The Witch and the Borscht Pearl (13 page)

Just when I decided no one was coming, the door opened. A woman stood there, a dark shape outlined by a sudden glare of light. I expected a housekeeper to tend the door in an establishment of this price and size, so it took me a second to realize that this was Bella. I recognized the fingers first, splayed against the slim hip. The last time I’d seen them, they were clutched tightly in Solly’s hand. One finger still wore Solly’s enormous emerald cut diamond.

“Bella?” I ventured, squinting against the yellow light.

“Yes?” I remembered the low roughness of her voice and wondered if Solly had found it sexy.

“It’s us,” I said. I was shivering uncontrollably by now, which made my words emerge through chattering teeth. “Mrs. Risk and Rachel, and this is a friend of ours, Charlie. Can we come in?” She made no move and I wondered if she’d understood me.

“Please accept my condolences,” put in Charlie. “I understand you and Mr. Mansheim were about to be married.”

Again, no answer, and still we waited. I wondered if I was going to have to barge through this door, too, but she finally swung it open.

We stepped in.

“What do you want?” she asked brusquely, as she closed the door behind us. She didn’t invite us any further in, but the foyer was too blissfully warm for me to complain. Solly’s house looked old, as deep and high as it was wide, with carved moldings, wood floors, Oriental runners, and paneling everywhere. The few pieces of furniture I spotted were intricately designed and decorated and had that sheen of loving care applied with muscle and oil I could smell like a sharp perfume.

A staircase coiled around to begin its ascent from the far end of the squares hall, its railing forming balconies on second and third levels that looked down at us past an unlit chandelier bigger than Charlie.

The room to our immediate left was furnished with a deep leather sofa, matching chairs, and richly tinted Oriental rugs. An inviting fire blazed in a rose marble hearth, and I stared at it with longing, but Bella either couldn’t take a hint or was too preoccupied to notice.

“How are you bearing up?” asked Mrs. Risk.

“Reporters,” came the terse reply. “They keep ringing up and asking insinuating questions.” She looked at us suspiciously, which Mrs. Risk interpreted immediately as an accusation.

“We have nothing to do with the news media. We’re only here to help Pearl, and hopefully you, too,” said Mrs. Risk.

“I’m not so foolish as to believe that. I will not talk to you. I have no desire to have what I say end up on page one somewhere. Or in police reports.” Her eyes glittered coldly.

“Drat that Zoë,” I groaned.

She added, stiff with anger, “The police are full of questions. I believe they think Solly was murdered and that I have done it.”

“Did they accuse you?” asked Mrs. Risk.

“No. But I’m not stupid. I can smell the suspicion on their breaths. What I’d like to know is who planted that suspicion? Why would I, of all people, want Solly dead? What would I gain?”

I gazed pointedly over her shoulder to the rooms beyond. “What a beautiful house. You must be very comfortable here, except for possibly painful memories.”

Bella took a step towards me. “What is this you suggest?” Mrs. Risk clutched my arm and squeezed. As my fingers began losing all feeling, I got the message that maybe I was supposed to keep quiet.

Hastily she inserted, “Rachel means that it must be very painful staying here without Solly. You must have wonderful memories of times spent together here.”

“I never lived with Solly if that’s what interests you. I moved in this morning, for convenience to hold shivah for him. When that’s over, I am gone.”

“Back to France?” I asked, flexing my bicep against the pain Mrs. Risk was inflicting on my arm.

Bella, glowering at me, said nothing.

Mrs. Risk, her resigned tone saying that she knew it was no use, asked anyway, “If we could sit down?” She let go of me. I exhaled in relief.

“No. You may come tomorrow after the funeral, if you must, but I’m in no mood for company now.” She pulled the door open. The icy wind instantly reduced me to shivers again. I cast an inquiring eye at Mrs. Risk. Were we going to stand for being tossed out, or were we staying?

When nobody moved to leave, Bella prompted with frigid politeness, “If you please?”

Mrs. Risk turned away, and Charlie and I followed her out. The door closed, followed by the substantial clack of a bolt that meant business.

Mrs. Risk exclaimed, “Drat!” She immediately turned and rapped sharply on the door. Charlie raised an obliging hand towards the bell, but Mrs. Risk shook her head no.

“Never mind,” she said with a sigh. “I doubt she would answer anyway. Rachel, why did you have to talk?”

“I wanted to know if Solly left her anything. Why should you get the fun of asking all the questions?” I lifted my chin. “And we found out, didn’t we? She inherits nothing but that chunk of ice on her finger.”

She sighed with long-suffering gusto and muttered something containing the word ‘tact,’ which I tactfully ignored.

I shuddered, and Charlie put his arm around me. “Rachel’s going to catch pneumonia if we don’t warm her up soon,” he said.

Mrs. Risk glanced up at him, but instead of answering, she peered off to her right. “I was hoping to inform Bella of the person spying on her through the window, but I got too involved in repairing the effect of Rachel’s questions and forgot.” She shrugged. “Now I suppose we’ll have to find out who this is on our own. Charlie dear,” she began, but he’d already, at her first words, jumped sideways from the stoop and was loping off in the direction she’d indicated.

At Charlie’s approach, a shapeless figure suddenly detached itself from the deeper shadows of the house and sprinted across the lawn, skirting a group of spindly rose bushes. Nothing could be discerned about the figure at all, not even its gender, except that it ran quickly. Charlie seemed unable to catch up, and, with my frozen legs, I was a poor second behind Charlie.

The peeping tom plunged through the perfect line of mercilessly trimmed shrubs that edged the property. A solid living fence, they rose more than three meters high, with short trunks spaced at about a half meter apart and branches tightly intertwined. I followed Charlie, impressed by the desperation of someone who would plow through a barrier that dense. Those stiff branches must’ve gouged pretty good.

With some difficulty, Charlie thrashed himself through. By the time I reached the shrubs, I heard the cough of a starter. An engine caught and then roared as gas was fed into it with a heavy foot. I dropped to my knees and scrambled between the small trunks, below the lowest branches, then sprang again to my feet in time to see Charlie stomping through puddles, racing down the middle of the street after a departing car. After about twenty meters, he swerved and doubled back for his milk truck.

By the time I caught up, Mrs. Risk was already in her seat, with Charlie pumping the ancient engine back to life.

“Watch it! Don’t flood the engine,” I shouted over the racket as I squeezed in behind Mrs. Risk.

Charlie cast me a sardonic look. “Just hang on,” he said.

Fortunately, because Solly’s drive was circular, we didn’t have to waste time turning around. The engine sputtered into action and soon we were toddling (don’t forget, this is a fifty year old milk truck) down Solly’s street. We teetered on two wheels as Charlie skidded left around the corner to get back onto Ocean Avenue. Luckily, considering Charlie’s curbside driving style, local security prohibited parking on the exclusive street.

At the next intersection, a sprawling junction where Ocean met highway 27, we joined the light traffic entering downtown East Hampton. A flash of familiar taillight guided us to bear right on James Lane where it splits to enclose a long narrow pond in front of a row of well-manicured old houses. After passing a few overly cautious drivers, only two vehicles separated us from our quarry on the narrow road. Charlie hunched over the steering wheel, his fanny hardly touching the seat.

As we headed deeper into town, I spotted an oncoming van weaving in the opposite lane about ten blocks from us, threading a too-rapid path around enormous gullies of leftover rain water. “Watch that van,” I muttered to Charlie.

Then the last vehicle ahead of us turned right, leaving nothing between us and the car we pursued except too much space. I strained vainly to read the license plate. To my frustration I couldn’t even see if the car was from New York.

“Get closer,” I demanded.

Charlie broke his concentration to glance back at me with incredulity. “Oh, I get it,” he said. “We’re supposed to be catching up to this guy?”

“Oh, grow up,” I snapped back.

Suddenly the divided sides of James Road rejoined itself and the two tiny lanes broadened into four, although now clogged with parked cars on either side.

The van caught my attention again. It still barreled towards us, careening crazily between puddles and, like an arrogant bull, trusted its bulk to frighten away traffic in the opposing lane when it carelessly crossed the double yellow lines.

“That guy’s been smoking something,” muttered Charlie.

Our quarry swerved right with squealing tires to avoid the oncoming van, causing the van to swerve broadly left across lanes in reaction to the near collision.

Charlie jammed on his geriatric brakes as the van, on the rebound, aimed straight at us.

Mrs. Risk twisted in her seat and grabbed my arms to keep me from tumbling backwards into the truck bed. I stifled a scream and then lunged to clutch her in return as, when Charlie swerved the other way, she nearly dropped out through the gaping door hole. Charlie shaved so close to a parked Lincoln that he jerked the steering wheel back too hard in reaction. At that moment the van slid by without collision.

Engineered in an era of low speed and sedate driving habits, the top-heavy panel truck rolled for four breath-taking seconds on its two passenger side tires, nearly dumping both me and Mrs. Risk out into the road.

Empty wire baskets bashed into themselves, bouncing off the inside walls of the truck. A few ricocheted painfully off my backside, one striking me square between the shoulder blades. We clung to her seat and each other with every muscle we jointly owned.

By the time the truck righted itself—with a little encouragement from Charlie—and I had sucked in a new lungful of air, the old one having been used up a while back, not only was the van long gone, but no trace of the car we were chasing could be seen.

Traffic was sparse, but enough was moving to keep us guessing whether or not the car had turned a corner.

“It must have turned left there,” declared Mrs. Risk, pointing decisively at a side street. Charlie followed her direction, and we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a shopping center parking lot, with crazily scattered stores and no exit visible in the maze. Finally we discovered a sign that pointed to our right, to ‘Newtown Lane’. Another left turn after that and somehow we found ourselves back on the main road, hopelessly alone, heading back in the direction from which we’d come.

For twenty minutes, Charlie tacked back and forth on side roads, trying to catch sight of the car again.

Eventually Mrs. Risk sat back with a sigh. “What color was that car exactly, Charlie?”

Charlie shook his head. “Pale green, maybe? Blue? Pale something. Under fluorescent streetlights, tough to figure out. And I never caught up enough to make out the license plate.”

“Did you catch that
van’s
license plate?” I grumbled.

“No,” snarled Charlie. “I was busy driving.”

“Aaaah, you were driving! That’s what you were doing?”

“Charlie. Rachel. Never mind. As for the license plate, I think it was daubed with mud, anyway. I suspect the entire car was wearing a coat of mud, courtesy of this storm. Us, too, no doubt. Rachel. What did you notice about the vehicle?” she asked.

Charlie opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, I answered, “That engine restarted dead cold—it had to be sitting at least twenty minutes in this icy rain, because he got to Solly’s before us. With that engine, I would’ve heard his arrival otherwise.” I shook my head. “I couldn’t tell the make or color. Pre-’85 is my guess, though, from its shape. The engine couldn’t have been stock, because the body was one of those cheap models, not good enough to justify that size of engine. Actually, it sounded an awful lot like an old Chevy engine, one of the bigger ones. A 405 maybe, or a Chevrolet truck 350, obviously modified for speed. That acceleration was powerful. Don’t feel bad, Charlie. We never would’ve caught up with it in this truck, van or no van.”

“Would you recognize the car again in sunlight?” she asked sharply.

“No,” I admitted. “But I might recognize the engine if I heard it again. It’s been well taken care of. Really hummed.”

Charlie swiveled around to stare at me, prompting me to tell him sharply to watch the road. I had no intention of dying in some ridiculous milk truck.

“Let’s stop someplace along the road, Charlie. As you’ve already mentioned, Rachel’s freezing,” commented Mrs. Risk.

About ten minutes out of East Hampton, he pulled into the parking lot of a small country inn. Within minutes, I was huddled next to a blazing fire in the lobby, my blue-fingered hands clasped around a hot toddy.

Charlie poked me. “So? Tell me.”

“What, the car stuff?” I answered irritably. “I hung out at a couple of garages when I was a kid.” I’d found most garage mechanics to be easy going, uncritical human beings, unlike the other adults in my life. Not that that was Charlie’s business.

Mrs. Risk strode off towards the hostess’s tiny reservation desk, and after a small passage of time, returned.

“I called Michael,” she announced. “Informed him of the peeping tom. He’s going to post an officer to keep an eye on the house.” She shook her head. “I’m really annoyed with Ms. Bella. Our ridiculous chase might’ve turned out differently if she’d allowed us to stay. Tchah,” she said irritably, and took a swallow of wine.

“I wonder if he was really just spying on her,” I murmured.