The Seven Sequels bundle

by Orca Various

  They say honesty is the best policy. I decide to see if they know what they’re talking about.

  “I saw this guy”—I jerk my head at Puffy—“lurking around your garage.”

  “Lurking?” Puffy snorts. “Listen to this guy. Lurking!”

  Eric is listening—intently—so I continue.

  “That’s what it looked like to me. So I went to check it out.”

  “And?” Eric demands.

  That puts Puffy’s nose out of joint. “A guy does another guy a favor, and this is what happens? Fine.” He thrusts the snow shovel at Eric. “You want to give me the third degree over nothing, you can clear your own driveway!” He jams his hands in his pockets and marches away. Eric doesn’t even turn his head. He’s focused on me.

  “What was he doing in there?”

  “Looking for something.” I glance at Puffy’s back. He’s made it to the road and is booting it down the street. He is not a happy camper. “Maybe the snow shovel.”

  “Yeah?” Eric looks at the tool that’s now in his hand. “I was looking for this earlier. Thought I was going to have to buy a new one. Where did he find it?”

  I tell him. I don’t mention the box, because now that I know Puffy and Eric know each other well enough for Eric to take it as a given that Puffy would want to clear the driveway, I think maybe what happened in there is none of my business.

  “See you,” I say.

  “Not if I see you first.”

  When I turn to go, Eric is holding the snow shovel. When I look back from the street, he’s out of sight. The side door to the garage is still open.

  SEVEN

  I have a lot of time to kill until six o’clock tonight. First on my order of business, I need a place for the night. I walk downtown, spot a Holiday Inn almost instantly and go inside. The clerk at the desk, a squeaky-clean type in a white shirt and tie and a gray jacket with a name tag pinned to the lapel—Thomas Hadley—looks me over. Maybe I imagine the slight curl of distaste his lips make, but I’m pretty sure I don’t. I’m wearing a too-thin leather jacket, faded jeans and troublemaker boots, and I’m not carrying any luggage.

  “May I help you?” he says after he’s finished his none-too-subtle inspection.

  “I’d like a room.”

  His eyes rake over me again, and I’m torn between wishing I’d doubled back to the diner Jacques works at to pick up my duffel and wanting to pound some respect into Thomas Hadley. I mean, how does he know I’m not some millionaire’s son?

  “Do you have a reservation?” he asks.

  “No. But I bet you have a few vacancies.”

  He fiddles with his computer for a few minutes, probably just to make me sweat.

  “We require a credit-card imprint,” he says finally, as if that will settle the matter and send me on my way.

  I dig the Major’s gold card out of my wallet and slap it down on the counter.

  Hadley looks at it. Then looks up. “And valid photo ID.”

  Out comes the wallet again. I toss my driver’s license onto the counter next to the credit card.

  Hadley picks it up gingerly—you know, in case it’s smeared all over with some homeless person/ petty criminal contagious disease. He examines the photo on the license and compares it to the face in front of him.

  “Your name?” he asks, like it’s some kind of trick question.

  I tell him.

  “Address?” He holds the license so I can’t see it. He’s still trying to trip me up.

  I rattle off my address and throw in my birth date just to hurry things along. Hadley looks disappointed.

  “And how long will you be staying with us, Mister…Charbonneau?” he asks. He mispronounces my name.

  “One night. Maybe two.”

  He begins entering information into the computer in front of him. It takes a few minutes, but he finally gets my signature and slips me a key card. He even manages to thank me for choosing Holiday Inn without choking on the words. Jerk.

  The first thing I notice when I get up to the room is how warm it is. In fact, it’s the toastiest I’ve been since leaving Uruguay. The second thing is how comfortable the bed is. I spread-eagle on it like a kid about to make a snow angel. I think about texting Adam to see how he’s doing, but I’m pretty sure that whatever he’s up to, I’m going to feel bad because, so far, I’ve got nothing useful. I haven’t found Mirella—although it’s possible, I guess, that the union will have a record of her—and I know nothing more about the Nazi in the newspaper clipping, other than a name that has a pretty good chance of turning out to be fake. As for my grandfather, it’s still a complete mystery why he was masquerading as someone named Klaus Adler. I decide to wait. I’ll contact Adam when I have something concrete to report.

  I close my eyes. When I open them again, I jump, thinking someone must have snuck into the room—Hadley?—and closed all the blinds. It’s so dark.

  But the blinds are open, and I realize with a jolt that I’ve slept the day away. It’s nearly six, and the sun is down for the night.

  I scramble to my feet and sniff my armpits. I could use a shower, but I have no clean clothes to change into. Everything is in my duffel bag. Still…

  I strip down and shower fast. I wash the underarms of my shirt and blow-dry them. I don’t have any deodorant, but at least I smell like soap now and not a bad case of BO. I dress and then I’m off to the old man’s place, feeling less than hopeful that he’s managed to come up with something.

  I ring the bell.

  No answer.

  The front of the house is dark. There’s no light in the hall, none in the living room, none in the front upstairs windows.

  I circle around to the back to see if there’s any sign of life there.

  A light is shining out of the old man’s window, so I go up onto the porch to take a look, to see if he’s in there.

  He isn’t. Who I see instead is Katya.

  She’s alone in Curtis’s room. She’s moving things—piles of books, boxes, stacks of paper—holding them up and then putting them back down again after she’s given them a thorough once-over. She’s doing it methodically, moving slowly around the room. After a minute or two, she stands up straight and shakes her head. She’s looking for something, I’m sure of it. But what?

  She goes over to the trunk, the one in front of the massive picture of Der Führer. She tries to lift the lid, but it doesn’t give. She tries again. Nothing. She kneels down in front of it for a better look. My guess: the trunk is locked. She stands up, hands on her hips. For a few seconds, she’s like a statue. Then she tries to move the trunk, pull it forward, which I don’t understand. Moving it isn’t going to make it open.

  From the effort she puts into it, it’s clear that the trunk is heavy. When she straightens up again, her shoulders are heaving, as if she’s breathing hard. Then she reaches over the trunk, grabs hold of the framed Adolf and starts to lift it.

  Which is when someone shouts.

  I hear a thump and a curse. It’s coming from outside Curtis’s bedroom door, and my eyes shift there. There’s a chair in front of the door. That’s funny, I think, until I realize that Katya has put it there to warn her when someone tries to come in. She starts to put the picture back, but it slips from her hands. There’s a crash, followed by another muffled shout from the other side of the door:

  “What’s going on in there?”

  Katya freezes. She stands there for a long time, staring down at what she’s done. At least, that’s what I think at the time. Someone hammers on the door. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Katya swings into action, putting everything she’s got into pushing the trunk back into place. She rushes over to the door and yanks the chair aside. The old man shuffles in at double time, pushing his walker in front of him. He’s in a robe, there’s a towel over one shoulder, and his hair is sticking up in all directions. He cleaned up, same as me.

  “Why was my door locked?” he demands.

  “It wasn’t locked, Grandpa.
I was just tidying up. I guess I moved the chair in front of the door without noticing it. I’m sorry. How was your shower?”

  But he doesn’t want to talk about his shower. He wants to know what that crash was.

  Katya is all innocence. “That was just the door hitting the chair.”

  I pull away from the window and circle around to the front of the house again. This time I ring twice. I also rat-a-tat-tat on the door to make sure someone hears me.

  It’s Katya who answers. Her cheeks are flushed.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Your grandfather invited me to dinner.”

  She scowls.

  “You can ask him,” I say cheerily.

  She’s itching to close the door on me, but the old man’s walker swings into view, followed by the old man. He’s still wearing his bathrobe, but it’s open now, and I see he’s managed to get himself into a pair of clean pants.

  “Come in. Come in.” He smiles at me but shoots a look of irritation at Katya.

  I step inside and remove my boots.

  “Don’t you have to check on dinner?” Curtis says to Katya.

  For a second, it’s hard to tell who she’s angrier at, me or her grandfather. She spins around and marches to the back of the house, where, I have to say, something smells delicious.

  “Follow me,” Curtis says.

  I pad down the hall behind him to his room. The trunk is back in its place in front of Hitler, and any damage Katya did to the frame or the glass when she dropped it isn’t visible. I think about telling the old man what I saw, but how would that make me look, peeking into his room like a burglar on the prowl? I tell myself that Katya’s business has nothing to do with me.

  “Did you find out anything?” I ask.

  Curtis has pushed his way over to the closet. He opens the door and stares inside before pulling out a clean shirt. He shrugs off his bathrobe, and I see how skinny he is—all bone and wrinkly skin. He’s unsteady on his feet when he lets go of his walker, so I watch him closely, ready to prop him up if I have to. He gets one arm in a sleeve no problem, but then he has to hunt around for the other arm, which isn’t easy because the shirt is hanging half off him and the empty sleeve is behind his back. He keeps working at it silently until I can’t stand it anymore. I grab the sleeve, even though he growls that he doesn’t need help. When he doesn’t thank me, I get the feeling I’ve insulted him.

  Finally, he drops into a chair.

  “Did that union guy get back to you?” I ask.

  “Donnie? Yes, he did.”

  I wait.

  “And?” I ask finally, exasperated.

  “Mirella worked at a Chrysler plant until she retired out of there.”

  I hold my breath.

  “She was active in the union too.”

  Was, as in before she retired?

  “She died back in the nineties. No husband. No kids.”

  Well, that’s that. Mirella isn’t going to be able to help me. I’m exactly nowhere. I’ve made no progress at all.

  “What about Franken?” I ask.

  Curtis shoots me a sly smile. “I did some work for you, finding out about Mirella, and you still haven’t told me why you want to talk to her. Anything else I do for you is going to be a trade—you want to get information, you have to give information.”

  “Does that mean you found out something about Heinrich Franken?”

  “You want to get, you have to give,” Curtis says.

  I don’t want to explain the whole mess, but I don’t see I have much choice. Besides, whatever happened was so long ago now that the only people it probably matters to are me and my cousins. Even if my grandfather was a spy or a Nazi or whatever, what difference does it make now?

  The doorbell rings.

  “Can somebody get that?” Katya shouts from the kitchen.

  I look at the old man.

  “Gerry’s out,” he says. “Eric too, I think.”

  What else can I do? “I’ll go.”

  The bell rings again. I step out into the hall. Katya appears in the doorway to the kitchen, wiping her hands on an apron and looking annoyed, as if everything always falls to her. Maybe it does. Maybe that’s why she left home.

  “I got it,” I yell.

  “It’s probably Uncle Gerry. He goes out for a few beers with his friends and then can’t find his keys when they drop him back home.” She goes back into the kitchen.

  I head in the other direction, to answer the door.

  It’s a sharp-looking guy—overcoat, scarf, leather gloves, a gift-bagged bottle in one hand and a bunch of flowers in the other.

  “You must be Eric,” he says, grinning and shifting the gift bag to the hand that’s holding the flowers. “I’m Noah. It’s great to finally meet you.” He pumps my hand and looks as happy as a kid who’s just met his all-time-favorite superhero.

  “Who is it?” Katya calls from the kitchen.

  Noah smiles at the sound of her voice and steps forward to come inside. The only problem is, I don’t shift to give him the room. It’s not my house, and he may be Noah, but I don’t know him from Adam.

  I call back to Katya. “Some guy says his name is Noah.”

  Katya must have a Star Trek transporter back there in the kitchen, because she’s at my elbow in a nano-second. She shoves me aside.

  “Noah, what are you doing here?”

  Her tone, a mix of stunned and angry, wipes the smile right off his face.

  “Aren’t you happy to see me?” His mouth turns down into a sad-puppy pout.

  Katya glances at me. She pushes Noah out onto the porch, steps outside with him and closes the door. She’s in a sweater and leggings, with a chef ’s apron overtop. If she wants to freeze out there, what do I care? And boy, is she ever annoyed with Noah. I can hear her right through the door, mostly because Gerry didn’t do a great job replacing the part of the doorframe that I broke. There’s a gap between it and the side of the door.

  “It’s about time I met your family.” That’s Noah, sounding reasonable and also a little hurt.

  “I told you I’d handle it. I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be here.” That’s Katya.

  “They have to meet me sooner or later.”

  “That’s not what I’m here for, and you know it.”

  There’s a long pause, and I’m ready to head back to the old man when I hear Noah again. He says, “Did you find it?”

  Katya answers, but she lowers her voice so that all I hear is a low hum. Noah matches his voice to hers. Normally, I wouldn’t care. But there was Katya in the old man’s room, clearly looking for something that, as far as I can make out, she didn’t find. And the next thing I know, here’s a guy named Noah who wants to know if she found it. It makes a guy wonder: found what? I also wonder why Katya doesn’t want Noah here—and why he showed up, apparently unexpected.

  When I get back to Curtis’s room, he’s scrambling around in a drawer, pulling stuff out—batteries and coins, bits of paper, pill bottles, paper clips, what I think is a tie clip, some cufflinks, more scraps of paper.

  “Did you lose something?” I ask.

  “Aha!” Triumphant, he holds up something. A key.

  “Come on,” he says. “Let’s go get a nip.”

  He pushes his walker out into the hallway, waits until I’m standing beside him and then locks the door. He drops the key into his pants pocket and is off to the living room.

  We’re intercepted on the way when the front door opens and Gerry bursts in. His face is red, his nose is redder, and he’s stomping his feet.

  “Getting colder out there.”

  “You’re just in time for a nip,” Curtis says.

  The door opens again. This time it’s Katya and Noah. Katya is wearing Noah’s overcoat. Noah is shivering in a sharp-looking black suit.

  “Grandpa, Uncle Gerry, this is Noah. He’s staying for dinner.”

  The two men look at the newcomer. The puzzled expressions on thei
r faces make me think that not only have they never met Noah, but they’ve never even heard of him.

  “I—I met him at school,” Katya says.

  Noah nudges her. “There’s more to it than that.” He smiles at her and holds out a hand. Shyly, Katya takes it.

  “We’re engaged,” she says softly.

  “Engaged?” Gerry shouts the word, as if she’s just announced that she’s been arrested for solicitation. “Engaged?”

  “I love your niece, sir.” Noah gazes lovingly at Katya. “She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  Gerry ignores him. “How can you be engaged to someone I’ve never heard of?” he demands. “When you were here at Thanksgiving, you didn’t mention him. And now you’re telling me you’re getting married? I don’t know the first thing about him.”

  Katya’s cheeks flush. She slips out of Noah’s coat and drapes it on the banister. “We can talk about this later, Uncle Gerry. I’m in the middle of making dinner.” She turns to Noah. “I could use an extra pair of hands.”

  But Gerry is blocking the way. “We’ll talk about it now.”

  “Uncle Gerry—”

  “I’ve been responsible for you and your brother since your mother died. I raised you. Me. Not that good-for-nothing father of yours.”

  “Gerry.” It’s the old man. He touches Gerry’s arm—a warning. Gerry shakes him off.

  “I raised you, and I want to make sure you’re doing the right thing. You’re nineteen, Katya. You’re too young to get married.”

  “Mom got married when she was eighteen.”

  “Yeah, and look how that worked out. What do you even know about this guy?”

  Noah stiffens. A sharp look crosses his face. Katya catches it.

  “Uncle Gerry, Noah is standing right here. Don’t talk about him as if he isn’t.” Her face softens, and she comes in close to her uncle. “I love him and he loves me. What do you want to know?”

  “For one thing, what he does for a living.”

  “I just graduated from law school,” Noah says. “I’m about to start an articling position.”

  “In other words, you’re unemployed.” Gerry, unemployed himself, is not impressed.