Murder in a Good Cause

by Medora Sale

  For the rest of the evening Theresa sat like an infuriated Roman matron, toying with her food and drink until Frank Whitelaw offered to drive her home.

  Throughout the whole hideous meal Whitelaw had tried valiantly to pretend that nothing had happened; he had done his best to maintain a witty dinner-table discourse with Nikki and Herr Lohr, being amusing about art and the oddities of the colonial cultural scene. Paradoxically, he made everything worse. She was grateful for his efforts, but they reminded her that she didn’t really want him, oozing tact and charm, around forever. How was she going to dismantle her mother’s network of dependents without being totally coldhearted and ruthless? She shook her head. She would have breakfast, talk to Klaus about his business, ask Herr Lohr about the estate, and make some decisions. Throwing on some jeans and a sweatshirt, she headed out to face the world.

  The smell of coffee drifted in through a silent house. She walked down the hall and pounded on Klaus’s door. She was rewarded by a low moan. “It’s past nine,” she called. “Breakfast is now.”

  The table was neatly laid with a basket of rolls and several pots of jam. Veronika walked into the empty kitchen. It was spotlessly clean. A large china pot of coffee sat on a warming plate, and on the stove was a pan filled with milk. She reached over and turned on the burner under it. Inside the refrigerator she found freshly cut butter and a pitcher of orange juice. She carried them all into the dining room, considered the ambient gloom, piled everything on a large tray, and carried it into the conservatory. “Bring the coffee,” she called to Klaus, whose footfalls were echoing on the stairs.

  “What about the milk?” he asked. “It’s boiling.”

  “Bring it, too, of course,” she answered impatiently.

  “Where’s the omnipresent Bettl?” asked her cousin as he came into the conservatory with two china pots.

  “She must be out shopping,” said Nikki. “I came down and found everything laid out. Like the magic castle in Beauty and the Beast.”

  “Well, we’ve got Beauty,” he said, “and Bettl makes a good Beast, but I don’t know quite where I fit into this plot.” His ramblings were interrupted by the ringing of the phone. “I’ll get it,” he said. “Pour me some coffee, will you?”

  He listened for a long time, looking slightly glazed, and finally spoke. “Look, Theresa, just let me finish my coffee and I’ll be right over. Have you called the police?” The phone sputtered hysterically back at him. “All right, sweetheart, we won’t do that. Just hang on until I get there.” He dropped the receiver back in its cradle. “That’s all we need right now,” he said gloomily.

  “For God’s sake, what has happened?” snapped Nikki. “What do you mean, police?”

  “Your esteemed brother-in-law has disappeared, taking two suitcases, the Porsche, all the cash in the house; a considerable amount.”

  “How much?” interrupted Nikki.

  “Over seven thousand dollars,” Klaus continued. “Kept around for buying milk with after the banks close, I suppose. Anyway, he vanished during the night like the snows of yesteryear.”

  Nikki giggled. “You aren’t very sympathetic. Is Theresa upset?”

  “She appeared to me to be furious rather than upset, although she did use words like ‘worried out of her mind’ and ‘what if something has happened to him.’ But it struck me that she’d be even more upset if nothing had. Anyway, I’ll go over there and see what I can do to calm her down. Unless you need me here?”

  Nikki shook her head. “I have lots to do, if I can only get around to it. I might have lunch with Harriet. Don’t worry about me.”

  Veronika shut the door thoughtfully behind her cousin and walked back to the conservatory. The room was gray and gloomy, like the day, and she shivered with the cold. She had to get out of the house, but first she had to find some warmer clothes. Her mother must have had sweaters over here. After all, she always came in early spring. As soon as she put socks on her icy feet, she would look for something she could wear.

  Her mother’s sitting room was still locked and sealed off, but the police had removed their seals from the bedroom. She went over to the dressing room and threw open the huge closets. They were almost empty. Damn! What had happened to all the clothes? There were some thin wool dresses, not warm enough, too long, and much too conservative in cut. There should also have been warm wool pants. She began to open the large drawers that filled one wall. They were empty. Goddamn Theresa must have been in here as soon as the police left and swiped everything she could get into. Or Bettl, in which case it would be everything any member of her large and unpleasant family could get into. She slammed the drawers shut. Unless . . . of course. Mamma might have had her woolens packed away in the basement, not cluttering up her closets during the hot weather.

  Veronika put on a pair of running shoes and headed for the basement stairs. Where would she have kept everything? Not in Klaus’s darkroom. She opened the wine cellar, looked around, and shut it again. The next room was a storage room, usually locked, but of course the police had removed the padlock. It contained four wooden packing cases and an assortment of empty cartons. She glanced at the wooden crates, which were filled but not yet nailed down. Surely even her mother didn’t ship all her clothes back and forth across the Atlantic in wooden crates, but you never knew. Poor dear Mamma—her eyes filled with tears—had had some rather pre-jet travel notions. She pushed open the partially closed box nearest to her. It was filled with shredded paper and objects carefully enveloped in bubble packing. She took out one and unwrapped it. It was a silver teapot, in need of polishing, but, to her inexpert eye, very pretty. A box filled with antiques she had picked up over here? Odd when you thought of the house in Munich and the house in the country both stuffed full of this sort of thing. She set the teapot down on another crate.

  She opened the next wrapped package. It was a silver teapot, in need of polishing. She stared at it for a long time. She opened the next one. It was a silver teapot, in need of polishing. She began to giggle. Mamma must have been going berserk. She kept pushing away the material and finding more parcels. When she had extracted the fourth silver teapot, three sugar bowls, six sets of tongs, a tray, and four cream jugs, she had a demented vision of her mother opening an antique shop in the house in Munich. Her impulse to laugh was suddenly displaced by cold fear. What in hell was going on?

  She tried to remember when Mamma had started insisting that this room be locked. This summer? Last summer? Or was it Mamma? Maybe it had been Theresa. She could see herself, as clearly as if she were still there, sitting on the dock in the sun, dangling her feet in the water, reading the Toronto papers, which were filled with articles about a wave of large-scale thefts in the city. Thefts of art, jewelry, and silver. Good, expensive silver. And Mamma had become worried about money, hadn’t she, in the last year. Worried about Theresa being left penniless, about Milan’s shady dealings. And, she suddenly remembered, worried about running afoul of the law. Mamma would scarcely have been breaking into houses, but she could have been helping someone, for a share in the profits. . . . Veronika shook her head. It was mad. Her mother would never do something like that. Would she? But how much did she really know about her mother? And what other explanation could there be for all this? And whom, of all the people in this city, would Mamma have bent the law to help? She felt a sick sense of dread as she thought of her sister and her husband, in prison, and her niece and nephew . . .

  Meanwhile, she was getting colder and colder. She left the room, flung open the door of Klaus’s darkroom, and grabbed a heavy sweater he had left hanging there on the hook. She ran upstairs to her bedroom, put on a T-shirt, pulled on the sweater, reached for the phone, and dialed 911. But as soon as she heard herself asking for the police, she broke out into a sweat. This was crazy. Whatever it was that Mamma had been mixed up in, she couldn’t call the police. She hung up and redialed. She listened impatiently to Harriet’s an
swering machine and then poured out her dilemma in incoherent bursts. “Harriet, it’s Nikki. I’ve found some things . . . in the house. I’m sure they shouldn’t be there, and I have to talk to someone. I’ll meet you at noon . . .” Suddenly she remembered that Harriet was out of town for the morning. “No, four o’clock would be better for you, wouldn’t it? I’ll see you there at four. By the front entrance.”

  As she dropped the receiver down in its cradle, another telephone in the house disconnected as well.

  When the telephone rang, Carlos was just patting cologne onto his newly shaved cheeks. He listened to the steady voice, grunted, and slammed the receiver down. In less than a minute, he had changed into more respectable clothes, stuffed his pockets with wallet, cash, and keys, and was out the door. In another ten, he was heading east along St. Clair, confident that the girl would be moving west, toward shopping and restaurants. In fact, there she was, walking across the bridge, in the direction of the subway station. The car would be a distinct liability. He turned at the first corner, parked under a No Parking at Any Time sign, and set out after her.

  He thought briefly about what he had been asked to do and rejected it as too complicated and dangerous. Never leave loose ends was the credo he lived by. Much better to deal with her permanently. The subway station would be the best place. As he mulled over the problem, his longer legs eating up the distance between them, he fished in his pocket for change. He paused at the first newspaper box he came to, indifferent to its contents, shoved in his money, and took out a paper, useful for hiding busy hands. Up ahead, the girl slowed as she approached the subway station, and he reached into his pocket for bills to buy tokens with. She paused in front of it and peered into her big shoulder bag. She looked up at the sky, dropped the flap of her bag shut, and headed toward Yonge Street.

  “What the hell?” he muttered as he tucked his paper under his arm and followed, adjusting his pace to hers as they moved. Wherever she was going, she was dead easy to follow. In her red-and-blue heavy sweater that reached almost to the knees of her disreputable blue jeans, she offered a striking contrast to the neat dark suits and skirts of the working women striding purposefully along the street.

  She turned at the corner and headed briskly down Yonge Street.

  Manu put down his burden and knocked peremptorily at the door of the apartment. He heard leisurely footsteps inside; the door opened halfway, and there was a split second of frozen movement as the fence took in the sight in front of him.

  “For chrissake, man,” he hissed, “get that stuff out of the hall.” Manu leaned down lazily and picked up the box again; as soon as he had a grip on it, the fence grabbed him by the arm and yanked him into the apartment. “I thought I told you not to bring it here. Not now.”

  “Don’t bother to close the door,” said Manu. “The buru will be here in a second with the rest. It’s all downstairs. He’s bringing it up.”

  “You idiots!” said the fence as an ominous bump from the hall outside testified to the probability that Manu meant exactly what he said. He flung open the door and began to haul the boxes into his apartment. The buru sauntered in, carrying the last box.

  “Something wrong?” asked the buru.

  “Something wrong?” he reiterated. “You’re bloody right there’s something wrong. You can’t leave this stuff here. Look, you arrogant son of a bitch, I said I’d move it for you, but I never wanted to see you or it anywhere near this place. Remember? A helluva lot of good I’ll be to you if I’m in jail. And that’s where I’ll be if they find all this in here. I’m moving it out again if you don’t. I’m putting it out on the street, and they can haul it away with the rubbish.”

  The buru sat down and stretched his legs out in front of him comfortably. “You do that, my friend, and I call the police and tell them where these boxes came from. You want me to do that?” He smiled. “You see, we’re already in big trouble, Manu and I, aren’t we, Manu?” The gloomy-looking man standing beside him nodded. “And Manu thought—Manu’s very smart, my friend, more than you think—Manu thought it was time you shared just a little of the danger. In case you were planning to pull out and leave us. From now on, we’re going to visit you every day—and many people will see us here, won’t they?—until you pay us our share of the profits. And don’t tell me there haven’t been any profits. I know. I have friends in New York, and they’ve checked the galleries for me. We’ve sold a lot. So if your friend in New York—if he exists—hasn’t paid out, you’d better start getting some money from him.”

  The fence looked at him for a long time, as if trying to assess with absolute accuracy the likelihood that the buru knew what he was talking about and would carry out his threat. At last, he turned and opened a closet door containing shelves piled high with towels, sheets, and various oddments. He removed a stack of towels and handed them to Manu, who dropped them contemptuously on the ground, revealing a small gray safe. He leaned in to dial in the combination, shielding the workings of his fingers with his body.

  In less than thirty seconds the gray door swung open, and he reached into the cavity. In a few more seconds, he slammed the door shut, backed out, and closed the cupboard door. He was holding several packages of bills. “Right,” he said, staring steadily at the buru and avoiding Manu’s more ambiguous gaze. “This is roughly what the first two lots brought in.” He handed it over. “Minus my commission. But I’ll have you know I haven’t seen that money yet. It’s being held in the States. You move it in here, and people start asking questions. This is my own money I’m giving you. The other two can take their share out of this.”

  The buru looked at the money in his hand as if it were covered with some strange and vile growth. He opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, and leaned back on the wall.

  “And as for getting this lot over the border,” continued the fence, “for chrissake, two cops and a harmless old lady! You don’t make it easy.”

  “Us!” said Manu suddenly. “We didn’t touch them. It was Don, and Carlos. Crazy bastard. Your crazy bastard, too. Not one of my people. He speaks our language like a child. What does he know about the fight for independence?” He shrugged. “Don’t blame us.”

  “How in hell was I supposed to know he was crazy?” muttered the fence. “You fools needed help. You were damned lucky I got someone who used to be in the antiques business. You look at that money in your hand. If you hadn’t had Carlos, you’d have been picking up worthless trash, netting a few hundred a time for all that work. And Carlos wanted Don.”

  “Well,” said the buru casually, “they can have their money when the next shipment pays out.” And with that he began carefully splitting up the contents of the packets between himself and Manu.

  “Can I drive you somewhere?” asked the buru as the two men walked together toward the sidewalk.

  Manu shook his head. “I have a visit to make,” he said. “It will be better to take the subway.”

  “A visit?” The buru frowned.

  “To Don. He and Carlos are preparing to run. That money was for them. I know it. I could feel it in the way he handed it over to us. Carlos is too busy right now to do anything, but Don— I will go find him at work. And say a few words.”

  The buru nodded. If Manu smelled danger, they had all better look about them.

  Veronika slowed down, at last, to consider where she was going and what she wanted. She was outside a bookstore, a bookstore that looked quiet, dark, and softly lit. She needed to think, and this seemed an excellent place for it. Once her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, she passed quickly by the racks of bestsellers lining the entry and stopped at the large sale table in the middle of the store, heaped high with outdated novels, odd cookbooks, and battered children’s stories. She touched the spine of each with one delicate finger as she read the titles. Nothing. The next pile contained a selection of dog-eared “how-to” books, most of them involving losing weight or inhibi
tions or husbands without guilt. Not relevant. Then her finger touched Become a New You in Eight Days. That was it. She wanted to become a new her. A different Veronika.

  She pulled it out. Chapter 1 counseled her to start with the easy part, to develop a new image from the skin out. In other words, new and different clothes. The idea seemed brilliant and persuasive in its simplicity. If you look like the person you want to be, you will become that person. Why not? She glanced at the price of the book and then took out her wallet. Her stomach growled as she stared at the single five-dollar bill inside it, and she realized that she needed two things before tackling her project: food and cash. She put the book back, grateful for its inspiration, doubtful that in its details it would do her much good, and moved briskly out the door and toward the corner.

  The smell of hot dogs grilling at a stand near the corner reminded her how hungry she was. As she pulled out her wallet once more, a softly hesitant voice muttered, “Hey, lady, you got any spare change?” She shook her head, embarrassed, and took out the five.

  “One,” she said to the vendor, handing him the bill.

  “Mustard and relish beside you,” he answered in a bored voice, slapping the hot dog in a napkin on her hand and slipping her three dollars in change in beside it.

  As she stepped back toward the curb, a man rushing to catch the light smashed into her, hitting her shoulder with his elbow and propelling her directly into the road. She twisted her well-muscled body in an attempt to change direction and fell hard against the panhandler, who was investigating the trash basket closest to the hot-dog stand. She grabbed the edge of the basket, pulled herself upright, and looked over at him in apology. He was thin, dirty, and cold looking, younger than she was and bent over in an effort to keep from being toppled into the traffic. As he straightened up, he reminded her of her cousin Klaus, fallen on hard times. The smell of food under her nose suddenly nauseated her. “Sorry about that,” she said. The panhandler looked up, suspicious. “You like mustard? Here, I haven’t touched it.” She handed him the hot dog, and as an afterthought, the three dollars. Today was a day to start things new.