by Angela Zeman
“Solly had his share of enemies, I imagine,” said Mrs. Risk.
Vivian’s eyes narrowed. “Enemies?”
“Well, someone, whether or not it was Bella, did kill him,” I reminded her.
She flicked a stray ash from her thigh with a manicured nail. “I have a hard time thinking Sol had enemies.”
“Solly was handsome, a man to whom women succumbed sexually with regularity,” said Mrs. Risk. “He was respected and successful in his profession. And we mustn’t forget how wealthy he was—all enviable traits. Envy can breed dark passions.”
Vivian continued to pluck at the material on her thigh as if trying to remove the last dregs of that lonely ash. “I see what you’re saying.”
“His financial success alone would be enough to inspire greed,” Mrs. Risk continued. “It seems he was a talented investor, as well as an inspired manager. His estate will make Bella independently wealthy for life … if she’s innocent of his murder.”
Vivian glanced up. “A big if.”
“It’s amazing, actually, that he was able to do so well while managing only one entertainer. Isn’t that unusual?”
“Well, Pearl had TV and movie deals. Lots of money there.”
“Not for Pearl,” I said. Mrs. Risk’s eyelids lowered warningly at me.
“What do you mean, not for Pearl?” asked Vivian.
After a look of exasperation at me, Mrs. Risk replied offhandedly, “Pearl’s nearly bankrupt.”
Vivian drew back, her eyes widening. “Broke? You mean, she hasn’t any—any investments to keep her in old age or anything? What if she doesn’t do great tonight? Her career …?” She seemed unable to frame the idea of Pearl’s dilemma into words. Her green eyes sparkled moistly. “I had no idea,” she finished.
“Oh, I think you did,” said Mrs. Risk. I blinked in surprise. With no apparent rancor, she continued, “Solly robbed Pearl methodically and continually for the last twelve years. He had to have help from Pearl’s accountant. Her present accountant discovered discrepancies almost immediately after your husband died, so the facts were obviously unconcealed. The only explanations for your husband’s lack of diligence are twofold: either he was a partner in Solly’s crime, or he was incompetent. As sole owner of his own business, he would’ve had no one to hide things from. Your expensive tastes proclaim Marvin’s expertise as a businessman, so therefore, he must’ve been competent. So it’s obvious. He abetted Solly’s thefts and died unexpectedly, which left him no time to fix the books to look innocent.”
Now Vivian’s eyes grew enormous. “You’re crazy. My Marv would never do anything like that!” She gasped.
We waited and I thought the idea was to let her stew before nailing down the facts. But when she suddenly uncrossed her legs and bolted, Mrs. Risk made no move to stop her. As we watched her twitching behind exit the premises, Charlie said, “Well, well, well.” An eloquent talker, that Charlie.
“He was in on it?” I asked Mrs. Risk.
“He had to be. It was obvious. Not so obvious is whether his charming widow knew about it too.” She gazed after the vanished Vivian, then sighed. “We must try now to find Ilene.”
We stood and filed out, after I signed the check, ‘Vivian Steiner.’ After all, it had been her caff.
27
IT SEEMED SILLY NOT to start with the most obvious way to find someone in a hotel, so, using a house phone, I called the front desk and asked to be connected to Ilene Fox’s room. No one answered. However, as it worked out, Charlie found her.
As we strolled down the broad walkway—yet again—discussing places to check, he ducked into one of the little shops lining the passage to buy toothpaste. While he counted out change at the cash register, two women behind him gossiped excitedly about how they’d seen ‘the singer’ minutes before at the indoor pool. Guessing ‘the singer’s’ identity, he scooped up his purchase and sprinted towards us, hissing, “The pool,” and hustled us in that direction.
We almost didn’t find her. She wore a modest navy blue bathing suit beneath a white terrycloth robe, and was reclining on a chaise lounge in the farthest, most quiet and isolated corner of the sun-drenched atrium. She looked faintly damp from an earlier swim. Her short silky hair clung darkly, outlining her delicate skull. Sunken circles ringed her closed eyes and her cheekbones jutted with unhealthy starkness. Even asleep she looked exhausted.
Children’s splashes and shrieks echoed from to the vaulted ceiling but, amazingly, the racket didn’t wake her. The air was swampy, full of enough chlorine to sting my eyes and nose. In my sweater and jeans, I’d begun sweating the second the door swung shut behind me.
Ten feet away, an immense old woman in a cotton housedress with swollen ankles wrapped in stretch bandages sat in a chair positioned at the very edge of the pool. Hunched forward at the waist, she scolded in a foreign language (Yiddish?) a small tearful girl bobbing below her who was supported on the water’s surface by a colorful plastic inner tube. The antics of other children made waves that bumped her repeatedly against the pool’s side, but she clutched the inflated circle to her chest and kept her trusting gaze on the old woman.
I looked again down at Ilene’s worn face as her breaths came almost imperceptibly, trying to imagine her as a vulnerable, attacked sixteen year old. It wasn’t hard. Her blue-veined lids, thin as tissue paper, barely concealed the decades of anguish she must’ve carried around with her as she associated, over and over, for love of Pearl, with her rapist.
I could have cried for her.
Mrs. Risk, crouching, bent close and breathed out, “Ilene.” Ilene’s lids sprang open. She glanced without speaking at me, at Charlie without recognition, and then at Mrs. Risk.
“Don’t disturb yourself,” said Mrs. Risk, but at the words, Ilene struggled to sit upright. She swayed as if lightheaded and pressed her eyes with the tips of her fingers.
At a flick of Mrs. Risk’s glance, Charlie strolled off to where some teenagers were cannonballing into the pool at its deep end. Mrs. Risk pulled up a chair and sat down at Ilene’s side. I squatted on the damp tiles.
“Dear, we know what Solly did to you.”
I flinched at Ilene’s silent response. As immediately as if Mrs. Risk had just brutally struck her, the purple deepened around her eyes. She sat perfectly still.
Abruptly she said, “Not Solly.” She tilted her head to meet Mrs. Risk’s gaze.
“We know it was Solly, dear. Don’t worry. Pearl will never learn the truth from us.”
Tears began to well and spill over in Ilene’s eyes. And mine, too. Her hands trembled where they lay balled in her lap, with fingers tightly curled and thumbs tucked in like a child’s.
Mrs. Risk said softly, “You kept your secret bravely.”
“I had to.”
“To spare Pearl, I know. She needed Solly, and you swallowed all your pain for her. All these years you’ve continually swallowed all your pain for her.”
As screams and violent splashing exploded into gales of raucous laughter from the teenagers, tears streamed down Ilene’s pale cheeks. Her mouth looked like a long thin bruise across her face.
“But do you realize the harm you’ve done yourself? Your life has been like a bud that never opened, never bloomed. You cut off your feelings at age sixteen, which kept those terrible wounds from healing.” She picked up Ilene’s bloodless fists, and, opening the fingers, flattened and held them gently within her warm ones.
“You love Pearl, but Pearl loves you, too. I think she’d be horrified at how badly you’ve hurt yourself on her behalf. She never wanted such sacrifice from you.”
For some moments, Ilene didn’t say anything. Then she said softly, “My family was Roman Catholic.”
Mrs. Risk nodded. “So you said before.”
Ilene continued, “To have an abortion back then was—was a nightmare. My church … And besides, it wasn’t legal. Pearl could’ve gone to jail for arranging it. I don’t know how she did it. I hadn’t been staying with Pe
arl long. The doctors said I was too chronically undernourished to bear a healthy child. They had doubts about either of us surviving. Pearl made me tell her where my parents were and she called them. Afterward, she refused to tell me what they said, but she didn’t have to.” She exhaled, a long painful breath.
“What did your doctors suggest you do?” asked Mrs. Risk.
“No one had any suggestions. Except Pearl. She kept saying over and over that she wanted me to live. She was the only one who did.”
She swallowed hard. “I murdered my child. And when I die, I’m going to burn in hell forever, in the lake of fire.” She said this with a subdued shrill note, as if panic over the prospect bubbled just beneath the surface.
“No!” I recoiled, shocked, but she paid no notice.
“‘He that committeth sin is of the devil.’” she said as if quoting, her face pale and rigid. “A mortal sin.”
“God would never demand you to burn in hell for this, Ilene! You were a child, then, yourself. A monstrous sin was committed against you.”
“God will never forgive me,” she replied.
“God forgave whatever there was to forgive, years ago. And if God can forgive us our sins, who are we not to forgive ourselves? Better than God?” asked Mrs. Risk in a tender, urgent voice. “‘By grace we are saved through faith … it is the gift of God.’”
Ilene turned away from her, “I don’t believe the Bible any more.”
“But you believe in hell, in the lake of fire?” Mrs. Risk asked, almost angrily.
“We pay for what we do.”
“You’ve paid already, Ilene. As Solly finally paid,” said Mrs. Risk, leaning back in her chair as if exhausted. She closed her eyes for a moment, then, opening them, gazed at the misted lofty ceiling above us. After a while, her scrutiny returned to Ilene’s face.
“I wish you would believe me, child,” said Mrs. Risk in a low resigned voice.
I understood why Mrs. Risk called this middle-aged woman ‘child’. Ilene possessed a child’s one-dimensioned outlook.
“Yes. At the last, he did pay, didn’t he,” agreed Ilene. Then she glanced at Mrs. Risk as if gauging her and finding her wanting. “It’s nothing to you. You don’t believe in the sanctity of human life.”
“Why do you say that? Because I’m not appalled about your abortion?”
Ilene nodded.
“You’re wrong. Abortion’s not a simple issue, no matter what those horrifyingly unChristian fundamentalists rant. They don’t speak on God’s behalf. God doesn’t need anyone to speak on His behalf. Can you understand that, dear?”
“But some lives are more important than others.”
“How so?”
“Even after what he did, Solly was more important than me. To my family and to my Church the baby was more important than me. I’m the least of everyone. But Pearl, she loved me before she hardly knew me, and I should’ve been nothing to her. I’ve never understood why. But I love her.”
“Darling, you’re a unique and important person in this world, believe me.” Mrs. Risk groped for words. “When you were young, your parents’ unloving actions toward you must have been cruelly bewildering. The people who were supposed to love you, whom you had every right to expect to take care of you, didn’t.”
When I heard this, I flushed and stared at Mrs. Risk. She’d once used similar words in a conversation with me. But she only gazed intently at Ilene, concentrating fiercely on her.
“Solly probably told you he loved you, too, to entice you into the rape situation. As an adult dealing with a child, he, too, let you down. But Pearl did love you, even though you had no reason to expect anything from her. The irony must have puzzled you greatly. I can understand why you’re so devoted to her,” said Mrs. Risk.
But Ilene had stopped listening. Glancing at her wristwatch, she rose from her chair, said, “I must start preparing. I have to be at my best tonight, it’s the least I can do after I’ve let her down so badly.”
“You’ve let her down? How?” insisted Mrs. Risk.
Ilene turned to stare wide-eyed at her. “You said it yourself. I made a mistake when I didn’t get him sent away years ago. Because of me, Solly was still around to hurt her with Bella and to steal her money. She has nothing, now, you know. And they’re putting all those humiliating stories about her in the papers. She’s been hurt so much, and she doesn’t deserve any of it. I could have saved her all that. If I’d only—” she swallowed hard.
“Pearl’s no stranger to struggle, Ilene. You don’t need to protect her. She’s stronger now than ever before.”
“No. She needs me. I’ve got to make it up to her for what I did!” Ilene took a step, but staggered. I jumped to my feet and grabbed her arm to steady her. My fingers gleamed warm and brown against Ilene’s pallid skin.
Mrs. Risk stood. “She is strong, Ilene.”
Ilene jerked her arm away from me. “No. Her heart, she almost died. She tried to depend on Solly and the others, but they let her down. All she’s really got is me!”
“That heart attack was two years ago. Ilene, she no longer needs your sacrifices!”
Ilene shuddered, then hastened away, wrapping her robe tight around herself as if the tropical air contained an arctic chill. As she rounded the far corner of the room, she broke into a loping run. Running away from us. I didn’t blame her.
After a long moment, Mrs. Risk started after her. I watched first Ilene, then Mrs. Risk circle the enormous pool, their images strangely blurred in the moist air. I wiped at my eyes.
It wasn’t fair. She might think she’d murdered her child, but so had she been killed, only slowly, over long cruel years. She’d murdered again, for Pearl, but I could find no blame for her. After all, she could go to hell only once. Looked to me like she’d already put in her time there.
In her anguished mind, she might not’ve realized the implications of using Pearl’s own medication until after the police investigated. Her silent, ubiquitous presence could certainly have enabled her to overhear about Solly’s condition and the effects of digoxin without being noticed. I watched Mrs. Risk narrow the distance between them. Run, Ilene! I willed Mrs. Risk to give up the chase. What more could she want from Ilene? Let her go free, I begged silently.
Ilene reached the exit. She shoved at the heavy glass door blindly, with difficulty, but Michael, turning in at the same door, pulled it open for her. I held my breath. He spoke to her, but she swept past him, probably not even seeing him, and I exhaled in relief.
Mrs. Risk stopped dead where she was, then turned and started back. I ran up to her and clutched her arm. “What now?” I stared meaningfully at Michael, coming our way.
“We’ll see,” she muttered under her breath. She made a slight motion with her head and Charlie, lounging watchfully by the diving board, leaped to his feet to join us. His and Michael’s paths converged at the near corner of the pool and they advanced together.
“Hello, Michael,” she said when they arrived.
“Hi.” He nodded at me, but no usual smile. Charlie positioned himself behind us as if choosing sides, dividing our group into ‘us’ and ‘him’. And ‘him’ was Detective Sergeant Michael Hahn of the Sixth Precinct Homicide Squad, Suffolk County Police. Just ‘Michael’ no longer.
“Is Miss Fox okay?” he asked. Mrs. Risk took his arm and they moved away. I stayed behind with Charlie, willing to leave it to Mrs. Risk to appease Michael with some story or other. Dully, I watched the swimmers play.
The woman who’d earlier scolded, now beamed with adoration at the child. The girl bobbed and squealed with delight in the pool, secure under the approving gaze of the woman who loved her. I wondered what Ilene’s parents had been like. Whether they’d ever looked at her like that. Somehow I doubted it, shoving down the knowledge that I hadn’t gotten such looks, either. I shrugged. History.
I glanced back to Michael and Mrs. Risk and my attention sharpened. They seemed to have a lot to discuss. I edged over to listen. Charli
e followed.
“I won’t insult you by asking if you’re sure,” I heard Michael comment as I arrived. He was scribbling in his small notebook.
“What are you telling him?” I asked her, curiously. They broke off and turned together to look at me. The depth of sadness in Michael’s expression told me.
“NO!”
He now knew all about Ilene. Mrs. Risk obviously cared only that Pearl would go free. Too bad for Ilene. The thought flashed crazily through my mind, what if Ilene had been Mrs. Risk’s friend and Pearl only an acquaintance? Would things be different? I took a step back, wanting space between them and me and nearly fell into the pool. For a moment I wobbled on the edge.
“Rachel, darling,” began Mrs. Risk, reaching for me.
I twisted away from her touch. “Shut up. Just shut up! She’s sick. She needs help, not jail! Detective Hahn, doesn’t your jurisdiction end at the borders of Suffolk county?” I snapped.
Michael said gently, “Ordinarily. A local officer is meeting me. I have his assurance of a warrant if I need one. If I don’t receive cooperation.”
“Well, gee, now you’re scaring me. This must be a dangerous place if you’ve got cooperating officers and warrants and all.” To punctuate my sarcasm, I gestured widely to point out the splashing children, the chattering parents, and even a group of geriatric bingo players visible through the glass atrium doors.
Michael stiffened.
I swallowed hard, knowing my ranting wouldn’t help Ilene.
Michael, his patience infuriating me, waited. He always did have excellent manners. I managed to produce a more subdued tone. After all, I was begging. “This is Thanksgiving weekend at a family resort. Tonight’s couple hours of entertainment means prosperity or starvation to Pearl, but not just that. When Ilene sings tonight, to open Pearl’s show, she’ll be showing her devotion to the only person who ever loved her. And we all saw how she’s crumbling. This might be her last chance for a long while. Don’t take it away from her. You want to arrest the real bad guys, arrest the ones who tore Ilene apart years ago. Michael. Please. Are you that anxious to fill a jail cell? Can’t you wait until tomorrow?”
