Where the Bones are Buried Read Free

and asked very politely if he could please let me through with it. He apologized like a gentleman and put it in a barrel on the far side of that machine that takes naked pictures and when I walked through and saw his head was turned, I grabbed the jar back and put it in my carry-on.”
    â€œYou could’ve landed yourself in trouble, Mom.”
    â€œBut I didn’t. And I brought you something else. I’ve decided it’s time to pass on your grandmother’s sapphire pendant. She always wanted you to have it.”
    â€œIt’s no use trying to inveigle the girl with honey and geegaws, Swan. She’s no fool.”
    Swan sighed. “It’s sad to think everybody’s some kind of an inveigler, Margaret.”
    â€œSad, but true.” Margaret blew her nose as if to trumpet her contempt.
    And I’m in the company of two of the best, thought Dinah. If she could, she would put them out on the side of the road and make a break for it. But blood and history held her. She was tied to these women, and to the ghost of Cleon Dobbs, like a tin can to the bumper of a speeding getaway car. She could imagine cutting the cord, but in the crunch, she couldn’t go through with it. Instead, she bottled her anger and followed the signs out of the airport on the Zugfahrt Zum Flughafen.
    When she had nosed the Golf safely onto the road and reached cruising speed, she took a deep breath and asked, “Who is this alleged tax cheat and how did you find out about him?”

Chapter Three
    Dinah retraced her route, doglegging onto Tegeler Weg, a four-lane highway divided by a median. The now-bucketing rain obscured visibility, but traffic didn’t slow. Cars slalomed in and out of their lanes like Olympic racers as brake lights flashed and horns blared. Driving in Berlin was not for the faint of heart even in good weather, and this rain turned the road into an obstacle course. If she could make it back to Bismarckstrasse, she could wend her way across to the Tiergarten and from there, she knew the way home.
    Thor had leased a townhouse in an upscale neighborhood near Hausvogteiplatz in the central part of the city, the Mitte. The owner had painted their unit lavender, which made her feel a shade conspicuous, but the location was convenient to the Norwegian Embassy and within walking distance to Humboldt University on Unter den Linden. Proximity to the Tiergarten, a magnificent park with miles of walking paths, was an added bonus.
    The car in front of her braked and she took the slowdown as an opportunity to elicit a bit more information. “Who is this man you want to find, Mom? Who was he to Uncle Cleon?”
    â€œDon’t let’s talk about it until everyone is bright and fresh in the morning.”
    Dinah didn’t expect a refreshing sleep, or any sleep at all, for that matter. But her mother refused to elaborate and there was nothing she could do but stew. She felt cornered, like a mouse without a bolt hole. Her thoughts darted every which way. She had no idea how much Swan had known about Cleon’s crimes while they were married. She had always claimed ignorance. But truth-telling didn’t run rampant in Dinah’s family. Everyone she’d ever loved lied, except maybe Thor. He’d bent the truth once when he neglected to inform her that he was working undercover in Greece. But that was a matter of national security. He’d had no choice. In personal matters he was honest almost to a fault. He would freak if he found out that she had inherited one of the last numbered bank accounts in the world, a financial dinosaur built on the sale of illegal drugs.
    Some people aspire to crime. Some have crime thrust upon them. Dinah considered herself to be in the second category. She hadn’t wanted to come into possession of a pile of dirty money. She hadn’t wanted to be stuck with a dead drug lord’s millions or become his posthumous accessory-after-the-fact. But