The Passover Murder Page 7

  “I’m glad he’s as smart as he is nice. I could tell the minute I met him he was a good man. He looks you in the eye when he talks to you, and I think that’s very important.”

  It was more a comment on Marilyn, I thought, than on Jack, but I thanked her for her kind words. Marilyn is a very aboveboard person. That’s probably why she gets along so well with her adult daughter. She doesn’t manipulate. If there’s something going on in Mel’s life that she doesn’t approve of or has questions about, she asks openly. I suppose childless people always have strong feelings about how to raise children—and they’re often wrong—but I liked the way Marilyn and her daughter interacted, and I always sensed the respect each had for the other, over and above the affection.

  My salad was a happy new culinary experience, although Marilyn assured me they were better in Nice. For my part I was delighted they were this good on Lexington Avenue.

  “When we finish, I’ll pick up the car and we’ll drive down to Kips Bay. Then what?” Marilyn asked.

  “Well, it’s been a long day. Jack and I can take a ride over the weekend. He can tell me what precinct it’s in, and I’ll see if I can find the detective who handled the case.”

  “Do you think he’s still there? Sixteen years is a long time.”

  “If he isn’t, he’s probably somewhere else in the city. And in any case, Jack can get a copy of the file and go through it with me.”

  “It doesn’t sound like fun. It must be a very nasty job, reading autopsy reports and looking at ugly pictures of victims.”

  “It is. But you keep telling yourself, this is going to help me find a killer.”

  “A beautiful little woman that didn’t weigh a hundred pounds. I will never be able to accept what happened to her.”

  “How did she die, Marilyn?” I asked. It was a question I needed an answer to, but she had never volunteered it and I had been reluctant to ask.

  “She was beaten to death,” Marilyn said sadly. “I think he broke her neck.”

  “How awful,” I said aloud, and to myself I thought: This was no case of random violence. He hated her.

  We picked up Marilyn’s car after we finished our coffee and drove down Second Avenue from the Seventies to the Thirties. A couple of turns and we were in front of a magnificent apartment house overlooking the East River.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said. “Iris lived well.”

  “They paid her well and she was single. Single women can afford a lot of things married couples can’t. Nice apartments are one of them.”

  “Mel said she and her cousins inherited Iris’s money.”

  “That’s right. Iris had a will. She was a very modern woman for her age. She divided her money equally among her grandnieces and -nephews. But there wasn’t much. We’re talking about hundreds, not thousands or tens of thousands.”

  “What about her other things? She must have owned jewelry.”

  “She did, and a nice fur coat. I think Harry gave her most of it. I asked Pop about it over the weekend. Those things were to be distributed to her remaining brothers and sisters. I think Sylvie got the coat.”

  “So nothing went to your generation.”

  “We didn’t need it. Sixteen years ago we were all in the prime of life. Are you looking for a motive in the family?”

  “I’m looking for a motive wherever I can find one. What about boyfriends? Did any of them inherit?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Do you have a copy of her will?”

  “I don’t think so. I didn’t inherit, so none was sent to me. But Mel should have gotten one. She was an heir.”

  “Yes, she mentioned that.”

  “Have you seen enough?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then let’s call it a day.”

  9

  Marilyn dropped me off at my house and drove down the block to look in on Mel and the grandchildren. The first thing I did was change into a pair of jeans, a shirt, and a warm sweater. The heat would take a while and the house was cold. One thing I learned well as a Franciscan nun was how to pinch pennies. While I had absolute financial security at St. Stephen’s, I rarely had a nickel more than I needed on any given day. I don’t leave the house with fifty cents in my bag anymore, but I keep track of what I have, and sometimes I have a little trouble letting go of it, even when I should.

  As soon as I changed my clothes, I sat down at the dining room table and emptied Iris’s bag piece by piece. The purse itself, as Marilyn had noted, was well made of a beautiful black leather with a striking red leather lining and a small change purse of the same red leather anchored to a seam with a fine gold chain. The change purse held her subway tokens and what looked like a mailbox key. The French purse, which was also bright red leather, had seventy-two dollars in it plus some change. It also held her Social Security card, a library card, and some membership cards to organizations I was not familiar with.

  The credit card case was separate and contained quite a number of cards. There was the American Express card Marilyn had pulled out when she first opened the case, cards for Bloomingdale’s, Saks, Lord & Taylor, Bergdorf Goodman, and B. Altman. My Aunt Meg used to love shopping at Altman’s, but it had closed down some time ago, long after Iris’s death. There was also a Visa card and one gasoline card, although I had not found a driver’s license anywhere.

  The bag was divided into two sections, the rear one holding the French purse and credit cards, the front containing keys, tissues, a lipstick, the mirror, and a small red leather book. This last was an agenda with the week on two pages, a red ribbon marking the place where “seder” was noted on two consecutive days, and under the second was the letter M. I sat back, turned to January, and began looking at every entry Iris had made.

  Iris Grodnik had lived an active life. In her last three months she had attended the theater several times, an opera at Lincoln Center, a lecture at Cooper Union, a wedding in February, two birthday parties, a few family affairs, and a funeral about a week before she died. Some of the entries were so cryptic I could not determine what they meant. “L’s wedding 4” on a Sunday referred, I assumed, to the person and the time of the event. Whether Dr. J. was a doctor or a dentist—or perhaps a chiropractor—I could not tell. Appointments continued beyond the date of her death. Had she lived, she would have attended a bridal shower for C on a Saturday afternoon. I took a sheet of paper and wrote down the family events, including the shower, to ask Marilyn about. I didn’t know if that would lead anywhere, but I had little else to work on. I also made a list of all the letters Iris used, presumably to refer to people, the M of the second seder, Dr. J., the C of the shower, and several others throughout the little book.

  What struck me was the absence of any reference to her friend Shirley Finster, or to Harry, the presumed boyfriend. Perhaps she hadn’t bothered noting with whom she attended the plays and operas since she would remember that without a reminder. And what about all those empty pages on Saturday nights, the traditional going-out night for single people? Did she have a steady beau for those evenings?

  I looked at my watch and decided it was time to think about dinner. I had some lamb and vegetables to stew, and the preparation would take a while. This being Friday, Jack would be home for dinner barring a problem at work.

  I browned the meat and cleaned the vegetables, appreciating the aroma from the pot. The house had warmed nicely, and cooking helped to make the kitchen even warmer and more inviting. When everything had been added, the pot covered and the flame turned down to a simmer, I boiled some water in my Christmas present from St. Stephen’s, a whistling teakettle, and got some tea out of the cabinet. Then I sat at the kitchen table with the paper and my cup of tea to enjoy the pleasure of my own company.

  When the phone rang a little before six, the time when Jack would ordinarily be leaving the station house, I sensed that my evening would be disrupted.

  “Hi, honey,” Jack’s voice said. “How’d it go?”

 
“More interesting than either of us thought. We found something in Marilyn’s closet. I have a lot of things to talk to you about.”

  “It’ll have to wait, Chris. There’s a problem.”

  “You on a case?”

  “No. It’s family.”

  I felt a disquieting chill. His father had seen a doctor recently, and his mother had seemed worried about it. “Your dad?”

  “No. He’s fine. It’s something else. I can’t talk about it now. Look, I know it’s lousy, but I’m going to spend the night at Mom’s. I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Jack, is someone sick?”

  “Nobody’s sick. There’s just something I’ve got to work out here. You don’t mind staying alone, do you?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Make a reservation for dinner tomorrow, OK?”

  “OK.”

  “I’m really sorry, honey.”

  “I just hope everything’s all right.”

  “We’ll work it out. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I sat down at the kitchen table feeling empty and bereft. Although I had spent some nights away from him over the Christmas holiday, Jack had never spent a night away from me. He had sounded strange over the phone, and his explanation had been vague. If it wasn’t illness, what else could it be? His parents were reasonably young and reasonably healthy. They both worked and had begun taking trips in the last few years for their vacations. I thought about calling them but decided not to interfere. For the first time since my marriage, I felt excluded from Jack’s family, and Jack’s family is pretty much the only family I have.

  It didn’t help that my fragrant stew was on the stove and that I had a million things I wanted to talk to Jack about. I sat for a few minutes, recovering as though I had had the wind knocked out of me. Then I went back to the phone and called Greenwillow, where Gene lived, and arranged for him to visit me for dinner.

  “You called just in time,” the aide who answered the phone said. “We’re almost ready to sit down.”

  “I’ll be there in five minutes. Don’t let him eat a bite.”

  “You got it,” she said with a laugh.

  I put my coat on and went out to the car.

  We had a good time together, my cousin and I. We grew up together in the happy years when both my parents were alive and both of his were, too. During the years when I was a nun, I drove to Oakwood regularly to visit him. He was the reason I owned a car, the reason Aunt Meg maintained a room for me in this very house, covering the bathroom mirror before my arrival and uncovering it after I left. They were all that was left of my family, and now it was only Gene.

  We ate together and then, because I knew he would appreciate it, I took him out for ice cream before dropping him off at Greenwillow. Then I went home, read for a while, and went to bed.

  It wasn’t the best night of my life. I read for a long time, till the words were swimming and I could no longer keep my mind on what I was reading. I turned off the light and fell asleep quickly, but I awoke about an hour later and worried about what it was that had kept my husband away from me. I had no answers, no hints, no vague ideas. Eventually I slept.

  The phone rang when the night was still dark and I was disoriented and groggy. I reached for Jack and had a shock when I felt his absence, then found the phone and answered.

  “It’s me. I’m sorry to get you up.”

  “Jack?”

  “Yes. You OK?”

  “I think so. I was sleeping.” The way I felt, I still was.

  “I can’t talk long. I’m in the kitchen and I don’t want to wake everybody up.”

  “Did something happen?”

  “I just missed you.”

  “Oh, that’s nice. I miss you, too.”

  “I’ll see you later.”

  “OK.”

  “Go back to sleep.”

  “Mm.” It was a piece of advice I didn’t need.

  His car turned in to the driveway just before three and I went to the door to meet him. We hugged as though we hadn’t seen each other in months and then we kissed like lovers meeting at a trysting place.

  “We going somewhere for dinner?” he said, taking off his coat.

  “I called Ivy’s and they said they had a table at seven.” Ivy’s was a small French restaurant in the next town where you could bring your own wine and the food was good and not very expensive.

  “Good. I’m in the mood for Ivy’s.”

  “Do I get to hear what the problem is or do I start biting my fingernails?”

  “Anything but that. Can I make some coffee? Mom’s started drinking decaf and I need a shot of high octane.”

  “Go to it.”

  He was already in the kitchen. “It’s my sister,” he said.

  “Your sister.”

  “She and her friend Taffy have been building up their catering business, doing better and better, everything looking real good, and suddenly—” He stopped and got the coffeemaker going.

  “Suddenly what?”

  “Suddenly the impossible happens. You hear about these things, but you never think it’ll happen to you. Taffy took a vacation. She’d been planning this for months, got tickets to somewhere, hotels, everything. She leaves last weekend, and yesterday morning Eileen gets a call from her bank that the catering account is overdrawn.”

  “A check bounced?”

  “She wrote a check a couple of days ago, and today she’s told there isn’t enough in the account to cover it. But she knows for sure there’s plenty of money there.”

  I could feel ice work its way down my neck. “Her partner?”

  “Taffy emptied out the checking account before she took off.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “It’s worse than terrible. It’s grand larceny.”

  “You think she stole the money, Jack?”

  “She wrote the check and cashed it at the bank before she left. It’s her signature; the girl at the bank remembers cashing it for her.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “Eileen can’t either. They’ve been friends since first grade at St. Margaret’s.”

  “Friends don’t do things like that,” I said.

  “Chris, honey, friends do everything enemies do.”

  “She must be a wreck.”

  “She is. She’s scheduled to do a big party next weekend, they’ve put down a hefty deposit, and she doesn’t have enough money to pay the bills for it. She’s a very together person and I’ve never seen her like this. But what’s really eating her is that Taffy would do this. Those girls grew up together. Taffy was always underfoot. I used to step on her when she was a kid.”

  “Something must’ve happened to make her do this.”

  “It wasn’t spur of the moment, Chris. She didn’t wake up one morning and turn crazy and decide to empty the checking account and hop on a bus. She planned this for weeks, maybe for months.”

  “Eileen’s heart must be broken.”

  “It is. Broken into little pieces. But the important thing right now is to keep the business going. If Eileen disappoints this client next week, they could take her to court and that could be the end of her.”

  “How much is involved?”

  “She wasn’t clear on that. She just isn’t thinking straight at this point. But I think Dad and I can come up with a couple of thousand to get her through. She has almost nothing of her own in savings because she wanted to keep a comfortable cushion in the business account.”

  “Jack, I have whatever she needs.”

  “Forget it. That’s your money. You know what Arnold Gold would say if I let you use that money for Eileen’s business?”

  Arnold Gold is the lawyer I met on my first case, the man I work for, the substitute father who gave me away at our wedding last August. He is also a person very concerned about protecting me from dangers I can neither see nor imagine.

  “Jack, this isn’t a question of you letting me do anything with the money. You just
said it’s my money. Last I looked, I was an adult of reasonable intelligence and a mind of my own. I happen to have plenty of cash in that account because one of the bonds Aunt Meg bought just came due. Let me think of this as an investment. Investments don’t always yield cash dividends. Sometimes they help deserving people.”

  “Chris, I can’t let you—” He stopped to rephrase. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. That’s your inheritance. It’s there for you, your future, your old age. Look, the truth is, you may never get it back. I don’t know if Eileen can handle this business by herself, and she’s in no shape right now to go looking for a new partner, not that she could trust anyone ever again after this.”

  “Then let me give it to her as a gift.”

  “Did anyone ever tell you you were impossible to reason with?”

  “Dozens of people, most of them students who thought I was cruel, heartless, and totally devoid of understanding.”

  He shook his head. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  He meant that. He refused for the rest of the day to discuss his sister’s problems. I suggested I could call her, and he said he thought it wasn’t such a good idea. Eileen and her mother were working together to prepare for the party next weekend, and Eileen was too close to tears to carry on a conversation. Exhausted from his long ordeal last night, Jack took a nap, waking with just enough time to shower and dress for dinner at Ivy’s.

  On the way, we stopped at a liquor store and he picked up a bottle of red wine. “OK,” he said, getting back in the car. “Now tell me about the mysterious disappearance and death of Aunt Iris.”

  “I found something that was overlooked for sixteen years.”

  “Hell, I could’ve told you you would. You take this stuff seriously. What did you find?”

  “Her pocketbook, the one she had with her that night and everyone thought she took with her because they didn’t find it in the apartment.”

  “So you turned the light on and there it was.”