The Last Word (24 page)

“Perfect,” Olivia answered, warming to the professor more and more as the hour progressed. The sandwich was delicious. Her fear of being forced to swallow processed meat and cheese disappeared the moment she tasted salami, ham, mortadella, mozzarella, provolone, and a tangy olive spread piled between round slices of fresh Italian bread.

Billinger poured Perrier into two coffee mugs and clinked the rim of his cup against hers. “So what are you looking for, Olivia? What does Nick Plumley’s death have to do with Kamler’s painting or the New Bern camp?”

She swallowed a mouthful of sandwich. “As I said over the phone, Nick Plumley didn’t just die; he was murdered. I can only assume that he changed his name from Ziegler to Plumley because he was ashamed to be the son of an escaped prisoner. Either that, or his father had adopted the surname Plumley in order to avoid capture. Whatever the reason, Nick’s father must have given him a firsthand account of life in the camp, his and Kamler’s escape, and how Kamler killed the prison guard, so why was Plumley searching for additional accounts?”

Picking a wayward sesame seed from his shirt, Billinger looked thoughtful. “Since listening to your voice mail, I’ve wondered about that as well. I’m writing a nonfiction book on the POW camps in North Carolina, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned as a historian, it’s that one cannot find the facts without also sifting through a heap of gossip and rumor. Sometimes, rumor leads to fact. I wonder if that might be the case with your murder investigation.”

Olivia put down her sandwich. “Please explain.”

“Mabel, the woman I mentioned, was also the child of a prison guard. Like our mutual friend Raymond Hatcher, Mabel was a terrific source for personal accounts of life at Camp New Bern from a young person’s perspective. In fact, Mabel was a teenager then, so her memories are more detailed than the ones Mr. Hatcher recalls his older brother having told him. Mabel and Evelyn White were best friends.”

This revelation caused Olivia to lean forward in her chair, anxious for the professor to keep talking.

Billinger took a sip of Perrier, as though he needed a moment to pluck up the courage to continue. “Mabel repeatedly told me that Evelyn and Heinrich Kamler were lovers. She also refused to accept that Kamler murdered Hatcher. According to Mabel, Kamler had a gentle and quiet nature. He was popular among the guards, the other prisoners, and the locals. More importantly, he was content, or so Mabel claims. She was adamant that Kamler had no desire to escape because he had no family left in Germany and he would never want to be parted from Evelyn. He planned to marry her when the war was over, naive as that may sound to you and me.”

Rising to her feet, Olivia returned to Billinger’s stack of photographs and picked up the one of Evelyn and Heinrich. His features were too distant to be perfectly clear, but even a blurred image couldn’t suppress the easy attraction passing between him and Evelyn. “What if Kamler was innocent?” Olivia looked at Billinger. “He was never captured, right?”

“No.”

“What if Kamler wanted to punish Plumley for branding him a murderer?”

Billinger rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “And becoming the thing he was falsely accused of being? And why now?
The Barbed Wire Flower
has been out for ages.”

“Maybe Kamler didn’t have access to Plumley until now,” Olivia guessed. “Maybe he didn’t know he was Ziegler’s son. Maybe Ziegler was actually responsible for the guard’s death.”

With an indulgent grin, Billinger indicated the seat Olivia had abandoned. “All conjecture.”

“And what of Evelyn?” Olivia asked, her eyes betraying her hope. “Is she still alive?”

“I’m afraid not,” Billinger replied softly. “She passed away several years ago.”

Olivia didn’t return to her lunch. She was too restless to sit down. Something was gnawing at her, an elusive thought she couldn’t grasp. It fell away like a handful of sand running between her fingers. She also knew she wasn’t asking the right questions yet. “Plumley was looking for this painting. If I can find out why it mattered to him, I believe this murder investigation will crack wide open. Could we visit Mabel? I’d like to hear her talk about Evelyn and Heinrich.”

Billinger hesitated. “She’s in a nursing home in Hills-borough, a town north of here. It’s only a twenty-minute drive, but it might be a waste of time. Mabel’s mind is not what it once was. She’s been steadily deteriorating into senility.”

Wrapping up her sandwich to indicate her decision, Olivia stared, unseeing, at the butcher paper. “Did Mabel ever mention Ziegler?”

“Several times. He was a late arrival to the camp and a full-blooded Nazi. He and a small group of men kept themselves apart from the rest of the prisoners, and according to Mabel, Ziegler was also in love with Evelyn White.”

Olivia walked around the professor’s desk and looked down at the faint note written on the back of Kamler’s painting. “This message can be read one of two ways. Either Heinrich is telling Evelyn that he’s planning to escape and they can elope, or he’s assuring her that the war is drawing to a close and that he will find a way to remain in the States and build a life for them both.”

After wiping his hands on a napkin, Billinger put on his cotton gloves again and tenderly turned the painting over. “What do you see when you look at that cabin?”

“Sanctuary,” Olivia answered immediately. She had had plenty of time to consider the emotions that the cozy structure evoked. “Security. Home. Welcome.”

Billinger nodded. “This might very well be an image from Kamler’s past, from his childhood. But it could also be his hope for the future. A simple life, a private life, a place where one could step away from the world and hide. A nest, so to speak.”

“Evelyn would have been a legal adult by the end of the war,” Olivia said, her eyes riveted on the bar of light streaming from the crack under the cabin’s front door. “How was he planning to support her even if he could stay? As an artist? A farmhand?”

An idea struck Billinger. He clamped his hand around Olivia’s forearm in an attempt to gain her full attention even though her eyes were already locked on his face. “The last time I went to visit her, Mabel was going on and on about Evelyn’s treasures. It didn’t make any sense at the time, but what if Evelyn had more paintings? What if there are
more
of these”—he gestured at the watercolor—“hidden in your friend’s house?”

A knot of fear formed in Olivia’s stomach. “Then Harris isn’t safe. Kamler’s works are worth a small fortune.”

Wordlessly, the pair flew into motion. Olivia packed up the painting, and Billinger tossed the debris from their lunch into the trash bin. Grabbing his suit jacket, he hurriedly collected the photographs and dropped them into a large envelope.

“Bring the painting,” he told Olivia. “Who knows what flood of memories might come flowing from Mabel’s mind when she sees it.”

Olivia shouldered the bag and pulled her cell phone from her purse. “I’m glad you’re driving. I need to put a call in to Oyster Bay’s police chief and have him put a detail on Harris’s house.”

“You know the chief of police?” Billinger seemed impressed.

Thinking of Rawlings’ brown eyes flecked with green and gold, his tacky Hawaiian shirts, his penchant for chocolate milk, and his undeniable skill as an artist, Olivia murmured, “Not as well as I’d like, but I plan to do something about that very soon.”

—LORD BYRON

 

R
awlings was a step ahead of Olivia regarding Harris’s safety. He’d already established a rotation of drive-bys during the day and had offered overtime pay to any officers willing to sit in a squad car outside Harris’s house during the night.

“I can’t afford to do this much longer,” Rawlings admitted. “Don’t have the budget for it. If I can’t break this case soon, Harris might be living with me.”

Olivia would fund the cost of overtime herself if need be and told the chief as much. “Especially after dark. He’s more vulnerable then.”

“Except that he always has company,” Rawlings said after a discreet pause. “It’s one thing to incapacitate a single person in order to search the house for hidden artwork, but to take two people out requires more planning.” Olivia heard a rustling at the other end of the phone as if the chief was sifting through sheaves of paperwork. “But the killer’s had enough time to plan, and that puts me on edge. I feel like Mr. Plumley’s murder only partially fulfilled his agenda and that he or she is ready to make a move. I believe that the countdown was initiated by that murder but is racing toward another act of violence.”

Olivia had experienced the same prickling of unease, an unidentifiable sense of urgency that pushed at her like a wind at her back. Even now, on a wooded road north of Chapel Hill, Olivia felt the pressure building and intensifying like a wave preparing to crest. She tried not to fume at the ancient Chevy pickup in front of them, even though it forced them to drive below the speed limit.

Billinger was lost in his own thoughts, but Olivia found his presence comforting. She hadn’t expected to have formed an immediate alliance with the professor, yet here he was, having put aside whatever plans he might have had for the rest of the afternoon, taking a chance on an old woman with an inconsistent mental state.

Mabel was in a wheelchair in the garden of The Sunrise Retirement Community. Olivia almost made a caustic remark about the nursing home’s name, but held it back. She recognized a need to step into this insulated world with a positive attitude and could see that Billinger was well practiced in walking with soft footfalls and wearing a bright smile. He raised his hand and waved to a nurse watering a ceramic urn filled with red geraniums before approaching Mabel.

“Good to see you, Professor!” The nurse greeted him warmly. “Mabel’s havin’ a good day. She’ll be right glad for some company.”

The woman they’d come to visit was a tiny thing. Her body was so slight that it seemed as though she couldn’t hold herself upright without the support of the wheelchair. Mabel had tufts of white cotton-candy hair and rheumy blue eyes, but when she heard Billinger’s voice, she smiled and blinked away the fog of memory and held out a fragile hand, marked with age spots and swollen rivulets of blue veins, and reached for him.

Billinger squatted down and looked at Mabel with genuine affection, accepting her hand and gently placing his over the thin flesh. He wheeled her alongside a nearby bench and gestured for Olivia to join them.

The professor had told her that Mabel was only in her seventies, so Olivia was caught off guard by the woman’s appearance. She wore all the marks of someone who’d struggled, kicking and clawing, through life. The years had shrunken her and bit away at her curves until she had the body of an undernourished child—all sharp angles and skin stretched tight across the bones. Her face was carved with deep wrinkles, like those on a walnut shell, but there were many fanning from the corner of her eyes, indicating that she’d born her troubles with a healthy dose of good humor.

“How lovely to meet a friend of Emmett’s,” Mabel said to Olivia in a voice as insubstantial as a leaf pushed about in the breeze. “He’s such a dear.” She gazed at Billinger fondly.

Instead of taking a seat next to the professor, Olivia stood directly in front of Mabel. “May I show you something?”

As the older woman nodded in assent, a stray shaft of sunlight broke through the protective boughs of the oak tree to the northwest and illuminated Mabel’s face, erasing away the decades. For a fraction of a second, Olivia saw how handsome this woman had been in her youth and that the ghost of this beauty coexisted with her brittle bones and mottled skin.

Olivia froze for a moment. Had her mother survived, would she be like Mabel? Would her radiance have shone through the sea blue eyes she shared with her daughter? Or would a lifetime spent growing old alongside an erratic man have robbed her of all her softness and grace, replacing them with furrows of worry and hard edges of regret?

Mabel turned her hands over, showing Olivia her palms and inviting her to come back to the present moment. Happy to obey, she unwrapped Kamler’s painting and, keeping it anchored on a piece of cardboard, tenderly placed the watercolor on Mabel’s lap.

The woman slipped on a pair of bifocals that had been hanging from her neck on a chain of finch yellow and gasped. “This is one of Henry’s!” Then, assaulted by doubt. “Isn’t it?”

Olivia and Billinger exchanged looks.

“Henry?” Billinger prompted in a patient voice.

Mabel covered her mouth as though she’d let loose a secret entrusted to her long ago by a dear friend. “I sometimes forget that Henry wasn’t his real name, but Evie called him that instead of Heinrich. Almost from the beginning. To her, he was Henry.” Mabel’s eyes drank in the winter scene. It was almost a tangible thing, to see her slip away from the senior center’s garden and travel back to Camp New Bern, to her girlhood, to Evelyn White.

Barely breathing, Olivia imagined she could follow Mabel through this wormhole of time, spying the pair of teenage girls in starched dresses and Mary Janes, schoolbooks clutched against their chests as they giggled at the sight of a group of cute boys hunched over glasses of cherry cola at the drugstore counter.

“Evie’d never been sweet on a boy before,” Mabel said. “It was like she was waiting for that German boat to get sunk, waiting for those young men with their strange language and their strange uniforms to wash up onto the beach like a group of mermen. Henry was the best looking and the sweetest. He never acted like a prisoner. It was more like he’d come to visit distant relatives. The first time Evie and I went to take lunch to our daddies, she spotted Heinrich through the chain fence, and it was . . .” She trailed off, nostalgia tugging her lips into a grin.