Triple Cross

My grandmother was in the great room beyond the kitchen, reading a book with oversize print.

“We’ve heard dinner is another original masterpiece, Nana Mama,” I said, going straight to the lidded yellow ceramic casserole dish.

“Not all original,” she said, putting her book down and struggling to get up. “I modified something I saw in one of my magazines the other day. There’s rice in there too. And more hot sauce in the fridge if you want it.”

Nana held her hip and limped toward us, looking frailer and more tired than I’d seen her in a long time.

Bree picked up on it as well. “Are you feeling okay, Nana?”

My grandmother said, “Just getting old. My sciatica’s acting up.”

“Well, sit down,” I said. “We can get the food for ourselves.”

“Sitting down is half the problem, my doctor says,” Nana replied with a laugh and a flip of her hand. “I’ll just go have Jannie help me stretch again while you eat.”

The way she was moving had me concerned enough that I made sure she did go out and have Jannie help her with her stretches before I started eating.

The dish was a masterpiece. The chicken practically fell off the bone. The green olives had become part of the sauce, which tasted a little sweet at first before the hint of fire crossed the lips and lit up the tongue.

Nana Mama came back into the kitchen after her stretches, moving much better. Bree moaned. “How did you get that sweet and hot taste in the sauce? It was so good!”

“Blackstrap molasses and cayenne pepper,” Nana said, pleased. “Glad you liked it. Now that my back’s feeling a bit better, I’m going up to my room to read a little more before I turn in. Can I leave the dishes for you?”

“Of course,” I said, getting up to hug her. “Thank you for taking good care of us, old lady.”

“It’s an old lady’s pleasure.” She laughed. “And her purpose.”

CHAPTER 71

AFTER WE’D CLEANED THE dishes and put away the leftovers, Bree and I watched some of the game with Ali and Jannie. But then Atlanta pulled away and was up eighteen points in the middle of the fourth quarter.

Bree, drowsing on my shoulder, said, “I’m zonked. It’s bedtime for this girl.”

“I’m not long behind you,” I said.

“Good night,” Bree said; she kissed me and went up the stairs.

I yawned when the game ended and the kids went up to bed, but I knew I was still far too wound up to sleep. As I often did when I felt like this, I climbed up to my little attic office.

It had low ceilings and looked like a hoarder’s paradise, but my best thinking took place in the old chair behind an older desk or on the ancient couch.

I’d no sooner sat down than my phone rang. “Suzanne Liu?” I groaned, seeing the caller ID. “I’m not taking this.”

I thumbed Decline. Almost a minute later, the phone beeped to alert me to a voice mail. I ignored it.

Then the texting started. Seven messages, and all long. I scanned the first one, then read it and the six after it closely.

In each of the texts, Liu raised issues with the way Tull had written his second book, pointing out blatant errors and false statements. The editor finished by imploring me not to exclude the writer as a suspect in the murders.

Things are not as they seem, she wrote. Not with Thomas Tull, Dr. Cross.

I sighed. On the corner of my desk in a neat stack were Thomas Tull’s three books. I picked up the only book of his I had not looked at in depth, Noon in Berlin.

Like the others, the writing pulled the reader in and did not let go. I think I’d read twenty pages before I picked my head up, realizing I’d been utterly fascinated with his description of the victims meeting for a noontime tryst at an apartment near the Tiergarten in Berlin only to be murdered while they made love, both struck with darts that contained powerful animal tranquilizers, enough to stop their hearts in seconds.

From there, Tull jumped to the point of view of Inspector Ava Firsching of the Berlin police, the female detective that the writer had gotten involved with on this case. As Tull depicted her, Firsching was in her early thirties, tough, dedicated, and in the midst of what would be the case of her career.

I read another two chapters and came across another name: Hauptkommissar Horst Martel. Tull portrayed Martel as Firsching’s foil inside the department, a strictly by-the-book cop, too rigid to try creative ways to deal with the string of lovers being murdered at noon in the German capital.

I looked at my watch. It was nearly midnight in DC, nearly eight in the morning in Berlin.

On a whim, I Googled the phone number of the Berlin City Police and found it and something better, the number for the major-crimes unit. I called it and was not surprised that it was answered. Eight o’clock in the morning, cops answer. Later, when things get hectic or nuts, sometimes they don’t.

Luckily, the detective I got spoke English, but he said he was sorry to inform me that Hauptkommissar Martel had retired the year before. When I asked where Martel had retired to, he said he thought he was still in Berlin.