be much fun if there weren’t any.”
Before leaving, the Tadpole nodded toward the framed photograph on the detective’s desk.
“Shall I leave you the doll? For your daughter?”
Elena looked at the photo of Nastya on her first day of first grade, holding a bouquet of flowers and wearing a great big bow in her hair.
“Oh, Misha,” she smiled. “She’s given up dolls and taken up curling. She prefers 40 pound granite rocks to dolls these days.”
As soon as the forensic expert had left, the office phone rang. The detective picked up the receiver and heard a polite question.
“Detective Petelina?”
Petelina was happy to hear the voice of Ivan Ivanovich Lopakhin, the medical examiner. She did not know exactly how old he was but was sure that he had performed autopsies and written up findings for detectives who had long since retired. As Lopakhin liked to quip, “The best surgeon in the world hasn’t got a thing on me. Not one of my patients has ever complained.”
“I was just thinking of you, Dr. Lopakhin.”
“Speak of the devil and he shall appear. Sometimes I get the impression that I’m working in his waiting room.”
“That would make me the travel agent who books your patients.”
“One-way tickets only – no round trips.”
Elena liked to chat with the medical examiner and assumed that it was only thanks to his self-effacing irony that Lopakhin had managed to hold out at his job for so long. However, it was time to get down to business.
“Dr. Lopakhin, I have arranged for the body of Ekaterina Grebenkin to be delivered to you. Please pay special attention to her epithelial tissue as well as any fibers under her nails.”
“Actually, I called you precisely because I am so attentive. The poor girl’s body was first delivered to the nearest morgue. We were forced to arrange for her to be delivered here, to the police morgue. And here is what the orderlies told me…”
“I’m all ears.”
“Imagine this, Detective Petelina, there were already two men who came to visit the girl at the hospital morgue today. One said he was her friend, the other her uncle. They came separately. The common thread was that each one wanted to look at her belongings, especially her purse.”
Elena frowned and looked over at the couch. There, in a plastic bag, lay the dead girl’s purse. Elena had automatically dropped it there upon entering her office and turning on the light. Here was the price you paid on the first day of work after a vacation!
“Thank you, Dr. Lopakhin. As soon as you find anything…”
“By all means.”
The detective said farewell to the medical examiner and retrieved the purse. The latch clicked. Elena’s gloved fingers carefully unzipped the zipper. Petelina dumped the contents of the purse onto her empty desk. Her eyes instantly fixed on the most important item.
She couldn’t believe it!
11
Elena’s dissatisfied mother was waiting for her when she got home that night. Olga Ivanovna Gracheva lived in the building next door. She would meet Nastya as the girl came back from school and take her to curling practice. The sixty-year-old woman was not much for diplomacy and spoke whatever was on her mind.
“Normal people miss their homes when they go away on vacation. Un-normal people miss their work.”
“I had to stay late, mom. There was business to take care of.”
“Criminals, eh? How about sparing a thought for your family? The apartment is dusty. The fridge is empty. I had to haul the groceries from the store all on my own to make dinner.”
“What dust? We were gone for two weeks.”
“Dust doesn’t vacation in Thailand. Dust stays here and looks for ways to get into the house. If there’s no one around to clean, then just like those lazy Romans in Pompeii, dust will bury our entire city.”
“Pompeii was buried by Vesuvius erupting, mom.”
“Vesuvius-Shmesuvius. If you can’t find the time for it, find a maid. Cleaning your apartment gives me a backache.”
Nastya emerged from her bedroom. Elena noticed a pent-up sadness in the thirteen-year-old’s eyes.
“What happened, Nastya?”
“While I was off riding that cute elephant in Thailand, I missed the Moscow curling tournament.”
“Big deal. There’ll be other tournaments.”
“The coach got angry and made Vera the skip. Now she’s the team captain. The girls are saying that I’m going to be vice skip now. It’s not fair.”
Elena hugged her daughter.
“At least we had a good time on the beach.”
“You and Valeyev had a good time. Locking yourself away from me every day.”
Elena became embarrassed. Wearing light clothes on the warm beach, she and Valeyev could barely keep their hands off each other like insatiable a pair of newlyweds on their honeymoon.
“You left the girl on her own?” Mrs. Gracheva perked up. “In a strange and savage country with elephants and jungles?”
The front door opened. Marat Valeyev had returned from work. A month before their vacation, Police Captain Valeyev had moved in with Major of Justice Petelina. The two did not feel it necessary to keep their relationship from their coworkers.
“Still a captain?” Mrs. Gracheva greeted her “sonny-in-law.”
“Mom, it’s time for you to go home,” Elena instantly jumped in. “I’ll do the cleaning Saturday and thanks for the dinner.”
“Saturday is still a whiles away,” burbled Mrs. Gracheva, getting her things together in the entryway.
Initially, she had objected to her “smart, successful and beautiful” daughter’s relationship with “an ordinary captain, and a Tatar to boot – God help him.” But once she saw that Lena was not going to change her mind, the mother began to push her agenda in other ways. Accordingly, Mrs. Gracheva used every possible opportunity to barb her “sonny’ with a look or a word.
“Are you planning on formalizing your relationship? Or is the plan simply to have a fling and then move on?”
“Let’s talk about that later, mother. Here is your scarf.”
“The scarf, of course! We wouldn’t want me to catch a cold! After all, who would make the soup and look after little Nastya if I did?”
Elena bore this reproach calmly, figuring that it was best to keep quiet. Her mother, however,
