The Passover Murder Read online

  “How does Erin come to have the name Garganus?”

  “Because she’s—Miss Bennett, this is not your business. If you don’t leave, I’ll call the police and have you removed.”

  “If you don’t tell me the connection, if you don’t tell me what your husband was doing on East Seventy-first Street the night that Iris disappeared, I will tell Detective Harris White what my suspicions are and he will reopen the investigation and center it on your husband.”

  She touched the gold again. I noticed she hadn’t moved toward the bell that would summon the maid or the telephone that lay on a table many feet from her wheelchair. The last thing she wanted was the police, whether she called them or I did.

  “You seem to have come to several erroneous conclusions,” she said with forced composure.

  “Iris was doing your husband a favor,” I said. “She was doing both of you a favor. They met that night so that he could give her something. What was it, Mrs. Garganus, money? Was it the key to an apartment where she would stay with someone?”

  She looked a little paler. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. This is worse than conjecture; this is pure malicious fantasy.”

  “Did they argue about the amount? Did he drag her into his car and drive her somewhere? Was he alone in the car or did he have a driver who witnessed the whole thing?”

  “This is nonsense, this is slander, and I don’t have to listen to it.” But she made no move. She sat perfectly still.

  “Tell me what happened that night.”

  “I will not.”

  “But you know, don’t you?”

  “My husband was here with me. We heard about Iris’s death after they found her body. That’s all I know.”

  “What about your daughter?” I hadn’t wanted to say it. The thought of her daughter must have been so painful that I had hoped not to have to bring the matter up. If she wanted to talk about it, it was her option.

  “What about my daughter?” she said in a low, quivering voice.

  “She was pregnant.”

  “Get out of here.”

  It had been Taffy’s story to Eileen that had eventually made me think about it. Erin Garganus had been born after Iris died, enough afterward that his might have been the person chosen by the family to stay with their pregnant daughter. Perhaps she was suicidal even then, perhaps she wanted an abortion and the Garganuses could not condone it. But they could trust Iris. Iris could take their daughter to Europe, to Switzerland or wherever the parents wanted her to go, and she could stay with her till she gave birth. Then she could come back and resume her job, having taken a wonderful midlife sabbatical. She could talk to the old gossips in the office about the beauty of Switzerland, the charm of Paris, the rest and relaxation in Spain. But something had gone wrong the night of the seder, and instead of going to Europe, she had ended up dead among rusting trucks in the oil yards.

  “Tell me, Mrs. Garganus. I will do everything I can to protect your privacy—and Erin’s—and to protect what’s dear to you.”

  “I have nothing to say.”

  “The Grodnik family wants to know what happened to their sister. Her oldest brother is dying now. Her sister cries every year at the Passover seder. Please tell me what you know.”

  “My husband didn’t harm her.”

  “Then what was he doing there that night?” I was sure now that Wilfred Garganus had been the person Iris had gone downstairs to meet. I hadn’t been sure when I walked inside this house with Erin, but I was now. Now I was certain that my vague suspicions were founded in truth. If I didn’t know exactly what happened, I was close enough that Mrs. Garganus was afraid that I knew as much as she did.

  “Take your coat off and sit down. I can’t bear having you stand there.” She turned her chair to face the sofa I sat on. “I have never told anyone what I know. The police interviewed my husband after they found Iris’s body, and he told them the truth, or as much of it as he felt was necessary. He didn’t know what happened to her, and since he wasn’t involved, he felt it wasn’t necessary to discuss family matters that had nothing to do with her murder.”

  “But I’ve come close,” I said.

  “Very close. Miss Bennett, I don’t know who killed her. I tell you honestly, I don’t know if my husband knew who the killer was, but I don’t think he did and I didn’t want to know. We had enough to worry about at that time in our own family.” She wheeled herself a little closer. “Our daughter was a troubled child. We gave her everything, we did everything for her. No school had the right friends for her. No doctor was able to activate in her the strength of character I knew she was born with but which she was unable to summon when she needed it She got mixed up with the wrong people, she drank alcohol at an age when I would not have considered it, she used drugs. She was our only child and we were desperate and unable to help her.”

  “I’m sorry. I understand how hard it must have been and how hard it must be now to talk about it.”

  She glanced at the staircase and turned back to me. Erin was in her room, the good student doing her homework. I hoped.

  “She became pregnant about sixteen years ago, a little more. We found out who the boy was—the young man. They were both in their twenties. Take my word for it that he was worthless. I didn’t want her to marry him any more than she wanted to. First she said she wanted the baby, then she said she didn’t, and finally it was too late to make a decision. Nature had made it for her. She was too far along for an abortion. We talked about the baby and never came to a decision. Would she give birth and give it up or would she try to be a mother? I thought having a baby might turn her around, might give her a reason to stay sober and off drugs. If I was naive, I apologize. This was my only child and she was carrying what might be my only grandchild. But I did not want the world to know what was a private, family matter.”

  “You wanted her to go away to have the child.”

  “Precisely. But we couldn’t let her go alone. I could have gone with her—I was up and about in those days—but there would have been too much explaining to do. I don’t know when we thought of Iris, but the moment her name was mentioned, we knew she was the perfect person. She had no family responsibilities, we had known her for years, and Wilfred trusted her as much as if she had been a sister. And there was another thing,” she said, cocking her head to the side. “She had a wonderful personality. She was a happy, upbeat person. She got along with people, and people liked her. Wilfred asked her one day at work. It was short notice because I wanted Partie, that’s our daughter, out of here before her condition became noticeable. I remember that Iris said she couldn’t leave immediately. Her family was getting together for her holiday, Passover, I think it was. And one of the girls in the office was getting married and she had promised to go to the shower. But after that, she would be ready to go anywhere.”

  “So she pretended to quit her job.”

  “Yes. She left on a Friday and took a couple of weeks to put her affairs in order. She said there were people she had to see, plants in her apartment she had to give to friends who would care for them, clothes she had to buy. Of course, we paid for everything, you understand.”

  “She hadn’t told her family anything about it,” I said. “They didn’t even know she had quit her job. The only person who knew was her oldest friend.”

  “I’m sure she would have taken care of all that the following week. I know that she had ordered her passport. It probably came after she died. And Wilfred booked airline tickets for her and Pattie and arranged for a place for them to stay in Switzerland. It was the tickets and the cash that he was giving her the night she was taken away.”

  “He gave her cash?”

  “He didn’t want a record of a lot of money going into her bank account. Wilfred was very concerned about appearances. If she was audited, how would she explain a large deposit? He gave her enough money to get them comfortably to where they were going and intended to send more along later. She was going to ta
ke the money and buy traveler’s checks the next day, except she never did.”

  “Do you know how much he gave her?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but it was at least a thousand.”

  “So she had a thousand dollars and an airline ticket in her hand or her coat pocket.”

  “Probably in her purse.”

  “We found her purse last week in her brother’s closet. It had been there for sixteen years hidden among boots and umbrellas. She went down to meet your husband without taking it with her.”

  “She intended to go back up, I suppose. She told him she would slip out for a few minutes and meet him downstairs.”

  “Did he walk or drive, Mrs. Garganus?”

  “He walked. He used to enjoy a walk at night. When the weather was fair I would go with him. That night he went alone.”

  “What happened when he came home?”

  “He was upset. He said Iris had been there, he had given her everything, but he was upset about something. He didn’t want to tell me about it, I suppose to spare me anxiousness, but after Iris’s body was found, he said that as he was leaving her, someone called her name.”

  “A man?”

  “That was the impression I got. Whoever it was, he had a car nearby and Iris got into it.”

  “Did she struggle? Cry out? Argue?”

  She looked pained. “It was Wilfred’s feeling that she didn’t want to go, but she didn’t do any of the things you suggested. She got in the car, Wilfred waited for a minute or two, and saw the car drive away.”

  “Did he get a license plate number? A description?”

  “Miss Bennett, he had no idea at the moment that the man was a killer. It was obviously someone she knew because he knew her name. In fact—wait a moment.” She furrowed her forehead as though the wrinkle would extract the memory. “Wilfred said the man called her I.”

  “I? As in Iris?”

  “Yes. He said, ‘I? Iris?’ That’s how Wilfred repeated it to me. Anyway, by the time we heard she was dead, it was too late to think about a license plate or a description.”

  “He didn’t tell the police any of this, did he?”

  “I don’t honestly know what he told the police, but I expect he didn’t discuss any of it. What he went to see her for was our concern, not that of the police. And since he couldn’t furnish any description of the man or the car, why should he mention it?”

  I could think of some reasons, but it was sixteen years too late to make an issue of them and I didn’t want to hurt this woman who had not herself been involved. “What happened to the airline tickets?” I asked.

  “After her body was found, he canceled the reservations.”

  “I see.”

  “We made other arrangements for Pattie,” she said, as though I needed to know the end of the story. “And when Erin was born, they came here to live. Eventually we adopted her.”

  “It seems to have worked out very well.”

  “Yes.” She looked down. She had lost her daughter, but she had done her best. “So far I seem to have succeeded at motherhood much better the second time.”

  “I’m sure you succeeded the first time, Mrs. Garganus. A mother can’t control everything in her daughter’s life.”

  “Perhaps,” she said with a small smile, “she can try a little harder.”

  24

  Iris had met two men in the street that night, and she had known them both. Joseph was right; one of them had given her something. But the Grodnik family was just as correct; the other had taken something from her, eventually her life. Two men, and she had known them both. But had the meeting with both men been planned or had the second one been accidental? There was no notation for any meeting at all the night of the seder.

  Perhaps, I thought, walking to my car from the Garganus town house, the arrangement to meet her boss had been made late, possibly just that afternoon over the telephone. And the second meeting, the one that ended her life, could have been a coincidence. It was even possible that the M who had planned to see her the night of the second seder had changed his mind and decided to drop by on the night of the first. And he had known where it would be and that Iris would be there.

  I got my car and drove uptown, thinking about that and a few other things. Mrs. Garganus’s mention of the passport had also caught my attention. When Marilyn’s mother found it in the mail at Iris’s apartment, it must have prompted a lot of discussion and questions in the family. Perhaps that was one of the papers Abraham had incinerated yesterday morning. What had they thought? I wondered. That Iris had planned to run away with someone? That she had retired without telling them and was moving to Europe? That she was going to visit the mythical son that apparently existed only in my imagination? Abraham Grodnik would never tell me and I could not ask.

  I picked up the FDR Drive and drove up to the George Washington Bridge. I had Shirley Mandelbaum’s address with me and a map of Bergen County. Jack was coming home late tonight, so it didn’t matter when I got home, and if I could corner her, now that I had information from Mrs. Garganus, maybe she would tell me something more. I crossed the bridge and found my way to Teaneck. I had been here once before when I had investigated the first homicide of my amateur career, but I was going to a residential area this time, not a Catholic church. I made a few wrong turns and stopped to ask directions twice and then I was on a quiet street with lawns and trees and shrubs, not unlike the one I live on in Oakwood. Children were playing outside several houses, and three women with strollers stood at the curb talking as their toddlers looked around and chewed wetly on snacks.

  The Mandelbaum house was at the far end of the street, one of several older houses built long before the group I was driving through. Here the trees were taller and thicker, the shrubs woven together in a natural fence, the houses stone. I parked at the curb and walked up a slate walk to the front door.

  The woman who opened the door could have been a sister to Iris Grodnik. Small and very thin, she had a full head of gray hair and bright eyes that might still be looking for mischief.

  “Mrs. Mandelbaum, I’m Chris Bennett. We spoke last night.”

  She shook her head. “You didn’t have to make a big trip. Come in. I’ll give you a cup of coffee, but there’s nothing else I can tell you.”

  “I spoke to Mrs. Garganus today, just a little while ago. She told me about the trip Iris was going to make.”

  “She told you?”

  “All of it.” I took my coat off and she hung it in a closet. “About how her daughter was pregnant.”

  “I can’t believe she told you. Can I get you some coffee?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Then let’s sit in the living room. Harold’s in the family room watching a thirty-year-old baseball game on cable.” She smiled. “What is it with men? It happened thirty years ago and he sits and agonizes like it’s happening now.”

  I couldn’t help but like her. I sat in a chair in a living room that looked as though it didn’t get much use. Everything was blue and puffy and had the undisturbed quality of a museum. Shirley sat in a hard chair, explaining that if she took the sofa, she’d never get out of it.

  “Shirley?” a man’s voice called. “Someone come in?” He appeared suddenly, an old man in corduroy pants and a flannel shirt.

  “Go back to your game, Harold. This is the lady I told you about, who’s trying to find out who killed my friend Iris. We’ll talk a little and then I’ll get your dinner. Go or you’ll miss your ball game.”

  He greeted me and left. “Have you lived here long?” I asked.

  “Almost thirty years. Harold was a widower with two kids. I was very lucky.”

  I was pretty sure they were even luckier. “No one even referred to you by your married name.”

  “No, I guess I’m Shirley Finster forever for the Grodniks.”

  “And you were Shirley Finster when you talked to the police.”

  “You know that, too.”

  “I’ve talk
ed to the detective.”

  “There was nothing I could tell him. Why should I have a policeman on my doorstep? Chris, what can I tell you that could help you find Iris’s killer?”

  “I think you’re the one who knows that.”

  “She was killed by a man who probably robbed her. How could I know who he was?”

  “Because he knew her. The night Iris left the seder, Mr. Garganus met her outside her brother’s house to give her money and the plane tickets to Europe. Mrs. Garganus told me this afternoon that her husband heard the other man call Iris by name.”

  “Oh.” Her lively little face clouded. “You’re not making this up?”

  “No. Mr. Garganus should have told the police what he saw and heard, but he didn’t want to have to talk about why he was meeting Iris that night. So he never told them he was there and that he saw Iris get into a car.”

  “My God. It was someone with a car?”

  “Someone with a car and he knew her. Do you think it was Harry Schiff?”

  “Harry? Never. Harry was crazy about her. He would never have hurt her.”

  “Was it a new boyfriend then? Someone who was very jealous and didn’t want her going away to Europe for six or seven months?”

  “Honey, if there was a new boyfriend, I never heard about him.”

  “Could it have been Martin Handleman, her ex-husband?” I asked, running out of possibilities.

  “What, from 1939, that idiot she married? That’s ridiculous. She never saw him again.”

  “Could it have been a son that she had by Handle-man? A son who came back to her and wanted money from her?”

  She shook her head, her face tight, her forehead creased. “She had no son. I’m telling you, she had no children.”

  I could see that something was now bothering her. It was as though with each suspect that she crossed off my list, we came closer to someone she did not want to name. “You know who it is, don’t you?” I said.

  “You’re sure he called her name?”

  “It’s what Mr. Garganus told his wife.”