by Anna Porter
“Why?”
“There were glass shards in Singer’s chest.”
Thirteen
MRS. SINGER’S SENSE of outrage at her husband’s sudden death had not abated by the time she arrived in Toronto to identify the body. David, who had the unhappy task of accompanying her from the airport to the morgue, was even grateful for her sustained fury. From past experience, he knew that anger he could deal with, grief he could not. In Homicide you get your share of both.
Mrs. Singer was shorter than he remembered, shorter even than the diminutive Yan. A slight, compact woman with wavy white hair piled high on her head, a silver fox coat that boosted her narrow shoulders, a heavily lined face that had been exposed to tropical sun. She wore too much makeup for anyone to tell if she had been crying. When Yan pulled back the sheet, she drew her mouth and eyebrows into a grimace of acute pain, touched her fist to her stomach or heart with a sharp intake of breath, nodded, turned on her heel, and walked, very erect, out of the examining room. David followed her outside.
At the door, she swiveled around and looked up at him, dry-eyed. With one hand she clasped the collar tight around her neck, against the wind and, he thought, for comfort. The other hand disappeared between the folds of her coat. “I suppose there will be some formalities,” she said. “I should like to attend to them right away. Then I want to take Harvey home.”
“Papers to sign. A few more questions. Shouldn’t take long,” David said. “Perhaps you’d like to take a rest now...”
“I would not,” Mrs. Singer said firmly.
“We have booked a room for you at the Four Seasons.”
“I have no intention of staying in this godforsaken city one more second than absolutely necessary,” she said, her voice rising. “The arrangements are made, the plane is booked, the undertaker is waiting. Now why don’t we just get on with it?”
She was silent all the way up Yonge Street to the thoroughly unremarkable building Homicide occupies near Woodlawn Avenue, across from the fashionable gourmet food store Parr patronized for special occasions. Giannini had come up from 52 Division with all the forms.
She did not remove her coat while filling them out and answering the routine questions. David wondered why neither her son nor her daughter-in-law accompanied her on the journey. A nasty duty for anyone alone, but particularly for a woman of her age. When he asked about it, she said she was perfectly capable of handling her own affairs. Family and friends would attend the funeral the next day. She could think of no reason to subject them all to this. Could he?
She had brought a dark suit for the body to travel in, a clean shirt with his initials embroidered on the cuff. She had not brought shoes because David had omitted to tell her that Harvey’s were booked into evidence and that, in any event, he had promised to return them to the Indian when the investigation was over.
He and Brother Twelve had managed to establish an alibi for the night of February 26th, after all. Between 10 P.M. and 1 A.M. on the 27th, they had been seen by seven different constables from 52 Division, sleeping on the grille next to what used to be Julie’s Mansion midway up Jarvis Street. At least three of the constables had requested the two men to move on, found them unable to do so, and left them there. The owner of the new restaurant at Julie’s was known to be kind to vagrants and hadn’t filed a complaint.
There had been no stolen Jaguar reports that night, or since.
“Was it unusual for Mr. Singer to go for trips without telling you in advance?” Constable Giannini asked ingenuously. He had been working on a theory of Singer-as-philanderer. A crime of passion, maybe.
“He had never done it before, if that’s what you mean,” Mrs. Singer replied indignantly.
“Was there anything unusual about his departure on the 26th of February?” David asked.
“Not that I noticed.”
“Can you describe your morning for us?”
“Do you imagine this is going to help find who killed him?” She was looking at David with undisguised animosity.
“Possibly,” he replied patiently. “I know these questions must seem trivial and some are painful to answer, but you must recognize that our purpose is to serve justice, and I assume you want the same.” He sounded pompous even to himself and Giannini could not suppress a wince, but David was a believer in verbal cushions for the bereaved. Inexplicably, they worked.
Gloria Singer was no exception. She now described Harvey’s morning without protest. They had woken up at their usual time, 7 A.M. It was still dark, and she had let the dog out onto the balcony. Harvey had put on the water for coffee. She had bought an automatic espresso-maker at Christmas, but never learned how to use it. She was scared of the hot steam. That’s why Harvey made coffee. She had brought in the New York Times from the doormat. Harvey had dressed.
“Was there anything unusual in the way he dressed that day?”
“No.”
“He wore rather expensive shoes, near new.”
“He liked to dress well.”
“Always?”
“Since we retired in 1982. Left the business to Melwyn and Elaine. Harvey wanted our son to have the challenge of making his own way. We were going to enjoy the money we’d saved.” She stopped for a sharp intake of breath, but did not break down.
Giannini offered to get her coffee, which she accepted.
“He had his suits made of English wool, his shirts came from Japan and Italy. Bought his shoes at Dack’s. And he bought an apartment on Central Park. Why shouldn’t he? Till ’82, we had lived in the Bronx.”
“He must have made a considerable amount of money, then?” Parr asked cautiously.
“You could say that,” Mrs. Singer announced. “And we didn’t think we’d live forever to spend it.” She slammed her coffee cup onto the desk, spilling some of the black liquid over Giannini’s papers. She whispered something under her breath that sounded like “Damn him.”
David waited for her to recover her composure, then asked if she’d go on with the events of February 26th.
After he dressed, Harvey had joined his wife in the kitchen. They read the paper, talked.
“What did you talk about?” David asked.
“Nothing special. A dinner party. The kids. Koch’s speech. I asked if he’d read the brochures on Venice I’d left for him next to the bed. We were going to Venice on the way to Israel next month. We went in ’85 and ’83 as well. Every second year. We had planned once to retire to Israel, but Harvey couldn’t stand the climate. He didn’t like the heat. And he loved New York.”
She had started to relax, and that was dangerous. Her eyes became damp as she stared out the window.
“Then he put on his coat and left,” David said quickly.
Gloria Singer stiffened again, swallowed. “No,” she said. “He went to the study. I washed the dishes. Let the dog in. Made the bed. He came into the bedroom to tell me he was going out. Must have been near eight by then, because I’d turned the light off. There was some sun, I think. He said he’d be back in the evening.”
“Did you ask him where he was going?”
“Yes. But I was annoyed he was leaving for the day without warning, I’m not sure how it came out. I’d planned to go over to the Nobels’ that afternoon for bridge. I was sure I had told him earlier. He’d been rather...preoccupied the past few weeks.”
“Preoccupied? How?” Giannini asked eagerly.
“Just preoccupied,” Mrs. Singer said irritably.
“Was he ignoring plans you had made?” David asked.
“Yes, he was. I don’t know what, he was worrying about something. Week before, he forgot we had theater tickets. Started to forget his bridge evenings. He even forgot my birthday in January. Hadn’t done that once in 30 years. He bought me this coat to make up for it.” She stroked the furry sleeve affectionately. “Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.”
“Where did he say he was going?”
“I thought he said something about his accountant. Fred Kaplan di
d all Harvey’s numbers. Last time he’d been down to see Kaplan, they had lunch and went to a ball game in the afternoon. He didn’t get back till past midnight.” In such circumstances Gloria Singer would be the kind of woman who did not bother to camouflage her opinion.
“Did he go to Mr. Kaplan’s?” Giannini asked.
“No. And Kaplan wasn’t expecting him. He was the first person I called when Harvey didn’t return that night. When did he get to Toronto?”
“He came in on American at 2 P.M.,” Giannini said. “He was booked to return at 10 P.M. the same night.”
Gloria Singer shook her head. “Doesn’t make any sense. No goddam sense at all.”
Giannini nodded sympathetically. It didn’t make sense to him either.
“You’re certain you never heard him mention Paul Zimmerman?” asked David.
“If he did, I don’t remember. I found those bits from the papers in his desk drawer. Only reason I even bothered to look twice was the black ribbon. Nothing else had a black ribbon around it. Have you asked the Zimmermans if Harvey was up here seeing them?”
“Not yet,” David said. “As I said, they have had a death in the family, too. Any other unusual things in the drawers?”
She shook her head. “Odds and ends, photographs, old tobacco. Before he started on cigars, he used to roll his own. Matchboxes. Some little things he’d collected in the old country when we were there last year. Memorabilia, I’d call it.”
She was unaware of any new friends her husband might have acquired, new habits—except for his forgetfulness; there had been no mysterious parcels or letters through the mail, no unusual phone calls. Nothing.
For identification, she had brought along Harvey’s driver’s license, his Blue Cross card, and his naturalization certificate. He had become a U.S. citizen on June 1, 1950. He had no birth certificate. That had been lost in the war, as had his parents and most of his relatives. He was in Auschwitz from 1944 to 1945.
David detailed Giannini to accompany her and her husband’s body to Air Canada. He drove to the Bridle Path.
***
There was no guard at the entrance to the Zimmerman estate, and the gates were open. The long, winding driveway was lined with tall poplars, their nude black branches trimmed into mushroom shapes. The ground-floor windows of the mammoth house were man-height and -width, ballooning out of the main structure and protected by wrought-iron spikes of a mid-18th-century British variety, an exaggerated version of the Queen’s own at Buckingham Palace. The overall effect was somewhat bizarre.
He parked at the side where the road widened to the size of a tennis court. There were two other cars snug against the flowerbeds, one a Jeep Cherokee Chief, the other a white Ferrari. He walked around the Ferrari, admiring its glistening lines. He could almost smell the fresh leather of the soft bucket seats. Now there, David thought, is a true work of art.
The garage itself jutted out some twenty feet from the main building. Two of its triple doors were shut. Through the third, David could make out the outlines of an old Rolls Silver Cloud and a saucy little Morgan convertible, all battened down for the winter. As he came closer, he saw a young, broad-shouldered man in dungarees bending over the hood of the Rolls, polishing.
“Hello,” David called out cheerfully.
The man straightened, put the cloth down on the hood, and glowered at him. His blond hair was cropped short and square. His pinched, red-nosed face was much too small for his bulging neck muscles and sloping shoulders. A bodybuilder, David thought. It takes all kinds. “Deliveries at the back,” the youth told him. “Service entrance.”
“I am not delivering,” David said. “I’m a policeman. Can I talk to you for a second?”
“What about?” He had not become any friendlier.
“Your name, for starters.”
“Why?”
David showed him his identification. “Detective Inspector David Parr,” he said. “And yours?”
“Michael Ward,” the young man admitted reluctantly. “I have no trouble with the police. I work here, see? Part-time, keeping the cars spick-and-span. That’s me job, see?”
Why was he so defensive? “When is the last time you took care of the XJ-S, Michael?” David asked, calculatedly adding a hint of menace.
“I didn’t bloody steal it,” Michael snapped. “They shipped it off to Bermuda last weekend, dammit. Never stole nothing in two years and you know it.” He’d backed up against the Rolls, feet braced, head down, like a bull trying to decide whether to charge.
Been to jail then. Theft?
“Of course you didn’t,” David said softly, knowingly. A trick he had perfected years ago. “All I asked is when you cleaned the Jaguar last.”
“I dunno. Last week,” Michael shouted. “What’s it to you?”
“Think now, Michael, can you place the time more accurately?” David persisted.
Michael was looking down at his toes, shoulders hunched forward, shaking his head from side to side. “Perhaps I can help you in some way, Officer,” asked a well-modulated voice from the shadows.
The side door connecting the garage to the house had opened and a tall thin man emerged, dressed almost entirely in black. Black trousers, black patent-leather shoes, and buttoned-up black tunic that accentuated his thinness. With his sparse hair, pale and narrow face, long lantern jaw, and flat forehead, he reminded David of an old, black-and-white movie figure of Count Dracula, Max Schreck’s version. Approaching slowly and steadily, his arms and torso stiff and immobile, he appeared to be wheeling along.
David was so fascinated that he didn’t respond at once to the polite query. The man had come up to the Rolls and interposed himself between David and Michael Ward. He repeated his question, this time putting more emphasis on the “I.”
“I was asking about the Jaguar,” David said finally.
“You were?” The man raised one thin eyebrow. “Why?”
“We’ve found pieces of an XJ-S on the scene of an accident last Thursday night, the 26th,” David said. Potential witnesses often forget everything when you mention the word “murder.” “I was inquiring about the whereabouts of the Zimmermans’ Jaguar that night. And on the following day.”
“As far as I know, it was in the garage. However, you could ask Mrs. Zimmerman directly. She is in Bermuda, but I would be pleased to furnish you with the telephone number. We had the car shipped to Bermuda last Sunday. That would have been the 1st. The day Mr. Zimmerman died.”
“And who might you be?” David asked, pulling out his notebook.
“Arnold Nagy. I’m the general manager of the household, and Mr. Zimmerman’s butler,” and with a tasteful sigh, “may he rest in peace.”
“Was the car used only by the Zimmermans?”
“Yes. Including Mr. Zimmerman’s son, when he is in town.”
“I was about to ask Michael here if he noticed some damage to the car on Friday.”
“He didn’t work Friday.”
“Saturday, then, or Sunday, before it was shipped off?”
Michael had returned to vigorously polishing the Rolls. He made no effort to answer. Arnold filled in for him, as before: “He didn’t work those two days either. He had vacation time coming and took extra days around the weekend. He came back Tuesday morning.”
“Could someone other than the family have gained entrance to the garage during those four days and taken the Jaguar out?” David didn’t bother with Michael any more.
Arnold thought about that for a while. “Yes,” he said, “I expect that would be possible, but chancy. We usually have a guard at the gate. He would certainly have noticed such an irregularity.”
“Where do you have the Jag repaired? Normally.”
“At Downtown Fine Cars.”
“And who would take the car there?”
“Geoff Aronson, Mr. Zimmerman’s chauffeur.”
“I’d like to speak to him.”
“I’m afraid that will not be possible. He is in Bermuda, wit
h the cook and Mrs. Zimmerman’s maid. Perhaps it would be best if you asked Mrs. Zimmerman all these questions, Officer. Though, frankly, unless it is frightfully urgent, it would show some respect for her bereavement if you could defer the call for a few days.” Arnold spoke English as though he had learned it from old books.
He did not invite David into the house while he fetched the phone number, and he made sure, subtly, that David was not left alone with Michael Ward. He sent the young bodybuilder down to the greenhouse with an errand.
“How long have you been with the Zimmermans?” David asked when Arnold returned.
“Twenty-two years this winter.”
“Did you ever meet Mr. Singer? Harvey Singer from New York, an associate of Mr. Zimmerman, perhaps?”
“Singer...,” Arnold repeated thoughtfully. “Hmm. Can’t quite place the name, though maybe...” For a second, David was sure Arnold was going to say yes. But what he quite distinctly said was, “No. I don’t believe so, Officer.”
Nevertheless, David was sufficiently encouraged by the hesitation that he decided to call on Deidre Thomas. She was located on the all-marble top floor of the Monarch Building. She had been Paul Zimmerman’s secretary for the past eight years. She was an unusually curvaceous 50, with a wide red leather belt connecting the ample halves, both of which she had chosen to accentuate by wearing a tight-fitting blue knitted dress. She smelled of expensive cologne. It was her face that betrayed the 50 years, though she had applied considerable skill to disguising the fact.
She seemed pleased to see David. Since Zimmerman’s death she had been working hard, organizing masses of files for Philip Masters. “Death,” she remarked matter-of-factly as she led David down to her office, “requires an enormous amount of paperwork.”
David said he thought that would very much depend on the amount of money you left behind, which, in his own case, would not pose a serious problem.
Miss Thomas giggled conspiratorially. “Mr. Z. certainly took good care of me in his will,” she said. “Two years’ guaranteed pay and no obligation to stay beyond the month it’ll likely take to get all this sorted out.”
