Read Online An Image of Death by Libby Fischer Hellmann - Free Book Online

spend the weekend with Sara? Her parents invited me to go to their house in Galena.”
    Galena, a small town on the Mississippi at the western edge of the state, has become a trendy vacation spot. With skiing in the winter and boating in the summer, it’s an all-purpose, inexpensive resort, assuming you can bear its refurbished nineteenth-century charm. “The whole weekend?”
    She nodded. “We’ll leave after school on Friday. Be back Sunday night.”
    David was coming out Friday. We’d have the house to ourselves. For two days. And nights. Yes, there really was a God.

C HAPTER E IGHT
My dear Herr Meyer,
In the hope that this letter finds you healthy and well, I beg your indulgence for this intrusion. I have been reluctant to pose these questions heretofore—perhaps I did not want to know the answers. However, life has led me to a juncture in which it is necessary that I make the effort.
Sixty years ago the Gottlieb family lived a few buildings down from the synagogue in the central part of the village. Herr Gottlieb was a tailor; he and Frau Gottlieb had four children.
The family was assumed to have perished during the war—with the possible exception of the eldest daughter, Lisle. It was thought that her parents arranged passage by steamship to a relative in Chicago, Illinois, USA, in 1938.
Herr Meyer, I would be most grateful for any information about Lilie and her progeny—from any quarter. Indeed, it is most urgent that this occur. Please direct any persons with information to reply to the following address.
P.O. Box 58 (Antwerp 11)
B-2013 Antwerp
Belgium
    I handed the letter back to David. He folded it and put it into his pocket.
    “What do you think?” he asked.
    We were eating dinner at a village restaurant that seems to reinvent itself every five years. A French bistro in its current incarnation, it has art deco walls, white floor tiles, and plenty of attitude. But neither of us was paying much attention to the milieu.
    “Tell me again how you got it.”
    “Meyer read it over the phone to a woman at the bank. She translated it for me.”
    “Meyer?”
    “Mrs. Freidrich and Mr. Meyer are neighbors. He got the letter. She called me.”
    “So he told her about it?”
    “I assume so,” he said impatiently. “But that’s not important. What do you think?” he asked again.
    “About what?”
    “Do you think it could be from my uncle?”
    “I’m not sure I can answer that. I have no way to tell. Why would he be in Antwerp?”
    Our waiter, who’d been hovering a few discreet feet away, asked if we wanted another drink. When I nodded, he whisked our glasses away.
    “Antwerp is the second largest city in Belgium,” David said. “It’s the home of the painter Rubens. An international center for diamonds.” He paused. “And there’s a large Jewish population. At least compared to other European cities. Maybe he settled there after the war.”
    “It’s possible.”
    “You don’t sound convinced,” he said worriedly.
    “It’s not that. It’s just—what part of the letter makes you think your uncle wrote it?”
    The words were hardly out of my mouth. “First off,” he cut in, “the writer knew exactly where the Gottliebs lived. There—”
    “Anyone who was familiar with the village might have known that.”
    “That’s true,” he conceded. “But it’s obvious the letter was written by someone of a certain age. Someone who was alive during the war.”
    “Or someone whose elderly relatives told him what the village was like.”
    The waiter returned with fresh wine, chardonnay for me, merlot for him. David tugged at his shirt collar, as if it were too tight. “Maybe. But how many people would call her ‘Lilie’?”
    “Lilie?”
    “It means lily in German. That’s what her little sister called her. She couldn’t pronounce Lisle, so she called her ‘Li-li.’”
    “How do you know that?”
    “My mother told me.” His chin jutted out. “That’s not something just anyone