The Witch and the Borscht Pearl

by Angela Zeman

  Damn well right, I thought. If he’d had any respect for Pearl, he’d have done a lot of things differently. The bastard.

  “Bella,” she said with a growl. She pulled herself to her feet. “Pearl should beware. She’ll be dyin’ next. Solly’s killed, Bella gets his money. Pearl puts Bella in her will, too, Pearl could be next to go. Watch out.” She pushed by me, nearly walking on my hand.

  I abandoned my dinner and thought that over. Solly had millions? Then Pearl had to’ve had that many more millions, because a percentage of her income was the source of his income. Unless Solly was incredibly good with investments?

  A few minutes later, Mrs. Risk sidled past the obstructing couple on the lower step.

  “Interesting perch you have here,” she said, settling next to me. “Have you seen Vivian Steiner?”

  “Yeah. She threw up more than her share of your excellent wine about fifteen minutes ago.”

  Mrs. Risk grimaced. “Thanks for sharing that information.”

  “Also, the housekeeper, named Mrs. Harmon, told Vivian that Bella inherited not just the house, but the whole works from Solly. And Vivian is royally steamed about it. She hates Bella.”

  “Doesn’t she?” Mrs. Risk gave a short laugh. “But I can’t visualize her lack of friendship as a loss to Bella.”

  “Oh, yeah? Vivian said to me that Bella killed Solly for his money, and that if Pearl writes Bella into her will, Pearl’d better watch out, because she’ll be next. Talk like that won’t do Bella any good.”

  Mrs. Risk sat watching the people mill around below us and said nothing.

  I asked, “Do you know the percentage of commission Pearl paid Solly?”

  Mrs. Risk considered. “Twenty percent? A manager makes more than an agent, I think. It depends on how much he did for her.”

  “As far as I’ve heard, he did everything. So could he have gotten ‘millions’ out of that?”

  “How did you arrive at that amount?”

  “That’s what Vivian said. Millions. That gives Bella a huge motive for killing Solly.”

  Mrs. Risk grimaced. “Dear God. I wonder if her information’s reliable?”

  “Hey, what did you find in that desk?” I asked in an undertone.

  Mrs. Risk sat still for a moment, then reached into her left pocket. Cupping her hand over it to shield it from view, she revealed a small gold box to me, the top of which was heavily decorated with curling gold leaves.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said softly. “It’s one of Solly’s pillboxes, isn’t it? It can’t be the one Solly had at dinner the night he died, though, Michael has that one.”

  “You’re right. It’s not the same one.” She turned it over. On the back I saw etched in flowing script, ‘To V. Passion like ours will live forever. S.’

  I gasped. “He was going to give it to Vivian? But—but then why is she so furious on Pearl’s behalf? She acts really upset about Pearl getting dumped by Solly. I mean—” I shook my head, confused. “She was too drunk to disguise how totally she was on Pearl’s side.”

  “You’ve got it wrong. The box is Pearl’s. I found this folded up beneath it.” And she handed me a yellow invoice.

  I smoothed it out on my knee. It was the carbon copy of a jewelry store receipt for the box. It contained a detailed description written in longhand. On the lower half, a few lines were of different messages doodled out, as if Solly had had a hard time deciding what to inscribe on the box. In two of them, he’d spelled out the ‘V initial to ‘Velma’.

  I recoiled, then, making sure no one could overhear, said in a shocked whisper, “Pearl lied! They were in love! She kept her feelings secret. She did kill him. Oh, my God.” I reached out to touch Mrs. Risk, knowing how anguished she must be, but felt inadequate and pulled back again. I asked humbly, “What are you going to do with that? If it was in his desk, he obviously hadn’t given it to her yet.”

  She shook her head. “The box, even though it was upstairs in his drawer, has been used. It’s scratched on the edges. And it already contains pills.” She opened the box and let me look.

  “Saccharin?”

  Mrs. Risk gazed at me grimly. “I’ve never seen Pearl care whether she used saccharin or whatever was at hand. That was Solly’s personal quirk. No, she had a different need for a pillbox.” She waited.

  I stared again at the tiny white tablets. Then, “Digitalis?”

  “Digoxin, Pearl’s medicine. The pills look remarkably similar to saccharin, don’t they?”

  I shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I’d have to see some saccharin up close to decide.”

  “You have. Most of these are saccharin. But not all.”

  I examined the tablets again, fascinated. Then appalled. “They look almost identical. But what’s Pearl’s box and medicine doing here? And I thought you just said she didn’t care what she sweetened things with. Why would she be carrying saccharin, too?” At the misery in Mrs. Risk’s face, I closed my eyes, silently cursing my thoughtless blunder. “So this is how Pearl switched her medicine for Solly’s saccharin.”

  For a few long minutes I watched the milling crowd, unable to meet her gaze. Until something tweaked at my mind. “But—it’s evidence. She left it here?”

  Mrs. Risk looked away from me. “She’s always been horribly absentminded. She might have forgotten it after a last passionate interlude with Solly. Solly probably stored it away for later return.”

  I grimaced. “Pretty absentminded.” Then something she said registered. “Passionate interlude? I know that’s what the inscription said, but, still.”

  That provoked a grim smile. “Why, because of Pearl’s and Solly’s age? Pearl may have spent the occasional night with Solly during their courtship. We’ve been assured by more than one person that he was in love with Pearl.

  Solly was a vigorous man, and widowhood has been very lonely for Pearl.”

  “Well,” I said tiredly, picking up my plate and napkin in preparation for leaving, “we’d better get this to Michael.” My mouth twisted. “Guess Zoë was more prophetic than any of us knew.”

  Mrs. Risk stood. “I don’t want Michael to have this just yet. Not until I get more answers.”

  She glanced around sharply, then replaced box and invoice in her pocket.

  I stood up, too, and examined her face closely. I saw that her eyes, normally glittering black like watered onyx, were now like black holes above grey shadows. Anguish gave her an ill, drawn look. I asked her, I couldn’t help it. “I know that you’re very close to Pearl, closer than her other friends realize.”

  She interrupted me. “Pearl is that rare person who deserves the best from her friends. Somehow she magically softens the rough edges of life for us all. She needs us, but we need her even more.”

  “But are you going to protect her if she’s guilty?”

  She tilted her head oddly at me. After a long moment, “There are many degrees of guilt,” was all she said. She gazed around her like a queen surveying a troublesome kingdom. “Let’s go. I need time to think, away from this babble.”

  13

  THE NEXT MORNING, AS we sat facing each other at Mrs. Risk’s hearth, no sound but the quietly snapping fire filled the room. The newspaper lay crumpled at my feet, supposedly read, but I’d faked it. It overflowed with details about Solly, Bella’s past, Pearl’s marriage, and on and on. The way the articles were written made me shudder. I couldn’t take it anymore.

  I cradled a hot mug of tea between my palms and concentrated on what was distracting me. I’d had reason, from my own past, to know Mrs. Risk’s iron loyalty to those she considered worthy of her affection, and this was my problem.

  For the first time I regarded this trait with fear. Was it a trap? Mrs. Risk was the first human being I’d ever felt I might be able to trust—in time—and even that small step forward hadn’t come easily. If her affection for Pearl led her to do something terrible, got her into trouble … what would happen to her? Where would she go?

  Frighten
ed by my own thoughts, I stared into the flames. My concerns, were they for Mrs. Risk? Or myself? Selfish. I was being selfish.

  But to lose her so soon …

  I’d spent a bad night. Gory dreams, in which Pearl had transmuted into Mrs. Risk and then faded bewilderingly back again into Pearl. The gore came from stabbing, as both were gouged repeatedly across the chest with knives. For some reason that detail had been crystal clear in the otherwise hazy dreams. The knives possessed serrated edges and had torn Pearl’s and Mrs. Risk’s flesh into technicolor tatters. I couldn’t eat breakfast this morning.

  “I’m sorry your dreams disturbed you so terribly last night,” said Mrs. Risk softly.

  I looked up, groggy, but startled. “I didn’t mention them, did I?”

  She smiled. “Drink your tea, dear. There are herbs in it that will help.”

  I lifted the cup to my lips. The soothing fragrance of the tea enveloped my aching head. Then, in a perverse impulse, I rejected comfort and set my cup with a clatter onto the stone floor.

  From the other side of the hearth, Mrs. Risk tilted her head at me, but her eyes were focused on some inner vision. “You didn’t read the paper this morning, did you?”

  “No.”

  “A small article, on page seven. At Shevrosh Hills last night, a grave was disturbed. Actually, it says desecrated, but I’ll see for myself before reaching that conclusion. The report is maddeningly inexplicit. The damage must’ve been discovered and reported early last night to have made the morning edition, but it doesn’t say.

  “Solly’s grave?”

  She shrugged. “Again, it doesn’t say, although it mentions that the grave was new.”

  I tried to think why it might be Solly’s grave, if it was Solly’s grave, but my mind was too dulled to cooperate. “It’s a big cemetery. It’s useless to worry about it until we know for sure it was Solly’s.”

  “Indeed, and we’ll find out,” she agreed mildly. “It might’ve been random vandalism.” She absently gave Jezebel’s back a stroke as the cat sauntered by. “You know, I want very badly to know what happened to that necklace.”

  “The Borscht Pearl? Why? If Pearl goes to jail for murder, she won’t be needing it,” I said, naming the unmentionable like a dare: ‘… Pearl goes to jail for murder …’

  She said only, “We must also speak with Ilene again. She surely owes Pearl some great debt from the past. I wonder what it is?”

  With a sigh I picked up my cup again, lifting it to my forehead and pressing it’s warmth against my sore and frustrated flesh.

  “And I also wonder, how old is Zoë?” she continued in that dreamy, off-center voice. She threw a few twigs onto the fire, which made it crackle for a moment. The room filled with a delicious odor.

  We sat together in silence. What difference could Zoë’s age make in anything? In my bewilderment, I drank my tea.

  Finally I blurted, “You can be charged as an accessory if you withhold evidence. And Michael would—” I stopped, my fears choking off my breath. Then the aroma from the fireplace surrounded me, and I could feel my shoulders relaxing. I settled back. Surely there was an answer for everything—somewhere. If I only concentrated.

  “We need to know if Pearl is missing any medication,” I heard Mrs. Risk continue. Her voice sounded muffled. “And where Bella lived after the party, if not with Pearl. If Zoë would just …” and I heard no more.

  As sleep lifted away from my mind, I became aware of a pleasantly warm weight pressing gently on my body, making movement too much effort. At nearly the same moment, I heard Mrs. Risk hang up the phone on the table behind my chair with a faint click.

  I didn’t bother to turn my head to see her, and she stayed where she was. Like a voice out of nowhere she asked, “Feel better?”

  I blinked lazily. To my surprise, the fire was just the same, and I was still sitting in the chair, although a small pillow now supported my neck. The warm weight became a down comforter that had been tucked up to my chin. I stared, heavy eyed, across the room out a window. From the appearance of the sky, night had arrived, but the clock on the wall reassured me that it was still only late morning.

  “I want summer back,” I said forlornly. “I feel loaded down with all these clothes, all this huddling around teacups to get warm. I don’t like it.”

  She reached over from behind me and touched my forehead and I suddenly realized that the dull painful ache had disappeared.

  “Winter is transitory, like everything else,” she said.

  Transitory, like everything else. Like this moment of comfort and warmth. Like attachment to people. I forced myself out of the warm chair, throwing off the comforter. Stiffly I walked over to the windows she was so fond of polishing and felt bitterness. And underneath the bitterness, I found that the self-pity hadn’t left me. I wrapped my arms about myself in shame.

  She laughed. “You worry too much, and always about the wrong things.”

  She always said that, and I always disagreed. But her clear, uncomplicated laughter eased my cloying self-pity. With some relief I asked, “Who were you talking to on the phone just now?”

  “Pearl.”

  “Oh.” In despair I leaned my head against the cool window panes. What, just what, are we going to do about Pearl’s guilt? I wondered to myself. Then I said it out loud.

  Mrs. Risk looked at me peculiarly. “She’s innocent.” But she didn’t sound as dampeningly positive as she normally did. I examined her face for signs that her confidence was shaken, sure that such a thing had never happened. Couldn’t happen.

  “I know you think she is,” I said, “but what if she’s really guilty?”

  A shadow fell across Mrs. Risk’s face, and the planes of her body suddenly, amazingly, shrunk into very old age and she became to my astonished eyes a bent-backed crone with claw-like fingers and craggy features. She looked at me as if through a haze of pain that I didn’t understand. “If Pearl is guilty, it will negate all the decades I’ve spent learning to understand human nature. If Pearl has been true to herself, she can’t be guilty.”

  I blinked and the vision disappeared. I felt a shiver of fright pass through me. I stared at her for another moment, but she showed no signs of returning to the shape of whatever I’d seen. What had been in that tea?

  “You could be wrong. What about the evidence you found? Pearl could’ve lied to us,” I insisted.

  “Pearl’s made a career of telling uncomfortable truths in endearing ways,” said Mrs. Risk with a half smile. “Why should she start lying now?”

  “Seems to me she started back in August,” I snapped.

  I whirled away from the window and began to pace, slapping my arms roughly. I needed to wake up, to decide what to do. Do? I rubbed my cheeks with my palms in despair. Think!

  “Does Bella know Pearl has no money?” I asked suddenly.

  “I don’t know. Oh, by the way,” she continued in a thoughtful tone of voice, “Michael says Bella has a record in France.”

  “For what?”

  Mrs. Risk’s mouth twisted. “For shoplifting. Extortion. And a little spot of fraud from some con games I gather she participated in. He offered to send me the names and details but I said not to bother. No convictions.”

  “Why? Where the victims all men and they dropped the charges?”

  Mrs. Risk’s eyes twinkled just the slightest. “I didn’t ask.”

  “Oh, fine. Just terrific. I suppose you’re sure she’s innocent, too?”

  “I haven’t decided what to think about Bella. I’m not defending her. I just want—”

  “You just want Pearl to live happily ever after, no matter what! Free of suspicion, her comeback a raging success, with her beloved sister also free of suspicion. All her dreams come true. Just because you happen to care about her. Omigosh. How naive can you get for an old woman?”

  Mrs. Risk laughed outright. “I beg your pardon? OLD?” At that moment she looked very young, amazing me again.

  Jezebel c
hose that moment to stalk across the room from the fireplace. Our arguing must have disturbed her. She approached me stiff-legged, crouched at my feet for a split second, then lunged her front feet upward to land them high on my thighs. She unsheathed her claws and in a slow luxurious cat-stretch, gouged my legs all the way down to the floor.

  “Ow!” I jerked away too late. “I felt that right through my jeans.”

  “She’s angry with you that you don’t trust me,” murmured Mrs. Risk. She went to the coat stand by the door and lifted her cloak off the hook. She wrapped it around her, looking very much the witch and again agelessly vital. “I’m going to Solly’s to sit with Pearl. Although, I suppose I should start calling the place Bella’s. Want to come?”

  Helplessly I gazed at her from across the room. “Sure,” I finally said, giving up. I wanted so much but had no idea how to get it, or even what ‘it’ was. I stood and took my coat from her hands. “We’ll have to stop by the shop. Daniel—”

  “Oh, I’ve already called Daniel. He said he’d be happy to open the shop after school, and that you weren’t to worry about the orders that came in yesterday. A friend of his who has access to a car will deliver them for you. Free. The friend thinks it’s fun and has nothing better to do. Hmmph. Fun. Only an infant would think driving a car is fun.”

  She opened the door and we faced the frigid weather together.

  14

  WE ARRIVED at Solly’s—Bella’s—after eleven. I slogged through the puddles to reach the door, still feeling limp and slightly drugged. I also still felt spooked at the illusion I’d experienced of Mrs. Risk’s … old age?

  The housekeeper, Mrs. Harmon, opened the door with only a glum look as a response to our greetings. After taking my coat and Mrs. Risk’s cloak, she rolled off into the back regions, abandoning us unannounced.

  “She must be counting the hours until she can retire,” I murmured. “Either that or the glamour of keeping house for Bella has faded already.”

  We stepped to our left into the living room, searching for life. There we found Bella sitting by herself on the sofa, staring into a roaring fire. Pearl was nowhere in sight. Bella never stirred. Was she too exhausted to move, or just didn’t care what happened around her?