Chapter 5: The Mysteries

Emotionally exhausted after a difficult night of sleep, Clara got out of bed as usual at 6 a.m. to go jogging. In the reception area, she heard sounds coming from the kitchen where someone was probably preparing breakfast for the boarders. The front door was unlocked and Clara stepped outside and drew in a deep breath of fresh air of a new day, feeling free like a bird escaping from its cage. While she was doing her stretch exercises, she pondered in which direction she should run.

... and to the right it was.

Detective Obermoser had taken her to the end of the narrow street, but not beyond. It continued winding about 100 meters (110 yards), then dipped to the right and, after a very short distance, veered to the right again. From that point, there were large old residences lined along the right side of the street overlooking a beautiful, dense wooded area on the other side.

A few houses down, she came to a two-story house, still under renovation, with a dozen or more fancy cars sitting in front and spilling over into the spaces in front of the houses on either side. The scene was impressive. They were luxury cars of the most expensive makes and models such as Mercedes Benz, Audi, and BMW, all black, with shiny chromed wheels, which only someone with a fat bank account could purchase and maintain. Here and there, further down the street, a few cars sat in front of the other houses, mostly of the more popular makes, less expensive and compact such as Volkswagen, Fiat, and Ford. Clara gave little thought to what she saw and continued jogging.

It was so refreshing running alongside the woods, in proximity to Nature, smelling the musty earth of the forest floor, listening to the twitter of birds, and seeing the emerging sun’s rays shine through the leaves of the trees in a shimmering dance. There were a couple of streets along the way that led back into the maze of Vorwald, but Clara wanted to remain close to the green fragrant woods, filled with vitality.

She came to a curving stretch where the number of houses became smaller and sparser and appeared to be abandoned or uninhabited. The cobble stones were rough, jagged and uneven, covered with a thin layer of slippery green moss. The street came to a dead end, but continued into the woods along a narrow dirt trail which disappeared between the thick underbrush and tall trees.

Clara wanted to jog a little further and explore the vibrant green woodland, but her better judgement prevailed. She turned around to head back to the pension along the same trajectory, imagining the beauty she might find deep within the forest at some other time.

As she came closer to the house where the big cars were parked before, they were all gone with the exception of one which looked like the type that the master spy, James Bond, drove in the movies. She also noticed that the house lined up with the pension, each facing the backside of the other. Two men were talking in front of a large, open door. One, a tall and muscular guy, had his back to Clara and didn’t see her approaching. She, however, saw him handing over a large wad of money to the other man whose black suit was draped over his shoulders like a cape.

Just as she was about to enter the pension, the James Bond car drove by with its engine roaring and disappeared around the nearby corner. Whatever took place back there on the other street seemed strange, but Clara just shrugged it off. After all, she thought, if something illicit had transpired, the local police should be the ones to get involved and investigate.

Clara felt reinvigorated after taking a shower and, at 7 o’clock sharp, went downstairs. She was hungry and curious about the “continental” breakfast that Rebeca praised in her letter. She chose a table near one of the sunny windows. Soon afterwards, Alesa appeared already with her student backpack in hand and with a rosy expression on her face. She had two final exams, one early that morning and the other in the afternoon. If she passed both, and she was confident that she would, she would qualify to get her degree. Later that night, she and a bunch of other university colleagues were going to celebrate the results. Therefore, she probably would not be at the pension for the evening tea.

Clara was eager to talk to her about some matters that were gnawing at her, but decided to put it aside, seeing that Alesa’s mind was elsewhere, talking about her career plans for the future. Moreover, Alesa was in a hurry to finish her breakfast, anxious to be early at the university for her first exam. Clara wished her lots of luck and watched her leaving.

Back in her room, Clara grabbed the disturbing message from Rebeca and began to read it again, hoping to comprehend its meaning. The first word, written in bold letters, seemed like she was shouting in an attempt to get the reader’s attention and let them know that she was desperate. After that, Rebeca spoke about horrible things happening to her. However, they didn’t appear to be merely dreams or imaginations in her head.

Concentrating and trying to decipher the significance, Clara suddenly picked up a humming sound like the type made by an electric motor, coming from behind the wall where the wardrobe stood. She listened carefully for several seconds until she heard a clack of something metallic snapping into place and the humming stopped.

She nearly fell from her chair when seconds later someone pounded on her door. It was not the polite knock of someone coming to pay a visit, but a startling succession of bangs, similar to the action police take when they are about to burst open a door and take a criminal by surprise.

Clara got up and opened the door to find the Russian woman standing there, holding a vacuum cleaner in one hand and a duster in the other. She didn’t give Clara a chance to talk and dove right into the reason she was there. It was the day to clean the rooms, including Clara’s, even though she just moved in. The Russian woman was going to start with the first room down the hallway, giving Clara enough time to remove her things from the floor and eventually take a walk.

“OK?” the woman said. It was not an optional suggestion. It was her way of giving a terse command which to Clara sounded more like “understood?”

“OK, yes,” Clara replied, nodding her head.

As the woman withdrew towards the first room, Clara noticed an open door at the end of the hallway to her immediate right. It was an elevator. That explained the humming of an electric motor she had heard a moment before. The woman had said that the pension didn’t have an elevator. Apparently, she meant the type for boarders to use to go from floor to floor. That meant that it was used solely as a service elevator, probably to reach the kitchen or the laundry room, a contraption which survived from the past. The first time that Clara saw the door, it was closed and she thought it was a closet to store linens, towels, and cleaning products, not to hide an elevator. She frowned in amazement and wondered if the pension harbored any other secrets or mysteries.

Ticked off that she couldn’t continue reading her sister’s message, Clara was left with no other option than to get dressed and leave. Either way, she needed to buy some more clothes to continue with her disguise as a student. She also wanted to go to the Alô Brasil to eat a decent home-made meal of rice and black beans. She was getting a little bored eating sandwiches for lunch and local dishes like potatoes with sauerkraut and sausages. They were a bit too heavy for her stomach.

Silence hung over the pension when she returned from her shopping trip and it was still hours away from the evening tea. Certain that no one else was going to knock on her door and foil her concentration, she removed Rebeca’s message from the suitcase, tucked it between the pages of her James Patterson book, and made herself comfortable between the pillows and cushions on the bed, pretending that she was reading the novel.