“We also don’t know what he did with his cash,” Mrs. Chimchak said. “He didn’t trust banks. He kept a minimum balance in his checkbook for expenses, tax payments, and the like. For appearance’s sake. But you can bet he kept the majority of his profits in cash in his house. Did you check under the mattresses when you visited his home with Roxanne?”
Someone who didn’t know the Ukrainian immigrant community might have been surprised, but I wasn’t. Most people, like my parents, managed their funds like every other citizen. But some didn’t. A friend of my deceased father’s had kept his life’s savings under the floorboards of a closet. When a fire broke out in his apartment building, he ran inside to rescue his money and burned to death.
“No,” I said, and to my own surprise added, “but we should have. I should have thought of that.”
Mrs. Chimchak nodded and I knew she was thinking of the same incident involving my father’s friend. “Yes. You and Roxanne probably should give the house a thorough once-over.”
“Would you come with us?”
“No. It’s not my place. This is a family matter. Roxanne was his niece. You were his goddaughter. That’s not a place for an old spinster. Besides, my back and my knees… I can’t move around as well as I used to. I have a hard time with stairs, you know.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You guys had that in common, too.”
“Indeed.”
We stared at each other with blank faces. I knew we were thinking the same thing.
“No way he went down those stairs on a rainy night,” I said.
Mrs. Chimchak shrugged. “Rainy night, silent night. I don’t care if the Stalin moon was shining the path down his stairs. There is no way he went down them of his own accord. Someone pushed him. Someone killed him.”
I marveled at her conviction. “You’re so certain.”
“Of course I am.”
“Because he suffered from bathmophobia?” I pronounced the affliction in English but with a Ukrainian accent, as though that would somehow make it a Ukrainian word. I did that when my Uke vocabulary failed me, which was inevitable when the discussion included technical terms.
Mrs. Chimchak, thankfully, understood what I meant. “No. I’m not sure he was killed because of his fear of stairs. I’m sure he was killed, because the only reason he went down them was to get a bottle of wine. And he didn’t need to do that the night he died.”
“Why not?”
“Because I brought it up for him.”
Her words echoed in my ears. “You were in his house the day he died?”
“I came by to discuss his invoices for March. We met once a month to go over the books. And before I left, he asked me to bring him up a bottle of French wine. There were many cases of wine. They looked expensive. I forgot to mention it. That’s another place he parked some money.”
“What time of day was this?”
She considered the question. “Midafternoon. About three o’clock. Right before your brother showed up.”
A lump formed in my throat. I had to clear it to speak. “Marko?”
She nodded, not a hint of emotion about her.
“Marko was at my godfather’s house that day?”
“He was walking up the sidewalk as I was leaving. He said hello, he was very polite. He never smiles, your brother. I feel sad for him because I wonder if he’s ever experienced joy. But he does speak beautiful Ukrainian.”
“Yes,” I said, my head reeling from the revelation. Why hadn’t Marko told me he’d been there? “He’s a fanatic. He’s obsessed with his Ukrainian heritage. His fluency is a point of great pride.”
Mrs. Chimchak slid a folded piece of paper toward me. “That is a copy of a receipt for your godfather’s airplane tickets for his first trip. Notice that he didn’t pay for the tickets. A third party was billed.”
I studied the receipt. Round-trip from New York to Crimea via Frankfurt and Kyiv. The cost of the tickets had been billed to the Black Sea Trading Company. The address given was in Sevastopol. There was also a phone number.
I pocketed the receipt, thanked Mrs. Chimchak, and got up to leave. She stopped at an alcove on the way and pulled a box out of a desk drawer. She turned and handed me a tin of Altoids. It was the same white box she’d given me during my survival test more than twenty years ago, with the teal piping around the edge. I smiled and tried to say no, but she insisted.
“Take them. Keep them close to you. When a person doesn’t feel well, a mint will always improve her spirits.”
I’d heard that line before. The Altoids helped save my life back then. The circumstances were different now, and there was no way they’d save me this time. Still, I changed my mind and took them. It was a spontaneous decision rooted in the knowledge that Mrs. Chimchak was giving them to me for a reason. She was reminding me that I was going to have to be as resilient as I’d been when she’d given a similar box to me last time. With this small gesture, she was also telling me to expect the unexpected, and to remain diligent at all times.
She asked me about my plan of action and I told her.
“You’ll keep me informed?” she said.
“Better than that. I’ll be back tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that. Until we’ve solved the murder. Until we’ve solved it together.”
She gave a slight nod of satisfaction and hustled me out the door.
I got back on the highway and headed toward Brasilia. Once I was safe in the left lane cruising at a comfortable seventy-nine-mile-per-hour pace, I flipped open the box of Altoids. I remembered the unexpected taste I’d experienced the last time I’d popped one of her mints into my mouth. This time I licked it first.
It really was a mint this time.
CHAPTER 21
On the morning of her third day, Nadia woke up to find her fire had survived the night. The log-feeding mechanism Mrs. Chimchak had taught her to build had actually worked. The sight of the low burning flames boosted her spirits, as did the realization her fever had broken.
She climbed out of her lean-to. The red sun rising in the East told her it was still early morning. She still had the rest of the food Marko had brought, and enough juices and water to last her through the night. With the fire burning and the extra matches he’d left her, nothing could go wrong. All she had to do was waste time and survive one more night.
Nadia ate a Baby Ruth candy bar for breakfast. It was the smart choice. It had peanuts for lasting energy and caramel for an instant pickup. Then she hiked to the stream and washed up. After she was done washing her face, however, she had to sit on a log to rest. The short walk and the simple act of splashing water with her hands had tired her out. By the time she returned to her camp she felt feverish again. Nadia cursed her bad luck as she fed the fire.
She wished she had some Sucrets throat lozenges or some Vicks cough drops to ease the pain in her throat. It hurt every time she tried to swallow. Then she remembered Mrs. Chimchak had given her the box of Altoids. Maybe a mint really could make a person feel better when she had no better options.
Nadia popped one into her mouth. Instead of a burst of mint, however, she choked on a bitter explosion. Nadia bolted upright and spit out the tablet. What was it? A salt or iodine tablet? Was it another test? Was she supposed to survive with some sort of strange substance in her body? Maybe the KGB had interrogated Mrs. Chimchak back in Ukraine. Maybe this was her sick way of toughening Nadia up. All the immigrants were wacko that way, Nadia thought. They had a different mentality about what made a person strong from regular Americans because they’d been through so much themselves.