J. Jance - Lying in vait

And then I understood. Of course. How could I have been so stupid? The tools. Lorenzo had said something about tools, about how they'd brought tools and supplies home with them on board the fishing boat. Tools they'd picked up from Gunter's joint-venture partner.

A wave of gooseflesh swept up my legs when I finally realized the awful truth about all those neatly organized tools that had once been stacked, row upon row, in Gunter Gebhardt's impossibly clean basement.

How many gold teeth did it take to make a vise? I wondered, feeling almost sick to my stomach. Or a sledge hammer? Or a solid-gold wrench? And at a rate of five thousand people a day, how many murderous Sobibor days had it taken to accumulate all the gold hidden in Gunter's hoard of tools.

I said I'm not psychic, and I'm not claustrophobic, either, but suddenly it seemed as though the walls of the basement were closing in on me. Fighting back nausea, I spun around and headed back toward the stairs. And that's when I realized what else was missing.

The engine. The one at the bottom of the stairs-the one I had stumbled over when Else had brought Sue and me down to show us the soldiers. At the time, I had thought it to be some kind of auxiliary power generator. No doubt it was made of gold as well.

Appalled, I rumbled up the stairs and out the back door into the cool comfort of the cold, wet air. I was standing there with my chest heaving when Michael Morris and June Miller found me. Michael hadn't been wearing a jacket when I last saw him, but he was now. It must have belonged to John Miller, because it came almost to the young man's knees.

"What's happened in there?" Michael asked me, his face stark with alarm and worry. "Nobody will tell me anything."

"Nothing," I said.

"What do you mean, nothing?"

There was no sense in making things worse for him. "There's no sign of struggle in there, Michael. It's as though all three of them simply decided to go away for a while. They seem to have left in a very orderly manner. It's like they just stepped outside and locked the door."

"But they didn't do that," Michael objected. "I know Kari wouldn't leave voluntarily, not without calling me or leaving a message."

I turned to June. "When the truck was being loaded, did you see any sign of coercion?" I asked. "Anything to indicate that the people you saw were being forced to do something against their will?"

June Miller shook her head. "No," she said. "Not at all."

Of course not, I thought bitterly. Because Alan Damn Torvoldsen was in it up to his Norwegian eyebrows the whole time he was feeding me his line of pathetic bullshit about how Else Didriksen broke his heart by marrying someone else.

Sue Danielson's Escort showed up on the street, then pulled into the Millers' driveway directly behind the 928. She popped out wearing jeans and a bright yellow slicker. "You look like hell, Beau," she said as soon as she was close enough to catch a glimpse of my face. "What's going on?"

"The tools," I told her, leading her a little away from the others so we could speak privately. "Gunter Gebhardt's tools are gone from the basement."

"So?"

"The soldiers weren't made out of the missing Sobibor gold," I answered. "The tools were."

"Oh," Sue said.

"It looks like Erika Weber Schmidt found herself an accomplice," I added. "Unfortunately his name is Alan Torvoldsen. They're out on his boat right this minute. I'm afraid Else and Kari Gebhardt and Inge Didriksen are out there with them."

Sue frowned. "What makes you think that?"

"Because earlier this afternoon I asked Alan to come over here and look after Else for me. After that fiasco with Moise and Avram walking away with the soldiers, I was worried someone else might try to pull a fast one. I asked Alan not to let any strangers into the house. I don't know how he kept from laughing in my face."

"How do you know for sure he's in on whatever's going on?" Sue asked.

"Because June Miller saw him loading the truck."

Sue Danielson glanced briefly in June Miller's direction and then back at me. "You know, none of this is your fault," she said.

It irked me that I was that transparent, that she could so easily grasp exactly what was going on with me. "The hell it isn't," I responded. "If I had just let things alone…" I gave up. There was no point in saying anything more.

By then two of the three squad cars had already left the Gebhardt place. Only two officers were left, one of whom was the young woman I'd spoken to earlier. I was less than eager to chat with either her or with her partner. I knew they were both destined to spend most of the rest of their shift filling out a mountain of paper.

Not that it would do any good. They had broken into Else's Gebhardt's house without a warrant, based on my suspicion that something was amiss, but they had discovered no solid evidence to back up my claim. Consequently, no amount of explaining to Captain Riley would ever square what they had done. He would blame them. They would pass the buck and blame me.

I would live or die depending on whether or not Else Gebhardt took exception to their relatively harmless act of breaking and entering. If she filed a complaint, then there'd be the devil to pay down at Seattle P.D. And the responsibility would fall squarely where it belonged-on me.

A man came walking up to us. He was tall, stoop-shouldered, wearing glasses and a trench coat. "I'm John Miller," he said, offering his hand. "June's taken that poor young man and gone inside to make cocoa. She wanted me to ask you inside. It's cold and wet out here."

My mother reserved her highest criticism for those she considered too stupid to live. They were always the ones who were "too dumb to come in out of the rain." Which is exactly how stupid her middle-aged son was being right then.

The words John Miller used-"cold and wet"-amounted to gross understatement. A gusting wind drove splinters of icy raindrops into our faces and clothing. And there I stood in the Gebhardts' driveway on Culpeper Court with nothing at all on over my soaking sports jacket. I had failed to notice that I was wet to the skin and shivering.

With John Miller leading the way, we migrated across the street to a house with evidence of recent construction and relandscaping. We entered by walking past what architects are fond of calling a "water feature." The babble of running water burbling noisily over river rocks may sound wonderful on a hot summer's afternoon, but on a cold, wet winter's evening, it only made me that much colder.

Inside the house, John introduced Sue and me to a grizzled, lop-eared black-and-white terrier named Barney. The dog eased over against Sue to demand some attention and petting while John offered me a stack of towels and led me to a bathroom that was fully stocked with a six-year-old's complement of rubber toys.

After toweling myself as dry as possible, I returned to the living room to find John sitting beside the gas-burning fireplace and quizzing Sue about what it was like to be a single parent as well as a police officer. I found it intriguing that he was more interested in that than he was in the details of whatever untoward events had occurred across the street. Meantime, June had taken Michael Morris into the kitchen, where she was busily making a pot of cocoa and administering a dose of TLC to a young man very much in need of both.

I heard her telling him in a calm, soothing voice that he shouldn't worry, that everything was going to be fine. Even though I didn't agree with her-everything wasn't going to be fine-I still gave the woman credit for trying. Michael Morris was almost frantic with worry.

Like somebody else I knew, he was dealing with his own damning set of "if onlys." If only he had insisted that his mother invite Kari over to dinner; if only he had come to Blue Ridge earlier in the evening; if only; if only; if only. Ad infinitum.