Winter Passing (26 page)

Daylight faded in the valley as Darby and Richter drove the north edge of Hallstatt Lake. Night would come soon. Darby noticed the last reflection of pink on the water as she drove. This man promised her safety once she revealed the hidden treasure. Could she really believe him? He’d already told her several lies. Could this be, perhaps, her final glimpse of sunlight? She checked the rearview mirror again. No one had followed them from the city. Surely Brant would wonder where she was, be searching for her maybe. But he was too far behind.

God, you can’t want this to happen. Not after everything. Not after this journey you’ve led me on.

Had Tatianna thought those same words? What doubts and fears did she have during those last steps before death? Darby wanted to be strong, setting her jaw and holding her head high. But inside she felt weak and shaky and feared she might crumble at any moment. She prayed for strength over and over again.

Richter had been quiet the last few miles. She imagined him hatching his plan to retrieve the inheritance, and then what? Darby needed her own plan and could only think of the Gerringer home in Hallstatt. If she could somehow get to them, perhaps she’d make it.

“Take a right at the next curve,” Richter said.

“That’s not the way to Hallstatt,” Darby said, her voice rising. This was not in her plan.

“There’s something I must do first.”

Brant had tried roads and places in Salzburg but couldn’t find Richter’s car anywhere. He’d stopped by Darby’s hotel, called a dozen times, driven to Richter’s favorite places, and started once toward Munich and Ingrid’s house. Instead, he phoned again on his return to Salzburg, but no one answered. He’d gone to Gunther’s, only to leave without talking to him. For how could he break this news to the old man now? But could the old man be in danger? The police would believe none of this—it was all speculation.

Late afternoon faded quickly into night. He drove into a parking lot and hit the brakes hard.
Think, think
, he told himself. If only he’d tailed Richter and Darby immediately. Brant picked up his car phone and tried Richter’s cellular but received only a recording that indicated the power was off. He called Darby’s hotel again, feeling like he was repeating her trip to Vienna. Could that have only been days ago? Again, there was no answer in her room. The front desk said they hadn’t seen her. Next he dialed Ingrid in Munich. The line picked up.

“Frau Müller is in Gosau today,” the housekeeper said. “She’s finishing work there before closing the house.”

Brant hung up before saying good-bye. Gosau was over an hour away. And what if Darby wasn’t there?

He squeezed the steering wheel. There were only two options he could think of. Either Darby had betrayed them and was involved with Richter and Ingrid, or Darby was in trouble. His eyes said she’d tricked them. His heart told him differently. Yet his feelings had certainly failed him before.

Brant battled back and forth. Darby had appeared in Salzburg at the same time he began to suspect Richter and Ingrid were involved in something. She’d disappeared in Vienna for an entire night and never given an explanation as to where she’d gone. Richter was looking for her when Brant picked her up at the train station. And the ring—the one piece that had convinced him. Ingrid most likely had seen it on Celia’s finger years ago. She could have made a duplicate and given it to Darby. The evidence and seeing Darby drive off in Richter’s car all pointed one way.

But then he remembered other things. Darby so childlike and afraid after her room was broken into. Could that have been part of the act? Was she capable of faking their night at the dinner concert and her interest at the Holocaust conference? Were her laughter and kisses only for dramatic effect? And if Darby was partnered with Ingrid and Richter, why hadn’t she gone straight to Gunther for the information they sought?

Then the image of Darby asleep next to Gunther made him ignore the facts and believe in her. He’d watched them sleep so deep and safe and secure. Though they’d just met, they were not strangers, but grandfather and grandchild brought together at last.

“If she’s not involved, then she’s in danger,” he said aloud.

Brant turned the car out of the parking lot while hitting the buttons on his phone. He didn’t want to worry his old friend, but he needed to know one thing: Where was the inheritance hidden?

The sign said
Gosau
. Darby turned the car to the right. “Are we going to Ingrid and Gunther’s house?”

“Just follow my instructions.” His voice revealed his own conflicting thoughts. “I need a few supplies. We can’t dig with our hands, now can we?”

Darby remained silent as they drove miles of twisting mountain road through dense forest and along a silver stream that caught the last lights in the sky. The car was warm and comfortable with the scent of men’s aftershave, but Darby felt sick. The road rose from the forest into a long mountain valley and into tiny Gosau. Richter directed her up myriad streets to a hillside house—Gunther and Ingrid’s, she assumed. The smaller house next door must have been where Brant had spent his childhood summers. She imagined him as a boy exploring forest grottos and visiting Gunther on the porch of the larger house.

A black car was parked in the driveway of the larger house.

“What will my grandmother think of you, I wonder?” Richter smiled slightly as he slid the gun back into the jacket pocket. Darby hesitated, glancing around as she got out of the car. Richter watched her every move until they were inside the house. No one greeted them. The house was empty except for a few belongings and some furniture covered with sheets. Darby heard a steady
swish
from somewhere, and Richter motioned her toward the stairway. He followed close behind.

Inside a room at the end of a hallway, a woman stood with her back toward them, sweeping the hardwood floor. Bookcases lined the walls, and a small couch sat covered with a sheet like a punished child left in the corner. French doors opened toward the second-story porch, where the lights from the village below glittered like beacons through the glass.

The woman turned quickly as they entered. With one hand over her heart and the other on the broom handle, she scolded Richter in rapid German. Age had changed Ingrid’s beauty, but not robbed it. She stood with straight posture, holding herself with something of grace or pride. Her hair was pinned up for work, but her clothing was stylish beige slacks and a clean white-and-tan shirt. For an elderly woman, Ingrid would be considered beautiful, and Darby felt a jealous sting that this had been Gunther’s wife for the last fifty-five years. But the lines in Ingrid’s face weren’t from laughter; she seemed unable to smile or to sing.

“Grandma, speak the English you insisted I learn. I have brought my American friend to meet you.”

Darby and Ingrid evaluated one another in silence. Then Ingrid spoke to Richter in a hushed tone in German.

“Her name is Darby. Darby Evans.”

Ingrid put her hand over her mouth and dropped the broom with a loud clatter.

“Darby, meet Ingrid,” Richter said quietly. “Your step-grandmother.”

Ingrid stalked toward Richter, speaking angrily.

“English, remember?” Richter shook his head, then grew annoyed and defensive at Ingrid’s words. “There was nothing else I could do. We were about to lose it all. Darby told me where it is. Gunther told her.”

“You talk with Gunther?” she asked Darby, her voice sounding strained. “Why you bring her here, Richter?”

“I needed supplies on the way to Hallstatt.”

“Hallstatt?” Ingrid said, turning away.

“Yes. Right there, all these years. And we thought it was a simple pilgrimage to his dead wife.”

“It was,” she said bitterly. “Why you come here? Why bring her?”

“Everything will be fine. Darby is coming with me to get the coins and brooch, then we’ll do something. . . .”

“What?” Ingrid asked. “Did you think? What will we do with her?”

“I don’t know.”

Both pairs of eyes glanced her way. They started firing words back and forth in German. Darby searched the lights of the village for a way out.

“I’ll be in the basement, getting supplies,” Richter said.

“
Nein
. Take her with you.”

“You may want to say some things to her.” Richter stared for a long time at his grandmother, then at Darby. All at once Darby realized she wanted to ask Ingrid a thousand questions and accuse her of even more. “I’ll be downstairs, not far away.”

“Be quick about it, Richter,” Ingrid said, standing tall as if trying to compose herself.

The women listened to Richter’s exit, down the stairs, through a door. Darby walked toward the French doors. She peered at the railing and beyond it, wondering if she could jump the ten or twelve feet to escape. But wouldn’t Ingrid immediately call for Richter? She could easily overpower Ingrid, but what would she do—hit an old woman? No other house was nearby except for Brant’s old, deserted cottage.

Darby opened the doors and stepped onto the wood balcony. She glanced back to see what Ingrid did. The older woman sat on the edge of the couch, her head down in thought. The deck was high, too high, it seemed. She’d get hurt and never be able to run unless she could hide in the darkness somewhere. It may be her only chance.

Ingrid stood in the doorway and flipped on the porch light. The illumination over the older woman’s head brought deep shadows below her eyes. “What did Gunther say?”

Darby leaned back against the railing and faced the woman who’d destroyed her grandmother’s and grandfather’s lives. “I had the letter you wrote Celia telling her that both he and Tatianna were dead.”

Ingrid raised her chin and glared coldly at Darby. “I did what I had to do at that time. Your grandmother was my friend, a long time ago.”

“Your friend?”

“I knew someday this would come. I don’t know how, but I knew. And you could never understand.”

“You’re right, I could never understand.” Darby wanted to tell Ingrid what the lies had done to her grandmother, her mother, and even her own life. But where would she begin? And would it matter?

“It wasn’t my fault. It was the war. You can accuse me, but your grandmother would not have lived without me. She was a mess. I saved her as much as Tatianna did. We all did things we did not expect—war does that. Even Celia. She betrayed Tatianna.”

“What?”

“You know so little but accuse me still.”

“How did Celia betray Tatianna?” Darby’s heart pounded. She’d always had one thought that she feared to consider—that her grandmother escaped by using Tatianna, betraying her. Sure, she knew her grandmother would never do that, but what about in such a treacherous time? Darby paced into a dark corner of the porch. “My grandmother was not a betrayer.”

“She admitted it to me.”

“Tell me.”

“Tatianna and Celia made some pact or vow of friendship as young girls. When Celia’s father was captured by Nazis, Celia was given information that Tatianna was the person who revealed his hiding place. Celia believed it. I believed it too. I became friends with all of them in Salzburg. Tatianna was always reading her Bible and talking about how she served a loving God. She wanted to be a missionary and use music to bring beauty into the lives of the poor. I didn’t believe it until later. The two girls loved each other, as much as Celia and Gunther loved. Then everything began to fall apart. Her father taken, we knew Celia had to hide. The news that Tatianna was the one who told shocked Celia. Celia accused her and left with Gunther. Tatianna was devastated. But later Gunther sent for Tatianna. I volunteered to drive Celia out and Gunther arranged for Hallstatt. When I arrived, it was Celia and Tatianna who were there.”

Darby sat down on the armrest of a wooden chair and glanced up into a diamond sky. At least her grandmother hadn’t actually betrayed Tatianna, but instead their vow of belief.

“Then what?” Darby said it like a challenge, while listening for Richter’s footsteps below. “How did it happen that Tatianna gave her life for my grandmother, and you stole what was left?”

“You make judgment so easily when you not there. I not intend what happened. Your grandmother escaped because I take her. I made difficult choices, and after war, I was in great danger—my children also. Gunther gave safety for me, and I believed he was dead when I wrote Celia that letter. I told myself that Celia rebuilt her life in America. I was sorry to find that she die last autumn.”

“How did you know?”

“She contacted me last year while searching for inheritance.”

“My grandmother called you? Last year?”

“Yes.” Ingrid’s face was shadowed as she looked away from the light.

“Why didn’t you tell her the truth then, when they still had time?”

“After that many years? It was too late. I always thought Gunther knew where the inheritance was but also wondered if somehow Celia got it out of Austria. When she call, I knew for sure that Gunther must know. Celia say she sick, and I sorry for that. I call once, and your mother give me news of her death.”

“And you never told her about Gunther.” They had been so close. Celia and Gunther could have at least had a few months together. But again, the greed over the Lange inheritance took lives away. Darby felt an almost uncontrollable urge to slap Ingrid. She was shaking, overwhelmed that she could harbor such anger toward another person.

“I need to protect my own,” Ingrid said. “And Celia dying—why then tell her about Gunther, after all the years? I have to do hard things. You not know the choices you make until in the danger. You do not understand.”

“Then make me understand,” Darby said firmly. She may never know if Ingrid didn’t speak now. “What happened the night my grandmother escaped?”

Ingrid breathed into her hands, then wrapped her arms together. “Chaos. The world was in chaos. The plan was to take Celia out, and Gunther would be a decoy at a house in Upper Austria. He would follow later. We pretend it was great adventure—Celia’s escape to America. I get Tatianna and Celia at Hallstatt. We took several days to go through the Alps—we have to take one road, then switch to another. We try to laugh a lot. But inside I know we all sad and afraid.”