Yom Kippur Murder Page 19

  “In his and a Mitchell Herskovitz’s.”

  “To whom did the checks go?” I asked.

  “To Nathan Herskovitz. He’s the first name on the certificate.”

  “So you wouldn’t have notified Mitchell when the certificate was rolled over in a different name.”

  “Oh no. This kind of thing happens every day. We only deal with the first person named.”

  “I see.”

  Mrs. Paterno got up to go.

  “Well, thank you very much,” I said.

  “But we would have told him about the checking,” Mrs. Dickson said.

  “What checking?”

  She looked back at her screen. “When Mr. Nathan took out the last certificate, we were giving free checking for CDs over fifty thousand dollars. Both Mr. Nathan and Mr. Mitchell got it. When the names changed, Mrs. Paterno here got free checking, and we notified Mr. Mitchell that he would have to start paying for his.”

  “When would Mitchell have been notified?” I asked, my heart starting to pound uncomfortably.

  “About the middle of September. It takes a little time to do the paperwork.”

  “Let’s go,” I said to Mrs. Paterno. I thanked Mrs. Dickson and Mrs. Paterno, and I left the bank.

  “Do you think …?” she said as we went out to Broadway.

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  “I forgot to tell you, I think I know what killed him. I think I know what’s missing.”

  “You do?”

  “I went back yesterday by myself and looked around.”

  “Show me,” I said.

  24

  “It’s gone,” Mrs. Paterno said.

  We were standing in Nathan’s living room, in front of the mantelpiece over the boarded-up fireplace. She was right. It was gone. Whenever I had gone to visit Nathan, whenever we sat in the living room, I was conscious of the ticking of the marble clock. It wasn’t the absence of Nathan that had made the apartment so quiet; it was the absence of the clock.

  “It was very heavy,” Mrs. Paterno said. “I think he found it in an antique store a long time ago and had it fixed up. He said it reminded him of one his parents had when he was a boy.”

  He had told me something quite similar once.

  “It’s funny we both missed it,” she said.

  “It wasn’t meant to be missed. Someone moved the other things on the mantel, so there wouldn’t be a gap. It looks as if it was never there.”

  “But you couldn’t just carry it out under your arm. It was too big and too heavy.”

  “You could carry it out if you had a suitcase with you, if you were on your way to the airport to fly home.”

  She stared at me with her dark eyes. “What should we do?”

  “I have some phone calls to make. I don’t want to use this phone.”

  “Come upstairs.”

  I felt a little uneasy. I had no credit anywhere. I was four months out of a convent where I earned in the high two figures each month—and gave some of it to charity.

  “The calls may be expensive,” I said hesitantly. “I don’t have a credit card to charge them to.”

  She looked at me witheringly. “I am not Mr. Gallagher,” she said. “I want to find out who killed Nathan as much as you do.”

  We went upstairs and I called St. Stephen’s. Grace was on bells, and we made a little small talk before I asked her my question.

  “Do you have the name of that travel agent that we always use at St. Stephen’s?”

  “Yes, it’s Emily at Round the World. Do you want her number?”

  “Please.”

  I wrote it down, sent my regards to everyone, and hung up. Then I dialed Round the World and asked for Emily.

  “Emily,” I said when she came on the line, “this is Chris Bennett. I used to be at St. Stephen’s. I was Sister Edward Frances.”

  “Sister Edward,” she said cordially. “I didn’t know you’d left.”

  “A few months ago. Emily, I have to ask you a favor.” I explained the situation. When she heard it was a murder, there was nothing she wouldn’t do for me. “I have to find out whether a man named Mitchell Herskovitz flew from New York to Atlanta on September twenty-ninth, late afternoon or evening, or September thirtieth in the morning. Can you do that?”

  “I sure can. I’ll make like I’m his travel agent. You know, I call a special number that’s only for agents. Right away that gives me access that you can’t get.”

  “Great. And while you’re at it, it might be helpful if I knew where he came from when he flew into New York.”

  “Easy once I find out if he was booked New York to Atlanta. It may take me some time, Sister—uh—”

  “Chris.”

  “Chris, of course. I have a lot of airlines and a lot of flights to check, and I’ve got to leave early today. Can I call you tomorrow morning?”

  “I’ll wait at home for your call.” I gave her my number, and we hung up.

  “Do you think he came up here to kill his father?” Mrs. Paterno asked.

  “No, I don’t. I think he probably never knew that Nathan had him listed on certificates. My aunt listed me on some of hers, and I didn’t know it till she died and I found them in the safe-deposit box. But he knew about that one because of the free checking. When he heard from the bank that the checking was no longer free, he thought Nathan was taking the money away from him, or something like that. Maybe he thought he was being completely disinherited. He may have had a business trip to New York and decided to ask his father what happened.”

  “And they had a fight.”

  I shook my head. “It wasn’t a fight. It was really something very tragic.”

  I left her and drove home, arriving before four. I felt sick and worried and discouraged. I called Sergeant Franciotti, but he was off. He would be in tomorrow.

  Then I called Jack.

  “Hi, how’s things?” he asked when he got on the phone.

  “I need your help,” I said.

  “What’s wrong? You sound terrible.”

  “Jack, if I discover evidence pointing to a possible murderer, do I tell his lawyer or do I tell the police? There’s a house that has to be searched, and somebody has to get a warrant. Would the lawyer see to that?”

  “What happened?” he said, his manner all official.

  “I can’t tell you now. I’ll tell you tomorrow. I’m just afraid that—I want to tell Arnold, but I don’t want to compromise him. He’s the attorney for my suspect.”

  He didn’t answer right away. Somehow I knew he wouldn’t go after Arnold this time. “I’ll ask my law professor tonight. I’ll have an answer for you when I get home. Is ten too late to call?”

  “I’ll wait up. I have to know, Jack. I have to do the right thing.”

  * * *

  It was after ten when he called. I was in bed reading, and I turned so quickly to answer that I lost my place.

  “I got it,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “You know lawyers; they sit on the fence.” I wondered when the turning point would come, when his sympathies would cross the line, in favor rather than against. “I put it to him the way you explained it. He said it’s a judgment call. The attorney might thwart the search for any evidence that would tend to incriminate his client. My guess is that Gold would take that position, from what I know of him. When I suggested turning the evidence over to the police, the professor said, ‘That’s a much better idea. They can get the search going on probable cause. We have a crime, a suspect, and probable cause to believe that something will be found in a certain place based on information or a strong likelihood.’ That’s it.”

  “I’ll call Franciotti tomorrow, if I have anything.”

  “You really think you’re close?”

  “I won’t know till tomorrow.”

  “If you need a warrant, do it before Saturday. They only issue them on weekdays. And cross your fingers for a sympathetic judge.”

  “Thanks.”<
br />
  “You still want me to meet you at the Herskovitz place?”

  “I’ll be there Saturday, in any event.”

  I walked early on Friday, meeting no one. Then I went back for breakfast and a long wait. Emily didn’t call until almost noon.

  “I’ve got it,” she said triumphantly. “The problem was, when I finally found the airline, it turned out he missed his connection Friday afternoon, New York to Atlanta, and he had to change airlines. When he got out to the airport, he was standby, but that was a very busy night. It was Friday, which is always heavy, but it was also a Jewish holiday.”

  “I know,” I said. “Yom Kippur.”

  “That’s it. He finally got on a late flight with Delta. Do you want the details?”

  “Please.” I wrote them down.

  “He arrived in New York early Friday from Philadelphia.”

  “He must have been on a business trip,” I said.

  “The whole trip was charged to his company’s travel agent.”

  “I really appreciate it, Emily.”

  “Oh, gosh, it was a pleasure. Is this your murderer?”

  “I hope not,” I said.

  Franciotti wasn’t in. What a surprise. I wondered briefly where detectives go when they’re “out.” I left my name and number and said it was urgent. That hadn’t done much good on Monday when Bettina and I had our little adventure, but I felt we were on friendlier terms now. I called again at two, but he was still out.

  I started to get nervous. Jack had said you couldn’t get a warrant on Saturday, and I just couldn’t see waiting till Monday to put this to rest. Besides, I wanted Franciotti to check something at Nathan’s apartment before the Herskovitzes came in and started packing.

  It was four when he got back to me. I told him what I had learned, down to the flight numbers.

  “Jeez, you mean the son?” he said.

  “It looks that way. He spent the previous night in Philadelphia, so he probably had a suitcase with him. If his clothes were bloody, he could easily have changed in the apartment, even if he put on yesterday’s dirty shirt. And we finally figured out what’s missing from the living room, a heavy marble clock.”

  “Aha,” Franciotti said. “Which he could have taken with him in the suitcase. Sounds like you’ve got a lot of solid facts there. Nice.”

  “I think someone in Atlanta ought to get a warrant and search his house. They may find the clock stashed somewhere, and the bloody clothes, too. It’s not likely he dropped them in the laundry.”

  “I’ll get right on it.”

  “Sergeant, Mitchell and his wife are flying in tonight. I don’t know where they’re staying, but their children might. If the house is searched tonight, they may call him and warn him.”

  “I’ll tell Atlanta to get the warrant and hold off executing it till tomorrow. The search can wait a day.”

  “Good idea,” I said, as though it had been his. “There’s something else you may want to look into.” I took a deep breath and admitted to him that I had looked around the apartment that day last week when he had found me there, the day after the break-in. “I wore the big yellow rubber gloves that hang over the pail under the kitchen sink. It occurred to me that if the killer came into the kitchen to wash or wipe off his hands, he might have seen those gloves and put them on to rearrange the things on the mantel. I know that my handling them kind of bollixes things up, but maybe you could get some prints off them. And I’m sure any man’s fingers are longer and thicker than mine. They may have left some prints.”

  “Good thinking. I’ll go over there with a lab guy as soon as I talk to Atlanta.”

  I didn’t want to hold him up on his call, but something was still niggling at me. “There’s just one more thing,” I said. “When Mrs. Paterno and I went into the apartment the day we found the body, she was absolutely sure the bolt was locked. It means the killer had a key.”

  “Or she remembered wrong. Mitchell Herskovitz is supposed to pick up the keys to his father’s place tomorrow morning. I have a note about it.”

  “I just wanted you to know.”

  “Thanks. Let me call Atlanta.”

  25

  Saturday was not the best day of my life. I called Arnold in the morning and asked where he would be in the afternoon. He said at home till four or five; they had one of those damned cocktail parties to go to, and they hadn’t decided whether to go early and leave early or go late and leave early. I said I might need him.

  “Something cooking?”

  “You know me,” I said lightly. “There’s always something cooking.”

  “By the way, I talked to Bert Finch yesterday. He’s got apartments in two different buildings for Gallagher and Paterno, ready for inspection. He’ll paint to suit.”

  “That’s really wonderful, Arnold. I’ll tell them when I go down this afternoon.”

  “Mitchell cleaning the place out?”

  “He should be.”

  I tried Franciotti, but he wasn’t at the precinct squad. I checked with Celia, and she said she would wait up for me. I promised not to be too late. Then I packed a bag.

  I had already decided to leave Celia’s early on Sunday and not attend mass with her. I stopped going on a weekly basis after I left St. Stephen’s, something I was working out for myself. So I packed some casual clothes for the next day and I dropped Mark’s prayer book in, in case I had time to leave it off. Then I dressed for my evening. At one I drove into New York.

  I carried my overnight bag using the shoulder strap. You can’t leave anything that looks like luggage in a parked car because it’ll be broken into, and the repair is likely to cost more than replacing what was stolen.

  I walked up to Broadway to find a pay phone, and I called Franciotti.

  “We got the gloves,” he said. “Is Herskovitz in the apartment?”

  “I haven’t been up there yet, but I would guess so. He told me he wanted to get an early start.”

  “He never picked up the keys.”

  “I see. What about Atlanta?”

  “I’m waiting on a call from them. Hold on … There it is now. I’ll see you at the apartment in an hour, one way or the other.”

  I took out another quarter and dialed the number for St. Luke’s Hospital, just to kill a little time before going to Nathan’s.

  “We expect Mr. Greenspan to be released tomorrow,” I was told. I sent my happy good wishes and hung up.

  Then I called Arnold. “I’d like you to come to Nathan’s apartment,” I said when he answered. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

  “Be there in an hour,” he said.

  I stopped at Gallagher’s apartment and told him the good news. He was ecstatic. Then I went up to six and told Mrs. Paterno. She took it the way she took everything, like a neutral weather report. Then I walked down to five.

  The door was ajar, but I knocked and called before walking in. As I passed the study, I could see that all the books were gone from the shelves and a number of cartons were stacked in the middle of the room. Mitchell and his wife were in the living room, he in a sport shirt, she in jeans and a big shirt tied in a knot at her waist. We were introduced, and I put on the biggest act of my life. They were wrapping the pictures of Renata and the children in paper that looked as if it had been left by the same mover that had delivered the cartons.

  At a quarter to three, Arnold arrived. He’s kind of a striking-looking man, tall and lanky with a shock of white hair and one of those lean faces with lots of angles and thick white eyebrows. We all talked a little more while the Herskovitzes worked. Then, just at three, Sergeant Franciotti, his partner, and a uniformed policeman walked through the door.

  “Afternoon, Miss Bennett,” he said rather formally. He walked by us, holding his shield up, and stopped in front of Mitchell. “Mr. Herskovitz, I’m sorry, but I have to arrest you for the murder of your father, Nathan Herskovitz.”

  Carolyn screamed, “What?” and Mitchell turned so pale, I was a
fraid he might faint.

  Arnold, of course, retained his cool. “Don’t say anything, Mitchell,” he said, walking toward him and dodging cartons while Franciotti took handcuffs out of his pocket and started reading Mitchell his rights from his Miranda card. “Sergeant, Mr. Herskovitz is represented by counsel at this time, and there will be no questioning of my client. Now, what’s this all about?”

  “Acting on a warrant issued in the state of Georgia, the Atlanta police searched Mr. Herskovitz’s house this morning”—here Carolyn gasped and covered her mouth with her hands—“where they found a probable murder weapon and a bloodstained shirt.”

  Mitchell murmured, “Oh, my God,” and Arnold looked sternly at me. I nodded, feeling as miserable as I have ever felt.

  “I only came to see if he was all right,” Mitchell said with a sob in his voice. “He took my name off a certificate, and I thought he was getting forgetful. I thought maybe he needed some help. And then we came in here and I saw the pictures and I just couldn’t bear it. I didn’t know what I was doing. I just knew I had to do something, something for my mother’s sake. My poor mother, my poor, poor mother who lived with that—”

  But Arnold was practically shouting through Mitchell’s impassioned monologue. “Don’t say anything, Mitchell. Nothing, not a word. Mr. Herskovitz has no statement to make, Sergeant.”

  When Mitchell had calmed down, Arnold spoke briefly and quietly to him, and I went to comfort Carolyn, who was beyond comforting. Franciotti’s partner and the uniformed policeman took Mitchell away, but Franciotti stayed.

  “We’ll get some prints off those gloves,” he said to me, “and match ’em after Herskovitz gets printed. When the lab does its job on the shirt, we’ll compare the blood type with the father’s. You were right about everything in the house in Atlanta.”

  “I wish I hadn’t been.”

  “You want to explain?” Arnold said.

  I introduced him to Franciotti, and then I went quickly through what I had learned in the last two days.

  “You could’ve called me,” Arnold said.

  “I couldn’t. I asked Jack what I should do, and he asked his law professor Thursday night. The professor said a suspect’s lawyer might not cooperate, to protect his client. If I wanted a search, the police were the best people to tell. I called the sergeant.”