Blood of the Reich

21

Hood’s Cabin, Cascade Mountains, United States

September 5, Present Day

A kiss is just a kiss, the old song went, and Rominy had been perfectly prepared to tell Mr. Jake Barrow not to take any liberties, thank you very much. But he kissed her at midnight at the end of the most traumatic day of her life, after explosion, chase, wine, inheritance, and Nancy Drew mystery madness at the hour she felt most vulnerable and puzzled. He smelled smoky, with a masculine scratchiness on his firm jaw. She kissed back-where was her discipline?-and somehow it advanced to the inevitably awkward comedy of unzipping the sleeping bags and dragging the pads and struggling out of clothes.

So they did it, poor Benjamin Hood’s creepy disconnected finger left forgotten and alone on the shelf above. Too weary to make it explosive, too tentative and clumsy to make it sublime, but a release nonetheless. It left her warm, and worried that she’d made a mistake. Stay away from men, that’s my advice. So why did it feel so right? They fell asleep, his arm across her until he rolled over, and she didn’t wake again until the approaching dawn had turned the windows milk-gray.

She blinked sleepily, looking at unfamiliar shadows, stretching stiffly on the sleeping pad. Jake’s breathing was heavy but so far he didn’t snore. Point for Barrow. There were also the sounds of field mice or worse skittering around. Yet the cabin was also small and snug and cozy, and birds were starting up in the trees outside as the light strengthened, and…

Someone was at the window.

Her eyes opened wide and her head jerked up. A face seemed to float in the glass like a pale moon, young, cruel, with thick, snarly lips and a Mohawk stripe on an otherwise shaved head. A silver ornament dangled from one ear.

The face stared back, with deep dark eyes as soulless and unblinking as a shark’s. Then it disappeared.

Rominy sat up, heart hammering. Had she really seen it? “Jake!” she hissed.

He grunted and moved closer.

“Jake, wake up! I saw someone!”

“Who?” he mumbled.

“Some bald guy, like a skinhead! He was at the window but then he wasn’t.” She was whispering without knowing why.

Barrow opened his eyes and looked over her shoulder. “Where?”

“There, above the sink.”

“Are you sure?” He stood, naked, and went to the window. “Up here in the sticks?” He looked out other windows, then cautiously opened the door. He glanced around and shut it. “There’s no car. You were dreaming.”

“I don’t think so.” She was trembling. “What if they’ve come?”

“It took me forever to track this place down. I don’t think those guys have done it, or they’d have been waiting for us.”

“That’s not reassuring.”

“He just looks and leaves? And Delphina’s dogs don’t go crazy? No, I think you had the edge of a nightmare.” He came back to the sleeping pads, sat, and pulled her down. “Or maybe you saw a raccoon.”

“Jake, we don’t even have a gun and we’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“We have Great-granddad’s gun, which looks menacing enough. And we’re in the middle of nowhere so we don’t need a gun. This is the safest place to be right now, trust me. And I have a hunch we’re going to find what we’re looking for today.” They were spooned together, his arm across her shoulder and against her breasts, with all the rest of him against her back and butt and legs in a quite delicious way. She could feel that part coming to life again.

“But what if somebody’s out there?”

“Nobody’s out there, I looked. Anyone coming up that road we’d hear from a mile away. Maybe you saw old lady Clarkson’s ghosts.”

“It was so real.”

“It was a dream. Settle down. It’s too early to get up.”

She wiggled against him, glad of his warmth and nearness. “ You’re up.”

“I’m just glad to see you, as Mae West said.”

“You know, I didn’t mean for us do that last night,” she whispered.

“I did. I like you.”

“And I still don’t know anything about you, Jake, not really.”

“You will. This is a good start.”

“I’m usually more reserved.”

“I don’t doubt it. Unusual circumstances.”

“Extraordinary circumstances.”

“Spec- tac- ular circumstances,” and he began to laugh, so she had to turn to kiss him to get him to stop and, well, another half hour went by.

Finally he told her to rest in the warmth of the bed while he got up to build a fire and put water on the camp stove. She watched him as he pulled on his jeans. Yep, he was as fit as she’d surmised in the Safeway store, eye candy in Dogpatch. He seemed in awfully taut shape for a keyboard jockey, so he must really be trying to get his money’s worth from a health club membership. Was he too vain?

Stop being so judgmental! One minute Rominy is buying Lean Cuisine, and the next she’s in a wilderness cabin with stud muffin reporter. Was any of this real? She lazily viewed him as he pulled on his shirt.

“You’ve got a tattoo.” It was on his right shoulder.

“Yeah. Almost a cliche these days.”

“What’s it of? A circle something?”

“A sun wheel. Old traditional art. Tibetan, among others. I liked the design.”

“Chosen after three beers too many?”

“Oh no, I thought about it quite carefully.”

“I like it,” she decided.

“It’s supposed to be good luck.”

She had a vague memory of having seen something similar somewhere before, but couldn’t remember where.

“We’ve still got a mystery to solve, you know,” she said.

“We’re not supposed to indulge our appetites until we do,” he agreed.

“But now I’m hungry.”

“So we’ll eat and then we’ll figure this out.” The camp stove kettle whistled and he poured hot water into a mug with instant coffee. “I’ve got a Kellogg Variety Pack.”

“You do know how to impress a girl. Will you turn your back while I dress?”

He sipped, looking at her. “No. I don’t think so.”

Which was not entirely bad, since he did seem appreciative.

The sun eventually came up, lighting the trees and cabin, and they turned again to Hood’s odd map with its fingerprint contour lines. It still looked more like a Rorschach blot than a treasure map, but there had to be some meaning to Hood’s weirdness. Had he cut off his finger just for this, like van Gogh sawing off his ear?

There was a directional arrow on the map, with an N presumably marking north. Jake oriented it with his survey map, but there was no obvious correlation between the two.

“It’s like half a clue,” said Rominy.

“I hope he was sane when he did this.”

She went back to the cookie tin with its contents. “He left us a compass, too.”

“To use that, you have to know which way you’re trying to go.”

“It’s amazing it still works.” She turned, to watch the needle spin. Nothing happened. “Except it doesn’t.” She turned again. “It’s broken. Frozen.”

“What do you mean?”

“The needle always points the same way on the dial. Sort of northeast.”

Jake took it from her and tapped the instrument. The needle didn’t budge. “You’re right.”

“What if that’s a clue?”

“Why would a broken compass be a clue?”

“What if he fixed the compass so it wouldn’t turn and then put it in the safety deposit box with his finger?”

“You mean it’s a bearing, a heading?”

“Yes.”

“But from where?”

“I think we have to assume this cabin. Find where we are on your survey map, use the compass bearing, and draw a line.”

Jake did so. The line crossed several mountains, but it still wasn’t clear which, if any, was supposed to match Hood’s fingerprint. “We’re still missing something. What next, Woodward?”

She pondered. “Elementary, my dear Bernstein. The other stuff in the tin has to mean something, too. The only question is, what?”

He shook his head. “Oh boy, this is not like jotting notes at a press conference. My brain does not work like this. A pistol and a scarf? It makes no sense, this calendar has no guidepost, no… wait a minute. Is that gun loaded?”

“God, I hope not. I waved it around in the bank. With seventy-year-old ammunition?”

He picked it up, aimed it away, and worked the mechanism with an efficiency that surprised her. Did Jake know about guns, too? A shell, green with age, was ejected. It fell on the floor.

“Oh my, what if it had gone off?”

“Well, it didn’t.” He picked the round up, studying it curiously. “Look.” He moved the bullet to the calendar. Its diameter matched the hole that had been made through the pages to hold the calendar up. “The hole is ragged. I think Ben Hood shot through this baby before he drew his map, or finger, or whatever the heck he was doing.”

“Why?”

He pointed at the open pages. “To give a reference point. Either where we’re going or where we are.”

“Yes!” She liked this collaboration. “Where we are, I’m guessing. Our starting point. So your compass bearing can be drawn from the bullet hole.”

Using the N to orient the broken compass, Jake drew a line from the hole the. 45 bullet had made across the calendar map to the northeast. It crossed Hood’s fingerprint. “Which means?” he asked.

“I don’t know. The scarf. What’s that for?”

“Your great-grandfather was a lunatic, wasn’t he? Or completely paranoid, locking everything away until a relative comes along to claim it-someone who likely wouldn’t be with the government, or Tibet, or the Nazis. And here you are, junior detective.” His tone was admiring, which she liked. Rein it in, Rominy.

She picked up the scarf and examined it. The silk was dirty, frayed white, and unremarkable in every way. Had it been given to him by some potentate in Tibet? Or was there something hidden in its meaning? What would a junior detective do? Or a man at the end of his life at the end of a terrible war? She held it up to light from a window. Parts seemed cleaner than others. Which meant… what?

“Jake, light your lantern.”

“Sun’s up, Rominy.”

“Light it anyway. I need some heat but I don’t want to hold this by the fire and risk setting it ablaze.”

The lantern was the old gas type, and its mantles flared to life with a familiar hiss. In short order the glass cylinder enclosing the mantles was too hot to touch, and Rominy held the scarf near the light. “This is something we used to do as kids.”

“Hold scarves to lanterns?”

“Invisible ink. You can use juices, honey, diluted wine, urine, you name it. Coke, even. You mix with water, write, and let it dry. You can’t see it.”

“Until you heat it?”

“Yes. Voila!” Brown characters had appeared on the scarf. Rominy pulled it away and they read.