Snow White Must Die (Bodenstein & Kirchhoff, #4)(11)
She and Christoph had met two years earlier, when the investigation of a murder case had taken Pia to the Opel Zoo in Kronberg. Christoph, the director of the zoo, had fallen for her on the spot—the first man for whom she’d felt any attraction since breaking up with Henning. The feeling had been mutual. Unfortunately Oliver von Bodenstein had considered Christoph a prime suspect for quite a while. After the case was finally solved and Christoph absolved of all suspicion, their relationship had developed rapidly. From passionate infatuation love had eventually evolved, and they had been a couple for a good two years now. They had kept their separate residences, of course, but that was going to change soon because Christoph’s three daughters, whom he had raised by himself after the sudden death of his wife seventeen years ago, were about to leave the nest. Andrea, the eldest, had been working in Hamburg since the spring; Antonia, the youngest, was more or less living with her boyfriend, Lukas; and now Annika wanted to move in with her child’s father in Australia. Tonight was her farewell party at their father’s house, and tomorrow she would leave for Sydney.
Pia knew that Christoph was anything but happy about this. He didn’t trust Jared, the young man who had gotten Annika pregnant four years ago. In his defense, however, Annika hadn’t told him she was pregnant and instead had broken up with him. But in the long run everything had worked out. In the meantime Jared Gordon had earned a doctorate in marine biology and was working at a research station on an island in the Great Barrier Reef. So he was something of a professional colleague, and Christoph had given his daughter and her boyfriend his blessing, although reluctantly.
Since it was out of the question for Pia to give up Birkenhof, Christoph had rented out his house in Bad Soden as of January first. Annika’s farewell party this evening was also Christoph’s farewell to the house where he had lived for many years. His bags were already packed, and the movers would be coming for the furniture next Monday. Until the Frankfurt zoning department gave the green light for the planned remodeling and expansion of Pia’s little house, the larger pieces of furniture had to be put in storage temporarily. Yes, Pia was quite happy with the latest developments in her personal life.
* * *
Tobias had raised all the window shades and inspected the dismal state of the interior of the house by daylight. His father had gone out shopping, so he had started by cleaning the windows. Just as he was doing the window in the dining room, his father returned and walked past him, head down, into the kitchen. Tobias climbed down from the stepladder and followed him.
“What happened?” His gaze fell on the empty shopping basket.
“They wouldn’t wait on me,” Hartmut Sartorius replied softly. “It’s not that bad. I’ll go over to the supermarket in Bad Soden.”
“But you shopped at Richter’s yesterday, didn’t you?” Tobias asked. His father gave a feeble nod. Instantly making up his mind, Tobias took his jacket from the wardrobe, grabbed the basket with his father’s wallet in it, and left the house. He was shaking with anger. The Richters used to be good friends with his parents, but today the scrawny old crone had thrown his father out of the store. He wasn’t going to put up with that.
As Tobias was about to cross the street, out of the corner of his eye he noticed something red on the fa?ade of his father’s former restaurant and turned around. Someone had scrawled HERE LIVES A RUTHLESS KILLER in red spray paint on the wall of the building. For a few seconds Tobias stared mutely at the ugly graffiti, which had to be evident to every passerby. His heart was hammering against his ribcage, and the knot in his stomach clenched even tighter. Those bastards! What was the point of this? Were they trying to drive him out of his parents’ house? What were they going to do next, set it on fire? He counted to ten, then turned around and walked straight across the street to the Richters’ grocery store.
The assembled gossip mafia had seen him coming through the big plate-glass windows. When the bell on the door jingled they were all standing there as if in some tableau: Margot Richter standing like a queen behind the cash register, wiry and malevolent, with her spine ramrod straight, as always. Her burly husband had planted himself behind her, taking cover rather than exuding any sort of menace. With one glance Tobias took the measure of each of the other people present. He knew them all, the mothers of his childhood friends. In front stood Inge Dombrowski, the hairdresser and uncrowned queen of slanderous innuendo. Behind her Gerda Pietsch with her bulldog face, twice as fat as she used to be, and probably with a tongue twice as spiteful. Next to her Nadia’s mother Agnes Unger, careworn and now gray-haired. Unbelievable that she could have produced such a beautiful daughter.
“Good morning,” he said. An icy silence confronted him. But they didn’t try to stop him from approaching the shelves. The refrigerator motors were humming loudly in the tense silence. Tobias loaded everything into his basket that his father had jotted down on his shopping list. When he neared the checkout counter, everyone was still standing as if frozen in place. Showing no sign of emotion, Tobias set all the goods on the conveyor belt, but Margot Richter had her arms crossed over her chest and made no move to begin the checkout process. The bell on the door jingled again, and a delivery driver who had no idea what was going on came in. He noticed the tense mood and stopped in his tracks. Tobias didn’t budge an inch. It was a test of will, not only between him and Margot Richter, but between him and all of Altenhain.