Rebecca Temple Mysteries 3-Book Bundle

by Warsh, Sylvia Maultash

  chapter eighteen

  That afternoon, in two separate examining rooms that adjoined her private office, Rebecca took care of patients who arrived with heart palpitations, sprained ankles, skin rashes, sore throats, and fuzzy tongues. She took a lot of blood pressures and listened to a lot of chests. By five o’clock, she took a minute between patients to call Constable Tiziano.

  “This isn’t official, Doctor,” he said, “I don’t want this to go no further.”

  He waited.

  “I won’t tell anyone, Constable.”

  “Okay. Pathologist says preliminary findings showed cause of death as drowning. No heart attack.”

  “No heart attack?” An electric shock went off in her body. No time for it to sink in. He went on.

  “No trauma to the head. Some bruising and scratches on the face. Some bruising on the knuckles.”

  “Knuckles?”

  “Could’ve happened after he fell into the pool. Struggling to get out.”

  “You’ve seen this before in drownings?”

  “No.”

  “Wouldn’t he get bruising on his knuckles if he’d hit someone?”

  “That’s what the pathologist said.”

  She could feel her anger rising. “Well, then he fought with somebody before his death and…”

  “And seems to have won. There’s not much on his face, a few scratches on his arms that could’ve happened in the pool.”

  “But I think I know who he fought with.”

  “Yes?”

  “John Baron had bruises on his face that afternoon. He’s an awful little man, rude and belligerent…”

  “We’d all like to put rude, belligerent men behind bars.”

  So he was human after all.

  “Do you have proof that they had an altercation?”

  “No.”

  “Um-hum. Oh, and one more thing. His shoulder was dislocated.”

  “His shoulder was dislocated?” She knew she sounded like an echo but she was having trouble taking it all in. The picture of Michael lying on the concrete beside the pool flashed before her.

  “What does the pathologist say about that?”

  “It might’ve happened when you pulled him out.”

  “Yes,” she said. All right. Maybe. “What about alcohol?”

  “Alcohol and Valium in the blood.”

  “Valium?” she said. “How much Valium?”

  “Enough to knock him out. Especially since he’d had a few drinks. Guy probably never knew what hit him.”

  “But that takes a lot of Valium. Why would he take enough to knock himself out when he was expecting guests?”

  “I don’t have to tell you, Doctor, if he was used to taking the stuff, he’d need more and more. Do you know if he had a habit?”

  “I’d be surprised if he did.”

  “But you can’t rule it out?” She was still thinking about it when he said, “Was he upset about something?”

  “He didn’t kill himself.” Even as she said this, a little voice inside her head began to whisper, You hardly knew him, how can you be sure?

  “Well, did anyone threaten him?”

  She thought of Claude Simard’s letter. She thought of Teodor. “No.”

  “Well, it doesn’t add up to a struggle. If there’s nothing else to go on, it’ll probably go on the books as an accident. Death by misadventure we call it.”

  “What about —” What was she thinking? “What about his feet? Were there any scratches on his feet?”

  “They would’ve reported that.”

  Rebecca hung up. She felt nauseated. She had been hoping all along for a heart attack. Things would have been clear-cut then. An accident. But this changed everything. She went into the next examining room to take stitches out of a young basketball player’s knee.

  At 6:30 she said goodbye to her last patient. After Iris had left for the day, she pulled the envelope from her purse and reread the letter from Claude Simard. Her stomach growled as she nibbled from the store of roasted almonds she kept in a bag in her desk drawer. She remembered the apple in her skirt pocket and pulled it out.

  She thought of the handkerchief in Michael’s garbage bin. It wasn’t that Michael would not carry a handkerchief. He would never own one that shade of plaid. What if Simard had come to Michael’s house before they arrived? Should she have told Tiziano about the letter? There was no threat in it, just desperation. He even called Michael a good man; how could that be construed as a threat? She didn’t want to implicate him before she had any real information. The guy’s story was tragic enough without her making trouble for him. Yet she couldn’t just ignore the letter, the handkerchief. Even if it was too soon to tell Tiziano.

  She was really hungry now. There were lots of good restaurants on the Danforth. Greek town. She found the return address on the envelope in her Perly’s street guide. It was past the trendy part of the Danforth, where it headed toward seedy.

  She drove east to Gerrard Street then turned north on Broadview to reach the Danforth. She could have gone along Bloor Street, which turned into the Danforth as you drove east, but traffic on Bloor crept at a snail’s pace any time of the day.

  Danforth Avenue was busy at dinnertime. The weather was still fine, and people sat outside at tables under striped awnings at the mainly Greek restaurants. On her way back she would get some takeout moussaka.

  The upscale restaurants ended and gave way to small, colourless stores where cheap outdated toys and kitchen-ware lay behind dusty display windows. She found Rhodes Avenue and made a right turn. The street was lined with war-vintage houses that looked their age. She stopped in front of a small, semi-detached, two-storey house covered in clapboard. The tiny lawn was studded with dandelions.

  What was she doing here? She just needed to know one thing: did Claude Simard push Michael into the pool?

  She walked up the sagging wooden stairs to the front door and knocked. There was a din of some kind going on inside. Bags of garbage relaxed in the corner of the veranda. Strips of white paint peeled down the lintel around the door and nearby window.

  She knocked again, this time louder.

  Finally the door opened. A television murmured inside. The smell of cabbage wafted over her. A little girl of about eight, wearing a pink dress two sizes too large, stood watching her. Before Rebecca could say anything, the girl yelled out, “Mam!”

  A harried voice from inside called back, “Tell them to go away, Mary!”

  The little girl blinked but didn’t move. Her rather plain face was smudged with dirt. She held the door tightly to her side, blocking any view of the interior.

  “I’m looking for Claude Simard,” Rebecca said as loudly as she could without screaming. Maybe someone would hear her over the TV.

  A woman in her forties approached the door. She wore a shiny black skirt and white blouse, her brown hair tied back in a stringy ponytail. “Oh, yeah?” she said. “What for?”

  “I want to ask him some questions. About his job.”

  “This got to do with the strike?”

  “Sort of.”

  The woman scrutinized Rebecca a moment, took in her matching linen skirt and blouse, the high-heeled sandals. She turned her head away from the door and yelled into the house, “Claude! Someone to see you. And I gotta go. I’m late for work.”

  She vanished inside while the girl stood guard at the door. A minute later the woman squeezed through the doorway and hurried down the steps. Rebecca watched her head up the street toward the Danforth. Probably a waitress uniform.

  The little girl stared at Rebecca, twirling a strand of dark greasy hair around a finger.

  “Is Claude your father?” Rebecca asked.

  The girl shook her head.

  “Your uncle?”

  She nodded.

  “Get away from there, Mary,” a man’s voice commanded from behind. A large hand reached to open the door wider and the little girl flew back.

  A tall thin man with a bit
of a stoop beneath a black t-shirt watched her with lacklustre eyes. “D’I know you?”

  “I was a friend of Michael Oginski’s.”

  He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, shoved one hand into his jeans pocket. “Yeah? It’s too bad what happened to him.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Word gets around.”

  “Did you send him this?” She held up the envelope with the office address scrawled on the front.

  The man swallowed, cleared his throat. “What if I did?”

  “Hey, Claude!” a man’s voice cried out from inside. “You’re missing the wrestling.”

  She continued. “Did you go to his house on Saturday?”

  “I got company. Gotta go.”

  “Did you go to his house on Saturday?”

  His head pulled back and he began to cough, sending his large cheeks shaking. “No,” he said between hacks. “Why would I?”

  He pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket and spat into it.

  She stared at the blue and green plaid. “I know you were there,” she said. “You left one of your handkerchiefs behind.”

  “Hey Claude! You gotta see this guy move.” The voice from inside. “He fought with Mohammed Ali that time, remember?”

  Claude quickly stuffed the plaid square back into his pocket, then cocked his head toward the house. “So Miss…”

  “Dr. Temple.”

  He stared at her. “So, Doc. You wanna beer?”

  She followed him down a dark hall toward the electronic din of a crowd hungry for blood. In the living room a man around Claude’s age sat on the edge of a threadbare mock-Scandinavian sofa, wearing a Yankees cap. He shoved his long, grey hair behind his ears when he saw Rebecca.

  “Hey, doll, have a seat. You’ll see some damned fine wrestling.”

  “Shut up, George,” said Claude.

  He led her through the living room, past George, into a tiny adjacent kitchen separated only by a half height wall. The roar of the TV crowd continued.

  “What’s it to you where I was?” Claude said, not asking her to sit down in one of the two vinyl-upholstered chairs.

  “I’m not sure the drowning was an accident.”

  “You think I —” He gaped at her and started to cough again. “Look at me! Do I look like I could… I can barely carry myself around. Okay, I was there. But it was Friday night.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothin’ happened. I just wanted to see if he could help me. I can’t work no more. I’m dyin’ of cancer and it’s John Baron’s doing. I thought he could help me out.”

  She looked at his red-rimmed eyes. He had taken the handkerchief out again and held it in a large fist. Large hands. How much strength did it take to —

  “Why didn’t you go to Baron himself?”

  “Baron’s the devil. Wouldn’t ask him for nothin’. Besides, you can’t get into that building if you look like a miner. They got guards on them doors.”

  “How did you find Michael’s address?”

  “He’s in the book. Baron ain’t.”

  “So you got to Michael’s house. Then what happened?”

  “I was just startin’ to make my case, hardly more’n a few minutes. All of a sudden the phone rings. Sounds like someone’s coming over and when he hangs up, he says he don’t have time now. He’ll get back to me. Pulls some twenties outta his wallet and hands ’em over. I tell him he can’t buy me off like that. Then I left.”

  “You were angry.”

  “Sure I was angry.”

  His face suddenly registered her implication. “But nothing happened.”

  All at once George loomed beside her, the odour of sweat. He was Claude’s height, only upright so he seemed taller.

  “Got another beer, Claude?”

  Claude opened the fridge door and took out two bottles from a whole shelf of bottles. He held one out to Rebecca.

  “No thanks.”

  George prodded off the cap and took a swig. “Everything okay, Claude?” He looked pointedly at Rebecca.

  Claude opened his own bottle and gestured toward her. “She thinks I killed somebody.”

  George grinned. “Did you?”

  “You know I wouldn’t hurt a fly,” said Claude, winking at him.

  “Yeah, you ain’t got nothing against flies, but what about the rest of us? You tell her about your temper?”

  “He’s just foolin’ around,” said Claude. “He knows I wouldn’t hurt a fly. Nothin’ bigger either.”

  “Yeah, sure,” said George. “Claude here wouldn’t hurt a fly.” George lifted the bottle in a sign of departure. “’Scuse me. I gotta go watch two guys beat the shit out of each other.”

  Rebecca waited until George had sat down in the living room again. Then she said to Claude, “Did you two fight? I mean physically?”

  “No.”

  “Did he hit you?”

  He peered at her. “No.”

  “Could you tell who was on the phone?”

  “Some woman.”

  “A woman?”

  A smile played along his lips. “I guess he was cheating on you.”

  “We weren’t…” She threw him a censuring look. “Did you get a name?”

  Simard scratched his head. “Helena?”

  Rebecca caught her breath. “Halina?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And he said she was coming over?” He nodded. “What time was it?”

  He looked toward the ceiling, thinking. “Midnight, thereabouts.”

  She stared at him. He stared back. Why would he lie about this?

  “Do you remember any of the conversation?”

  He turned away. “Nothing special. Something like: ‘You’re coming over? Okay.’”

  “How did Michael seem to you?”

  “What d’you mean?”

  How could she put this? “Did he look drunk?”

  “Drunk? Hell no.”

  “Did he look… drugged?”

  Simard grimaced at her. “I don’t know what yer getting at, lady, but he was just normal.”

  He looked down at her hand. “Can I have my letter back now?”

  She shoved it back into her purse. “I’ll let you know.”

  Rebecca found a parking spot on the stretch of the Danforth where you could walk from one Greek restaurant to another checking out menus. She ordered some moussaka to go at the counter of the first one she came to. The waiter told her she was welcome to wait at the bar for the five minutes it would take. Instead, she stepped out to the pay phone on the sidewalk. It was 7:30. Maybe Tiziano would still be on duty.

  “Eleven Division.”

  “Could I speak to Constable Tiziano.”

  “Who’s calling?”

  “Dr. Temple.”

  There was a click, then someone picking up. “Yes, Doctor, what can I do for you?”

  “I’ve got some new information you’ll be interested in. A woman visited Michael the night before he died. Now she’s disappeared.”

  “Has she been reported missing?”

  “She’s not exactly missing. We just don’t know where she is.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  Not the enthusiastic response she’d hoped for. “She’s visiting from Poland with her daughter. They’re suspicious of authority so we haven’t called the police. But I don’t trust her. Doesn’t it make you wonder, her disappearing just after Michael’s death?”

  She waited. Silence. “I don’t have the luxury of ‘wondering,’ Doctor. I’m too busy doing police work. Look, it doesn’t change anything. Without signs of a struggle, it’s going down as an accident.”

  She took a breath. “Well, Constable, I have to tell you I’m very uncomfortable with the amount of Valium found in his blood. I think I would’ve noticed if he was addicted. And if he weren’t addicted, he wouldn’t have taken that much at one time.”

  “You’d be surprised at how well people can hide things. It’s not som
ething you advertise. You know how many alcoholics there are out there and you’d never know it to look at them? And let’s say you’re right, he wasn’t an addict. Maybe he just wanted to take something for his nerves and he underestimated it and took more than he needed. Then before the stuff took effect, he went into the pool, and before you know it…”

  “Isn’t it possible someone drugged him?”

  “Look, Doctor, I don’t want to be rude, but you should leave the policing to the police.”

  “I’m perfectly happy to leave it to the police. I think you should start by speaking to Halina.”

  Pause. “Does she have any reason to want to harm Mr. Oginski?”

  “I don’t know. Isn’t that your job to find out?”

  An audible sigh. “Do you have any idea how many alcohol-related drownings there are each year? They’re heartbreakers, and I know how you feel. You knew the guy and that makes it worse. But I see it all the time. I know it’s hard to accept, but sometimes that’s all we can do.”

  That night Rebecca slept fitfully. The moussaka had been delicious but too heavy for her system, which was still upset from the weekend. Every time she felt herself falling into blessed unconsciousness, some demon would make her turn over and she would be roused yet again into a headachy stupor. This went on until she looked up at a suddenly blue sky and found herself straddling Michael again, pushing down on his chest, pump, pump, pump. She breathed into his mouth, breath in, breath out. This time his eyes were wide open under the goggles. He was staring at her while she worked on him, which made her nervous and glad of the goggles, “Speedo” upside down. Nose not quite right. He blinked behind the transparent plastic of the goggles, his eyes as blue as the sky.

  Rebecca sat bolt upright in bed, gasping for air, astonished at the darkness of her room. It was night, the blue sky was gone, and Michael was dead. But the goddamn goggles! The Speedo logo had been upside down. Did that mean the goggles were upside down? The plastic bridge across the nose too low on his face. She glanced at her clock radio. Nearly three. Too late to call anyone. She would wait until the morning.

  After a few hours of shallow sleep, she sat up in bed and read further into Michael’s manuscript, a chapter made up mostly of letters. When was the last time she had written a letter?