Planned Coincidence: A Thrilling Suspense Novel (International Mystery & Crime)

by Dana Arama

"I'm going to put the mattresses down in the exercise room. One hour, okay?"

  I gave him a sloppy salute. Arm muscles I never knew existed ached. He smiled and went on his way. He was taking control of my training pace again. Through the window, I saw him carrying two of the four mattresses towards the club house.

  I continued checking my mail.

  There was a letter from overseas. It was in a large white envelope and was addressed to Dan in English. I opened it and out dropped two letters. One was a form from the Municipality of Paris detailing a debt, and the other was a letter from a lawyer representing the City of Paris. I tried to remember our last visit to that city. Did we receive a traffic ticket we forgot to pay? I could not remember such an event. I read the attorney’s letter sentence by sentence. Finally, I took the two letters and went to the study. This was not something I could clarify while perched on a kitchen stool.

  In the office, I sat down at the desk and delved into the letter’s legal language. I finally made out that Dan had a debt to the Municipality of Paris of thousands of euros regarding municipal taxes that had not been paid for three years. I calculated how long this had been going on for and called Ohad, my family lawyer.

  "I can’t believe he bought a property in Paris," I said after we exchanged pleasantries. "It must be a mistake."

  "It's not a mistake. I handled the purchase and transferred the money to the seller.”

  I thought hard, trying to remember if Dan had ever told me about this purchase. Nothing rang a bell. "At that time, we were short of funds, and our financial future looked very uncertain." My memory of Dan sitting hunched up on the patio came to my mind. I tried to remember the details of our conversation about how tight our budget was and our subsequent phone conversation while I was driving back to Tel Aviv. Dan had not offered so much as a hint about a future influx of money.

  I heard a timid knock on the door and went to open it, the phone still to my ear. "A few more minutes," I whispered to Guy. “Go on,” I told Ohad.

  He told me what he knew.

  "An apartment? He bought an apartment in the worst part of Paris?" I could not believe my ears. I imagined my smart husband mingling with the thousands of Muslims and Africans who inhabited that quarter. Why would he do that? After all, an ordinary person does not enter that area unless they must. This move of his at that time of our lives was less logical to me than if he had bought a luxury apartment in the city center.

  "Apart from the apartment, I’m not aware of him investing in anything else," Ohad added casually. "I’ve no idea what he used it for, but I have the exact address if you want to go there. I tried to tell you after the event, but you weren’t in any position to take it in.”

  "It's okay. Do you have a key?”

  "No. He didn’t give me anything else.”

  “Who else knows about this place? Are there any co-owners?” With my whole heart, I hoped he wouldn’t say “Nathaniel.” Avner and Lili would have also given me a hard time, but Nathaniel would just be impossible.

  "It isn’t listed as part of the company's assets." He hesitated before adding, "I think Dan chose to keep it to himself."

  I felt a wave of love for Dan wash through my soul. My darling, how you saved me from dealing with them, I thought.

  "Thanks, Ohad. For now, please find out more about the debt from the attorney of the City of Paris. I guess I'll have to go there."

  "Will you also come to see about this bank vault?"

  I stood stock still. The vault?

  "What vault?" I asked cautiously. How many secrets did you hide from me, Danny?

  "Below my office, at the bank; he rented it on the same day we closed the acquisition documents."

  "Oh. I understand. Thanks, Ohad, we'll be in touch." I did not add anything more. I did not know where Ohad’s loyalties lay.

  I put down the phone and went to find Guy.

  "You’re very careful," I said as he punched in the code for the pool door.

  He looked at me quizzically.

  "Although you only left for a moment," I explained myself, "you went to the trouble of locking up again."

  "You don’t need more than a moment to enter even the most protected place. There’s no reason to leave openings when we know that danger is around."

  “Speaking of caution, we completely forgot that I was supposed to work out in the water today.”

  "I didn’t forget. Two things helped me plan today's workout. One is that you’re not old and heavy, as the friend who advised me had assumed. And the second thing is that we must hurry with defense and attack training. We'll get to the aqua exercises soon. They’re good for building muscle mass.”

  "They’re also good for dealing with the heat," I said as I went to turn on the air conditioner.

  "Yes. But the air conditioner is good for that too.”

  ***

  The mattresses had been put in their place and I was well into half an hour of warm-up exercises. Despite the cool air, I still was sweating, but less than yesterday. The sweat did not bother me, but my physical pain was.

  "Each lesson begins with the basics,” Guy told me. We stood facing each other on a soft surface. He took a position that I remembered from the day before. "It looks like this is an attack," he continued, "but we first have to learn to defend ourselves. In the coming days, you'll see how these movements serve you against knife attacks, strangulation, etc. You'll need these in order to defend yourself against any form of attack."

  "So, is this a method of attack or not?”

  "This is the moment when you shock the attacker and run away. It doesn’t last more than a second. The whole idea is for you to act aggressively, inflicting enough damage that it’ll take him more time to recover than you do.” His expression was serious, almost severe. "The whole point is for you to feel really good about one or two exercises and you'll see that they serve you in a variety of situations." A smile flitted across his face. I was beginning to get used to this fragment of a smile poking through the tough mask he wore. He went to the cupboard where he kept the equipment he had brought from home. "Let's try it with a training knife. Notice: when the blow’s directed toward the groin, take your body back or else the knife will cut you."

  I felt the touch of a blunt knife near my groin. I could easily imagine the damage if it was a real knife. But it was not, and the feeling of him approaching my body gave me a sense of excitement and danger. I hoped he did not feel it radiate off me.

  “There’s never a good defense without an immediate offense. That is, when you’re trying to hit me, I protect myself with one hand." He raised his hand up in a protective gesture he had taught me. "And, I attack with the other hand.” His other hand surged forward quickly and struck an imaginary opponent. He then looked at me. "Here, you have to remember that this is a battle for life." I had nearly felt comfortable enough trying to stop the attacks, but now the exercise had become much more complicated. Although I had muscle pain, I continued to practice.

  I finally felt almost complete exhaustion. I waved to him, indicated I needed another short break. He took the opportunity to turn on the light. "I didn’t notice it was getting dark,” I said.

  "I feel like you’ve lost concentration. Let’s finish for today."

  "It's not that I lost my concentration," I replied. "It’s that my thoughts are completely focused on something else."

  "No problem, we’ll continue tomorrow. When your head’s clear, it is easier to solve problems.”

  I left quickly and went immediately to the office. I did not know if it was to get away from what I felt when I was glued to him or to find the paperwork to get me into the secret vault. I knew probing into past documents was going to be like peeling open a deep wound that had only just began to heal. I had no choice. It had to be done. The way to the light was apparently through a series of dark tunnels. Exposing Dan’s secrets was one of many I needed to traverse.

  ***

  It was eleven-thirty when I went down to
my comfortable chair. A narrow band of light coming from under the suite’s closed door and the muffled sounds of television made it clear that Guy was still awake. Quietly, I went to the television cabinet drawer and pulled out my notebook. Its leather cover added a cinematic touch to the detailed list I’d compiled within it.

  I sat in my armchair with the notebook cradled in my hands. I did not open it. I did not need to read it to know what was written there in my own hand: jottings that started with a confused doodle and continued into neat rows with the letter ‘v’ written next to them in small print. To the plans written in it, a variety of movements were now added. I felt the writing of them in my aching muscles. I practiced them in my mind. I lived them in my dreams, when I was able to fall asleep. Now an apartment, the number of a bank vault and a matching key, had been added. I was hoping they would help me solve the mystery behind the fate of my husband and son.

  The TV in Guy's room went silent. I wondered if he was going to sleep. Light briefly flooded the living room as he went to the pool. I almost expected it. Like any other night, he ignored my presence there. I sat in the dark and I watched him. My dolphin jumped into the water smoothly and in those precise, elegant movements, continued to move ahead in the bright water. He swam meter after meter, gracefully touching the wall and doing a precise rotation at the end of each length. His movements had their usual mesmerizing effect on me.

  I woke up with a jolt when I dropped the notebook. The adrenaline alone was not enough to keep me awake. The thin strip of light was gone. I glanced at the illuminated clock. It was after two-thirty. I picked up the notebook from the carpet and went upstairs. I did not feel safe to leave it in the living room. I had already formulated a plan to get me into the vault. In the wrong hands, it could put me in jail. Tomorrow, I'll lock it away, I promised myself. It’s too late now.

  But the next day, I had other things to do.

  Chapter 10

  Tel Aviv hit me hard. My long estrangement from it had managed to make me forget its frenetic, insolent, flirty, impatient human beings. Double parking on every street, long-legged women in sandals and miniskirts, cafés filled with visitors.

  "You’re looking around like a tourist." The sunglasses hid Guy’s eyes, but I recognized the amused smile at the corner of his mouth.

  "And you look like the proximity to the sea has revived you."

  "Proximity to the sea and this city… a while ago you asked me why I wasn’t going back to the farm, to work with my parents. This is why: I lose something of myself when I'm there, far from the sea, far from the action of the city.”

  "Then when we’ve finished shopping, we should go eat down by the water. What do you think?”

  "Honestly, I think all this shopping is unnecessary. I told you, I have a suit at home.”

  "First impressions can be made only once. Believe me, the eyes that will examine you at the concert will notice if something’s fake and will focus on it. If we want to fit in, we have to do it right.”

  State Square was packed as ever and parking was impossible. "Tell me if we’re close, because I don’t really see where we can park here."

  "Pass the Weizmann. I just need to inform Vittorio we’re here. He’ll take care of us." And so it was. The car just in front of the store pulled out and we took the parking space. Vittorio, wearing a neatly pressed lilac shirt, tie and dark blue pants, rushed out to greet me. I was sure that the eyes of all the people walking around in the square would be on me, but it was not so. I had disappeared from the news. I hoped that my acquaintances would develop a polite memory loss, to give me a moment of grace. I wanted to be left alone to emerge from the mud slowly and carefully, until I got to the day when I could bloom out of my dark, cold swamp.

  "Mrs. Korman." The opening of the car door and the kiss on the back of my hand were Vittorio’s hallmarks. I was no longer excited by them. "I am so happy to see you back with us.”

  "Thank you, Vittorio. You make my return very pleasant.”

  He glanced at Guy, clearly assessing him. "We will soon spoil the man with you, as we did with Mr. Korman."

  I realized the first picture he saw in his eyes. I hesitated over whether to put him straight. I decided not to. I could not cope now with the pitying stares the term ‘bodyguard’ would bring. I preferred the look of appreciation he gave me.

  Guy followed us into the store. I looked at his reflection in the window. Despite his baggy pants, despite the shirt draped carelessly over his muscled torso, despite the sunglasses that hid his sunken gray eyes, I thought he was, indeed, a young man that I should be proud to be seen with.

  Right after we entered the store, Vittorio rushed to close the door. After he made sure it was locked, he went to pick out a suit. Since Vittorio had left us alone for the moment, I seized the opportunity and walked up to Guy. "He thinks you’re my lover,” I whispered in his ear. His eyes widened in disbelief. "You have to remember that he has other customers," I added quickly. "Maybe it's better to let this rumor spread."

  I could see him debating this, considering its implications. "Okay. Best play your cards close to your chest." Then he added in a whisper, "How are we supposed to behave?"

  I smiled. "We don’t need to be all over each other." And if he was all over me, I wondered, would I recoil? "Just don’t admit the truth."

  Vittorio returned. In one hand he held a suit hanger and in the other a variety of shirts, which he spread on the counter like colored cards. Guy gave me a quizzical look and I wordlessly indicated that he should choose a shirt to his liking. He chose a light blue one.

  So conservative, I thought. "I think that purple shirt may be suitable, and the white one is necessary." I pulled them from the orderly pile and placed them in Vittorio’s hands.

  Guy turned to the dressing room and Vittorio followed him, ready to assist. Only after they both left did I feel the mask broadcasting ‘all is well’ slip from my face and I resumed breathing. None of them knew how difficult it was for me to return to this store, which was full of memories.

  The background music, the comfortable chairs, and fresh coffee were intended to evoke a sense of luxurious comfort. I hoped with all my heart that discretion would also be part of the list, but I knew that would never happen. Once we left the store, the rumors would start. Guy and I would have to run a gauntlet of stares at the concert.

  Guy came out of the changing room looking like another person. I smiled at him. “Armani looks stylish on you.”

  "Clothes make the man, definitely," added Vittorio as he brought the large mirror over and set it in front of Guy.

  "Not bad at all!" Although he didn’t say much, the satisfied look in his eyes expressed the appreciation he felt.

  "It looks great, but I think the purple shirt would be better for the concert."

  "A tiny pinch off the length of the pants and you're all set," Vittorio said. He was already on his knees. He carefully folded the hem to the appropriate length while he gave a significant stroke to Guy's hip. He immediately gave me a look of discomfort.

  I stifled a smile. "Vittorio." I tried to maintain a straight face, but my voice betrayed me. "He is still not used to you.” I knew Vittorio’s little games, as all the cream and the fat of the country knew. It was a harmless one.

  "Now we've finished with the measurements." Vittorio picked himself up and added, “All you need now is the shoes, and your outfit will be ready."

  "You're the best Vittorio, as always.” I glanced at my watch. "We'll vacate the parking spot in half an hour. Is that okay?"

  "Of course." Vittorio packed the clothes and accepted my payment. "What do you plan on doing on a beautiful day like this?" he asked as he opened the door.

  "We’ll finish shopping and have lunch at the port. Shame to lose the last few days before the masses go on vacation."

  "Have a magical day." He bent to kiss my cheek in one of his feminine movements and said goodbye to Guy.

  We left the store. The midday sun beat down my ey
es. I put on my sunglasses and glanced back at Vittorio’s shop. "Look, we’re barely gone and he’s already on the phone.”

  "Who’s your money on? Russian clients or just the gossips?"

  "I’d bet on the gossip columnists." We continued to walk calmly, as if the call was of no concern to us. "After all, now that I’ve become a merry widow, I’ve rekindled their interest."

  For me, only one phone call could have been the worst, given that the other Korman men were his clients. To them, I was not a sad or merry widow. I was a widow living at their expense.

  We left the shoe store with a pair of elegant shoes which, according to Guy, were surprisingly comfortable. We loaded the fancy box into the trunk and headed out to the beach. When we were nearing the port, I remembered that we had forgotten to select appropriate ties. I pictured myself selecting one of the dozens of ties from Dan’s closet. Three years later, the thought of it was still too shocking for me.

  Guy's voice removed me from my thoughts. "I'm sorry, what did you say?”

  ''I asked what restaurant were you thinking of? Where do you want to stop for lunch?"

  "Oh... we’ve almost reached the harbor. Excellent. Take the next turn."

  I took a quick glance at my favorite fish restaurant, where I had eaten with Pierre and Sergey. I could not bring myself to enter it again.

  "This restaurant," I said, pointing to the next one. "I'm sure you'd prefer to sit on the terrace, right?"

  "Of course," he replied, adding with a smile, "And there’s parking directly opposite."

  I felt like I had saved myself from an unbearable memory. The sea was reflected through the large windows. The view was calm and relaxing. If only I could calm the storm in me, I thought. Tables with matching parasols were set out on the patio. We went out there and chose a shaded table close to the water line.

  "You look like a different person when you're by the sea. Much more relaxed," I said.

  Guy smiled. "It’s just enough for me to smell the air and salt. Once I smell it, I'm a different person. Listen to the sound of the waves. There’s no better music than that. For me, it would be even better if the restaurant turned off the music they are playing.”