by Rita Lakin
The killer opened the door of the apartment. With a few quick strokes of a rag, the damning words were washed away. The killer also looked around, not really concerned. It was still much too early for anyone to be up.
Greta was so pleased with her take—a slightly bent set of plastic dinnerware and a wonderful black wig—that she wasn’t aware she was no longer alone.
She gasped as the killer loomed over her.
“What you want?” she said, trying not to show her fear. “This my stuff, get your own fluff.” Talking was hard for her. It had been so long since she had spoken to anyone.
“I don’t want your stuff, you fool—”
“Then go ’way. Don’t want play.”
“It’s not nice to paint on people’s doors.”
Greta stared, worried, because the killer’s hands were hidden.
“I ain’t got paint. . . .” But her eyes betrayed her as she instinctively looked toward the Dumpster where she had hidden the can.
“Wanna see what’s behind my back?” The hands came out with nothing in them. Greta looked confused. Her eyesight was not good. She didn’t notice the thin, colorless latex gloves.
“What did you see, Greta? Tell me!”
Greta moved backwards, but the killer kept pace. Her eyes looked into eyes that showed no sympathy. She knew she was doomed.
“You know what you’re gonna see now?” The killer pulled her by her hair and dragged her back to the Dumpster. Greta tried to run, but her feet were pedaling in air.
“I don’t tell . . . I not told. I not be so bold. . . .” she said, gasping.
“Bad news, Greta. No pot roast for you. No chocolate cake. You love garbage, now eat your last meal!”
The killer pulled a rancid onion from the trash can and forced it down her throat. “You like your salad? Sorry, no dressing.” Greta gagged, and the food was retched out, but the killer pushed it in again and held her mouth shut until it went down. “Ready for your main course?” Her eyes widened and teared as horrible remnants of foul-smelling food were shoved into her mouth. In her terror, she was not aware of the powdery substance that was forced in along with a slimy strand of what had once been spinach.
For a few more minutes she coughed and dry-heaved. Finally, she stopped struggling—paralysis began to set in. Her body sank to the ground, as the voluminous skirts cushioned her.
The killer took a moment to retrieve the paint can from where Greta had hidden it. At the corner of the building the killer turned and smiled.
“Too bad, Greta, you’re about to miss your greatest literary masterpiece.”
Greta’s last thought before she lost consciousness was of a doll she had had as a child in the old country. A gypsy dancer she could gently fold up into its beautiful gown. Its eyes would close and the doll would go to sleep. She, too, would now go to sleep at last. She hoped Armand would be waiting for her and would forgive her for taking so long.
25
Sing Gypsy, Cry Gypsy,
Die Gypsy
I come home from my early dentist appointment and I know immediately something is wrong. Too many people are hovering about outside, most still in robes, moving every which way. An ambulance and a police car are parked near the side of my building. Oh, God, I think hysterically, who is it now?
I don’t stop to ask. I head where the flashing red lights beckon.
The girls are there. Quickly I count them off. Bella. Sophie. Ida. Where’s Evvie? Oh, no, where—? There she is, thank God. Standing with Harriet and Esther, who is seated in her wheelchair. Hy and Lola stand next to them, clutching one another for support.
The girls see me as I approach and they all grab at me, crying, all talking at once.
From Ida: “Hy went out to the Dumpster—”
Then Bella: “He was schlepping this big carton from a new TV, though I don’t know what was wrong with the old one—”
And Sophie interrupting her. “He saw a nightmare in the daytime and then he ran around the corner yelling—”
I am trying to see who the paramedics are bending over, but I can’t tell who it is.
“This all happened a couple of minutes ago,” Evvie tells me.
“We only just came downstairs,” Sophie adds.
“Tell me already!” I can’t stand it. “Who is it?”
“The Kronk!” they say in unison.
“Greta?” I ask incredulously. I turn to Hy. “Tell me what you saw!”
He shrugs. Clears his throat. Hitches up his inevitably loud-patterned shorts. Clearly he’s told his tale a few times already. “First I don’t see nothing. The TV box is bulky and I can hardly see my way around it. I’m just about to lay it down and start to stomp on it so it’ll fit in the Dumpster and I see a bunch of what looks like colored rags. Then I go closer and it’s a body laying inside of them rags. I don’t even recognize her. It’s maybe five years since I even laid eyes on her.”
Hy, always loving the spotlight, is determined to squeeze out every ounce of drama. And Lola, truly in shock, for once is not interrupting him. “At first I think it’s a stranger, but, no, she looks familiar. I know it’s nobody else, because everybody else I would recognize, so logic tells me it’s Greta Kronk. All I know for sure, she doesn’t look sick. She looks dead. So I run for somebody to call the nine-one-one.”
His audience is rapt. Hy always did know how to tell a story. But this one was no joke.
“Could you tell what killed her?” I ask.
“I don’t see no blood, so I figure she died of old age, or from eating that putrid garbage. Her mouth was full of that crap.”
Everyone responds with horror, making gagging and gasping noises. Bella, turning pale, leans against the wall that separates us from Phase Three, for support.
A policeman comes toward us, his notebook at the ready. It’s orange mustache again. I remember him from the infamous night Millie called 911. “Does Mrs. Kronk have any relatives?”
“Nobody,” we all chorus.
“Do you know what killed her, Officer?” I have to ask.
He shakes his head. “Maybe her heart gave out. Looks like she just keeled over.”
I move closer and watch as the ambulance attendants lift her onto the gurney. It’s the first time any of us have seen Greta in years. She looks so thin. She must have been starving herself. I remember the dress she’s wearing. It was the gypsy costume she wore when she gave dancing lessons that one year and very few people showed up. In those days, she was buxom and she filled out that dress pretty good. This body lying here is like a skeleton. Now I can see Greta’s face clearly, and I jump back, startled. Her face! My God, her face! She looks terrified. As if something frightened her to death.
Sol Spankowitz ambles over. “Did you see what she wrote?”
I stare at him, puzzled.
“That crazy broad wrote another poem. On her own door. Like she wrote it to put on her gravestone. Weird. Come take a look.”
The girls and I follow Sol around the corner, and now I realize what people were staring at when I arrived: Greta’s front door on the third floor of P building.
“What does it say?” Bella asks tugging at me.
“I don’t know. It’s hard to read from down here.”
Mary and John Mueller, her neighbors, are up there with a few other people from the building. They hear me and they all look down from the balcony. John calls to us. “It says, ‘Get fed. Get dead.’” His voice is bitter. “Well, that’s the last nasty poem she’ll ever write.”
His wife, Mary, turns away, embarrassed. Who can forget the cheap shot Greta took at John’s masculinity?
We finally end up in Evvie’s apartment, drinking tea. Needless to say, this is accompanied by a plate full of cheese Danish. As is typical, we are seated at the dining table in our usual card-playing seats. Harriet has pulled up an extra chair to join us.
I sigh. “Now I’ll never get a chance to ask her why she wrote what she did on my car.”
“Poo
r, sad lady,” Harriet says as she reaches for another pastry. “What a way to die. All alone like that.”
“And we were trying to get her thrown out.” Bella sighs. “I feel so guilty.”
Sophie giggles behind her hand. “Look at you,” she says pointing at Harriet. “You’re eating all the Danish.”
Harriet laughs nervously. “Just neurotic eating,” she explains. “From all the excitement. I better start working out at the gym more often. By the way, did I tell you I’m starting my vacation? Maybe I better spend it exercising.”
Considering what good condition her body is in, she doesn’t have to worry about working it off. We should be in such good shape.
“How many heart attacks are we gonna have around here?” Sophie demands to know.
“Another heart attack?” I ask pointedly.
Evvie looks at me. “Another coincidence?” We exchange glances. She knows what I am thinking.
“That was only a guess the officer made. He couldn’t know for sure,” says Ida. “Maybe she’s been sick for who knows how long and she just happened to die right then and there.”
“What are you saying, Glad?” Harriet asks.
“Now a third woman dies suddenly for no apparent reason? All having just eaten food that came to them oddly?”
“Garbage is eating?” sniffs Sophie.
Bella jumps up, spilling her tea on her lap. “You think she was poisoned, too!”
“You are turning into a one-track train,” says Sophie.
“How could that be?” Ida asks me. “How could the killer know she was going to eat garbage?”
“You mean he had to put poison in all the garbage cans?” Bella surmises.
“Every day until she picks the right can to eat out of? Nonsense!” Ida shakes her head vehemently.
“No,” I say, grossing myself out even as I suggest it, “but what if he forces the poisoned food down her throat?”
“How could he make her eat it?” Sophie says. “I, personally, would clamp my mouth shut.”
“I wish you would,” says Ida, glaring at her.
“A gun. He had a gun! Oy, a gun in Lanai Gardens. That I should live to see the day!” Bella is getting hysterical.
“Bella, dear. He didn’t need a gun. She was undernourished and very weak. It wouldn’t take much to overwhelm her,” I say quietly.
“Why would anyone want to kill that poor pathetic creature?” Harriet asks.
Bella asks shrilly, “Was it her birthday? Does anybody know?”
“I don’t think so,” Evvie says, musing. “April comes to mind.”
Sophie gets up and starts pacing, wringing her hands as she does. “You wanna know why!!! I’ll tell you why! Because he’s a serial killer, that’s why. He’s gonna kill us all before he’s through! Eating us to death with our favorite food!”
Bella fans herself furiously with a paper napkin. “Garbage was her favorite food?”
“Please, everybody calm down,” I say.
“Yeah,” says Evvie, “before we all really get heart attacks.”
Bella is shaking her head agitatedly.
“What?!” Ida demands.
“I’ll never eat gefilte fish again,” Bella says wistfully of her favorite food.
“Fool!” Ida mutters under her breath.
26
Death of a Poet
It’s mid-afternoon and Lanai Gardens is at rest. Nap time. La siesta.
I’m too overwrought to sleep. I sneak out of the apartment building under cover of silence.
Now that Kronk is gone, Marion Martini, who has been hiding her car around the corner from U building, has driven it back. She’s been secreting it there since the night the Kronk smeared raspberry juice all over her new upholstery. And all the other car owners who’ve had to wipe garbage off their windshields won’t miss her, either. How sad. No one cares that she’s gone.
I drive to my place of refuge, the library.
“So,” says Barney with mock seriousness, “what’s been going on at Lanai Gardens? This last week, the library has been recipient of a thousand rumors. Everybody has a different story.”
“Ten people have died, we’ve been told,” says Conchetta, hardly able to keep a straight face, “but maybe it’s four, or maybe two. They’ve been strangled, poisoned, knifed, and put under Haitian voodoo spells.”
I laugh in spite of my sorrow.
“And you,” says Barney, “are the inciter of said rumors. You are now a private eye?”
Conchetta grins. “That’s what you get from reading too many murder mysteries. So, give us the real enchilada.”
And I fill them in on what has happened up until today.
My friends silently absorb what I’m saying. For a few moments the only sound in the room is the minute hand ticking its way around the big old maple library clock.
Barney whistles. “Whew. That’s heavy. No wonder you haven’t been around.”
“Too many coincidences,” says Conchetta.
“My point exactly.”
Barney asks, “Did you really go to the police? I love that the rumors escalated to the FBI and the CIA. Someone even mentioned that you might go into the witness protection program. That’s my favorite.”
“Oh, boy,” I say, “there’s Pandora’s box and then there is a Jewish Pandora’s box. . . . Yes, I did go to the police, but they didn’t believe me. And now there’s been another death. This morning.”
“No!” Conchetta stifles a cry.
“Who?” asks Barney.
“Greta Kronk,” I say. The two of them stare at me, dumbfounded.
It’s quiet today in the library. Few people choose to battle the midday heat, and wisely stay home. In almost complete privacy, we three move over to one of the reading tables and sit down with the inevitable cups of Conchetta’s Cuban coffee.
“How?” they both ask.
“She died next to the Dumpster behind my building. Her mouth was stuffed with rotten food—”
“Madre mia!” Conchetta says, “How awful! And I thought she would be the one who would hurt somebody.”
“Now, I’ll never get a chance to meet her,” says Barney wistfully. “I’ll miss her rhymes.”
“There was one left on her door,” I tell them.
“What did it say?” asks Barney, barely able to contain his excitement.
I recite. “‘Get fed. Get dead.’” That quote will be engraved forever in my mind.
For a moment neither of my friends speaks.
“Wow. . . .” Barney finally whispers in awe. “But how could she have written ‘get dead’ after she died? She certainly wouldn’t have done it before.”
“Exactly. I finally figured out that was the killer’s idea of a sick joke. Trying to make it look like Greta wrote the poem.”
A lone straggler comes out from behind the stacks and brings his books to the checkout counter. We wait until Conchetta returns.
We tip our cups in memoriam for the poet who gave us such memorable rhymes as “Tessie is fat and that’s that.”
Conchetta says, “I especially loved ‘Sophie shop til she drop.’”
Barney adds his favorite: “‘Leo buys. Leo sells. Leo tells. Lies.’”
“It’s the recklessness of the killer this time that puzzles me.” I say. “Considering that the other two murders were conceived and carried out with icy meticulousness, this time he had to have forced the food down her throat. And to attack in daylight. What a chance he took.”
“Was it her birthday, too?” asks Conchetta. She pours us some more of her coffee, but I can’t drink it. My stomach feels like acid is eating my insides.
I am suddenly sick to my stomach. “No!” I say, as realization kicks in. “Damn it!” I am so angry at myself, so angry that once again my slow memory synapses have failed me.
I am shaking with the frustration I feel. “Greta wasn’t on the murderer’s list! She knew that he had killed. Twice! She knew that and tried to tell me by soaping t
he words on my car, and I just didn’t make the connection! If I had only realized she was probably a witness to the crimes, I could have saved her life! And found out who the killer was.”
Conchetta comes to my side and puts her arm around my shoulder.
I am distraught. “What am I going to do?”
“Go see that detective again, and this time you’ll be able to convince him,” Conchetta says.
As I drive home I think that maybe the killer final ly made a mistake. Please, God, let it be true.
27
Digging up the Dirt?
I’m practically living by my phone. Maybe one of these days I’ll give in to progress and get an answering machine. But who knows. One thing could lead to another. I might get tempted to buy a car phone, then a beeper or cable TV or, God forbid, a computer. I’ve managed to live this long keeping life simple. . . . Ignore me, I’m rambling. This waiting is driving me crazy. I’ve been trying to get an appointment with Detective Langford but he’s been away for two days at some cop conference in Miami. I know he’s back today. I’ve already left three messages.
Speaking of the phone, it hasn’t been ringing off the hook as is usual. Where are the girls? I’m grateful, because I would have to get them off the line pronto. And they’d insist on knowing why. And if I tell them, Evvie especially would demand to go with me, and there is no way I’ll put myself through that again. But what are they up to? I wonder. Mah-jongg is over by now. Curious.
The phone rings. It’s Langford at last. I beg to see him as quickly as possible. Can’t I tell him over the phone? No, I insist. It’s too important. I can hear the weariness in his lethargic voice. Too many mai tais on the beach? Too many blond shiksas around the piano bar? Miami Beach can be a dangerous place. Reluctantly, he tells me if I can get over there in five minutes, he’ll fit me in. Beggars can’t be you-know-what. I’m out the door as fast as I can grab my car keys.