J. Jance - Lying in vait

Unlike a certain hell-raising boyfriend named Champagne Al Torvoldsen, I thought. I said, "Gunter didn't smoke, he didn't drink, and he needed a father."

"That, too," Else Gebhardt said with a wistful little half-smile that made me wonder if she, too, was comparing those two very different young men as they must have been back then-the wild-haired, happy-go-lucky Alan and the straight-arrow, serious Gunter.

She gave me a searching look. "I suppose you knew we had to get married?"

I shook my head. What must have seemed like the central tragedy of her teenage years had been invisible to me and probably to most of the other kids at Ballard High as well.

"I mean, I had to marry someone," she added, "and Alan was long gone. My father saw to that. Fortunately for me, Gunter stepped in, but then I lost the baby anyway, when I was five months along. Our own daughter-Gunter's and mine-wasn't born until much later, when we were both beginning to believe we would never have a child."

Else shook her head sadly. "It's funny, isn't it, the things you think about at a time like this. Gunter and I had a good life together. He was a difficult person to understand at times, but we got along all right. I wasn't in love with him when we got married, but I came to love him eventually."

She was silent for a moment, looking across the room at the shelves filled with handmade soldiers. It seemed to me that she welcomed the chance to talk, to unburden herself of the secrets she had kept bottled up for years.

"It's strange. My father adored the ground Gunter walked on. My mother liked him all right at first, but later, especially these last few years, it seemed as though she resented every breath he took. Then there's my daughter, Kari. Not just my daughter, she's Gunter's daughter, too. Kari hasn't spoken to him or to me for almost four years now. And that boyfriend of hers wouldn't let me talk to her today, wouldn't even let me give her the news that her father is dead. I don't know if she'll bother to come to his funeral."

Else Gebhardt stopped speaking and looked bleakly from Sue Danielson to me. "I'm sorry to go blithering like this. You probably hear these kinds of sordid little tales time and again, don't you? And I don't suppose you stopped by expecting to hear all this ancient history."

"It helps," Sue Danielson put in quickly. "It allows us to form a more complete picture of who-all is involved. Besides you, who can tell us about your husband's associates, his working relationships?"

"If you ask around Fishermen's Terminal or the Norwegian Commercial Club, I'd imagine most people would tell you that Gunter drove a hard bargain, and that's true. He wasn't easy to get along with, but he was a man of his word. And there was no one in the world he was harder on than on Gunter Gebhardt himself."

"He took over your father's fishing business?" I asked. "Or did Gunter buy your father out?"

A pained shadow crossed Else's face. "My father had a heart attack at age fifty-seven. He was totally disabled for five years before he died. If it hadn't been for Gunter, Daddy and Mother would have lost everything-the house, the boat, the cabin on Whidbey Island."

She shook her head. "Nobody ever handed Gunter anything on a silver platter. He worked like a dog to hold it all together. And it paid off. We own this house free and clear, BoBo. And the boat as well. We don't owe a dime on it, either. That's why, even these last few years when the fishing openers have been so short and when every man and his dog were out there trying to grab what few fish were left to catch, Gunter was still able to make it and do all right.

"We were lucky. For one thing, when the iron curtain fell, Gunter got in on the ground floor with some of the new joint-venture things coming out of Russia. For another, we didn't owe any money while everyone else was being eaten alive by interest rates."

Something was starting to bother me. Else Gebhardt was talking a blue streak, telling us all kinds of things we hadn't asked and didn't necessarily need to know. I wondered if we weren't being fed a line of some kind; if the tales Else was telling us were nothing more than a thick smoke screen designed to hide something else-something she didn't want to say.

"What happened last night?" I asked, inserting the question in a place where Else had most likely only paused for breath.

"What do you mean?"

"What was he doing down at the boat in the middle of the night in the middle of the winter?"

A slight flush crept up Else Gebhardt's neck. "He stayed there sometimes. Overnight."

"Why?"

"Because he wanted to."

I don't like boats much. They smell of diesel fuel and grease and dead fish and mold. They're dank and damp and cold.

"Why?" I asked again. "In the winter, if someone can choose between sleeping in a hard, narrow bunk on a boat or in a nice warm bed in a cozy house like this one, you'd have to be crazy to choose the bunk."

"We had a fight," Else said quietly. "He left the house and said he wasn't coming back."

"What did you fight about?"

"My mother. She's the one thing we've always fought over. You see, this house belonged to my parents originally. We bought it from them, and Daddy used the money to buy an annuity for Mother, so she'd have some kind of pension income of her own. And Gunter promised my father that Mother could always live with us; that we'd take care of her for as long as she lived.

"Gunter was a man of his word. He took that promise very seriously, and he kept it. We both have. But it's cost me more than it has him. You don't know what it's like living with her day in and day out. Mother still acts like the house belongs to her, like we're only living here because she lets us. The towels have to be folded the way she likes them. Everything has to be done her way, and I don't have any say in it at all."

Else paused again, and I thought I could see how this was all shaping up. In the age-old battle between contentious in-laws, someone is always bound to be caught in the middle.

"Let me guess," I said. "Gunter gave you an ultimatum. He told you that you'd have to choose between them. Either your mother was out the door or he was."

Else shook her head. "No," she said. "That wasn't it at all. I told Gunter last night that I wanted to sell the house and put my mother in a retirement home. I've found one I think she'd like down in Gig Harbor. I told him that if he didn't agree to back me up on this and sell the house, I was leaving-that I'd go live in an apartment over someone's garage if I had to.

"I tried to explain to him that sometime before I died, I wanted to live in a house of my own-a place that belonged to me more than it did to my mother. A place where I could leave the dirty dishes in the dishwasher overnight without running it and no one would ever know about it but me."

"What did Gunter say?"

"No. Not just no, but absolutely no! He told me I was being silly and selfish. And then he left-stormed out of the house right in the middle of the fight. He just walked out the door, got in his truck, and went down to Fishermen's Terminal to spend the night. That's what's so unfair about it. Men can do that, you know. They can leave. Women can't. Somebody has to stay behind to take care of things. I had to stay here with Mother. I've had to do that my whole life."

Else Gebhardt's blue eyes suddenly brimmed with tears. "I feel so awful. I loved him. And I'm sorry he's dead. And I don't know what I'll do without him, but I'm mad at him, too, dammit! Because he got away, and he left me holding the bag. And because he didn't even bother to kiss me good-bye."

Just then a door opened at the top of the stairs. "Else?" a woman's voice called. "Phone."

"I can't talk to anyone right now," Else managed, choking down a sob. "Tell them I'll call back."