“You’re right — you can’t begin to understand. It’s my fault Goldie’s dead. If I hadn’t sent her the picture —”
“Don’t fall into that trap. Let me help you.”
“There’s nothing you can do.” He hovered near her impatiently. “Let me by.”
“Let’s sit down and talk.”
“It’s too late for that.”
The quietness of his voice belied the turmoil underneath, the rage that fed the fire in his eyes. She was not going to convince him of anything.
She stepped backwards into the hall. He barely glanced at her, then squeezed past her out the door and downstairs. She couldn’t call Wanless, there was no time. Besides, what would she say? Someone else believes in the murderer and plans to kill him? That sounded ludicrous, even to her.
She closed up her office and sailed down the stairs. From the front door she could see him getting into a blue car parked on Beverley Street. She lost sight of him for a minute while running to the back lot to get her car. It couldn’t have been more than a minute, but by the time she turned north up Beverley, he was gone. That was all right. She knew where he was going. She just had to get there in time.
chapter twenty-eight
Rebecca raced her Jaguar up Beverley Street through the blue twilight. The rain had darkened the sky early as she turned left along College Street. The evening traffic rolled along here too slowly, people relaxed after a day’s work with nowhere important to go. Exasperated, she cut into the right lane and turned north on Spadina. It would be faster this way.
She veered in and out of slower traffic, then was caught at a red light. It gave her a minute to think. Why was she in such a hurry? To stop Nesha from what? Killing someone who had been stalking her for two days? Killing Goldie’s murderer? From her own personal viewpoint, it wouldn’t be such a loss. She might be safe again. Why was she in such a goddam hurry? It couldn’t be the democratic process she was rushing to save. Maybe it was Nesha’s prospects once he had reduced himself to the level of everything he despised. She couldn’t stop him if he had a gun. She was sure it was a gun. Probably the gun. She couldn’t just watch him throw his life away. He’d been through so much already. It was probably arrogance to think she knew what was best for him. The weight of that possibility, that perhaps justice was not always straightforward or even easy, held her back for a moment. Feldberg, if he was Steiner, deserved whatever Nesha gave him. But what did Nesha deserve? Better.
She sped the rest of the way, finally climbed the rolling hill of Bathurst Street till the familiar line of duplexes was in sight. She slowed down on approach, keeping an eye out for a blue car in vain. There were other streets he could park on. She passed Feldberg’s building, Goldie’s empty duplex, then made a right turn into the first side street off Bathurst. She parked, then hurried from her car.
In the dimming light, she sprinted down the block till she reached the front door of Feldberg’s duplex. Opening it, she found herself in the entranceway before two apartments, the same layout as Goldie’s. The door to Feldberg’s apartment was closed. She hadn’t noticed it being such a solid door when Feldberg had opened it for her. It had no window like Goldie’s, but was made entirely of panelled wood with only a peephole. Better to keep people out.
She listened for shouts, two men arguing. There had been no gunshot; she would’ve heard that. Something was wrong though; it was too quiet. But she recalled Nesha’s low still voice and imagined it recounting its horrors to an unrepentant Feldberg.
She did the ordinary thing. She knocked. Nothing. She knocked again. Not a sound, not a movement. She wasn’t leaving without an answer.
“Mr. Feldberg!” she cried through the door. “Mr. Feldberg, it’s Dr. Temple. Could I have a word with you?”
Without warning the door flashed part way open and a leather-clad arm reached out. A strong hand grabbed her by the forearm, pulling her inside. A gasp issued from her throat.
The hall was dark but the reflected light from the living-room showed her Nesha in an old leather bomber jacket, one vexed hand on a hip. “You trying to wake up the whole neighbourhood?” His voice was a hoarse whisper.
“Where’s Feldberg?” she murmured.
“Not here.” He stood blocking her entrance into the apartment.
“How did you get in?”
“I’m not a burglar. It was open.”
She looked over his shoulder at the apartment. “Open?”
“You don’t believe me? I knocked. I heard him moving around in the apartment and I waited. Then everything got quiet and I got suspicious. So I tried the door. It was open and he was gone.” Then something on the wall behind her distracted him.
She turned to find the keypad of what looked like a fancy burglar alarm. “I’d say you were lucky he hadn’t turned the alarm on.”
“I ran in. He probably didn’t have time. He must’ve gone out the back door, but I wasn’t fast enough to see him.”
She turned back to look at the spotless apartment, the baby blue leather sofa, the steel and leather armchair. “Maybe he keeps a lot of cash,” she said. “Why else would he need a burglar alarm?”
Then she noticed it. The Corot that had hung over the fireplace was gone.
She pushed her way past Nesha and ran to the spot where two hooks pierced the wall above the mantel. Against one arm of the leather couch leaned a very empty carved gilt frame.
She dove into the dining-room, Nesha on her heels. The Utrillo was missing. The empty frame had been thrown behind the steel and leather armchair. Everything else appeared as she remembered.
“Did you actually see who was in the apartment?” she said.
He shook his head.
“Then it could’ve been a thief who didn’t know any better. That means that Feldberg could come walking in any minute.” She stood still, listening. Someone honked outside on Bathurst Street, but the building was quiet.
“Let him come,” he said. “I’m ready for him.”
“I’d like to avoid a confrontation,” she said. “If anyone comes to the door, we run out the back.”
He gave her a wry smile. “You run, I’ll cover you. What d’ you mean the thief didn’t know any better?”
“These paintings aren’t real. They’re good reproductions, but not valuable.”
Nesha shrugged. “I don’t know anything about art. I’m going to take a look around.” He disappeared into one of the bedrooms.
Suddenly tired, she leaned against the small round table in the centre of the dining-room. “I don’t understand any of it,” she said out loud to herself. Sitting down, she lay one arm along the cool shiny surface of the burled wood. What exquisite taste he had for a man who repulsed her.
She looked up at the drawings she hadn’t seen before on the wall opposite. They were religious sketches of saints and angels, possibly studies drawn before a painting in oil. She tried to cross one leg over the other under the table, but there wasn’t enough room beneath the wooden apron skirting the tabletop. Her leg had elicited a dull thud from below, making it apparent that a panel closed off the bottom of the apron. Then where was the drawer? There was more than enough room for a drawer, but there was no drawer. She poked her head beneath: there were no openings, no latches, no knobs. What was she looking for?
She knocked the flat of her fingers gently against the underside of the table, like somebody’s belly. Hollow. She moved her fingers further to the left. Hollow. She moved to the right. Not hollow. She struck it again. The table resonated. Definitely not hollow. Something was inside that section of the table. She bent down on one knee to examine the apron. It was divided into four quadrants, each ending with a seam at one of the legs.
She pulled at the quadrant that echoed with its elusive contents. No movement. Maybe she was wrong. She pried around its edges trying to loosen any joints. She pulled at it again. Nothing. This time she took off her shoe and banged it around underneath the apron.
Nesha emerged from the bedro
om. “Are you crazy?” he said under his breath. “There might be people upstairs.”
Rebecca tugged at the quadrant of wood once more. To her surprise it pulled out easily. Inside lay an album of some kind. Nesha came closer as she lifted the plastic cover. Each page contained two plastic sleeves for photos, one above the other, set into a wire spiral. The first photo was a likeness of a Claude Monet painting of lilies. A very good likeness, the swirling violets and greens approximating summer in Giverny. Inserted into the sleeve below was a typewritten card: Alfonso Hauptmann, Avenida Arboles, 124, Buenos Aires, 467-9342. She flipped to the next page. A photo of a crowd scene by Renoir. The women in hooped skirts and flounced hats, the men cavalier in their boaters. The card below read: Victor Ocampo, Calle Cordoba, 56, Buenos Aires, 921-0743.
“This is a waste of time,” Nesha said impatiently, and returned to his search through the bedrooms.
She kept flipping the plastic-sheathed photos, mesmerized by the beauty of the paintings. What could such a catalogue mean and why was he hiding it? All the addresses on the cards were from South America. Then she came upon an extraordinary picture. It was labelled Portrait of a Young Man, by Raphael. Good God, she thought. Raphael. They really picked the best ones. The painting was a tease — a young nobleman with dark hair curling over shoulders that blended, in the shadows of the photo, into a rich robe. Wistful eyes beneath perfect feminine brows watched sideways, averted from the viewer. She froze when she read the card below: Max Vogel, 103 Northgate Cres., Toronto, Ontario.
How did Vogel know Feldberg? And what did this picture mean? She pried the photo and address card from their plastic sleeves. Then she replaced the catalogue into the quadrant of wooden apron beneath the table and pushed it back into place as quietly as she could.
She knew a little about Raphael from her undergrad art history courses, that he was overshadowed in the Italian Renaissance by the giants da Vinci and Michelangelo. He was famous for his dewy, graceful Madonnas, but it was his secular portraits that lingered in the memory for the depth of their feeling.
Had she seen this particular portrait before? She approached the oversized art book that lay on Feldberg’s coffee table. It was a good compendium of art history from prehistoric times to the present. She looked up Raphael in the index at the back. There was reference to a Portrait of a Young Man in chapter eight. She quickly turned to the page where the title was narrowed down to Portrait of Bindo Altoviti. The arrogant young man there looked quizzically over his shoulder, his neck adorned with reddish-blonde hair. The elegant narrow shape of the head was similar but the two young men were miles apart in character. This one lived at the National Gallery in Washington. Who knew how many portraits of young men Raphael had painted. What was she looking for anyway? She’d have to wait to speak to Vogel.
She crept into the small bedroom at the front of the flat, listening for sudden noises. A bare clothes dummy stood in one corner, a tiny delicate size that probably suited both Chana and Goldie. There were two dressers, a wooden chair, its seat covered with a homemade cushion, and a table that looked like it had been a stand for Chana’s sewing machine.
Rebecca began to open the drawers of one of the dressers, painstaking in her attempt at silence. Cuts of neatly folded fabric lay stored inside, awaiting the seamstress. Each time Rebecca made a noise, she stopped and listened, waiting for someone to come through the door and discover them.
The top drawer of the other dresser was filled with spools of thread of all shades. In one corner of the drawer lay a cookie tin. She opened it, thinking to find sewing paraphernalia. Instead, she found a mound of pale blue airmail envelopes, much like the ones she had confiscated from Goldie’s apartment. Only these were from Goldie to Chana. Rebecca pulled out the top letter. No use. She had to find Nesha.
She tiptoed toward the light in Feldberg’s bedroom. With each creak, she stopped and waited, adrenaline on alert. The room was empty. The bed floated beneath a down-filled black and blue duvet, its headboard and dresser a rich mahogany. There was very little surface clutter, everything orderly.
She heard a sudden scrape of metal on metal coming from the den. When she got there, Nesha stood near the open drawer of a small desk, absorbed in some kind of ledger. He’d broken the lock.
“Could you read this?” she said, holding a page in front of his face.
When he looked up his eyes were distant, but he took the page from her. His lips began to move silently. “This is an old letter Goldie wrote to her sister,” he replied, still reading. “Nostalgic, but not useful, I think.”
“Could you...?” Rebecca said.
He glanced at her briefly, then began. ‘”Chanele, I’m so glad you are still in touch with our cousin in California. Our dear cousin. How strange and wonderful to think of someone who brings to mind our life from so long ago. Memories both painful and happy. Happy because life at home was good; Mother, Father, our sisters and brothers, all happy memories of those poor sweet souls. What I can’t bear to think about is leaving them behind, never seeing them again. The grief never goes away. It is good to know there is one last person still living who has some connection to our dear family.’”
Rebecca felt a trembling come over her. She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. “It doesn’t sound like the same person. She’s so articulate in Polish. I never knew that side of her. I never really knew her at all. It was always such a struggle for her to communicate in English.” She felt her eyes tear over, quickly forced herself past the moment, unwilling to lose control in front of a stranger.
“What about the others?” she said, pulling out a few of the letters.
He scanned them quickly. “Same kind of thing. Domestic details. Goldie telling her she was lucky to be in Canada. Sympathizing with her about the husband. And so on.” He handed the sheets back to her.
A car door closed somewhere nearby. Both their heads snapped up. Nesha carefully replaced the books in the desk. Rebecca’s body stiffened from the effort of listening. Someone had just parked outside in the back. A man’s voice disturbed the quiet. A key turned in the lock of the side door.
Nesha grabbed Rebecca’s hand and pulled her toward the closet in the corner. The side door of the duplex slammed and a woman’s voice joined the man’s. Nesha pushed her inside the closet, then squeezed in front, closing the door. She was pressed tightly against his back; she had to turn her face to the side. She was gagging on the overpowering smell of mothballs. His breathing was remarkably even as his shoulder blades moved softly against her chest. Even if they weren’t discovered, how would they get out? In another second, noisy footsteps began to pound up the stairs. The other apartment. They both let out their breath but waited until the steps sounded overhead. She realized she was leaning her head against the back of his neck.
“Good God!” she whispered, when he opened the door. She couldn’t breathe amid the mothballs. The tenants were moving around in their apartment upstairs.
“Why don’t you go?” he said, once they were back in the den. “It’ll be safer.” His eyes seemed softer when he looked at her.
“If you come.”
He smiled with resignation. “You’re a stubborn woman.”
They headed down the hall. Near the phone on the kitchen counter lay the day’s mail, mostly bills and junk mail. However, one envelope bore an official-looking return address from Germany. Without hesitation, she pulled out the letter on official stationery, heavily typed in German. All she could tell was that Feldberg was being notified about something that involved money.
She thrust the sheet in front of Nesha’s face. “How’s your German?”
He screwed up his eyes and began to move his lips silently.
“The bastard!” he said finally. “He’s getting paid for his so-called suffering. Incredible! This letter says his restitution — he’s getting restitution from Germany! — will go up because of his incarceration at a labour camp in Poland. Which camp was he in?”
Nesha’s ey
es shifted quickly along the page. “Skarzysko Kamienna. That’s it!” he cried. “That’s the link. Steiner was in Skarzysko — he was promoted to the labour camp. It’s him!”
She shook her head. “How could he have lived all these years as a Jew? Even fooling his wife?”
“Everything fits. Do you have a better explanation?”
Rebecca was pushing the letter back into the envelope when a ring exploded from the phone less than two feet away, making her jump. Nesha lurched toward her protectively. They stood watching each other, waiting through three rings, then four. Suddenly a machine clicked on. Feldberg’s raspy voice told the caller to leave a message.
“Leo, pick up the phone. I know you’re there.” Rebecca recognized Isabella’s low Hispanic voice. “Please, Leo, I need you tonight. I can’t go on. I called Teresa to take my place at the club but I can’t stand it, can’t stand being alone here.” She’d had something to drink. Probably numerous somethings. “You must forgive your Isabelita if I said something. I can’t remember, did I say something bad? Where are you, I’ve been calling for hours! Please don’t be angry, pick up the phone, please Leo, please.”
When the phone finally clicked off, Rebecca said, “We’ve got to get out of here.” She turned to look into his face. “Now.”
He blinked once, expressionless, but he didn’t argue. “Just a minute,” he said. He vanished into the den and came out a minute later with Feldberg’s ledger and a few bankbooks.
“You’re taking those?” she said.
“I’m an accountant. I’m going to do his books.”
chapter twenty-nine
Nesha, carrying the ledger under his arm, walked Rebecca back to her Jaguar which she had parked on a side street off Bathurst. She was the one looking over her shoulder at the empty street. The people in the houses whose tidy lawns and ornamental trees breathed quietly in the dark were no doubt sunk in front of their TVs by now and paid no attention to two shadows navigating the sidewalk.
Rebecca Temple Mysteries 3-Book Bundle Page 17
