Rita Lakin_Gladdy Gold_01 (15 page)

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."

"Poor, 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

I
t'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 the 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.