The Mystery of the Third Lucretia (24 page)

Vanderwehr picked up a microphone, said something in Dutch, and within seconds two officers were coming out of one of the doors behind the front desk, pulling on their coats.

One of them, a young, good-looking man with dark hair and bright blue eyes, said, “You say a woman you know has been kidnapped? Where is she being held?”

“That's better,” Lucas muttered, and led the way out the door.

When Jacob's car door slammed behind Lucas at the market, Jacob called Mom a bad name and picked up the gun in a way that made her think he was going to hit her with it. Then he put it back down and held it on his lap, probably afraid the people around them might see it.

“I'll make you suffer for that,” he said quietly, and he shifted into reverse, checked his mirrors, and started backward. Finally he pulled the car around the corner they had just passed and into the Quarter. A few blocks later he pulled the car onto the curb, grabbed Mom's left wrist, jerked it around her back like he'd done to Lucas, and shoved her arm up high enough that she let out a yell.

“If you try anything, I'll make you very, very sorry,” he said, and put pressure on her arm to make sure she slid out of the car after him.

He held on to her like that, walking her down the street and around the corner into Achterburgwalsteeg, his other arm around her shoulder as if they were lovers going somewhere for a little privacy.

When he had to unlock the building door and again at the top of the stairs when he had to get into his room, he twisted her arm way up again until she gasped in pain.

In his room he turned on the light, bolted the door, and put the chain on, then let go of her and hit her across the face. “That's for letting the girl out of the car.”

The blow almost knocked her down. Her instinct was to make as little trouble as possible so he wouldn't hit her again, but she knew the more she could stall him, the better chance she'd have of being rescued. So she hauled up her courage and spoke.

“You know, the Third Lucretia is a phenomenal painting,” she began, and she was relieved to see the spark of pride in Jacob's eyes. “How long did you work on it?”

“Off and on for almost four years,” he said. He was pulling Mom along with him now as he walked around the room, searching the shelves and tabletops for something.

“And how long have you known Marianne Mannefeldt?”

Jacob looked at Mom, as if he wasn't sure how much he should tell her. Then he shrugged. “Six years. I knew her before she was married.”

“So you planned the crime together. How exactly did you manage to kill her husband?”

The question didn't have the effect Mom had hoped. Instead of answering, Jacob swore at her and hit her again with his free hand. Then he found a roll of twine, shoved her down into a straight-backed chair, tied her to the chair, and tied her ankles and wrists. Finally he reached for a dirty paint rag, wrapped it around her mouth, and tied it behind her head.

When he finished, he reached in his pocket for his cell phone, and pressed a number.

Mom had never spoken Dutch really well even when she lived in Amsterdam, because everybody in the Netherlands speaks English. And it had been twenty years since she'd used what little she once knew, so she figured she'd forgotten most of it.

But she remembered some words. Plus she speaks German, and German and Dutch are a lot alike. So as Jacob talked, she found she could understand a lot.

He was talking to Marianne—he called her by name a couple times. He started out asking where she'd been between five and seven. Then he told her about capturing Mom and Lucas. He said something about the restaurant, the car, the daughter at the market, and something about the daughter getting the police. Mom thought Marianne must not have liked what he'd done because when he answered her he was yelling and his face got red.

Somewhere during this part of the conversation she thought she heard a noise outside, but the sound was almost drowned out by Jacob's shouting. He kept yelling “you always” and “you never.” When she heard “she knows,” “kill,” and “dead,” she knew he was talking about what he was going to do with her.

After a while she thought they'd started talking about ending the whole relationship because twice Jacob said the word “married” in a sarcastic way.

It was right after Jacob said, “Love? What do you mean, love?” that she heard a woman's voice in the hall, then another woman started shouting at the same time. It became clear that two women were coming up the stairs yelling at each other.

As they reached the landing outside Jacob's door, she heard the sounds of a physical fight. Someone fell, there were big bangs against the wall and the door, and the women kept screaming at each other.

Jacob said, “Just a minute,” and he put the phone down on the table, walked to the door, and yelled, “Who's there?” in Dutch.

The sounds of the fight just kept on going.

“What's happening out there?” Jacob yelled, but the only answer was more screaming and a big bang against a wall.

Jacob unbolted the door, leaving the chain fastened, and opened it a crack.

Mom heard a window break behind her at the same moment the chain lock snapped and the door burst open. Jacob was knocked sideways, and a bunch of bodies swarmed into the room. Tony from the hotel was in front holding the huge fireplace log he'd used to break in. He was followed by three women.

Tony dropped the log and went after Jacob, who pushed him backward and turned toward the door. But a tall woman with dyed blond hair hit him hard in the stomach with her elbow. He doubled over and she, Tony, and two older women with gray in their hair and sensible shoes grabbed him from all sides and got him on the floor.

That was when Mom heard my voice behind her where I'd come through the window.

And just then, over all the noise in the room, we heard the BEEP-beep BEEP-beep of a European police siren.

The place was totally chaotic. I couldn't believe how strong Jacob was. It took Tony and two of the women to keep him on the ground, and the whole time he was yelling a steady stream of what I was sure were Dutch swear words. Sister Anneke stood on the landing, shouting down to what must have been policemen below.

“Where's Lucas?” I said, struggling with the knots in Mom's gag.

When I finally got it off her, she said, “Lucas was with Jacob and me in the car until—”

At that very moment, I saw Lucas herself, framed in the big window, two policemen behind her.

“Lucas!” I shouted. Sister Anneke, back inside the studio, managed to find a pair of scissors and cut the twine from around Mom's hands and feet while Lucas and the policemen scrambled in, and the policemen took over for the people holding Jacob down. Mom stood up and turned around, and I could see huge swollen red spots and some blood on her face.

“Lucas!”

“Gillian!”

“Kari!” The three of us hugged each other separately at first, then all together.

By this time Tony was talking to the policemen in Dutch. The two nuns came over to look at the bruises on Mom's face. Mom said she was basically okay, thanked them, then turned to the blonde, whose name turned out to be Hanne.

“Thank you so much for helping with all of this,” Mom said.

“You are welcome,” she said, with a thick accent. “Kari is lucky to have you for a mother.”

“I'm lucky to have her,” Mom said, and the two of them hugged. Tony had finished talking to the policemen, and Mom thanked him for his part in the rescue.

Jacob was on his feet, his wrists in handcuffs. A radio was squawking, and I heard the sound of more police cars on the street below.

The head policeman thought Mom should go to the hospital, but she said she was just bruised. She said spending a few hours sitting around in a hospital in a foreign country was all she'd need to top off an unbelievably bad evening. The policeman said okay, he'd have a nurse look at her later.

Then he said we all had to go to the station. We went down the stairs from the inside this time. As we passed the second floor, Hanne said, “This is where I live. The apartment should be empty, but I live here with a friend. I do not know how to say it in English.” She said something in Dutch.

“They've taken over the empty space. They're squatters,” Tony translated.

“We are squatters,” Hanne repeated. “So we have a key for the building that someone made for us, and so . . . so . . .”—she was trying to figure out what to say in English—“when we must get in, I open the door.”

Three policemen drove Jacob away in a van. The rest of us went in regular police cars to a special station for Quarter business where we all had to tell our stories and sign some papers.

While we sat there, a reporter came in who wanted to ask us questions. Mom, who hadn't even thought about the newspapers, said no, we were going to talk to a particular reporter. Then she called Bill, who called his friend Johanna, who'd just gotten back from Venice. She came down to the station and made us all go over our stories one more time.

Finally, when it was time to go, I went up to Sister Anneke and Sister Katje and said, “Thank you for helping me, and helping save my mom,” and I gave each one of them a hug. Then I turned to Hanne. “Thank you, too. Thank you for believing me,” I said, and gave her the biggest hug of all. I got tears in my eyes, and I heard her sniff.

She held on to me. “Be thankful for your good life, little girl.”

And I was, more than I'd ever been before. I remembered standing with her in the alley, and how she'd told me that nobody believed her when she was fourteen. I thought maybe she was one of the women in the Quarter who'd been abused when they were young, and when she'd tried to tell her mother or somebody that she was being abused, they hadn't believed her.

“I'm sorry . . . about what happened to you when you were a girl,” I said.

She gave me another big squeeze, then let me go.

That was the way Bill translated the beginning of the story that ran in the Sunday paper. And right there, at the top of the front page, under the headline, was a picture of us standing next to the
Third Lucretia
, which a newspaper photographer had taken in the Rijksmuseum that morning.

For a while we were famous. Monday morning, there was an actual press conference with lots of cameras. We got on European television and on CNN, and our picture was in the International Herald Tribune. Both the Minneapolis and Saint Paul papers called and interviewed us. So did a German newspaper and a French newsmagazine.

Okay, I'm going to admit it right here and now. Having the whole world know what we'd done felt extremely cool.

We spent a few more days in Amsterdam making all kinds of statements to the police. Then, finally, it was time to go home.

Believe it or not, two TV stations and some photographers were waiting for us with cameras when we stepped off the plane, and we got our pictures in the Saint Paul and Minneapolis papers again. For a few days everybody made a big fuss over us, then it all kind of died down.

There's an artist called Andy Warhol—he's the guy who painted those big pictures of the Campbell's soup cans—who said everybody gets their fifteen minutes of fame. Well, I think the Third Lucretia thing was ours. We've been famous, we're not famous anymore. Big deal.

By the way, if you're wondering if I still got punished the way Mom said I would after she caught us in the Quarter, the answer is yes.

It's funny how one thing happening leads to so many other things happening. Personally, I think the very best thing that came out of the whole Third Lucretia business was Grandma Stickney's new project.

Probably you remember about Grandma Stickney speaking at that big international women's meeting, right? Well, International Women United, the group she was president of, had their annual meeting right there at the demonstration, and Grandma Stickney's term as president was over and they had to elect somebody else. Except for going to the United Nations in September, she was pretty much done with it. So when she got back home she was kind of let down and depressed. I guess that can happen if you're used to being really busy and suddenly you're not busy anymore.

So when she heard about Sister Anneke, Sister Katje, Hanne, and the mission, she got this idea. She got a bunch of people to fork over money to help start a new program at the mission to give loans to women in Amsterdam's Quarter to make new lives for themselves.