A Pain in the Tuchis: A Mrs. Kaplan Mystery (15 page)

On Monday morning, Mrs. K received a telephone call from Inspector Corcoran.

“Ida,” Mrs. K said when we met for breakfast, “he has found the photograph and we can come down to look at it if we wish.”

“And do we wish?” I still was not sure why she wanted to see that photograph.

“Well, yes, at least I do. Perhaps there is no need for you to come along if you have other things to do this morning.”

As it happened, I did have an appointment with the dentist, who was coming to the Home so we did not have to
shlep
downtown to his office. It is a little perk, as they say, of being old. So Mrs. K went to see the photograph by herself. I did not mind, as I had no particular desire to see what this Erik looked like some years ago. When I asked Mrs. K why she wanted to, as usual she said she would tell me later, when she had more information. To be honest, I often have trouble following Mrs. K’s reasons for some of the things she does, so I am quite content to wait until she has finally figured something out and she explains to me at one time the whole
megillah,
the entire story, including the ending.

My appointment was over before noon—I was lucky Dr. Simmons did not stick me with one of those needles that make everything in your mouth go numb, so you can’t talk or eat properly—and by lunchtime Mrs. K was back. She seemed quite excited.

“It is as I thought,” she said when we had been seated and served.

“And how is that?”

“I will explain later. Let us have our lunch in peace and not worry about Daniel or the police for now.”

This seemed a good idea, especially as both Karen Friedlander and Isaac Taubman had just come to the table. Not only would it be impolite to ignore them, but what we had to discuss was not what one would call public information. And perhaps Mrs. K and Taubman would like to talk about their date-that-was-not-a-date.
Mazel tov.
Our discussion could wait.

About an hour later, someone knocked on my door just as I was finishing with the toilet. Have you noticed that you can go the whole day with no one knocking on your door or calling you on the telephone, but the five minutes you are on the toilet, the telephone will ring and the door will knock? At least I have a telephone extension in the bathroom, but I cannot open the front door from there. Maybe I should start to carry my smarty telephone into the bathroom; I have heard ladies in the public restrooms talking on their phones while on the toilet, as if they were sitting in their living rooms at home. It is what they call multitasking, I think.

Anyway, I put myself together and hurried to the door. It was Mrs. K, and she had a worried expression on her face.

She came in and sat down on the sofa. She looked quite serious.

“So, Ida,” she said, “we are now getting to what you might call the heart of the matter. But I still need certain information before I know if I am, as you put it the other day, barking at the wrong tree.”

Usually if Mrs. K is barking at a tree, it turns out to be the right one. But there is always an exception possible.

“And there is a problem finding this information?”

“I think there will be. Let us look at the possibilities.”

I asked Mrs. K to wait while I made some tea and we could relax a little. She seemed like she could use it.

It took me only a few minutes to boil the water and make the tea, and soon we were sipping and Mrs. K looked much more relaxed than she did when she knocked on the door.

“So, Rose. Perhaps you should start at the beginning. Otherwise I will be getting confused.”

Mrs. K put down her teacup and cleared her throat.

“Ida, do you remember I said that on Saturday morning I had a little idea?”

“Yes, certainly I remember. It was while you were brushing your teeth, was it not?”

“Actually, it was while I was taking my vitamins, but that is close enough. And I spent a great deal of time thinking and, as I told you, asking questions of Daniel and Inspector Corcoran. And now I have seen the photograph, and things are beginning to fall into place. I am seeing possibilities that I did not see before, although some of them might seem quite improbable.”

This reminded me of the important lesson of Mr. Sherlock Holmes that Mrs. K is fond of quoting: “When you eliminate what is impossible, what is left over must be the truth, no matter how
meshugge
it might seem.” I mentioned this to Mrs. K.

“I am pleased that you see where I am going with this. I have eliminated what at least I consider impossible, and I am trying not to let the fact that some more possible solution is—what is the expression—is a long shot, keep me from considering it.”

“So what is the impossible, and when we take it out, what is left?”

“Yes, is that not what they call the sixty-four-dollar question? What could and could not have happened, I have been asking myself, given what we know and what Inspector Corcoran has told us?”

“And did you now come to a conclusion?” I could tell Mrs. K was excited, like a hunting dog that is getting near the rabbit it has been following. I also know that at such a time, she is more interested in pouncing on the rabbit than stopping to explain where she thinks it is hiding.

So I was not surprised or disturbed when she answered, “Not yet, but I am getting there. I still need to find a couple of important pieces to the puzzle. They are related to the two medicines that we were told were together responsible for Vera’s death. I can think of only two, or maybe three, ways to get this information.”

“And they are…”

“Well, the easiest way would be to get certain medical records. I was going to ask Inspector Corcoran for another favor, that he should get these records for me.”

“I don’t know, Rose,” I said. “Medical records? They are extremely confidential, are they not? I remember Morty telling me that when Joanne was in the hospital with some kind of infection, they would not tell him anything about her condition, even though he is her husband, until she signed some kind of paper saying it was okay he should know. So if a husband cannot even find out about his sick wife…”

“Yes, exactly. That is why I hope Corcoran will help. The police can get information that we cannot.”

“But even if they can, will they give it to you? You are not the police.” It is true that once before, during that matter of the matzoh balls, Mrs. K had been able to obtain information from the police records of certain residents of the Home, and perhaps she was thinking she could do so again. But that time she had persuaded Isaac Taubman to ask his son Benjamin, who is a policeman, to get the information for her as a big favor. Benjamin could have lost his job if his superiors had found out. I reminded Mrs. K of this, and she agreed she could not ask such a favor again. And Corcoran would be a lot harder to persuade than Isaac Taubman!

Mrs. K thought about this problem for a long time, sipping her tea and looking somewhere far away. Finally, she said, “Yes, you are right. It probably is not even worth asking Corcoran. It would not be proper for him to do this for me, and besides, he has already been very helpful about the photograph and I don’t want to become a
noodge,
a nuisance. So that takes me to the second possible way to get the information….” Her voice trailed off.

Mrs. K sounded even less enthusiastic about this choice than she had about the police.

“It would be a much more unorthodox method. One we used in the past, although very…very reluctantly.” It sounded from her voice like she was even reluctant to mention it to me.

For a moment I could not understand to what Mrs. K might be referring. And then suddenly I had my own epiphany, or whatever it is. Or at least one of those lightbulbs went on over my head for a change.

“You don’t mean Sara’s friend Florence, do you? Florence the lady burglar? Whose telephone Sara gave me?” I was hoping the answer was no, but I was pretty sure it was yes.

It was.

“I’m afraid so. Do you think it is possible she would do another big favor for us?”

“You mean enter a room again and look for, or at, something?” This was what the lady burglar had done for us once before. But it had not gone well.

“Yes, something like that. Do we dare ask her again?”

I thought about this for a moment. I answered reluctantly.

“To be honest, I don’t think so. First of all, the last time it was you yourself who was, shall we say, in the soup. Florence did this as a favor to Sara, because I am Sara’s aunt and you are my best friend. It is maybe too much to ask that she do it again, and this time for Daniel, who is not even related to you or me and a stranger to Sara.” I knew that, as far as Mrs. K was concerned, she felt as close to Daniel as one can without being actually related, as I have already explained. But this would not be apparent to Sara’s friend.

Mrs. K nodded, and I continued.

“There is also the fact that things did not work out exactly as they were planned the last time. We all survived, but I still sometimes have nightmares about it. So that is another reason I would be reluctant to ask her again.”

“Yes, you’re right, Ida,” Mrs. K said. “We shall put that idea aside for the moment. But I still would like to speak with your niece Sara.”

“Not about the lady burglar?”

“No, something else. I would like to ask a question of that lawyer she used to work for, what was his name?”

“Farraday, I think. Why do you need a lawyer? Are you in some kind of legal trouble?” This was a new development. I had not heard of any problem with the law Mrs. K was having.

She laughed. “No, Ida, I just wanted to ask something about a will.”

I was relieved. “About updating your will?”

“Uh, something like that, yes.”

“This is a good idea, Rose. I have to do the same,” I said. “As I think I told you, it occurred to me when I was visiting Morty and seeing how quickly his children are growing up that I had not looked at my will in many years. Sara told me more than once—I think she knew as much about these things as Farraday did—that when there is a change in the family, who gets what in your estate can change too, so it is important to keep your will up to date.”

“Yes, that’s right, of course.”

“I will give you Sara’s telephone number and you can ask her. I am sure she will be glad to help. Maybe she can answer your question herself. As I said, after working for Mr. Farraday for many years, she learned quite a bit about his business. He even wanted to send her to school to become a—what is it called—a paralegal, I think it is. But she then got that inheritance and decided she would retire from working for a while.”

“Yes, maybe she can answer my questions; that would be much easier. Thank you, Ida, I shall call her later.”

“So back to your medical question. Is there any other way to get the information you need?”

“Yes, there is one more possibility. I shall see if Daniel can help with this. He may not be able or willing to, but I really won’t know until I ask him.”

And that is where we left it. I could tell Mrs. K was getting close to the end of the hunt for Vera’s killer. I was somehow sure it would either be whoever it was she was now concentrating on, or it would be the only other alternative.

That would, of course, be Daniel.

On Tuesday morning after breakfast, Mrs. K and I went to see Daniel again. He was still looking gloomy, and who would not? The trout was still in the milk, as Mr. Thoreau apparently would say, and so far we had not been able to remove it.

“Do not worry, Daniel,” Mrs. K told him. “I am working on an idea that I hope will make everything much clearer. But I shall need your help again.”

“Of course, I’ll do whatever I can,” he said.

“Good. I assume your pharmacy keeps records of who is prescribed what medicines, yes?”

“Well, yes, we do have that on our computer.”

“So you could look up, say, whether last week or last month I was prescribed some particular drug.”

“Yes, we can do that. Provided you purchased it there, of course.”

“Ah. And what if I purchased it at another Superior Drug Mart, but in some other city?”

“Hmm. I think it wouldn’t matter, now that all the stores are linked by the same computer network.”

“This network—can you get to it here? I mean, from home, if you are not back at the pharmacy?”

“Well, yes, I can still log in. I’ve had to do it from time to time.”

“Good. And finally, how far back does this computer record go? More than, say, one year?”

Daniel thought for a minute. “I’m not certain, but I think the company policy is to keep records for at least seven, or maybe it’s ten, years. Just in case of lawsuits and such. You know, if someone claims they were harmed by a particular drug, that sort of thing. So did you want me to find out what drugs my mother was taking? I thought the police already knew that from her doctor.”

“It is something like that. But another person.”

Daniel looked almost shocked by the suggestion.

“I can’t do that, Rose. You must know that those records are confidential. It’s against the law, as well as against company policy.”

Mrs. K took Daniel’s hand and, like a mother enlightening her son to the ways of the world, she patiently explained, “Daniel dear, I know you are a good person, an ethical person, and you would not violate either the law or your conscience for anything. We saw that when it came to the autopsy and the conflict with
halacha,
with Jewish law. Now we seem to have a little conflict with the company rules.”

“Not just company rules, Rose. As I said, it’s also against the law. And while you convinced me there was an exception to the prohibition on autopsies in my mother’s case, I don’t know of any exception to the confidentiality law that doesn’t involve some kind of subpoena or other legal procedure.”

Mrs. K was still patient, still like a mother to a son. “Yes, I understand. And I am as much a law-abiding person as are you. But in this case it is not a matter of your avoiding a little break in the law; it is a matter of your avoiding spending the rest of your life in prison. I would not ask you to do this if it were not the best—maybe the only—way I know to get this vital information.”

Daniel lapsed into silence, looking troubled, as anyone would be. He stared down at his lap, in which his hands were folded, his knuckles white. Finally he looked up and said, “I will think it over tonight and let you know tomorrow, is that okay?”

“Certainly,” Mrs. K said. “Call me in the morning.”

And that was how we left Daniel, just as gloomy as we found him, or maybe more so. Mrs. K did not look much happier, and I could not blame her. She is not just law-abiding, like she said to Daniel. She is a person who, if a pay telephone accidentally gave her quarter back, she would mail it to the company. If there still were any pay telephones.

“I hope Daniel will agree to do this,” Mrs. K said to me on our way out of the store. “If not, I may be out of ideas.

“And Daniel might be out of luck.”

Back at the Home, Mrs. K and I went to our respective apartments to freshen up. According to what Mrs. K told me later, this is what happened next:

There was a knock on her door, quite a heavy knock. She opened the door, and there in front of her was a large man. “Like one of those football players, only older,” she said. It was a little intimidating, and she is not a timid woman.

“Are you the lady who’s asking all the questions about Vera Gold’s death?” he said. It was hard to tell from his manner whether these words were a simple inquiry or some kind of an implied threat.

“I guess you could say that,” Mrs. K replied. She could hardly deny it. “Why do you want to know?”

“I’m Fred Herrington.”

Now at least she could start to put two and two together, although what they would add up to was not yet clear.

“You are the man who used to live with Vera?”

“That’s right. Can I come in?”

She let him in.
Nu,
she could not just leave him standing in the hallway, could she? And besides, she naturally was curious as to not only why he was there, but also where he might fit into the puzzle we were still trying to work out.

Mrs. K showed Mr. Herrington into the living room, where he sat on the sofa, taking up more than his share of the cushions. She offered him tea. “No, thank you,” he said, in a tone of voice that seemed to say, “I am here on serious business, not to drink tea.”

“Mrs. Kaplan,” he said, speaking slowly, when she had seated herself across from him, “I have a confession. I’m the one who…”

Before he could finish his sentence, Mrs. K jumped in with “Who killed Vera?” I think it was because she was so focused on that question, and here she might just have the answer handed to her, so to speak.

No such luck. “No, no,” he said, laughing. He apparently looked much less threatening when he laughed. “Where did you get that idea?”

“I apologize. Please go on. To what do you want to confess?”

“That I’ve been kind of watching you the last few days. One time I think your friend noticed me, but I managed to disappear before she caught up with me.”

“And why would you be watching me? Am I that interesting?”

Again he laughed. “No, no. I mean I’m sure you are an interesting person, but I’m afraid I tend to be somewhat…somewhat shy, I guess you’d say, around strangers, especially in public. I’ve wanted to talk with you, but I didn’t want to just barge in on your conversation with your friend, I wanted to talk with you alone, and…well, I finally decided to come here, in private, instead.”

“I see. Ida will be glad to know this. And now that the ‘confession’ is out of the way, what did you want to talk to me about?”

“About Vera, of course. I received a letter from an attorney saying she had passed away and that I was to receive something in her will. I had lost touch with her a few years ago, and this was the first I knew of her death.”

“I imagine it was something of a shock to you, even if you had not seen her in a while. You had not been to see her at the Home before receiving this letter?”

“No. As I said, I hadn’t seen her in quite a while.”

“Did you…did you part on good terms?”

“Pretty good. It was what you might call by mutual agreement. Vera was becoming increasingly, well, difficult to live with. And I suppose I cramped her style a bit, being as nonsocial as I am. Vera always liked to be out and about. This was before she became ill, of course.”

“Yes. But I still do not see why you were so anxious to talk with me, rather than the lawyer, or her son, Daniel.”

“Daniel and I did not…get along very well. We didn’t agree on what was in Vera’s best interests, I guess. I did go and see the lawyer, and he told me that the police were investigating Vera’s death as a murder. That was a shock, I can tell you. And he said they had arrested Daniel. That was even more of a shock.”

“To us also,” Mrs. K said.

“Anyway, I wanted more information than the lawyer had, so I came here to the Home to find it.”

“And why not to the police?”

Mr. Herrington looked a little uncomfortable. He said, “I…I’ve had some run-ins with the police in the past, and I try to keep my distance from them.”

“So how did you know to look for me?”

He laughed. “Oh, it seems everyone here knows you’re investigating Vera’s death, trying to clear Daniel’s name. Isn’t that right?”

“I suppose so, yes. And to be honest, you are on my list of suspects.”

Herrington looked quite surprised. “Me? Why me?”

“Well, we didn’t know on what terms you parted from Vera. And there is the inheritance, is there not?”

Another laugh. “Oh, that. I told the lawyer I was renouncing the gift in the will. I don’t need the money, and whoever is next on the list probably does.”

Mrs. K was, of course, surprised by this new information. She and Herrington talked about Vera and the investigation—the parts she could talk about publicly, of course—for quite a while. He even accepted another offer of tea before he left, having learned what he came to find out.

After I rejoined Mrs. K in the lounge and she described her meeting with Herrington, there was only one more thing to do:

Cross Fred Herrington off our list.

When we returned from breakfast the next day, there was a message that Daniel had called. It said simply, “I’ll do it. Give me a call. DG.”

A large sigh of relief Mrs. K gave when she read this. “We are still in the game, Ida,” she said. “Let us get this done before Daniel changes his mind. And before I do.”

And that is what we did. Mrs. K telephoned Daniel and told him what she wanted him to look up. He agreed and said he would get back to her within an hour.

Daniel did call Mrs. K back about an hour later, and after hanging up the telephone, she turned to me looking more pleased than I had seen her since the evening of her date—or whatever it was—with Isaac Taubman.

“Ida, I think we are on the right track this time. There remains only one more thing I must do before we can go to see Inspector Corcoran with our information. And for that I must borrow your new telephone, the one Sara gave you.”

“My telephone? What has that to do with anything? Of course you may borrow it, but…”

She laughed. “I apologize, Ida. I have not been explaining things very well the last few days, have I? It is just that until I am sure of something, I am reluctant to go out on a limb, to tell even you what I am thinking. Especially when it concerns other people. But now let me tell you exactly what I am thinking, and you can tell me whether I am on the right track or just totally
meshugge.
”

So finally I was learning what all this gathering of information was for. Mrs. K began with her vitamin pill “epiphany” and explained all the steps in her reasoning. I must say, although I have often been impressed with how Mrs. K’s mind works, this was the most impressive of all. And maybe the most surprising.

Unless, of course, it turned out to be wrong. And to be perfectly honest, I thought it had about the same chance of being right as being wrong. And that could be a disaster, because Mrs. K seemed to be putting all her eggs in the same carton.

What a mess if it tipped over….

I went to my apartment and got my new smarty telephone and handed it to Mrs. K. I then went over with her all of the instructions my grandchildren had given me, at least the ones I could still remember. She thanked me, put the telephone in her pocket, and said she now had a very important visit to make, and to wish her luck. I did, and then she was gone.

I had a feeling the next time I spoke with her, we would know all there was to know.

And I was right.