It wasn’t.
Zach read her mind. “I know you think that Ben is involved in this somehow, and that he might have something to do with your husband’s death. But I don’t think so.”
“According to Sterling, he knew about the letters, and he was in Poughkeepsie the day he died. What else could that mean?”
“I admit that it’s suspicious behavior, but Sterling is the one with the motive, and I think he wants us to believe otherwise. He has all his life’s work and fortune invested in this election. And don’t forget, he also knew that Carsten had those letters. And he was the one who met with Ellen a couple weeks ago, so he likely knew what was going to go down at Maggie’s presentation.”
Veronica again looked at her children, who appeared mesmerized by the fish. She figured Jamie was plotting ways to poison them, while Maggie was complaining about some oil company that was threatening that specific species of fish into possible extinction.
“They’re not in danger,” Zach said, eying the children.
“How can you be serious?”
“I believe Ellen is telling the truth that there was a group called the Apostles, but I think it was just a last ditch effort to save the collective asses of the Nazi leadership that died out years ago. I don’t believe the part about reclaiming power.”
“But you have to admit that it’s interesting timing with an election coming up. If you’re planning on taking over the world, snagging the job of President of the United States seems like a good stepping-stone.”
“That’s an interesting angle, the same one your daughter has, but
Kingston
and Baer aren’t exactly Hitler’s kinda guys. Hitler was an expansionist, to say the least, and Baer is by any definition an isolationist. And Kingston is willing to go to war to protect a Jewish state … need I say more?”
Veronica took another glance at Maggie and something clicked. Maggie was a passionate environmentalist long before she knew what the word meant. Veronica remembered one time in the third grade when she came home crying because a classmate called her a tree-hugger. Veronica told her that trees and hugging were two of the best things on the planet, so it couldn’t be a bad name. And since those were the days when she let Veronica hug her, they pretended to be trees and hugged. Veronica realized this wasn’t about political ideology—this was about trees. And that’s why she knew danger was lurking in those trees.
“To fulfill my science requirement at NYU I took a botany class.”
“And this has something to do with what’s going on?” Zach asked, looking confused.
“We studied trees. And it’s related because this thing is all about family trees.”
She pulled a pen from her purse and began scribbling Ellen’s genealogy on a cocktail napkin. Ellen had children with two different men—Harold Peterson and Heinrich Müller—creating two lineages. She had two children that they knew of—Chosen Josef and Harry Jr. From the letters, they’d learned that she had at least three biological grandchildren—Carsten came from the Peterson lineage, while Josef, of the Müller branch, had a child named Flavia with his mistress, along with another child with his wife, whose identity they’d yet to learn.
Veronica began crossing off names of those who were deceased. Sure, some of the deaths were natural, especially those of advanced age, but many were suspicious. Harry Jr. and Greta were murdered. Flavia’s mother died suspiciously. So did Carsten and Ellen.
It was like when those gypsy moths eat away at a tree until it’s completely dead, and in this case it was a family tree they were destroying. And while Veronica only got a ‘C’ in that botany class, she did learn enough to know Maggie and Jamie were in danger.
Ben Youkelstein needed to get inside to talk to Rose Shepherd. She’d left out an important detail during their first meeting—her real identity. The murder of Greta Peterson now made perfect sense.
He cursed himself for not putting this together sooner. The Wolf reference—Hitler’s early alias—was a clue she handed him on a silver platter.
Through the darkness outside the prison, he saw a man leave the premises and walk briskly toward an awaiting vehicle.
It couldn’t be
, he thought.
But that was just wishful thinking.
And it changed everything.
He waited for the man to drive away, before heading inside. He called for Nina Flores, but was told that she’d left for the evening. He then asked for Sister Goulet.
The person behind the desk informed him that she was in a meeting, and wouldn’t be available for a half hour. He couldn’t wait that long, so he made up a story that he’d left his wallet behind in Rose Shepherd’s room earlier this afternoon, and hoped to retrieve it. A reasonable request, he thought. But like most of modern society, the prison was a bureaucracy and Rose Shepherd would have no visitors without being cleared.
He thought to mention that he believed Rose Shepherd was actually Eva Braun, and her murder of Greta Peterson was connected to a group called the Apostles, who were plotting to raise the Reich from the ashes. But he figured that would just get him a one-way ticket to the psych ward. He had too much to do to spend his final days in a straitjacket. So he impatiently waited.
Thirty minutes later, Sister Goulet met him with a smile. He told her his “lost wallet” story and she led him to Rose Shepherd’s prison suite.
When she opened the door the smell of bitter almonds attacked his senses.
Rose Shepherd was sprawled out on the floor in front of her favorite chair. The television was blasting out the ten o’clock news with wall-to-wall coverage of tomorrow’s election. Sister Goulet rushed to the woman on the floor.
Youkelstein didn’t move. This time he was sure that Eva Braun was dead.
By the time they hit the Saw Mill Parkway, Veronica could smell home. They were so close. And while she craved it, the kids
needed
it. They were riding high after their pizza and sugary drinks, but she knew it was fleeting, and their crash was imminent.
While children might be the most resourceful creatures on the planet, and were able to rinse horrible events from their consciousness like shampoo from their hair, they were still slaves to structure. And as their crankiness heightened, Veronica knew that she needed to get them to bed and pray they didn’t have permanent nightmares.
The last leg of the trip was to pick up TJ at Zach’s neighbors. Zach immediately rushed to his son and wrapped him in a big embrace. TJ looked confused by it, but Veronica wasn’t.
As she neared home, she could practically feel the warm fire she planned to build, and curl up next to it with a good book. But something didn’t feel right.
The first bad sign was that the lights were on at her mother’s house. She was normally in bed by ten. Veronica did remember her mentioning something about a school fundraiser, so maybe she’d just returned home. She hoped.
But when she noticed the lights on inside her house, along with Uncle Phil and Aunt Val standing outside the front door, Veronica knew something was very wrong. She parked the car and rushed into the house, finding it looking like tornado footage. Broken glass, furniture turned over—the place had been ransacked.
Her mother was crouched by a smashed television on the floor like she was contemplating giving it CPR. “What happened?” Veronica asked, horrified.
“I just returned from my fundraiser and I noticed a strange car—a Jeep—in your driveway. But I didn’t want to pry because I thought it might have been that boy you went to the movies with and didn’t want to be one of those overprotective mothers.”
“I think it’s a little late for that.”
“I heard a crashing sound, so I turned on my floodlights. That’s when I saw the man in your backyard. I grabbed a baseball bat, but by the time I got out of the door, the Jeep was hightailing it out of here. The lights must have spooked them.”
“They could’ve had guns, Mom—what did you think you were going to do?” Veronica admonished. The mother/daughter roles had reversed. A fitting ending to this bizarre day.
“When it comes to my daughter and grandchildren, I don’t worry about my safety.”
Her words were firm, but Veronica could tell her mother was shaken. It was a rare sight.
Veronica did a sweep of the house. While things were smashed and broken, very little was taken. Her jewelry was still there, as were most of the valuables. The only thing she noticed missing was Maggie’s computer. She didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that the intruders were looking for something specific.
She immediately called Eddie. Her voice cracked as she described the scene. The day just kept getting worse.
“I was headed over there anyway. I just dropped by to pick up some of Ellen’s things at Sunshine. I should be there in ten minutes,” he said, providing a small level of comfort.
She moved downstairs and was cut off by an angry Picasso, who was demanding his bowl of dinner, or “cat crack” as Maggie called it. She took a moment to feed the king, without so much as a “thank you” meowed in return.
Veronica’s next stop was her still brightly lit backyard. She noticed that Maggie was observing an area that had been dug up. Veronica joined her daughter, and realized the intruder had removed the time-capsule she’d buried this morning.
But upon further inspection, it was clear that Ellen had beaten the Nazis to the punch once again.
“You never saw what was in there, did you?” Veronica asked, as she eyed the box in Maggie’s hands.
“No—Oma put it together and I just buried it.”
The only thing in the box, besides books and paperweights to give it the impression it was full of goodies, was a note that read:
Did you really think I’d make it that easy for you? If you want the book you’re looking for, the only way will be to face me like real men.
A thin, wry smile escaped from the corner of Maggie’s lips.
“What is it?” Veronica asked, reading her look.
“I know what Oma meant when she said
facing
her to get the
book
.”
“Is it something that you can let your mother in on?”
“I helped her set up a Facebook page so that we could communicate directly for our project, and we could store the scans from her photos.”
Veronica didn’t know much about Facebook. She gave into the pressure a few years ago and signed up, but as her marriage crumbled, and her husband ended up dying, it became really annoying to look at her “friends” happy lives that they were constantly posting about, so she shut it down.
“Only Ellen can get into her page, right?” Veronica asked.
“Unless someone else had her password,” Maggie said with a big smile.
There was no reason to call the police.
This was not a burglary. At least not the typical kind the police could help with. And while the police in town were very good at certain things—like breaking up high school keg parties—Veronica figured international conspiracies and Nazis weren’t really their thing.
So they waited for Eddie. At that point they could discuss the next steps, and check out what Ellen was hiding on her Facebook page. In the meantime, Veronica took care of some much-needed business. First of which was to get rid of her mother, along with Uncle Phil and Aunt Val.
Once that was taken care of, they changed into more comfortable clothes. Maggie put on her pajamas, while Jamie finally shed his police uniform, changing into an oversized, hooded Yankees sweatshirt that Carsten gave him on their last Christmas together.
Veronica changed into her own comfortable sweats, which she wore with running shoes. She then started a fire in the fireplace.
Next, they all chipped in and tried to clean up some of the wreckage. Luckily all the broken stuff was just that—stuff. The really important items like photograph albums, DVDs of the kids being born, and the last connections to their father, weren’t touched.
A knock pounded the door. Veronica expected Eddie, but remembered he would never knock. When she looked through the peephole and realized who it was, she filled with anger. She swung open the door. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I have uncovered new information,” Ben Youkelstein said. “We need to talk.”
“Yes we do,” Veronica fired back. She sent the kids to their room. No arguments this time.
“I really need to tell you what I’ve learned,” he eagerly repeated.
“Is this something you
just
learned or something you learned a long time ago, like how my husband came to you with Ellen’s letters? Did you think to bring that up when Flavia mentioned he was meeting his contact at Vassar … it was you!?”
His face went blank. “Veronica, I can explain.”
“How could I trust anything that ever comes out of your mouth after all your lies? Get out of my house! And for your sake you better hope I don’t find out you had something to do with Carsten’s death, or I will hunt you down like those Nazis you chase.”