Mrs. Kaplan and the Matzoh Ball of Death (13 page)

At lunch neither of us said much, and we did not eat much either. Just a
bissel
lentil soup and maybe some corned beef. We were both on
shpilkes,
pins and needles, nervously waiting for Sara to come and pick us up and take us to the burglar lady.

Finally it was two o'clock, and only a minute or two after the hour Sara arrived. We were sitting in the lobby of the Home looking out the big glass front windows when an enormous car made its way up the circular driveway and around to the front door, where it stopped. It looked like one of those old cars like you see in magazine articles about the “good old days.” It was dark blue and had so much shiny metal on the front and side, with big rows of sparkly teeth in front, it looked like a fierce animal that was ready to leap on some poor smaller one.

To my surprise, though, it was Sara. Not the animal, but driving it. She stopped and got out of the car as Mrs. K and I got up to meet her.

“Am I late?” she said as she came through the big glass doors.

“Not at all,” said Mrs. K, “you are just on time. But what is that you are driving? I have never seen a car that big.”

Sara laughed. “Sure you have, just not in a while. Don't you remember when they were all this big? It's an old Buick that I inherited from my dad. I kind of like it, because it's different, though it does guzzle a lot of gas.”

“I'm sure it does,” Mrs. K said, staring out at it.

“So let's get started,” Sara said, and she took my arm and escorted me out to the big car, as Mrs. K followed. She opened the doors for us, as they were quite heavy and took some effort to pull and push. But inside there was so much room, it was like sitting in a nice soft chair in the lounge. I sat in front with Sara, and Mrs. K sat in the back.

It was not a long ride to Sara's apartment, and because the car was noisy and Sara seemed to have her hands full steering it, we did not talk much, except to ask if Sara knew what it was her friend Florence wanted to tell us in person. But Sara just said it was better that Florence tell us, so we had no choice but to wait.

As I said, Sara, who is not a large woman—she has a nice, slender figure—had to make a big effort to drive this monster car, and there were a few times she seemed to come awfully close to the other cars or the side of the street. But she managed to avoid hitting anything, and I managed to keep my
pisk
closed and not be a backseat driver (although I could not help a quiet squeak or two when the near misses were on my side).

Soon we arrived at a
bekovedik
—respectable-looking—ap
artment building. Sara parked the car at the curb in front—I don't know how she managed to fit it in, but she needed only two or three tries to do it—and got out. She came around to open the doors for me and Mrs. K, which I'm sure we appreciated. She again took my arm and the three of us entered the building through large glass doors that opened automatically when we stepped in front of them.

We entered a fancy-schmancy lobby, with nice carpeting and glass tables on top of which were vases of flowers. Against one wall were two elevators, the doors painted gold. Sara pushed the button for “up,” and when the elevator came we got in and she pushed another button for her floor. Up we went, a little faster than my stomach would have preferred, and when it stopped (and my stomach caught up) we stepped out, turned left, and walked down a long hallway to Sara's door.

The hallway in Sara's building was different from that at the Home, being narrower and somewhat darker. But there were several brightly colored lines painted all along the walls, from one end to the other, which really made it seem quite cheerful. They could do with something like that by us.

Sara used her key to open the door and ushered us in. There was a small entrance hall decorated with brightly colored prints. A door probably had a coat closet behind it, and an opening opposite the front door led directly into a large, sunny living room. As soon as we entered the apartment, a woman who had been sitting on a sofa in the living room got up and smiled, although she did not come to greet us. The reason was obvious.

Now, the lady waiting for us was tall, athletic-looking, and quite attractive, with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was wearing a pretty outfit of a yellow skirt and a light blue blouse. But the first thing we noticed about the woman was not her face or her clothes, but her foot. It was in a cast, and she was using a metal cane, like they give you at the hospital to use while you are recovering from something wrong with your leg.

I did not have to be Mr. Sherlock Holmes—or even Mrs. K—to make with the deduction that this cast was the burglar lady's “little hitch.”

Sara introduced us to the lady with the cast, whose name was Florence Palmer. We all sat in the living room, Mrs. K and me on the sofa and Sara and Florence (who had asked us to call her “Flo,” but we do not know her that well) on big stuffed chairs facing it. On a coffee table between us Sara had kindly put out a bowl of mixed nuts, and she offered us something to drink.

“Yes, Sara, dear, a cup of hot tea would be most welcome,” Mrs. K said. I added, “For me too, if you don't mind.” Sara went into the kitchen and came back a few minutes later with a silver teapot that I recognized as part of a set that had been in our house when her mother and I were growing up. I was pleased to see it was still in the family, and that Sara was thoughtful enough to bring it out on this occasion, as it is not the kind of thing young people these days like to use. She also brought some shortbread cookies, not my favorite (a
bissel
too rich at my age), but it is the thought that counts.

“Well,” Florence said after we were settled and sipping our tea, “you can see that I had a little accident. Would you like to hear just about that, or the whole story of the other night?”

Mrs. K looked at me and I shrugged my shoulders a bit, so she turned and said to Florence, “Well, since we are here and I am quite interested in hearing all about how you found the earring, please go ahead and tell us the whole
megillah
.”

We all settled back, and Florence began her story.

“I'd already decided that going in through the front doors of the rooms was a non-starter,” Florence said. “Sara had told me there were handle locks and deadbolts. Not only were the two locks likely to be tough to open, even for someone like me who took a locksmith course as part of my ‘professional training,' but the fact that the hallway was well lit and a public thoroughfare, in effect, made it too risky to operate there.

“That, of course, left the windows in back. Sara told me the number of windows from each end of the building to the ones that Mrs. Kaplan wanted searched, so that I would know which ones to enter. There was no other way to tell them apart, as they're all the same size and at the same height, as you know.”

“Yes,” Mrs. K said. “Even we had to peek into a window and then count to be sure which rooms were ours.”

“Right. Anyway, I dressed in my usual work clothes—a jumpsuit, black on black, both fashionable and practical—and drove out to the Home hoping to get there just as the entertainment was starting. But I ran into traffic and arrived a little later than I wanted. That's why I like to give myself plenty of extra time, for any unplanned delays. Anyway, I parked about a block away from the Home. When I got to the fence around the back lawn, I followed it until I found a dark corner where I couldn't be seen. After checking around for other life forms, I boosted myself over to the other side. Unfortunately, I had chosen a poor spot to land, because there were rose bushes planted along the fence at that point, something I guess Sara hadn't noticed.” She glanced at Sara, who looked slightly embarrassed.

“No, I guess I hadn't. Sorry,” Sara said.

Florence did not seem too upset about it. “Not to worry. Once I'd extricated myself from the rose thorns while stifling a scream of pain from several scratches, I kept in the shadows and made my way toward the back of the building.”

“Was it dark back there?” I asked.

“Actually, it was darker than I thought it would be, which is good. Those floodlights on the ends of the buildings are activated by motion, but the sensors don't have a very wide range, and I found that if I stayed very close to the building, they didn't go on.”

“That was fortunate,” Mrs. K said. “What would you have done if they had turned on?”

“Oh, there are ways to shut them off, but they take time and I was lucky I didn't have to bother.”

“So how did you find your way in the dark?” Mrs. K asked. “Did you have with you a flashlight?”

“Exactly. Plus, the moon was pretty bright that night, which helped. I slowly made my way along the dark windows and counted to find the first one I was supposed to enter. After counting twice to be certain I had the right window, I found that it was shut and locked.”

“Oh, dear.” I think Mrs. K and I said this at the same time.

“Oh, dear is right. Anyway, after cursing and wondering what the room's occupant had against fresh air, I set to work on the window. It should have taken me only a minute or so to open it and defeat the limiting whatsis, because they use an old-style lock that just requires the right kind of tool. Which I had. And which took this occasion to break in three places at once. Careless of me not to have a spare, but there it was. Opening the window without the special tool took an extra fifteen or twenty minutes, which kind of put me behind schedule, so that once I got in I was in a hurry.”

“But you found the earring, yes?” Mrs. K asked, even though Florence had already said she had earlier.

“Oh, yes. It took longer than I'd expected to search the room and locate the earring, but it turned out that was actually the easy part. Just as I was preparing to put everything back in order and get the heck out of there, I heard the residents returning from the recital, coming down the hallway toward the room I was in. At any moment, that room's resident might open the door and walk in on me.

“What can you say to a person who enters their room, which was totally unpopulated when they left it, and finds you looking back at them?”

“What indeed,” Mrs. K said.

“Obviously, I had few options. Violence was out, of course. I assumed I wouldn't be able to convince even a doddering octogenarian that I somehow belonged there. (Spontaneous late-night telephone repairs?) I supposed I could've yelled ‘Boo!' and made a break for it. If I was lucky, and they didn't die of a heart attack, the startled person would chalk it up to a hallucination brought on by advancing senility.”

I think Florence suddenly realized whom she was talking to, because she stopped with a look like she was embarrassed.

“Umm, sorry about that,” she said. “I didn't mean to imply that everyone there is senile or anything. I was just…you know, making a point.” She looked at Sara for help, but Sara had started laughing and was no help at all.

Mrs. K came to her rescue instead. “Don't worry,” she said. “Some of us are, and the rest of us don't mind you saying so. But we get your point. Please already get to how that happened”—
indicating the cast on Florence's foot.

“Sorry. I'm almost there. I wanted to avoid a confrontation, so I was backing up rapidly toward the window when I accidentally tripped over a small table and fell. I didn't make a lot of noise falling, but I also knocked what turned out to be a small metal jewelry box onto the floor. It made a hell of a racket for something so small.”

“That must have been the noise we heard when walking down the hallway,” I said, and Mrs. K nodded in agreement.

“So you were passing by when I made that noise? Geez, that was lucky. Anyway, I held my breath as I heard voices raised just outside the door and I assumed someone must have heard the crash. But when no one opened the door, I started to get up but found I'd hurt my ankle rather badly. All I could do was hop on the other foot over to the window and crawl out. Once on the grass, I promptly sat down and assessed the damage.”

“I can imagine it was very painful,” Mrs. K said in a sympathetic tone. She seemed to have forgotten for the moment that it also meant Florence's burglaring was
kaput
for the night, if not longer.

“I didn't sit there long, because time was running out, and I knew it would take me a while to hobble back to the fence. And then I still had to make it back over the fence and to my car.”

“
Oy gevalt!
” said Mrs. K. “How did you do all this with a bad ankle?”

“I didn't. Not by myself. Oh, I somehow made it back to the fence. But there was no way I was going to get over the fence and then drive home without help.”

“So what did you do?” I asked. “Who was there to help you?”

But as soon as I asked the question, I was sure I knew the answer. We all looked over at Sara, who had not spoken up through this whole
megillah,
and she sort of raised her hand.

“Sara to the rescue once again,” she said, a little sheepishly.

Florence jumped back in. “Yeah, I have Sara on speed dial. Under H for ‘Help'!”

There was silence for a minute as we all digested what Florence had said. Then Mrs. K got back to the important point. “So where does this leave us with our investigation? I take it you are temporarily out of the burglar business?”

“I'm afraid so. I made the ankle much worse by hobbling on it, and then getting over the fence, even with Sara's help, really did it in. Even without the accident, I'd run out of time. It was really my fault, all that wasted time, and I would've considered finishing the job another day, but now…” She kind of shrugged her shoulders in a helpless manner.

Mrs. K looked at me and said, “Well, Ida, I suppose I will have to make do without the information from the second room. It does make a small hole in my theory, but there is nothing we can do.”

I nodded and took her hand, giving it a sympathetic squeeze. Nothing we could do.

“Unless…”

This was Florence speaking up again. We all looked at her, puzzled.

“Yes? Unless what?” said Mrs. K. She did not sound hopeful.

“Unless you'd like to give it a try yourselves.”