I assured him I would do my best.
"You know what I think, Mr. Lapid? I think Anna jumped at the chance of having Cleo around because she was lonely. She never said as much, but that's what I intimated. Do you have a dog, Mr. Lapid?"
I told him I didn't.
"That's too bad," he said, gazing affectionately at the dog snoring lightly on his lap. "A dog's the best cure for loneliness a person could find. Much better than other people."
In the rear ground-floor apartment, I heard a much different tale. The teller was Margalit Blissberg, a twenty-five-year-old nurse with a square face, plain features, and a sturdy little body.
"I didn't like her at first," she said flatly. "Mostly because I could tell my husband was attracted to her. The man was an inveterate womanizer. Or—" she added with a sneer "—he saw himself as one. I don't know what made that idiot believe he could seduce Anna; she was much too beautiful for him."
She paused, giving me an amused look that made it clear she knew full well what this last remark said about her. "I'm comfortable with who I am, Mr. Lapid. I'll never turn heads, nor do I want to. If you ask me, too much manly attention is a curse. A beautiful woman may get a boatload of compliments, gifts, and free meals, but she also has to fend off a swarm of slobbering men with nothing but bad intentions. Not a good bargain, far as I'm concerned. All I'm after is one good man with a solid brain and a pure heart, and you don't need to look like a film star for that."
She waited for me to say something, almost challenging me to contradict her, but all I said was, "You were telling me about your husband..."
"Ex-husband," she said, showing me her ringless left hand. "Like I said, the idiot lusted after Anna. At first I blamed her for it, because there was something suggestive about her. Nothing I could put my finger on exactly, but we women can tell such things about each other. It was like she was trying to get the attention of every man in sight, and I actually thought she was trying to steal my husband from me. Which, I'm embarrassed to say, made me an even bigger idiot than he was."
"What changed your mind about her?" I asked.
"My own two eyes, that's what. I had gone out one evening for a night shift at the hospital, only when I got there, I discovered I'd gotten the days mixed up. I wasn't due until the following night. So I came back here, and when I got in the building, I heard voices drifting down the stairwell from upstairs. My husband's voice and Anna's. I padded my way up and saw my husband trying to kiss Anna by her door. But she averted her head and pushed him off her so hard he banged his back against the railing, which served him right, the bastard."
"What happened then?"
"He cursed her, called her a whore for leading him on. I stood there, dumbstruck, my hand pressed to my chest, but Anna was unruffled. She just told him to go away, back to me, and said something about not being interested in a man younger than her."
"Younger than her? You sure that's what she said?"
"I can't quote her exact words—by that point my heart was drumming so loud in my ears it's a wonder I heard anything—but it was something like that."
"Seems an odd thing to say."
"Not really. Most women wouldn't go out with a younger man."
"I mean it's an odd thing to say at that moment."
"I agree, but I don't really care what she said or what she meant. All I care about is what she did, which was to put my idiot ex-husband in his place. And for showing me in a way I couldn't deny anymore the kind of lowlife he was. She set me free. I divorced him soon after."
"You were interviewed by the police five years ago," I said. "Why didn't you tell them any of this?"
"All they asked me was whether I heard or saw anything the night Anna died. Or if I ever saw her with a man, which I didn't." She paused, and for the first time her tough veneer cracked and I glimpsed the hurt her ex-husband had caused her. "I also didn't want to talk about it at the time. I felt ashamed my husband cheated on me. Which was stupid. Now I don't care anymore."
"Where is your husband now?" I asked, thinking he likely held a grudge against Anna and might have decided to pay her back for rebuffing him.
"After the divorce, he moved to Nahariya and got remarried. As it happens, the wedding was the same night poor Anna was killed. The bastard actually sent me an invitation, can you believe that? I thought that was low even for him."
"The wedding was in Nahariya?" I asked.
"Yes. And last I heard, they still live there, still married. I feel sorry for his wife."
"You're sure it was the same night Anna died?"
"One hundred percent. I wish I could show you the invitation, but I tore it up and flushed the pieces down the toilet the day it arrived."
Which meant the husband was off the hook. He had as solid an alibi as they come. Nahariya was a few hours' drive from Tel Aviv.
Margalit Blissberg said, "My opinion of Anna changed completely that night. You might think I'd feel envious or resentful of her, but I never did. I wanted us to become friends, but that didn't happen." Her tone became softer now, when she had said her last word about her ex-husband and only had Anna to speak of. "I don't think Anna was an easy person to get close to. There was something sad about her, something you only saw if you looked hard enough to see past her beauty. I don't know what caused it, but it was there all right, deep in those pretty eyes of hers. I was terribly sorry when she died. Because she was a good person, and because she gave me the chance to build a better life. And also because I knew that when she died, it was with that sadness still inside her."
18
Emerging from the building where Anna had lived, I leaned against a tree and lit a cigarette. I expelled each lungful in a long, emptying whoosh, as though trying to get rid of all the sorrow that had invaded my chest, along with the smoke. My head throbbed and my stomach was grumbling. I'd been on the move for nearly the entire day and had eaten nothing since my lunch with Meltzer. In twenty, twenty-five minutes I could be at Greta's Café. Hot food awaited me there, as did my chessboard and the prospect of a stitch of time in which I would not have to talk or think about Anna Hartman and who might have killed her. And, of course, there was Greta herself.
I'd taken two dozen steps with that destination in mind, when it occurred to me that there was another man I might seek out first. Someone who lived very close by. Talking to him would likely prove fruitless, but as I was already in the neighborhood...
My mind made up, I hastened westward to the corner of Trumpeldor and Ben Yehuda, which was the address I had for Eliyahu Toledano.
It was a handsome three-story building, with long, narrow balconies that curled around the building's exterior like a smile. His apartment was on the top floor.
I knocked on his door and frowned as a baby's mirthful squeal pierced through the wood. Two seconds later, the originator of said squeal was staring right at me with two huge, impossibly blue eyes.
She was too young to have opened the door herself. That had been accomplished by the woman who held her expertly with one hand.
The similarity between them was striking. A mother and daughter, no doubt. But where was the drunkard Toledano?
The baby squirmed playfully in her mother's grip, her chubby legs pumping up and down like pistons. A little pink bow was tied in her fine amber hair. She let out another joyful squeal, then stuck four fingers deep in her mouth and began sucking on them with admirable diligence.
The mother—pleasantly exhausted, as all good new mothers tend to be—gave me a smile and inquired gently as to the purpose of my visit.