The Corpse with the Ruby Lips

by Cathy Ace

  My poor husband didn’t look at all well, so I waited while he finished attending to his nose, then I allowed him to continue. “Don’t bother, the RCMP thought of that, and they worked through everything they could get their hands on. Jack and his mate think the shots might still be in the file, but he recalls they put a special team to work on just the photos—working out who everyone was, and discounting most of the people in them.”

  “Ah well, it was worth mentioning.”

  “It was. Moving on—my information is that no other crime similar to this took place in the immediate vicinity within the ten years surrounding 1976, so there was no suspicion of any connection with any other cases. Apparently we were right to think they gave the husband a long, hard look, but they couldn’t place him outside the family home during the hours in question. Same thing for the son and daughter, despite the fact the son popped up on their radar some time later.”

  “Would those be the times his sister Alexa mentioned to me?”

  “Seems that way. Jack’s going to follow up on that front. Sounds like petty theft, no violence, but possession too. This was before the days when BC bud was the province’s biggest illegal cash crop, and almost a gang commodity. Way before people started to come here to do ‘Vansterdam’ tours of the cannabis scene. The first pot-festival was held in Edmonton back in 1977, and I know it was something many of us spent a lot of time and effort tackling in our daily routines here. But your Valentin Seszták never served time.”

  “How did you manage to find that out? You don’t still have access to police records, surely?”

  Bud managed a smile. “I don’t, but I know quite a few people who do.”

  “Rule bending by my law-abiding, justice-serving husband?”

  “All for a good cause, Cait. All for a good cause.”

  “Granted. I am guessing the father and son alibi each other on the night in question, the daughter too, right?”

  Bud looked surprised. “The kid sister? Both ex-cops agreed she was never seriously considered. The strength it would have taken to lift a heavy rock then bash in the woman’s skull precludes a thirteen-year-old female. Indeed, Jack said the son was so weedy they didn’t think even he’d have had the strength required to deliver the wound the mother had.”

  I visualized Valentin’s wasted body. “He’s rail-thin, even now, though he looks like he might have been wiry when he was young. Both he and his sister are tall, but you’re right, they don’t look strong. Anything more?”

  “Not yet. We’re not going to know more until Tuesday at the earliest, because Monday’s November 11, so it’s a day off here—though not for a caregiver like me, of course, or for serving cops, but it’s not the time to bother folks with stuff like this. Do you get a day off there?”

  “No, it’s not a day off, but I will be going out for dinner on Monday.”

  “Again?” Bud sounded surprised.

  “Yes. I’m off to Vajdahunyad Castle for an evening of goose and wine. It’s St. Martin’s Day, which is a big deal here, and the HUB is marking the day as part of its year of celebration for its anniversary.”

  “Enjoy,” said Bud halfheartedly. “The thought of either right now makes me want to heave,” he added feebly, and we said our goodbyes quickly.

  When I was alone again, I realized I’d better get some pills into my system if I had any hope of staving off the lurgies, and get as good a night’s sleep as I could. I wanted to be up and reading as early as possible, so I had some milk, took some tablets, and wore my wrap to bed. Socks too.

  A few hours later I was wide awake, propped up on my pillows, and halfway through the fifth book of the Bloodline Saga; sleep had eluded me, and I’d become so annoyed with all my tossing and turning that I’d decided it was better to give in and get on with my reading. By 4:15 AM I was done, in more ways than one; I’d reached the end of the book, though not the end of Valentin’s tales, and I was absolutely exhausted. I finally understood why it seemed half the world was awaiting the final book with rabid anticipation—VS Örsi had provided some wicked cliffhangers at the end of book five. I napped, off and on, until around nine, then dragged myself to the bath and soaked for an hour in the small tub. It helped a little, but there’s no substitute for sleeping soundly, so I found myself in a state of torpor as I left the apartment, and not really looking forward to my lunch date at all.

  I knew it would take me almost an hour to get to Zsófia’s home, so allowed myself time to make the journey with ease, and I was glad I’d already bought some wine and flowers to take with me, because I just wasn’t in the mood for shopping. The wine had cost about a third of the price of the flowers, which I’d left resting in the fridge overnight so they’d look fresh when I presented them to my hostess. What I hadn’t planned on was the torrential, icy rain, and the crush on the metro, so I arrived at the Andrassy Avenue house soaked, the flowers looking almost as bedraggled as me, wanting to knock back the entire bottle of wine. I pulled the handle that made a bell sound inside the imposing building and waited. And waited. I rang again. Nothing. Then I heard a gut-wrenching scream from above me.

  Saying Something Different

  AS I PEERED TOWARD THE upper stories of the building from where the scream had emanated, I saw Valentin hanging out of a window, flailing his arms. Alexa was leaning out of a window below him, shouting up at her brother.

  “What will people think, Val? Get back inside, right now. You’ll catch your death of cold.” Alexa looked down at me. “Cait? Nice to see you. I’ll be down in a minute.”

  Both she and her brother disappeared, and I waited at the front door. One of the oddest aspects of the entire incident was that Alexa hadn’t acted as though anything out of the ordinary had happened. Maybe Valentin regularly screamed like a banshee from his rooms? I wondered how that went down with the neighbors.

  By the time Alexa opened the door and I made my way into the entry hall, I’d managed to compose myself, and I handed her the hostess gifts I’d brought without mentioning Valentin at all. Inwardly, I was delighted when Alexa explained that Valentin had been determined to discover if a person’s head would be sufficiently protected in a battle by a certain sort of helmet and had been thrashing a mannequin about in his rooms, screaming with bloodlust as he did so. As she spoke, we made our way to the salon upstairs, and I wondered if her reaction to the whole situation was so calm because she was used to her brother’s little “experiments.”

  Having expected my arrival, Alexa was able to offer a wide array of alcoholic beverages when I was seated. I went with a gin and tonic. She did likewise. I hadn’t expected to be alone with Alexa, and her manner and topics of discussion signaled she didn’t want to begin our conversation where we had left off a week earlier. Instead she asked me to tell her about the previous night’s riverboat trip, which I did in as entertaining a manner as possible, and without mentioning anything about her family.

  When Zsófia finally joined us—she’d been delayed at the Gellért Spa—she listened impassively as the tale of Valentin’s play-battle was retold by her slightly irritated mother. This allowed me to be more certain my original judgment was correct—what they saw as normal behavior was way beyond what anyone not related to Valentin Seszták might consider usual. I realized I’d have to take that onboard as I made my assessment of the man as a suspect in his mother’s murder.

  With his experiment having tired him, Valentin would eat in his rooms with Martin, I was told, so we three women made our way to a dining room that adjoined the salon where we’d been sitting.

  The setting was grand, to say the least; opulent draperies at tall windows, inlaid wood floors, mirrors along the interior walls, and a highly polished table of massive proportions with three places set at one end. The elaborate table-settings, floral decorations, and ravishing display of fruits as a centerpiece made me suspect Alexa had some help about the place other than Valentin’s nurses. I was proved right when a young woman arrived bearing food on a large tray, wh
ich she deposited on a long, inlaid sideboard with gold ormolu trim. Alexa thanked her, then rose. Zsófia and I followed her to the food and helped ourselves, buffet-style, to roasted goose and root vegetables.

  With a mounded plate in front of each of us, the conversation resembled what I’d expect in any polite company, for about ten minutes. Then Alexa dropped something of a bombshell.

  “Cait, there’s no question your visit here last week has opened old wounds, for both my brother and myself. I decided not to ignore what happened, so I’ve been speaking to Valentin about our mother’s death, when that’s been possible.” She paused, and looked first at her daughter, then me. “Zsófia has also confessed to me she begged you to look into this matter, Cait. Is that correct?”

  So, the cat was out of the bag and running around the dining room. “She did,” I replied calmly.

  Alexa reached for her glass of wine and swigged. “I love my darling daughter very much, but, on this occasion, I have had to tell her I think she acted improperly. It wasn’t a good idea to go behind my back. Maybe I am to blame for Zsófia feeling she had to ask an outsider to get involved. I haven’t been very open about her grandmother and grandfather. Discussing the matter makes me very unhappy.”

  “That’s perfectly understandable,” I dared.

  Alexa’s glare didn’t suggest she welcomed my opinion. “Understandable or not, I can see why knowing nothing would make Zsófia want to know everything. But it is still a tragedy, and it still cuts deep—for me and Valentin. As such, and upon sober reflection, I believe the family would now prefer it if you would step down, Cait, and put the matter to one side. We’re all going to move on and not allow it to blight our lives any more than it already has.”

  Zsófia and I both paused, each of us with a forkful of food poised in midair. I especially wondered how “sober” the reflection had been on Alexa’s part; the fact she’d already polished off half the bottle of wine at her elbow, whereas Zsófia and I had barely touched our glasses, spoke volumes.

  “Mama, you cannot be serious,” said Alexa’s daughter impatiently, placing her cutlery onto her plate with a clatter. “When we discussed this last night, you said you didn’t care if I looked into my grandmother’s death. Those were your very words. You ‘didn’t care’ what I did.”

  Having lived with a person whose memory was often ravaged by too much liquor, I recognized the expression that flashed across Alexa’s face; she couldn’t recall exactly what she’d said to her daughter the night before, and experience was telling her she’d never be able to retrieve the lost words from the black hole where they’d sunk without trace.

  Zsófia wasn’t letting up. “How can you have changed your mind about something so important, so quickly? It’s not possible. What’s happened since last night that makes you say this, now?”

  I wanted to take Zsófia to one side and try to get her to understand the vagaries of alcoholism; the mood swings, the mind-boggling shifts in opinion, the forgetfulness, the desperate desire to be understood and loved . . . the passion that tips over into violence in a millisecond. It seemed at least that Alexa wasn’t given to violent outbursts—though who knew what had gone on over the years. I judged that if last night’s version of Alexa hadn’t cared, and today’s did, it was the woman who’d been drinking all day who was dismissive, and the one who was still in the early stages of her daily intake who was worried. Which was interesting. Unusually for me, I kept my thoughts to myself. The dreadful tension between mother and daughter wasn’t going to be broken by a pithy quip.

  Zsófia snapped, “Cait and her husband have already put a great deal of effort into this for us. And anyway—why wouldn’t you want to know who killed your mother? I’d want to know who did it if someone killed you.”

  Alexa placed her knife and fork down silently, and glared at her daughter. “I’ve thought about it at length, and I have discussed it with Valentin. We both agree this is not something we want to revisit. This is my mother we’re talking about, Zsófia; you really know nothing of her other than seeing some old family photos. You only know what I’ve chosen to tell you about her. You’re my daughter, Zsófia, and I will speak to you about your grandmother more when the time is right. But for now, thank you, Cait, for all you’ve done, but I’d like you to just stop.” She emptied her glass.

  As both women’s eyes turned to me I said, “I don’t think I can do that.”

  Alexa roughly wiped her mouth with her napkin. “I would prefer it if you did.” His tone was fake polite.

  “I don’t mean I won’t, I mean I can’t,” I said. “You see, Alexa, my husband’s already been briefed by two retired police officers who worked the original case and it really is true that cops who fail to catch a killer are rather like terriers who’ve failed to catch a rat. They’re off down that hole again now, and I don’t think they’ll reemerge without their quarry.”

  “I wish my daughter had never asked you to get involved,” said Alexa, fuming. “Zsófia, you shouldn’t have done what you did. Now how will we stop all this?” Her voice was rough with anger.

  “We can’t, Mama,” said Zsófia. I noted a hint of satisfaction in her voice. “If we support Cait in what she’s doing for us, we could all finally understand why Grandmother was killed, and who killed her.”

  Alexa stood, the feet of her chair sliding silently across the beautifully inlaid wood floor. She gripped the edge of the table. I wondered if she needed to steady herself. Her eyes were darting, and she looked flushed. It frightened me because Angus used to look much the same before he showed me the part of his personality that was most vicious. I instinctively looked around for possible missiles—sadly, there were too many; crystal-ware, cutlery, even dishes and plates might be about to fly. Had it been Angus standing there, drunk and seething, that would have been my assumption. I wondered how it would go with Alexa.

  My heart stopped thumping when the woman gathered herself and retook her seat, looking tired. “Oh my darling child, you don’t know what you’re saying. Isn’t it bad enough your grandmother was murdered? Isn’t that enough to hide from the world, let alone the truth about who killed her? Knowing who did it, or why they did it, will not bring her back.”

  I found Alexa’s words fascinating. Zsófia looked puzzled, and a silence ensued.

  After a few moments, Zsófia’s question, “How’s your goose, Cait?” surprised me.

  “Delicious, thank you,” I replied, returning my attention to the meal on my plate. Taking my chance to move away from the subject of a reinvestigation I didn’t think I could stop, I dared, “Are you the cook here, Alexa? This meal is wonderful.”

  Alexa’s voice sounded distant, “No, we have an adequate woman who keeps us well-fed. Keeps Zsófia well-fed in any case, as you can plainly see. I eat more moderately than she does.”

  Zsófia glared at her plate and shoved a forkful of roasted carrot into her mouth. I felt embarrassed for the poor girl. She wasn’t out of shape, just well-covered. And if Alexa thought her daughter overweight, I wondered how she judged me, because I had a good thirty pounds on the girl. I took the barb personally, but decided to try to defuse the situation by saying, “I’ll be having goose again tomorrow night at the St. Martin’s Day celebrations at Vajdahunyad Castle. Is today your celebration of that feast?”

  “Yes. Ana, our cook, insists we do it every year,” grumbled Alexa. She pushed her half-eaten meal away and refilled her empty glass, hugging the bottle after she’d poured. “I don’t know why I let her do it. I don’t like goose at all. She’s very religious, so we do it for her.”

  The Alexa with whom I was sharing a tense luncheon seemed to be a totally different person than the one I’d met a week earlier, and I dwelt on why her attitude toward me had changed so markedly. It couldn’t have been anything to do with me specifically, I reasoned, because I hadn’t told her about the slight progress in the investigation back in Canada. So it had to be the simple fact that someone, anyone, was rooting about in her
family’s background. As she’d said, of course it would be something about which she’d be sensitive, but Zsófia had hit the nail on the head when she’d asked her mother why she wouldn’t want to find out what had really happened that night back in 1976.

  We all ate in silence—well, I did. Alexa folded her arms and stared at the glass and bottle on the table in front of her, and Zsófia pushed her food around her plate. I felt I was the only one not acting like a sulky teenager, and was wondering distractedly about how my visit would progress, when the door to the room was flung open by Martin, the nurse.

  “Mr. Valentin wants to join you all for lunch. I have told him no, as you said, and have locked his door. He is throwing furniture against it and says he is being starved. Would you like me to sedate him now?”

  The two Takács women looked at the man as though he was asking a question they’d heard many times before. For all I knew, they had. Confusion when faced with familiar places or tasks, forgetting to eat, or forgetting one has eaten, and the sad inability to recognize those who love you—and sometimes becoming angry with them because one believes them to be strangers—are just some of the challenging symptoms that can accompany the development of several forms of dementia, Alzheimer’s included. I wondered how my hostess would react.

  “How does he seem, otherwise?” asked Alexa. “Has he already eaten?”