“You give me your number and I will pass it to him.”
“Fine,” Nesha said. “Only I’m staying at a hotel and I don’t know the number. I’ll call you tomorrow and give it to you.”
chapter twenty
That afternoon Rebecca focused all her concentration on attending to her patients. It was therapeutic to solve other people’s problems, feel she was really helping someone. More than once she became gratefully lost in the puzzle of a patient’s illness. At the end of the day, though, her own predicament awaited her.
Soon after the last patient had closed the door, Iris threw on her jacket. “I gotta get going. My kids are coming for dinner tonight. Kids! They’re both over thirty and I’m still calling them kids.” She turned to Rebecca. “Why don’t you come over for dinner? I’m cooking up a storm.” She stood a moment, watching Rebecca, her hazel eyes concerned. “You all right?”
Rebecca glanced up from the file she was reading. It was a question Iris had asked many times over the past six months. Rebecca must have had a grim expression on her face.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“Dinner?” Iris repeated.
Rebecca smiled sheepishly. “Thanks, Iris, I’ll take a rain check.”
Iris hovered near the door, the perfect waves of blonde hair blurred in Rebecca’s peripheral vision. “Really, Iris, I’m fine. Have a nice dinner.”
Rebecca heard the door close, then sat a moment, mesmerized by the evening silence. Dr. Lila Arons, from downstairs, had gone home on time tonight. Rebecca was alone in the building. She wondered what Iris was making for dinner. Rebecca had been over a few times but always felt awkward with Iris’ grown children, who were too polite to refer to David’s death except obliquely, and then an embarrassed pause would hang in the air till Rebecca or Iris broke the silence.
Suddenly she was aware that the present silence, the silence in the building, had been broken. Footsteps sounded downstairs. No, someone was coming up the stairs. The noise echoed in the empty building. Rebecca stiffened. She wasn’t expecting anyone. Should she lock the door? She jumped up, realizing she couldn’t get to the door in time to lock it before the man — she was sure it was a man — reached it. She flew into her inner office, adrenaline pumping. What were the chances the killer would be so brazen? She stood by the phone, hating her own vulnerability. If she screamed, would someone hear?
“Dr. Temple?” A man’s voice rose in uncertainty.
Her breathing was shallow. She listened, but wasn’t sure what she had heard.
“Dr. Temple?”
She recognized the accent then, and tried to still her heart. When was she going to stop panicking? She took a breath, then walked into the hall with a purposeful stride.
“Mr. Vogel,” she said. “What a surprise. I thought you were going to phone.”
He looked around the office. “I took the chance you would still be here. Are you alone?”
She ignored the question, wishing Iris had stayed for a few more minutes. Or maybe he had waited for Iris to leave. She had to stop imagining monsters everywhere. The racing of her heart made that impossible. He looked very civilized, with his blue turtleneck tucked into navy wool pants.
“I hope I didn’t frighten you when I came in.”
Was it that obvious, she wondered. “What have you found out?”
His pale blue eyes observed her. “Something reassuring,” he said. “The man’s innocent. He was occupied with something in a public place the night of the murder. He has witnesses. And he cannot explain the poor woman’s inquiries about him. You must admit she was a disturbed woman. You mustn’t take seriously what she said if she wasn’t quite right — here.” He pointed to his temple.
“Then you can tell me the man’s name.”
He glanced around the office. “I would think this would be good news. That the man is innocent. Perhaps you should move on. It may even be that the poor woman was killed by robbers.”
“Mr. Vogel...”
“Max. Please.”
“I must speak to the man. If you won’t tell me who it is....”
Vogel raised his palm in some sort of defeat. “There is a place you can find him. A club. I’ll give you the address, but I promised I wouldn’t give away his name. And, of course, you must not mention me.”
Rebecca ate her dinner in the kitchen looking out the patio doors at the garden. It looked no different from last spring when David could still see enough to clear the dead leaves off the crocuses and grape hyacinths that would soon unfold their purple hearts. Tulips and tiger lilies came later. He had organized the garden so that something would always be blooming. There were the perennials that returned each year: yellow blackeyed Susans that spread in clumps, red hollyhocks against the fence, and forget-me-nots a heart-rending blue in unexpected corners. Near the end of May he would plant little annuals that would blossom and spread till the first frost. That was before he had gotten ill and lost his sight. Tears welled in her eyes at the irony: the garden he had created would come alive each year while he was gone forever.
She knew this was a road of thought she didn’t want to travel down again. She got dressed to go out.
El Dorado glittered in the night of College Street, its marquee outlined by a necklace of flashing bulbs. Nothing subtle there. Rebecca parked at a meter several blocks away, locked her doors, and set off in the direction of the club. She passed small hardware stores, dress stores, and food shops closed for the night. As she opened the door to the club, she turned momentarily and in the distance caught sight of the man in the sweatsuit who had watched her in Kensington Market the day before. Stopping automatically, she peered into the milky haze born of too many light bulbs tearing the dark. The outline of the man flickered down the street then burned up in the volley of the flashing lights like a moth. She had to get hold of herself.
She stepped into a dimly-lit hallway, aware of the music arriving in distorted echo through the ceiling. The restaurant on the first floor was nearly empty. A carpeted stairway straight ahead was flanked by a sign: “Upstairs, Thursday to Sunday, The Gauchos with Isabella Velasco.” Isabella Velasco. The black-edged card, the dead son in Buenos Aires. Interesting coincidence.
Rebecca’s eyes adjusted to the light and she realized there was a balding, angular maitre d’ in a black suit standing in the restaurant, watching her. His sour face prodded her to follow the music.
chapter twenty-one
The stairs were carpeted in an orangey-red that reminded her of Spanish tiled roofs and the satin dresses of flamenco dancers. She stood in the doorway of the club, halted by the smoke and the noisy rhythm of the music that set the floor vibrating. Middle-aged couples clung to each other in the centre of the dance floor, gliding to some tango. The sultry beat was being produced on the opposite side of the room by a band of trumpet, guitar, and drums, and Isabella Velasco. Her voice insinuated itself along the melody of some song about rain, while her fingers punctuated the journey, her hands opening and closing to click her castanets like little clams. A long black dress, slit to the thigh on one side, hugged her bony figure. Her dark hair was pulled tightly off her face. She was not young. A well-preserved forty-nine, as she swayed to the rhythm.
Rebecca took a moment to observe the room. It looked like a club for homesick Latins: a rigid toreador, with charging bull, had been painted across the wall behind the band. David would not have approved. The two figures were naively drawn and the colours flat and childish. Near the entrance hung several paintings of, presumably, the Spanish countryside, as well as the requisite rendering of a señiorita in lace mantilla. A set of bull’s horns and a sword were suspended in one corner.
She