The Passover Murder Read online

  “I hate to use that word.”

  “I know you do. That’s why I used it. Half of it was probably hers.”

  “It was.”

  “But she didn’t have a right to take even her share without discussing it with you first.”

  “That’s part of our agreement.”

  “I’m sure that if she had come to you and told you the situation her sister was in, you would have tried to work out some kind of accommodation.”

  “Oh, Chris, I would. I would have done anything. If I’d gone to a bank with our record and all our money in the checking account, I could have borrowed more.”

  “But she didn’t and so you couldn’t.”

  “I know.”

  “And she left you in a terrible position. Of course you want to forgive her. You don’t want Taffy to spend the rest of her life with this awful thing hanging over her head, knowing she hurt you and you’re incapable of forgiving her. But forgiving doesn’t mean that you pick up where you left off. Both of your lives have changed. You can’t ignore that.”

  “They’re two separate things, aren’t they?”

  “I think they are.”

  “Then if I write her back—I think that’s easier than calling—and tell her she’s forgiven, I have to make it clear that our partnership and our giggling together don’t come along for the ride.”

  It’s a funny thing about giving advice. A piece of the burden slips from the asker’s shoulders to the giver’s, and as I sat there, I was conscious of the weight of Eileen’s decision, an uncomfortable weight. I had met Taffy only briefly at our wedding, which their company had catered, but I felt for her, felt the pain of her being asked by her sister for help, the additional pain of taking something that wasn’t hers because there was no one else and the sister needed the money because she had done something wrong or stupid. But my main concern was for Eileen. Not only had she been effectively bankrupted by her friend’s action, she had suffered emotionally, and was still suffering.

  “You know I can’t tell you what to do.”

  “I’m not asking you to. I just want to hear how you feel, and what you’ve said so far is really very helpful.”

  “Did she say anything about repaying the money?”

  “She said her sister will make good, but it’s going to be a long time. Personally, I’m not sure we’ll ever get it all back.”

  “You sound like a realist, Eileen.”

  “I’m in business. I’ve learned a lot in the last few years, a lot of it things I wish I’d never had to learn. This is probably the worst.”

  “It’s probably the worst for your whole life. Maybe that’s how you should look at it. After this, everything’s going to be easier.”

  She tried to smile. “You think I shouldn’t give Taffy a second chance.”

  “I think this is the hardest decision you’ll ever have to make and you shouldn’t make it too quickly. Some time has to pass. The business part of you has to talk to the part of you that’s a friend.”

  “Because they’re in conflict.”

  “I think they are.”

  “I wish we could just go back a month and do this over the right way.”

  “Let’s go for a walk.”

  “Good idea.”

  We got our coats and went outside. It was a bright, cool, spring day. We were only weeks away from that wonderful period when the trees leafed out, the tulips and daffodils bloomed, the pink and purple trees showed their color for a brief time before the green leaves took over for the rest of the season. I couldn’t wait.

  “I always thought Jack was a city person,” Eileen said, looking around Pine Brook Road with its quiet houses. “I couldn’t imagine him ever living in a place like this, and he loves it.”

  “I’m glad. I’m not a city person, and when I come back from New York and get off the parkway and onto the little roads, I feel a sense of relief. And it smells so good here.”

  “It does, doesn’t it?”

  We walked by Mel’s house and I thought of Iris for a moment. “Were you surprised when Taffy asked you to put it all behind?”

  “Very. I thought she was gone for good. I thought I’d never see or hear from her for the rest of my life. I was resigned to it. It made it easier for me ta hate her.”

  “In a convent close friendships are frowned upon.”

  “But you’re close to Sister Joseph.”

  “Yes. But we never giggled together.”

  “Does that make you sad?”

  “I’ve never thought about it. I had wonderful years at St. Stephen’s. If there are things that I missed, there are also things I experienced that most other people haven’t. I’ve never made a list of pluses and minuses or assets and liabilities, and I don’t intend to.”

  “Taffy was always there for me. Once, when a boyfriend ditched me, I don’t think I could have gotten through it without her.”

  “That’s one of the experiences I missed in my life.”

  “Don’t cry over it,” Eileen said, laughing. “I think it took ten years off my life.”

  “I expect it added to it. It made you smarter. And maybe tougher.”

  “Not smart enough,” she said.

  “You’ll do the right thing, Eileen.”

  “It just hurts so damn much.”

  18

  I called a lot of Handlemans in the evening and got nowhere. There were Martins who were too young, Martins who had died and whose wives had retained their names in the phone book, and a lot of responses that convinced me they didn’t know what I was talking about. I don’t think I ever found any Martin Handleman seventy-five or older, so it was all a dead end.

  I told Jack about Eileen’s visit and added that I had given her a check for two thousand dollars before she left. Since I married Jack, my inheritance has gone unused. I’m not a very aggressive investor and I’ve tended to leave Aunt Meg’s money the way she had it, mostly government notes and a few stocks I’ve heard called “widow and orphan” investments. All I know is that checks come in from time to time, and when they accumulate, I do something with the money that will earn it more interest. Jack thinks we’ll be millionaires someday, but I suspect we’ll call on those funds to build a family room or put a child through school. Or both. It isn’t anything I worry about. But Eileen told me I now had an “interest” in her business, whatever that means, and she suggested I was now a venture capitalist. Whatever that means!

  On Friday morning I dressed more formally than my usual jeans since I like to look acceptable when I visit the nuns. When Jack left for Brooklyn, I got in my car and drove west to the Hudson River and north to St. Stephen’s, a trip my car knows so well I sometimes think the turn signals go on before I touch them.

  I had a lot to think about as I drove. The lunch with Eileen had added to my growing perceptions about family. The elder Grodniks had kept secrets from their children; Eileen would not discuss Taffy’s problems with her parents. The reasons were different. The Grodniks were embarrassed about certain things like divorce; Eileen felt her mother would not understand because she was the “older” generation. But the outcome was the same. The indiscretions of a generation stayed there.

  I had little doubt what Taffy’s sister’s indiscretion had been, and I was slightly amused at Eileen’s decision not to tell me, although she must surely have known I had guessed. I suppose that coming from a convent, I inspire certain expectations in people, expectations that may be far from accurate. While I don’t discuss the intimate details of my life with other people, except perhaps in confession, I had what is generally called an affair with Jack before we were married. I think I surprised myself when I did it, but I never felt guilty. I felt conflicted because it forced me into small lies when I spoke to people like Joseph and it kept me from mass until I found a wonderful priest with whom I could talk. Happily, there are such people and I was able to set my conflict aside. That Jack felt none of my concerns has never troubled me.

  But as I drov
e up the Hudson on the old road, I thought about Taffy’s sister and Iris Grodnik and how families come together to protect their own.

  As usual, my heart skipped a beat at the first sight of the tallest spire of St. Stephen’s and my vital functions quickened at the approach of the convent. It is a beautiful place. A private road winds from the entrance to the Mother House, where I left my car in the nearby lot. Beyond that there are paths and lanes to the various buildings, across fields and through trees that on this morning had not yet leafed out. After I parked I treated myself to a solitary walk and the sense of renewal that always accompanies it.

  I ran into no brown-habited Franciscan nuns and passed only a few students, none of whom I knew. St. Stephen’s College, where I taught for many years, is beyond the original buildings of the convent and I stayed away from it, preferring to pass the Villa, where the retired nuns live, and the chapel where Jack and I were married.

  When my body felt loosened by my walk, I returned to the chapel and stepped inside. Two nuns knelt in prayer near the front, one on the left, one on the right, neither aware of the other’s presence or of mine. I fetched three candles, left an equal number of dollars for them, and lit one each for my mother, my father, and my aunt Meg, an old practice of mine when I enter a church. I hope to go to Rome someday and light them at St. Peter’s.

  Then I sat in a rear pew, not praying, just enjoying the peace of the place and the moment. This chapel is left open twenty-four hours a day, and at night it isn’t uncommon to find one or two sleepless nuns sitting or kneeling in a pew, often the older ones from the Villa. Many times when I was a nun I walked inside for morning prayers to find a nun who had surely spent much of the night there. But what I thought of that Friday morning was the day last August when Jack and I were married here. The sun was so bright that the windows were ablaze. There were flowers and white ribbons and the beautiful altar linens Jack’s mother had given the convent as a gift and which had been handmade by one of the nuns with a talent for embroidery and a joy in her work.

  One of the nuns let out a sigh or a moan, and I stood and eased myself out of the pew, not wanting to disturb or break the silence. Outside, I turned left and walked along the path Jack and I had taken as husband and wife back to the Mother House.

  “There you are, Kix,” a familiar voice called as I stepped inside. It was Angela, who was usually on bells in the small telephone room not far from the entrance. “You look great. How was the drive?”

  I hugged her. “Easy as pie. That car of mine turns corners before I know I’m there.”

  “Are you staying for lunch?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Maybe I’ll see you then. Unless you and Joseph have a long tête-à-tête upstairs.”

  “It’s hard to tell. I’m working on an old murder and I need a clear head and some direction.”

  “You came to the right place. Go on up. I’ll ring her you’re coming.”

  The Mother House is built like a fortress. It’s old and made of stone, and something in me loves to walk up those wide, worn steps to the second floor. Joseph’s office is at the far end of the hall, giving her a corner and windows on two sides. She opened the door before I knocked, and we hugged and exchanged greetings as we walked inside.

  “The carafe is full,” she said as we separated to sit on opposite sides of the long conference table, our usual seating arrangement when I came up for assistance. “And Sister Dolores came and baked muffins this morning when she heard you were coming.”

  Dolores had been in charge of the Christmas dinner Jack and I had shared with the convent a few months earlier. She was one of the nuns in the Villa, a woman in her seventies who refused to consider herself either old or unable to contribute. “That sounds wonderful. I should probably take cooking lessons from her. I still leave the exotic cooking to Jack.”

  “And your wonderful neighbor.”

  “And to Melanie. It’s still a wonder to me that she made Christmas cookies in my kitchen for the first time in her life and they were perfect.”

  “Well, you have other fine attributes. You’ve been outdoing the police for some time now.”

  “This one is a toughie, Joseph,” I said as she passed the basket of still warm muffins to me.

  “Good. Those are the ones I like best.”

  “It’s Melanie’s great-aunt,” I began, “a woman named Iris Grodnik who was murdered in New York about sixteen years ago. And it happened while the family was celebrating Passover.”

  “Then you’re probably learning while you work.”

  “I certainly am. Toward the end of the seder a cup of wine is poured for the prophet Elijah and someone opens the door to the house or apartment so he can get in. In this case, the woman who opened the door put her coat on, left her pocketbook behind, and went outside. Two days later her body was found in an oil yard at the northern tip of Manhattan, several miles away.”

  Joseph reached for the pile of white, unlined paper that she kept at the end of the table and uncapped a pen. “She went to meet her killer,” she said.

  “Perhaps.” And then I told her the story.

  There is something about retelling that is in itself useful. It forces you to recall details, to put them in context, to organize events and discoveries. But beyond that, when you relate information to a perceptive listener, you are asked questions that must be answered or investigated further, and the listener’s point of view often brings to light other areas that should be looked into and makes you consider possibilities you never thought of.

  Joseph didn’t bombard me with questions, but she asked several. “Why the oil yards?” was one.

  I shrugged. “He had a body. He had to do something with it. Why not the oil yards?”

  “Not an acceptable response,” she said. “If I had committed a murder in Manhattan and had to get rid of a body, I’d probably try to dump it in one of the parks, Central Park or Riverside Park. They’re large and accessible; you can drive there day or night.”

  “Maybe he knew the northern part of Manhattan. Maybe he’d lived there. An awful lot of people do.”

  “Go on, go on. Don’t let me get you off course.”

  I told her everything I knew and everywhere I’d gone, referring to my notes and forgetting nothing. I mentioned my visit to GAR and my subsequent visit to Mrs. Garganus and her granddaughter, the unexplained facts of Iris’s departure from the company. I told her about our visit to Abraham Grodnik’s apartment, the discovery of the handbag, and Mr. Grodnik’s reaction when he heard Marilyn and I had been there. I described my talk with Detective Harris White and my meeting with Harry Schiff, Iris’s old boyfriend. And I talked about my meeting and phone conversation with Aunt Sylvie and my uneasiness about her secret.

  “From the beginning,” I said finally, “Iris’s family, that is, Marilyn Margulies mostly, but I think she speaks for the family, has felt that Iris went outside that night of the seder to meet someone she knew and give him something, perhaps money that a friend or a co-worker needed to borrow. Everyone says Iris was a good friend, a person who would help you if you were in need. But if it was a co-worker—and that seems increasingly unlikely—I don’t know how to find her, and some of them are no longer living. Most of her family was present at the seder, so it couldn’t have been any of them. That doesn’t leave many possibilities.”

  Joseph looked thoughtful for a moment. “Let me just review what’s missing. You know nothing about the ex-husband.”

  “That’s right. Aunt Sylvie told me approximately when they were married and that it was a bad marriage. It didn’t last a year. And none of the Handlemans I called last night seemed right for the part.”

  “And you haven’t been able to find the best friend.”

  “Not a clue. Shirley Finster. Aunt Sylvie thinks she may have married, but she doesn’t know the new name. I think there must be an address book—or was an address book—that belonged to Iris. If it exists, it’s in Mr. Grodnik’s apartment, an
d he will never let us see it.”

  “Because there’s something he doesn’t want you to know about Iris. That’s really what we have to think about.”

  “I think she could have had a child,” I said. “One of my theories is that she married to legitimize a child or she became pregnant while she was married.”

  “But the child isn’t part of the family.”

  “She would have given it up. In a family where divorce was considered anathema, imagine what they would think of an illegitimate child.”

  “Or a legitimate one that the mother gave up because she felt she couldn’t raise it herself. Can you find out if such a child was born to her?”

  “It’s very difficult, Joseph. Arnold Gold will do his best, but he really needs a date, and a location would help a lot.”

  She smiled at the mention of Arnold. They had met at our wedding and discovered they had much to talk about. “And if the child was given up for adoption, the records are probably sealed and we have no idea what the child’s name would be. I hope that’s not the answer because it sounds like a dead end. Let me leave that for a moment. I’m interested in your perception that Mrs. Garganus knows more than she’s willing to tell you.”

  “We had a very brief conversation that lasted only until she got me to the front door, and it started with her saying she knew nothing about Iris except that she was the best secretary her husband had ever had and in the next sentence she was suggesting that Iris was taking an extended vacation to Europe, specifically to Switzerland. For a woman who knew nothing about Iris, she certainly knew a lot more than Iris’s family did.”

  “They had no inkling she was going to travel?”

  “They didn’t know she’d quit her job.”

  “So something is indeed very strange there. Could you manage to see her again?”

  “Not if she sees me first.”

  “Did you have the feeling her granddaughter was visiting or that she lived there?”

  “She must be living there. Mrs. Garganus said she’d stayed home from school because she had a cold. If she was going to school in that area, she must live there. And she had a room she went up to.”