Edited for Death

by Michele Drier

  “Five minutes?” he asks.

  “Perfect,” I say and slap on foundation, blush, shadow and mascara. I grab lipstick, mirror, wallet and phone and cram them in my purse.

  Some locals have arrived and taken over several tables in the bar. Royce is looking frazzled, tending bar while one of the dining room staff carts cocktail orders. He waves and says “Can I get you anything? We’re not officially open,” gesturing to the plastic sheeting still hanging behind the back bar, “but we can sure pour you basic drinks. Or you can have wine, here’s the list.”

  “White? Sauvignon Blanc?” Phil says to me.

  I agree and we move to the quietest table we can find against the wall.

  I can barely suppress my news but I’m chary about talking while in the hotel. I know the contractor’ crew is involved with something, but don’t know what or with whom. There are just too many ears around. The only ones I’m sure of at this point are Phil and Henry Blomberg because they were both gone. On second thought, Blomberg could have slipped away and used his cell when he and Phil were out. Wait a minute, the guy on the phone said, “ And that guy, Blomberg. He gives me the creeps.” Scratch Blomberg.

  “You first?” I say.

  “You may have thought I was trying to get out of the dirty work, but something Henry said last night rang a bell with me,” Phil says.

  “I remember that Robert won his medal in Heidelberg so I wanted to dig into Henry’s background a little more. Henry said as he tracked his family, and some of their looted possessions, he read a lot of Army records. He uncovered that Robert won his medal in an action at his, Henry’s family’s, house. The Nazis were using it as administrative offices and had some of their bureaucrats headquartered there. Churchill and Hitler had an agreement that the Germans wouldn’t bomb Coventry and the Allies wouldn’t bomb Heidelberg, so the High Command thought it was a safe place to put offices that worked with sensitive information. And offices that could be evacuated quickly.

  “Henry said by the time he got back there, during the Nuremberg trials, the house was still standing but had been gutted and the entry and front staircase had been shot up. Henry wasn’t sure if it was a grenade, bazooka or what, but he took a few chips of marble with him as a talisman and felt he’d find more of his past.”

  Phil holds up a hand to silence questions as he takes a sip of wine. I’m a little miffed at being shushed, but want to hear the rest of this story

  “He hadn’t, until a few years ago. The internet and new search engines made it dead easy to do research. There’s a lot of information on the web about Sen. Robert Calvert, including his service record. Did you know that Robert was also at Dachau either the day of or immediately after it was liberated?”

  Now I hold up my hand, palm flat out. “We’ve been digging in the same boneyard,” I say. “Let’s finish our drink and head out for dinner.”

  Silence settles on us like a tule fog—dense and thick at eye level but only four feet deep. Once we finish our wine and stand to leave for dinner, we both say “But, what....”

  I grin and take Phil’s arm as we walk toward the car. The River Run is three miles out of town, converted from an old ranch house. Once we’re out of earshot of the hotel, I say “Robert’s diaries from 1944 and 1945 are really interesting. He starts out as a gung-ho kid wanting to ‘see some action,’ but gets to a dead-tired, bored G.I. The February and March pages for 1945 are cut out of the notebook. But by early May, right after he’s seen Dachau, he’s a changed man. Whatever charged up the lackluster green kid to go to school, get an education and get involved in politics probably happened in that short span—six weeks or so that laid out a life for him.”

  “Cut out?” Phil is stuck at the missing pages. “You mean that Robert wrote those pages and then cut them out? How many pages are gone?”

  “No, Robert didn’t cut them out. It’s about twenty pages and the edges of the pages look freshly cut. I think it’s been somebody in the last few weeks. Maybe whoever trashed Stewart’s room. Or maybe Stewart?”

  “Why would Stewart cut them out?” Phil asks. He’s thinking as he’s driving. “He had instant access any time he wanted. Or, he cut them out so that nobody else could read them?” Now it’s Phil who’s headed down speculation street, as well as the driveway into the restaurant.

  He parks and as we head into the building he says, “With pages missing, we may never know what happened. Henry was forthcoming with a lot of information. In fact Henry never met Robert. Robert was already terminally ill. Henry was leaning on his connections with Royce. He says he’s been coming up to Marshalltown to get to know the remaining Calverts. His main contact is Royce, but he and Stewart traded historical information,”

  Over a salad of baby greens with dried cherries, sliced pears and walnuts, through the main courses and into the dessert of Meyer lemon tarts, we drink another bottle of wine and peel apart some of the events of 60 years. I don’t know why, but I don’t mention the missing gloves. Something about it has me worried

  Dinner over, I launch into the rest of my afternoon.

  “You sat where?” Phil is laughing so hard I think he might choke.

  “It got to the point that I didn’t dare come out of the bathroom,” I say. “”You know, once you’ve been eavesdropping you have to stay. Was Henry with you the whole time?”

  “Yep,” Phil sputters. “I assume he has a cell phone, but I didn’t see him use it at all. If it wasn’t Henry, and it doesn’t make sense that he’d be talking to Royce, then who?”

  This question is going to just get added to the full pot of unanswered pieces we have stewing.

  If Henry Blomberg had traced Robert Calvert to his house in Heidelberg, what did that mean? Had Robert seen something or overheard something? According to the medal citation, there were more than a dozen GIs swarming over the house that day, maybe Robert wasn’t even aware he was a witness to something.

  Maybe Henry just wanted to talk with someone who was there; someone who knew and saw what happened to his home. Or maybe Henry believed that Robert knew much more. Maybe Robert knew where some of Henry’s family had gone. Or some of Henry’s family’s treasures.

  Where, if anywhere, did Dachau fit? So many Holocaust victims were never named, never found after the horror; did Henry think that Robert met someone there? Would Robert’s meeting a member of the family who had lived in the house in Heidelberg have personalized the infamy and caused him to come out of his stupor? Did Robert know about the massacre of Germans at Dachau? His diary didn’t mention that American soldiers mowed down unarmed Germans in a frenzy of anger and disgust after opening the camp, but was that incident talked about?

  . And why was Henry Blomberg here, now. He had been coming to Marshalltown intermittently sure; was there any connection between his arrival and Stewart’s death?

  By the time we’re ready to leave, it’s full dark. A new crescent moon hangs low in the western sky, cupping Venus, and the cooling air is soft.

  On the short ride back to the hotel, I lay my head back and watch the swirl of stars. Living in urban areas flooded with light during the night, I almost forget you can actually see the Milky Way. As we pull up to the hotel even the lights of Marshalltown, few enough that I think of the town as dim, erase the galaxy overhead.

  “Care for a nightcap?” Phil asks. “Let’s go see if the party is breaking up.”

  We come into the lobby, hear shouts of laughter from the dining room. From the bar across the hall though, Henry Blomberg calls out, “Join me for a drink, or a coffee?”

  Two lamps on either end of the bar cast pools of yellow which only light the back bar. What little light that reflects off the plastic sheet behind the bar shimmers in the room’s faint draft and leaves the rest of the room shadowy.

  Blomberg has moved a small table into an arc of light at one end of the bar and has a glass, a silver pot and a cup on the table in front of him. From the looks of the remains in the glass, he’s been drinking a bra
ndy. We draw up two chairs to join him. I put a hand on the pot and pull it back quickly.

  “That was just brought in from the kitchen, my dear,” Blomberg says. “I suspect it’s awfully hot. Did you burn yourself?”

  I shake my head, embarrassed. “No, I just assumed that you’d been here for a while and the coffee had cooled. It startled me.”

  Phil glances around and rises to look behind the bar. “There’s a bottle of Port here, Amy. Would you like a glass?”

  “I would. And I’d like a coffee as well.”

  The waiter appears from the dining room, tray in hand, and gives us a curious look as he places the silver creamer and the bowl of sugar cubes on the table.

  “We helped ourselves to a glass of Port, but we’d like two more cups for the coffee,” Phil says. The man nods quickly and leaves.

  “I was telling Amy a little of our conversation this afternoon,” Phil turns to Blomberg. “She’s discovered some odd information in the Calvert family’s diaries about the war years and about Germany in particular. She knows that Robert was in Heidelberg and that he was also at Dachau, but there’s something missing.”

  Phil’s playing an interesting game. I wish I knew the rules.

  “She found diaries that both William and Robert kept during the war.”

  “Diaries? I don’t believe that the Army allowed soldiers to keep diaries,” Blomberg says, suddenly animated.

  “I don’t think ‘allowed’ is the word,’ says Phil with finality. “It was illegal to keep one and a serious offence if you were caught. Amy found some information that neither of us was aware of.”

  I’m not sure I know where Phil is going so I chime in with “I discovered that some of the German guards at Dachau were gunned down by the Americans right after they liberated the camp.”

  Blomberg nods. “Yes. It hasn’t been talked about a lot. There was some talk at Nuremburg but the Americans tried to keep the rumors contained. It wouldn’t have looked good that some soldiers took things into their own hands while the Allies were trying to bring some of the worst Nazis to justice using law and the legal process.”

  “I can’t imagine all that horror,” I say. “I know that it all happened. What I know of it is from books and movies. Meeting you and realizing that you saw much of it first-hand is jarring. I think of it as history, in the past.”

  “It’s living history for me and I’m still finding pieces,” Blomberg says in a quiet voice. “I know that the fight where Robert earned his medal was in my family’s house. Now having met Stewart and knowing Royce, it’s vividly real again to me. I’ve not seen or read any of the papers you refer to. Was there any mention of my home?” Blomberg’s voice is low and wistful. I’m taken aback to realize that he still thinks of it as home after more than sixty years.

  It’s time to share some information. “No, the odd thing is that Robert’s diary ends at he enters Heidelberg and then picks up again at Dachau. Someone has cut out pages, maybe twenty or so. I had to use a glass to see the page stubs,” I say, watching for any response.

  Blomberg responds, all right. His jaw almost hits the table. Unless he’s an award-winning actor, it’s pretty clear this is news to him.

  “But who could have done such a thing?”

  “I suspect the same person who trashed Stewart’s sitting room,” I say, going on to describe the mess Phil and I found this morning.

  Phil picks up on the thread of this morning’s discovery and we rehash the work we did in straightening up the historian’s rooms. Blomberg seems lost in thought, probably remembering from his childhood.

  “Oh,” I say. “I almost forgot to tell you, Phil. As I was leaving Stewart’s room, you know, after I came out of the bathroom, I noticed something else.

  “I’d taken off the gloves I was using and thought I’d just thrown them on the desk. As I was closing the sitting room door, I saw they were gone.”

  “That’s weird,” Phil says. “Maybe the guy on the phone just picked them up to throw them away. Maybe he’s planning to use them himself if he’s still going to search.”

  “That’s possible,” I say. “They were just sitting there. It’s even possible he thought whoever trashed Stewart’s room left them. I don’t know how much forensic stuff you can get from a cotton glove, but probably DNA. Maybe he didn’t want anybody running any tests on them. I doubt he knew I took out a new pair this afternoon. And speaking of gloves, I’m sure glad I had them on when I found the scrap of a note from Robert.”

  “What note?” Phil’s and Henry’s eyes are drilling into me.

  “It was just a scrap of that flimsy paper the GI’s used for mail,” I say. “I don’t know who it was to, or if it ever got sent. It was in pencil and said,” I scrunch up my nose and close my eyes, trying to bring back the faint words. “I don’t remember exactly, but something about ‘I don’t know what to do with it. Maybe it belonged to one of those people. I guess I’ll bring it home.’”

  Blomberg has been idly twirling his spoon in the china cup, but it suddenly crashes into the edge of the cup and flies out onto the tablecloth, leaving a trail of dark brown drips.

  “Oh, how clumsy of me, I’m so sorry,” he says, reaching for his napkin to sop up the spill of coffee. As he speaks, I notice that his hand is shaking. I glance up at his face and am shocked to see a sudden pallor. I watch him as he controls his breathing, fighting for composure, and in a few seconds two hectic spots of color began to bring blood back to his face.

  “It’s been a long day,” Blomberg says. “This has stirred up many old memories for me and I didn’t realize quite how tired I am. If you’ll excuse me, I think I’m going to head upstairs for bed.”

  He pushes his chair back, nods to Phil, takes my hand, says “Good night,” and is gone.

  “That was a little precipitous,” I say as the waiter reappears with two cups, saucers and spoons on his tray. After filling our cups he leaves and both Phil and I exhale, neither aware that the other was holding a breath.

  “It was odd,” Phil says. “I don’t remember anything that we talked about today that would have upset him. Or scared him. Your news, though, was information that he wasn’t prepared for.”

  “He really seemed shaken when I mentioned the note,” I wonder.

  “Well, the note does sound like Robert planned to bring something home.”

  “I thought about that. I figured it was some kind of war souvenir. God knows what—a helmet, a sword, a German medal. It could have been anything. And it could have been tossed by now. You’d think if it were at all valuable to the Calvert family history, Stewart would have it in some safe place. Between me and the construction guys, a lot of the stored crap has been gone through.”

  Phil looks at the coffee stain on the tablecloth. “I would have thought Stewart would have a war souvenir from his grandfather in some prominent place, mounted or framed or something. I still can’t shake the feeling that the mention of the note was what spooked Henry, though.”

  “I know. It’s hard to judge him. Do you think that reaction was ...”

  “I don’t know what to think,” Phil interrupts. “Except that I began doing a little research this afternoon on Heidelberg and 1945. Let’s take our drinks upstairs and take a look at some of the stuff I found.”

  Phil flips open his laptop while I set the drinks down and kick off my shoes. The computer brings up the San Francisco Times homepage, Phil hits a few keys, clicks on the paper’s Lexis-Nexis connection and types in “World War II Army records.” After a couple more clicks, he says, “Look.” I look over Phil’s shoulder at the lists of names.

  “So? It’s soldiers who were stationed in Heidelberg.”

  “But look at the date. And look at the names of the Americans who were present when Robert Calvert won his medal. And look at the address of where that happened.” move closer, read the screen, and draw a sharp breath.

  “Ben Nevell was there. Robert Calvert saved his life! No wonder they stayed friends.�
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  And we know, and Henry Blomberg knows, that the house where all that happened belonged to his family.”

  Why were there these connections—links and events that had taken place more than 60 years ago, in a country 7,000 miles away—making the hairs on my arms stand up? As I told Blomberg, the whole war period was beyond my conception. The most horrific, evil, inhumane and incomprehensible acts had taken place and suddenly, in this quiet room in a tiny town in California, they are real again. I close my eyes and again visions of explosions, sounds of men shouting and screaming, smells of gunpowder and blood and death are all around.

  Just as I feel myself being drawn into a vortex of violence, my eyes snap open. I gasp, realizing that it was a vision, and take a deep breath.

  “Are you OK?” Phil is watching me closely. “It looked for a minute that you might faint.”

  “I’m fine. I’m not a fainter, but it was a strange, weird sensation. Now I know what people who claim to have physic powers are talking about; it felt as thought I was really there.”

  “Sit down and have a sip of the Port,” Phil says. “Or maybe the coffee? Can I get you some water?”

  “No, no, I’m really fine, just let me sit here for a second,” I say, lying back in the armchair.

  I’ve pushed the threats out of my mind until the vision wrenches them back, and I know that I have to share them. I tell him that I’ve gotten one in the office and one on my car’s windshield and his reaction is predictable.

  “Goddamn it Amy! Why didn’t you tell me before?” his face is beginning to blotch.

  “Because I thought you might respond like this,” I murmur. “I really don’t think there’s anything there, it’s just another weird thing happened. I told Sheriff Dodson.