The Storyteller Read online

  And yet.

  When my grandma was being taken by the Nazis, how many other Germans had turned a blind eye, making the same kinds of excuses?

  "So," Detective Vicks says. "What's this about?"

  I take a deep breath. "A man I know may be a Nazi."

  The detective purses his lips. "A neo-Nazi?"

  "No, the kind from World War Two."

  "How old is this guy?" Vicks asks.

  "I don't know, exactly. In his nineties. The right age, anyway, for the math to make sense."

  "And what is it that led you to believe he's a Nazi?"

  "He showed me a photograph of himself in uniform."

  "Do you know that it was authentic?"

  "You think I'm making this up," I say, so surprised that I meet the detective's gaze head-on. "Why would I do that?"

  "Why would a thousand crazy people call in to a tip line that runs on the news about a missing kid?" Vicks says, shrugging. "Far be it from me to figure out the human psyche."

  Stung, I feel my scar burn. "I'm telling you the truth." I am just leaving out, conveniently, the fact that this same man asked me to kill him. And that I chose to let him believe I was entertaining the possibility.

  Vicks tilts his head, and I can see that he's already making a judgment--not about Josef but about me. Clearly I'm trying my damnedest to hide my face; he must be wondering if there's more I'm concealing. "Is there anything in this man's behavior that would indicate he was actually involved in Nazi activities?"

  "He doesn't wear a swastika on his forehead, if that's what you're asking," I say. "But he has a German accent. In fact he used to teach the language at the high school."

  "Hang on--are you talking about Josef Weber?" Vicks says. "He goes to my church. Sings in the choir. He led the Fourth of July parade last year, as the Citizen of the Year. I've never even seen the guy swat a mosquito."

  "Maybe he likes bugs more than he liked Jews," I say flatly.

  Vicks leans back in his chair. "Ms. Singer, did Mr. Weber say something that upset you personally?"

  "Yes," I say. "He told me he was a Nazi!"

  "I mean an argument. A misunderstanding. Maybe even an offhand comment about your . . . appearance. Something that might have warranted . . . such an accusation."

  "We're friends. That's why he confided in me in the first place."

  "That may be, Ms. Singer. But we're not in the habit of arresting someone for alleged crimes without having a valid reason to believe he might be a person of interest. Yes, the guy speaks with a German accent, and he's old. But I've never even experienced a whiff of racial or religious prejudice from him."

  "Isn't that the point? I thought serial killers were supposed to be totally charming in public; that's why nobody guesses they're serial killers. You're just going to assume I'm crazy? You're not even going to investigate what he did?"

  "What did he do?"

  I look down at the table. "I don't know, exactly. That's why I'm here. I thought you could help me find out."

  Vicks looks at me for a long moment. "Why don't you write down your contact information, Ms. Singer," he suggests, passing me a piece of paper and a pen. "I'll look into things, and we'll be in touch."

  Without a word I scribble down my information. Why would anyone believe me, Sage Singer, a damaged ghost who only comes out at night? Especially when Josef has spent the past twenty-two years gilding his reputation as a beloved Westerbrook community member and humanitarian?

  I hand the paper back to Detective Vicks. "I know you're not going to contact me," I say coolly. "I know you're going to toss that piece of paper into the trash as soon as I walk out the door. But it's not like I walked in here saying I found a UFO in my backyard. The Holocaust happened. Nazis existed. And they didn't all just evaporate into thin air when the war ended."

  "Which was nearly seventy years ago," Detective Vicks points out.

  "I thought there was no statute of limitations on murder," I say, and I walk out of the conference room.

  *

  My nana only serves tea in a glass. For as long as I can remember, she has said this is the only way to drink it properly, the way her parents used to serve it when she was a young girl. It strikes me, as I sit at her kitchen table, watching her bustle around the kitchen with her cane to set the kettle and arrange rugelach on a plate, that although she talks openly and easily about being a child and about her life with my grandfather, there is a caesura in the time line of her life, a break of years, a derailment. "This is some surprise," Nana says. "A nice one, but still a surprise."

  "I was in the area," I lie. "How couldn't I stop by?"

  My grandmother sets the plate on the table. She is tiny--five feet, maybe--although I used to think of her as tall. She always wore the most beautiful set of pearls, which my grandfather had given her as a wedding gift, and in the old photo of the ceremony that sat on her mantel, she looked like a movie star with her dark hair in victory rolls and slim figure hugged by a confection of lace and satin.

  She and my grandfather used to run an antiquarian bookstore, a tiny hole-in-the-wall that had narrow aisles jammed with hundreds of old tomes. My mother, who would always buy her books new, hated the vintage hardcovers with their cracked spines and threadbare cloth covers. True, you couldn't go in there and find the latest bestseller, but when you held one of those volumes in your hands, you were leafing through another person's life. Someone else had once loved that story, too. Someone else had carried that book in a backpack, devoured it over breakfast, mopped up that coffee stain at a Paris cafe, cried herself to sleep after that last chapter. The scent of their store was distinctive: a slight damp mildew, a pinch of dust. To me, it was the smell of history.

  My grandfather had been an editor at a small academic press before buying the bookstore; my grandmother had allegedly wanted to be a writer, although in my childhood I never saw her write anything longer than a letter. But she loved stories, that much was true. She would sit me on the glass counter beside the cash register and take the A. A. Milne and the J. M. Barrie books from their locked case and show me the illustrations. When I was older, she would let me wrap customers' purchases in the brown butcher paper she kept on a giant roll, and she taught me to tie it with string, just like she did.

  Eventually my grandparents sold the bookstore to a developer who was bulldozing a host of mom-and-pop stores to make way for a Target. Whatever money they made was enough for my nana to live on, even all these years after Poppa was gone.

  "You were not really in the area," she says now. "You look just like your father used to look when he lied to me."

  I laugh. "How's that?"

  "Like you've swallowed a lemon. Once, when your father was maybe five, he stole my nail polish remover. When I asked him about it, he lied. Eventually I found it in his sock drawer and told him so. He became hysterical. Turned out he read the label and thought it would make me--someone Polish--disappear. He hid it before it could do its job." Nana smiles. "I loved that boy," she sighs. "No mother should outlive a child."

  "It's no party to outlive your parents, either," I reply.

  For a moment, there is a shadow veiling her features. Then she leans down and hugs me. "See, now you are not lying. I know you are here because you're lonely, Sage. That's nothing to be ashamed of. Maybe now, we will have each other."

  They are the same words, I realize, that Josef said to me.

  "You should cut your hair," my nana announces. "No one can see you properly."

  A small snort escapes me. I think I'd rather run naked through the street than cut my hair, and leave my face exposed. "That's the point," I say.

  She tilts her head. "I wonder what magic could make you see yourself the way the rest of us do," she muses. "Maybe then you'd stop living like a monster who comes out only after dark."

  "I'm a baker. I have to work at night."

  "Do you? Or did you pick the profession because of the hours?" Nana asks.

  "I didn't come her