“But nothing, Rebecca. You have a business to manage. Property to defend. Family issues to resolve. Stop running away after distractions dangled in front of you like candy for children. I don’t have time for Hagan’s nonsense and neither do you.”
He heard the sharp intake of breath. He should have been ready for her attack, for the chill in her voice.
“But you have time to interfere in my life? Time to fly to Boston and hassle my parents. Go barging in where you have no business, no right. What did you think you were doing?”
He didn’t answer. He had no defense. Mostly he had done it for her, to smooth the way to a reconciliation with her parents. But he’d also done it for himself. He needed to meet them, to be accepted by them. Before he left Head Tide, he had to know if there was a future to come back to—one with Rebecca in it as more than a client and close friend. This time around, he was getting the parental approval first.
Her voice rose higher. “Do you think I’m incapable of talking to the people who raised me? I will. When I’m ready. I don’t need your help. In that or anything else.”
Jo whispered a prayer that it wasn’t true. He needed her too much. Possibly for ignoble reasons. He hoped that someday soon he could explain it.
Not tonight.
Without looking at the keypad, he punched the end button with his thumb, held it until the phone went dark, then slipped it into his pocket. The moon seemed brighter without the mechanical competition. It was nearly full; the old man might have been smiling. Jo hoped the moon was smiling in Indianapolis.
“Good night, Rebecca. Take care of yourself.”
Thirty-three
Rebecca sagged against the gate and stared at the phone. She couldn’t believe it. Jo had hung up on her.
Okay, she’d given him reason when she’d yelled at him for meddling in her affairs, but his condescending attitude toward Hagan had sent her over the edge. Not wanting him to worry, she hadn’t whined about being ousted from the track, cut off from the rest of the crew. Or carped about Elise’s demoralizing attitude. She’d kept those petty hurts to herself. Standing in the dark, outside the fence, she hadn’t revealed how alone she felt: solely responsible for Jasmine’s safety, guilty about Peyton’s death and worried about the bug and what it meant. She’d mentioned Hagan’s incarceration only because that was one thing her attorney could help with.
Could Jo be that sensitive about Hagan? Damn it. He sent Hagan out here. Some pair they were. Hagan, the controlling, who kept everything to himself, championed by Delacroix, the sanctimonious who dictated how she should relate to her own family. She was better off without either of them. She stomped inside the patio, threw the phone on the redwood table and slipped into the kitchen.
The house was peaceful in sharp contrast to her thoughts. She should sleep, but knew it was beyond her; still she went through the motions of getting ready for bed and eased open the door to her room. Light from the hallway filtered in. Jasmine was on the far side of the bed near the wall, curled under the blanket, the top of her head a dark sliver against the yellow binding. She looked smaller than the pillow, as shapeless as one losing its stuffing. Yet there was nothing limp about her. She had a tough inner core.
She needed it. The story of Jasmine’s natural family began as a common urban tale. In Groën’s version, a spunky woman, barely out of her teens, got pregnant by an older man, Reginald Quick. He was a decent hard-worker who welcomed the chance for a family. They married and had the child: a girl born with a strange skin disease. The mother tried to cope for a few years, but found it too difficult. Said she was too young for motherhood. She viewed Jasmine’s disease as her personal failure. One day she packed and left her family, town, the state.
Reginald hadn’t condemned her. He set about to raise Jasmine the best he could. He infused her with his passions, took her to car races and history museums. When she was big enough to hold a camera, he showed her how to compose a picture that told a story. For a couple of years, they were happy.
Then Reginald was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. The doctor told him what to expect. There were drugs that might slow it, drugs he couldn’t afford. He thanked the doctor, then did the hardest thing a man could do, put the daughter he loved into foster care. Two weeks later, Reginald Quick disappeared.
Rebecca leaned against the doorframe watching Jasmine breathe. A lump was forming in her throat, moisture building in her eyes. She remained outside the room, for fear her sniffling would wake the girl. Let her dream. Her daylight reality was too harsh. Far better for her to live in a fantasy world: fight imaginary demons, pine to become a damsel who drove race cars, spend afternoons shelling peanuts and conversing with a squirrel called Fred.
At first, Groën confessed, he’d been tempted to pity the girl. “But how could I? There is nothing pathetic about Jasmine. She is all spirit, a child capable of bouncing back. A survivor.”
Rebecca agreed. She ached for Reginald Quick, for what he was facing alone and for the joy he’d abandoned. She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. Life is so damn perverse.
So was she.
Why was she making such a big deal about Robert and Pauline not being her biological parents? Would she have had a better childhood if she had been raised by Nicole and Jamie? From what she’d been told, Jamie had been an irresponsible dreamer. Nicole was so bitter toward her parents that hatred would have poisoned her love for her own daughter. Neither one had a pursued a career, so money would have become an issue. Most likely, they would have separated. She would have had to cope with being the product of a broken home.
She tiptoed into the bedroom, pulled the door to behind her. As it was, she had been raised by a couple who’d given her every advantage and done their best to love her. As had her brothers and both sets of grandparents. Had her grandparents known the truth? Had her brothers suspected? She smoothed the sheet next to Jasmine’s face.
If she’d call her parents, she’d find out. If she called her parents, she might find out that nothing had changed. She hadn’t lost her mooring. One intelligent, spirited elderly woman was petitioning to become a part of her life. How bad was that?
A tear slid down the side of her nose as she promised the sleeping form she would call her parents tomorrow. Honest.
Sunday—Final Lap
Thirty-four
Rebecca opened the drapes a crack. The pale gray sky was dotted with layers of fluffy clouds. A few optimistic birds chirped to herald a sunrise still an hour away. It promised to be a bright day, but that didn’t make up for the wasted night.
Hagan had not called. Nor returned.
Jo hadn’t called back to apologize.
She hadn’t slept more than an hour.
Sometime around three, she’d given up and slipped from the bed, causing Jasmine to whimper and turn over. She’d retrieved her cell phone from outside, heated milk in a warped saucepan and sipped it sitting cross-legged on the sofa, going over the team’s mishaps and Peyton’s torture. She was convinced that all parts were interconnected, but she couldn’t see how. Taken together they made a vast canvas, like The Last Stand by Remington, where the subjects were too spread out to grasp as a whole. Too much open space to judge which side was winning.
At four A.M., after an hour of staring at striped wallpaper with tiny six-pedaled flowers, she’d fetched her laptop. Once connected to the Internet, she scrolled through a frightening list of electronic surveillance devices used to eavesdrop on the unsuspecting. Name the range you wanted, the size you needed and the price you were willing to pay. All major credit cards accepted. Even mauled by the squirrels’ teeth, the unit was recognizable as a bug. If the publicity was to be believed, it could transmit to a tape recorder a half-mile away.
Letting the drape fall shut, she wondered if there was a car parked against the curb, radio turned to a ranting evangelist, driver hunched down drinking tepid coffee, waiting to hear something. Inside, all was Sunday-morning quiet.
Sunday. Race day. She a
ched to be at the track, prepping the car. Carlson didn’t want her: “Rebecca, don’t be insulted, but it would be better if you did not come to the pits.”
Once the police released Hagan, there was nothing to keep her in Indianapolis. She could run home as Jo demanded and take up her normal life. Leave behind a mystery she couldn’t solve and the people embroiled in it whom she couldn’t help.
Before shutting down the computer, she’d pulled up flights from Dayton, Ohio, to Boston, Massachusetts, for Monday. Hagan would give her a ride as far as the Dayton Airport. US Airways would get her to Boston in time for dinner. She’d call her parents later to confirm the plans. If they couldn’t be reached, well, they’d all survive the surprise.
Discarding the computer Rebecca went in search of a steno pad and a gel pen. It was time to organize the known information into workable chunks. As a senior Post editor used to remind her, “When your imagination fails, you can always rely on the facts. Of course, your story won’t be as interesting.”
Right now, it didn’t have to be interesting, just a recognizable story line. The mess reminded her of a favorite childhood toy—a block puzzle of Peter Pan. It was a foot square, divided into sixteen equal cubes. There were four different illustrated scenes, each a different action shot. All sixteen pieces had to be the right side up before you could see the whole picture. During the night she’d decided that not all her pieces were right side up.
She ripped out four sheets of paper. On the first one she listed the sabotage aimed at the team: cut brake lines, watered gas, stripped lug nuts, the gunshot. On a second, she jotted details of Peyton’s torture and his subsequent death: the taped voice speaking German, the smeared visor, the name Heinrich Kauffman, coro—. The third was devoted to Jasmine’s photographs: innocuous pictures of the pits, the race car and one arm of the shooter. The fourth page contained notes on the destruction of Samuel Groën’s photography store: the incendiary rifle shot, Jasmine’s camera card, the timing of the incident.
She added bug to the last sheet.
It was possible, but improbable, that Groën had his own band of enemies, people he’d annoyed to the point of wanting to destroy his business and him with it. But what was the chance they’d do it at that precise moment—while the camera card was there to be developed? Much more likely that destruction of the shop was related to the photograph.
If so, then the eavesdropper was likely to be the shooter.
Throughout the afternoon, Jasmine had repeatedly asked the time, whined that she didn’t want to be late picking up her picture at six o’clock. Earlier in the day, she’d told Hagan all about what was on the film. She insisted she’d seen the devil. Groën said the photograph did not show the shooter, but you wouldn’t have known that from overhearing Jasmine. To destroy the photograph, all the eavesdropper had to do was follow Jasmine to Groën’s shop.
Holding on to that premise, she tore off another sheet; labeled who, what, where, when and why across the top. Three of the questions were easy—what, was a listening device; where, was attached to the kitchen door off the patio; why, was to listen in and determine what the occupants of the house knew.
Listen to whom? Jasmine and Groën had just moved in. Spying on Ian at the house would have been unproductive: Mostly, he read automotive magazines or listened to heavy operas through earphones. Like Ian, she rarely discussed anything other than racing until Hagan arrived. Hagan, a cop who had shown up unannounced right after someone had shot at the pits. His presence might make a stalker curious.
Who and when were even more elusive. The entire crew knew where she and Ian lived, consequently where Hagan was staying. If a stranger had asked for the address, it wouldn’t have raised any suspicions. The house on Patricia Street was not a state secret.
Likewise, the bug could have been planted anytime. The house was empty during the day. There was no neighbor’s guard dog to scare off an intruder at night. Even after Hagan showed up, the patio gate had been left unlocked to allow Jasmine—and apparently, the eavesdropper—easy access.
Hearing the squelch of rubber on the wood floor, she turned and smiled at Groën. He raked fingers through his beard. “While I sleep, you have solved the mystery, yes?”
“Hardly. You take my notes. I’ll make coffee.”
She slid her chair back from the table, allowing Samuel to take her place. Nose bent down to the surface, he read each clue, pushed the page aside as he reached for another. He formed the four sheets into a cross, shuffled them to suit his thoughts. Then he took a pen from his shirt pocket and popped off the cap. He scratched tiny lines of notes on the bottom of one page, circled a few words, then swiveled to include her. “Are we certain that there is just one person behind all this?”
She slid cups on the table. “I hope so: one complicated, driven, vengeful loner. Torture by committee just doesn’t feel right.”
“We start with one.” He waved a finger over the papers. “But, loner or not, he was known to your Mr. Peyton. Pains were always taken so he would not be seen. The mischief to the cars was done at night. The shooting from a distance. During the interrogation, vision through the helmet was obscured. Our villain can shoot, yet he doesn’t kill Peyton. He missed on Thursday. He could have shot him Friday night at the deserted track, but didn’t. We know much and yet too little about his goal.”
Rebecca found a hard corn muffin and two slices of cold pizza. She arranged them on a plate and dropped it on the table as she sat. “Killing Peyton was never the object.”
“I agree. Or he prefers killing him by degrees: torment, sabotage, little distractions to unnerve his prey. He is Jewish.”
She stopped, her hand midway to the pizza. “Jews are the only race capable of such atrocities?”
Samuel bobbed his head, then wagged it sideways. “Of course not. But we are good at it. It makes the most sense. You have not seen Jasmine’s photograph. I have.”
“You said there was nothing to see.”
“Not for you, maybe, but for me. We Jews do not forget.” He rolled up the sleeve of his shirt. “You remember I tell you the shooter’s sleeve was pushed up so, perhaps to better steady the rifle? Jasmine photographed the arm just after the recoil, as it eased away from the barrel. The flesh was exposed, so the scar just above the wrist was visible. Not really a scar, scar tissue. Not recent and red, but faded like a snapshot from my childhood. I enlarged it. No stitch marks, no burns. Faint ink marks, numbers. An indelible reminder of something removed long ago.”
“A tattoo?”
“Not a drawing, Rebecca. Numbers, six of them. So hateful they had to be grafted over.” He nodded at her, willing her to make the connection.
She dropped the slice onto the plate and snatched up the pad of paper. On a clean sheet she wrote German Connections.
Thirty-five
The phone rang just before seven. Groën was calculating the current age range for Holocaust survivors. If he was correct and the scar had once been a concentration camp identification number, then the gunman had to have been a Nazi prisoner of war.
“Was the skin on the forearm dry, aged?”
Groën shrugged. “Who noticed? I focused on the scar, not skin.”
Rebecca homed in on the ringing; it was her cell phone. She rescued it from beneath a sofa pillow, kept walking to stretch.
Her grandmother was so keyed up she sounded asthmatic. “Did you say that the owner of the race team’s name is Peyton Madison? Oh, how is he by the way?”
Rebecca didn’t remember mentioning Madison’s full name in their earlier conversation, but perhaps she had. “He didn’t make it. Died of heart complications. Presumably a result of his ordeal at the track.”
Dorothea paused. “He was an elderly man?”
“Fifties. Why?”
“Ah. The younger Madison. Not made of the same stern stuff as the father. They say he’s going strong. Of course he may not know yet.”
“About Peyton? He—”
Dorothea took a
deep breath. “Oh, dear me. Let me begin closer to the beginning. I’d better sit.”
Rebecca waited for her grandmother to come back on the line.
“There. Much better. Now, on your behalf, I spent last evening on the phone with acquaintances who track down Old Masters belonging to Jewish war survivors. Do you realize that as of the nineteen-nineties, an estimated thirty billion dollars worth of art was still unaccounted for? Some is surfacing now as the survivors die off because those inheriting are feeling complacent. Sad stories. Many were reluctant to speak with me until I mentioned Heinrich Kauffman. His name was like breaking a dam, got everyone talking. Mainly because he’s something of a mystery. At least one of them was. You’ll want to take this down.”
Rebecca grabbed the steno pad from the table, found a pen on the floor. She scribbled as Dorothea spoke, amazed at the details she’d uncovered overnight.
Heinrich Josef Kauffman, the first of the name, had been a successful chemist in Stuttgart in the decade leading up to WWII. He was remembered as tolerant, kinder than his wife, less shrewd, far less political. When Hitler started making speeches, it was Hilde Kauffman who embraced the cause with fervor. She passed out leaflets to friends, dragged Heinrich, Jr. to rallies, that sort of thing. Her husband went along with her, out of indifference at first. Later because survival and his fortune depended on it. When it became obvious that no Jewish family, however prominent, was going to be allowed to prosper, the gentile Kauffman stepped in to help his Jewish neighbors.
“Opinions are divided, Rebecca, between those who believe Kauffman initially wanted to help his friends, and the other camp, who suspect Hilde was behind the planned acquisitions. Greed was her motive. Or retribution.”
“What were they acquiring?”
“Art, of course. Didn’t I mentioned the Aryanization of art collections? Well, that was Heinrich Kauffman’s game from about nineteen-forty-one until nineteen-forty-five. Just before the war ended in Europe, Kauffman and his eldest son, also Heinrich, vanished. As did the art collections of four prominent Jewish families, collections conservatively valued in the millions.
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