Free When the Devil's Idle by Leta Serafim

a
hearing aid, but he didn’t like to wear it. He said, ‘If I get one
now, what will I do when I’m old?’ He was like that, my papa,
always making jokes.” Gunther Bechtel looked away.
    Patronas opened
the door of the closet and rummaged around. Everything was clean
and relatively new. Pants with elastic waistbands, light-weight
cotton shirts in a variety of colors. There was a row of shoes at
the back of the closet, cloth slippers and a pair of white American
sneakers still in their box. Wrapped in tissue paper, they had
never been worn.
    “ You
see,” said Bechtel. “All is in order.”
    A chest of
drawers held cotton boxer shorts and rolled-up compression socks
for circulation. In addition, there was a wallet and a black and
white photo of a man and a woman. It was very old, the photo, the
style of the woman’s hair dating from the 1940s.
    “ My
parents.” Gunther Bechtel reached over and shut the
drawer.
    Initially,
Patronas had wanted to quiz him about the cat, but changed his mind
after hearing the tremor in the man’s voice. He’d discuss it with
Gerta Bechtel when he got the chance, keep her husband in the dark
in case he didn’t know. The cat was a stray, and according to the
little boy, save for the grandfather, no one had been overly
attached to it. As Bechtel had pointed out, Germans weren’t popular
in Greece these days. The cat’s death could have been an act of
vandalism, the equivalent of someone spray painting ‘Fuck Merkel’
on a wall.
    He felt like he’d
trespassed enough. “Could this have been a robbery? Did you check
the house after you found him? Was anything missing?”
    “ Not
that I’m aware of. As my wife told you, they had just returned from
the beach and were all inside, taking showers. I had recently come
from Africa and was asleep in the bedroom. It is a long journey and
very exhausting, hours and hours in airports and on planes, then
the boat from Leros. Whoever did this might have been planning to
rob the house and my uncle caught them. However, aside from the
usual chair he sat in, nothing appeared disturbed in the garden and
the outside lock had not been tampered with. Sometimes Walter is
careless with the door, so it might even have been left open that
night. I don’t know. You must remember: we are guests here, so we
do not know precisely what belongs. I’ve called my friends and
asked them to return as soon as possible. They’ll know better if
something valuable in the house is missing. Also, they’ll be able
to tell you the names of the people who built the house. Perhaps
one of them kept a key.”
    A long,
complicated speech. Apparently, Bechtel had gone over things in his
mind.
    “ I
will let you know the results of the examination in Athens.”
Patronas took care not to say the word ‘autopsy’ out
loud.
    “ Why
does he need to be examined?” Bechtel asked angrily. “Any fool can
see he was beaten to death.”
    “ If
we’re lucky, forensics can establish the weapon.”
    “ What
difference does it make? Whatever it was, it killed him. He was a
deaf old man who liked to sleep in the garden. Anyone could have
surprised him. It would have been easy. No trouble at
all.”
    “ But
how did they get in?” Patronas asked.
    Bechtel continued
to stare at him. “Finding that out is not my job, Chief Officer. It
is yours.”
    Patronas thought
about the interview as he walked down the path, going over Gunther
Bechtel’s words again and again in his mind. The German’s remark
about Mossad seemed strange, too emotional a response to what
Patronas had been asking. It could have been a long-standing
resentment—Bechtel saying he was a good man, that those had been
different times, different people—but somehow Patronas didn’t think
so.
    Also, the
interaction between the couple felt off. Bechtel did all the
talking, his wife remaining silent except when summoned to endorse
his point of view. And why hadn’t she told her husband about the
cat? A stray,