested. They put me in a camp and I was attached to a work detail, cleaning up after bombing raids and digging defensive trenches against the Russian army. I was a wreck after the war. It was Hilda who convinced me to start skating and dancing again. There you have my sad war story.” She pointed her chin at Mason. “I noticed your scars: the one on your left rib cage, your back, and the one on that lovely ass of yours. My little pincushion. Also the scars on your feet. Burns?”
“Frostbite from when your comrades forced me and a thousand other POWs on a death march.”
“A big, strong he-man like you . . . I bet you came out of it just fine. The boy grows up in the American dream to become a war hero. That’s what most of the Ami soldiers want you to believe, telling me how wonderful life is in America, so that I’ll rend my clothes, pull my hair, and curse God for not making me an American.”
Mason smiled and leaned on his elbows. “I was born in Augsburg, but when my father died in World War One, my mother, along with my grandparents, emigrated to the U.S. We went to the state of Ohio, where my grandfather had a brother with a farm. My mom married an American, a mean drunk named Robert Collins. Because of the anti-German sentiment, they changed my and my sister’s name from Strächer to Collins, my first name from Meinrad to Mason—”
Adelle chuckled. “They did you a favor, there.”
“My stepfather left home when I was eight. My sister died of polio, and my mother from booze. My grandmother raised me. I was a cop, then a detective with the Chicago police. Then because I was a detective and fluent in German, army counterintelligence recruited me. I was captured, and became a POW for four months. And now, here I am, fraternizing with a gorgeous ex-Nazi.”
“You’ve come full circle. Back to the Fatherland.”
“It’s not my fatherland. Not after what Hitler and Germany did. I’m still trying to understand how an entire population supported, even cheered, a man like that.”
“We’re all innocent, and all guilty. Didn’t you know that? All supporters, and detractors. All willing participants, and helpless bystanders. That’s the only way it can work.”
“You’re pretty smart for a skater.”
“I didn’t know there was a maximum IQ requirement for skaters. On the other hand, in my experience, there does seem to be one for cops. Present company excluded, of course.”
Mason finished his coffee. “Speaking of being a cop: I still have a few questions.”
“For my room and board?”
“To find your sister’s killers.”
When Adelle didn’t respond, Mason asked, “Why did you and Hilda live apart? And why keep the fact that you were sisters a secret?”
“We lived apart because that’s how I wanted it. It didn’t take long after coming to Garmisch for me to resent her, and I grew angry. She had all the talent. She got all the men. I acted just like when we were kids. Plus, I didn’t like some of the things she was getting into. We fought like cats, then I refused to talk to her. Hilda came to me about three weeks ago. She was afraid, and she didn’t have anyone else to trust. She told me everything, and through it all, we became close again. And we didn’t keep that we were sisters a secret, exactly. Hilda thought I would be safer if we simply kept quiet about our relationship.”
“Any idea why Winstone recruited Hilda as an informant? What kind of contact could Hilda have had with Giessen and the rest? How did she know them?”
“This is a small city. Anyone who dealt on the black market—and that’s just about everyone—knew of these men.”
“But for Hilda to get that close, she must have had some direct connection.”
Adelle took interest in her spoon for a moment, turning it over and over in her empty cereal bowl. “Hilda was Herr Giessen’s lover.”
Mason lit a cigarette to mask his surprise. “Even while she was with Winstone?”
“No. Giessen and she were only together for a few months last summer. Hilda volunteered to strike up a renewed friendship with Giessen for Winstone’s investigation.”
“She met Winstone when?”
“Sometime in December. She was with Eddie Kantos at the time.”
“Kantos? One of the other skaters insinuated he was a pretty tough guy.”
Adelle nodded. “I guess he was rough on her. That lasted about five months, until Winstone recruited her to inform on Kantos. She fell in love with Winstone during that time. Poor girl never had much luck with men.”
“Do you think Kantos killed them out of revenge?”
“Could be.”
“Anyone else you can think of who might have wanted to kill them?”
“Whoever they got too close to in the investigation, I imagine. Whoever is trying to take over the black markets.”
“The million-dollar question,” Mason sa
id and rose from the table. “Are you going to be here when I get back?”
“I haven’t made any plans to do otherwise.”
“Then stay out of sight and don’t answer the door for anyone but me or my partner.” He disappeared into the living room and came back a moment later with Adelle’s Walther P38. He laid it on the table in front of her. “Just do me one favor and don’t open fire unless you’re sure it’s not me coming through the door.”
Adelle stared at it for a moment then looked up at Mason with alarm in her eyes. “Do you think they know I’m here?”
“No. But you’re not the only one they could be coming for. Me, for example. You and me, it seems we’re in this mess together, whether we like it or not.”
FOURTEEN
Mason ignored Abrams’s increasingly insistent questions about where’d he’d been, and why he looked like Jack the Ripper just before plunging his blade into his next victim. He followed Mason across the detachment headquarters and up the stairs, having to take two steps to each of Mason’s long strides. On the third floor, Mason zeroed in on Densmore, who once again was bending the ears of three MPs about some case while he was a detective for the St. Louis police department.
Densmore took one look at Mason and dismissed his less-than-enthralled audience before Mason could get there. Abrams wisely fell back so as not to be in the line of fire.
Densmore feigned a smile. “Investigator Collins. You look chipper this fine morning.”
“I’ve just come from the morgue,” Mason said. “You’ll never guess what I discovered: Winstone’s body was shipped out. The ME never had a chance to perform an autopsy.”
“Calm down, Mas—”
“Was that your idea? Get rid of the only evidence that could determine whether it was suicide or murder?”
“Just hold on a minute.”
“You’re deliberately sabotaging this investigation. Why?”
“I’m still your superior, so you will calm down,” Densmore said. He jerked his finger in the direction of his office. “In my office. Now.”
Spoils of Victory Page 13