The Passover Murder Read online

  “Taffy’s sister isn’t pregnant.” Eileen looked at me with confusion in her eyes.

  “She isn’t?”

  “Not that I know about. She gambled. She had huge debts and someone was threatening her if she didn’t pay up right away.”

  “I can’t believe it,” I said. “From the moment you told me the story, I was sure that was it.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to mislead you, but that’s the way it was.”

  It was my turn to laugh. “What a lucky misunderstanding,” I said. “I have an idea. Let’s go for a ride. I haven’t seen my cousin Gene for a long time. I’ll bring him a piece of cake.”

  Eileen put her arm around my shoulders and squeezed. “You’re great,” she said.

  I almost cried.

  27

  Over the weekend we decided we would break ground as soon as we could line up a builder. To celebrate, we went out to dinner at Ivy’s. Jack had their lobster special and I ordered the house chef salad.

  “For dinner?” Jack said. “That’s a lunch. They put that on the menu for those women who eat celery sticks. Are you OK?”

  “I’m fine. I’m not very hungry.”

  “You look like hell.”

  “I do?”

  “You’ve lost weight. I don’t like the way you’re eating. Are you pregnant?”

  It stopped me for a moment. “I guess maybe I am. You think that’s why I have no appetite?”

  “Could be.”

  “How come you know about this and I don’t?”

  “I eavesdropped when I was growing up. Eileen said you didn’t eat much yesterday.”

  “Eileen told you she was here?”

  “Yeah. Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I thought she wanted to keep it a secret.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I misunderstood. We had lunch together. Maybe I didn’t eat as much as I usually do.”

  “She and Mom are going to be partners. What makes me think you know this already?”

  “I think it’s a great idea. She told me yesterday when she came for lunch.”

  His raised eyebrows told me he suspected something, but he didn’t ask. “So Mom’s going to be a partner and a grandmother. That’s terrific.”

  “You’re going to be a father, John Brooks.”

  “I guess I am.” He gave me the smile that was half the reason I’d married him. “We did it, didn’t we?”

  “We really did.”

  “Have you been to a doctor yet?”

  “Not yet. I guess I’ll go pretty soon.”

  He leaned over and kissed me. “You want me to go with you the first time?”

  “You really are a sweetheart. I don’t think so, honey. I think I can handle it. Just be there at the end.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  It was a couple of weeks later, when the trees were leafing out in earnest, that Marilyn called and invited Mel and me to lunch at her house. It was one of those moments when I understood why women wanted to own silver and china and crystal. Marilyn had it all out on the dining room table as though we were royalty, or foreign dignitaries at the very least. And of course, the food was divine.

  “Pop told me after the seder he was glad he’d met you, Chris,” Marilyn said. “And he thought it was a wonderful joke that Jack walked in off the street like Elijah.”

  “I think it’s what Morris Gordon wanted to do sixteen years ago.”

  “That’s a very sad case. I think the lawyer’s going to see that he never goes to trial.”

  “How do you feel about that?” I asked.

  “I’m not bloodthirsty. We’ve found out what happened to Iris, and Morris has suffered a great deal because of it. From what I’ve learned, she paid his debts when he couldn’t manage them. I think he bet on horses. She was as good-hearted as we all thought she was. And that counts for a lot. Sylvie’s gone to see him in jail.”

  “It must be very hard for her.”

  “It is, but she’s tougher than she looks. She told me that when she and my mother cleaned up Iris’s apartment they came across letters Morris had written to Iris. Pop didn’t want any of us kids to know about him. He was bad, he was gone, he didn’t exist. It may sound harsh, but that was how he lived. They got rid of everything sixteen years ago, and what was left, if anything, he had Mrs. Hires incinerate the day we went to talk to him.”

  “So we might never have known if we hadn’t gone to the oil yards and talked to Juan Castro.”

  Marilyn smiled. “Pop was smart, but he forgot one thing.” She got up from the table and opened a drawer in her credenza. She came back with a black book with red-tinged pages. “This is the family Bible that Pop inherited when his parents died. Look.” She opened it to a page near the center and handed it to me.

  It was the list of family members, starting with names I had never heard of, continuing to Abraham and then, in order of birth, the rest of the brothers and sisters. A few lines down were Iris and Morris.

  “So even if you hadn’t asked me to look into Iris’s death, you would have opened this Bible just about now and seen the name,” I said.

  “What a shock that would have been,” Mel said. “Discovering you had an uncle you’d never seen or heard of.”

  “Maybe less of a shock than the way it actually happened,” her mother said. “But I would never have made the connection between him and Iris’s murder. And I wouldn’t have known where to look for him. It’s been quite an experience.”

  “For all of us,” I said. I gave the Bible back to Marilyn and watched as she put it back in the drawer. Then something dawned on me. “Did you find your father’s poems?” I asked.

  “What poems?”

  “He told me when he was young he knew he wanted to be poet. He said that he had a whole boxful of poems in his apartment”

  We looked at each other as the truth dawned on each one of us.

  “He incinerated them,” Marilyn said. “My father threw away his poems.”

  “He didn’t want anyone reading them,” Mel said. “He didn’t want us to pass judgment.”

  “That’s why he didn’t want anyone looking around his home when he wasn’t there,” I said. “It wasn’t evidence of Morris he was hiding; it was his poetry. He’d gotten rid of the other things sixteen years ago.”

  Marilyn shook her head. “He was proud up to the last minute, wasn’t he? What a man. What a wonderful man he was.”

  Spring came with the burst of color that I love. The loan was approved, a tentative date was set up for our addition, and I had seen an obstetrician for the first time when I picked up the Haggadah that Mel had given me to keep after the seder.

  I sat in the backyard one afternoon and leafed through it, right to left, looking down the pages for something I remembered and wanted to read again. There were four sons, the wise, the wicked, the simple, and the one who was unable to ask a question. I wondered how Morris Gordon would be described. Surely not a wise son and perhaps too obviously a wicked one. But possibly neither of those characterizations was accurate. Perhaps he was simple, too simple to know right from wrong, too simple to do what was right.

  I looked down at the English translation. Maybe all three were wrong. Maybe Morris’s burden was that he was unable to ask a question, unable to pick up a phone and say, Abe? This is Morris. I know it’s been a long time, but could I come home for Passover?

  I was pretty sure I knew what the answer would have been.

  A man of the cloth…

  a bride of Christ…

  a private detective???

  From the Ballantine Publishing Group.

  Available in your local bookstore.

  Here’s a heavenly assortment

  of mysteries featuring clergy

  who are also detectives.…

  THE CHRISTINE BENNETT

  MYSTERIES

  by Lee Harris

  Christine Bennett has left the cloiste
red world of

  nuns for the profane world of New York State.

  THE FATHER KOESLER

  MYSTERIES

  by William X. Kienzle

  Father Koesler is a reluctant—albeit intrepid—sleuth in Detroit.

  THE RABBI SMALL

  MYSTERIES

  by Harry Kemelman

  Murder always finds a way to distract David Small from his rabbinical duties.

  THE SISTER JOAN

  MYSTERIES

  by Veronica Black

  Sister Joan has found an additional calling to the one from above.

  Holidays can be murder.

  THE GOOD FRIDAY MURDER

  THE YOM KIPPUR MURDER

  THE CHRISTENING DAY MURDER

  THE ST. PATRICK’S DAY MURDER

  THE CHRISTMAS NIGHT MURDER

  THE THANKSGIVING DAY MURDER

  THE PASSOVER MURDER

  THE VALENTINE’S DAY MURDER

  The Christine Bennett mysteries

  by

  Lee Harris

  Published by Fawcett Books.

  Available in bookstores everywhere.