Page 32
Felicia got a telegram the next morning while Eli and I were eating breakfast with her.
We were alone in the dining room. Ford had gone to work, Veronika was throwing up in her bathroom, Alice had gone to the grocery with Leah in attendance.
She was all starry-eyed. Evidently, the second visit with the Volkovs had gone well.
Veronika and her husband (and Alice, of course) were invited to the Volkovs’ place for dinner in a week.
Eli excused himself to make one of his mysterious phone calls in the library, which had been his father’s office. Since the main telephone was in the foyer, the library was the only room where you could talk in private.
We heard the back doorbell ring. “Leah’s gone,” I said, and pushed my chair back.
“Mrs. O’Clanahan will get it,” Eli said, and left to make his phone call.
Sure enough, after a moment the cook came into the dining room with a yellow envelope on a little tray. I was about to tell her where Eli was, but she went to Felicia’s chair.
“Telegram for you, Miss Karkarova.” Mrs. O’Clanahan looked a little excited. We didn’t get a lot of telegrams.
Felicia’s whole face lit up as she took the envelope.
“Thank you,” she said, with a decent pretend calm.
As soon as Mrs. O’Clanahan left the room, she tore it open.
Her eyes ate up the words. “Hans is in New York,” she said, just about vibrating with excitement.
“He and Ahren are about to board the Normandie .”
“Where will they dock?” I put down my fork.
“They’ll dock in Southampton in England.
” She said this very carefully, as if she’d memorized it.
“Ahren disembarks there to get a train to where his folks have settled. Hans will go on to Le Havre, in France. Then he’ll get a train across France to get into Switzerland, to Geneva.
He might be in Geneva in as little as six days.
More likely seven or eight. I found maps in the library. ”
I would need to study some myself, if everything the seer had predicted began to happen. “Listen to you,” I said admiringly.
“I don’t know if I pronounced all of those right,” Felicia admitted.
“I’ll never be able to say you didn’t.” My sister would have (more or less) a week of suspense until Hans had reached his uncle in Geneva.
And then he would have to get all the business about the jewelry settled.
I had never had business that big to manage, so I couldn’t guess how long that might take.
“He won’t try to go to Germany, right? To see his sister? ”
“He has to stay out of Germany. We hope his sister’s husband can protect her, but he wouldn’t be able to do anything for Hans.”
“So then what?” I asked.
“Once Hans has gotten his financial situation squared away, he’ll come back. He’ll find work to do for a year. And then we’ll be married.” Felicia was willing herself to believe all this would happen, could happen. That war would not break out and destroy her one little plan.
“Doesn’t seem like much to ask,” I said.
“It doesn’t, does it? Everything could go all right.”
“It could,” I said, not letting any doubt into my voice. “Who was he working for, before?”
“What do you mean?”
“When he showed up in Texoma. To have a look at you.”
Felicia’s face went blank. She’d never thought about that part of Hans’s story. Love, it blinds you.
“He does belong to some group of Jewish wizards. And they had heard about me. And they sent him. But he didn’t explain more about them.” Now she sounded uncertain.
“Maybe it’s better we don’t know,” I said.
“Why?”
“We can’t tell if we don’t know.”
“You really think someone will try to get it out of us?”
I hadn’t really believed someone would try to kill my sister during this festive week.
I hadn’t believed a mother would sit silent while a bomb was ticking away at her daughter’s feet.
“I don’t know,” I said heavily. “I do know you have to keep on pretending you’re open.
To Mateo and Clayton, and the others circling around. ”
Felicia looked at me with an arch expression. “Not just me that’s getting circled around.”
“Who? Katerina? Fenolla? Anna?”
“I’ve hardly seen Anna.” Felicia looked troubled, just for a second. “And since Katerina’s mother and brother… left town, Katerina’s kind of at a loss. Her dad came down from Los Angeles to escort her. You think maybe we could take her with us, to something?”
“I don’t mind. I’ll talk to Eli.” That was a good thing. If I came face-to-face with Irina again, I’d have to kill her. But that wasn’t Felicia’s problem. “What were you saying before we got sidetracked with Katerina?”
“Ohhhh. Clayton has paid me a lot of attention, but the last two times I danced with him, he just wanted to ask questions about you.”
“What?” I could make no sense of that.
“Lizbeth this and Lizbeth that. How old are you, what family do you have in Texoma, how long have you been married to Eli, was it a legal marriage… on and on and on.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Lizbeth! He’s got feelings for you, dodo!”
“But I’m married. He knows it.” That settled it, as far as I was concerned.
“Maybe Clayton thinks he can edge Eli out of the picture.” Felicia was openly grinning now. She thought this was hilarious.
I was married. That was the last word: again, as far as I was concerned. Our marriage was tottering, but it was still a promise I’d made.
Clayton Dashwood was good-looking. He had financial security. He lived in an agricultural state with lots of water. He could play the guitar very well. I liked him.
But Clayton had told Felicia and me, when he’d appeared in Texoma, that he needed to marry a woman with magical ability since it was running low in his bloodline. I pushed this new and unwelcome confusion out of my head and slammed the door on it.
Eli returned to get a cup of coffee. He seemed to be thinking hard about something, which he usually was nowadays, but Felicia wasn’t interested in his mood.
She was a teenager in love. She told him all her news about Hans and his journey.
I didn’t mind listening twice, because I wanted to be sure I got it straight.
None of these places seemed real to me. I hadn’t even seen them on a map. I hadn’t heard of them before.
I had a small world.
Ford had left the newspaper on the table when he left, and I decided I better start reading it every day like he did.
The news about Germany was pretty scary. German troops were beginning to move toward the Polish border. Looked like they were preparing to invade. I shook my head, thinking about Agnieszka, who surely must have some family there.
The next thing my eyes fell on, like the story had a magnet attached, was a little two-paragraph item.
A woman’s body had washed ashore and been discovered.
Probably it was Maria’s, from the description.
I wasn’t surprised. Felix and I had just dumped her in the surf.
From time to time, I’d seen bodies that had been in the water for more than a day.
Not salt water, but I couldn’t imagine that would be any less destructive.
There wouldn’t be a way to find out how she’d died, and I’d made sure there was nothing on the body to say who she was.
Maybe the sister in Encinitas would see the story and view the body.
She’d at least know why she hadn’t heard from Maria.
I was just being silly, sentimental. (That was one of my mother’s least favorite traits in other people, being “sentimental.” “Silly” was a close second.) Maria’s sister had barely been able to write in Spanish, and the chances of her reading a newspaper in English were about zero.
Just as Felicia was coming to an end of the Hans saga a second time, and Eli’s patience was also coming to an end (I was an expert in spotting that), I noticed another article.
Two bodies, that of a middle-aged woman and a young man, had been found close to Lake Murray Reservoir. They’d been identified as Irina and Mikhail (also known as Paul) Swindoll of Los Angeles.
It seemed someone had believed me when I’d said that Irina knew about the bomb ahead of time. And the only people I’d told had been Eli and Felicia.
I looked up to give my husband a narrow-eyed look. He raised his hands, palms up, to ask, What did I do? Maybe he hadn’t read the paper.
“Felicia,” I said, to stop the river of Hans-talk.
She shut up, surprised.
“I don’t know if Katerina will be going to any more events this week,” I said. “Her mom and brother are dead.”
“Really?” My sister didn’t try to look surprised. Neither did Eli.
“I don’t know if I’ve pointed this out before,” I said. “But I really, really hate not knowing things. Important things. Things I’m part of.”
Eli and Felicia both looked pretty damn guilty. Of course, Felicia decided to get angry, because she knew she was in the wrong. I saw her tuning up. “No, ma’am,” I said. “You don’t get to bawl me out. You two need to tell me what you did.”
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