Lying in wait

7

I'm not sure why it surprised me so, but the shock on my face must have been readily apparent.

"Gunter's father was a piliot in the Luftwaffe," Else explained. "He was killed shortly before D-day. Gunter's been making these soldiers for years. It was his way of honoring a father he barely knew."

I only half heard what Else Gebhardt was saying. I was studying the collection of miniature soldiers in their painstakingly painted Nazi uniforms and thinking about my own father. He died just before D-day as well. Same war. Different side.

Looking around the basement now, I saw it through different eyes and felt as though I had been given a glimpse of not one but two dead men-an unsung war hero, a man who had presumably died honorably while fighting on the wrong side of a lost cause. And his son, who had spent his entire adult life living in a country where his father's wartime exploits would have been anathema to anyone Gunter chose to tell. Rather than discussing his father aloud, he had created this secret basement shrine.

I wondered if Gunter Gebhardt ever knew how lucky he was. He had been fortunate enough to find a wife who had understood and accepted his need to honor his father. I saw Else Gebhardt in a whole new light as well.

"How did your husband happen to come to this country?" Sue Danielson asked.

Else beckoned for us to follow her and led us to a small workbench area where three tall stools were grouped around a waist-high countertop. We each settled on a stool.

"I've never been quite clear on how it happened, but somehow Gunter and his mother ended up in Norway after the war. Her name was Isolde. That's where the name of Gunter's boat came from. She married a Norwegian fisherman named Einar Aarniessen who happened to be my father's second cousin. When Gunter was in his mid-teens, both his mother and stepfather were killed in an automobile accident. When Gunter wanted to come to this country, my father sponsored him."

"That's how you two met?" I asked.

Else nodded. "I didn't know it then, but I think it was a put-up deal. My father wanted a son, you see-someone to fish with, someone to leave his business to. And since his only child was a girl-me-the best Daddy could hope for was a suitable son-in-law. As far as that was concerned, Gunter was perfect. He was a hard worker. He didn't smoke or drink."

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."

"It's Kari."

"Oh, of course," Else said, wiping the tears from her face and lurching to her feet. "Kari. Tell her I'll be right there. You'll excuse me?"

Sue and I nodded in unison. After Else left, I looked down at the notebook on the countertop in front of me. The page was blank.

"All this stream-of-consciousness stuff isn't getting us anywhere, is it?"

"Not really," Sue agreed. "But there's one thing I'm curious about."

"What's that?"

"Why does she keep calling you BoBo?"

I didn't much want to discuss it, but I figured I'd be better off getting it out of the way once and for all.

"It's from back in the old days," I answered shortly. "Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. It's a nickname that dates from Ballard High School Beaver days, when the cheerleading squad used to give pet names to all the athletes."

"You two knew one another back then?"

"As well as a lowly sophomore ever knows the senior movers and shakers. You know how that goes. Else and Alan Torvoldsen were a real item back then."

"That's the guy she was going to marry? The one who knocked her up? Isn't he the same one Watty wants us to see later today?"

"That's right. In case you hadn't noticed, Ballard's really a small town stuck in the middle of a big city."

Sue Danielson nodded. "I'm beginning to figure that out," she said.

I got up and prowled around Gunter Gebhardt's compulsively clean workshop. Stored in one cupboard I found the collection of carefully crafted plaster molds he had used to create his army of lead soldiers. I also found the collection of paints and delicate brushes and files he must have used to do the finish work on the soldiers once they came out of the molds. Painstakingly making those soldiers must have been the sole creative outlet for a man with considerable artistic talent and capability.

The door at the top of the stairs opened, and the stairs creaked under the weight of heavy footsteps. Soon Else Gebhardt appeared from behind the partition at the bottom of the stairs. She was still crying, but she was smiling through the tears.

"Kari's coming down from Bellingham. Michael's bringing her down. They'll be here early this evening. I can hardly believe it." As far as I could see, it seemed reasonable that a daughter faced with news of her father's death would show up to help her mother. "What makes that so hard to believe?" I asked.

"You don't understand," Else replied. "The last time Gunter and I saw Kari was the night of her high school graduation. She cut us dead-refused to speak to either one of us. I thought it would break her father's heart."

"I heard you on the phone earlier. When all this came up, how did you know where to call her, then?"

"Kari stays in touch with her grandmother-with my mother," Else answered.

No wonder Else wanted to be out from under her mother's thumb. Inge Didriksen was a problem. On more than one front.

The phone call from Kari seemed to have had a calming effect on Else. After that we settled down and took some more organized information from her. What time her husband had left the house the previous evening-seven. Where had he said he was going-the boat. Did Else know of anyone with whom Gunter was having difficulties-she did not. Was she aware of any business dealings that may have gone awry-not that she could think of.

The questions were straightforward, and so were the answers. That kind of basic interview may not seem like much in terms of drama or excitement, but the information gained usually forms the foundation of a murder investigation. It's like a baseline X ray on a cancer patient. It tells investigators where and when things started going haywire. It's the hub of a wagon wheel-an initial point for branching out and asking more questions.

As we walked away from the house and threaded our way through the collection of parked cars, I was struck by how commonplace and ordinary the house looked. Yet inside those sandstone walls there had been a world of multigenerational conflict-years and decades of parents and children at war with one another.

Of course, everyone tries to pretend to the outside world that his own family isn't at all like that, but maybe if you scratch the surface, most of them are just that way. Sue Danielson's family certainly wasn't absolutely smooth and trouble-free. The little lunchtime set-to with Jared had proved that.

I left the Gebhardts' home in Blue Ridge convinced that Else and Gunter's seemingly troubled existence, one filled with marital and parental strife, wasn't all that different from anyone else's.

Mine included.