Where the Bones are Buried (12 page)

What was the actual time of the murder? Swan said she had gotten to the ferry dock at about five-thirty, later than Lena claimed to have taken her photo. Margaret was already there, waiting for Swan. They argued for a few minutes, then Swan walked to the tower, which would have taken her a good half-hour. When she reached the tower, she found Pohl already dead so the murder must have occurred before six, while it was still daylight and before the dancing and the drumming revved up. The hiker who reported the body must have come along shortly after Swan left, and the Rahnsdorf police arrived before Lohendorf and Dinah got to the tower a little past seven-thirty.

It dawned on her that the prime suspects were the early birds—Florian Farber, Viktor and Lena Bischoff, Luther Wurttemberg, Stefan Amsel, and Baer Eichen. In spite of his seeming intoxication last night, Amsel warranted special scrutiny because of his connection to the Adlon. “Did you or any of the others hear gunshots?”

“No. Luther thought he heard fireworks down by the lake around six.”

Nobody expects gunfire, she thought—at least not in Germany, and it isn't always clear where the sound has come from, depending on the distance and caliber and the physical terrain. It was possible that the murderer used a silencer and what Luther heard was, in fact, fireworks.

“Other than Viktor, did any of the other club members have a bone to pick with Pohl?”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“A grudge. Some reason to hate him or fear him?”

Farber's forehead puckered and he closed the laptop. “I am not a priest. I do not take confession.” He closed his laptop and stood up. “It is past my closing hour now.”

“I won't keep you. Thanks so much for showing me the photographs. If you'll be so kind as to give me the Bischoffs' address, I'll be on my way.”

He looked doubtful.

She smiled. “Lena popped by my apartment last night. She was all torn up and I want to check on her. To make sure she's all right.”

“You had better be careful, Frau Pelerin. Lena is a volatile woman and she thinks your mother killed Alwin.”

“I intend to convince her she's wrong.”

“Then I wish you good luck.” He took a business card from a holder on the desk, wrote an address on the back, and put the card in her hand. “She and Viktor quarreled last night after the police questioned them. I doubt you will find them at home together.”

Chapter Eighteen

Kurfürstenstrasse swarmed with evening shoppers, making their way west to the retail mecca of the Ku'damm or maybe the vast and luxurious KaDeWe, short for Kaufhaus des Westens—the department store of the West. Dinah glimpsed the KaDeWe sign a block away over the roofs of other buildings. She thought about the array of fantastic desserts in its seventh-floor café and her mouth watered. The tiramisu törtchen with the chocolate frosting seemed to cry out to her. She held out against temptation, afraid that if she stopped even briefly, she would talk herself out of a visit with Viktor and Lena.

She waited on the corner for the red traffic light man to change to green. The jaunty little man in the hat had been a popular icon in East Germany and, despite efforts to replace the
Ampelmännchen
with standardized traffic signals, he remained as a sentimental relic. He was by far and away the most innocent reminder of the German Democratic Republic's oppressive communist regime.

Green Ampelmann appeared and she crossed to BudapesterStrasse and hailed a taxi. She showed the driver the address on the card and he assured her he could get her there in twenty minutes. For some reason, she had a feeling of urgency and a raft of second thoughts about blackmail as the motive for murder. More often than not, the simplest explanation was the correct one and sex was as simple as it got. Viktor fit a profile common in the States—depressed man, unable to cope with his wife's infidelity, flips out, buys a gun and kills his rival. Some head cases went on to kill the wife, the children, and the in-laws before killing themselves. It occurred to her that Lena might be in danger. This line of thinking led her to recall stories of third parties caught in the line of fire between feuding couples. She envisioned her obituary.

Dinah Pelerin, 34, long known for her habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, was shot dead in the Berlin suburbs by a make-believe Kiowa brave named Drumming Man. Her mother, exonerated of murder, wore kitten heels to the funeral.

The taxi cut through the Tiergarten to the intersection of Strasse des 17 Juni, the former Nazi triumphal boulevard renamed in 1953 in tribute of the East Berlin protesters gunned down on that day by the Red Army and the East German Volkspolizei. Straight ahead, on a small traffic island at the hub of six avenues through the park, stood the memorial column commemorating the Prussian victory over the French in 1870. The Soviet troops who captured Berlin in 1945 referred to the golden angel who sat atop the column as “the tall woman.” Berliners called her Golden Lizzy. Geert called her the chick on a stick. The chick had looked down on a lot of history in her time. Some thought her pedestal was a place where angels congregate. Some thought ghosts. Keeping her secrets, she glimmered noncommittally as a light rain began to fall. The taxi skirted around her island and headed toward the River Spree.

This driver liked classical music. The radio played a soothing serenade by Brahms and her thoughts reverted to Thor. He would think of something sensible and incisive that would never have occurred to her. But Thor was tied up with an international crisis and how could she possibly explain her mother's situation?

They crossed the River Spree and after a couple of miles, the driver turned right onto Otto-Dix-Strasse. She recognized the name. She had seen a few of his paintings exhibited in the New National Gallery. The Nazis had deemed him a degenerate and burned some of his work. Two of his canvases had been recently discovered among a trove of masterpieces stolen by the Nazis and hoarded in the home of an elderly art dealer's son in Munich. Come to think of it, those paintings remained in legal limbo because the art dealer, like Reiner Hess, was under investigation for tax evasion.

The taxi slowed and came to a stop in front of a row of modest townhomes, each painted a different color. The driver consulted Farber's card and pointed. “That one. The house with the blue door.”

She pushed a fifty Euro note into his hand. “Will you wait please? I shouldn't be more than a few minutes.”

He pocketed the note. “Take your time.”

She pushed open a low gate and followed a brick path through a well-tended small garden. In the rainy dusk, it was hard to see what the Bischoffs grew other than cauliflower and kohlrabi. A sensor light came on when she stepped up onto the stoop. The doorknocker was the bronze head of an Indian chief. No question this was the right place. She rapped the knocker against the door with force several times. No one answered. She looked back at the taxi driver, who lolled against the seat enjoying his music.

She rapped again.

“
Wer ist da
?” answered a sullen male voice.

“Dinah Pelerin.”

The door swung open and Viktor appeared, disheveled and unsteady on his feet, but dressed in normal Western clothes and without his braids. “
Was willst du
?”

She assumed it was the same question that had greeted her when she strolled into Farber's gallery. “I'd like to speak with your wife.”

“
Geh zur Hölle
.”

“I don't speak German, Herr Bischoff.”

“Go to hell.” He turned and staggered down the hall, thumping a drumstick against the wall as he went.

She caught the door and held it open. A wave of heat rolled over her. The house was like an oven. “Lena? Are you in there?”

Leaving the door ajar, she tiptoed inside and followed Viktor down the hall into a scorching-hot wreck of a room. Cowhide armchairs had been overturned; shards of Hopi, Zuni, and Navajo pottery littered the floor; a large oil painting of a warrior astride a galloping horse had been slashed and thrown against a wall; and the hilt of a knife stuck out of a large rawhide drumhead.

A fire blazed and crackled in the fireplace. There was no screen, and cinders spat out onto the stone hearth. Viktor appeared immune to the heat. He sank down cross-legged in front of the fire and tipped a bottle of Magic Horse Scotch to his mouth.

“Did you and Lena have a fight?”

He didn't answer.

“She's not injured, is she?”

“I am the one who is injured.”

Something crunched under Dinah's foot. She picked up a clay fragment of a frog, a Zuni motif. A dustpan containing black-on-orange fragments, probably Hopi, had been set on a tray table. She picked up the frog's severed head and a piece of a reddish-brown bowl. The bowl looked antique. “You must feel awful losing so many beautiful pots. They look valuable.”

“They were. But not to my wife.”

Dinah wondered if these treasures had come from Farber's Happy Hunting Ground. Maybe Viktor received an employee's discount. She said, “Lena visited me last night. She was extremely emotional over the death of Alwin Pohl.”

“He was
die Viper
. Nature and the sacredness of life that we value, he treated with contempt.”

“Did you know that Lena planned to go away with him?”

“Water seeks its level. In the nightclubs they met in secret. The Berghain, the White Noise, Cookies. I am not a fool.”

“You must have hated him.”

“
Ja
,
sicher
. I hated him.” He turned the bottle up to his mouth. He wiped his lips and glared, daring her to ask the obvious question.

She dashed a drop of salty sweat out of her eye, judged the distance to the door, and asked it. “Did you kill him?”

“I hate killing.” He maundered something else in German and seemed to lose his train of thought. “My wife says I am not man enough to kill.”

Under the windows opposite the fire stood an undamaged étagère with a few framed photos and a collection of books sandwiched between a pair of antique binoculars and what looked like a gas mask and canister. She walked over and looked at the books. Several were by Karl May, but a few carried English titles like
Native American Spirituality, Listen to the Drum
, and
The Wind Is My Mother
. She picked up a black-and-white photo of a man in uniform posed in front of a swastika. “Did your father fight in the war?”

“That is my grandfather. He was a Nazi. A war criminal and a coward. He killed himself to avoid capture, but my father revered his memory. He remained a Nazi until he died. I hated them both.”

“If you feel that way, why do you keep the photograph?”

“It is
das Büßerhemd
. My hair shirt.” He picked up a shard of pottery and scratched a swastika on the wood floor. “Did you know that was a symbol of peace for the Hopi? It is a symbol of healing in Navajo rugs and baskets.” He pulled a baggie out of his pocket and began to roll a joint. Sweat trickled out of his hair and ran down his long face as he licked the paper and lit up. “I should have been born a pagan in another century.”

“Some of your pottery looks as if it came from another century. Do you and your partner import from dealers in the U.S.?”

“That is not my responsibility. I write histories and take pictures and present the pieces to our clients.”

She wondered again about the provenance of some of the items for sale in the Happy Hunting Ground, and the idea of blackmail reasserted itself. “Do your histories include information about where and how the pieces were acquired?”

He stared at her. She wasn't sure how much the alcohol had dulled his thinking, but his eyes appeared sharp.

She took a chance. “I think Pohl was blackmailing someone in
der Indianer
club. Do you have any idea who? Or why?”

“
Erpressung
?”

“
Press
sounds right. Was Pohl pressuring anyone? Demanding money for his silence?”

“Blackmail.” The word seemed to have a profound effect. Either he was a great pretender or the possibility genuinely startled him. He grimaced and waved her away. “Who are you to come into my house and ask these questions?”

“I'm the daughter of a Native American woman who was invited to your Indian show and got a very nasty surprise. I know that Lena thinks Swan murdered Alwin, but she didn't. I'm hoping to prevent the German police from charging her with a crime she didn't commit.”

He took a deep drag and exhaled a cloud of pungent smoke. “Reiner Hess came to the gallery with Pohl six months ago. At the next meeting, Florian presented Pohl as a new member. It is possible that Pohl knew of an American law Hess broke.”

“When did you last see Hess?”

“The first time I saw Pohl was the last time I saw Hess.”

Dinah cranked this detail through the mill. Had Hess put Pohl up to blackmailing Swan? As Cleon's lawyer, he would have been more likely than Pohl to know about Cleon's various bank accounts. Maybe he thought he could glom onto the Panama money by threatening Cleon's favorite ex-wife. But surely he would have demanded more than a half million dollars. “Where is Lena, Viktor? I'd like to talk with her.”

“On her way to hell. I don't care.”

Dinah cared. Viktor might hate killing in general, but he made Lena sound like a special case. She couldn't decide if “on her way to hell” was hyperbole or confession. Before she left, she had to make sure that Lena's body wasn't decomposing in a back room. Viktor stared into the fire, seemingly absorbed by his private sorrows. Dinah latched her hands behind her back, affected an air of aimless curiosity, and moseyed into the rear hallway.

There were two bedrooms, lights left on. She slipped into the larger one and looked inside the closet, which was two-thirds empty. The only clothes on hangers were men's shirts and suits and a man's overcoat. She reconnoitered the dresser drawers, but all she saw were Viktor's socks and skivvies. She peeked under the bed and scoped out the adjacent bathroom. There were no cosmetics on the double vanity, no perfumes, no jewelry. And no blood. A woman could be murdered bloodlessly and her belongings deep-sixed, but Dinah's provisional assessment suggested the Lena had packed up and decamped under her own steam.

She gave the smaller bedroom a look-see. There was nothing suspicious and she ambled back into the living room. Sweat streamed down her sides and she felt as if her bones were melting. She had to get out of here or she'd dissolve into a puddle. “Do you have any idea where Lena has gone, Viktor? Does she have family in Berlin, or a best friend?”

He staggered to his feet and pulled the knife out of the rawhide drumhead. “Baer was lucky his wife died young. A man is lucky who never knows the falseness of his Frau.”

She would have asked if he owned a gun, but the time didn't feel right. She bid him
Auf Wiedersehen
and hurried out into the rain.