Daddy's Gone a Hunting

71

At five o’clock on Wednesday evening, Frank Ramsey and Nathan Klein rang the bell of Lottie Schmidt’s home. Now that they had received confirmation that Gus had not won a lottery within the United States, they had agreed that this time there would be a harder edge to their questioning, with Frank playing the more sympathetic role and Nathan expressing disbelief at Lottie’s lottery claim.

Lottie opened the door on the second ring of the bell, but if she was surprised to see them, she did not indicate it. Something in her attitude was also different. They both noticed that right away. She seemed less frightened and more sure of herself. “I would have appreciated a phone call,” she said as she stepped aside to let them in. “And you might have saved yourself a useless trip. I’m leaving in the next few minutes to go to my neighbor’s house. She was kind enough to invite me for an early dinner.”

“Then I’m very glad we caught you, Mrs. Schmidt,” Frank said, pleasantly. “We’ll only be a few minutes.” He started to turn from the foyer into the living room.

Lottie stopped him. “I think it would be more to the point if we sat at the dining room table. I have some photo albums there that I think might interest you.”

She did not tell them that after her neighbor Peter Callow left the other day, she had sat at that table, thinking long and hard. It was obvious to her that while Peter would defend her, he did not believe that she was ignorant of where Gus had gotten the money for Gretchen’s house. If he doesn’t believe me, no one else will, she had reasoned. Well, I’ll find a story that might hold up.

With that thought in mind, she had pulled down the folding stairs to the attic, climbed up, and retrieved a now-dusty photo album and several framed pictures of severe-looking people in formal dress or military uniform. The items were from a box that had not been disturbed since the first day they moved into the house.

Carefully wiped off, the album and the pictures were now spread out on the dining room table. She invited the detectives to sit down there. Unlike the other time they had come into her home, she did not offer them water or coffee.

“You have heard my husband described as a master craftsman who was forced into retirement by Douglas Connelly and his minion, Jack Worth,” she said, her voice level. “Gus was that. He was all of that. But he was also part of one of the finest families in Germany.” She turned the album around. “In World War I, his grandfather was an aide to the kaiser. His name was Field Marshal Augustus Wilhelm von Mueller. That is his picture with the kaiser.”

Stunned, the two detectives stared at the album.

“And this is a picture of his grandfather’s home. Gus’s father was the second son in the family. Gus’s father and mother died in an accident when he was a baby. Gus was their only child. The horse-drawn carriage they were riding in overturned on a rainy night. After they died, Gus was brought here and was raised with his cousins.” Lottie pointed and continued: “It was a castle on the Rhine and it was filled with furniture and paintings that were priceless antiques. My husband did not learn to love and appreciate beautiful furniture and art in a public museum. He lived for the first eight years of his life in what was in essence a museum, and he never forgot it.”

Lottie turned the page. “There is Gus with his cousins when he was six years old. You will notice that they were all girls. Gus was the only male grandchild and would eventually have inherited the castle and everything in it.”

Her voice becoming more emotional, she said, “Gus’s grandfather regarded Hitler with contempt and disdain. The family was not Jewish, but like many others of their rank they disappeared and died when Hitler came to power. Their homes and property were confiscated. Gus was in the hospital because of a burst appendix when his family was arrested and taken from their home.

“The Gestapo came to the hospital. The nurse hid Gus and showed them the body of a boy that age who had just died and told them that he was the von Mueller child. They accepted what she said and left. The nurse, whose last name was Schmidt, took Gus home that night. That is how he survived.”

“He was raised as the child of the nurse?” Ramsey asked.

“Yes. She moved to a different city and enrolled him in school. She told him that he must never talk about his former life because he, too, would be taken away. He was terrified by the cruelty of what happened on Kristallnacht and by the fact that his Jewish friends at school had to wear yellow armbands. That was, of course, before they, too, disappeared.”

“Then he was the only survivor of the family?”

“Absolutely. Everyone died in the camps. His grandfather’s castle was taken over by the Nazis and later bombed during the war. So no one was really sure if there was anything belonging to the family that was left. Gus never wanted to talk even to me about the past. After the war, the German people suffered terribly. Gus had quit school when he was sixteen, after the nurse who had adopted him became ill and died. He was completely on his own and found a job in a furniture repair shop. We were both twenty years old when we were married. He was wearing a rented suit.”

She smiled reminiscently, then said, “You see, that was why people found Gus unyielding, even autocratic. He came by it naturally. He was the offspring of a noble family.”

“Mrs. Schmidt, this is absolutely fascinating,” Frank Ramsey said, “but how does it fit in with the fact that Gus was able to give Gretchen enough money to buy a very expensive home five years ago and an annuity to help support it?”

“As you must be aware, there are organizations that track down property that was stolen by the Nazis. I knew years ago that Gus had been in touch with them. More than that I don’t know. He hated to refer to the life that existed before his family disappeared. His pain was too deep. His heart was broken. What he did tell me five years ago was that he had finally heard from one of the search organizations and they had negotiated a deal with the present owner of one of the paintings that was proven to have been in the castle. The new owner offered to pay a fair price for it, provided his name never was revealed. Gus accepted the offer. He never told me more than that but that was the money he used to buy Gretchen’s house. He received payment for a painting that rightfully belonged to him, and that is why, gentlemen, I ask you to leave my home and stop trying to make Augustus Wilhelm von Mueller II into a thief.

“I know, even though he is dead, you are convinced he is an arsonist,” Lottie said bitterly as she stood up and pushed back her chair. “Isn’t that good enough for you?”

Silently, they followed her to the door. After they went out she closed it behind them and then they heard the decisive click of the lock turning.

As they looked at each other in the gathering darkness, Frank’s cell phone rang. It was a detective from the precinct near the complex. “Frank, we just got a call from the Connelly place. They have a sinkhole in the parking lot and there’s a skeleton in it. It’s pretty obvious it’s been there a long time. It looks like a woman. She’s wearing some kind of necklace with the name Tracey on it. They think it’s Tracey Sloane, a young actress who disappeared about twenty-eight years ago.”

“We’ll be right there,” Frank said. He turned off the phone, looked at Nathan, and tersely told him of the incredible find at the complex. They both rushed to the car. As Frank turned on the engine, Nathan asked, “Frank, Hotchkiss had been missing for nearly forty years. Do you think he might have been hanging around the Connelly plant when Tracey Sloane disappeared?”

“I don’t know,” Frank said. “But if he was, it’s going to be damn hard to prove it.”