Restoreth My Soul (Psalm 23 Mysteries) (20 page)

Jeremiah pressed his fingers against his head. There were too many questions still, ones that would likely never be answered. Life was like that, though. One rarely got answers wrapped in neat little bundles with all the loose ends tied in bows. Life was messy and complicated and left all sorts of unresolved issues.

Like what he was going to do about Cindy.

He sighed, got up and retrieved the painting from where he had hidden it underneath the couch. It hadn’t been the world’s greatest hiding place, but he hadn’t had time to do better.

He propped it up face first against the couch so that the back was facing him. He stared again at the second string of numbers, wondering what exactly they meant. Had Heinrich put them there or some museum cataloguer?

There was a knock on his door.

“Come in,” he said, wearily.

Marie opened the door. “There’s a German man here to see you,” she said, her lips in a tight, disapproving line.

“Thanks, you can go ahead and send him in,” Jeremiah said, returning his eyes to the back of the painting.

Marie followed his gaze. “What are you staring at?”

“I’m trying to figure out what that bottom string of numbers means,” he said. There was no need to hide that or the painting itself any more. The painting would be gone in moments.

“They look like coordinates to me,” Marie said.

Jeremiah looked up sharply. “What do you mean?”

“Coordinates, like GPS. My sister and her husband do that geocaching thing, you know?”

“No, I don’t know,” Jeremiah said.

“It’s this big thing, millions of people all over the world do it. You take a small box say and you hide it somewhere like under a log in a forest or in some bushes in a park and you leave a log book so that whoever finds it can record their name. Some of them even include small gifts that people can exchange. It’s usually just small stuff. Up in northern California, though, they once found one that had rubies in it. Anyway, you hide the cache, log the coordinates on a website, and then people try to find it. It’s like a big treasure hunt basically. They took us once. We didn’t find any rubies, but it was at least an interesting afternoon. Anyway, that looks like coordinates to me.”

“Marie, you’re a genius,” Jeremiah said as he got to his feet. “An absolute genius.”

“I’ve been telling you that for years,” she said tartly.

She left his office and he stood in the doorway. Albert was walking toward him. Jeremiah waved to him impatiently then stepped back. “There’s your Rubens,” he said, pointing. “Take it.”

“Are you in a hurry?” Albert asked, looking surprised.

“Yes, I am.”

Jeremiah pushed his way past him and into the outer office. “Marie, how much time do I have?”

“About another hour and a half, why?”

“I’ll be back,” he said, racing out the door.

“Where are you going?” she shouted.

He got into his car, pulled up the picture he had taken before of the back of the painting and punched the coordinates into his GPS app. Then he called Cindy.

“How are you doing?” she asked.

“Want to go on a treasure hunt?” he said, not bothering to answer her question.

“Sure.”

“I’m heading for a set of coordinates, meet me there.”

He gave them to her then hung up the phone and began to drive. Fifteen minutes later he was pulling up outside a cemetery. He climbed out of his car just as Cindy, Joseph, and Geanie arrived in Joseph’s car.

“What are we looking for?” Cindy asked breathlessly as she ran up to him.

“The second set of numbers on the back of the Rubens. I think they’re coordinates.”

“That direction!” Geanie said, consulting a phone and then pointing into the heart of the cemetery. “It says we’re about a quarter of a mile away.”

The four of them set off across the grass, turning slightly as the GPS indicated.

“100 feet, we’re getting close,” Geanie said.

“What is it we’re looking for exactly?” Joseph said.

“I don’t know, I’m hoping we’ll know it when we see it,” Jeremiah said.

“Twenty feet. We should be on top of it any moment.”

Jeremiah stopped and looked around. There, a few feet away was a massive crypt. He walked up to it and read the inscription on it. “Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit.”

“What does that mean?” Cindy asked.

“Unity and Justice and Freedom, it’s the official motto of Germany.”

“So, you think this belonged to Heinrich?” she asked.

Jeremiah crouched down. “I’d say so. This carving is much newer.” He pointed to a small Star of David on the door.

“What do we do now?” Joseph asked. He picked up the chain that was holding the door closed and examined the lock on it. “I guess we need to call the police and wait for them. They’ll probably have to get some sort of court order to open it.”

“Stand back,” Jeremiah said.

The others moved a couple of feet back. He pulled the gun out of his waistband and they hastily retreated much farther. He aimed it at the lock and fired.

He replaced the gun, and took the now shattered lock off the chain. “Shall we?” he asked.

Cindy nodded, her eyes wide.

Together they pulled open the door and stepped inside. Light filtered through the doorway, pale and weak. Then a much brighter light stabbed the darkness as Cindy held up her phone. “Flashlight app,” she said.

They stepped into the crypt, Joseph and Geanie right behind them. A few more steps in and Jeremiah stopped in his tracks. Next to him he could hear Cindy gasp.

There, in front of them, was row after row of stacked paintings, each wrapped in a protective sheath.

“It’s true,” Cindy whispered. “He got them out, before the fire.”

“Yes.”

“How many do you think there are? One hundred and thirteen?”

He shook his head. “I think he got
all
of them out.” He cleared his throat. “Now I think it’s time to call the police.”

Mark got out of his car and joined Liam on the sidewalk a few stores down from the art gallery. Liam handed him his phone. “Jeremiah called, you’ll want to call him back.”

“After.”

Liam shook his head, his eyes wide. “I don’t think it will wait.”

Mark called and the rabbi picked up instantly.

“What is so important it can’t wait ten minutes?” Mark asked.

“We found the rest of the paintings.
All
of them,” Jeremiah said.

“Tell me where you are.”

As soon as Jeremiah had given him directions Mark hung up and called dispatch. He explained that he had a situation he was in the middle of, but that he needed officers to arrest Trevor Haverston and to look for anything that would connect him with Russians. As soon as he was finished he grabbed Liam and the two of them headed for the cemetery.

Adrenalin was still pumping through Cindy as she, Joseph and Geanie left the cemetery, ordered out by Mark and Albert, whom Jeremiah had called second after Mark. Both men had shown up to take charge of the paintings and the entire situation. Jeremiah had left immediately after their arrival to return to the synagogue.

Cindy knew that for the rest of her life she’d never forget the site of those stacks and stacks of paintings. Hundreds of millions of dollars was what Jeremiah had said it must all be worth. It was unreal. Deep down she was furious that she’d had to leave before everything was resolved with them.

Then again, Mark had pointed out it would probably be months before things were truly resolved with them. Governments would have to be involved, negotiations, all sorts of things.

“That was incredible,” Geanie was gushing. “I never dreamed we’d find hidden treasure like that.”

“It was unreal,” Joseph said.

“Buried, just like what the Nazis did with so many treasure troves,” Cindy mused.

At least she’d gotten to take a good look before the officers had arrived. The one thing she’d been quick to note, though, was that there seemed to be no other pieces of the Amber Room, and that bothered her.

At least now, though, with the artwork found she and Jeremiah wouldn’t have to be looking over their shoulders every moment waiting for Katrina or Jeremiah’s unknown assailant to find them.

They all headed back to Joseph’s house, the other two talking excitedly, but Cindy was too lost in thought to join in. She couldn’t shake the feeling that they were still missing something, something very, very important.

By the time Mark made it back to the precinct he had nearly forgotten about Trevor. The moment he walked in, though, the captain called him over.

“Good call on the Haverston kid. We did some checking. Seems he learned a few things from his grandfather that they didn’t teach him in his fancy business school. He overheard his father talking about the painting he’d found and thought he’d take advantage of it. We applied a little pressure and he rolled on his black market contacts who, it turns out, have ties to someone in the Russian consulate in L.A. They’re the ones who got the bright idea of forcing the old man to talk instead of waiting around to see if he’d lead them to anything.”

“So, all is explained,” Mark said, feeling as though it were a bit anti-climactic. Then again, anything after going through and trying to catalogue hundreds of millions of dollars of missing art would be.

“We’ve turned everything we have over to the Feds, including the kid. We can wash our hands of the whole mess now.”

“Did they ever find Katrina and her bodyguard?”

“No, but it’s their problem now, let it alone,” his captain advised.

Mark nodded wearily.

Jeremiah made it back to the synagogue just in time. After that service he returned to his office. Only one more service and then the day was done. He wished he knew how things had turned out finally at the crypt. He reached for his phone to call Cindy, but his eyes fell on the videocamera sitting next to his computer.

He guessed the whole thing was kind of moot now. He picked up the camera and turned it on. He glanced at the first segment of video. Not having to walk up and down the wall made it much easier to read. Without having to translate verbatim for the digital recorder it was also much faster.

A minute later he found himself skimming through, able to go at a much faster pace. He read about how Heinrich had partnered with some Russian and American soldiers to get the treasures out of the tower and then out of the country. These same partners he’d later had a falling out with and killed.

He talked of the efforts he had gone to to hide his treasures in America and of having to move them once across the country. He talked of settling in Pine Springs and building a house. He said he had to relocate his treasures, but he never said exactly what he had or where he was putting it.

Then, slowly, he began to talk of a change that came over him. Age and time to reflect eventually stirred guilt in him for all that he had done and a deep desire to make things right. He had taught himself Hebrew. He’d even tried to figure out if anything he owned had been stolen from Jews and which ones, but without revealing anything to other people he couldn’t go very far down that road.

One of the paintings had become damaged and he had taken it to an art restorer. Then he believed that the man was trying to steal it. They had fought and ultimately Heinrich had killed him. The guilt added to what he already felt for everything else had nearly destroyed him.

It wasn’t long after that he realized the art dealer must have told others about what he had. Heinrich wrote about his growing paranoia that he was being watched, followed. He felt his days were drawing to a close and he just wanted to find a way to make things right. Then he found a synagogue with a nice rabbi who was actually from Israel.

Jeremiah halted, hitting pause on the video. Him. Heinrich was recounting his meeting with him. He finally hit play again and continued to read, more closely now.

Heinrich had had every intention of keeping their meeting and revealing his secret and begging Jeremiah for his help in what he was starting to think of as the Great Restoration. When he headed for the synagogue, though, he discovered beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was not paranoid, but that people were looking for the paintings. He didn’t dare risk meeting the rabbi lest they guess his plans.

He began to follow the girl that spent so much time with the rabbi hoping that he could make contact that way. His one chance in the park was again ruined by someone following him.

The last few lines were hurried, sloppy, something had changed and he knew that his stalkers had grown tired of waiting and that a confrontation was imminent. He was going to leave something behind, that only the one chosen by G-d could use and that all would be well and the Great Restoration would go forward, even if he wasn’t alive to see it.

Jeremiah sat, stunned, when he came to the end of the narrative. Restoration. The last thought on the old man’s mind.

Marie knocked on his door, startling him. “Time,” she said.

Cindy was sitting in Joseph’s living room, her hand still wrapped around her cell. Mark had called to update her on everything he had learned. She’d scarcely hung up with him when Jeremiah did the same.

It was over as far as both men were concerned. But she still couldn’t let it go. Not without one last look at the house where this had all started. She called them both back and they agreed to meet her at Heinrich’s home later that evening.

She was the last to arrive. Both Mark and Jeremiah were inside, comparing notes. They both looked as tired as she felt. She clearly had come into the middle of the conversation.

“Doesn’t it strike you as odd that the contractor and three of the guys who helped build this house died just as it was being completed?” Jeremiah asked. “Heinrich didn’t mention anything about that in his description of having the house built.”

“Yes, but you know what strikes me as more odd? In this entire place there was only a nail hole in one wall. All of the walls look pristine, like they’ve never been touched, patched, anything,” Cindy added.

“Well, he clearly was only really living in the one room,” Mark said.

“And he had a priceless piece of the Amber Room under the floor. Where did the rest of it go?” Cindy asked.

“I don’t know. Isn’t it enough we found all those paintings?” Mark asked. “The bad guys have gone to jail, art has been recovered. Can’t we just call the case closed and let someone else somewhere down the road worry about the Amber Room? I mean, for all we know the piece we found is the only piece he was able to smuggle out of Germany.”

“It’s possible,” Jeremiah said with a shrug.

“It’s over, Cindy, let it go,” Mark said. “We’ve all earned a rest.”

Cindy didn’t like it. The location of the rest of the panels from that room was going to drive her crazy, she just knew it.

“Have either of you got a hammer or something?” Cindy asked as a thought occurred to her.

“No,” Jeremiah said.

“Sorry, why?” Mark asked.

“I’ll be right back,” Cindy said, heading for the front door.

She made it outside, opened her trunk, and grabbed her tire iron. She hefted it in her hand. She slammed the trunk closed and headed back inside the house.

Both men had walked closer to the door and took a step back when she walked in.

“What exactly are you planning on doing with that?” Mark asked.

“I’ll show you,” she said, marching toward the bedroom.

She walked up to one of the walls, ran her hand along it, then took a step back. She wrapped both her hands around the tire iron and then swung it like a baseball bat.

Both guys shouted as the tire iron made contact with the wall. The iron went right through and slivers of wood rained down.

Mark bent down and grabbed one of them. “This is just painted balsa wood. You wouldn’t make walls out of this. What on earth?”

“Not real walls,” Cindy said, grabbing an edge and breaking it off.

There, behind the false wall, she caught a glint of something. She stepped back and handed the tire iron to Mark.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I just figured out what Heinrich did with the rest of the Amber Room.”

Less than five minutes later Mark and Jeremiah had torn down the rest of the wall. There, resting right behind it, was another section of the famed wall, amber and jewels glittering in the light.

They made quick work of the rest of the walls in the room, finding the same behind each of them.

“I’m betting he had false walls installed in every room, with the possible exception of that one wall in the dining room that actually had something hanging on it,” Cindy said. “He hid the room where he could always keep an eye on it.”

“And then he killed the four men who helped him do it and made it look like a car accident,” Mark realized. “That’s insane.”

“It was ingenious,” Jeremiah said.

“We’re going to have to take this entire house down to its foundations before we’re through,” Mark said. “Who knows what else he hid where.” He looked at Cindy. “How did you know?”

“Just a feeling, a lucky guess. He hid most of the paintings offsite, but he had that one piece of the room close to him. He felt guilt about the paintings because he felt somehow they were stolen from the Jewish people, whether they were or not. But not the Amber Room. The Amber Room was stolen from the Russians and I’m guessing he didn’t care nearly as much about them.”

Mark sighed. “I’m calling my friend at the Bureau. I’m not even about to try and sort this one out.”

Cindy nodded, a feeling of peace settling over her. She looked at both men. “Now, now it’s over,” she whispered.

Just over a week later Mark was sitting in his captain’s office with a feeling of dread eating away at his insides. He’d been waiting for fifteen minutes when the man finally entered, closed the door and took a seat behind his desk.

He studied something on his desk for a moment and then glanced up. “How are you doing?”

“Better. Caught up on a lot of sleep,” Mark said.

“Good.”

The man looked down at something on his desk again and then shifted in his chair.

“I’ve been told by the mayor that the German government is officially requesting that you be given a citation for bravery and going above and beyond the call of duty. Apparently they’re also planning on some sort of official awards from the German government for those involved in this whole mess.”

Mark blinked in surprise. “Sir?”

“I know. I’m right there with you. Bottom line is, I’ve been told to treat you like a freaking hero.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Neither do I. So, let’s get down to business. I need to assign you a new partner. We’ve got an odd number of detectives currently so that means either bringing someone in or promoting someone up.”

“I’d like to make a suggestion in that regard,” Mark said.

“After having read your report I’m not surprised. He’s going to need a lot of training still.”

“Yes, but he’s a good man and he’ll make a great detective.”

“Fine.”

The captain stood up and crossed over to the door. He yanked it open. “O’Neill, get in here!”

He stepped back and a moment later Liam strode in the door, his face scrunched up with concern. He glanced at Mark and if anything he only looked more uncomfortable.

The captain shut the door.

“O’Neill, you know why you’re in here?” he barked.

“No, sir,” Liam said.

“I wanted to know where you thought you were going just now.”

“Out on patrol...to work,” Liam said.

“Not dressed like that you’re not.”

Liam looked over his uniform, clearly trying to figure out what was wrong. Mark bit his lip to keep from smiling.

“I want you to go home and don’t come back here until you’re dressed properly,” the captain said.

“Yes, sir,” Liam said, still clearly confused.

The captain reached into a desk drawer and pulled something out. He tossed it to Liam who caught it in midair.

“You’ll be needing that.”

“A detective’s shield?” Liam asked.

“Yeah, that’s the good news, you just made detective. Congratulations.”

Liam’s mouth dropped open in shock. After a moment he managed to ask, “What’s the bad news?”

“You’ll be partnering with this piece of work here,” the captain said, pointing to Mark.

Mark smiled.

Liam stepped forward and for one awkward moment Mark was afraid the other officer was going to hug him. Instead he held out his hand. “It will be my honor.”

“Mine, too,” Mark said, standing and shaking.

“God save us all,” the captain muttered. “Now both of you, get out of here and go catch some bad guys.”

Cindy hung up the phone and turned back to her computer. It was strange to be back at work like nothing had happened. She had been kidnapped...again...and they had found priceless artwork and treasures worth hundreds of millions of dollars in the process ending a decades long search for some of those items. She felt like somehow it should be totally life changing.

But yet, here she was back at her desk fielding phone calls about when different events were going to be happening and struggling to figure out the calendar for the next month.

“This is never how it would have ended if it was a movie,” she sighed to herself.

The front door opened and she looked up. Dave was standing there, his face a mask of despair and desperation.