Restoreth My Soul (Psalm 23 Mysteries) by Debbie Viguié Page B

time.
    Geanie cleared her throat. “There’s nothing either of you can do.”
    “Dave told me what happened,” Cindy said.
    Geanie nodded, looking miserable. “What happened after I left?”
    Cindy bit her lip. She didn’t want to tell her what Dave said Roy and Gus had said upon her departure. “I, uh, closed the office for the rest of the day,” she said finally.
    Geanie nodded and then glanced at Joseph. “Did I interrupt your game?”
    He waved a hand dismissively. “It was just business. It can wait. In fact, if you want, I could reschedule the next few days and we could go to Disneyland Paris or something cool.”
    “Don’t you have a bunch of things you have to do in the next couple of weeks?” Geanie asked.
    “Nothing that can’t wait.”
    “What about the dog show?”
    Joseph bred and raised champion poodles.
    He shook his head. “Clarice could use a break.”
    “What about the art auction?”
    “I have more than enough art already?”
    “What about that play we were going to go see?”
    “We can see it some other time.”
    Geanie nodded, but didn’t say anything else to him. She turned to look at Cindy. “Why do they have to be like that?” she asked.
    Cindy shook her head. “They’ve been like that since I first got there. I don’t know why, I’m just tired of it hurting everyone but them.”
    Geanie nodded again and turned to stare at the empty carton of ice cream.
    “Who wants some mint cookies and cream? There’s some in the fridge.”
     
    Jeremiah was tired. He had finished the top of the second wall that morning and he was grateful that he was able to ditch the ladder again for a while. Of course, when he got to the bottom of the wall he’d be sitting on the ground again, scooting along as he read. Heinrich certainly hadn’t made this easy.
    All the worrying he was doing about Cindy wasn’t helping either. He was going to call her after work and see how she was. He couldn’t spend a lot of time on the phone, but he could at least check in.
    His thoughts shifted to what he had found in the master bedroom the night before. A panel from the Amber Room, it had to be. In 2003 a replica of the room had been made and installed at the Tsarskoye Selo State Museum Reserve outside of St. Petersburg. He had seen it once, marveling at the beauty and the intricacy of detail.
    Several different groups had been hunting for the real Amber Room after it was lost in 1943. It had last been known to have been at the Königsberg's castle museum in Germany where it had been on display before the museum’s director, Alfred Rohde, was told to crate it back up and remove it. It was boxed up and several months later the castle was destroyed by an allied bombing raid. Some believed the Amber Room had been destroyed in that raid but no pieces of wreckage from it had been recovered. Others believed it had already been moved, but theories abounded as to where it could have gone. It was just possible that part of it, or maybe even all of it, had ended up somehow in America. Stranger things had happened and he had been a witness to many of them.
    Many different people had worked long and hard to restore items that had been stolen during the war. Most people thought of the art stolen from Jewish people living in Germany and the countries it invaded. However, other countries besides Russia and other people had been subject to looting. Half of the Hesse Jewels belonging to Prussian royalty and stolen by American soldiers had never been recovered.
    So many things lost, perhaps forever. It was one of the great atrocities of war that people often didn’t think about. The theft and destruction of items of personal and historic value was a travesty.
    That was why he had to finish this translating. He had to know what Heinrich had had in his possession and where to find all of it. He only hoped that the information was there.
    When he had entered the house that morning it had taken all the strength he had not to