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“Maybe you just misheard. Surely, no one was really murdered,” I say, even though what I really want to know is who? Who was murdered?Who?
“I know what I heard,” Brigitte says with a sniff. “They said the wordmurdermore than once.”
On the other side of the playground, the teachers begin clapping, a signal for the kids to line up even though the bell is still a good minute or two away. My gaze tracks to Sem, already bored of the drama, watching a couple of the older boys play soccer with an empty Coke bottle. He’s standing close enough to hear the clapping, but there’s too much ambient noise for it to register.
“But how did they get inside?” Manon says in her native tongue. “A troop of teenagers can’t sneak past a doorman. Not unless they beat him up, too.”
Even if she doesn’t have all the details right, she’s not wrong about the building’s security. The doorman is indeed a hurdle, as are the locks on every gate and door, as are the security cameras monitoring every entrance and hall and exit. Whoever did this would have had to pull a trick or two to get inside, and they’d need a fob to operate the elevator.
I tug my phone from my pocket, pull up my local news app, and scroll through this morning’s headlines. There’s nothing about a murder. Nothing about any sort of disturbance on the Valeriusplein.
I look up and spot Sem, watching me just outside the door.What’s wrong?he signs.
Nothing,I sign back. I try to smile, but my lips stick to my teeth.Have a good day.
With a reluctant nod, Sem slips into the stream of little bodies shuffling toward the door and disappears inside. I shiver despite my fur-lined coat.
“According to what I heard, the doorman didn’t even know anything was wrong. Not until one of the neighbors reported a pretty woman racing out of there. Apparently, she was frantic.”
A hard knot forms in the pit of my stomach because a pretty woman also tracks. Xander has a constant parade of them going in and out of his penthouse, Amsterdam’s very own version of a fuckboy. The first time I called him that, he laughed so hard he had to sit down. In the months since, it’s become something of an inside joke.
And yet...
And yet.
“We have a problem,” Xander told me only a few days ago. “Ithink there’s someone following me.”
Thomas was upstairs putting Sem to bed and it was drizzling out, but I still ducked into the backyard with my phone just in case. Xander knew better than to call during family time, but sometime in the past month or so, the rules had been tossed out the window.
“You think or you know?” I said, keeping an eye on the slice of kitchen I could see through the back door window, empty for now. Deeper into the yard, my rescue Ollie sniffed at his favorite bay laurel bush. Ollie was my excuse if and when Thomas suddenly reappeared.
“I know,” Xander said that night in my ear. “I’ve seen him twice now. At the café across the street from the factory and just now, on the sidewalk outside my apartment. A tall guy wearing a black baseball cap.”
Which could describe a million men in this country, and washereallysure? Because last week, he’d called to tell me someone rummaged through his desk at the factory. The week before, someone was listening to his calls. I didn’t take it very seriously because Xander is under a lot of stress. Everyone at House of Prins is. Alot is riding on the new lab-grown line, and it still isn’t meeting projections.
Next to me, themoedermafiahas grown by three more mothers, all of them still chattering away about the doorman, the woman, thepatserdead on the floor. I listen with half an ear, thinking there are almost a million people living in Amsterdam proper. A million other people themoedermafiacould be referring to now, in any one of dozens of other buildings backing up to the park. Just because they say it’s the one on the Valeriusplein doesn’t mean it’s true.
“Let’s go see what we can find out,” Brigitte suggests, waving the other mothers toward the sidewalk and the row of bikes beyond as the last of the children shuffle into the school. “Maybe the neighbors will still be standing outside, or we can try that café on the corner. Somebody must know something.” Their gazes don’t so much as skim over mine.
My husband is always telling me that I should try harder, that small talk between mothers at the school fence is a beloved Dutch tradition, but Thomas is a Prins, the sixth-generation heir to a diamond dynasty who’s never had to work to make friends. People gravitate to him for his money and status, but that privilege doesn’t automatically extend to me just because we share the same last name. For these women,for the other mothers here at school, I’m notreallya Prins, and I never will be.
I stand there for a long moment, alone in a lingering crowd of women making plans for workouts and boozy lunches and book clubs that don’t include me, and for once, I don’t feel like the last kid to get picked for a team I don’t really want to be on anyway.My head is swimming with what I just heard, the news drowning out all the rest.
A pretty woman.
A murdered man.
There are easier ways to get to the truth than asking themoedermafia.
On the short bike ride home, I call Thomas.
He answers, like always, in English, because it’s faster and less awkward than suffering through my clunky Dutch. “I’m in the middle of something. Can I call you back?”
Nohello, my love.Nohow’s your morning going?But at least he takes my call. Thomasalwayspicks up when I call, no matter where he is or what he’s doing. It’s the one positive of having a medically fragile child, I suppose, that your husband never ignores your calls.
“I won’t keep you long. I was just calling to see how your morning is going.”
There’s a long, empty pause, mostly because Inevercall to see how his morning is going. But I can’t just come out and ask if Xander happens to be sitting at his desk down the hall. I can’t just tell him about the sirens and themoedermafiaand ask if the rumors are true without raising Thomas’s suspicions. Voicing my worry would only raise Thomas’s radar in ways I really don’t want to be raising right now.