17

Tom’s message slid into her inbox like an invitation to regret: Move into my pod across the road. It’s safer, and I can stop worrying about you every five minutes. It was sweet, that “I know better” way Tom had, but Leila wasn’t buying it.

She thumbed back a reply. I promised Christina I’d look after the house and Wolfie. No cults or homicidal archaeologists are changing my plans.

A sad emoji pinged back. Tom wasn’t giving up, but work had him chained to the Grossman Center until his financial projections were in. He’d miss dinner; the Center was feeding his team.

Disappointed but not deterred, Leila decided to clean up Tom’s new place. It was part guilt, part curiosity. She grabbed the spare key, the plastic kind that came with a polished wood veneer to make it look fancier than it was, and let herself in.

The pod was pristine, the kind of clean that said either Tom had hired a housekeeper or he’d stopped living like a human being. The only mess in sight was her lipstick, perched smugly on the marble bathroom counter. She’d thought it was lost and felt a pang of relief seeing it there.

She was about to leave when movement caught her eye—a shadow flitting past the window. Big, dark, and silent. Her owl friend again? She turned to get a better look, but there was nothing to be seen, just the empty snow-dusted street.

“Get a grip, Leila,” she muttered.

A dose of caffeine seemed like the cure for her wandering mind. She hit the button on Tom’s industrial-strength coffee machine and listened as it hummed to life, grinding beans like they owed it money. The coffee it produced was liquid perfection, poured into bone china so fine it made her feel like a queen.

Settling onto one of the leather-upholstered bar stools, she nibbled on shortbread biscuits imported from Scotland. Then it happened again—a shadow outside, just at the edge of her vision. Maybe insomnia wasn’t just for humans, the owls can have it too.

“Or maybe I’m cracking up,” she muttered, staring into the empty street.

The coffee worked its magic, sending her thoughts back to the mustard-jacketed man and his midnight antics. He wasn’t your everyday thug, that was for sure. He’d haunted that sleepy mountain village, then the hospital. 

Her phone vibrated against the counter, the “Meow” ringtone startling her. She grabbed it, seeing a call from the nurse at Christina’s hideaway.

“Oh, Mrs. Weinrich,” the nurse began, her voice kind but urgent. “Someone here at the hospital needs to talk to you. It’s about your aunt, but don’t worry, she’s fine. My colleague is taking care of her.”

Leila’s heart kicked up a notch. “Put them on, please.”

A woman’s voice came on the line, raw with tension. “Madame! He came at night—and started strangling me, screaming, ‘Where is it? Where is it?’ But he didn’t say what ‘it’ was.”

“Who?” Leila demanded, her grip tightening on the phone.

“A man. They put me in Christina Weinrich’s ward for some reason. My name is Jillian Hertz.”

“Oh my God, Mrs. Hertz. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. I calmed him down, told him I might know better where ‘it’ was if I could recover from the shock. I asked him for a cigarette, then poked him in the face with it. Then the girl with the broken arm woke up and clocked him with her cast. He passed out, and we left him in the hallway.”

Leila blinked. “Wait, you talked to him after he tried to strangle you?”

“Sure. What else could I do?” Jillian’s tone was pragmatic, almost bored.

“And he thought you were Christina?”

“That’s right. He saw her name on the chart and didn’t know the difference.”

“What did he look like?”

“Ordinary,” Jillian said after a pause. “Middle-aged, grayish hair. Short, I think. It was dark.”

“Mustard-colored tweed jacket?” Leila pressed.

“That’s him! Do you know him?”

“Not exactly. Did he say what he was looking for?”

Jillian’s silence stretched long enough to make Leila check the connection. Finally, the woman sighed. “No, he didn’t say. Just kept asking, ‘Where is it?’”

Leila’s mind spun. “Thank you for letting me know. Please take care of yourself. And call me if you remember anything else. It could be important.”

The nurse was back on the phone, promising to text Leila if Christina needed things from the shops, and hung up.

Leila sat there still, her thoughts racing. The mustard man was after something he thought Christina had. As the nurse hung up, Leila sat on the endless sofa in Tom's flashy living room to do more thinking.

The mustard guy had seen the name in the journal, assumed the poor woman was Christina, and interrogated her at night while gently squeezing her throat. He didn’t kill her and even gave her an illegal cigarette. So the mustard man wasn’t one of the rulers’ assassins. But here’s the kicker: what exactly he wanted from the woman? Something about “it” and where. Where was “it”? That was the million-dollar question.

The fact that he’d first struck out at Christina’s chalet might be the missing link. Whatever he’d been after wasn’t there. Maybe Eduard Yellen, the late eccentric archeologist, had interfered with his plans. That’d make sense. Two men, both sniffing around like hounds on the same trail. They were not playing on the same side; that much was clear. They’d bumped into each other searching for “it” in Christina’s place, and the encounter was deadly for Yellen.

Leila pictured it: The Mustard Jacket watched Gerard plucking the keys from the hiding spot near the chalet. Then, later, when Gerard whizzed off on his snowmobile, the mustard man slipped in. The locks were not a problem; the dog’s a pushover, practically rolling out the welcome mat for him. He searched the place. For what? Leila didn’t know. Something important. Most likely that artifact the rulers were talking about at that dinner.

Then Yellen arrived. Maybe he’d figured out someone else was hunting for the same thing. Maybe he had chosen a lousy timing. Either way, the mustard man panicked and cracked Yellen over the head with whatever was handy. One hit and the lights were out. When Leila showed up moments later, the guy must’ve been sweating, dragging the body out, and dumping it next door to keep the heat off Christina’s chalet. If the new owner of that derelict place wasn’t about to start renovation, Yellen’s body might’ve gone undiscovered for years. Ah, the new owner of the abandoned chalet, the mysterious Gerard Weinrich who confessed to Yellen’s murder. That couldn’t be. He wouldn’t just drag the body to his own house. She should have thought of this earlier. Maybe Gerard lied to Leila about the murder. The thought made her feel small and timid. She couldn’t trust Gerard. The warm, sweet Gerard. The only guy who was always good news, a dear friend. As much as she liked young Weinrich, she had to be careful. Weinrichs on his side of the family were not to be trusted. Christina introduced him as a former student. Did she know his real name and did it bother her? Leila suspected Gerard was playing his own game. 

She drained the last drops of her coffee and stared at the snow outside. Whatever “it” was, it had to be important enough to kill people for.

The car pulling up outside shook her out of her thoughts. Tom had arrived, offering to drive her to Christina’s hideaway. She locked the door, grabbed her coat and headed out.

At the hideaway, Tom decided to wait in the car, and the Filipino nurse greeted Leila with a smile. “She’s doing well. Wants to see you.”

Leila stepped inside. The warmth of the woodstove wrapped around her like a fleece blanket. Christina lay bundled on a narrow bed, her face peaceful. Across the room, the shift nurse was knitting, her needles clicking softly.

The nurse stood, shrugging on her coat. “Can you sit with her for half an hour? I need to grab something to eat.”

Leila nodded and took the seat by Christina’s bed. The nurse left, and the quiet pressed in.

Then Christina’s voice broke it. “Leila. What’s going on?”

Leila jumped. “You’re awake!”

Christina’s sharp eyes pinned her down. “You’re hiding something. Spill.”

Leila hesitated, then gave her a milder version of the truth. “There was a small incident last night. A noise behind the wall. Turned out to be a bird trapped behind a secret door in your living room.”

Christina’s brow furrowed. “Secret door?”

“Yeah. Leads to the attic. Lots of old stuff up there. Family heirlooms?”

Christina sighed. “Did I ever tell you about my grandfather?”

Leila leaned in. “Not much. He wasn't a Nazi, right?”

Christina’s gaze grew distant. “He fought in the war. Worked with… well, let’s just say he knew how to keep secrets. Brought back strange things. Trophies, curiosities. Some of them were from our old place. The castle. He had to leave it behind as Nazis considered him a traitor.”

Leila’s pulse quickened. “The castle?”

Christina nodded. “He didn’t talk much about it. Just said they were valuable things.”

Leila’s thoughts swirled as the pieces clicked together. Valuable, taken from her family’s castle, tied to a secret door, and, possibly, to a mustard man who wouldn’t quit. Leila's eyes flickered with unhealthy excitement: she was getting closer. Though closer didn’t feel that safe.

“So, it’s all from Germany, then?” Leila said, her voice as casual as the question wasn’t. The idea fluttered around her head like a moth near a lightbulb, faint but insistent.

Christina nodded, her expression tinged with nostalgia. “Yes, from a Getzen castle in Saxony. German soldiers were stationed there during the war.”

“Getzen, you say?” Leila asked, startled.

“Well,” Christina chimed. “Grandfather said so.”

Leila raised an eyebrow. “And that other part of our family… were they cozy with the Nazis?”

Christina gave her a tight smile, the kind a teacher reserves for slow students. “It’s complicated. The head of our family was an outspoken critic of Hitler. He was a close ally of Baron Rainer-Maria von Staufenberg. When the Nazis rose to power, he left Germany for Argentina. But his brother joined the Nazis. He was a member of the Hitler fan club.”

“And the title?” Leila prompted.

“Oh, the old aristocracy wouldn’t hear of transferring it to him. Too bad, I don’t remember his full name now.”

Leila’s eyebrows shot up. “Too bad for his descendants as well.”

Christina nodded, clearly delighted to explain these things.

Then she leaned forward, her tone darkening. “There’s a twist to the story. In early 1945, Himmler ordered to hide a massive cache of looted valuables. Gold, jewels, priceless artifacts—forty million dollars in today’s cash. The orders were followed all right. The treasure was hidden so well that no one’s found it to this day.”

“No one?” Leila pressed, the bait too tempting to resist.

Christina shook her head. “Not a soul. The Allies interrogated everyone they could find, but those who knew the location were… let’s say, permanently unavailable.”

Leila narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean, unavailable?”

“Executed. One by one. The guy in charge made sure of it. He wanted the secret buried—literally.”

“Oh, yeah. I read about that. But what happened to the guy in charge?” Leila asked.

“He slipped out of Berlin as the city fell. Westward, they say. He vanished like a magician with a grudge. Never seen or heard from again.”

"And what happened to your grandfather?" Leila asked.

"I am not sure what had happened between him and his brother. All I know he returned to the castle in Saxony after the war. He lived there until he got married. Leila leaned back, letting that sink in. Forty million dollars in today’s cash, hidden for decades. Meanwhile, back in Saxony, Christina’s grandfather was moving out of family castle—an old mask, among other things, now gathering dust in the attic. Two men snooping around Christina’s chalet, one dead, the other still making trouble. And there was a nasty cult called the Rulers with unhealthy interest in artifacts. It didn’t take a genius to connect the dots, but the picture was still hazy.

Christina’s sharp voice broke into Leila’s thoughts. “Leila,” she said, “you’re keeping something from me. Your eyes are glowing. That means you’re up to something.”

Leila blinked, caught off guard. “Who, me? Not at all.”

“Don’t fool me,” Christina said, her tone sharpening. “My leg is in cast, but my head is in decent shape.”

Leila giggled. “Fine, I’ll tell you later. Just focus on getting better, okay?”

“Lunch!” A nurse’s cheerful voice resounded from the hallway, breaking the tension.

Leila breathed out with relief, grateful the awkward conversation with her aunt was over.