May 2024
Anneliese
ANNELIESE RANG THE bell in the deserted hotel lobby.
A minute later she rang again, and when the desk clerk failed to appear, she followed the faint clanking of cutlery into the dining room. The furnishings were dark and heavy, and the daylight that filtered through the dirty windows was pale. Strange artifacts that looked like antique tools hung on the walls. Next to a scarred mahogany bar was an old upright piano; and in the corner, a pool table covered with a tarpaulin. The tables and barstools were unoccupied. A shapeless girl in her late teens was emptying the dishwasher.
“Hello,” Anneliese said.
The girl’s head jerked up. She wiped her hands on her apron. “Can I help you?”
“A white wine.” Anneliese set her backpack on the floor and hopped onto a barstool.
The girl reached into a refrigerator and pulled out an almost empty bottle. “Lucky you. This is the last glass.” She tipped the remains into a tumbler and slid it across the bar.
Anneliese sniffed the wine. She wasn’t picky. She had drunk just about every cheap wine known to humankind. This one smelled like Magic Marker.
“Have you worked here long?” she asked, pretending to take a sip.
The girl’s eyes narrowed. “Who wants to know?”
“I don’t mean to pry. It’s just … I was born in this hotel. In the year 2000.”
The suspicion on the girl’s face lifted.
“I heard the story. Only one baby ever born in the hotel. What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see my birthplace.”
The barmaid dunked glasses in a sink full of soapy water. “The hotel isn’t Noordeinde Palace, is it?”
Anneliese’s mother must have had no class and no money, or she had chosen the hotel because the staff wouldn’t ask questions.
“My mother gave me up for adoption. I don’t know her name. I’m trying to trace her.”
“I love mysteries,” the girl said, inspecting the chip on a glass as if trying to solve how it had happened.
“My name is Anneliese.”
The girl set the glass on the bar, and they shook hands. “I’m Sophie.”
“Will you help me?”
“How?”
“Does the hotel have records of the guests from 2000?”
Sophie snorted. “I doubt it.”
“Can you find out?”
“I would have to ask Rob, the manager, but he’s not in today.”
“Can you phone him?”
The girl frowned. “We’re not allowed to call him on his day off unless it’s an emergency.”
Anneliese fixed her eyes on Sophie’s Delft blue ones. She pictured Sophie coddled by loving parents and surrounded by plump sisters—blood sisters. She pictured jolly birthday parties, lovely presents from her siblings, never a dead mouse wrapped in gift paper and tied with a silver ribbon. Sophie didn’t have to sleep at night with a chair wedged under the doorknob. Anneliese cleared the lump in her throat.
“Do you know who your mother and father are?”
“’Course, I do.”
“If you didn’t know, wouldn’t you want to find out?”
Sophie looked down at her hands and picked at a cuticle. “I suppose.”
“Help me. Call Rob.”
The girl let her hands drop. “I guess he won’t fire me. Wait here.”
Sophie left her post and disappeared into the lobby. Anneliese hazarded a sip of wine, and as she expected, it tasted sour. She reached over the bar and emptied the glass into the sink. It seemed like an hour but was probably only minutes before the girl returned, her face flushed deep red.
“He swore at me.”
“I’m sorry, Sophie. But what about the records?”
Scowling, the girl crossed her arms over her chest.
“It’s like I thought. They don’t have records from that far back.”
Anneliese sagged. A dead end. She might never know who her mother was. She paid for the wine, picked up her backpack, and turned to go.
“Hold on,” the girl said. “Old Radboud has worked here forever. He might remember something. He’s upstairs fixing a leak. Can you wait until he’s done?”
Anneliese sat down at a table and after perusing a grimy laminated menu, she ordered a salad. When she finished eating, she wandered over to the piano, a full-sized upright, taller than modern pianos. She sat down on the bench and played a scale. The keys were sticky, and the piano was out of tune. She flipped through the dusty sheet music piled on top.
A tap on her shoulder made her jump.
A broad, coarse-featured man with a long silver ponytail glared at her. “Sofie says you want to ask me about the baby.”
“About me. I was the baby.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it. I never saw the child, but I heard it wailing. We got complaints from the other guests.”
Anneliese smiled. “Sorry about that. Can I buy you a drink, Radboud?”
His expression lightened a little. “I eat and drink here for free, but you’re welcome to join me.”
“Done.”
They sat down at the same table where she had lunched. Sofie brought two steaming coffees and apple pie for Radboud.
“Mind if I join you?” she asked.
“Sit down.” Anneliese nodded at a chair.
The old man squinted at Anneliese. “I don’t remember what your mother looked like, but I remember thinking she was pretty.”
“Tell me about her.” Anneliese leaned on her elbows and rested her chin on her hands.
“She and her sister stayed in separate rooms. They checked in a couple of months before you were born. They kept to themselves. It made the staff curious. Gave us something to gossip about. You know.” He stopped talking to shovel in two big bites of pie. “They didn’t go out. They took their meals in their rooms. We figured they were hiding from the baby’s father.”
It made sense. The year 2000 wasn’t the Victorian Era; a single mom wasn’t ostracized, but she might have had good reason to keep the father in the dark.
“Do you remember my mother’s name?”
He shook his head. “Sorry. But I don’t think she was using her real name anyway.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because I know for a fact her sister wasn’t. I recognized her.”
Anneliese’s heart skipped a beat. “Was she someone local?”
“No. She was a big celebrity.” He pondered for a moment. “She wrote the theme song for SS Athenia.”
“Louisa Veldkamp? The concert pianist?” Anneliese had all her CDs stashed in a box in Noorddorp.
“That’s her. She didn’t play a note while she was here.”
“What else do you remember?”
“The housekeeper was worried about your mother.”
“Why?”
He pulled on his earlobe. “I don’t recall her exact words. She said something wasn’t right.”
“What did she mean?”
“Maybe nothing. Bep was high most of the time.”
“Are you in touch with her?”
“I’ve loaned her money a few times since. She still owes me.”
“How do I contact her?”
He shrugged. “She finds me.”
“Does she live in Den Bosch?”
“No idea.”
“Last name?”
He shrugged again.
“If it comes back to you, will you call me?”
Anneliese gave him her number and watched him type it into his phone.
As the train chugged from the station, Anneliese pulled out her phone. Yikes. Her battery charge was down to one percent.
She tapped the words: Louisa Veldkamp’s sister.
No matches.
She opened the entry for Louisa in Wikipedia. Conscious the battery was close to empty, she skimmed over the section “Accolades and Awards” and lingered a moment over “Mysterious Disappearance,” before tearing her eyes away to “Family and Personal Life.” The gist of it was she had been an only child and was survived by twin sons and a husband. Then the screen went black.
Who was the pregnant woman in Den Bosch posing as the pianist’s sister?