“I see.”
There was a long silence. We both knew what was coming next, and neither of us wanted to be the one to say it. “She wanted to know if the kids could come live with us,” Ivan said finally.
There it was. “And neither of you felt it was appropriate to involve me in this conversation?”
“It was premature. She wanted to talk with me first.”
“What, so you could make a preliminary decision? So the two of you could resolve whatever needs to be resolved and then report back to me?”
“They’re our kids, Martine.”
I’d heard the expression before: seeing red. Who thought that it was literal? I never actually did it until that night: but there it was in front of me, pulsing and angry. Red, red, red. “Your kids? They’re your kids now? After years of parenting them together? After years of not being able to make plans every other weekend, not being able to do anything in the summer that didn’t involve them, not being able to afford things—don’t say you don’t remember that, it’s exactly what was happening when we were first married—because of paying child support and transportation and braces and…” I was having trouble breathing, and running out of English. I do fury much better in French, possibly the only thing I have in common with my boss. I took a deep breath, tried to regroup. “After all that, suddenly, they’re your kids? I’m good enough to cook and care and transport and pay, but not good enough to make decisions affecting their lives—oh, yes, and incidentally, my life, too?”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“That’s exactly what you meant! That’s absolutely precisely what you meant! You don’t give me any warning that it’s what you’re thinking about, you go off and don’t answer your phone and leave me alone to deal with them and let me think all sorts of horrible things, that you were maybe even dead somewhere, and it’s bad enough I have to deal with a murder here—”
“Wait,” he interrupted. “What murder?”
“Don’t even go there! Don’t you dare go there! That has nothing to do with you!” I was shouting and crying at the same time, and I had to stop, I really couldn’t breathe.
“Listen to me.” Ivan grasped my hands in his. “Listen to me. I didn’t know that’s what it was about. Margery called me and asked me to come. She didn’t say why, only that she didn’t want the kids around for the conversation. So I thought that she was probably going to tell me she was sick. There was that hospitalization last year, and I know she’s had some tests done at Mass General … anyway, I thought it was bad news, bad news about her health, which, yeah, might have led ultimately to the same thing, the kids coming to live here, but I didn’t think that far. I thought I should honor what she wanted, they were okay here with you, we could have a conversation and that would be that.”
“And she told you to keep this whole thing secret from me?”
He expelled breath in something like a splutter. “Of course not. But after they told me on the phone—well, you remember, we were with the kids all day, Martine. I didn’t want to make a big deal of it in front of them. I thought I’d call you from Boston, talk with you then.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No, and I’m sorry about that. I really am. First it was Margery—you know how she is, she feels guilt anytime she isn’t the world’s most perfect mother, and she was still going back and forth over the decision. And then I got a call from the casino—”
I could feel the hysteria rising again. “You took calls from the casino but not from me!”
“—and it was an emergency.” “Emergency” is one of the words we respect in each other’s lives. We both work with the public in highly visible positions. We both have jobs that aren’t expected to end at the close of the day. We both acknowledge and accept that, and “emergency” is a word we don’t use lightly. Normally, I would have completely accepted and respected his need to deal with an emergency rather than calling me. But this wasn’t a normal night. “I don’t care if the foutu casino was burning to the ground! I had a right to know! To not worry! I thought you might be dead, and instead you and Margery were talking about your lives, and…” I ran out of steam. The tears that had been vying with my shouting were too overwhelming.
“I’m sorry, Martine,” Ivan said gently. “I should have involved you.”
“Yes,” I sobbed.
“And we’re going to have to talk about it, but not now.”
“No,” I sobbed.
That’s the problem with people, isn’t it? That they will disappoint you. That even Ivan—who by and large is one of the best human beings I’ve ever met—is sometimes stupid, selfish, and completely unaware. I had an inkling that I wasn’t completely easy to get along with all the time, either. But marriage is where you acknowledge that your partner isn’t exactly who or what you want them to be, and you love them anyway. That they can disappoint and you can move on. I knew that, even as I crawled miserably into bed, to nurse the hiccups following in the wake of my meltdown. I knew that we would make it all right.
I just wasn’t yet seeing quite how.
* * *
Monday morning, and the sun was far too bright. I felt as though I’d been up partying all night. I winced at the smallest sound.
And, worse luck, I had to go to work.
Hard to believe everything that had happened over the weekend: it was Thursday when I’d been called in to a meeting and heard Patricia Mason’s story for the first time. I felt as though I’d been living it forever.
Richard was already in and looking disgustingly cheerful. He took one look at me and signaled to Chantal, who kept an espresso machine in the outer office. “Ça n’va pas?” he asked. “What is the matter?”
“An argument with my husband.” I left it at that.
He followed me into my office. “I heard about the murder,” he said. “It was in the newspapers yesterday.”
Of course it would be. We’d gone from a PR coup to being a city in which young women students got killed: that was exactly the way that Jean-Luc would see—and articulate—the situation. And, somehow, it was going to be my fault.
“They’re investigating it,” I said, sitting down.
“And the jewels?”
“It’s been passed on to a pay grade way over our heads,” I told him. “All the way to Ottawa.”
“C’est dommage,” Richard commented. He sat down in one of the chairs facing my desk, elegantly crossing one leg over the other. “You won’t hear from monsieur le maire, though, that’s one good thing.”
“What?” A glimmer of light in a very dark mood. “Why not?” I’d been expecting the summons to already be on my desk.
“He’s in Québec City,” Richard said. “The conference. He left Saturday, will not return until tomorrow or Wednesday.”
“So maybe he doesn’t know?”
Richard sighed and, reaching over, riffled through the piles of paper on my desk. He extracted a copy of the Gazette and held it up for me to see. I sighed. “Okay, so he knows.”
“He knows,” Richard agreed, tossing the paper back on the pile. “But you can be sure that it is not going to ruin his stay at the Château Frontenac.”
The one thing we could count on: the mayor taking care of himself first and foremost. He was probably enjoying a massage at the Payot Institute spa even as we spoke. On the taxpayers’ dollar, of course.
“No,” I agreed. “Nothing could ruin that.” I took a deep breath. “Okay. We need to send out a press release about the murder. Can you get a quote from the city police about how the investigation is going?” It was going nowhere, of course, but they’d find a way to say otherwise. No one wanted the people of—or the visitors to—Montréal thinking there was a mad killer on the loose.
If only they knew that they were perfectly safe in their beds. This particular killer was only interested in one thing. But what? I watched Richard leave and pull the door shut quietly behind him and still I couldn’t move. What did the kille
r gain by eliminating Patricia?
I picked up my smartphone and snapped at the robotic voice to call Julian. “There had to be something she wasn’t telling us,” I said when he answered.
“Good morning to you, too.”
“It just occurred to me. Sometimes people don’t say everything that they should, they assume there will be time later to do it, but maybe in her case there wasn’t. So maybe that’s what we have to find out.”
“Sounds like you’re talking from personal experience.”
“Did that occur to you?”
He sounded like he was talking to an old person. “Yes, Martine. That did occur to me.”
“Oh.” I felt deflated. “So, have you?”
“Have I what?”
“Found out what it was?”
A long sigh. “Not yet, Martine.”
“Will you tell me when you do?”
There was a long pause. “This is a criminal investigation, not a cold case. An active criminal investigation. I’m even on the periphery, for God’s sake.”
“You work best on the periphery,” I reminded him. Julian had somewhat rejected the life his family name and money could have allowed him—or at least put it on hold—yet was never really accepted into the rank and file of city police. Never really one of them. And probably driven to show results more than anyone else on the force because of it.
“Julian,” I said. “The only thing we have going for us is that we know her. Knew her, I mean.” I remembered his energy, the last time the police had shoved him aside, his willingness to follow his own ideas, his own instincts, and where it had led. I wanted that Julian back again. “We should figure out who was following her.” I had, of course, no idea how one might do such a thing.
“I’ve been assigned to pulling her history.” He sounded glum.
“That should take you about five minutes.”
He sighed. “I give up. All right. That guy she saw, that I saw, he may have just caught that bus because it was available and he knew I was onto him.”
“Or he may have caught it because it was familiar, one he usually takes,” I said, nodding, even though he couldn’t see me. “It’s a place to start.”
“Yeah, okay.” His voice was resigned, but I didn’t care. He’d get enthused once we started making some progress.
“I have work to do here,” I said. “What about lunch?”
“You’re just looking for an invitation.” That was better; that was more like Julian.
“Invariably,” I said and laughed.
“All right. One o’clock … at Café Pavé?”
“Parfait.” I was even smiling as I hung up the phone. We were going to get somewhere with this clue; I was sure of it.
I had no idea how wrong I could be.
* * *
She was sitting at the counter at the Hebrew Delicatessen, just three seats down from him. He’d been reading the Gazette, only looked up because the man beside him had knocked his arm standing and reaching into his pocket to pay. So Hans glanced up, reflexively, and his eyes met hers.
In that first sharp brilliant moment, he had to remind himself to breathe.
She smiled, even, a quick, tentative smile, and he didn’t have the courage to return it. But as he ate his smoked-meat sandwich he kept looking at her, his glances surreptitious, drinking in that beauty with each one. The dark hair, the dark eyes, the oval face. The dimple. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, in his entire life. Dark hair in waves that she let tumble down her back. Large gray eyes under dark eyebrows. A small waist and lovely hips and breasts … Hans looked away, shocked at his own thoughts. How could he disrespect such a woman? She was an angel. She was perfection.
On Tuesday, his heart was pounding when he arrived. “The usual?” Bernie asked him, and Hans nodded distractedly. He tried to pay attention to his lunch, to his newspaper, but every time the door opened he looked up, hoping to see the girl, afraid of seeing the girl.
By the time he went back to work, he was exhausted. That night, he sat on the edge of his bed and practiced clever things to say. I haven’t seen you in here before.… No, I would have noticed, someone as beautiful as you … I wonder if you might be free on Friday, there’s this movie.… None of them was particularly clever, he realized. How did you talk to a girl like that?
On Wednesday, he pushed the door open and saw two things at once: the girl was there, and the seat at the counter next to her was empty.
Hans took a deep breath and headed over. This was his chance. This was his opportunity. A girl like this only came around once in a lifetime. He’d manage to find something to say. He’d—“Excuse me!” The woman with the three packages had bumped ahead of him and was putting her bag down on the seat. His seat. She glared at him and Hans backed off, but the girl looked up and saw Hans and this time, when she smiled, he had the good sense to smile back.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Avner was on the telephone.
Chantal stuck her head into my office. “I cannot understand him,” she said. “He doesn’t speak very good French, and he is speaking too quickly.”
“Who is it?”
“I cannot get his name. Something German, it sounds like. He keeps saying, Martine LeDuc, Martine LeDuc. Do you want the call?”
“Why not?”
A few clicks, then a voice. “Ah, so finally it is you on the telephone, I only have to wait to get to the right person. There are layers of people I must speak to first.”
“And bonjour to you, too, Avner.”
“Ah, well, at least she knows my name. The other girl, I think she couldn’t hear so good.”
“The other girl,” I said, “hears perfectly well. She’s francophone. And she doesn’t know your name. What can I do for you?”
“You can tell me maybe why it is that I am sitting in my parlor instead of going to minyan like I should do, every day of my adult life. Every day I go to the shul, no matter how cold, no matter if there is snow, if I wake up, I go. But not today. You can maybe help me with that.”
“Because you don’t have a car?”
A snort of derision. “You think, a car, this is what I need? No. What do I need a car for? I take a bus. Everywhere in Montréal, I take a bus. I can afford a car, yes, I can afford many cars if I want them. But do I want them? Do I want to be in the traffic with a car? There is no need of a car. What I need, I will tell you this: what I need is a nice Jewish daughter-in-law. What I need is mine wife to get better in her head. What I need, is right now a nice bagel from Viatur, and don’t let nobody tell you that Fairmont it’s just as good, that’s a lie. What I need, is to go to minyan.”
“Avner, what’s wrong?”
“Ah, now it is she asks the right questions. What is wrong is why I call you. What is wrong is I think maybe Montréal, it’s not as tolerant as I think. What is wrong is I get the death threat.”
I think I gasped. I know it wasn’t what I was expecting. “What happened, Avner?”
“Tell me this first, Martine. Is this still all right, that I call you Martine?”
“Yes,” I said distractedly. “Go on, Avner.”
“So, yes, Martine, tell me this. She has been killed, the girl with the diamond, the diamond that my father make a replica of in the death camp of Buchenwald?”
I drew in a breath. “Yes. She’s been killed.”
“This is what I think. I don’t look so much at the newspapers, you know, but on the bus, you see all sorts of things. I think I see she is dead. And now at my house I am having my coffee, because my doctor he says, one cup of coffee in the morning, this is all I am permitted now—”
“Avner,” I said.
“Yes, yes. So I am having my coffee and mine Naomi, she comes in, and she has in her hand this thing, it is an envelope, and she says it was in the door. I don’t know how long it’s in the door, me. We don’t go out always by the front door, even though the park, it’s close by, it’s a nice walk, but not every day do we go to
the park.”
I was getting dizzy. “What happened?”
“So the envelope, mine wife Naomi, she says it is in the door. With mine name, Kaspi, on it. Just mine name, that is all, but on the back of the envelope, there it is, the Star of David. Just like that.”
“What was inside the envelope? What did it say?”
“Inside this envelope with mine family name on it, inside this envelope with the Star of David on it, here is the note. It says—here, I read it to you, it is right here in my hand—it says, ‘you are next, death is waiting for you.’ And underneath that, there is another drawing, too.
“Another Star of David?”
“No, Martine, this time, you do not guess so smart. This drawing inside, it is the swastika.”
I suppose I should have seen it coming.
“Stay where you are,” I said to Avner. “I have to call Julian—détective-lieutenant Fletcher—but we’re on our way.”
“Yes, but with this plan, I see a problem.”
“What is it?” I was already reaching for my sweater.
“You do not know my address. Perhaps I can give it to you now?”
Avner, you’re going to be the death of me. “Go ahead.”
I scribbled it on the paper that was topmost in one of the piles on my desk—Hutchinson Street, in Outremont, not in but not far from the Hasidic enclave—and hung up. Quickly I pressed Julian’s digits. “Lunch is off. We’re going to see Avner.”
“Why?”
“He’s had a death threat. And you’re going to just love who it’s from.”
* * *
“A swastika.”
Julian was standing in a cavernous living room in a very large house on a street where you could probably eat off the pavement if you were so inclined. There were paintings on the walls that were probably originals, and probably valuable; the Kaspis clearly lived extremely well. Avner might take the bus, but I’d spotted a Mercedes under the porte-cochère.
Avner’s wife was sitting on a sofa, her face white. Avner surrendered the paper and envelope and then went to sit next to her. “It will be all right,” he said, taking her hand in his.
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