by Joy Fielding
“Extendicare Bayview,” a woman answers promptly.
“Excuse me, but who would I speak to about a possible former resident?” Amanda ventures.
“I’m sorry. I’m not sure I understand what you mean.” The woman’s thick Eastern European accent grows wary.
“I’m trying to find out about a woman who may have been a resident at your place until very recently.”
“What is her name?”
“It’s either Turlington or Turgov or Tureck or Turofsky. Something that starts with Tur. Hello?” she asks when no answer is forthcoming.
“Is this a joke?”
“No. Trust me. I’m not joking.”
“Who is speaking, please?”
“Look. I know it’s a rather peculiar request, but it’s really important. If you could just tell me whether you had a woman living there who died in the last month or so, whose last name is either Turlington or Turgov or—”
The line goes dead in her hands.
“This is going to be fun.” Amanda takes a deep breath, then calls the next number on the list.
And then the next one after that, and then the next, and the next.
TWENTY-SIX
HER name was Rose Tureck and she died of congestive heart failure at age ninety-two on January thirty-first,” Amanda says, strolling into Ben’s office on the twenty-fourth floor of the Royal Bank Tower at precisely two o’clock that afternoon. Her tone is brisk, almost breezy, something she’s been working on ever since she left the library. The tone says, Nothing of consequence happened last night. The tone says, Don’t worry about me—I am neither hurt nor wounded. The tone says, It’s business as usual.
Ben jumps to his feet behind his desk, knocking the file he’s working on to the floor. “What are you talking about?”
“Rose Tureck, mother of Rodney Tureck, aka Turk. Do you think I could trouble your secretary for a cup of coffee before we head out to see my mother?”
Ben looks as if he’s just been mowed down by a truck. “Sandy,” he calls through the open doorway. “Could you bring Ms. Travis a cup of coffee, please. Cream and sugar.”
“Sure thing,” Sandy calls back.
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on here?” Ben motions toward the chair in front of his cherry-oak desk.
Amanda flops down on the chair, pushes her hair away from her face, stares Ben straight in the eye. This is also something she’s been practicing since she left the library. The full-on stare, the one that informs her first ex-husband that he’s of little or no consequence to her, that what he does with his life is of no real concern to her, and that what happened between them last night, what almost happened, what should have happened, has already been forgotten. “I made another trip to the library this morning,” she begins.
“Are you all right?” he interrupts unexpectedly.
Amanda’s shoulders stiffen. Is it possible he missed the professional tone in her voice, the look of indifference on her face? “Of course I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be all right?”
“Last night—”
“—is over. Case closed. Move on, Counselor.” She smiles. The smile says, Get over yourself. You take things much too seriously. You always did.
Ben’s smile in return is tenuous and doesn’t last long. “Okay, so you went to the library,” he repeats, sitting back down and waiting for her to continue.
Amanda leans back in her chair, crosses one leg over the other. “I went back to the library because I thought I might be able to find a listing in the death notices for either Turlington, Turgov, Tureck, or Turofsky.”
“And you found Rose Tureck?”
“I found bugger-all,” Amanda contradicts quickly. “I spent over an hour going through every goddamn Toronto paper for the last three months, and do you think I could find even one bloody Turlington, Turgov, Tureck, or Turofsky?” She almost laughs. She’s been rhyming these names off for so long, they’re starting to sound like a rock group.
Ben’s secretary appears in the doorway. The petite young woman in a brown leather miniskirt crosses the small room in two easy strides and hands Amanda a mug of steaming coffee. “I hope it’s not too sweet.”
“I’m sure it’s perfect. Thank you.” Amanda takes a long sip, several thousand grains of sugar immediately congregating on her tongue, like sawdust. She closes her eyes, partly from fatigue, partly because she’s afraid that if she has to keep looking Ben straight in his gorgeous face much longer, she’ll end up flinging herself across his desk and into his arms, giving lie to her earlier protestations and embarrassing them both. Damn him anyway. Does he have to look as handsome in a pin-striped suit as he does in jeans? “How much do you charge anyway?” she asks.
“What?”
“Your hourly rate. What is it?”
“Two hundred dollars. Why?”
She shrugs, opens her eyes. “Just wondered.” She even makes more money than he does, she thinks, taking another sip of the sickly sweet coffee and trying not to shudder.
“Well, you obviously found something,” Ben says, encouraging her to continue.
“Not in the death notices, I didn’t.”
“Are you going to tell me or do I have to beg?”
“I’d love it if you begged.”
He laughs. “Okay, I’m begging.”
This time Amanda’s smile is genuine. Once again they’ve managed to break the ice, establish an easy rapport, almost in spite of themselves. “Okay, well, when I didn’t have any luck with the newspapers, on impulse I decided to try the nursing homes. Hayley Mallins said her husband came back here to settle his mother’s estate. So I figured his mother had to be pretty elderly, and she probably lived alone, since no one bothered to put a notice of her death in the papers. I thought there was a chance she might have lived in a nursing home or an assisted-living community. Anyway, I figured it was worth a shot, so I started calling around. Started with the A’s. Well, no, actually, I started with Extendicare because they had this big ad, but then I went back to the A’s and kept going until I reached the K’s. Kensington Gardens, to be precise. Thank God I didn’t have to call the million Leisureworlds that were next on the list. Anyway, guess what? Kensington Gardens told me that a woman named Rose Tureck had lived there for the past two years, and lo and behold, she had a son named Rodney who lived in England, and whom they’d been instructed to contact at the time of her death. Rodney Tureck, aka Turk, aka—”
“John Mallins,” Ben states, the glint in his eye betraying the calm of his voice.
“Certainly looks that way.”
Ben rises from his seat, comes around the front of his desk, takes the mug from Amanda’s hands, and deposits it on his secretary’s desk as they walk past. “Let’s say we go talk to your mother.”
Half an hour later, they pull into the parking lot of the Metro West Detention Center. “Careful,” Ben says as Amanda opens her car door, the first words either has spoken since getting into his car and strapping on their seat belts. “It’s slippery,” he reminds her, and she responds with an exaggerated yawn, as if to tell him she isn’t quite awake yet from the nap she pretended to be taking on the drive over.
It was easier that way, she decided. Spared them both the effort of small talk, or worse, of having to rehash the unfortunate events of last night. So instead she’d simply closed her eyes and feigned sleep, going so far as to produce a small, counterfeit snore, and trying not to imagine what went on in Ben’s apartment last night after she’d left.
Amanda also pretends not to notice the elbow Ben offers for support as they walk through the parking lot. They proffer their identification to the official on duty, who makes a great show of studying their driver’s licenses before permitting them to sign in, then continue through the familiar routine of metal detectors and searches through bags and briefcases, before being led down the long, airless corridor to the small, windowless room that serves as a conference room for prisoners and their attorneys.
“You all right?” Ben asks, as he asked earlier.
Why does he keep asking me that? Amanda wonders testily. Do I look unwell? Does his ego require that I be a quivering mass of jelly in his presence? “I’m fine.” She removes her coat, throws it over the back of one of the chairs, begins pacing back and forth across the concrete floor. What’s the matter with him anyway? “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you keep asking if I’m all right?”
The question seems to catch him off guard. “No reason.”
“No reason?”
He shakes his head. “Try not to be confrontational,” he says.
“You think I’m being confrontational?”
“I don’t mean with me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m talking about when you see your mother.”
“I have no intention of being confrontational with my mother.”
“Good.”
“Why would you say such a thing?”
“Amanda …”
“I mean it, Ben. What makes you think I’d be confrontational?”
“I don’t think that necessarily.”
“Then why say it?”
“Because I’m detecting a slight edge,” he admits after a pause.
“You’re detecting an edge?”
“Maybe I’m wrong.”
“You think?”
“Okay, then. I’m wrong. I apologize. My mistake.”
“What’s with you anyway?”
“I guess I’m just being a lawyer.”
“You’re being an asshole.”
Ben winces, as if he’s been slapped. “Okay. Do you think we could rein it in a few notches?”
“Rein what in?”
“Whatever the hell it is we’re doing.”
“You started it.”
“Fine, then I’m finishing it.”
“Fine.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
They stare at each other from opposite sides of the room.
“What just happened?” Ben asks.
Amanda takes a deep breath, exhales slowly. “I think we had our first fight.”
“About?”
“I have no idea.” They laugh, although the laugh is muted, tempered by embarrassment. “Think we could kiss and make up?”
He smiles. “Cost you a dollar.”
“A dollar? That’s pretty cheap. You charge more as a lawyer than a lover?”
“I’m a bigger prick as a lawyer,” he says.
This time Amanda’s laugh is both genuine and hearty. “Sorry for before. It was entirely my fault.”
“No. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”
“It was good advice.”
“It was provocative.”
She nods. “Okay. So you were provocative and I was confrontational.”
“We make a good team.”
Yes, we do, Amanda thinks, looking away.
The sound of footsteps. The door to the small room opens. Gwen Price steps inside.
“Hello, Ben. Amanda.” Her lips flex into a questioning smile. “To what do I owe this unexpected treat?” The guard closes the door as Gwen straightens her shoulders inside her awful green sweat suit and approaches the table in the middle of the room. Ben immediately pulls out a chair for her, and she sits down, folding her hands in front of her and eyeing them both warily, waiting for a reply.
“We have a few questions to ask you,” Ben says.
“Shoot,” Gwen says, then laughs. “Sorry. A rather unfortunate choice of words.”
“You think this is funny?” Amanda asks.
“Amanda …,” Ben warns.
“What is it you want to ask me?”
Amanda pulls three of the bogus business cards out of her purse, slaps them on the table in front of her mother.
Gwen looks briefly down at the cards, then up again. “What’s this?”
“Looks like a bunch of fake business cards,” Amanda tells her, sliding into the chair across from her mother, straining to detect even the slightest crack in the other woman’s steely facade.
“Are they supposed to mean something?”
“You tell me.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Walter Turofsky, George Turgov, Milton Turlington,” Amanda recites slowly. “These names mean anything to you?”
“No. Nothing.”
Amanda drops the last card onto the table. “How about this one?”
Gwen Price turns ashen, although not a muscle in her face so much as twitches.
“Rodney Tureck,” Amanda pronounces carefully. “Name ring a bell?”
“No.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t much care.”
“Tell me who he is, Mother.”
“I don’t know who he is.”
“The hell you don’t.”
“Amanda …,” Ben cautions.
“Rodney Tureck, also known as John Mallins. Ringing any bells now?”
“Didn’t I shoot someone named John Mallins?”
“John Mallins, also known as Rodney Tureck, also known as Turk,” Amanda persists, ignoring her mother’s sarcasm. “Son of Rose Tureck.”
“Son of a bitch,” Gwen swears under her breath, just loud enough to be heard.
Amanda eyes Ben without moving her head. “Who is he, Mother?”
“Where did you get these cards?”
“I found them in the house.”
“My house?”
“Yes. I lived there once too. Although you probably don’t remember.…”
“Amanda …,” Ben warns again.
“You have no business going through my things.”
“You have no business shooting people!”
Gwen Price struggles to her feet. “This conversation is over.”
“She’s dead, you know.”
“What? Who?”
“Rose Tureck. She died a few weeks ago. Congestive heart failure. Age ninety-two.”
Gwen digests this latest bit of information, says nothing.
“It’s the reason her son came back here. To settle her estate.”
“I don’t see what any of this has to do with me,” Gwen maintains stubbornly.
“You killed the man, Mother.”
“So I did. At last, something we agree on. Can I go now?”
Amanda makes a great show of reaching back into her purse. “Not until you tell us how you got this.” She drops the photograph of Rodney Tureck and his daughter onto the table.
Tears spring to Gwen’s eyes as she lifts the picture into her now-trembling hands. Surprisingly, she makes no move to wipe them away. “Where did you find this?”
“What difference does it make?”
“You have to stop this,” her mother warns.
“Stop what?”
“Stop snooping where you don’t belong.”
“And you have to start leveling with us or we can’t help you.”
“I don’t want your help,” Gwen shouts. “Can’t you understand that? I want you to go away and leave me alone.”
“Of course you do,” Amanda shouts back, her own eyes filling with tears. “That’s all you’ve ever wanted from me.”
“No.” Her mother shakes her head vigorously back and forth. “No, that’s not true.”
“Of course it’s true. And trust me, as soon as you start giving me some straight answers, I’m on the first plane out of here. You never have to see me again.”
“You think that’s what I want?”
“I don’t know what you want.”
“Please,” her mother says, crying now. “I know you think you’re helping me, and I appreciate it, I really do—”
“I don’t need your appreciation.”
“—but you’re only making things worse.”
“How can things possibly get any worse?”
“Because they can.”
Amanda pulls at h
er hair in helpless frustration, bringing the back of her head over the top of her spine, thrusting her chin high into the air. “Okay, Mother. This is what we know. We know that the man you shot isn’t really John Mallins. We know that the real John Mallins disappeared twenty-five years ago after becoming friendly with a man who called himself Turk. We know that Turk’s real name is Rodney Tureck, and that he probably killed John Mallins and assumed his identity. We know from the autopsy report that he had plastic surgery, possibly to impress his young wife, but more probably to make himself look younger, since John Mallins’s passport gives his age as forty-seven. That’s what we know.” She takes a breath before continuing. “What we don’t know is where you fit in to this mess.”
“Maybe I don’t fit in. Maybe it doesn’t matter whether he’s John Mallins or Rodney Tureck or George W. Bush. The fact is, whoever he was, he was still a stranger to me.”
“The fact is you had this picture of him in your home. Which kind of shoots your story about him being a total stranger straight to hell.”
“Which is exactly where he deserves to be,” Gwen says, pushing away her tears and staring at the wall ahead.
Silence.
“You’re admitting you knew him?” Ben asks quietly.
“I’m admitting nothing except I killed him.”
“What about the pills you were taking?” Amanda asks.
“Pills?”
“I found bottles of antidepressants in your medicine cabinet.”
“I haven’t taken any of those pills in years.”