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“No,” Jack answered.
“Don’t have them. They’re a pain in the ass. And very expensive.”
I coughed to cover my laugh and decided I liked Maria Stein. She had guts. And attitude.
“You’re here about Leon. Have you found out anything? I watch the American television crime shows. Am I a suspect? They always suspect the husband or wife first.”
Jack’s face was very serious when he asked, “Where were you between three and five o’clock yesterday afternoon?”
She looked more thrilled to be asked than insulted. “I was here. I’m afraid I don’t have an alibi. My health isn’t what it used to be and trips into town are very exhausting. And I find I just don’t like people as much as I used to, so I try to stay away from them.”
“What about Leon? When was the last time you saw him?”
“Just after breakfast. Around seven-thirty or eight. He liked to go into town and play dominoes at the café until it was time for Mass. He liked going to the three o’clock because he said that’s when all the pretty girls went. Leon and I were married seventy years you know.”
I felt myself start to choke up at the thought of being married to someone that long and then suddenly being without them. I didn’t know how she was keeping it together as well as she was.
“I’ve outlived three of my children and a couple of my grandchildren as well, so I’ve been around the block a time or two. Do you know what made our marriage successful?”
She looked at both of us and I could tell Jack was just as captivated by her as I was.
“What?” I asked.
“Separation,” she said. “Leon left after breakfast every morning and didn’t come home until dinner each night. The longer we spent apart the less he got on my nerves. And believe me, when a man starts to get older they’ll get on your nerves a lot.” She looked at me as if she was telling me the world’s greatest secret.
“Joe said Leon came to the island back in 1945 and decided to stay after one look at you. He said you were married just weeks later.”
“It sounds more romantic than it was,” she said, shaking her head. “The war had just ended, and we even felt the aftermath here, secluded as we were. Then one day Leon shows up, rigid and German, and says he’s come for an extended vacation. His English wasn’t so good back then.
“To be fair, I looked older than I was back then. And I didn’t dissuade him when he started showing interest. I don’t know if Leon and I would’ve ended up together if my father hadn’t caught us in a very compromising position. I got the beating of a lifetime. My father was very religious. Staunch Catholic. So Leon and I were married within the week. And eight months later our first child was born.”
“Did you ever meet Leon’s family?”
“He said he didn’t have any living family. It was just him.”
I’d read the file Carver had sent us on Friedrich Durst over breakfast that morning, and I hadn’t been able to finish eating. Durst had had a wife and two daughters he’d left behind when he’d fled Germany. He also had the reputation of culling out the prettiest girls, usually between thirteen and sixteen, while he commanded the concentration camps. His experiments and torture of those girls would be stuck in my mind forever. And it explained why a thirty-year-old Leon found fifteen-year-old Maria so desirable.
“When did you find out Leon was Friedrich Durst?”
The question came out of the blue and it took a moment for it to process. Maria went completely still and I realized I was holding my breath. And then I realized Jack was right. Maria knew exactly who her husband was.
Chapter Ten
“Well that wentwell,” I said a few minutes later.
We sat in the SUV with the engine running, and I was still in a state of shock. The rain had lessened and the wind had died down some, so Jack put the car in reverse and we went back down the coastal road at a faster speed than when we’d arrived.
“How’d you know?”
“Just a gut feeling,” he said. “She was trying too hard. And her hand was shaking.”
“She’s eighty-five. Of course her hand was shaking.”
“It was the way she talked about Leon.”
“What way? She didn’t say anything bad. I thought she was just teasing about the secret to a long marriage.”
“Every time she said his name you could see the hatred in her eyes. She made it a point of saying she didn’t know if she and Leon would’ve ended up together if her father hadn’t caught them. What do you want to bet Leon raped her like he raped all those other girls? And Maria’s father was staunch enough in his beliefs to force her to marry her rapist.”
