The estate was the ultimate in luxury. In fact, the listing in the brochure had used those very words. Ten bedrooms, Italian marble pool, gourmet kitchen and private spa, views of the ocean and intercoastal, private beach and boat dock, every amenity imaginable.
People would have given their first-born to stay there, and would never want to leave, but Joyce felt like a prisoner. The situation was pure madness. A lunatic Nazi was coming to kill her and there was nothing she could do about it, no way to stop him. She had gone to the Palm Beach police station yesterday after talking to Harry. Met with a detective, man about her age named George Morris, dark hair, short-sleeve white shirt, coffee stain on the pocket, dark eyes, flat Midwest accent. She told him she was a survivor, told him about seeing Hess, the Nazi, in Munich six weeks before. She saw a grin form on his thin lips. He looked at her like she was a college kid on spring break who’d had too many shots of tequila.
“I’m sorry,” Detective Morris said, “the police can’t do anything unless there’s a threat. By that I mean, you see this Nazi in Palm Beach, he starts harassing you-” Morris started to grin and covered his mouth with his hand. “I want you to call me.”
Joyce would’ve loved to hear what he said about her when she left. He obviously thought she had a screw loose.
The estate was owned by the Frankels, Abe and Millie. Joyce had sold them the property a month earlier, her first big sale at Sunset Realty, and they had become good friends. The Frankels were going to be in New York at their Fifth Avenue apartment until early January. Joyce said she was having her condo painted. Millie said the estate was hers for as long as she needed it. That solved one problem. Harry was on his way, and that made her feel better, but what could Harry do if Hess showed up?
Joyce tried to keep busy, checked her messages, watched TV, exercised, sat by the pool, but nothing took her mind off Hess. The estate had an alarm system, and Josefina, the Costa Rican caretaker, lived there part-time. Security guards checked the house and grounds at night, and she locked the door to her suite on the second floor, but none of it relieved her anxiety, this feeling of foreboding.
She was thinking back on her life: escaping from the mass grave in the woods outside Dachau, taken in by the Muellers, the farm couple who had risked their lives for a Jewish girl, fed and protected her until the end of the war. Joyce’s aunt Sima and uncle Stanley had sent her a visa and money for passage to New York and invited her to live with them in Baltimore. Joyce didn’t have anyone else. She was twenty-one. Stan owned a real-estate company and offered her a job.
Four years later she met Mitch. Life couldn’t have been much better. He was smart and good-looking, had just graduated dental school. He was, as Joyce’s aunt had said, a catch. They got married. Mitch bought into a practice with five other dentists, specializing in root canals. That’s all they did. He talked about swollen gums and abscessed teeth and dead roots at the dinner table, eyes lit up with excitement.
He made a good living and Joyce didn’t do badly herself. With two incomes they were able to afford the house in Georgetown. They were married eighteen years when Mitch started fooling around. It was obvious something was going on. He started exercising for the first time in his life, lost weight, bought new clothes, and spent more time grooming and more time away from home.
Joyce thought it was a phase, a midlife crisis, something he would get out of his system. But there were others. How many she didn’t know. The final straw was when she found out Mitch was paying for an apartment for Sherri, a girl in his office. That was it, she moved out, filed for divorce, walked with half their assets, $350,000, her freedom, and, maybe best of all, she didn’t have to hear about dental procedures any more.
Joyce moved to Palm Beach and bought a fifth-floor, two-bedroom condo at the Winthrop House, with views of the ocean and the orange tile rooftops of the trendy shopping district. She applied for a job at Sunset Realty, and got it, but put off her start date for a week so she could take her niece, Jenni, to Munich. Joyce hadn’t been back since the war.
They were having a wonderful girls’ day, shopping all morning, walking along Leopoldstrasse when she saw him coming out of a restaurant. Recognized him, mind racing, trying to remember when, and pictured him wearing a gray SS uniform, holding a riding crop in gloved hands. Joyce approached him and said, “I know you.”
He glanced at her and smiled, thinking she was an old friend.
“You’re the Nazi from Dachau, the murderer.”
He frowned now, moving away from her, signaled a taxi. She dropped her shopping bags and went after him. “Stop him, he’s a murderer.” People on the sidewalk were looking at her like she was crazy, keeping their distance.
Jenni picked up the bags and followed her, surprised, embarrassed, Joyce could tell, by her outburst.
“Aunt Joyce, what’s going on?” Jenni looking at her like she’d flipped.
“It’s the Nazi murderer from Dachau.”
“That was thirty years ago,” Jenni said. “How can you be sure?”
Jenni called her friend Adele‚ who worked at the Anti-Defamation League in New York, explained what had happened. Adele suggested they contact the ZOB in Munich. Joyce called and talked to a woman named Lisa Martz, and arranged to stop by their office the next morning, to look through archival photographs of Dachau Nazis.
Joyce was calmer, more relaxed after that. She and Jenni went back to their hotel, napped and went out to dinner. When they returned to the room there was a swastika painted on the wall, their clothes were all over the floor. Joyce freaked. She wasn’t going to go through that again, called the airline and they flew out that night.
Three weeks later Mitch, her ex, and Sherri, his fiancee, were murdered. A Washington DC detective named Taggart had flown down to question her. He was a nice-looking dark-haired guy, although she couldn’t say much for his taste in clothes. He wore a green dress shirt and a brown plaid sport coat.
“Nice view,” he said, looking out the window at the ocean, Virginia twang in his voice.
“That’s why I bought it.”
“What’s a place like this run, you don’t mind my asking?”
She told him and he whistled hearing the amount.
“You want to sit down, Detective?” She was in one of the blue Baker Regency chairs. He crossed the living room and sat on the couch.
“Get back to DC very often?”
“I flew up for the funeral.” She had paid her respects to Pitsy and Jarvis, Mitch’s parents, and joined them for shiva.
“How about before that?” Taggart said.
“The day I moved.”
“How’d you feel when you found out your husband was having an affair?”
“Which time?”
“How many were there?”
“I don’t know for sure. Three or four, at least.”
“How do you know?”
Joyce said, “You married, Detective?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Ever have an affair?”
“We’re not talking about me,” Taggart said, getting defensive.
“When a guy has an affair things about him change. I knew what Mitch was doing.”
“Did you know Ms. Shore?”
“She worked in Mitch’s office,” Joyce said. “I saw her occasionally. We weren’t friends if that’s what you mean.”
“How’d you find out about it?”
“He rented her an apartment. The bill came to the house. Dumb, huh?”
“Were you angry?”
“No, I was relieved. I’d had enough. I said, you want her go right ahead. I’m leaving. You know when your marriage isn’t working, don’t you?”
“Do you own a gun?”
“I don’t believe in guns.”
“Did you kill your husband?”
She looked him in the eye and said, “No.”
“You know who did?”
Joyce shook her head.
She escorted him to the door, sure he was going to ask another question like Columbo always did, Peter Falk looking scruffy and disheveled. But Taggart wasn’t Columbo. He walked out. She closed the door and stood on the balcony, watched him come out of the building and get in a car and drive north on South Ocean Boulevard.