“No thanks. I’m content to watch.” She held on to Sid’s arm tightly.
“Well, who’s going to push the redial button? What about you, Mrs. Geller?” Pete was making room for Ruth, but her sister pushed her way in.
“Sergeant, my sister has gone through a lot today. If you want to experiment, let me be the guinea pig.”
“Thank-you, Mrs. Geller. Your finger will do just as well.” Debbie stepped up and lifted the one-piece instrument from the desk. “Is this the button you want?” she asked, looking up at Staziak, and pointing to the “redial” button.
“That’s the one, on the lower right-hand side.” Debbie pushed the button and held the phone to her ear. When it began to ring, she held the instrument so that we all could hear. It was on the dying end of the third ring when the ring stopped abruptly and someone answered on the other end.
“Hello? This is Mrs. Geller, who is this please?” We all could hear the sound of the response without being able to make out the words. Debbie said, “Hold the line, please.” She rested the phone on her shoulder and said to no one in particular, “It’s Rona Bagot, Glenn’s wife!”
“Rona!” said Pia, with disbelief. “But she’s visiting Sid and me at my place. She’s in my apartment!”
“Can you confirm that?” Staziak was speaking to Debbie.
“Rona, this is Debbie Geller again. Could you give me the number on the telephone you’re using?” There was a brief pause. “Yes, it is a kind of experiment we’re conducting.” She repeated the number.
“What’s going on here?” said Sid, taking the phone from his sister-in-law. “Rona, is that you? No, we haven’t all gone crazy. I’ll explain when we get back. No, it shouldn’t be much longer. Goodbye. Just a minute!” He waved the instrument at Pete. “You wanna take a crack?” Pete shook his head, and Sid told the unseen Mrs. Bagot to hang up. He did the same and then faced the rest of us. “Well?” he said, “I think we just proved something, but what is it?”
“You’re not going to say that Pia had anything to do with any of these crimes,” Debbie Geller said, looking a little like a mamma fox protecting her brood. “She couldn’t have had anything to do with any of this.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Pete said. “The person who last made a call on that phone was Larry Geller. We figure that it must have been made close to the time that Larry made his flit. We know that it had to be around then because he had no later opportunity. He was dead within in an hour of placing that call.”
“But why my place?” Pia cried. “I don’t understand.”
“Are you accusing Pia of these murders, Sergeant?” asked Mr. Tepperman. Sid was glowering at Pete, but unable to make a sound.
“We’ll stand by you, Pia,” Debbie said. “We won’t let the police railroad you on evidence as flimsy as that.” She looked at Pete and then at me. “You can’t make a charge stick that’s only based on a telephone call.” She said this like it was the cornerstone of Canadian jurisprudence. “The telephone just proves that someone, possibly Larry, called Pia at some time prior to his death. You can’t tie a noose with telephone cord, Sergeant Staziak.” Pete nodded, and let his eyes look in my direction.
“There is the question of the lighter,” I offered.
“What lighter?” Ruth Geller asked, suddenly taking more interest in the proceedings since Pia had become the central figure. Pete glanced my way but didn’t say anything.
“Pia’s Dunhill,” I said. “It was found at the scene.” Pia glared hatred at me. I felt Sid’s substantial bulk moving towards me.
“Benny, I told you how that happened,” Pia said, with her eyes half-closed. “I told you the truth about the lighter.”
“Mr. Cooperman, Pia could have left the lighter in Nathan’s studio hundreds of times. As a clue the lighter is as pathetic a piece of evidence as the telephone.” Debbie’s eyes were bright with defiance. “They’re both clutching at straws, aren’t they Sid?”
“If there wasn’t a cop here, Cooperman, your brains would be on the sidewalk outside.”
“Just don’t hit me for a minute, Mr. Geller. We still have a way to go.” Geller wasn’t mollified much, but there wasn’t a lot of swinging room uncluttered with relatives, rabbis and the president of the shul. For the moment, Sid had to take out his feelings on his molars. I turned to Debbie: “How did you know that the lighter we were talking about was found in Nathan’s studio?” Debbie’s eyes smiled as she collected her thoughts.
“Why, you yourself said it was found there. You heard him, Ruth?”
“What everybody heard me say was that the lighter was found at the scene. I didn’t say whether it was the fire-hall site where Larry was murdered, or whether it was the park where another related crime took place. But you knew which scene I meant, and I wonder how.”
“Well, if I didn’t hear it from you, I must have learned it from one of the dozen policemen that have been in and out of my house since the murder of poor Nathan.”
“That would be fair enough if the cops knew about the lighter, but they didn’t.” Pete was glaring at me. I could tell, even though I could only see him out of the corner of my eye. I turned to face him, “Sorry, Pete, it was one of those things I forgot to tell you and Chris about. The lighter was left at the scene in Nathan’s studio, but it was removed from there before you were called in. Before I got there too.” I thought that I’d better add that last part or I’d find that Pete and Sid were going to join forces to find a way to push me out the window. I turned back to Debbie. “Debbie, how did you know about the lighter when no one else did?”
“You’re out of your depth, Benny. You’ve got things twisted again,” she said, trying to smile, as though the proper expression could make this ugly scene disappear.
“There’s only one way I can figure it,” I said. “You’re the one, Debbie. You did it. You did it to Larry, to Kogan’s pal Wally, when he got too close, and you did it to Nathan too. Bringing in Pia as a prime suspect was part of the scheme, but just a minor part, not on a par with the rest of your very clever scam.”
“There are laws in this country, Mr. Cooperman,” Debbie said steadily, “to protect people like me from people like you who say damaging things in front of witnesses. I think I’ve heard enough. This is a very stuffy room, I think I’ll go home.” Debbie turned, and said her sister’s name, and they both made a move towards the door. At this moment a uniformed man from Niagara Regional made himself visible by filling the doorway with his two hundred pounds. Debbie and Ruth looked at the rest of us. Ruth was confused and disbelieving. She looked around the room at each of us and then at Debbie. Debbie stood very still, like she was gathering in her strength for a move she had not the resolution to make. There is only one word to describe her as she turned to face the rest of us and that word is “caught.”
TWENTY-NINE
It was some time before anyone spoke. What at first appeared as a gross slander was now being considered, not believed or taken for gospel, but it had been born, had a life and weight of its own. The silence brought with it the distant sounds of traffic moving along Welland Avenue. It was Sid who finally spoke. “First you make damaging statements about Pia, and now you’re giving Debbie a working over. What kind of guy are you, Cooperman?”
“Well, Sid, I had to pretend that I suspected Pia in order to catch Debbie off balance. Debbie intended us to suspect Pia and built a trail of phony evidence leading to her door. You saw what happened on the phone. Debbie did that, a bit of inspired malice Debbie dreamed up when I told all of you about how we’d nailed somebody through the redial memory on the phone. You remember that Debbie then went to look for the Scotch. What she really did was go out across to this building to remove the redial memory that pointed at her, and replace it with the one you heard.”