“Happy birthday, have a good one,” I tell Ronit and turn to leave, but not before she leans in and whispers in my ear the words I’ll eventually repeat more than once to the cops, to their sceptical gazes and endless barrage of questions. They’ll try to challenge my account and plant doubt in my mind, but I won’t budge from my story because I remember exactly what happened that night in the middle of the living room. Ronit looked me in the eye and whispered: “It’ll be my last.”
12
ACCORDING TO THE police report, Ronit was murdered shortly before sunrise.
The papers regurgitated the “in the dead of night” frill, and just like with Dina, they disclosed all the hair-raising details. And hairs they did raise.
She was found naked, tied to her white EKTORP armchair, nope, not white, soaked with Ronit’s blood – drained to the last drop! – with a small baby doll glued to her hands, and her forehead serving as a billboard for the most daunting word of all: “Mother.”
The detectives couldn’t establish whether it was the same handwriting that had appeared on Dina’s forehead, but the lipstick was the same hot red – the least maternal shade imaginable.
When I read that her body was found three days after the murder, the first thing I thought about was the smell.
It seemed like an especially cruel twist of irony that Ronit, for all her fancy Lagoon perfumes, Ronit, who always walked around in a cloud of sumptuous scents, was eventually found smelling what I can only imagine was less-than-fresh.
It was her boyfriend who found her, returning from abroad and walking straight into the horrifying scene that awaited him in the living room.
Even when envisioning the atrocity, I couldn’t help but feel a bristle of betrayal. Boyfriend? She had a boyfriend? Later I learned it was one of those breezy, strings-loosely-attached relationships, with him overseas most of the time. And yet, Ronit had a boyfriend. And a doll. See? They all get reeled in in the end.
The detective duo who appeared at my door took me by surprise.
I was almost finished unpacking boxes, my hairballs ceremoniously resting at the bottom of the garbage can, is it possible there were significantly fewer balls than usual? I didn’t bother taking down The Witch of Endor because Micha had already seen the painting, and its absence would only draw his leery attention to it all over again, which is the last thing I wanted after what I saw in Ronit’s bathroom. And out of nowhere, gling-gling went the doorbell, and the detective duo burst into my living room.
She – a diminutive figure with pinprick black eyes and a ponytail. He – heavy and froggish with a fleshy tongue that looked too big for his mouth. I couldn’t stand either of them from the minute I opened the door, and the sentiment was mutual, even if they tried to hide it at first.
“So, who do you think killed her?”
Just like that, straight to the point, no chit-chat or pleasantries. It was the short one, of course, her beady black eyes pricking the living room while Froggy plopped his fat arse on the only comfortable armchair in the room. And it ain’t a white EKTORP.
“I don’t know,” I reply, “but I’m guessing it’s the same sick perv who killed Dina Kaminer, right?”
“Interesting point,” she says, leaning against another shaky shelf, and I don’t dare tell her to move away from it. “Very interesting.”
She drags out the “very” with a mocking drawl, as if she’s watched all the same American detective movies I myself have watched, and I’m waiting for her to pull a box of doughnuts out of her bag and offer me one.
“You don’t think it’s strange that you knew both victims?”
“There were others at the party who knew them both,” I say. Neria Grossman’s and Taliunger’s faces flit before my eyes, and for a split second, Eli’s face flashes and fades, just like he faded into her bedroom.
“How did you know the murder took place right after the party?” Froggy interjects with a triumphant tone. The short one closes her eyes and sighs.
“Because it appeared in the papers,” I reply, and for a moment feel sorry for the fun-sized detective who at least comes across as a sentient being, for having been partnered up with such a half-wit.
“So why do you think we’re here?” she asks.
“I have zero idea.” I also have no idea why these two are here instead of Micha. O, Micha, where art thou?
“Where were you on the night of the murder, after the party?” Froggy probes, and it’s Micha’s voice that rings in my ears with the words the night of the murder, but this time I’m armed with the right answer.
“I was at the ER,” I reply. “I went to check if my nose was broken.”
Shorty tries to hide it, but a laugh escapes her twitching lips, and for a moment she looks like Taliunger – just one more woolly haired gnome bursting into laughter at my breaking bones.
The ER is aglow with blinding neon lights as I stagger in.
Hours of steadily exacerbating pain convinced me that I better go to the hospital to see what the little heir to the house of Grossman has done to my nose.
“Yes?” the receptionist asks, without bothering to look up from the form in front of her.
“I think I broke my nose,” I reply, and finally receive a look. It’s surprisingly unsympathetic.
“How did you get here?”
“Alone.”
Alone!
“Married?”
“No.”
And no!
Later they’ll explain to me that the receptionist’s questions are designed to rule out the possibility of domestic abuse. Turns out they get quite a few of those around here, lonely women limping into the ER in the middle of the night, and the nose just happens to be the body’s first line of defence.
When the X-ray technician asks me if I’m pregnant, I
