Dead Woods by Maria C Poets Read Free Book Online Page B

pleased if you could charge her with something.” Max shook his head. “I wonder what you have against her. Just because she has money doesn’t automatically make her a bad person—even if you don’t like her.” He took a sip of his tea. Lina could smell the herbs: peppermint, lemon balm, and something else she couldn’t identify. “Tell me, are there any people with money you don’t have a problem with?”
    Lina looked up and frowned. “How can you say that? Nonsense.”
    “Well, we had a similar situation in the Schmehl case, and when we did the investigation in Duvenstedt last year, in that villa, you also acted like this.”
    “Coincidence,” Lina said and turned to the copies of advance reservations, which she had gotten in the Waldschänke. “It’s just one of those feelings. Maybe one of the wrong ones,” she added with a crooked smile. She grabbed the phone and dialed the first number on the list before Max could talk the topic to death.
     
    The quiet residential street in Hamburg-Eppendorf was right next to the university hospital. Row houses and duplexes and amid them, an occasional single-family house from the 1920s. Chestnut trees lined the narrow one-way street and traffic noise from the nearby artery wafted over. It was five thirty on a Friday afternoon, the height of rush hour.
    The house in which Frank Jensen lived turned out to be half of a duplex with a white facade. A porch with dirty windows jutted out into a neglected front garden. The parking space in front of the house was empty, the garage door was closed, and an ad for a pizza delivery service was sticking out of the mailbox. Max rang the bell. He could hear it ring inside, but nobody opened. He pushed the button again. Nothing.
    He stepped back and looked up to the attic windows, but he detected no sign of life there, either. He took the three steps from the porch to the front garden, where the grass was in need of trimming. The windows were too high to peep in. He was about to check if there was a path around the house, when he heard shouting.
    “Hello, young man. What are you doing here, if I may ask?”
    An old woman was standing behind a sturdy fir in the neighboring garden. Max hadn’t seen her. Leaning on a hoe, she scrutinized him suspiciously. She was working in her garden, which was well taken care of.
    “Good afternoon,” Max said and slowly walked toward the woman, trying not to startle her. “I’m Max Berg and I work for the Hamburg Criminal Police. I’m looking for a Herr Jensen.” He showed her his badge, but she waved it away with the comment that she couldn’t read anything without her glasses.
    “What has Herr Jensen done?” his neighbor wanted to know.
    “Nothing, as far as we know. We think he’s a witness. By any chance, do you know where I could find him?”
    “Just check out all the bars around here. He’ll be sitting in one of them.”
    “Isn’t he working?”
    “Not for at least three years, or is it four already? Let’s see, my eldest had a prostate operation then; that’s when it was, and that for sure was three years ago. But then Jonas—my great-grandson, you know—would be four, since we celebrated his first birthday soon after. But Jonas is only three, isn’t he? Or it was maybe not his first birthday but his second? I’d have to look it up. I wrote it down somewhere.”
    Max had patiently listened to the old woman, but now he gently interrupted her, “I don’t think that’s necessary, Frau . . . Sorry, what’s your name?”
    “Berger. Elli Berger. I’m eighty-six,” she added so no one got the idea that she was just another youngster.
    “Frau Berger, I think I know what you are hinting at. The company for which Herr Jensen worked had to file for bankruptcy. That was more than two years ago.”
    The old lady nodded enthusiastically. “As I said, as I said. Horrible story. At first, I didn’t know what was going on, but when Kirsten always ran around teary-eyed and they