The Heritage Paper

Chapter 34



As far as Veronica knew, Carsten never had any communications with Rose Shepherd as long as they were married. He never even brought up the subject. Yet on the day he dies, right before meeting his “contact,” he goes to meet with her?

It made no sense.

Or did it make perfect sense?

They’d have to go to Bedford to try to get their answers.

But not everyone would remain on the Nazi Ghost Ship. Eddie refused to go within five miles of Rose Shepherd, and had a good excuse to jump ship—a security meeting for tomorrow’s election. Mr. Big Shot would be hanging out with Kingston, the mayor, and the police commissioner, to name a dignified few. Veronica feared his big break would be marred by Ellen’s claims this morning. She hoped it wouldn’t cost him the gig, but was aware that no politician wanted the stigma of a Nazi connection.

Flavia also turned down an offer to sail the “good ship” to Bedford Hills, choosing instead to return to her gallery. She claimed the Nazi ghosts had caused enough damage in her life, believing they were behind the death of her mother, and refused to chase after them.

After a quick break so that the children could use the bathroom and the adults could return phone messages, they were back on the road.

Youkelstein remained stationed between Maggie and Jamie in the backseat. He was talking to himself, analyzing the letters, and trying to match them to the list of Apostle names. It was established that Ellen was Andrew, and Müller was Philip. But he was now confident that Peter was Hitler, Judas was Bormann, and Thomas was Himmler. And they knew that Thaddeus was the one who married Josef.

But by the time they hit the Taconic Parkway he’d fallen asleep. Veronica noticed a lot of elderly folks napping during her visits to Sunshine Village, and a common theme she noticed was shallow breathing. It was like they knew they only had so many breaths left and didn’t want to waste them. But not Youkelstein. Even his breathing was passionate.

He didn’t even twitch in response to the sibling battle breaking out around him. Veronica decided not to reprimand them, finding the sound of normalcy to be calming.

My kids are actually acting like kids!

As they merged onto I-84 East, the mood relaxed. Jamie joined Youkelstein in a matching coma, and Maggie was using her iPod to block out the lesser species. Zach had signed on the Internet to search for all the information he could on Rose Shepherd. His mood seemed to sour the closer they got to Bedford. Veronica didn’t blame him—the story of Rose Shepherd wasn’t pretty.

When they first started dating, Carsten had told her that his parents had died in an “accident,” which she assumed to be a car crash. But as their relationship took a turn for the serious, and they found they had that rare “can tell each other anything” dynamic—the one that often fools couples into making vows and having babies—he told her the real story. That his mother was taking medication for depression that caused her to go into a state of paranoia, and made her think his father was a burglar, resulting in her accidentally stabbing him to death.

Carsten blamed the charges against his mother on it being a different time, when not much was known about mental illness. He contended the District Attorney made a mistake by putting her in a jail when she really needed to be in a hospital to get treatment. A mistake that cost his mother her life.

It was a gut-wrenching story.

But not completely true.

Veronica had been married to Carsten for almost eleven years when the incident took place in the kitchen of their Upper East Side apartment. The night their arguing crossed the line. The funny thing was that Veronica used to brag to their friends about how she and Carsten “never fought.” Probably because she always gave in to his every whim, she thought in retrospect.

She couldn’t pinpoint the exact time when he changed. There wasn’t any one incident. His long nights at the office were not out of character throughout their marriage, but he’d turned distant, and started not coming home for days.

Their arguments went from non-existent to constant, each one escalating in ferocity. And that night it happened so fast that Veronica never saw his fist coming toward her, dropping her to the cold, linoleum floor. That’s what she most remembered—how cold the floor felt.

The next day she told a mother at Maggie’s school that she was taking a box off the top shelf of their closet and accidentally dropped it on her face. Suddenly she was one of those people. They were one of those couples.

He said it would never happen again.

And it didn’t.

But his look remained a haunting reminder. The one where it looked like he needed every muscle in his body to restrain himself from doing it again.

All of this led her to re-examine his father’s death, eventually leading her to the microfilm room at the New York Public Library. She’d never questioned it before—it was a touchy subject that Carsten would never bring up. But after their own violent altercation in a kitchen, questions had arisen in Veronica’s mind.

By all accounts, Harry Jr. was a model husband and a doting father to their son Carsten, and Eddie, who was Greta’s child from a previous relationship. But according to the police report, Greta claimed that something snapped in him one day.

He started drinking heavily and would go into random rages where he’d hold rambling conversations with himself. This correlated with violent attacks on the job, leading to reprimands and suspensions.

Greta alleged that he’d threatened to kill her and the children on numerous occasions over the past month of his life, and that night he looked like he was going to live up to his word. During a scuffle, with his hands gripped tightly around her neck, cutting off her air, she reached for the nearest object. It turned out to be a meat cleaver, and she thrust it through his chest.

And the worst part—

It happened right in front of Carsten and Eddie.

They weren’t tucked away in their room like Carsten had told her.

The next days’ headline in the New York Globe was Mrs. Cleaver with a picture of Greta being hauled away in handcuffs. Not exactly one for the family scrapbook.

The arrest was controversial. Groups for battered women came to Greta’s defense, while the police tried to spin their fallen brother as heroic, and depicting Greta as a deranged woman with a checkered past.

Rumor was that the DA planned to drop the charges as soon as the furor died down and the police found a way to save face. But Greta Peterson never left her jail cell. While awaiting her preliminary hearing, she was strangled to death by her cellmate.

Her cellmate was named Rose Shepherd.