Mixed Messages (A Malone Mystery) (6 page)

“What a strange bird,” she said aloud, as she spotted John Berkley, the owner of a local
costume shop
who lived across the street
. It looks like that cat is walking him, she thought, watching the tall,
scarecrow-like
man with a long, gray ponytail zigzagging down the middle of the street with his black cat on a long leash.
The sleeves
,
shirttails
and pant legs
of his loose fitting
clothing
were flapping in the wind. H
e seemed oblivious to the fact that it was raining.
I’ve known him since he was born
,
she
thought, but he gets odder and odder with each passing year
.
Oh well,
as they say, ‘
to each
, his own
.
’
I’ve seen
a lot of
strang
e things
from this window.

Our family has quite a history in this house
, she thought
.
She knew that h
er great-grandfather
, Wolfgang Berger
,
and his new bride, Helga, had come to America in the late 1830s
.
Like so many others, they had left their native Germany for a new life where they would be free to use their talents to earn a living.
Many settled in Cincinnati where jobs were plentiful and the Ohio River offered the transportation necessary for commerce.
Olivia remembered reading somewhere that, by 1840,
the German population had become so large that Cincinnati’s city ordinances were printed in German as well as English.

According to the stories
her
father had told her, Wolfgang Berger worked hard, bought a lot of land
and developed
it.
He was responsible for the construction of many of the buildings in Westwood and
in
other parts of the city.
So many old
buildings are gone now,
she
thought. Little by little, other entrepreneurs had come along and replaced the old hotels and theaters in downtown Cincinnati with structures that were more modern and even, in some cases, with parking lots. It saddened her to think that so much of the old architecture, so much history, was gone. At least this house is still here, she thought. Papa’s grandfather built it
in 1863
, it’s been home to generations of Bergers since then and it’s still standing, a tribute to him.

Olivia’s father was born in the house and both of her parents had died there. She
believed their spirits still lived
on in the house
.
It was a comfort to her, feeling they weren’t really gone from her life
.
Now, she and her son, Lawrence, lived on the second floor and rented out the downstairs apartment
.
Someday, when she was gone, the house would belong to him
.
How sad, she thought, that Lawrence had never gotten married and had a child; that, someday, the Berger name would die with him
.
How disappointed Papa would be.

She
was in a nostalgic mood today
.
Some of her memories, growing up in the house, were happy and some were
n
o
t
.
She
was just a little girl at the time but she
remembered
toward the end of
the Great Depression
how
the beggars, men down on their luck, would knock on the
ir
door, asking for food or spare change
.
Her
mother had never turned anyone away
.
“We
are fortunate,” she would say
.
“We have food on the table and enough money
.
Not everyone is
as blessed as we are
.”
She
was a wonderful person, Olivia thought, recalling the night she
died, still a young woman,
stricken with influenza
.

Olivia remembered
the beautiful orchards
that
had surrounded the house when she was young
:
acres of apple, peach, pear, cherry, apricot and other fruit trees
.
She had especially loved early spring when, from her bedroom window, she looked out on the luscious pink and white blossoms and, when she opened her window, she could smell their sweet fragrance
.
She
smiled
as she recalled the time she ate too many pears and was up sick all night
.
To this day, pears were not one of her favorite fruits
.
And, she remembered playing
hide ‘n seek
with her friends, giggling when one of them found her hiding behind one of the large evergreen
trees
that b
ordered her father’s property.

She
rolled over to the built-in bookcase and took her family Bible off
of
the shelf
.
The cover was worn and many of the pages had come loose from the binding.
It contained the names and dates of the births, baptisms, marriages and deaths of her ancestors from Germany
.
Some of the
entries
were so old that the ink had faded
and she could hardly read them
.

She went back over to the window, put on her reading glasses, which hung from a gold chain around her neck
,
and carefully opened the Bible
.
She leafed
through the pages that
had turned yellow
with age
.
There, in the Book of Psalms, was the four-leaf clover Jeremy had given her all those years ago
.
She touched it
tenderly
with the tip of her finger and felt tears forming in the corners of her eyes
.

Oh, Jeremy, she thought, when I think of the orchards, I think of you
with your bright blue eyes, eyes I could never forget
.
She smiled as she remembered sneaking out of the house at age
seventeen
and climbing down the fire escape to meet Jeremy
.
Her father didn’t approve of her seeing Jeremy and so t
hey always met in the early evening because Olivia had to be sure she wouldn’t get caught
.

Since the fire escape creaked loudly as she let it down, she would wait until her father was seated comfortably in the parlor with his after dinner drink
and
the strains of Mozart, Bach or Beethoven reverberat
ing
through
out
the house
.
Papa was a good man, she thought, but he was a strict old German, determined to run his household and
his
family the way he saw fit
.

After secretly seeing each other for over a year, she and Jeremy had planned to elope. He
was so handsome and she’d loved him with all her heart
.
She
gently brushed a strand of hair away from her face
.
She reached up and unclasped the ornate silver barrette, which she used to hold her hair in a topknot, tucking the strand in and refastening the barrette
.
She smiled, remembering how Jeremy had loved to brush her long, silky hair
.
“I’ve never had it cut short like most old ladies,” she whispered
.
“
It might not
be
blonde like it used to be but
I’ve always kept it long for you.”

With tears in her eyes, she thought back to the night she’d planned to tell him that she was pregnant with his child. She knew in her heart that he would be happy, that somehow, even
though they were young, they would figure things out and make a good life together.

She remembered standing in their meeting spot,
under the
sprawling limbs of the
Osage orange tree,
waiting for what seemed like hours
.
When she
finally
heard footsteps approaching, she ran through the trees to greet him, her arms reaching out to him
.
But it wasn’t Jeremy
.
It was Papa
.
He’d grabbed her roughly by the elbow and pulled her into the house
.
She could still
feel
his
anger
and see
the rage in his face
.
She would never forget
his loud, hurtful words
.
She’d cried all night.

She
was sure that her father had driven Jeremy off
.
She knew
that
Jeremy loved her and she knew he would’ve wanted to see his baby
.
She decided to run away the next night
.
She would find Jeremy and they would go far, far away, somewhere where her father would never find them
.
They would raise their child and live happily ever after.

The next day it rained all day and, by evening, it had gotten colder
.
T
he sidewalks and trees had a thin layer of ice
.
She
dressed warmly and, carrying a small satchel with only the
most necessary things, she opened her bedroom window and started to climb down the fire escape
.
The metal was slick and she held on tightly as she slowly descended
.
About halfway down, she lost her grip and fell to the ground
.
She lost consciousness and, when she woke up, she was in a hospital bed and her father sat, slumped in a chair at her side
.

It was a miracle, the doctor said, that she hadn’t lost the baby
.
But she would never walk
again
.
And so, she’d given birth to Lawrence
.
And, a year later, Papa had the beautiful orchards torn down, subdivided the lots and built modern houses
.
That was a hard time, she remembered. I felt like a prisoner in my own home
.
It was hard enough adjusting to being crippled but Papa turned the back parlor into a living area for Lawrence and me and restricted me to the first floor of the house and the front porch
.
I couldn’t even go out into the yard
anymore
.
He couldn’t deal with having an illegitimate grandchild
, much less one
who
had been born with albinism
.
Lawrence and I were
a disgrace and
an embarrassment to him.

Many y
ears later, after her father died,
she
had an electric lift installed
,
connecting the two floors of the house
,
and a ramp
,
alongside the front stairs
,
so she could go for a “walk” when she chose to
.
She also divided the house into two apartments and rented
out
the downstairs
apartment
because, she’d reasoned, the house was too big for just two people
.

It wasn’t a question of money
.
Papa may have been strict and unyielding, she thought, but he made sure that Lawrence and I would never have to worry about money
.
He was a perfect example of what many people on the west side of Cincinnati have always said, “We
W
estsiders save our money so people on the
E
astside can borrow it.”

Poor Lawrence
had never m
e
t his father
, a father
who
didn’t even know he existed
.
She
hadn’t
had
the
opportunity
to tell Jeremy she was carrying his child and
,
after her father ordered him to stay away from her,
she’d never
heard from
him
again
.
She knew
that
her father believed
that
he was doing the right thing and she’d forgiven him long ago but she’d always
wondered what had become of Jeremy. Did he go off to the Korean War?
Had he married
another woman
and had children and a happy life with
them
?
Thousands of times through the years, she’d considered trying to find him but something held her back. How could she intrude on whatever life he’d made for himself? Still, she’d always hoped and prayed he would come to her.