Voices of the dead

“Lenore Deutsch, our top-selling agent, is handling Joyce’s listings in the interim. No one knows more about Palm Beach real estate than Lenore.”

“Is she ethical and professional?” Hess said, thinking of Joyce Cantor’s real-estate profile.

“Extremely, sir. Lenore always has her clients’ best interests in mind.”

“How can I disagree with that? Tell Lenore I will meet her at 1160 South Ocean Boulevard, one this afternoon-and I will have my checkbook with me.” A nice touch, Hess thought. How could she resist such an invitation?

35

The estate was the ultimate in luxury. In fact, the listing in the brochure had used those very words. Ten bedrooms, Italian marble pool, gourmet kitchen and private spa, views of the ocean and intercoastal, private beach and boat dock, every amenity imaginable.

People would have given their first-born to stay there, and would never want to leave, but Joyce felt like a prisoner. The situation was pure madness. A lunatic Nazi was coming to kill her and there was nothing she could do about it, no way to stop him. She had gone to the Palm Beach police station yesterday after talking to Harry. Met with a detective, man about her age named George Morris, dark hair, short-sleeve white shirt, coffee stain on the pocket, dark eyes, flat Midwest accent. She told him she was a survivor, told him about seeing Hess, the Nazi, in Munich six weeks before. She saw a grin form on his thin lips. He looked at her like she was a college kid on spring break who’d had too many shots of tequila.

“I’m sorry,” Detective Morris said, “the police can’t do anything unless there’s a threat. By that I mean, you see this Nazi in Palm Beach, he starts harassing you-” Morris started to grin and covered his mouth with his hand. “I want you to call me.”

Joyce would’ve loved to hear what he said about her when she left. He obviously thought she had a screw loose.

The estate was owned by the Frankels, Abe and Millie. Joyce had sold them the property a month earlier, her first big sale at Sunset Realty, and they had become good friends. The Frankels were going to be in New York at their Fifth Avenue apartment until early January. Joyce said she was having her condo painted. Millie said the estate was hers for as long as she needed it. That solved one problem. Harry was on his way, and that made her feel better, but what could Harry do if Hess showed up?

Joyce tried to keep busy, checked her messages, watched TV, exercised, sat by the pool, but nothing took her mind off Hess. The estate had an alarm system, and Josefina, the Costa Rican caretaker, lived there part-time. Security guards checked the house and grounds at night, and she locked the door to her suite on the second floor, but none of it relieved her anxiety, this feeling of foreboding.

She was thinking back on her life: escaping from the mass grave in the woods outside Dachau, taken in by the Muellers, the farm couple who had risked their lives for a Jewish girl, fed and protected her until the end of the war. Joyce’s aunt Sima and uncle Stanley had sent her a visa and money for passage to New York and invited her to live with them in Baltimore. Joyce didn’t have anyone else. She was twenty-one. Stan owned a real-estate company and offered her a job.

Four years later she met Mitch. Life couldn’t have been much better. He was smart and good-looking, had just graduated dental school. He was, as Joyce’s aunt had said, a catch. They got married. Mitch bought into a practice with five other dentists, specializing in root canals. That’s all they did. He talked about swollen gums and abscessed teeth and dead roots at the dinner table, eyes lit up with excitement.

He made a good living and Joyce didn’t do badly herself. With two incomes they were able to afford the house in Georgetown. They were married eighteen years when Mitch started fooling around. It was obvious something was going on. He started exercising for the first time in his life, lost weight, bought new clothes, and spent more time grooming and more time away from home.

Joyce thought it was a phase, a midlife crisis, something he would get out of his system. But there were others. How many she didn’t know. The final straw was when she found out Mitch was paying for an apartment for Sherri, a girl in his office. That was it, she moved out, filed for divorce, walked with half their assets, $350,000, her freedom, and, maybe best of all, she didn’t have to hear about dental procedures any more.

Joyce moved to Palm Beach and bought a fifth-floor, two-bedroom condo at the Winthrop House, with views of the ocean and the orange tile rooftops of the trendy shopping district. She applied for a job at Sunset Realty, and got it, but put off her start date for a week so she could take her niece, Jenni, to Munich. Joyce hadn’t been back since the war.