Read Online Where the Bones are Buried by Jeanne Matthews - Free Book Online Page B

sell.” He lobbed a menacing look over his shoulder at Geert and stalked out the door, slamming it behind him.
    â€œ Das Arschloch ,” said Geert, pushing himself off the sofa.
    If it meant what Dinah thought it did, she couldn’t agree more. “What’s the Müggelterm?”
    â€œAn old, falling-down tower in the hills above Müggelsee, a lake east of the city.”
    Müggelsee was where the powwow had been scheduled. So there was a connection after all.
    In her mind’s eye, Dinah saw Hess lurking in the dark behind a dilapidated tower. He had killed two federal agents and God only knew how many others while he was running drugs for Cleon. How likely was it that he would meekly turn over a suitcase full of cash to Swan and let her walk away? He’d never be sure she hadn’t made copies of the incriminating material and try to bleed him again. Where was Swan now?
    Her stomach growled and she was beset by a gnawing hunger. It was as if that cheese sandwich and ice cream never happened. She couldn’t think straight until she got something else to eat. “Would you like a sandwich, Geert? I’m starving.”
    â€œYou have now the Kummerspeck .”
    â€œThe what?”
    â€œWhen you feel trouble in your gut, it is like hunger. In German, we call it Kummerspeck . Grief bacon.”

Chapter Nine
    It wasn’t dark yet, but the lights were winking on along Bölschestrasse, the main drag in the village of Friedrichshagen. A few blocks ahead, the street dead-ended at the lake. The sky had cleared and a horned moon hovered low over the water. Dinah rolled down the car window and breathed in the mingled smells of sausages, brewer’s yeast and, if her nose wasn’t mistaken, rotting mulberries.
    Her driver said, “My sergeant will meet us on the trail to Kleiner Müggelberg. If Hess is here, we will arrest him. Besides threatening you and your mother, he is the subject of a large tax evasion probe.”
    â€œReally?” Hours of unanswered calls to her mother’s and Margaret’s phones and to Farber’s gallery had stoked her anxiety to the point of desperation and she had broken down and called Thor’s friend, Inspector Jens Lohendorf. She had spieled off some malarkey about Hess being a former boyfriend of her mother’s who learned about her trip to Berlin through a mutual acquaintance in der Indianer club. But the more she thought about it, the more panicky she became. Lohendorf didn’t know he was going after a double murderer and Dinah couldn’t think of a way to warn him without embroiling her mother in an international police investigation.
    She said, “I don’t think you should assume that he’s just a non-violent tax evader. He may have fired a gun into my car as I drove my mother from the airport. I couldn’t get a license plate number, but I filed a report.”
    â€œYes, I’ve read it.”
    â€œYou have?”
    â€œThor called me. He wasn’t sure you would follow up.”
    The news that Thor had gone behind her back threw her off balance. She knew he’d done it out of concern for her safety, but he’d put her in a precarious situation with Lohendorf. He would have told the inspector about the doll with the knife in its chest, which she hadn’t mentioned. And Lohendorf would have told Thor about the tax-dodging former boyfriend. When the two men got together to compare notes, she would no doubt be asked to account for the holes and disparities in her story.
    They had reached the landing dock. Lohendorf parked the car and walked around to open the door for her. “We’re in time to catch the last ferry. Sergeant Vogel and his men have cars in Rahnsdorf at the other end of the lake.”
    She squared her shoulders and snugged her shoulder bag close under her arm. If needed, she had her gun. She had shot it many times at the shooting range. Thor had insisted she take