A Pain in the Tuchis: A Mrs. Kaplan Mystery

A Pain in the Tuchis
is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

An Alibi eBook Original

Copyright © 2015 by Mark Reutlinger

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Alibi, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

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LIBI
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eBook ISBN 9780553393408

Cover design: Scott Biel

Cover art: Shutterstock

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A curse? You should have a lot of money, but you should be the only one in your family with it.

—Ernst Lubitsch

I should have suspected all was not quite kosher with Vera Gold’s death when one of the men carrying her body accidentally tripped at the front door and almost spilled poor Vera onto the ground. This was not a good omen.

Vera died at the close of
Yom Kippur,
the Jewish Day of Atonement, when we are called upon to examine our lives, confess the bad things we have done the previous year, and ask both God and the people we have wronged to forgive us. In her life Vera had much to atone for and many of whom to ask forgiveness; but knowing Vera as I did, I had no doubt she was unrepentant to the end.

About Vera’s death, you might say I had mixed feelings. I was not entirely sad to see her go, although I would have preferred that she left us upright rather than horizontal.

“Ida, it’s going to be a lot quieter around here now that Vera has died,” said my friend Rose Kaplan as we watched two burly men put Vera into a hearse.

“You say that as if it is a bad thing,” I replied. “The kind of excitement Vera caused I can do without, thank you very much.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Mrs. K said. “Still, you have to admit Vera kept things pretty lively at times.”

Now, that was an understatement. And when Mrs. K made it, she and I had no idea just how lively things were to become.

As I have said before, death at the Julius and Rebecca Cohen Home for Jewish Seniors is not what you would call an unusual event. Sad, yes. Unusual, no. Given the average age and state of health of the residents, it is perhaps surprising we are not having memorial services on a daily basis. Nevertheless, Vera’s was definitely a strange death. But then, Mrs. K seems to attract strange deaths like a dog attracts fleas.

Only fleas are a lot less dangerous.

“Did not your David use to blow the
shofar
on
Rosh Hashanah
and
Yom Kippur
?” Mrs. K asked me one day last September, the day before
Rosh Hashanah.
That’s the Jewish New Year and the beginning of the High Holidays, the ten-day period between
Rosh Hashanah
and
Yom Kippur.
David is my late husband, may he rest in peace.

We were in the kitchen of the Home, helping to prepare two of the most important foods for the coming holiday, apples and
challah.
There were just four of us, Mrs. K and I and Karen Friedlander and Fannie Kleinberg. Everyone likes to eat the goodies but only a few are willing to help make them. Karen and Fannie, and of course Mrs. K, you could always count on.

You may know that, unlike celebrating-type holidays like
Pesach,
Purim,
or
Chanukah,
with parties and presents and
noshing
lots of food, on
Yom Kippur
we are supposed to eat nothing at all. Instead, we fast for the whole day, from dusk to dusk. But maybe to make up for that, on
Rosh Hashanah
we eat very well.

The apples we were cutting up to be dipped in honey—it is so we should have a sweet year—and the
challahs
we were making were round ones. I am not sure why the
challah
—that’s a braided-up egg bread, it makes wonderful toast—is long in shape on
Shabbos
and round on
Rosh Hashanah.
Some people say it symbolizes the circle of life, others that it is a crown because God is the King of Kings. Whatever is the shape or why, it tastes very good.

So while we are slicing and mixing, somewhere in the building we hear someone practicing on the
shofar,
the twisted ram’s horn that is blown as part of the High Holiday services. When Mrs. K asked her question, I suddenly felt sad and stopped working for a moment. “Yes, that’s right,” I said. “For many years David was the
baal tokea,
the
shofar
blower, in our synagogue. I can remember him getting so excited the week before the High Holidays, making sure his lips were in shape for all the work they would be doing, just like if he were a famous trumpet player who was preparing for a big recital.”

“David I never heard, of course,” Mrs. K said, “but I remember one of the men who blew the
shofar
at our synagogue.
Oy,
such a sound he made. You know how, at the end of the final service on
Yom Kippur,
the
shofar
sounds
Tekiah Gedolah,
that very long note?”

“Do I know? You should have seen the color of poor David’s face when he blew that note. I was always afraid he might pass out, collapse right there on the
bimah.
In fact, I once asked him please to be less dramatic and
not
hold the note for so long. He said he could think of no better way to die than to be accompanied by the sound of the
shofar.
After that I
really
worried.”

Mrs. K laughed. “Yes, I see what you mean. And most
shofar
blowers, they hold the note for a few seconds and then give up. We all get the idea, and it is quite satisfactory. But this one man in our
shul
—a handsome fellow, not particularly tall or heavy, just ordinary build—would take a deep breath, begin to blow the long note, then turn slowly around, sending the sound to all parts of the sanctuary. You expected that after maybe twenty or thirty seconds, he would run out of air, like most people would. But he just kept on and on, sweeping the
shofar
back and forth, until we were all on the edge of our seats, wondering how long he could go on without collapsing. It was like he was Joshua at the battle of Jericho—you know, bringing down the walls with his
shofar.
When he finally did run out of breath and had to stop, we all felt like clapping, but of course one does not applaud during the
Yom Kippur
service.
Nu,
we contented ourselves with congratulating him afterward.”

“I am glad my David did not try anything like that,” I said. “It maybe would not have hurt him, but it would have given me a heart attack for sure.”

I began to get a
bissel
watery in the eyes, thinking about David. Mrs. K knew what was the matter—she does not miss much—and she came over and put her arm around me. “I know, Ida,” she said. “I miss my Sam too. But we must be grateful for the wonderful memories we have, and for our children, who will carry on the family after us.”

“Yes, I am being silly,” I said. “It is just that at this time of the year…But we should get back to work, or there will be no apples and no
challah
to
nosh
on after services.”

How important is family, I thought, especially at these times when we come together to celebrate or observe a special occasion. They provide you comfort, understanding, and hope for the future.

But not always. Standing there in the kitchen that day, I of course did not know that in ten days, when the High Holidays had ended, Vera Gold would have passed, and how differently her family would figure into that sad event.

The Julius and Rebecca Cohen Home for Jewish Seniors is probably like most such establishments, except most of the residents—not all, but most—are Jewish. They serve kosher food, and we celebrate all the Jewish holidays. If you want Christmas and Easter, you probably are in the wrong place. Mrs. K and I have lived at the Home for several years now. The residents are a real mishmash of people: old, young; rich, poor; athletic, arthritic. Mentally, many of the residents are still, as they say, sharp like a tack, but some are now more like the other end of the tack, having been hit with the hammer of life much too often. You know, missing a few candles from their
menorah.
Alas, it is life in a retirement home.

I suppose Mrs. K and I fall somewhere in the middle in all of these ways, with one big exception: if we are measuring how well our minds are working, Mrs. K is definitely the sharpest tack in the box. There certainly is no doubt she is smarter than I am; otherwise, it would be me who is solving the murders and she who is telling you about it.

So I shall do the telling, as usual.

Vera Gold moved into the Home maybe five years ago, more or less. From the beginning, she was a real pain in the
tuchis
—you know, what my son, Morty, would call a “pain in the butt,” and my grandchildren would use another, shorter word—always finding ways to irritate or infuriate the other residents.

I will give you some examples of what I mean.

First, there was the time Vera told Mr. Pupik, the Home’s general manager, that Rena Shapiro was keeping a cat in her room. Now, this technically is against the Home’s rules. Perhaps Vera knew about the cat because her room was right next door to that of Rena, and she had heard the cat meow at some time. In fact, most of the residents knew Rena had a cat, but no one minded because it was poor Rena’s only companion, and besides, it harmed no one, including her neighbor Vera. Rena is a sweet little woman, frail like a
faigeleh,
a little bird. She usually keeps to herself, seldom venturing out of her room except for meals or a walk in the garden. Who would begrudge her the company of a little cat?

Apparently Vera would. For some reason—perhaps just to be mean—Vera found it necessary to let the cat out of the bag, so to speak, reporting Rena’s secret to Pupik.

Mrs. K told me Rena had showed her a letter she had received from Pupik, all formal-looking, saying something like, “If you do not get rid of the cat, we will have to get rid of you.” Or words to that effect.

So how, you may ask, did we learn that it was Vera who snitched on Rena? Well, it is difficult to keep such a thing secret in a place like the Julius and Rebecca Cohen Home for Jewish Seniors, especially when there are ladies like our Mrs. Bissela living there. Mrs. Bissela, the Home’s resident
yenta—
you would say busybody—does not miss much that goes on, and she delights in telling whoever will listen what she has heard or seen. She certainly had no hesitation telling us what Vera had done, although I do not know how she found out. It is as if she has a spy in every room of the Home. Maybe she does.

Now, in strict Jewish law, it is a terrible sin to spread gossip, which is called
lashon hara,
an “evil tongue.” In fact gossiping is right up there with the big sins like murder or adultery, because of the serious harm it can do to another person. And this is even if—and maybe especially if—the words spoken about someone are true. False words can at least be proven to be false, and so the harm is mostly undone. But once a harmful truth is told, there is no way to untell it, and of course it cannot be proven to be false. As an old Chasidic tale says, once words are released into the air, they are like the feathers from a pillow tossed into the wind, drifting in every direction and impossible ever to recover. It is also a sin to listen to gossip, because if no one were to listen, the gossip could do no harm.

So you see that Vera’s telling on Rena was not just unkind, but a major sin. And so was Mrs. Bissela telling on Vera. Perhaps both of them will someday be rubbing elbows on the other side with
ganovim
—crooks—like Albert Capone or Bernie and Clyde, who I understand were very bad people indeed.

Why, you may ask, didn’t we just refuse to listen to Mrs. Bissela’s gossip? When Mrs. Bissela passes along something she has heard, it is extremely difficult simply to ignore what she is saying, sin or no sin. Should we cover our ears and shout “ya-ya-ya” like when we were children and didn’t want to hear what our parents were telling us? Come to think of it, that might work.

Anyway, Mrs. Bissela is particularly fond of Rena, and once she found out that it was Vera who gave her secret away, she was so angry we thought she would
plotz,
burst
.
And she made sure everyone else knew also. I am surprised she did not borrow a bull’s horn, or whatever you call that thing which makes your voice very loud, and announce it at dinner. I was present when she wished on Vera a
mise-meshune,
a particularly violent death.

When we learned about Vera’s complaining to Pupik, everyone was quite angry with her, especially Rena, as you would expect.

“There is no way Rena, who has no remaining family, could move out,” I said to Mrs. K. “Where would she go? And without her cat, she would be so lonely and unhappy.” I myself am not so fond of cats, but I know that some people get very attached to them, as did Rena to hers.
Nu,
to each his own.

Although we all would have liked to help, no one was quite sure what we could do for Rena. No one, that is, except Mrs. K. She is not one to stand by and wring her hands crying
oy vey iz mir
—woe is me—when she faces a problem. It is more likely her hands will be busy helping to solve the problem.

“Ida, we simply cannot let Pupik evict Rena,” Mrs. K said to me the day after we learned about Rena’s dilemma. “I have an idea. I shall look into it and see what I can do.”

When Mrs. K says she will see what she can do, I consider it as good as done.

That was all I heard about Rena until the next day. We were sitting in the lounge enjoying our morning tea—nothing fancy, just Mr. Lipton—and after we had both had a few sips and settled back on the sofa, Mrs. K says, “Ida, I did a little research, and I may have found a way to keep Pupik from evicting either Rena or her little cat.”

“How? You will make the cat invisible?”

“Yes, that would work, but it will not be necessary. Have you ever heard of such a thing as a ‘service animal’?”

“You mean like a dog that a blind person uses to get around? What has that to do with Rena’s cat?”

“I think it can be argued that the cat is also a service animal,” says Mrs. K.

That sounded a bit
meshugge
to me. Crazy. “A service animal? That cat? What service? The lazy thing does nothing all day but sleep on Rena’s windowsill. Not only does it not lead her around, she has to carry it across streets.”

“Nevertheless,” she replied, “I think there is a good chance. I was reading that these days many different animals can qualify. Dogs, cats, hamsters, turtles—I don’t think it matters, if they are necessary for the owner’s health. And if it is a service animal—a service cat, in this case—it is against the law for Pupik to refuse to let Rena keep it.”