Deadly Jewels (18 page)

“Or he may have caught it because it was familiar, one he usually takes,” I said, nodding, even though he couldn't see me. “It's a place to start.”

“Yeah, okay.” His voice was resigned, but I didn't care. He'd get enthused once we started making some progress.

“I have work to do here,” I said. “What about lunch?”

“You're just looking for an invitation.” That was better; that was more like Julian.

“Invariably,” I said and laughed.

“All right. One o'clock … at Café Pavé?”

“
Parfait
.” I was even smiling as I hung up the phone. We were going to get somewhere with this clue; I was sure of it.

I had no idea how wrong I could be.

*   *   *

She was sitting at the counter at the Hebrew Delicatessen, just three seats down from him. He'd been reading the
Gazette
, only looked up because the man beside him had knocked his arm standing and reaching into his pocket to pay. So Hans glanced up, reflexively, and his eyes met hers.

In that first sharp brilliant moment, he had to remind himself to breathe.

She smiled, even, a quick, tentative smile, and he didn't have the courage to return it. But as he ate his smoked-meat sandwich he kept looking at her, his glances surreptitious, drinking in that beauty with each one. The dark hair, the dark eyes, the oval face. The dimple. She was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, in his entire life. Dark hair in waves that she let tumble down her back. Large gray eyes under dark eyebrows. A small waist and lovely hips and breasts … Hans looked away, shocked at his own thoughts. How could he disrespect such a woman? She was an angel. She was perfection.

On Tuesday, his heart was pounding when he arrived. “The usual?” Bernie asked him, and Hans nodded distractedly. He tried to pay attention to his lunch, to his newspaper, but every time the door opened he looked up, hoping to see the girl, afraid of seeing the girl.

By the time he went back to work, he was exhausted. That night, he sat on the edge of his bed and practiced clever things to say. I haven't seen you in here before.… No, I would have noticed, someone as beautiful as you … I wonder if you might be free on Friday, there's this movie.… None of them was particularly clever, he realized. How did you talk to a girl like that?

On Wednesday, he pushed the door open and saw two things at once: the girl was there, and the seat at the counter next to her was empty.

Hans took a deep breath and headed over. This was his chance. This was his opportunity. A girl like this only came around once in a lifetime. He'd manage to find something to say. He'd—“Excuse me!” The woman with the three packages had bumped ahead of him and was putting her bag down on the seat. His seat. She glared at him and Hans backed off, but the girl looked up and saw Hans and this time, when she smiled, he had the good sense to smile back.

 

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Avner was on the telephone.

Chantal stuck her head into my office. “I cannot understand him,” she said. “He doesn't speak very good French, and he is speaking too quickly.”

“Who is it?”

“I cannot get his name. Something German, it sounds like. He keeps saying, Martine LeDuc, Martine LeDuc. Do you want the call?”

“Why not?”

A few clicks, then a voice. “Ah, so finally it is you on the telephone, I only have to wait to get to the right person. There are layers of people I must speak to first.”

“And
bonjour
to you, too, Avner.”

“Ah, well, at least she knows my name. The other girl, I think she couldn't hear so good.”

“The other girl,” I said, “hears perfectly well. She's francophone. And she
doesn't
know your name. What can I do for you?”

“You can tell me maybe why it is that I am sitting in my parlor instead of going to minyan like I should do, every day of my adult life. Every day I go to the shul, no matter how cold, no matter if there is snow, if I wake up, I go. But not today. You can maybe help me with that.”

“Because you don't have a car?”

A snort of derision. “You think, a car, this is what I need? No. What do I need a car for? I take a bus. Everywhere in Montréal, I take a bus. I can afford a car, yes, I can afford many cars if I want them. But do I want them? Do I want to be in the traffic with a car? There is no need of a car. What I need, I will tell you this: what I need is a nice Jewish daughter-in-law. What I need is mine wife to get better in her head. What I need, is right now a nice bagel from Viatur, and don't let nobody tell you that Fairmont it's just as good, that's a lie. What I need, is to go to minyan.”

“Avner, what's wrong?”

“Ah, now it is she asks the right questions. What is wrong is why I call you. What is wrong is I think maybe Montréal, it's not as tolerant as I think. What is wrong is I get the death threat.”

I think I gasped. I know it wasn't what I was expecting. “What happened, Avner?”

“Tell me this first, Martine. Is this still all right, that I call you Martine?”

“Yes,” I said distractedly. “Go on, Avner.”

“So, yes, Martine, tell me this. She has been killed, the girl with the diamond, the diamond that my father make a replica of in the death camp of Buchenwald?”

I drew in a breath. “Yes. She's been killed.”

“This is what I think. I don't look so much at the newspapers, you know, but on the bus, you see all sorts of things. I think I see she is dead. And now at my house I am having my coffee, because my doctor he says, one cup of coffee in the morning, this is all I am permitted now—”

“Avner,” I said.

“Yes, yes. So I am having my coffee and mine Naomi, she comes in, and she has in her hand this thing, it is an envelope, and she says it was in the door. I don't know how long it's in the door, me. We don't go out always by the front door, even though the park, it's close by, it's a nice walk, but not every day do we go to the park.”

I was getting dizzy. “What happened?”

“So the envelope, mine wife Naomi, she says it is in the door. With mine name, Kaspi, on it. Just mine name, that is all, but on the back of the envelope, there it is, the Star of David. Just like that.”

“What was inside the envelope? What did it say?”

“Inside this envelope with mine family name on it, inside this envelope with the Star of David on it, here is the note. It says—here, I read it to you, it is right here in my hand—it says, ‘you are next, death is waiting for you.' And underneath that, there is another drawing, too.

“Another Star of David?”

“No, Martine, this time, you do not guess so smart. This drawing inside, it is the swastika.”

I suppose I should have seen it coming.

“Stay where you are,” I said to Avner. “I have to call Julian—
détective-lieutenant
Fletcher—but we're on our way.”

“Yes, but with this plan, I see a problem.”

“What is it?” I was already reaching for my sweater.

“You do not know my address. Perhaps I can give it to you now?”

Avner, you're going to be the death of me. “Go ahead.”

I scribbled it on the paper that was topmost in one of the piles on my desk—Hutchinson Street, in Outremont, not in but not far from the Hasidic enclave—and hung up. Quickly I pressed Julian's digits. “Lunch is off. We're going to see Avner.”

“Why?”

“He's had a death threat. And you're going to just love who it's from.”

*   *   *

“A swastika.”

Julian was standing in a cavernous living room in a very large house on a street where you could probably eat off the pavement if you were so inclined. There were paintings on the walls that were probably originals, and probably valuable; the Kaspis clearly lived extremely well. Avner might take the bus, but I'd spotted a Mercedes under the porte-cochère.

Avner's wife was sitting on a sofa, her face white. Avner surrendered the paper and envelope and then went to sit next to her. “It will be all right,” he said, taking her hand in his.

She shook her head. “It is not all right. Avner, I told you not to involve these people. They will make it worse. They will get us all killed.”

“This is mine wife, Naomi,” Avner said to us. “She is upset by this.”

“Anyone would be,” I responded. “It's very upsetting. I'm very sorry, Mrs. Kaspi.”

Julian looked at the paper and turned to me. “This may change things,” he said. “About Patricia.”

“That she was killed by neo-Nazis instead of diamond thieves?”

“That she may have been killed by diamond thieves who are neo-Nazis.”

Avner looked back and forth between us anxiously. “This means what? This means that they know about the replacement diamonds?”

Julian frowned, sliding the card carefully into a plastic bag. “We'll see what we can get for fingerprints,” he said, and then turned to Avner. “Are you familiar with any neo-Nazi groups operating in the area?”

“You ask me this because I am Jewish? What, every Jew knows this? Because I am Jewish, I should spend my time looking under rocks for crazies?”

“Someone will know,” I said. “They keep records of these people somewhere.” Offhand, I couldn't think of where. The Holocaust Museum? “If that's even what we're looking at. This whole thing could be just a prank.”

“A prank that we're going to take seriously until proven otherwise,” said Julian.

Avner had more practical considerations in mind. “So I should not leave my house? No work? No minyan? What about mine Naomi?”

Naomi had an answer for that. “I have to do the shopping,” she said. “Every day, I do the shopping. I have to go out and do the shopping.”

“Can't you arrange for someone to guard them?” I asked Julian.

“On our budget? You've got to be kidding.” A beat, then, “I'll see what I can do.” He looked at Avner. “I think we need to take this threat seriously. Is there somewhere else you and your family can stay?”

“For how long? I am not anxious to begin living mine life in fear of the crazies. I have not for many years. I will not start now.”

Naomi clearly had other ideas. “And what, then? You want they should kill us in our beds? It's not funny, Avner. You know it's not supposed to be funny. We've seen this before.”

Avner put his arm around her shoulder. “Mine wife, the rabbi's daughter,” he said. “We cannot leave this neighborhood,” he said. “This is our home. Your policeman, he can guard us here.”

I understood his reluctance. Literally and figuratively, Montréal is a series of villages, and people tend to be fiercely loyal to their own
quartier.
Living somewhere else is like living in another city altogether. I'd made the switch from the Plateau to the old city, but it had taken some time to really feel at home in my new neighborhood. Now, of course, I couldn't imagine living anywhere else. “I'd like to see you somewhere else,” said Julian.

Avner considered it. “Mordecai Kaufman, he rents out rooms,” he said.

“That would be good,” I told Avner.

Naomi clearly didn't agree. “A room? You want us to stay in a room, now? Like refugees? This is what we have come to?”

“We'll come back,” he said, but she shook her head. “We will stay at my father's home,” she said firmly.

“Mine father-in-law,” said Avner, in the same voice he'd use to say, “a snake.”

“Your father-in-law, yes,” Naomi told him. “There at least I can cook, I can see my mother, we'll be next door to the synagogue, what more do you want?”

“How about Lev? Can he go with you?” asked Julian. “Or maybe stay with a friend?”

“You think mine son, he is in danger also?”

Julian and I looked at each other. “I think,” I said, “that we don't want to take any chances.”

Avner shrugged. “So, he will come, too, to the rabbi's house, to his grandfather's house,” he said resignedly. “I go now, make the arrangements, oh, we have so much to pack, so much to do!”

“Better than arranging for a headstone,” I reminded him, and he grimaced. Naomi was already halfway up the stairs. “And you think that he will appreciate seeing those slippers you wear, my father? How many times have I said, those slippers, they have to go?”

Avner turned to us and shrugged. “Mine Naomi, she will take care of things,” he said. “But I had better go now and pack these slippers of mine away before this wife of mine takes them.” He paused. “It is maybe good for her, to be with her family. Lately she is not looking so good.”

“I'm sorry,” I said, a little helplessly. I didn't know much about mental illness.

“It is what God sends,” said Avner philosophically. “She takes her medications, it is good. Mine wife is a beautiful woman, a beautiful mother, but I say to you it is maybe good that we go to the house of her father. I will go now and help her.”

Alone in the cavernous room, I turned to Julian. “What are you thinking?”

“I'm thinking that we need to rethink everything,” he said. “And that we need more information.”

“Who knows about neo-Nazi activity in Montréal?”

He gave me a smile that bordered on irony. “We do.” He pulled out his smartphone. “Let's see if I can get us an audience.”

“Sounds like we're going to see the pope.”

“Naw. That would be easier.”

*   *   *

It was on a Monday that Hans had first noticed the girl. Once he'd seen her, of course, he couldn't understand how he'd ever missed her. Or could ever think of anything or anyone else.

And now she had smiled at him. And he had smiled back.