Mrs. Kaplan and the Matzoh Ball of Death

by Mark Reutlinger

  —

  Several minutes later, Mr. Pupik, apparently having finished whatever it was he and the others were doing in Bertha’s apartment, comes up to our table. This is something he never does just to be friendly, so we knew he had something on his mind. And he asked us if Mrs. K would mind coming to his office when we were finished eating. As it was again quite clear it would not matter if we did mind—she should come anyway—as soon as we finished Mrs. K pushed back her chair, stood up, and with a deep sigh said to me, “I wonder what it is Pupik wants from me now. Is it not enough that he implies that my matzoh balls killed poor Bertha Finkelstein? I did not sleep well at all last night worrying about this, and now he wants to go over it again?” She sighed once more.

  “Anyway, Ida, I would like you should come along with me this time, so I don’t have to deal with Pupik by myself.”

  Now our Mrs. Kaplan is no shrinking violet—or shrinking Rose, if you will forgive the pun—and she has proved herself more than able to take care of herself on many occasions, but now she clearly wanted some moral support.

  “Of course I shall come with you,” I replied. “And you will see that there is nothing to worry about, and afterward we will both feel much better.” So we both walked down the hall into the office wing and knocked on Mr. Pupik’s door. And what we found when we entered did not make either of us feel better at all.

  8

  Seated in Pupik’s outer office at his conference table, which is round with six padded office chairs around it, were Dalgliesh and Columbo. They introduced themselves, and as Mrs. K suspected, they were not doctors or lawyers or family members. They were, in fact, policemen. Detectives, whose actual names we were told were Corcoran and Jenkins. Corcoran, the tall handsome one, was looking pleasant and impassive, and Jenkins was looking disheveled and jumpy, playing with a stack of pocket calendars that were on the table next to him. Pupik looked like he just got back from a funeral, although poor Bertha Finkelstein’s memorial service would not be until the next day. Corcoran got up and offered Mrs. K a seat. Me, he just looked at, as if he expected me to perform a magic trick or do a little dance. Sit down, he clearly was not inviting me to do.

  Mrs. K immediately turned to Pupik and said, “I don’t know why you wanted me to come here, but I insist you let my friend Ida stay. I shall tell her whatever happens here anyway, so it will save me the trouble.” Pupik seemed about to protest, and Columbo/Jenkins looked more sour than before, if that is possible. But Corcoran/Dalgliesh, who was obviously the one in charge of the meeting, just smiled and said, “If that’s what you prefer, Mrs. Kaplan, we have no objection. But I should warn you that what we have to discuss is of a…shall we say, delicate nature, and you may prefer a more private conversation.”

  But Mrs. K was adamant, and she sat right down and announced to everyone at once, “Then let us stop this kibitzing and get to the point. I have other things to do today.” So I sat down on a chair off to the side to listen, while Mrs. K and the three men sat at the round table. And after a last glance at me, Corcoran began, addressing Mrs. K.

  “I understand from Mr. Pupik here,” Corcoran said, indicating him with a nod of his head, “that yesterday he explained that Mrs. Bertha Finkelstein choked on a diamond earring that you identified as belonging to Mrs. Daisy Goldfarb, another resident of this institution.” Oy, such formal language he used, but I suppose it’s because he had to explain things carefully so nobody would mistake what he was saying. Anyway, he went on like this, speaking pleasantly, as if he was just discussing with us the weather:

  “Furthermore, the earring in question appears to have been in the soup that Mrs. Finkelstein was eating, and that was prepared by you.”

  Mrs. K nodded, as so far there was nothing new in what the policeman was saying.

  “Mr. Pupik tells us,” he continued, “that he was going to talk with Mrs. Goldfarb and ask her if she knew how her earring could have gotten into Mrs. Finkelstein’s soup. But before he could do that, and just a few minutes after you left his office, Mrs. Goldfarb came to Mr. Pupik’s office to report that sometime after she returned to her room the previous evening, she noticed that her earrings were missing.”

  “Had been stolen,” interjected Mr. Pupik, never one to leave well enough alone.

  “Well, yes, apparently that’s what she said,” Corcoran admitted, “and it certainly does look that way. She described the earrings that were stolen—missing—and they would seem to be the same ones that ended up in your soup—”

  “You mean, one of them ended up in the soup, unless you are saying someone else found one in their matzoh ball,” Mrs. K said, interrupting Corcoran.

  “I stand corrected,” Corcoran answered with a smile. “The same earrings of which one ended up in the soup and, unfortunately, in Mrs. Finkelstein. Anyway, at that point Mr. Pupik decided this might be a matter for the police, and that is why Mr. Jenkins and I are here.”

  Pupik nodded, as if satisfied that he had done his duty and deserved a pat on the back. He seemed to be enjoying himself.

  “This does put a different light on the situation, as you can see,” said Corcoran. I did not see, but apparently Mrs. K did, because she nodded as if he should continue. And he did.

  “What that means to us,” and here he looked at Jenkins, “is that whoever caused that earring to end up in Mrs. Finkelstein’s soup, or in the dumpling in her soup—”

  “Matzoh ball,” corrected Mrs. K.

  “Matzoh ball,” agreed Mr. Corcoran. “Whoever caused the earring to be in the matzoh ball in Mrs. Finkelstein’s soup, or in the soup itself, is probably the person who took Mrs. Goldfarb’s earrings in the first place. Whether they were trying to hide it or simply accidentally dropped it we do not know, of course.”

  At this point there was silence. We were all digesting what Corcoran had just said. But any way you swallowed it, it sounded like he was implying that my best friend Rose Kaplan not only had caused poor Bertha Finkelstein’s death, but maybe had stolen from Daisy Goldfarb the diamond earring she used to kill her.

  Oy Gotenu! It seemed like it was Mrs. K, not just poor Bertha, who was in the soup.

  9

  “So now you are accusing me of stealing Daisy’s earrings?” cried Mrs. K. “I who never so much as stole a paper clip when I worked in an office? Who would not be caught dead (you will excuse the expression) in those dangly-schmangly earrings of Daisy’s?” I had rarely heard Mrs. K raise her voice, but now it was several decibels above ladylike and rising.

  Corcoran stepped in quickly to say, “No one is accusing you of anything, Mrs. Kaplan; I was just following the logic of the facts we have thus far discovered. Now, if you can fill in some of the facts we are still missing, I’m sure we can quickly straighten this out. To begin with, if you could tell us how you happened to be in possession of Mrs. Goldfarb’s earring…”

  “But I did not possess Daisy’s earring,” protested Mrs. K, “so I cannot very well tell you how I got it.”

  “You did make the dumpl…uh, the matzoh balls that were in the soup last night, did you not?” Corcoran persisted.

  “Yes, of course, but—”

  “And the soup?”

  “Yes, and the soup, but—”

  “And I am told by Mr. Pupik that you were the only one allowed in the kitchen while you were making them, is that right?”

  “Yes, yes, but I did not have Daisy’s earrings in the kitchen with me, so what does that prove?”

  “Then do you have another explanation for how the earring ended up in the matzoh ball soup that you made in the kitchen all by yourself?”

  Well, now, that was just what Mrs. K and I were trying to come up with the previous night. And of course we did not have much success.

  “And how do you know those earrings were even stolen?” Mrs. K asked, changing the subject just enough to avoid answering Corcoran’s question. “Daisy Goldfarb is a very nice person I’m sure, but she is well known to be absentminded and forgetful. She
probably mislaid the earrings and when she could not find them, she thought they were stolen.”

  Here Jenkins piped up for the first time: “We asked Mr. Pupik that already, and from what he told us this was clearly a case of theft.”

  All eyes turned to Pupik, who suddenly looked uncomfortable, but he turned toward Mrs. K and said, “I also thought it was possible Mrs. Goldfarb had only misplaced the earrings. Such things happen all the time, of course, but then I spoke with Miss Zeiss, who as you know is Mrs. Goldfarb’s personal caretaker. She told me that earlier in the day she was helping Mrs. Goldfarb try on some clothes for the evening seder. Mrs. Goldfarb tried on the earrings in question, but she decided not to wear them after all. According to Miss Zeiss, she laid them down on the small table near the door.”

  “Not a very safe place for them,” Mrs. K said.

  “No,” Pupik replied, “there I agree with you. I even remarked as much to Miss Zeiss, who was a bit embarrassed and admitted she had intended to remind Mrs. Goldfarb to put them away in a safer place, but apparently she had forgotten to do so. Nevertheless the earrings were still on the table when Miss Zeiss left for the day, about 2 P.M. It is unlikely that between the time Miss Zeiss left and Mrs. Goldfarb went to the seder, Mrs. Goldfarb could have ‘misplaced’ the earrings.”

  “Did Daisy say she put the earrings away before she left for the seder?” Mrs. K asked.

  Pupik looked at Corcoran as if to ask him whether he should answer or not, but Corcoran made no move to interrupt, so he turned back to Mrs. K and said, “I asked her that, and she says she doesn’t remember. She may simply have forgotten about them being on the table.”

  Corcoran had his mouth open as if to ask a question, but Mrs. K beat him to it.

  “And did Daisy possibly pick them up and put them in her pocket, and end up walking out of the room with them when she went to the seder?” she asked. “Or did she leave the door wide open as I have often seen her do, so that any Tom, Dick, or Harvey could have taken them?”

  “As you know, Mrs. Kaplan,” Pupik said in a huffy tone of voice, “we have little reason to lock doors here; apart from the occasional trinket or item of clothing reported missing, we have virtually no instances of theft at the Home. I have always prided myself on the feeling of security the residents under my charge can—”

  This last was directed at Corcoran, who had to cut Pupik off at the pass before he began to list his Boy Scout merit badges and other such accomplishments.

  “I’m sure you have a very secure establishment here,” said Corcoran, “but if you’ll finish telling us about the earrings…”

  Pupik looked like he would much rather continue his personal résumé, but he just said, “Well, that’s about all, I guess.”

  Just then the telephone rang, startling us all a bit. It was one of those loud, unpleasant electronic sounds—give me a good old-fashioned ring of the bell anytime. Anyway, Pupik reached across to his desk and answered it. After a few grunts and a wince, he put down the phone and said to us, “I’m afraid I shall have to leave for a few minutes.” To the two detectives he added, “It seems Mr. Plotnik has locked himself in the maintenance closet again and refuses to come out until I come and assure him he will not be given ‘solitary confinement’ if he ‘surrenders.’ It’s a little quirk of his, nothing to worry about, a kind of game we play.” Only it didn’t appear that Mr. Pupik enjoys playing this game. Or that he enjoys Mr. Plotnik, for that matter. Nevertheless, with a sigh he rose to leave.

  “If you gentlemen would like to continue without me, please feel free to use my office,” he said. “I might be back shortly, but sometimes these things take a bit of time.”

  “We understand,” said Corcoran, although I’m not so sure about the “we” part, because Mr. Jenkins did not look at all like he understood. “As a matter of fact, Jenkins and I have an appointment later this morning across town, so we probably should be going anyway. I think we can take this up in another day or so.” Then he turned to us and added, “Perhaps in the meantime Mrs. Kaplan—and you also, Mrs….”

  “Berkowitz,” I told him. Such nice eyes he had.

  “…Berkowitz, thank you. You both might give some thought to what we have discussed here, and it’s possible by the time we next meet you will have remembered something that will help us to resolve this unfortunate matter.” He said it in such a nice way, but I couldn’t help but get the feeling that he didn’t mean it in a nice way at all, and what he really expected was for Mrs. K to think that she had been found out and to confess that she stole Daisy’s earrings and caused Mrs. Finkelstein’s death. And it gave me such a chill in my bones that even the nice cup of tea we had immediately after leaving Pupik’s office couldn’t take it away.

  10

  We did not talk about earrings or detectives or Mrs. Finkelstein the rest of the day. In fact, we avoided the subject entirely and tried to act as though nothing as strange and disturbing as this had happened.

  So we were sitting in the lounge and sipping tea, and on the sofa next to us sat Mr. Sol Lipman. Sol, whom Mrs. K and I know quite well, is a man of about seventy-five years, short and stocky with short gray hair. For his age (which, after all, is about my age also) he is always looking very healthy, like an athlete who has kept himself in good condition. An attractive man, is Sol Lipman.

  But that day he was not looking so healthy. In fact, he was looking as if he was in some distress, with his head in his hands, staring down at the carpet. Since there was nothing of particular interest to see in the carpet, this was not a good sign. Naturally Mrs. K and I noticed, and Mrs. K went over and sat down next to Sol. I slid over to listen. Mrs. K gently asked, “Is there something wrong, Sol?”

  He looked up, and when he saw Mrs. K he straightened himself and tried to look normal. He said, “Why do you ask?”

  “Because you are looking like your pet dog has just been run over, and I know you do not have a dog, so it must be something else. I do not want to pry, I just wondered if it is something with which I can help.”

  Sol pondered this for a minute before answering, “Thank you, Rose. It’s Lily. She has locked herself in our bathroom and will not come out.”

  Lily is Sol’s wife. (Who else would be locked in his bathroom?) They share a large apartment here at the Home, with two bedrooms and even a nice kitchen. Lily is not at all like Sol. In fact, it is an example of what they say about the attracting of opposites. Lily is tall and thin, and it is likely that the most athletic thing she has ever done is to shuffle the cards for bridge, which she and Sol frequently play. Sol is usually calm and quiet; Lily tends to be quite excitable, like one of those little dogs that is all the time barking. And yet they have been married for almost fifty years! Go figure.

  Mrs. K did not seem surprised to learn that Lily had locked herself in the bathroom. In fact, her response was simply, “What, again?”

  “Oh, so you remember the last time?” said Sol.

  “Not only do I remember,” Mrs. K said, “but it was Daisy Goldfarb and I who talked her out of the bathroom. She had become hysterical over…what was it? Something you had said to her?”

  “In a way, I guess,” Sol said. “I had asked her why she so often makes meat loaf for dinner on those days when we do not eat in the dining room, why she does not try something new, like maybe a Mexican or Italian dish. She took it as a comment against her cooking—‘What, you don’t like my meat loaf?’—although that was not what I meant at all, just that a little variety would be nice.”

  “Some people take everything so personally,” Mrs. K said, shaking her head.

  “Lily always seems to,” Sol said. “She certainly did that time. Pretty soon she was crying and had locked herself in the bathroom, telling me to go get myself another wife if I didn’t like her cooking! Oy, what a tummel!”

  “Yes, and it was not easy to calm her down, although we finally did. I cannot recall exactly what we said to her.”

  “Too bad,” Sol said, “because
she is in there again, and nothing I say is helping at all.”

  “So what was the cause this time? You did not mention her meat loaf again, I hope.”

  “No, no, nothing like that. In fact, after Lily got over being so upset and we talked about it, she agreed to try some new dishes from time to time, and it has worked out very well. No, this time I have no idea what has caused it.”

  “No idea? You said or did nothing?”

  “Nothing. At least nothing that I know of. I came home from some shopping I had done at the hardware store, and Lily immediately comes up to me and she is holding a book I had been reading. She shakes the book in my face and says something like ‘An alter kocker like you should be ashamed of yourself,’ and, well, from there one thing led to another…”

  “And then to the bathroom?”

  Sol nodded his head.

  “And what is this book she is holding?”

  Sol seemed to hesitate a moment before answering: “It is just one of those books that give advice on how older people like us can live happier and healthier. You know, some expert is telling you what to eat, how to exercise, like that.”

  Sol sighed and went back to examining the threads in the carpet.

  Mrs. K put her hand on Sol’s shoulder and asked, “Would you like that Ida and I should go and see if we can talk to her?”

  I was glad to hear Mrs. K make the offer, because she needed something to get her mind away from worrying about the police and Bertha Finkelstein. Someone else’s troubles always make a good diversion from one’s own.

  “Yes, certainly,” Sol said. “I’d appreciate it. Do you want me to come along?”

  “Just to let us in. It is better to keep this among women.”

  Sol scratched his head. “Married almost half a century and I still don’t understand what’s going on…”

  —

  Mrs. K and I followed Sol down the hallway to his apartment, which is in a separate wing from the single rooms that most of us occupy. Many people think of retirement homes like ours as places to live only when our husband or wife has died and we are alone. This is certainly the usual situation. But sometimes a married couple will wish to take advantage of the services a retirement home like the Julius and Rebecca Cohen Home for Jewish Seniors provides—meals prepared for them, doctors and nurses on call, and of course the socializing.