Death of a Second Wife (A Dotsy Lamb Travel Mystery) (29 page)

“You need to call the Swiss Central Bureau of Interpol and you need to call the customs a
gents at the main airport in Geneva. The date you are interested in is five April.”

“You already know these people, Captain. Would you do it for us?”

Marco beamed. I knew he was champing at the bit to take over, but he couldn’t ask. It would have been presumptuous and insulting to Kronenberg. The fact that Kronenberg
had
asked and had done so without a hint of rancor, raised my estimation of the big Swiss policeman. “I will be happy to do this, Detective Kronenberg. Is there a place where you and I can go to be more comfortable? This will take some time, and I may need you to help with translations.”

I led Marco and Kronenberg to Juergen’s little office behind the living room and left them alone. By this time the house was in full rubber-neck mode, everyone
dying to know more. I found them in the living room pretending to read, write letters, or work Sudoku. Odile was pretending to dust the bookshelf. I told them everything I knew and, together, we waited.

An hour later, Marco and Kronenberg emerged and joine
d us. Kronenberg stood in front of the big glass doors exactly as he had done that morning when he’d told us both Stephanie and Gisele had been murdered. With the light behind him, his face was less clear to us than ours were to him.

We heard footsteps on
the outside stairs and Juergen popped in, obviously taken aback by the large group assembled in his living room. “What is this?” he said.

Kronenberg explained.

Juergen’s face reddened. “Gold bars? What are you telling me? Someone has been storing gold in my bunker? I cannot believe it. Who, besides me and a few others”—he looked at Erin—“know how to open the door? Certainly, none of us would have anything to do with such a thing!” His voice rose to a squeak and his face turned even redder. “Thank God my father can’t hear this. I’m sorry he’s dead, but at least he doesn’t have to . . .” He stumbled to the ottoman, the only unoccupied seat in the room, and collapsed on it.

Kronenberg rocked up on his toes. “Do any of you know
anything
about these gold bars? Tell me now, because we
will
find out how they got here and we will eventually know if you have withheld any information.”

“I’ve never even seen a gold bar,” Babs said, smoothing the front of her blouse.

“They aren’t gold,” Lettie said. They’re silver.”

“Wait a minute!” Rounding on Kronenberg with a vicious glare, Juergen said, “You said gold! Is it silver or gold?”

Kronenberg explained to Juergen, and then to all of us said, “I must ask you not to leave the premises until we sort this out. I have your passports and I will return them to you shortly but, for your own protection, I will have men watching the house, twenty-four-seven, as you Americans say.”

“For our protection?” This came from Brian.

“Dotsy has told us about a glider making frequent passes over the house,” Kronenberg said. “We have reason to believe a man named Anton Spektor, the owner of the glider, is involved in an international smuggling operation and if so, he probably knows the gold is in the bunker and he may have been looking for a chance to go in and get it. Now that we’ve taken down the crime scene tape, he’s likely to make the attempt.”

“This is making no sense to me,” Patrick said.

Kronenberg turned to Marco and nodded.

“Interpol is working on it. Switzerland’s Central Bureau, a pa
rt of Interpol, is able to contact law enforcement in South Africa and any other countries that may be affected. Detective Kronenberg and I have called and told them everything we know. They, and the Swiss customs agents in Geneva, are talking to each other right now. We believe the gold, disguised as silver, was brought here by air from South Africa and cleared customs in Geneva early this month. The customs officials will have records, and Swiss law enforcement will be able to sort this out. I am sure.”

Thirty

Awkward! I never dreamed Marco and Chet would occupy the same room at the same time, but here we were and with orders from the police to stay on the premises. Marco could have left, but he showed no inclination to do so. He and Chet shook hands an
d made the proper noises when I introduced them. Seeing both men together, I could only think how very handsome Marco was and how much I enjoyed his presence. Chet toddled off to his room and the young ones took to the porch. Lettie, Marco, Babs, and I sat in the living room, dissecting theories about how this could have happened.

Marco suggested one or more of the smugglers, knowing somehow that their missing gold was in the bunker, dropped by in the early morning hours. Gisele and Stephanie, hearing nois
es, rushed outside and encountered the smugglers in the act of breaking in.

“Wouldn’t the smugglers have brought their own weapons?” I asked. “The gun they used was already in the bunker.”

Babs said she didn’t think two women would have dashed out like that. They’d have roused one or more of the men in the house. “And where’s the connection between these guys and the bunker? You’ve told us about the connection between the smugglers and MWU, owned by the Merz family, but how did gold that was supposed to go to MWU in Zurich, end up in the bunker here?”

That was the smartest thing I’d ever heard Babs Toomey say. How
did
it end up here? “Let’s not forget the notes Stephanie left on the phone pad early that evening,” I said.

Babs winced, probably because those notes contained the Cook County Vital Records number—the start of all her troubles.

“Her note had a reference to Johannesburg and to gold and silver. Stephanie knew what was going on. That’s probably why she was killed.”

Lettie, meanwhile, had been fiddlin
g with her phone. “No wonder I missed that call . . . I have the wrong time zone. Hey, Marco, do cell phones automatically change time zones when you do?”

“Some do and some do not.” He took her phone and pressed a few things. “You have the correct time.”

“The gun, people, the gun!” Babs leaned forward until she nearly fell out of her chair. “These murders must have been done by someone who knew what was in the bunker.”

My three companions went on for some time, playing armchair detective, but I was lost in
thoughts about Lettie and her phone—and time zones.

* * * * *

Kronenberg barged in shortly after dinner. Once again, we gathered in the living room.

“Anton Spektor and his partners are in our custody. We caught them at the Geneva airport.” Kronenberg could scarcely keep the grin off his face. “In a spectacularly stupid move, they tried to clear security in the very airport where they’d been the main topic of conversation all afternoon.” He held up his palm as if reading from it. “Ah, yes. Anton Spektor. Hav
e you enjoyed your stay in Switzerland? Anton Spektor! Guards!”

We all indulged in a refreshing laugh.

“One of his companions, by the way, was wearing a most unusual pair of shoes. Red leather shoes with strange patches sewn in odd places.” Kronenberg looked at me and nodded.

Marco, sitting next to me on the sofa, gave me a hug and kissed me on the forehead.

“Go, Mom!” Patrick and Brian yelled this, or something like it, simultaneously.

“Now for the bad part,” Kronenberg said, his tone suddenly serious. “Sp
ektor and his cronies have alibis for the night of the murders. They all spent the night at a hotel in Geneva and they stayed in the bar until after two, drinking and talking so loudly the bartender says he will never forget them. Security cameras have them on tape, wobbling to their rooms at approximately the same time the murders here were taking place.”

Chet spoke up. “Are you saying we’re back to square one?”

“I’m saying that, unless they had allies here, in LaMotte, the smugglers did not kill Stephanie and Gisele.”

“While I’m basking in the glow of your congratulations,” I said, “let me ruin it by asking if you’ve double-checked the time on Stephanie’s phone. She had a Blackberry, and on those phones you can manually change the time.”

The room went dead quiet.

“Explain, that, please,” Kronenberg said, his hands flying out as if to silence the group that needed no silencing.

“We’ve been assuming all along that Stephanie and Gisele were killed after eleven-thirty, because that’s what her phone says was the time she made her last call. The problem all along has been explaining who could have done it or how they could have done it, between eleven-thirty and the time the snow started. But what if they were killed before eleven-thirty? What if the time on Stephanie’s phone was wrong?”

Inadvertently, I had just convicted Juergen Merz. We all heard him “talking” to Stephanie at eleven-thirty. They were talking about wine, supposedly, and Juergen had even mouthed
Stephanie
while he was “on the phone.” If she was already dead, he was talking to no one. I hadn’t heard his phone ring. He’d pulled it out of his pocket and we’d all assumed it was on vibrate, with the ring tone silenced.

All these thoughts rushed through my head and, I suppose, every head in the room, in
less time than it takes to explain it.

Juergen jumped to his feet.
“Das ist verrückt! Ich will nicht hier sitzen . . .”

Kronenberg, too, fell back on his native German, attempting to calm Juergen and make him sit down. Marco’s hand found mine and our finge
rs laced. Seifert appeared from somewhere behind me and stepped around the sofa, his gaze darting from Juergen to Kronenberg, his hands poised to grab.

Juergen turned to me, his face purple with anger and fear, and pronounced a long, scathing condemnation
of me in German. I was grateful not to know what he said.

We all sat, afraid to move, long after Kronenberg and Seifert ushered Juergen out of the room. When Kronenberg did return, he issued his orders to us in measured English. “We are going to the statio
n in LaMotte. The guard we have already placed will remain overnight, so there’s no need to be afraid. We’ve removed the gold from the bunker and the smugglers are in custody. But who knows if we have got them all?

“Herr Merz will be helping us with our in
quiries for a while. He is not under arrest. Yet. Before we go, does anyone else have something to tell me? Anything at all that will help us wrap this up so you good people can go home?”

“Yea!” Lettie yelled, then slapped her hand over her mouth.

* * * * *

“He’s lawyered up,” Brian announced early the next day. “Odile’s hotline is burning up the wires this morning.”

We all sat on the porch, as if the air in the living room had become stale. A minute earlier, Babs had popped out and announced that Chet had found her a job as bookkeeper at a John Deere dealership near where she lived. For the first time in weeks, we were turning our eyes toward home. Erin announced the arrival of a new baby giraffe at her zoo. “One hundred pounds and six feet long. Mother and baby are doing well,” she said. The sun was shining and the coffee was good.

I heard Marco’s voice. After spending the night at his hotel in town, he had apparently found his own way back to Chateau Merz. I fetched him a chair from a closet inside and unfolded it for him. He kissed me on the lips in full view of my sons and ex-husband. It felt comfortable.

“I have been already to the police station this morning and I have the latest news,” he said. We gave him our full attention. “Juergen’s lawyer had to drive in from Zurich and he did not get here until this morning. Of course, he told Juergen to say nothing until they had time to plan out their defense, but earlier in the evening, Juergen was rambling on and saying plenty. They also called in Zoltan. Someone drove up the mountain to his little hut and picked him up. When Zoltan realized how much trouble his employer was in, he forgot loyalty and started talking to save himself. Naturally, he did not want to be charged as an accessory.”

Odile brought Mar
co a cup of coffee, which he accepted with a smile.

“Tell us!” Lettie bounced in her deck chair and tapped her little feet.

“Where should I begin?”

“At the beginning.”

Marco set his coffee on the porch rail and leaned back, folding his arms across his chest. “Here is what we now believe happened. Some of the details are probably wrong but, in time, it will all work itself out. Juergen knew about the smuggled gold. He hated it. These men had ruined his family’s largest business and they had picked on the Merz family because it was being run by an old man who was no longer able to play their game. They drove the company into bankruptcy and took control. That is when old man Merz called Juergen in from the Himalayas or wherever he was at the time, and told him to take over. Juergen tried, but failed. He was unable to prevent the smuggling so he decided to turn them in to the authorities. But first he needed hard evidence, so he stole three gold bars, covered with silver, after the shipment had passed through customs and hid them in the bunker here.”

“Who says he was planning to turn them in?” Brian asked. “How do they know he didn’t plan to keep it for himself?”