That meant that if he figured out what Whitaker had been looking into regarding her uncle's death, he could also figure out where she was, or at least where she would be if he could get ahead of her. That was no easy task. Whitaker was a damned fine investigator and had a hell of a head start on Taylor. She’d also had whatever the old woman had told her, something Taylor didn’t have.
Taylor’s first step was to do some research on Whitaker’s Uncle Frederick. He might not be the investigator that Whitaker was, but this was right up his alley. He had a wide array of databases and tools that he’d used over the past several years when finding people.
His first step was various public records searches such as marriage, criminal, asset, business, and license records followed by public legal records such as court cases and public financial records. While putting all that information together wouldn’t tell him everything about a person, it would give him a fair picture of a person's life.
The main thing Taylor learned is that Frederick had been fairly involved in his family businesses until five years ago. The Wissler family had made their fortune in factories during the early nineteenth century and really hit its stride in the late nineteenth.
By the First World War, they were one of the leading industrialist families in Germany and had even managed to buy their way into minor branches of the European royal families. While they had already been fabulously wealthy for several generations, it was Germany's build-up towards the inevitable clash between Germany, Russia, and France that put them into the upper echelons of German society. The family sold most of their factories to Krupp Industries as it consolidated. They’d made the right call again after the war to move their holdings out of Germany before the devaluation of that country’s currency and the rise of the national socialists and returned after reunification.
The majority of the family’s money was now in the Wissler trust, which invested in businesses in every major western nation. Since Frederick was from a minor branch of the family, he wasn’t part of the trust's board but was instead tasked with overseeing some of the businesses in which the trust bought controlling interest.
In this, he was like many of the various scions, although from Taylor’s research, a particularly successful one. He managed to work his way up over fifty years of service to become one of the families troubleshooters, brought in to fix or take apart troubled businesses or fix mistakes made by less successful members of the family.
It seemed to Taylor he was well regarded by the family, which made the sudden reversal of five years ago so surprising. Overnight, Frederick had been removed from every board and charity he’d sat on, some he’d been part of for a decade or more. The family had put out a notice that he was retiring due to ‘medical concerns.’
His obituary listed the cause of death as complications from middle-stage Alzheimer's disease. While that would explain why he’d need to be removed from positions of responsibility, it didn’t explain why it had happened all at once with apparently little notice given. Taylor didn’t know a lot about Alzheimer's, but he was pretty sure it was a progressive disease that worsened in stages, not something that popped up overnight.
The other thing that caught Taylor’s attention wasn’t a surprise since Whitaker’s being in Berlin was a direct cause of it. Days after Frederick died, Frieda had filed the first of many lawsuits to try and force a new autopsy and the police to reopen the investigation into Frederick’s death. All had been dismissed fairly early and from some of the filings, it looked like the Wissler family had sided against Frieda.
The summaries of the cases all read the same that Frieda believed her husband was murdered and the medical examiner either missed the evidence or covered it up. Nowhere in the complaints did she specify who she thought killed him, how they killed him, or why. While Frieda probably told Whitaker about it, nothing in the documentation available to Taylor helped shed any light on what Frieda thought actually happened. Of course, the fact that she was murdered and Whitaker was implicated suggested this was more than just the imagination of one old woman.
He just needed to find the thread that connected Frieda’s suspicions with her murder.
Chapter 5
Taylor spent several more hours poring over documents with no luck before shutting his computer down. He’d found some general background information, what he really needed wasn’t going to be found in searches. There were two possibilities he could see at the moment for getting more direct information, but both would require help to get.
He decided to call back to the States first. It was still morning back home, but the help he needed would have to be started soon before it got too late in Germany.
“Senator Caldwell’s phone,” Loren answered.
The volume of noise in the background suggested that the Senator was again at some kind of function. Considering how much the campaign season was heating up, that wasn’t a huge surprise.
“Loren, its Taylor. Can I speak with the Senator a moment? I’m calling from Germany.”
“I’m aware of where you are, Mr. Taylor. Hold one moment.”
The campaign must have been taking its toll on the Senators' aid. Dashel was normally obnoxiously polite, even when it was clear Taylor annoyed him, and rarely
