by Cathy Ace
Ebba handed a couple of stiff, old snaps she plucked from the pile of papers she’d taken from the envelope. “Here.”
I leaned over to see the man Jonas, but what I saw was a little boy in a faded, almost sepia-toned photograph who looked as though his face was black with dirt. His birthmark was certainly considerable. The second photograph showed a man I judged to be his fifties, not far off Bud’s current age. He had a build similar to Ebba’s—short and essentially cylindrical. This photograph was in color, and showed him wearing a tan corduroy pea jacket and peaked cap. He was smiling, his teeth a white gash in a face that was largely purplish. Yes, his birthmark covered slightly less of his face than it had done when he was a small boy, but it was so significant it would have been the first, and possibly the only, thing anyone would have noticed about him.
“That must have been difficult,” I said with sympathy.
“It made him bad,” repeated Ebba. “The letter from the lawyer says he was a good man, but I don’t believe it. Once you’re bad, you’re bad. He proved that by running off with whatever it was he stole from our family.”
Bud tried to laugh it off. “Oh, come on, Mom. I know rates of recidivism are pretty high, but people can pull their lives together and make something of them, even when they’ve done some pretty awful things. It might be that your brother suffered because of bullying, and had an even tougher life because of the times in which he grew up—but that’s not to say he couldn’t have made good later on. Did he marry? Have kids?”
Ebba snorted. “You see the picture?”
“Mom, people can look past the outside and fall for the person inside.”
“He was bad inside too.”
Bud’s quiet sigh told me he was battling frustration. I decided I’d rescue him. “Open the envelope, Bud. I’m dying to know what’s in it.”
Relieved I’d provided an escape, Bud sounded eager. “You both okay if I open it here, now?”
Ebba and Leo Anderson agreed.
The rip was loud, the contents of the envelope somewhat underwhelming. It contained an old-looking iron, mortise-lock key with a long barrel, and a handwritten letter. Bud scanned the letter in silence before his mother made it clear with a snort he should read it aloud.
I know you ‘Bud’ Anderson. I have been watching you for many years. I am happy the Internet has made this easier. Your mother was an earnest girl. I expect she is an earnest woman. I hope your father is happy with her. If he is, he must be a patient man, and maybe he is the jolly one. I am very old. Too old, some would say. I will die soon. It is inevitable. I do not fear death, though maybe I fear dying. I have lived most of my life alone, except for the camaraderie of a small group of special friends. I do not think anyone needs more than this. It is enough.
When you read this I will be dead. I hope it was painless. I doubt it. You will know. They will tell you. And now I have a quest for you. Will you take up my challenge? You must, if you love your mother. It will help her understand me. If she is still alive, of course.
Here is a key you will use to find something very important to me. You must come to my home to see all I have left behind. You must decide what to do with everything, because it will be yours. There are some special gifts for my friends. Please take them to their homes; meet them, talk to them about me, and give them their gifts. This too will help you, and your mother, know who I am. Who I was.
I cannot tell you who I am. No man can do that of himself. He is only the person he is because of how people know him, and what he has done. It is time for what I have done to be understood.
I do not know when you will read this. None of us can know when we will die, but one of my good friends had a son who is now a lawyer. He has promised he will arrange everything. I trust he will do as he has promised. If you are reading this, he has done his job. His details will be with this letter. If you contact him he will make the arrangements I have requested.
Bud, can I trust you? Come to my home. Do as I ask. You will be glad you did, I think.
If she is still alive, tell your mother Jonas never wanted to leave her, but was driven away by hatred, and pulled toward something he loved. Until you find out more about me, that is all I can say.
I wish I had known you. I hope you come to know me.
—Jonas.
The writing was that of someone whose hand shook a little with age; rounded loops made with a fountain pen scrawled across good-quality writing paper. His signature was rounded too, comfortable-looking. The silence was broken by one of Ebba’s alarming snorts.
“Didn’t want to leave me? Then he shouldn’t have gone.”
“It’s an intriguing letter,” said Leo quietly. Looking at his son with a twinkle in his eye, he added, “You’ll go, of course.” It wasn’t a question. “For your mother’s sake.”
“I don’t want him to go,” snapped Ebba. “Just because a bad man writes and says ‘go’ does not mean my son must go. You do not have to go for me, Bud.”
Bud didn’t surprise me when he said, “What if I want to go for myself?”
Ebba rose, snatched Bud’s plate from the table beside him, and said, “Then go. I will not stop you. But remember I warned you he was always bad.”
“I won’t forget, Mom,” replied Bud quietly. “Cait and I will go together. There’s a lot of upheaval at work for her right now, and there’s nothing she can do about any of it. We’ll go to Amsterdam for a couple of weeks. It’ll do us good.”
“It will be expensive, and full of tourists,” said Ebba dismissively.
“You know I can afford it, Mom. With my pension, and the compensation I got after Jan’s death, I can more than manage. We’ve each been to Amsterdam before, but never together.”
It was news to me that Bud had been to Amsterdam, but I decided to hold my tongue until we were back in the truck, which I hoped wouldn’t be long. I was beginning to get a headache from all the sugar and coffee I’d stuffed into myself, but it seemed I’d have to wait a while yet.
“Is there nothing else you can tell me about your brother, Mom? Anything at all?”
Ebba sighed and plopped herself back down into her armchair. “He was good at drawing. He used to draw horses for me.” Her tone told me she begrudged admitting this fact. “I might have some of his drawings upstairs, in my dresser. They won’t tell you anything other than what I just said—he could draw. He had lots of books he liked, full of paintings. He loved them more than he loved real people.”
“What else?” asked Bud. I’d seen him interrogate suspects during cases we’d worked on together when I’d acted as his victim-profiling consultant, but this was a different Bud—tender, encouraging.
“His singing voice wasn’t bad when he was a boy. I don’t know what happened after his voice broke because he didn’t sing after that. He used to sing to me at night in our bedroom, when I was small. I liked it. He would sing me to sleep. Old Swedish lullabies.” Ebba’s eyes were looking into her distant past and they filmed over with tears. “I wish he hadn’t gone away like that. It was never the same after he went. There was a big hole, and I wasn’t allowed to ask about him, not even to mention his name.” She looked up at her husband. “It was hard for me, Leo. I was still just a little girl.”
Leo Anderson slowly pushed himself out of his seat and moved to hold his wife. “Cry, Ebba, out with it. It’ll be good for you.”
Ebba’s little shoulders began to shudder beneath her husband’s bony hands. “He’s dead, Leo. Now I’ll never see him. Never know him. The hole will never be filled.” She dissolved into tears.
Bud stood. “I’ll go to Amsterdam, Mom—we’ll go. I promise we’ll do our best to find out what we can about Jonas, and we’ll come home and tell you all about your brother.”
We felt it best to leave, and did so after a good deal of hugging. I wasn’t sorry to
get away; I felt useless. I hate feeling useless—it’s so frustrating. One of my weaknesses is that I always want to fix everything for everyone. And I can’t. Life can’t always be fixed.
The drive home was pretty quiet for a while. Eventually I said, “When are you going?”
Bud revved the engine unnecessarily. “We could get everything sorted in a week or so. I’ll check flights when we get home. I’ll call this lawyer guy on Monday morning, and we’ll take it from there. You know you won’t achieve anything by hanging around in your office arguing about these changes, don’t you?”
I sighed. “Yes, I know. I’ll have to get the all-clear to be away. I can’t keep swanning off at the drop of a hat.”
“Family bereavement,” said Bud. “You married me, you married my family. Jonas is your family too.”
I swatted Bud’s arm as we sat at the traffic lights. “You know that’s not what either of us thinks, about marrying the other’s family, but I suppose I could use it to our advantage. Just this once.”
“Good. So—fish and chips, or curry?”
“You know how to spoil me, Husband.”
“You deserve to be spoiled, Wife.”
“I hope he wasn’t really a bad man, Bud. It would be nice if we could tell your mom he made a good life for himself.”
“We’ll see,” replied Bud. “Now come on, make a decision, I need to turn right if it’s fish and chips.”
“Turn left. We’ll have a curry, and a nice beer or two, no wine,” I said.
“Whatever you say.”
Interior of a Law Office, Amsterdam
“HE WAS GOOD MAN,” SAID Menno van der Hoeven as he ushered us into his office. “I’m glad you were able to make the trip here to Amsterdam to fulfill Jonas’s wishes. I hope you had a pleasant journey. Coffee?” He offered us a seat.
Jonas’s lawyer had the tall, slim frame of an athlete and he towered over us. His springy, curly hair was thinning and yellowish gray. Dark pants and an open-necked shirt gave him an air of casual professionalism, though his glow suggested he’d been exercising strenuously just before our arrival. Bicycle clips on the corner of his desk weren’t a surprise, nor was the fact that they were neon yellow.
I sniffed the coffee before I drank it. Bud said, “We appreciated you sending a car to collect us at the airport, and the hotel you recommended is just fine. Thanks.”
“The Plein Hotel near the museums is an excellent location. You will find it very easy to get about,” said Menno, curling long fingers around his cup. Menno spoke English well, with a soft accent that caressed the sibilant sounds and massaged the v’s to sound like f ’s. “It was my pleasure to make the arrangements.” He smiled warmly. “Anything for Jonas’s family. He and my father were great friends, you know. It is for this reason I want to make everything as easy as possible for you. Now—shall we get to business?”
Menno van der Hoeven sprang effortlessly from his seat as though uncoiling to strike, but all he did was move to his desk, pick up a yellow folder, and return to the chair next to the coffee table.
Opening the folder, he looked at Bud and began, “Your uncle was, I now understand, born in Sweden. I have known him my whole life and believed him to be Dutch. Jonas de Smet, as I knew him, never told me anything about his early life, though I understand from my mother that my father knew about it. I am an advocate in the laws of the Netherlands, and your uncle had all the correct papers to prove he was Dutch. With a family history between us, I will fulfill his wishes as if he were born a Dutchman. This is best, though it might not be exactly correct. The rules governing inheritance in the Netherlands are complex, being based upon Roman and Napoleonic law, but, since he had the correct papers, I will continue to act as though he was properly Dutch.”
Bud and I exchanged a puzzled glance over our coffee cups. Being drawn to Amsterdam in response to an unheard-of aged relative’s last wishes was odd enough—now this? “Jonas de Smet” had been passing himself off as Dutch and had somehow managed to get hold of paperwork to prove it? I knew for a fact that Bud’s mother’s maiden name had been Samuelsson, so I further surmised Jonas had also taken a false name; “de Smet” was the Dutch equivalent of “Smith.” Highly inventive.
“The first thing I must tell you is that he left everything to you, Bud. His will is perfectly legal, and is succinct. He wrote it in Dutch and in English. I can let you have a copy. You will see it says exactly what I have told you, with the addition that you must make some bequests. If you wish to sell his house, this law firm has connections with good companies that can do that for you, or with you. If you prefer to keep the house and rent it out, I can also direct you to a good company. There is one tenant in Jonas’s home. Hannah Schmidt. She has lived in the bottom part of the house for many years. She is anxious to know your plans and has telephoned my office almost every day. I am sure you will meet her. I also have a letter for you,” said Menno, pulling an envelope from the folder.
“He liked letters, it seems,” observed Bud wryly as he took the long, cream document from the lawyer’s hand. “A generational thing, I guess.”
Menno looked resigned. “My mother is the same. No email. At least she now has a mobile phone so she can get hold of me in an emergency. She never turns it on, of course.”
The upright lawyer seemed to be trying to connect with us. His office, though sparsely furnished, spoke of a successful practice, which suggested a trustworthy legal practitioner. Blond woods, pale leather upholstery, and clean lines made for a bare-bones aesthetic. Two overgrown spider plants on a shelf across the windowpanes suggested he, or someone else at the practice, liked greenery. The only problem was that, although he was saying all the right words, his tone wasn’t utterly convincing.
“Did you bring a laptop with you?” he asked Bud.
“I brought mine,” I replied. Bud threw me the same withering glance he’d given when he’d seen me lug the thing to the truck we drove to the airport. “I needed it so I could keep in touch with everyone back at the university,” I explained needlessly.
“Ah yes, the University of Vancouver. I understand you work there, Mrs. Anderson.”
I felt Bud hold his breath.
“It’s Professor Morgan, actually,” I said as gently as counting to five would allow me to do. “I kept my own name after Bud and I married.”
Menno didn’t miss a beat. “This is not unusual in my country also. What do you teach?”
I knew the Dutch were noted for their bluntness, but I found the no-frills way Menno spoke to be somewhat off-putting. “I’m a professor in the school of criminology. I’m a psychologist who specializes in profiling victims.”
The lawyer’s jawline firmed. “So we are all involved with justice,” he noted gravely. “Good. That means you will both do as Jonas asked.” Blunt to the point of brusqueness. “I have this for you also,” he continued, extending his hand to Bud. It held a computer disk. “I have not seen what is on this, but Jonas told me it was a recording of him speaking to you. You can use a disk with your laptop?” He seemed uncertain.
I smiled wryly. “It’s old enough to still have a CD player in it.”
“Good. You can watch it later, alone. I believe I know some of what it will say. Jonas told me he wanted you to make certain bequests to his friends. He asked me to keep an up-to-date list of their addresses.” Another sheet of paper was passed.
Bud took the paper and cast an eye across it. “When did my uncle make all these arrangements, Mr. van der Hoeven? I don’t really understand the situation.”
The advocate smiled laconically. “Menno, please. We are almost like old friends.” He tried to make his smile brighter. “Yes, it is unusual. Jonas approached me about five months ago. You will see that my mother is on the list. My father died three years ago. A heart attack. It was not unexpected.”
I could tell
from Bud’s body language he’d spotted an opening. “How did Jonas die? I have no details.”
“He was discovered at the foot of the stairs leading from his apartment to his front door. The belief is that he had fallen, and lay there for at least two days. The tenant who lives downstairs has a separate entrance, so no one had been into your uncle’s apartment for some time. The weather was unusually warm. Eventually his tenant alerted the police when—” he paused, genuinely uncomfortable for the first time, “—there was the aroma, you see.” He was quiet for a moment then added, “Jonas was elderly and known to be unsteady on his feet. It was unfortunate.”
Bud turned toward me and I shared his look of relief—at least it wasn’t a suspicious death.
As if reading our thoughts, Menno added, “There was no suspicion of wrongdoing. With you a retired policeman, and you a professor of criminal psychology, you might think he died of something other than an accident, but the police informed me this was not so. An elderly man fell. I am very sorry about it. My mother misses his friendship. She has few people left from her past.”
It was odd to hear about the death of Bud’s relative from a man who knew him much better than anyone in Bud’s own family had done. I realized Menno was probably more deeply affected by Jonas’s passing than either Bud or me—or even Bud’s mother, for all her tears.
“And his remains?” asked Bud hesitantly.
“Jonas requested no gathering to mark his passing. No memorial. He was cremated. His remains are at a funeral home. You can collect them whenever you choose.”
Bud looked uncomfortable, and I suspected he was grappling with the idea that his uncle’s ashes might end up joining those of my mum and dad, which were in two urns on the mantelpiece in our new dining room. We’d finally agreed that was where I could put them, for the time being.
“Did Jonas leave any instructions on that matter?” I asked.
“Not with me,” replied Menno. “Maybe it’s something he will tell you in the recording.”