The Last Secret, page 33
Another loaded glance is exchanged between them. “Trust me, you wouldn’t want to remember,” Kay says.
The block of cheese still in her hand, Pat slaps something down on the table in front of me. It’s the one-page document I saw my old nurses discussing in the kitchen this morning, the same one Kay had in her hand before I lost consciousness only a few minutes later.
Tuna’s sleek fur under my fingers is the only thing keeping me grounded as I gaze blankly at the paper. “What the hell is this?”
“The Salt Spring Historical Society will never get Gladsheim,” Pat says darkly. “Your new so-called will means nothing.”
“But Aunt Suze’s lawyer made a special trip out here,” I insist, shaking my head in frustration. What is Pat suggesting? “He had me sign my new will when you were in Vancouver…”
“A wasted trip,” she declares. “He didn’t know you’d earlier signed over your health care and property to me.” When I blink rapidly, trying to understand, Pat smiles. “You obviously don’t remember the local notary that I brought in shortly after you were discharged from the hospital.”
I’m suddenly wide awake and rigid with shock, the effects of the drug completely gone. Lifting the paper with a trembling hand, I try to focus on the legalese.
In accordance with the Power of Attorney Act I declare that this power of attorney may be exercised during any subsequent mental infirmity on my part.
And my signature on the bottom. I look up at Pat. “But this…this says you can only exercise power of attorney if I’m deemed mentally infirm. It’s obvious to anyone that I haven’t lost my mind.”
“Dr. Reisman would disagree,” Pat says, touching her arm to remind me how I’d flown at her with the craft scissors.
Mental infirmity. My heart swings like a pendulum from shock to sick realization. Details are hazy, but now I remember the notary and Pat conferring over a pot of tea in the living room while I lay on the couch, wrapped in blankets. I’d been on stronger pain medications then and was so thankful that Pat had my best interests at heart, I hadn’t bothered to read what I was signing. As soon as the notary left, the document had slipped from my memory. Like so many other things.
But the matter of whether I’m sane or insane can’t be determined by Pat and Kay. I crumple the POA into a ball and pitch it against the stove. Even Tuna looks as if he’d like to destroy it. “You can’t activate this until Dr. Reisman evaluates me. He won’t rely on a story of me going after you with craft scissors,” I say, holding my hands over Tuna’s ears. “I’ll tell him you threatened to kill my dog.”
Kay is leaning against the fridge, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other, watching me with interest. Pat scoops up the POA and carefully smooths it on the table in front of me again. “Dr. Reisman was particularly dismayed at news of your latest suicide attempt, and the screwdriver you stole from the shed to kill me with. He prescribed chlorpromazine to see if you would improve. But you’ve gotten worse.”
“When Reisman sees me, he’ll know what you’re up to,” I say, gripping the edge of the kitchen table, where Aunt Suze used to sit with her morning coffee. What would she think to see her dream house on the ocean going to two criminals? It would kill her all over again. “Reisman will know I’m perfectly sane and you’re the one who should be institutionalized.”
“Good luck with that,” Pat says so breezily, I must assume she’s got Reisman in her back pocket. “He’s already arranged a room for you at Riverview.”
I turn my head and stare blindly out the kitchen window, my throat aching with unshed tears. Gladsheim is Aunt Suze’s legacy. Gladsheim is my life. The thought of Pat and Kay ripping it away from me through devious plans, lies, and a POA I signed under the influence of serious medication, makes me livid with rage. Now I regret the suicide performance art and running at Pat with my craft scissors. Even stealing the screwdriver. All of it ammunition she needed to show Dr. Reisman that I was going insane.
Seething, I turn back to Pat. “This doesn’t mean you can commit me.” I itch to snatch up the POA and rip it into pieces, but she obviously has a copy somewhere.
Pat points to another clause, just above my signature, and I squint to read, barely able to breathe:
Without restricting the generality of the foregoing, I give the power and authority to do all acts necessary to transfer any and all property owned by me in the name of my Attorney.
“You can’t steal Gladsheim,” I cry in desperation.
Pat looks ready to slap me, but Kay intercedes, saying, “Let her have a strop. Fat lot of good it will do her.” Then she smiles. “Steal,” she tsks. “How gauche. We’re selling Gladsheim and splitting the proceeds—along with what you’ve made on art sales—”
Pat’s jaw drops as she turns to stare at Kay. “Hold your horses. Jeanie’s art sales aren’t in the bargain. You weren’t in the trenches with her all these years, preparing canvases and putting up with her bullshit. That money is all mine.”
“You were the one who asked me to come back,” Kay says, meeting Pat’s eyes with an explicit, unspoken warning. “You couldn’t do all this yourself.”
“But I managed…” Pat sputters.
“Did you really?” Kay has taken a few steps closer to Pat, who shuffles away, her head down, like a puppy submitting to the alpha dog.
Pat’s betrayal hurts, but Kay’s? Devastating.
Kay drops her cigarette butt into the sink. “What if Danek Rys shows up?”
Pat throws down what remains of the cheese and slings the bottle of fondue fuel onto the counter, rubbing her forehead. “If he dares arrive tomorrow, we’ll deal with him.” She raises her eyes and throws a secretive look at Kay. “Just as we have everything else that’s come our way.”
44
SAVKA
Vancouver
december 12, 1972
on the large photograph Savka held in her trembling hands, the orbital bones of the skull yawned black; the few remaining molars left in the bleached and gaping jaw gave it the look of a Shakespearean stage prop. But a wife knew her husband’s front teeth better than she knew her own.
Marko. “Were there any other bones found in the area?” Savka choked out. Just saying the words made her quake with loathing at whomever had murdered her husband.
The detective shook his head. “Nothing.”
It felt as though an arrow had thunked deep into her chest. She couldn’t breathe. It took everything in her to push the photograph across the desk of Detective Jaeger at the Vancouver Police Department headquarters. She hadn’t expected a young man, with such startling blue eyes and athletic build. The cleft in his chin was so deep it cast a shadow.
She felt abandoned, out of her element. Zoya had refused to accompany her, claiming she had to cover a colleague’s shift at the clinic. Savka must work, too, but she had called in sick. It seemed impossible to face this without help and she was still livid that, true to his word, Taras had obstinately left this morning for Salt Spring Island.
“You’d rather visit your girlfriend than find out what happened to your father?” she’d cried, grabbing his hand.
But Taras had charged out the door saying, “I must speak to Jeanie.”
How would she tell her son the police had found only his father’s skull?
Detective Jaeger’s office was nothing more than a cubicle, windowless and stuffy with the unpleasant smell of stale coffee and cigarettes that had been crushed in a glass ashtray on the desk. She felt as though she were suffocating.
Savka clutched her purse and got up. “Thank you for letting me know—”
“Wait,” the detective said. “Please look at the postmortem report.”
He handed it to her, and she tried to focus on the words, her eyes swimming with tears.
Cause of death: undetermined
Manner of death: undetermined
Date and time of death: unknown
“When did you last see your husband?” the detective asked, watching her carefully.
His scrutiny unnerved her. “When he left my room that night.”
“Did you see where he went?”
She was shocked at the suspicion in Detective Jaeger’s hypnotically blue eyes. Surely he had reviewed what she’d told the detective investigating Marko’s disappearance. Did he think she’d murdered her husband right after she’d had her womb removed, and dragged his body away? Savka took a handkerchief from her purse and dabbed at her eyes. “I had surgery that morning. It was impossible to get out of bed.” She wouldn’t tell the detective that Zoya might have run into Marko in the hallway that night. “My husband would be devastated to see his legacy reduced to a gap-toothed skull buried in a shallow grave,” she blurted, then berated herself. What a thing for a widow to say. She handed back the report and composed herself, consciously lowering her shoulders, which were almost at her ears. Despite everything she’d gone through with Marko, she didn’t wish him this kind of end. “My husband’s assassin is still out there,” she found herself saying.
Jaeger gestured at the chair. “Sit down, Mrs. Kovacs. There’s more.” Savka nodded, stricken, and reluctantly lowered herself into the chair. Jaeger cleared his throat. “The forensics report on your husband’s skull has told us he suffered blunt force trauma.”
Savka felt herself gasp for air. Somehow, she must summon her voice. “Someone…hit him?”
“Many times, it appears.” Detective Jaeger frowned. “We’ve determined an instrument like a lead pipe was used. We’ll need the rest of the body to know how he really died.” He directed her attention to a close-up photograph of Marko’s skull. “See this nick at the base of the occiput? It’s a clean, sharp edge, which means it was made after death. At first, the coroner thought it might be damage from carnivores disturbing the site, but he confirmed the damage was made by a serrated instrument…possibly a saw.”
Savka clapped a hand to her mouth, horrified. What kind of assassin would do such a thing?
Jaeger blinked a few times. “The body might have been dismembered as well as decapitated. A lot of thought and effort went into covering this up, burying the body.” He paused, as if hoping she’d offer something else. “Do you have any idea who would have wanted your husband dead in 1959?”
Savka pressed her quivering lips together. As she’d suspected, a Nazi hunter had found Marko and instead of forcing him into a car and shooting him in the back of the head in a remote field outside of Vancouver, for what he might have done with the Waffen-SS, the assassin had beaten him to death in a fury of revenge. The Nazi hunter—and perhaps an accomplice—had savored the grisly act of dismemberment, and, like Set had done to Osiris, buried the pieces across Egypt.
“My husband was very…political,” she finally managed. “There were Soviet operatives tracking him.”
Detective Jaeger looked doubtful. “There are no Soviet operatives in Canada,” he said with naïve confidence. “Any other ideas?”
She had questions, not ideas. Why had Taras insisted on going to Salt Spring Island this morning? What did it matter if Kay and Pat weren’t answering the phone? They could have been outside. Savka remembered O’Dwyer as if it were yesterday, the look on the nurse’s face when Marko had knocked her over on his way out of the room. She suddenly felt sick to her stomach, recalling the nurse springing up like a cat, as if she had revenge on her mind. And Pat was one of the last people to see Marko alive. Savka leaned toward Jaeger. “What of the two nurses on the ward where he was last seen? Can I see their statements?”
The detective leafed through the file and handed over the deposition, his forehead wrinkled in another frown.
Kay’s interview was short and unremarkable, but Savka studied the original investigating detective’s questions to Pat. And her answers. Savka’s finger moved across the English words. They swam on the page, and she blinked hard to bring them back into focus.
detective: You mentioned a man came up the elevator at 9:35 p.m. What did he look like?
pat o’dwyer: He was foreign—had on a dark coat and hat—I couldn’t see his face all that clearly. He said he was looking for his brother, Marko Kovacs. I told him visiting hours were over, and besides, Mr. Kovacs had left a few minutes before and probably went down the back stairs. The visitor had already pressed the elevator call button, but he suddenly dashed down the hallway when he thought we’d turned our backs.
detective: You didn’t try to stop him?
pat o’dwyer: We are two nurses, detective. Alone on a ward, caring for helpless women confined to their beds. We were afraid if we tried to stop him, he would make a scene and wake our patients.
detective: You didn’t watch to make sure he’d really left?
pat o’dwyer: We’re not police officers. And it seemed harmless, a dispute between two brothers.
detective: Did you hear anything? A fight perhaps?
pat o’dwyer: A patient had a hemorrhage and Kay and I were busy with her for half an hour. We heard nothing.
Yet Taras had told her that Jeanie remembered seeing a man with a dark coat and hat in the doorway of her hospital room. Had the assassin discovered Marko in the Fire Bride’s room and overpowered him, bundling him down the back stairs and into a waiting car? But something else concerned her more: Pat O’Dwyer hadn’t mentioned stumbling upon Belyakov in Savka’s hospital room earlier, nor had she said anything about being knocked down by Marko. Why had she lied to the police?
Savka handed back the deposition, and Detective Jaeger stood, offering his business card. “Call me if you remember anything,” he said. “Anything at all.”
After leaving the police headquarters, she stood outside in the cold wind coming off the ocean and lifted her hand to hail a cab. Her back ached and she yearned to curl up in her bed, take this rare second day off from work to rest. Savka thought of Taras, still on the ferry to Salt Spring Island. Perhaps seeing Marko’s skull and hearing how it had been cut from his body with a serrated saw had made her paranoid, but she couldn’t help but wonder if the Fire Bride had remembered something after her son left yesterday. Maybe it was a particular memory the nurses had found damning? Then it hit her: Taras hadn’t gone to the island for another romantic tryst with Jeanie, he’d raced there out of concern for her safety. Savka’s mouth was suddenly so dry, she could hardly swallow. Surely a man as big as Taras would not be in danger from two nurses, who must be in their forties by now.
A cab swerved out of traffic and pulled up at the curb. She leaned toward the open passenger side window, feeling the pull in her old hysterectomy scar. “Take me to the Tsawwassen ferry terminal,” she told the driver, and got into the back seat, terrified and overwhelmed. As the cab headed south, the first vague, simple steps of a plan had begun to form out of every betrayal and loss, from the memory of Ewa, who could never believe Savka was a warrior, from Marko and Natalka, who had called her a coward, and Belyakov, who’d owned her for what seemed like a lifetime.
And finally, the two nurses, whose fate had somehow become inextricably linked with hers on a dark night fifteen years ago.
45
JEANIE
Salt Spring Island
december 12, 1972
it’s one in the afternoon the day after my old nurses injected me with an antipsychotic, and yet the dark sky makes it seem closer to dusk. An hour ago, sun was shining through the skylight of my studio, but now thunderheads are building, casting a long shadow over Kay, who reclines on my velvet settee, casually flipping through a magazine.
“You and Pat have plotted all this time,” I say, seething with resentment. “You waited until you could steal this place away.”
She looks up at me where I stand in front of the French landscape, which was hauled in after Pat had rescued it from certain drowning. It must be finished, the paint dry, and shipped to Brussels before the new year, which seems a formidable task.
“Let’s just say we have a shared interest in keeping you safe,” Kay says, turning a page. “You have no idea what we’ve done for you,” she adds. “What we continue to do.”
I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out. This morning, a chlorpromazine tablet was back in my white cup and Pat examined my mouth after I took it, ensuring I didn’t spit it out. Just enough antipsychotics to keep me groggy and bitter, but not so much that I can’t work on this commission.
I mix some paint and, with delicate strokes, begin working in the trees along the shoreline of my composition. Prison warden Kay watches me out of the corner of her eye. The pressure in my chest is unbearable. All morning, I’ve been trying to figure out my game plan. If I engage Kay in civilized banter, perhaps she’ll see I don’t deserve to be committed to a mental hospital and have Gladsheim snatched from me. But those best-laid plans go to pieces the moment Kay takes out a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches.
My eyes widen with alarm. “You can’t smoke in here. There’s enough turpentine to blow the place sky high.” Not to mention my absolute terror at the thought of a live flame in my sacred space. But she ignores me, striking a match with dramatic flair and letting it burn down before she lights her cigarette, while I die inside.
“What happened in Africa?” The gloves are off and I have to know who Kay really is.
She settles back for a smoke and turns another page of her magazine, shooting me a weighted look. Finally, she must have decided that there’s nothing to lose. “I left.”
“You were fired.” My guess is close to the mark because Kay cringes slightly—imperceptible to any other eye but mine, the poor burn survivor who knows her so well.
She throws down the magazine and uncrosses her legs, moves to the edge of the settee, as if to get up. “I resigned.”
