The Witnesses Read online

  When he didn’t hear anything, Parker tried to resume his research on the Bontemps file, but his concentration was shot. Giving up any pretense of work, he approached Vicki.

  “Any word from Greg or Dexter?” he asked.

  “No, I think they’re meeting with the client in the downstairs conference room.”

  “Maybe they didn’t finish the evidence, and they’re talking about tomorrow,” Parker guessed.

  “I don’t know. Maude from the mortgage company buzzed me when they got back from the courthouse. I’d told her I wanted a heads-up.”

  “Do you think I can crash the meeting?”

  “Not without an excuse.”

  Parker started to turn away.

  “And here’s your excuse,” Vicki added and held out her hand.

  “What is it?” Parker took a sheet of paper from her.

  “A fax just came in that Greg’s been waiting for all week. He needs to send a response in the next ten minutes. I was going to take it to him, but if you’re willing to be my messenger boy—”

  “Thanks,” Parker said, not waiting for Vicki to finish.

  He bounded down the stairs. The conference room to the left of the foyer had been the parlor when the house was a private residence. Parker knocked on the door and barged in without permission. The lawyers were standing up and each shook Mr. Nichols’s hand.

  “We’ll be in touch as soon as the thirty-day time period ends,” Dexter said to the client.

  “Just a minute,” Greg said to Parker when he saw him. “We’re almost finished.”

  Parker stepped aside as the client left. “Thirty days?” he asked as soon as Nichols was gone.

  “For the defendant to appeal!” Greg clapped his hands together. “The judge charged the jury and sent them out to elect a foreman before wrapping up for the day. They returned in thirty minutes after doing a lot more than electing a foreman.”

  “Forewoman,” Dexter corrected.

  “Yeah,” Greg said. “The photographer you have a crush on, Ms. Donovan, was the forewoman. The jury answered all three questions in our favor, including the finding that will support treble damages. Everyone in the courtroom was in shock, especially me after I got blindsided by Buck Jenkins.”

  “What did he do that caught you off guard?” Parker asked, his mouth suddenly dry.

  “Testified about a conversation he had with our client after Jenkins’s deposition. I have no idea why Nichols didn’t think it might be important to let us know that he’d seen Jenkins at the marina where they both keep boats. They talked about settling the case before incurring the costs of trial.”

  “And because it didn’t take place between the lawyers, it wasn’t protected by the attorney-client privilege,” Parker mumbled.

  “Yeah, they taught me the same thing in law school,” Greg replied.

  It wasn’t exactly the concern that had crossed Parker’s mind at the back of the courtroom, but he had remembered from the deposition testimony that the two men occasionally saw each other socially and he’d wanted to remind Greg of the possibility.

  “But in the end it didn’t matter,” Greg continued. “I tried to grab Ms. Donovan before she bolted out the door, but she was gone before I got to her. However, one of the other jurors, a retired army staff sergeant I’d pegged as most likely to be chosen foreman, said she gave a summary of the evidence as soon as they hit the jury room, and no one disagreed with her opinion and conclusions.”

  “Do you think the lumber company will appeal?” Parker asked.

  “Sure, but they’ll also try to settle since the clock will be ticking on postjudgment interest. I anticipate an offer before we argue their motion for new trial.”

  “Oh.” Parker suddenly remembered the fax Vicki gave him as his excuse to barge into the meeting. “This just came in.”

  Greg quickly read it. “Why didn’t you give this to me as soon as you walked through the door?” he asked irritably.

  Before Parker could offer an explanation, his boss brushed past him and headed toward the stairs.

  “Sorry,” Parker said to Dexter.

  “Ignore him,” Dexter replied. “He’s working through the fact that he hit a home run in a case he didn’t want to take when Mr. Nichols first contacted me. I had to agree that all the expenses would come out of my pocket if we lost.”

  “Do you get a greater share of the recovery?”

  Dexter smiled. “Are you going to get a bonus because you lobbied to keep Ms. Donovan on the jury? The best thing I did all day was back you up when it came time to exercise our last strike. Greg only went along because he was convinced she was filler who wouldn’t move the meter.”

  Parker and Dexter left the conference room together.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Dexter continued as they climbed the stairs. “Greg did a nice job, especially with Buck Jenkins. If that had happened to me, I would have frozen up and started wishing it was time to go home on Friday afternoon.”

  Dexter stopped to tell Vicki about the trial. Parker continued to his office where he printed out his research in the Bontemps matter. Even though he’d not been directly involved in the trial, he felt vindicated that his instincts about juror Donovan had proved accurate and relieved that his failure to warn Greg about Buck Jenkins’s testimony hadn’t been fatal to the case.

  Most days Parker tried not to be the first lawyer to leave the office for home. Dexter, who was married and had two small children, usually left in time to make it home for supper. Greg was divorced and married to his career. He worked extra-long hours. Vicki appeared in the open door of Parker’s office. It was past time for her to leave for the day.

  “Hey, I was downstairs talking to Marge when an older gentleman came in asking for you,” Vicki said, then glanced down at a slip of paper in her hand. “He’s looking for someone named Franz Haus.”

  Parker sat up straighter in his chair.

  “He has a thick German accent,” Vicki continued. “He’s elderly, and I didn’t think it was a good idea to ask him to climb the stairs, so I asked him to write down his name on a slip of paper.”

  She handed the paper to Parker. Written in carefully formed letters was the name Conrad Mueller.

  “Thanks, I’ll be right down.”

  Vicki didn’t move, and Parker knew he had to toss her a bone to satisfy her curiosity.

  “The family name was changed from Haus to House when my grandfather immigrated to the US after World War II. Franz Haus is my grandfather.”

  “Your grandfather was German?”

  “He came from Switzerland,” Parker replied evasively.

  “Oh,” Vicki said.

  Parker didn’t wait for her to ask another question and stepped past her.

  “Marge offered him a glass of water,” Vicki called after him.

  Descending the stairs, Parker saw a man with thinning white hair and an angular frame sitting stiffly in a chair.

  “Mr. Mueller,” Parker said as he extended his hand. “I’m Parker House.”

  The man stood, closely eyed Parker, and then shook his hand. When he did, Parker glanced at Mueller’s left hand and saw the German was missing the index and middle fingers.

  “Is Hauptmann Franz Haus alive?” Mueller asked.

  Parker glanced at Marge, who was clearly going to eavesdrop and scoop up every morsel of conversation.

  “Let’s go someplace where we can talk privately,” he said to the older man.

  Parker heard Marge huff as they left the building. Mr. Mueller walked with a distinct limp, favoring his left leg as he moved across the porch and slowly descended the stairs to the sidewalk. There was a coffee shop on the next block where Parker could engage in a gentle inquiry into Mueller’s interest in his grandfather. Normally Parker would walk there. Seeing Mueller’s limp, he decided to drive.

  Parker knew his grandfather had fled to Switzerland after deserting from the German army in 1944 and felt an obligation to protect his opa’s privacy. He l
ed the way to his car parked down the street from the office.

  “This is my vehicle,” he said. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Is Hauptmann Haus alive?” Mueller asked again.

  Parker stopped and faced him. “Haus is a common name, and I’m sure there were a lot of captains with that name who served in the army. Why do you think the one you’re looking for lives here in New Bern?”

  “Did your grandfather serve on the staff of General Berg, whose division was part of Army Group G in 1944?”

  “I have no idea,” Parker answered truthfully.

  “Then the only way for me to find out if he’s the right man is for me to ask him myself.”

  “Why do you want to find out?” Parker persisted.

  Mueller looked at Parker and touched the place where his fingers were missing on his left hand.

  “He told me something that saved my life.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Frank cut the motor on the twenty-two-foot skiff and let it drift to the end of the rickety dock that precariously stuck its nose into the broad flow of the Neuse River. In the boat’s fish well was the afternoon’s catch of croaker, a bony fish that derived its name from the plaintive sound it made when pulled from the water. It was spawning season, and the croaker had turned a deep golden color. Leonard “Lenny” Blackstock was sitting in the front of the boat. He leaned over so he could loop a yellow rope around a gray wooden post and then pulled the skiff close and made it fast.

  “What are you going to do with your mess of fish?” he asked Frank.

  “Fry ’em,” Frank replied.

  Even the clipped pronunciation of the two little words revealed the man’s German accent. Almost six decades in the southeastern United States hadn’t sanded the crisp Teutonic edge from his speech. Frank picked up the bucket containing his fish and, with a surprisingly limber motion for an eighty-two-year-old man, swung it onto the dock. Lenny grabbed his bucket and did the same. Each year, countless croaker, flounder, speckled trout, striped bass, and more exotic fish, like mature red drum and tarpon, swam, spawned, and grew in the shallow waters protected by the Outer Banks archipelago. Several miles downstream from the dock, the Neuse and Trent Rivers ended their separate journeys and flowed into Pamlico Sound. Frank paid rent to the owner of the dock for the right to leave his boat there and avoid having to take it in and out of the water each time he wanted to use it.

  Lenny was a retired firefighter in his late fifties. The Vietnam War veteran had salt-and-pepper hair maintained in an old-fashioned flattop. He stepped onto the dock and held his broad hand out to Frank. The older man hesitated.

  “Take it,” Lenny commanded. “I don’t want you falling and busting your lip again.”

  “That day it was wet and blowing so hard the boat had trouble fighting through the waves.”

  Lenny continued to extend his hand. Frank took it, and Lenny hoisted him roughly onto the dock.

  “Be gentle,” Frank complained, rubbing his right shoulder. “I’m not a fish on a hook.”

  “And I don’t want you to get away. How else will I know where the fish are biting?”

  “You put us onto the best spot today,” Frank said. “I haven’t thought about heading up that little creek all season.”

  Frank looked up at the cloudless sky and took in a deep breath of the salt-tinged air. The only sound on the river was the gentle lapping of the water against the boat. With the cooler weather, it was past the season for enormous swarms of mosquitoes. Their tackle in one hand and the bucket of fish in the other, the two men walked side by side along the dock and onto the sandy soil.

  “And don’t be running out on the water by yourself tomorrow,” Lenny said. “Call me. It’s supposed to be a clear day, and we can head down past Oriental. I’d be willing to bet a few giant drum are still hanging around down there.”

  “Maybe,” Frank replied.

  They reached Lenny’s vehicle, an older-model pickup truck that was fighting a losing battle against saltwater rust.

  “Any chance you’d go to church with Mattie and me tonight after you eat your supper?” Lenny asked. “There’s a gospel group coming over from Engelhard, and I’ve heard they’re real lively. I could pick you up and bring you home when it’s over.”

  Lenny never tired of inviting Frank to attend a meeting. The last time Frank accepted was for a Christmas Eve service to watch his fishing buddy’s three grandchildren in a Nativity skit.

  “Not tonight,” Frank replied slowly. “I’m feeling caught between the past and the present.”

  Lenny gave Frank an odd look. “What on earth does that mean?” Lenny asked as he started the truck’s motor, which rumbled noisily due to tiny holes in the muffler.

  Frank was silent for a moment before he spoke. “I was feeling down this afternoon even though we were catching a lot of fish. Do you ever think the distant past is a nightmare that didn’t really happen, but you know it did?”

  Lenny put the truck in gear, and they started moving forward. “Yeah, every time I have a bad dream about rice paddies, monsoon rainstorms, and the men who never came home.”

  “Yes,” Frank said as he stared out the window. “That’s what I mean.”

  They rode in silence. It was less than a mile from the river to the secluded bungalow Frank had bought two years after his wife died. Getting away from town after her death enabled him to at least separate himself from constant reminders of his family. However, today on the river, it was remote memories of war that unsettled his soul.

  A thick mixture of crushed seashells on the driveway crunched beneath the tires of Lenny’s truck. The two-bedroom house, built of cedarwood planks now turned dark by age and sun, looked like it had sprouted from the sandy soil. A small tributary creek ran along the edge of the property. The large screened-in porch on the rear of the house gave Frank a view of the backyard. A previous owner had planted spiny cocklebur cactus, native to the Outer Banks, to mark the property line. When a cactus died, Frank didn’t bother replacing it, and what had once been an orderly barrier was now a gap-toothed grin.

  Frank retrieved his tackle and fish bucket from the truck bed.

  “Remember, call me in the morning if you want to go fishing,” Lenny called out through the open window of the truck. “If you don’t, Mattie is going to put me to work.”

  Frank watched for a moment as Lenny backed out of the driveway and then walked around the house to a wooden shed where he kept his fishing tackle. The modest contents of the shed were a far cry from the extensive gear he’d owned when he captained the Aare, a commercial fishing vessel named after the scenic Alpine river that flowed through Bern, Switzerland.

  Because it was built as a fishing retreat, the bungalow featured a utility sink in one corner of the porch. Croaker could be cooked whole, but Frank had enough fish that he could cut thin fillets and avoid the hassle of dealing with a labyrinth of tiny bones. He expertly sliced the pale flesh from one side of the fish, separated it from the skin, and cut out a narrow remaining strip of rib bones. It didn’t take him long to build a neat pile of twelve fillets on a cutting board. The phone in the kitchen rang. Wiping his hands on a paper towel, he went inside and picked up the beige receiver.

  It was Parker, his grandson.

  While he listened, Frank once again found himself suspended between the past and the present; the name Conrad Mueller, however, had no connection in either world.

  “Is that all he wants to do?” he asked Parker. “To thank me?”

  “Yes, Opa. He claims you saved his life. If you don’t want to see him, I can tell him no. He may have the wrong Franz Haus.”

  “But he called me Hauptmann Haus? You’re sure of it?”

  “Yes, and he mentioned that the Franz Haus he’s looking for served on the staff of a General Bergen or something like that.”

  “Berg,” Frank said softly.

  “Yes,” Parker replied quickly. “So, he really is looking for you?”

  “Did h
e say he served in the army?” Frank asked, avoiding an answer.

  “I didn’t ask him. Do you want me to find out?”

  Frank hesitated. He’d left the German army behind when the ferryman took him across the Rhine at Basel. There wasn’t a Luger in his house or a closet filled with wartime memorabilia. If a program or movie about World War II came on the television, Frank changed the channel. The years 1939–1944 remained a closed, locked book, and he knew of no good reason to open it.

  “No,” Frank replied. “I don’t want to see him, whatever the reason.”

  “Will do. Did you go fishing today?”

  Frank told him about the mess of croaker he and Lenny caught.

  “Awesome,” Parker replied. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  The call ended. Frank took the fish pieces into the kitchen. He would cook four in a skillet and freeze the rest. He divided the fish into three sections and put the pieces to freeze in plastic bags. He was also in the mood for okra and tomatoes to complement his fish.

  Frank opened a bag of frozen okra from Lenny’s garden. There were three ripe tomatoes on the windowsill above the kitchen sink. Putting the okra in a pot over low heat, Frank added salt, pepper, a half cup of chicken stock, and a thick pat of butter. After dicing and stirring in the tomatoes, he turned up the heat. His phone rang again. Two calls in one night was a rare occurrence. But it was Parker again.

  “Opa, I’m sorry to bother you, but you really should talk to Mr. Mueller. He’s totally convinced you saved his life toward the end of the war.”

  “I heard you the first time, but that’s not possible,” Frank replied irritably. “I was a junior staff officer.”

  “I don’t think he’s going to take no for an answer, and he doesn’t need me to find out where you live. He can do that by asking around town, especially now that he knows you’ve changed your name to House. Mr. Mueller came all the way from Germany to see you and seems like a nice old gentleman.”