Rebecca Temple Mysteries 3-Book Bundle

by Warsh, Sylvia Maultash

  Back and forth Nesha swam the length of the hotel pool, the muscles in his body sang with pain and he knew he would have to stop soon. Pretty good for an old geezer, he thought. Forty-eight. Where did it all go? Since Margie left he’d been forced to look at himself and he didn’t like what he saw. He had to hand it to her, he would’ve gone on like that forever if she hadn’t left, then not realized how wrong things really were till he was on his deathbed. Yeah, thanks Margie, thanks for nothing. He didn’t know how to love anymore, she had said. He had no love left. Well, how wrong she was. He could love. What he loved was feeling the water all around him, the water pulling at his memory, submerging it all into a deep corner of the pool. Wasn’t that love?

  If he could have done what he wanted when he was eighteen, he would’ve swum. Instead, he studied numbers. Numbers had always been magical for him and it might have worked. But the commerce and finance courses turned numbers into ciphers and sent him down to the pool at the university in search of comfort. After two years he realized he would make life easier by apprenticing himself to an accountant.

  It wasn’t until Nesha was married and a father that an American pup named Jastremski, coached by a breast-stroke champion, shortened and quickened the leg and arm movements of the stroke to come up with unheard-of speeds that smashed three world records. No sissy stroke then. Only fifteen years too late for him. By that time he had a house and a mortgage and several expensive cars to support. The breast-stroke became part of those deepest-sleep dreams that dissolve upon awakening.

  In his heart, his painfully ledgered accountant’s heart, he had always known there would be a day of reckoning. It was a matter of checks and balances, credit and liability. He had played with numbers long enough to know they were the only things you could count on.

  After twenty years of marriage, Margie came to him and told him that she wanted to live. A man courting death had no use for love, she said, and love was what she needed. Once Margie left, he realized that the only reason he was getting up each morning to go to work was that he’d done it the day before. One morning he went to a Y instead. He reacquainted himself with the breast-stroke and found to his relief that like old friends, they were still compatible.

  His partners noted his tardiness at work. Clients were starting to complain. Mr. Malkevich was not paying as much attention to their financial affairs as he used to, he wasn’t available when they called. After so many years with their company, did they deserve such treatment? There were other firms who would be happy to get their business.

  When Nesha showed no signs of “snapping out of it,” the partners offered him a deal. They knew about his wife and his tragic past but they couldn’t really understand what was going on. He knew they were much relieved when he accepted the deal even though they had to buy him out.

  His needs were modest. The bungalow he had bought was paid for; he didn’t care about fancy cars or clothes or even travelling. Where could he go where it would be different? His memories, his pain, he carried with him like baggage.

  chapter nine

  The uniformed young constable stationed Rebecca in the den and questioned her with official politeness, calling her “ma’am.” She watched from the doorway across the length of the dining-room as the police photographer took shots of the body in detail. Rebecca folded her arms across her chest, repelled by the violation of Mrs. Kochinsky’s privacy. From now on, the woman she had compared to Garbo would be a photo of a corpse in a police file accessible to anyone with a badge. While she gave the young constable particulars about her patient, then herself for the record, the forensic team went to work in their white coveralls. One man scowled as he dusted the door for fingerprints. A plump woman scraped something from the floor of the entrance hall. When the photographer was finished with the living-room, the woman cop, her long hair pulled back in a pony tail, searched on her hands and knees through the mess on the floor. All pickings were dropped by tweezers into glass vials and paper bags. “Shit” she muttered, crunching something under her leg.

  “So Sharon,” said the photographer aiming his camera at the dining-room buffet, its drawers hanging open. “What would you grab if you had five minutes to shop in K-Mart like this guy?”

  Two men, one in tweed sports jacket, the other in a trenchcoat, walked in and stood at the edge of the living-room. Both were broad-shouldered, but where the trenchcoat was muscular, the sports jacket was stocky. He was also half a head shorter.

  “This another one of those, Ed?” said the heavier man addressing the photographer. “One of those ‘five minutes shopping in K-Mart’ jobs?”

  The constable immediately excused himself to Rebecca. “Don’t touch anything, ma’am,” he added. He walked back through the hall where she could no longer see him.

  Rebecca watched the two men turn to greet the constable who was still out of her sight. His words were an inaudible mumble over the bustle of activity in the apartment. Both men took out pads and began to take notes after a moment of what she took to be the constable filling them in. At one point, they turned to look at the body, gestured toward something in the room, took more notes. She still couldn’t hear anything. Then suddenly they turned to look at Rebecca over the distance of two rooms. The stocky detective sized her up. What struck her was the blankness of his expression. Nothing showed. While the taller man faced the invisible constable, the sports jacket disappeared into the hall. She knew where he was heading.

  “I’m Detective Wanless,” he said, entering the den. He showed her his identification badge. “You’re the one who found the body? Dr. Temple?”

  He was not much taller than Rebecca but gave the impression of size with the solid mass of his chest and shoulders, bulky beneath the jacket.

  “Are you a relative?” he asked, preparing his notebook. His brown hair was thin and short on top, brushed forward over a high forehead. His large ruddy cheeks eclipsed a neatly trimmed moustache.

  “No.”

  “What was your relationship with the deceased—” he searched his notepad “Goldie Kochinsky?” His thick fingers held the pen, waiting.

  “I was her doctor.”

  “This was a house call, then?” His blue eyes studied her face, the pencil poised above the paper.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Why exactly were you here then?”

  The blankness of his face made it difficult for her to explain. “I was worried. She didn’t show up for her regular appointment.”

  The blue eyes didn’t change but the tone of his voice became human. “You must be one in a million, Doctor. Mine wouldn’t notice if I didn’t show up for an appointment. He’d go on to the next guy. Do you normally check up on your patients when they miss an appointment?”

  “Mrs. Kochinsky was a special case. She came to my office yesterday very upset. She was a very anxious person.”

  “Why was she upset?”

  “She said she’d just seen the man who was going to kill her.”

  Wanless arched an eyebrow. “And what did you do?”

  “I made a note of it,” she said. He looked up, still scribbling in his book. She couldn’t read his face, though she could imagine what he was thinking. “You know, there’s doctor-patient confidentiality,” she said.

  “There’s also a murder. To me this looks like a robbery gone bad. But I need more information before I can put it to bed.”

  Rebecca looked around. A robbery gone bad. Someone had meant it to look that way. But she no longer believed it. “There wasn’t much else I could do,” she said. “Mrs. Kochinsky told me the same story almost every week. Someone was always after her. That was her problem. You see, she was coming to me for anxiety. She was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.”

  “In plain English.”

  “She developed persecutory thinking after being tortured in Argentina.”

  He whistled softly between his teeth; his eyes brightened momentarily. “Tortured! God, aren’t you glad you live in Canada?
You saying she thought people were after her? She was paranoid?”

  “In broad terms, yes.”

  “So when she came to you with this latest story about the guy who was going to kill her, it was like crying wolf, is that what you mean? You didn’t take it seriously?”

  “It had all the same elements as her usual stories,” she said. “Except that she seemed more frightened this time. And she ran in without an appointment.”

  “Did she describe this man? Or any of the others?”

  “Only in psychological terms: he was evil, he had big dark eyes, he was powerful. I think she was waiting for someone to come from Argentina to kill her. But that would fit in with her paranoia.”

  “You think this Argentina story is possible? Was there a reason someone would’ve come for her?”

  Rebecca stared at the shell that used to be Mrs. Kochinsky. “I never thought so. Yet she’s dead. Who would’ve wanted to kill her? I know the woman was paranoid. She was a classic case, with a tightly connected system of her own truth — all very logical on the surface. But all based on a false premise. By any standards, paranoid.”

  “Let’s start from the beginning,” he said. “Can you describe for me how you found the body? From the time you came to the door. Everything you can remember.”

  He scribbled in his pad while she talked. It was the second time she had told her story in an hour. Only this time she mentioned the picture.

  “Mrs. Kochinsky waved this newspaper photo in front of me. I didn’t get a good look at it. All I saw was a duck. She was almost incoherent and I thought she was having a bad episode. But now, well, I think it might’ve been important.”

  “We’ll look around for it.”

  “I already did. It’s gone.”

  He looked up from his pad. “Did you touch anything?”

  She shook her head. “I just looked.”

  “Hey, Sharon!” he cried. The plump lady cop turned around. “Get some samples off the doc here.” He turned to Rebecca. “Just to eliminate your prints and fibres.”

  The lady cop in white coveralls approached Rebecca with her tweezers. Wanless said, “Once Sharon’s finished with you, I’d like you to come down to the station to give a statement.”

  She didn’t tell Wanless, but they would have to wait at the station. She was going back downtown to take another look at Mrs. Kochinsky’s file. There were holes in Rebecca’s memory. Maybe her notes would help.

  Their attention was diverted by the distress of a raised voice near the front. “I saw the police cars out here, I’m only three doors down,” the man exclaimed with the clipped nasal quality of a German accent. “What is going on here? Has something happened to Goldie?”

  The detective in the trenchcoat waved a hand of authority at the young cop posted near the front door. The man with the insistent nasal voice was allowed into the hall. From the den Rebecca and Wanless watched a trim, well-groomed man in his sixties approach the edge of the living-room. He was dwarfed by the tall detective who obstructed his view of the body and let him go no further.

  “I have a right to know what is going on,” he said in his slight accent. “I am Feldberg. This is my sister-in-law’s place.”

  Rebecca observed him with interest. The poor sister’s husband. Suddenly a phrase flew through her mind like a startled bird. Now he can have his fancy woman. Mrs. Kochinsky’s voice slurred by drugs after her sister’s retreat from the world. Rebecca understood better now, with Feldberg in view, handsome in tailored grey tweed sports jacket and white shirt; thick gunmetal hair combed straight back from his forehead.

  The detective in the trenchcoat lowered his voice, became inaudible from the distance. Finally he turned his bulk aside to reveal the body lying near the fireplace.

  “Mein Gott! Mein Gott!” Feldberg stared a moment, speechless. “Who would do this to her?”

  “Do you know if she had any enemies?” asked the detective.

  “Enemies? She was an old lady. What kind of enemies?” He gave a heartfelt shrug. “It looks to me like maybe a robbery.” He cast an eye over the havoc of the apartment.

  “You said you live three doors down. Did you see anything unusual today?”

  Feldberg shook his head, unable to take his eyes off the body.

  “Anyone strange hanging around the building lately?”

  Feldberg finally spoke. “Always punks are hanging around the stores on Eglinton. Nothing to do. It’s just a block away. Go talk to them.”

  “Have you had any problems with them before?”

  “They’re drinking, using drugs, always in front of that donut shop up there.”

  The trenchcoat patiently rephrased the question. “Did they come down this way before?”

  “I didn’t see them. But where they gonna get money for their drugs? You should talk to them.”

  “Do you know who lives upstairs, sir?”

  “Still in Florida. An old lady.”

  Feldberg’s eyes finally looked up from the body and fell upon Rebecca in the near distance. He looked at her with curiosity and would have spoken if the detective had not motioned for him to follow.

  “Are you the next of kin, sir?” Rebecca heard the detective ask, leading him toward the door.

  “My wife, Chana, is Goldie’s sister, but she’s senile.”

  “And where does she reside, sir...?”

  Feldberg turned to stare a long moment at Rebecca before being ushered outside, out of earshot.

  Then came a dog and bit the cat

  That ate the goat

  That Father bought for two zuzim.

  One little goat, one little goat.

  chapter ten

  Wednesday, April 4, 1979

  Nesha restrained himself from approaching the front desk of the hotel until after dinner. “I’m expecting a package,” he said to the clerk. “Malkevich.”

  The young man looked around under the counter. Nesha knew it was too early, that the thing couldn’t get there before tomorrow, but he was impatient.

  “Nothing here, sir. Sorry.”

  Nesha found the car he had rented waiting in the parking lot. Out of his wallet, he brought out the slip of paper with his cousin’s address scribbled on it. Finally they would meet again. The prospect warmed him like none other had for years. Why had he waited so long? He unfolded the map the rental company had thrown in. There was her street. It seemed to span the whole city going north. Well, he had the house number; he would find it.

  Light was slowly fading in the sky as he drove through the maze of intersections near the waterfront. He found the street he was looking for rather quickly, since it ran directly off the lakeshore route. Turning north, he headed away from the water. Toronto was much bigger than he had expected. According to the numbers he was passing, it would be at least several miles before he reached her place.

  He passed marginal quasi-lawns beyond which ugly narrow attached houses stood festooned with too many ornamental bannisters. The houses gave way to shops that glimmered beneath street lamps. He was unprepared for the orgiastic marquee lights of Honest Ed’s Emporium that occupied an entire block. As he continued north, his car balked at the steep incline of the hill that rivalled some of those he had left back home. The street became residential again, first with low-rise brick apartments, then as he got closer to his destination, the houses became substantial and the lawns grew pampered.

  The hill rose still higher, though gently now, as if they were climbing out of some primordial lake whose waves used to lap against these midtown shores. Traffic was light, but he could tell something had happened in the distance. Lights flashed round and round from police cruisers parked on the side of the road. A car accident probably. Or a speed trap.

  He slowed down, searching for the street number. He must have been almost there. Unwilling to get too close to a police car, Nesha pulled over and counted the houses to establish where she lived. With a shock, he realized police were swarming the house he was looking for. A c
rowd had gathered on the sidewalk. His hands began to shake. Something had happened to her. She was elderly; maybe she’d had an accident. Then why would the police be there? An attractive woman walked out the front door carrying a medical bag.

  He got out of his car and approached a middleaged couple absorbed in the spectacle. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  The man turned to glance at Nesha. “I don’t know what’s happened to this city. Some poor old lady was murdered right in her own home.” He shook his head.

  Nesha’s blood ran cold. The bastard had found her. What other explanation could there be? Nesha had sent her the picture on the off chance she might recognize the man. Somehow it had killed her.

  Back at the hotel, Nesha found himself filled with a rancorous energy that didn’t let him stand still. Zitsfleisch, his Uncle Sol used to call it when Nesha paced their small house as if it were a cage. Sol was long gone. Now Goldie, his only link with family. If he had arrived yesterday maybe he could’ve saved her. The old lady didn’t know anything. Why did the bastard kill her? Nesha felt powerless before the package arrived. Once he had it in his hand, there would be no stopping him. The bastard would be finished. But meanwhile, Nesha had to control himself somehow, keep the rage from destroying him.

  He made his way to the basement of the hotel like a man after a drug. People in the elevator shrunk away from his self-contained sense of purpose. He seemed frightening even to himself and hurried toward the soothing promise of water.

  He dove into the pastel-coloured pool and began to swim at a pace he knew he could not keep up; his energy demanded release. He had often jumped into a pool to quell the undercurrent of his energy. Up till now the source of the turmoil had been the images buried in his mind since childhood; he had somehow hoped these would run together and blur in the water as if the chlorine could seep through his skull and cleanse his brain, bleach it into oblivion.