by Howard Engel
“I should explain,” I said. “We have been running a little test on all of you, or at least some of you. Rabbi and Mr. Tepperman, you arrived after I had thrown out the bait.”
“Mr. Cooperman, this happens to be a house of mourning. Let me remind you we are sitting shiva. I’m shocked and disgusted by your boorish insensitivity. There have been two deaths in this family!” Debbie looked her best when she was playing the watch-dog for her sister. I remembered the skirmishes of our first meetings.
“We all appreciate the situation, Mrs. Geller, and nobody’s trying to make it into a three-ring circus. But, I admit, we did engage in a simple stratagem.” Ruth looked stunned and glanced at her sister, Debbie moved closer to Ruth, Pia held on to Sid’s arm. Sid looked like he wasn’t sure whether to sock me or shut up and listen. “A couple of days ago, I blundered into the office that Larry used to keep the papers he required for the complicated scam he was operating within the Jewish community. That was where he kept his books, and where he organized the escape route for himself and his girl-friend.
“One of the things I found, was the burned fragment of a bag that had contained diamonds. So I knew the form the loot Larry had acquired had taken. He could have gone for negotiable bonds, gold certificates, that sort of thing. But his way was diamonds, and it’s as good a way as any. Any jeweller around the world will give you a fair price for a good diamond with a clear pedigree. The other thing I found was that Larry’s phone had a built-in memory. When I phoned out using the redial button, I got his wife. Now, what could be more natural than that? Husband phones home to say that he’ll be held up, or that he’ll be right there. The trouble is we know that for the last couple of months, Larry never phoned home. All messages to Ruth were relayed through Rose Craig, Larry’s legal secretary. Still, when I used the phone, I got Ruth. I didn’t tell her where I was calling from of course, but I’m sure that she’ll remember our conversation.” Eyes were to Ruth, who was sitting on the edge of the couch, her back very straight and her thin fingers entwined around one another.
“Ye,s I think I remember the call you mean. We talked about Nathan, who’d called you in the middle of the night.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Ruth, how do you account for the fact that the memory on that phone got you?”
“Well, I think I can …”
“Just one minute, Mr. Cooperman,” Pia said, “are you saying that the centre of this case is in the memory of the telephone in Larry’s secret office?”
“I guess I’m saying that. Or at least that’s part of what I’m saying.”
“Well, I for one would like to see this telephone for myself.” I glanced at Pete, who shrugged his shoulders.
“We can go there, sure,” he said. “Even if we walk, it won’t take us more than a few minutes.” I looked at Debbie, who looked at her sister, who began to get to her feet. Rabbi Meltzer looked at Saul Tepperman for guidance. They were the last to get up.
“This is very exciting,” the rabbi said perhaps a little more loudly than he’d intended.
It only took about eight minutes to walk up Francis to Welland Avenue, along Welland Avenue for a block, then down Woodland to the office building at number 44. Kogan had my keys, so he opened the front door and led the way up the front stairs and along the corridor to the rear of the building, where he unlocked to door. The nine of us moved into the small room, which didn’t get any larger when the lights were turned on. All eyes went around the office, each pair finding the headland it needed to make sense of the scene. When they had finished with the filing cabinet, the chairs, the desk and the waste-paper basket with the scorch marks, they settled on the telephone in the middle of the desk. “It’s one of those cheap Formosa jobs,” Sid said, as though he expected more from an important clue in a human drama like this. “Well,” he went on, “let’s see where it takes us.” He looked around for volunteers. “Who wants to see where this thing takes us? Pia?”
“No thanks. I’m content to watch.” She held on to Sid’s arm tightly.
“Well, who’s going to push the redial button? What about you, Mrs. Geller?” Pete was making room for Ruth, but her sister pushed her way in.
“Sergeant, my sister has gone through a lot today. If you want to experiment, let me be the guinea pig.”
“Thank-you, Mrs. Geller. Your finger will do just as well.” Debbie stepped up and lifted the one-piece instrument from the desk. “Is this the button you want?” she asked, looking up at Staziak, and pointing to the “redial” button.
“That’s the one, on the lower right-hand side.” Debbie pushed the button and held the phone to her ear. When it began to ring, she held the instrument so that we all could hear. It was on the dying end of the third ring when the ring stopped abruptly and someone answered on the other end.
“Hello? This is Mrs. Geller, who is this please?” We all could hear the sound of the response without being able to make out the words. Debbie said, “Hold the line, please.” She rested the phone on her shoulder and said to no one in particular, “It’s Rona Bagot, Glenn’s wife!”
“Rona!” said Pia, with disbelief. “But she’s visiting Sid and me at my place. She’s in my apartment!”
“Can you confirm that?” Staziak was speaking to Debbie.
“Rona, this is Debbie Geller again. Could you give me the number on the telephone you’re using?” There was a brief pause. “Yes, it is a kind of experiment we’re conducting.” She repeated the number.
“What’s going on here?” said Sid, taking the phone from his sister-in-law. “Rona, is that you? No, we haven’t all gone crazy. I’ll explain when we get back. No, it shouldn’t be much longer. Goodbye. Just a minute!” He waved the instrument at Pete. “You wanna take a crack?” Pete shook his head, and Sid told the unseen Mrs. Bagot to hang up. He did the same and then faced the rest of us. “Well?” he said, “I think we just proved something, but what is it?”
“You’re not going to say that Pia had anything to do with any of these crimes,” Debbie Geller said, looking a little like a mamma fox protecting her brood. “She couldn’t have had anything to do with any of this.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Pete said. “The person who last made a call on that phone was Larry Geller. We figure that it must have been made close to the time that Larry made his flit. We know that it had to be around then because he had no later opportunity. He was dead within in an hour of placing that call.”
“But why my place?” Pia cried. “I don’t understand.”
“Are you accusing Pia of these murders, Sergeant?” asked Mr. Tepperman. Sid was glowering at Pete, but unable to make a sound.
“We’ll stand by you, Pia,” Debbie said. “We won’t let the police railroad you on evidence as flimsy as that.” She looked at Pete and then at me. “You can’t make a charge stick that’s only based on a telephone call.” She said this like it was the cornerstone of Canadian jurisprudence. “The telephone just proves that someone, possibly Larry, called Pia at some time prior to his death. You can’t tie a noose with telephone cord, Sergeant Staziak.” Pete nodded, and let his eyes look in my direction.
“There is the question of the lighter,” I offered.
“What lighter?” Ruth Geller asked, suddenly taking more interest in the proceedings since Pia had become the central figure. Pete glanced my way but didn’t say anything.
“Pia’s Dunhill,” I said. “It was found at the scene.” Pia glared hatred at me. I felt Sid’s substantial bulk moving towards me.
“Benny, I told you how that happened,” Pia said, with her eyes half-closed. “I told you the truth about the lighter.”
“Mr. Cooperman, Pia could have left the lighter in Nathan’s studio hundreds of times. As a clue the lighter is as pathetic a piece of evidence as the telephone.” Debbie’s eyes were bright with defiance. “They’re both clutching at straws, aren’t they Sid?”
“If there wasn’t a cop here, Cooperman, your brains would be on the sidewalk outsid
e.”
“Just don’t hit me for a minute, Mr. Geller. We still have a way to go.” Geller wasn’t mollified much, but there wasn’t a lot of swinging room uncluttered with relatives, rabbis and the president of the shul. For the moment, Sid had to take out his feelings on his molars. I turned to Debbie: “How did you know that the lighter we were talking about was found in Nathan’s studio?” Debbie’s eyes smiled as she collected her thoughts.
“Why, you yourself said it was found there. You heard him, Ruth?”
“What everybody heard me say was that the lighter was found at the scene. I didn’t say whether it was the fire-hall site where Larry was murdered, or whether it was the park where another related crime took place. But you knew which scene I meant, and I wonder how.”
“Well, if I didn’t hear it from you, I must have learned it from one of the dozen policemen that have been in and out of my house since the murder of poor Nathan.”
“That would be fair enough if the cops knew about the lighter, but they didn’t.” Pete was glaring at me. I could tell, even though I could only see him out of the corner of my eye. I turned to face him, “Sorry, Pete, it was one of those things I forgot to tell you and Chris about. The lighter was left at the scene in Nathan’s studio, but it was removed from there before you were called in. Before I got there too.” I thought that I’d better add that last part or I’d find that Pete and Sid were going to join forces to find a way to push me out the window. I turned back to Debbie. “Debbie, how did you know about the lighter when no one else did?”
“You’re out of your depth, Benny. You’ve got things twisted again,” she said, trying to smile, as though the proper expression could make this ugly scene disappear.
“There’s only one way I can figure it,” I said. “You’re the one, Debbie. You did it. You did it to Larry, to Kogan’s pal Wally, when he got too close, and you did it to Nathan too. Bringing in Pia as a prime suspect was part of the scheme, but just a minor part, not on a par with the rest of your very clever scam.”
“There are laws in this country, Mr. Cooperman,” Debbie said steadily, “to protect people like me from people like you who say damaging things in front of witnesses. I think I’ve heard enough. This is a very stuffy room, I think I’ll go home.” Debbie turned, and said her sister’s name, and they both made a move towards the door. At this moment a uniformed man from Niagara Regional made himself visible by filling the doorway with his two hundred pounds. Debbie and Ruth looked at the rest of us. Ruth was confused and disbelieving. She looked around the room at each of us and then at Debbie. Debbie stood very still, like she was gathering in her strength for a move she had not the resolution to make. There is only one word to describe her as she turned to face the rest of us and that word is “caught.”
TWENTY-NINE
It was some time before anyone spoke. What at first appeared as a gross slander was now being considered, not believed or taken for gospel, but it had been born, had a life and weight of its own. The silence brought with it the distant sounds of traffic moving along Welland Avenue. It was Sid who finally spoke. “First you make damaging statements about Pia, and now you’re giving Debbie a working over. What kind of guy are you, Cooperman?”
“Well, Sid, I had to pretend that I suspected Pia in order to catch Debbie off balance. Debbie intended us to suspect Pia and built a trail of phony evidence leading to her door. You saw what happened on the phone. Debbie did that, a bit of inspired malice Debbie dreamed up when I told all of you about how we’d nailed somebody through the redial memory on the phone. You remember that Debbie then went to look for the Scotch. What she really did was go out across to this building to remove the redial memory that pointed at her, and replace it with the one you heard.”
“But she wasn’t gone for more than a few minutes.”
“The back door of this building is practically at the foot of Debbie’s backyard. How long does it take to cross the garden, run up three flights and dial a telephone number?”
“Francis Street and Woodland. He’s right. They’re next to one another and both about the same distance down the block.”
“Debbie had used the short cut many times before when she went to visit Larry. And, I’m sorry to say, Ruth, that Larry used it when he visited your sister.”
“You’ll never make me believe you,” Ruth said, holding on to her sister to show the strength of her belief. “You have no proof, no rationale, nothing but malice. Why do you hate us, Mr. Cooperman?” Ruth said this so simply that Staziak looked at me with the same question.
“I don’t hate anybody, Mrs. Geller. I don’t like the things I’ve come across, but after being in the divorce business for so long, I’m used to unpleasant surprises. I’m sorry for the hurt in all this. I wanted to hurt you least of all, because they took advantage of you from the start. Nathan was aware that something was going on. That’s why he was killed. That’s what he wanted to talk to Pia about the night he was murdered. She got there just after Debbie had stabbed him, before she had even left the studio. That gave her an idea. So she left the lighter, which she had found earlier in the day. She didn’t know, and couldn’t have known, that Pia noticed the loss and arranged to have it picked up.
“In one way you’re right, Ruth, I don’t have a lot of proof. But I do have this.” Here I pulled the desk away from the wall and showed where Steve Tulk had installed a second telephone, and where I’d hidden the phone that Larry had been using.
“Two telephones? In an office this size? I don’t get it.”
“Well, Mr. Tepperman, I wanted to trap the murderer. I told that story back at Debbie’s house, knowing that the phone up here in the office was a newly installed one. It was put in today as a matter of fact. There was nothing on the redial memory, nothing important anyway. But this other phone, hidden back of the desk, is the one Larry used. It’s the one I used too that day I talked to you, Ruth. When I questioned you about getting a call from Nathan, you threw me for a loop. You answered the phone, therefore it followed that Larry had called you. You said that maybe I had the facts but wasn’t reading them right. You were dead on. It took me a long time to get the idea that you were visiting Debbie when I called not your house but Debbie’s. Larry placed that call to your sister to say that he had finished burning all his papers and was ready to make a dash to Toronto International with her, after making a short stop to pick up his suitcase with the diamonds at the Bolduc building site on Geneva.”
Tepperman was whispering to the rabbi, but the rest of the people in the room, including Kogan, were waiting, looking like they had just felt the floor tremble. “I know we don’t have a lot of proof. Much of what we’ve got is circumstantial. But we do know for a fact that someone from Debbie’s house crossed the garden and came into this office alone less than an hour ago. She may have thought she was unobserved, but there was a witness. Kogan, do you see the person who came to this office before we came as a group?”
“I do,” said Kogan like he was under oath. “That’s her with her arm on Mrs. Geller.”
“You’re pointing at Mrs. Debbie Geller, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Since I had Mr. MacIntyre’s keys to this building, I made use of them. Kogan was in the office across the way which has a glass panel in the door.”
“I thought she saw me once,” said Kogan. “She looked right at me. You forgot to mention,” Kogan said, “that when I called a few minutes ago and asked for Sergeant Staziak, I used the other phone and the redial button.” Kogan looked like he had more of his adventure to share with us, when he was interrupted by Debbie Geller making a sudden move. I missed the first part, I was looking at Kogan. So were the rest of us, including the hefty cop that Staziak had assigned to the possibilities of the night, as he called them.
“Look out!” Rabbi Meltzer was shoved out of the way, and Debbie darted past the uniformed man to the corridor. She was on the stairs before the rest of us, except the rabbi, knew what was going on.
“Carswell, catch her! Don’t let her get away!” Carswell was in a better position to get her than the rest of us. We all had to take turns going through the narrow office door. By the time I got to the stair landing, she had reached the first floor. I stumbled on the first half of the second flight and almost crashed down the rest of the steps. I grabbed the rail and nearly pulled my arm out of its socket breaking my fall. When I got up, I looked behind me. I was the only one in hot pursuit. Cool at the top of the stairs, Staziak was looking down at me.
“Pete, for God’s sake, she’s getting away!” Pete walked down towards me and helped me test the foot that had let me down. “Pete, are you crazy? She’s got a car in the driveway!” Staziak beamed at me. “It’s all taken care of; I’ve got a man on each of the doors. She’s going nowhere.”
“But what the hell were you yelling at Carswell for?”
“I lost my cool, Benny. Have you ever lost your cool?”
Half an hour later, with the exception of Debbie Geller, who had been taken back to Niagara Regional, warned and booked, and her sister Ruth, who was upstairs sedated, we were all back in her living-room drinking Debbie’s rye when Staziak returned from Niagara Regional. He reported that she was in good hands, and a doctor had given her something to help her get through the night. He further announced that he was no longer officially on duty. So Sid fixed him a rye with water. I was working on a weak rye with ginger ale while my right ankle was using up all of the remaining ice-cubes in the house. Pia had made an attempt at first aid with the ice wrapped in a dishtowel. To protect the rug, my foot was sitting in a shallow basin with the melt-waters. Pia was sitting near by just to check on the patient.
When we left 44 Woodland Avenue, Ruth went downtown with Pete. She returned after a few minutes, when she found that there was little she could do after getting in touch with a lawyer. Irving Bernstein, Larry’s old friend from Osgoode Hall days, had agreed to defend Debbie, at least until Debbie’s own wishes were known. I thought of Irving, and wondered if he was still wearing his ring from law school the way Larry was.
