by Mary Jackman
So it wasn’t about drugs, I thought. “Why would Maria trust a complete stranger?”
“She was desperate. Superior Meats was her outlet. Maria would need new connections and the cash, especially since she was unemployed and her father is dependent on her. After the girls became friendly, Inez confided that she was worried about losing her job. When she was hired at one the larger hotels downtown on the condition she had the necessary legal documents, she still didn’t have a work number. She had until the end of the week, before the next payroll, to obtain one or she’d be fired.
“When it came time for her to fill out her employment record she told them she lost her wallet with all her personal information. Companies are being more careful these days. They’d probably been warned about hiring casual labour without valid documentation. They gave her three weeks to complete her personnel file, and then time was up.”
“So that would appear to be a perfect excuse to be shopping for an illegal permit.”
“Maria was very guarded at first, but finally confided she had a card that someone left behind when they moved back to Europe and said there probably wasn’t any harm in borrowing it, you know, temporarily. She warned Inez to keep a low profile and no funny stuff. If she was caught stealing from the hotel rooms she would be put under investigation and a computer trace would reveal the card had been deactivated. Inez would be deported and denied further visitation rights to Canada. All in all, a big can of worms would be opened.”
“Not to mention that Maria would lose a valuable card number.”
“Yes, Inez made up a story about knowing others in the same situation. Said she knew a lot of people who wanted to know where to get instant work status even if it cost a lot. Maria was probably testing the waters with Inez at first, pretending to have only one card in her possession. Finally she confided she might be willing to help for a small fee of five hundred dollars. When she didn’t show at the hall to make the exchange, Inez forced her locker open hoping she’d discover the social security cards. Instead, she found Maria stuffed inside.”
“Oh my, gosh, David. That’s horrible.”
“I don’t think she’d ever seen a dead body before. That stuff is for hardened homicide detectives like me. She’s traumatized.”
I paused for a moment, forcing the image out of my mind. “I told you that the apron was in the store downstairs. Why are you in Louise’s apartment? Something happened in there before we arrived. Did someone report a disturbance?”
“Yes, in a manner of speaking. Mrs. Vieira called and has issued a complaint. She says Mrs. Kozinski attacked her.”
“I was afraid that might happen. That’s why we went over there.”
“There’s that ‘we’ again …”
“It’s just a friend visiting for a couple of days, don’t worry about it. I asked him to come to Louise’s apartment with me because I couldn’t get in touch with you. I called her before the contest to find out how she felt regarding the sale of her house to developers. Tony bought out Louise’s store property in an estate sale and along with the other properties it would make a nice chunk of land to build on. Why would Cecilia go over there when she must have known how upset Louise would be about losing her family home?”
“Are you suggesting she went over there looking for trouble? Mrs. Vieira has accused Mrs. Kozinski of aggravated assault. She came down to the station in person and showed us her bruises.”
“As strange as it sounds, I think Louise was expecting her visit. I don’t know what took place, but the apartment was a mess and no one was there. I left everything that we found on the kitchen table for you.”
“We’re looking at the counterfeit cards now. I assume that was Tony Vieira’s will torn up. Was that all you found?”
“Yup, and you can thank me later.”
“I’ve notified the feds and we have a BOLO out on Louise for questioning in regards to assault and possibly murder. Do you think she killed Maria?”
“She was at Toscano’s, wasn’t she?”
“Do you believe an old lady like Mrs. Kozinski was responsible for all these murders, first Tony, then Albright, and now Maria? Don’t forget someone was setting up your chef, as well.”
“It is hard to believe, isn’t it? But don’t be fooled by Louise Kozinski’s appearance. She’s not that old, and hey … wait a minute. You just said Daniel was set up. Does that mean you think he and his sister are innocent?”
“Daniel’s apron tested clean, so I’ve released them both. I could charge Meriel with lying to the police, but I probably won’t pursue it.”
“Thanks, Winn.” He turned that around fast. Now I was thanking him.
“You’re welcome. Now let me finish my job.”
I had no sooner laid down the phone when it rang again. I was shocked to hear the voice on the other end.
“Liz, you’ve got to help me.”
Doesn’t anybody say hello anymore? “Louise?”
“Tony’s wife is going to kill me for the deed to my building.”
“That’s a very serious accusation,” I said.
“It’s true. Tony left me the store in his will. It reverted back to my ownership if he died.”
“You should talk to the police, they’re looking for you.”
“That cop, the one we met in my store the day after Tony was killed? He likes you. I could tell the way he looked at you. And he came to your rescue that night in the alley when those thugs came after you. Talk to him for me.”
I wondered how she knew about the intended mugging, but word spread fast around the market. Unless there was another reason, like she witnessed the whole thing from her upstairs window and didn’t want to get involved, or on the contrary, hoped I’d be killed.
“Why would he leave you the store, Louise? It seems strange to me with his wife still alive. I assumed his wife would stand to inherit it all.”
“So did I. Imagine my surprise when I saw the will. I was sleeping with her husband for the last five years. I think she knew about our affair, but pretended not to care. Cecilia was all about appearances. She was only interested in his money, not making love to a butcher.”
“But you were, Louise?”
“I wasn’t at first. He dangled the forfeited mortgage over my head. If I slept with him he would go easy on the rent. At first I went along with it because I had nowhere else to go. I was so lonely for company after my husband died and I grew to like his attention. He wasn’t all bad. I never went hungry. And we were the same age and could talk about old times. I made him feel like a man. She didn’t. She belittled him, made fun of the way the girls called him Mr. Tony. Said it was undignified for a businessman. Tony came over last week and said if anything ever happened to him, I would get my property back. He left it to me in the will. I never dreamed he was telling the truth. When I saw her at the door I was afraid to let her in, but she insisted.”
“So, did you have a nice visit?” She didn’t know I’d already been to her apartment and seen the state of the place.
“It started off that way. Then she accused me of knowing about the conditions of the will all along, that I talked Tony into it and then murdered him to get the property back. She offered me a cash settlement if I moved out and I told her I would never give her the satisfaction. She got very angry and started yelling at me. I ran down the stairs and left her in the apartment.”
“You left her behind.”
“Yes, I had to. I was frightened. I still am.”
“Why did you go to the dance?”
“I wanted to talk to Maria. Tony said Maria knew everything.”
“About what, those cards we found at your place? Were you in on it?”
“What cards?” She issued a loud audible sigh and said, “I never know what anyone’s talking about anymore and I never got a chance to talk to Maria. She was already dead.”
chapter seventeen
* * *
I closed the office door behind me, whistled nonchalantly
past a couple of ghouls loitering under the exit sign, and then bolted down the stairs into the restaurant. I had mixed feelings about Louise. She said she was on her way back home and I agreed to meet her there before Winn and his posse could take her in for questioning.
It was only midnight, but everyone had gone. Years ago, when smoking was permitted, we often stayed open until one or two in the morning. Drink orders flew from the bar, one more drink, one more cigarette, one more cigarette, one more drink. No one wanted to leave. The waiters were kept busy lighting cigarettes, exchanging brimming ashtrays, and providing endless change for the cigarette machine downstairs. At closing time, stubborn customers had to be pried from the booths, and the waiters were often forced to don their coats and turn off all the lights before the squatters took the hint.
Rick left one night, pretending to lock the customers in by mistake. He went back ten minutes later, just as they were pressing their faces against the glass, trying to catch a lone passerby’s attention. Ah, the good ol’ smoking days. As a business person, the loss of income was bad; as a health-conscious mother, I dealt with it.
I checked that the tables were set up for tomorrow, the bar wiped down, and the beer fridge restocked. I tried the front door. It was secure, the door alarm set.
The kitchen was empty, too. The pots and pans had been washed and put away, the floors mopped, and the stainless-steel counters sprayed with disinfectant. Rick would make sure the refrigerator doors were closed, the gas knobs were turned off tightly on the Garlands, and the lids on the flour and sugar bins were secure. I saw that the push-bar on the back door was chained and the side window’s cage was locked in place. I was ready to leave.
Just as I was walking back toward the front dining room, past the stairwell, I heard a loud crash come from the basement.
I hollered from the top of the stairs, “Rick is that you? What are you doing down there?”
Kitty answered with a loud mew.
Darn. It sounded like glass. She must have knocked something off a shelf. I should clean it up before she stepped in it or insects and other various vermin were attracted to the contents. While I was down there I’d have a look at the new tail Rick said she had acquired. The growing collection of animal tails had begun to weigh on my mind.
The stairs led down into a vestibule where the public washrooms were located. EMPLOYEES ONLY marked a door that opened into the basement. Two of the foundation walls in the small lobby were the original limestone rock. The wall had suffered little from the flood, but the drywall surrounding the bathrooms had dissolved and had to be completely rebuilt. After it took two cement trucks to fill in the gaping hole where the water main had broken under the street and terrified our dishwasher, Abdul. The professional opinion of the building inspector was the foundation would still be standing for another hundred years.
When I first took over the restoration of the restaurant I decided to leave the stone walls exposed. I’m glad I did.
Rick’s briefcase was sitting outside the men’s washroom door, indicating he hadn’t left after all. The tail could wait another day. Louise was waiting at home for me.
“Rick, are you in the washroom? I thought I heard you down here. I think Kitty broke something, but if you’ve got it covered I’m going to leave, okay?”
He didn’t answer. I pushed the bathroom door open a little. Immediately, I was overwhelmed by the smell.
“Rick?”
I knew he wasn’t in there; I couldn’t see his feet under the stall door. I pushed the door open the rest of the way and stepped inside, holding my nose. The urinal drain was plugged by one of the melted deodorant pucks, leaving an inch of yellow liquid pooling in its porcelain bowl. I would have to remind myself to fish out the shrunken slivers from the drain tomorrow. Someday I’ll make a reality video and send it to all the naive students in schools around the world seeking glamour and fortune in the hospitality business.
I opened the basement fire door. I couldn’t see anything broken and decided I was probably mistaken about the source of the crash. The hundred-year-old pipes rattled and pinged, the ancient wooden beams creaked, echoing throughout the building.
After the flood receded, and I mean that quite literally, the ground had absorbed so much water that three feet of silt and slimy mud was left behind. The smell of oil permeated the spot where the two furnace tanks had been ripped out and smashed against one another. Except for the eight-by-ten, room-sized refrigerator, everything had to be rebuilt or replaced. We had to disinfect the walk-in and the compressor was replaced, but the unit was solidly built and had withstood the flood. Everything else was ruined. Hard to believe water damage is so irreparable. Water covers everything, seeping into the smallest crevice.
“Hey Rick, are you in here?” I heard a muffled sound. I went in and stood quietly. I spotted a broken mason jar on the floor. A few old rusty nails had spilled out and I picked them up one by one in case Kitty stepped on one. A wrench was leaning against the wall. It looked like it belonged to Bill, our young, tattooed repairman. He probably dropped it last week when he fixed the compressor and didn’t notice. I put it on the shelf beside the nails.
Two brand-new gas furnaces at the far end of the basement kept the upstairs tenants warmer last winter, but in the process burned over a thousand dollars of fuel a month. Kitty had made a cozy hideaway behind one of the new furnaces and I decided to head for her box of tails. I bent down a little to get a better look. The lights went out. The box quickly disappeared as did everything else, including my hands, which I was holding up in front of me to see how dark it was. It was bloody dark. And I wasn’t alone. Someone was in the basement with me. I was getting tired of this. If Rick jumped out and scared me, I was going to kill him.
“Cut it out, Rick. Rick? Is that you?” Whether he scared me or not, I really hoped it was.
“Hello, my friend.”
“Louise?”
“Can I get you anything, my friend, perhaps another free sample?”
I could barely hear her. Her voice was raspy, almost a whisper.
“Is that you, Louise? It doesn’t sound like you. I thought we agreed to meet at your apartment.”
“I changed my mind.”
“You wanted my help? I promise to put in a good word for you with the police.”
“It’s too late for that.”
“Don’t try anything funny, I know kung fu.”
I heard a muffled laugh. I would have laughed along with her, but was afraid of peeing myself. She was slowly moving closer. She would have to be careful in the dark. The dark, it was the one thing that might save me.
A tiny rebuilt staff washroom with a separate change room attached, where the kitchen people could change into their whites, was on my right. A floor-to-ceiling shelving unit holding all manner of linen and shelves containing dried goods was on my left. Paper supplies were stacked in cartons beside a small collection of lumber remnants, and pails of industrial cleaners and cans of paint resided in one corner. I could find my out blindfolded. I’ve had the lights turned off on me so many times either as a joke or by mistake that I’m used to the dark. I admit I broke a toe trying to find my way out of the staff washroom one night after Manuel, thinking everyone had left, had turned out the lights. He said he never heard such obscenities and knew it was me. “How flattering,” I told him. The point was that I’ve had to feel my way from one end to the other of the debris-filled cellar numerous times.
The only difference this time was the exit sign over the door was out, too. The fire code requires the sign to be on a separate circuit in case there is an emergency. That meant Louise had planned this meeting ahead of time. She could have slipped in here during a busy lunch-hour rush and no one would have noticed. We don’t lock the door to the basement anymore. Rick and I have had to remove the door from its hinges so many times after someone inadvertently locked and lost the key that we thought it was in our best interest to remove the lock altogether. Consequently, we told no one t
o leave any valuables down here. Even shoes are brought upstairs and hidden behind the bar. Thieves steal shoes if there’s nothing else to take, especially expensive athletic shoes. Easy, pull the old ones off, put the new ones on, and walk out.
“I knew it was you Louise. I told Detective Winn how I figured it out.”
“I’m sure you did. Too bad your boyfriend is going to find your body when he gets here.”
“Why kill me? I didn’t do anything. I like you. I thought we were friends.” I was stalling for time, slowly moving toward the corner where we kept bits of lumber. I was hoping to find something with which to protect myself.
“Stop moving. I’m going to find you, I’ve just been playing. I found a flashlight upstairs in your kitchen. Handy, I never thought of bringing one along myself.”
She turned on the flashlight and aimed it directly in my face. I felt like a deer trapped in the headlights.
“I’m going to tell you a little story and then I have to go. I was that sick bastard’s whore long before his pretty new wife came along. Tony dangled the mortgage over my head, telling me as long as I slept with him I could keep the store for a reduced rent. My own father’s store, can you believe that bastard?”
“But you said you grew to like him.”
“Shut up. When the bank foreclosed on the mortgage after my father died, and my husband became ill, they let him have it. I almost died of shame. I thought of moving, but where would I go? I’m fifty-seven now. After my husband passed away, I was alone. My friends are the market sellers. I’ve lived over the store my whole life.”
“Of course, if Tony sold his properties for condos, then you would be forced to leave.”
“Correct. The councillor turned out to be as evil as him, bringing in rats and protecting the crackheads’ legal right to squat. What about my rights? Two of a kind, they were. Have you ever heard of the saying, ‘Dogs smell their own dirt’? Well, they were rolling in it. They deserved to die.”
