by Marele Day
‘The zone?’
‘Yes. You know, the one athletes talk about.’ She had no idea what the zone was but she was hoping that the mere mention of it would work. ‘You can only be in the zone alone. See you soon, Eddy. I’ll bring back an icecream.’ She was out the door and down the steps before Eddy had even tied up his laces.
From her window she had only seen the flat from the back, but she’d done a bit of reconnoitring on her way to the shops that afternoon and she was pretty sure she’d earmarked the right block.
When she got out into the street and had turned the first corner, she looked behind to make sure that no-one was following her, especially not Eddy. Mrs Levack breathed a sigh of relief. No-one was. She made her way to the flats. There were lots of people about, as there always were in Bondi, thin young girls in thin young clothes sitting on milk crates outside cafes. You’d think the least they could do was supply chairs.
She came to the targeted block of flats. It was an old-style block, even older than hers and Eddy’s, and fortunately it didn’t have any security doors or even a buzzer—you just walked straight in. Dingy, peeling paint and graffiti, but these were the mean streets and Mrs Levack had to walk them.
It wasn’t the ground floor, she’d worked that out, so she climbed the dark staircase. There were two flats upstairs, numbers 3 and 4. She gave a soft little knock on number 4. No answer. She tried again, louder this time. Still no answer. She got down on the ground to look through the thin gap between the floor and the door.
‘Lost something?’
Mrs Levack turned, and found herself staring at a pair of shaved legs with a set of beautifully developed calf muscles. Her eyes travelled up to the thighs, shorts, singlet and the gym bag that the handsome young man was carrying.
‘Mark Bannister?’ she said, finally standing up. She knew of course that it wasn’t Mark Bannister. This chap looked nothing like the boy she’d been spying on and besides, he was dead, though she had heard that sometimes people who die suddenly don’t know they are dead and hang around where they used to live.
‘Harvey Keitel, actually,’ said the young man. The name rang a bell with Mrs Levack but she couldn’t quite place it.
‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Keitel.’ She held out her hand. He had a good strong grip. It had been a while since she’d felt a man’s good strong grip. People said Eddy had one but Mrs Levack rarely shook hands with her own husband.
‘Mavis Levack, private investigator,’ she repeated the words Claudia Valentine had said the night before. Except that she changed the name, of course.
‘Really?’ he said.
She handed him one of her cards. It wasn’t a proper ID, not like Claudia’s with a photo and everything, it was just a set of instant cards she’d had done that afternoon at the photocopy shop up the road. She’d spent ages trying to work out how to operate the machine and eventually had to ask one of the nice young men behind the counter to give her a hand. She was meeting such a lot of nice young men since she’d started as a P.I., and this was only day one.
Mr Keitel stuck the card into the waistband of his shorts, then opened the door, the very door Mrs Levack had been looking under. He went inside, leaving the door ajar. A light went on at the end of the hallway and she heard him going to the fridge, then some other unidentifiable noises.
‘Did you know Mark Bannister?’ she called out. If he’d heard, he wasn’t answering. She banged on the door to get his attention.
‘Yo, it’s open, David. Come in.’
Why did he think her name was David? Maybe in the dark Mavis sounded like David. Should she or shouldn’t she enter the flat of a strange man? She decided she should and stepped over the threshold. He didn’t seem strange, except for the shaved legs.
He came down the hallway towards her, carrying two whisky glasses that had something very dark and potent in them. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘thought you were my gym buddy.’
‘What’s that?’ Mrs Levack couldn’t help asking.
‘Wheat grass shots. Want one?’
Mrs Levack had no idea what he was talking about. Wheat. Grass. Shots.
‘It’ll put hairs on your chest,’ said Mr Keitel.
That was the last place Mrs Levack wanted hairs, but in for a penny, in for a pound. ‘Don’t mind if I do.’ She downed the lot in one go, a rich heady brew that tasted very rural.
‘How long have you been living here?’ she asked.
‘Two and a half, three years,’ he said.
‘Did you know Mark Bannister?’ she tried again.
‘Never heard of him.’
‘He lived in there,’ she prompted, indicating the flat across the way.
‘Oh, that guy,’ he said. ‘I see him occasionally, nod hello. I’m a flight attendant, not here that much. Davo,’ he greeted someone behind Mrs Levack.
She turned around to see a second chap, also with singlet, shorts and shaved legs. This Davo chap looked Mrs Levack up and down.
‘Got yourself a personal trainer,’ he commented to Mr Keitel.
Mrs Levack was thrilled that she was being mistaken for a personal trainer. All of a sudden she felt quite light-headed, giggly. She couldn’t tell if it was the jungle juice she’d imbibed or the testosterone. You didn’t get either of them at the bowls club.
‘Not on my days off,’ she retorted, entering into the spirit of things. She brought out another of her cards and handed it to him. Perhaps she should be more sparing with the cards. At the rate she was going, she’d be through the lot before you could say Jack Robinson.
‘Mavis Levack, P.I. We’re investigating the death of the young man who lived next door.’ Apart from the height, the clothes, the hair, the age difference, she could have been Claudia Valentine herself.
‘He died?’ said Mr Keitel.
She leaned towards him and said in a confidential tone, ‘They say it was a heart attack but we think otherwise.’ The two chaps raised their eyebrows at one another. They must have been impressed.
‘Yes, we certainly do,’ she went on. ‘You didn’t see or hear anything that might be of value?’ she queried.
‘Like what?’ asked Mr Keitel.
She remembered practically word for word what Claudia Valentine had asked her, which was quite astonishing as Mrs Levack often had lapses of memory. Perhaps it wasn’t remembering, perhaps she was channelling Claudia Valentine. ‘Anything you think might help us with our enquiries. His habits, whether he had visitors . . .’
The one called Davo was getting impatient, looking at his watch and tapping his foot.
‘Like I said, I’m not here much. I don’t think I can be of much help.’ Mr Keitel was starting to withdraw.
‘What about the girl with the hair like a lion’s mane?’ Mrs Levack tried desperately to jog his memory.
‘There are so many of them,’ said Mr Keitel philosophically. ‘Bye now.’
He closed the door, with him and his friend on the inside and Mrs Levack on the outside. She tried not to feel rejected. Claudia Valentine probably had frustrating days too. Not everyone paid such attention to detail as Mrs Levack did. Claudia Valentine was very, very lucky to have pressed the right buzzer.
All was not lost, there were the flats downstairs, they might know something. She tried one door then the other, again and again, knocking louder and louder till finally someone shouted, ‘For Christ’s sake, go home!’
She looked up. It was Mr Keitel, dressed only in a towel. She gave him a little wave. ‘Just going,’ she said sheepishly. He’d seemed like such a nice young man. She hoped his manners improved when he was up in the air.
Eddy was sitting by the phone and looked immediately relieved when his wife walked in the door. ‘I was just about to ring the police. Did you get lost in the zone?’ She smiled sweetly at him. ‘How come your mouth’s green?’ Eddy asked.
‘Green? Is it green?’ she said. She went into the bathroom and had a look in the mirror. She saw green. ‘An all-day sucker,’ she explained. She didn’t think sh
e could get away with the wheat grass thing, he’d be asking what it was and where she’d got it.
‘Well, don’t forget to brush your teeth, then,’ he said, and headed towards the bedroom.
Mrs Levack had false teeth, top and bottom. More important than brushing was to put them in a glass of solution. She scrubbed her mouth clean and, after examining her chest for hairs, donned her nightie.
The bed lamp was blazing and Eddy was propped up on the pillows snoring, a book—Photography for Dummies—open beside him. She gave him a mint-flavoured kiss and turned off the light.
All was quiet—except for the comforting rhythm of Eddy’s snoring. He made a few shunting noises, probably dreaming of his younger days as a tram driver. The Bondi route was the last to go. Eddy hadn’t converted easily to the buses.
Through the doorway into the lounge Mrs Levack could see the window, venetians blinds open. What with the departure from normal routine this evening, they had forgotten to close them. It was the window that looked onto the victim’s flat. She willed her mind into that flat, searching for possible clues. Then, by some strange coincidence, though it often happened in Murder, She Wrote and those other TV shows, the light went on.
Perhaps the strength of Mrs Levack’s mind was so mighty that she had actually made it happen. She tried willing Eddy to stop snoring, to no avail. But wait, was that a shadow behind the curtains? Was someone over there in the dead boy’s flat?
She padded silently into the lounge room and picked up the trusty binoculars. Yes, there was definitely movement behind the curtain. She had no time to lose. Down the stairs and round the corner she went.
As Mrs Levack approached the flat she saw her—the girl with hair like a lion’s mane. Up to no good, no doubt. Mrs Levack slid into the shadows and watched. The girl was coming down the path to the front gate. She looked in the letter box and retrieved one of those pamphlets advertising the specials at the supermarket. Call it junk mail if you will, but Mrs Levack read hers as studiously as Eddy read the paper. The girl looked like she wished the mail was something else, but at least she didn’t throw the flier away. Instead, she shoved it into her big bag. What else did that bag contain?
‘Excuse me.’ Mrs Levack emerged from the shadows. The girl looked up, startled. ‘Do you have a light?’ Mrs Levack was hoping she’d catch a glimpse of something incriminating when the girl opened her bag for the matches.
‘What?’
Mrs Levack didn’t have her teeth in and was talking all gummy. She repeated the request, this time accompanied by a bit of miming.
‘I don’t smoke.’
‘What about a Kleenex? I feel a cold coming on.’
The girl looked at Mrs Levack oddly, then took off down the street. So fast, in fact, that Mrs Levack could hardly keep up. The girl got into one of those fancy big black cars and drove away.
If only Mrs Levack had had the presence of mind to bring a pencil and pad with her. Despite repeating it over and over to herself, by the time she got back to her block of flats she had completely forgotten the registration number.
That was not the only thing. She had forgotten her keys. Here she was out in the cold night air, without her teeth and wearing only her nightie. At least it was one with long sleeves and not that flimsy little black number she’d bought for their wedding anniversary. She couldn’t sneak in undetected—she could hardly shimmy up the drainpipe—she’d have to get Eddy to let her in. Which meant waking him up. That was the last thing she wanted to do.
She stood there till she started shivering, then pressed the buzzer, leant on it so long and persistently that it would have woken Eddy up even if he were dead.
Eventually she got a response, a gruff kind of sound. She couldn’t make out the words but the voice was Eddy’s.
‘It’s me,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Mavis.’
He was at the top of the stairs waiting. She put one hand on the bannister, the other out in front, and up she went.
‘What in blazes are you doing, Mavis?’
Did she have to spell it out for him? She glided into the flat. Mrs Levack knew that place like the back of her hand, could find her way around it blindfolded, which was more or less the case at the moment. She thought it best to keep her eyes closed although she badly wanted to see the expression on Eddy’s face.
‘Flamin’ hell, Mavis. I think we’d better make a doctor’s appointment for you. You’ve done some strange things in your life but never this.’
Mrs Levack kept a blank face. Her arms were beginning to get tired, but if she put them down the game would be up.
It was an almost perfect run. In the home straight she knocked over the beaker containing her teeth. She felt them make contact but didn’t react. It had been a long time since she’d been able to bite her own toes. She climbed into bed. At last. It was probably safe to put her arms down now.
She opened her eyes, as if she’d just woken up. ‘Eddy!’ she said. ‘What are you doing up? Did you hear a burglar?’
‘What am I doing up? What were you doing up? You were sleepwalking, Mavis, you were outside leaning on the blessed buzzer.’
‘Nonsense, Eddy. I’m the one in bed and you’re the one up. If anyone’s sleepwalking, it’s you. Perhaps we should make an appointment with the doctor.’
Eddy rolled his eyes and got back into bed. ‘It’s only a dream,’ he kept mumbling to himself, ‘it’s only a dream.’
Eddy kept a careful watch on his wife over the next few days, giving her little opportunity to get out and about on her own. When she said she was popping out for a morning walk, Eddy said he’d do the same, that he wanted to observe the zone first-hand. She was in that precarious state of balance in which she needed to get out and do more investigating before the trail went completely cold, but had to assure her husband that she was quite all right.
Finally Mrs Levack’s chance came. Wednesday—Eddy and Bill’s library day. They seemed to spend hours there and Mrs Levack often thought that perhaps they were up to no good, but today she welcomed it as a godsend.
‘What’s Freda up to?’ Mrs Levack enquired when Bill arrived. Apart from being Bill’s wife, Freda was Mrs Levack’s best friend.
‘Gone for a walk with the dog.’
‘Mavis and I have taken up walking, haven’t we?’ said Eddy. Was there a hint of sarcasm in his voice?
‘Yes, we have,’ she said, treating it as a genuine remark. ‘Keeps the osteopyrethrum at bay.’
Eddy and Bill were ready to go. ‘You boys enjoy yourselves at the library. Eddy, maybe you could bring me back a book on exercise if you come across any. Cheerio.’ She put her rubber gloves on as if she was about to do the washing up.
Mrs Levack waited a full five minutes before she took off the gloves and put on her joggers. Remembering to take the key, notepad and pencil, she walked down the steps, looked left and right, and headed off. She had a new focus of attention, not the flat but the mailbox. If the girl had looked in the mailbox, it meant an important clue was coming.
The mail usually came between ten-thirty and eleven. It was 10.47 when Mrs Levack observed the postie deliver a long envelope to the victim’s letter box. She waited till he had passed, then made a beeline for it.
A letter from America. For some reason she thought of Captain Cook. No, that wasn’t it. Another Cook who did that thing on the radio, practically as old as Captain Cook. She knew the letter was from America because there was a small label in the top left-hand corner that said: ‘Grosz, Grosz and Epstein, 130 Madison Ave, New York.’ Hmm. She held it up to the light but couldn’t see through it.
She walked briskly back home. There was no time to lose. She filled the kettle and waited for it to boil. ‘Come on, come on.’ She strummed her fingers on the laminex. Then she heard its merry little whistle. At last. Strangely enough, Mrs Levack had never tried steaming open an envelope before and it took her a few goes before she realised she should be steaming the back, where it had been stuck down. But the
blessed thing wouldn’t budge. Ah, finally, she was able to get one corner of it up.
So intent was she on her task that she didn’t hear the door open.
‘Ah, a cuppa. You’d better put that letter aside, it’ll get all soggy.’ Then Eddy’s eyes narrowed as he saw what she was doing. Mavis was caught in the act. Now it was her husband’s turn to strum his fingers on the laminex. Though Eddy would need his glasses to read the small label, he could certainly see the addressee’s name, and it wasn’t Mr or Mrs Levack. ‘That’s theft,’ he pointed out.
‘But he can’t read it, he’s dead.’
‘You should have left it in the box.’
‘It’s not safe.’
‘Well, it doesn’t appear to be safe with you. Even if he’s dead the next of kin are entitled to it.’
‘But we don’t know who they are.’
‘It’s none of our business,’ said Eddy.
‘It is,’ Mrs Levack insisted. ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve been helping Ms Valentine with her enquiries.’
‘Who?’
‘You know, the young woman who came around, the redhead.’ She hardly needed to specify the young woman was a redhead. They rarely had any visitors under the age of sixty, red, blonde or brunette.
‘And just how have you been “helping”?’ Eddy asked.
‘Keeping an eye on things.’
Eddy knew the trouble his wife could cause when she ‘helped’. It was time to hand this over to the professionals. ‘You’d better ring and tell her then.’ He got out the phone book, put on his glasses and started looking under the Vs.
Mrs Levack took out the card that she always kept close to her person. ‘Actually, Eddy, I’ve got the number.’
He handed her the phone. She tapped out the numbers. ‘Hello? I say, hello? It’s Mrs Levack. Are you there, Ms Valentine?’ She winced as she got a beep in her ear. Then there was silence.
‘You think she’d have the courtesy to say something,’ Mrs Levack said to her husband.
‘It was probably one of those answering machines.’
‘It sounded suspiciously like a human being,’ Mrs Levack remarked. She tried again and the same thing happened.