“We don’t know.” Amelie stared down at the photos. “If your grandparents hid it, don’t you think they would’ve left their son, your father, some clues as to where to find it?”
“You think the photos or the watch contain the clues?” Luis leaned forward again.
“We hoped,” Maurice said.
Luis studied the photos. “I don’t see it.” His gaze went to the numbers inside the pocket watch. “Unless the numbers are the clue.”
Maurice’s phone chirped with an incoming call. He glanced down at the screen. “It’s Swede. Maybe he’s made some progress with the numbers or Schulz.” He answered. “Hey, Swede. I’m putting you on speaker.” He touched the screen. “Go ahead. Amelie is with me, along with Luis Benoît.”
“I found some information about Fredrick Schulz. Apparently, he is what he said he was, a European art historian. His name appears in a few articles discussing the search for and recovery of art stolen or lost during WWII. The articles indicate he didn’t keep any of the works for himself but helped to get them back to the families who owned them, or to museums, if there were no descendants to claim them.”
“That might only be on the artwork reported in the articles. We don’t know if some pieces weren’t reported,” Maurice said.
“True.” Swede went on. “I dug into Schulz’s background. He wasn’t born Schulz. He changed his last name from Weiss. His grandfather was a guard at Auschwitz from 1942 through 1945. He committed suicide at the end of the war, like so many Nazis did, rather than stand trial for their atrocities. Fredrick’s father committed suicide years later after living in the shadow of his father’s crimes. Fredrick was raised by his mother, an artist who believed art was for all to see.”
“That would explain his desire to recover lost masterpieces,” Amelie said.
“Or collect them,” Maurice added.
“Either way, I don’t know if you should trust him,” Swede said. “On a brighter note, I ran those numbers from the pocket watch through several algorithms. Coordinates didn’t make sense. I couldn’t find any dates that would make sense either. However…” Swede paused. “I ran them through variations of corresponding letters in the alphabet.”
“I take it you had some success?” Maurice asked.
“I did,” Swede said. “Because Armand and his parents were chefs, I came up with the following—you might want to get a pen and paper.”
“Hold on.” Amelie jumped up and ran to the counter, where she kept a pen and a pad of paper she used to jot down her grocery lists. She was back in less than two seconds. “Okay.”
Swede called out the letters one at a time. “S.O.U.F.F.L.E.A.U.F.R.O.M.A.G.E.”
As she wrote the last letter, Amelie’s heart skipped a beat. “Soufflé au Fromage.” She met Luis’s gaze.
His eyes widened. “The one dish I could never get right when he was still alive,” he said softly. “What does it mean?”
Amelie pressed a hand to her chest. “I think I know.”
Chapter 11
Amelie stood. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.” She ran to her bedroom, to the only antique she’d kept from her parents’ estate, a cabinet they’d called a commode with the door on the front that could be locked with a key. The key had been lost long ago, and the door remained unlocked. She used it to store throw blankets. The drawer above the door opened by pushing in. A spring engaged, and the drawer popped open. She reached inside, pressed a hidden button and a hidden drawer popped out.
Lying in a plastic bag with several silica gel packets was the recipe book that had belonged to Armand and his parents before him.
She pulled it out of the bag, carried it into the living room and laid it on the table beside the photographs.
Luis ran his hand over the worn leather binding. “Is that my father’s recipe book?”
Amelie nodded. “He gave it to me the night before he died and told me to keep it safe. It had all the recipes he and his parents had created through the years.”
Luis nodded. “Makes sense that he gave it to you.” He glanced up, his lips twisting. “You were his protégé. I was still an angry kid.”
“Is there a Soufflé au Fromage recipe in that book?” Maurice asked.
Amelie nodded and turned the pages until she reached the Soufflé au Fromage recipe she’d made on numerous occasions in Paris.
“Did you find it?” Swede asked, reminding Amelie that he was still on speaker.
“She did,” Maurice responded.
Amelie stared at the page, noting the strange use of capital letters in the middle of words or oddly bolded letters throughout the list of ingredients and instructions. She wrote down all the letters and some numbers that stood out on the pad, then sat back.
