Father's Day Murder (26 page)

“But if you can’t crack Horowitz—”

“I know. It’s hopeless.”

I got up and found the envelope of pictures Lila Stern had given me ten days ago. I went through them again, looking carefully at the faces of the people, at the evening purses on the table, at the seating arrangement. There was a beautiful picture of the Koches, his arm around her, both smiling. The other couples also had pictures of themselves and everyone looked happy, even the Meyers who must have known this was the last reunion they would attend together. No one looked like a killer. Cindy Wien glittered both literally and figuratively. Arthur looked like a man who had a few more books yet to be written. If there was anything to be learned from these pictures, I was unable to see what it was.

I looked at my notes again. Joseph’s suggestion that I find out when events had happened had been a good one. Two years ago Cindy and Arthur had married. Two years ago Ellen Koch and Arthur Wien had dissolved their decades-long relationship. That was a nice fit. But two years ago or a few months more, Robin Horowitz had visited the Wien apartment at least three times when Cindy wasn’t there. What was the connection?

If I was right and Ellen Koch had lied to me, she had harbored a grudge so deep and hurtful that she had planned to kill her former lover at the next reunion, which was Father’s Day. She had gotten nothing tangible from the murder, no money, no memorabilia. But she had the satisfaction of knowing that Cindy was Arthur’s last wife and last woman. If I could only figure out what Robin Horowitz’s role had been. The pictures yielded nothing, but my time line fit all the facts.

I gave up thinking about it. This was an important night in our lives. Tomorrow Jack would drive to One Police Plaza for the first day of his new assignment. It was a nine-to-five
job, at least at the beginning, which was an hour earlier than he had started work for years. That meant our lives would have to adjust to a different schedule. I never have difficulty waking up early. For the fifteen years I lived at St. Stephen’s, I had awakened daily at five, but at the other end of the day, I had turned in between nine and ten.

We went upstairs early and I didn’t read the last chapter of
The Lost Boulevard
. It was a kind of epilogue and I felt I had gotten from the book whatever the substance was. Whoever had killed Arthur Wien almost forty years after the publication of the book had not done so for anything that happened when the Morris Avenue Boys were boys. And if I was right about Ellen Koch, it was something that had happened only a couple of years ago that had given her life a murderous turn. I slept well.

Jack left earlier than he had to, but I understood his need. Traffic is unpredictable, especially during rush hour, and he was anxious to be early to find out where everything was located. I wished him luck, asked him to call if he got a chance, and watched him give Eddie a big kiss. Then Eddie and I went back to the kitchen and I tidied up after breakfast.

At nine I called Joseph and told her what I had learned over the weekend.

“I thought she might be the one,” Joseph said when I told her about Ellen Koch. “It seemed strange that no one else knew about this mysterious relationship.”

“But she looked me in the eye and said she hadn’t killed Arthur Wien.”

“That’s possible.”

“She also said she hadn’t used the manuscript as collateral for a loan. She acted insulted that I would suggest such a thing.”

“A woman of strange principle. Do you have anything concrete to tie her to the murder?”

“Nothing, I’m afraid. I don’t even know what kind of concrete thing I should be looking for. The police have the ice pick. If there were prints on it, they would have made an arrest.”

“I’m sure you’re right. I don’t think you’ll find anything of that kind, Chris. I think eventually you’ll know who did it and why, but I have no idea whether you or the police will be able to bring that person to justice.”

I had told her about my meeting with Robin Horowitz. Now I asked whether she thought Robin might know the truth.

“She may have her suspicions, but like so many cases that you’ve worked on, this will probably be circumstantial, unless you get a confession.”

After we spoke, I called one of the mothers in our little play group and she invited us over. I told Eddie we would be visiting Eric, but the news didn’t seem to make much difference to him. Our invitation was for ten until eleven so we drove over a little before ten.

It was an uneventful hour. The two little boys, who were almost exactly the same age, played in Eric’s sandbox and swung on Eric’s swings while Eric’s mother and I gossiped about town events. At eleven, after the boys had had juice and a cookie, Eddie and I went home.

The answering machine was making its usual annoying noise. The message it was keeping for me was short. “This is Marge Beller. I’d like to talk to Chris.”

I put Eddie safely in his playpen and called her back. I had almost forgotten that I had not heard from her.

“I talked to Fred,” she said. “He didn’t want me to tell you, but there are some things you don’t know and I want to stop speculation before it starts.”

The things I didn’t know were probably things she didn’t think I knew, like their being at the restaurant the night of the murder. “Go on,” I said.

“There was a reason why we didn’t get together with Arthur Wien the night he was in Minneapolis. It was our decision to renege.”

“I see.”

“What we didn’t tell you is that when we ran into Arthur in California three years ago, we were there with our daughter. Art invited us all out to dinner and we accepted.”

“Was Cindy with you?”

“No. We didn’t meet her on our visit. The next day Art called at our hotel and offered to take Melissa to one of the movie lots. He’s had several books made into movies so he knew his way around. Melissa thought it was a great idea and he picked her up before lunch. Fred and I went around by ourselves. When we got back to the hotel, there was a message that Melissa would be back after dinner so we took off for dinner without her. She came back much later and called our room to say she was back. I went down the hall and knocked on her door.” She stopped.

“Was something wrong?”

“A lot was wrong. She opened the door and I took one look at her.” Marge’s voice had become agitated. “She looked like a teenager who had been making out with her boyfriend in the back of a car.”

“What had he done, Marge?” I asked, feeling unsettled.

“Oh he hadn’t raped her. She saw to that. But he had
treated her like a girlfriend. He was her father’s age, exactly Fred’s age. She wasn’t a child; I don’t mean to say that she was. She was about twenty-five at the time. She’s our youngest and there’s a big gap between her and the next oldest. I probably sound like an overprotective mother, which I’m not, but I found the whole thing sordid. Imagine a man in his sixties coming on to a young girl in her twenties.”

“I understand why you were so upset. Did he see Melissa again?”

“Not on your life. He had the nerve to call the next day, but Fred talked to him and said we were busy for the rest of our stay. We had argued about whether Fred should talk to him about it, but finally Fred listened to me and didn’t. I didn’t want a scene and there was nothing to gain. We would never see him again, and there was no point in leaving with bad words between us.”

“How did Melissa feel about what happened?”

“She said he had taken her by surprise, that she didn’t know how to stop him. She said she had thought of him as a father figure, and when he started kissing her, she couldn’t quite believe what was happening.”

“And then he came to Minneapolis.”

“That was about a year later. He hadn’t married Cindy yet, I know that. He called when he got here and asked if he could take the three of us to dinner.”

“He included Melissa.”

“Very definitely. And we said something had come up and we couldn’t make it. That was the last time we spoke to him.”

“I see why you didn’t want to discuss it, Marge,” I said. “And I thank you for telling me.”

“I wouldn’t want you to think that I wished him dead.”

“I don’t think that.”

“It’s one thing to be a philanderer, but when you go after girls less than half your age—”

“It’s very hard to take,” I said. “I appreciate your call.”

So many things were going on in my head it was impossible for me to decide what to do first. Marge’s story had triggered a memory, something that had seemed unimportant, but as I thought about it, all the little unexplained events and pieces of information began to come together. Robin Horowitz had had her part in it and so had Ellen Koch, although they may not have known at the time what was to come and may not have known of each other’s involvement. I needed one fact and I knew the people who could give it to me, but would any of them do it?

I looked in on Eddie and got his lunch going. Robin wouldn’t tell me anything, she had made that very clear. She was protecting friends. Ellen had been involved, but had she known exactly what her involvement was? I might have to go to the source and I didn’t relish the conversation.

I took out the Manhattan phone book and looked up a couple of numbers. When you’re dealing with a common name in New York, there can be pages of them, including those with initials instead of first names. It’s very daunting. I copied down several that might be the one I needed and then got Eddie and gave him his lunch. He had had a busy morning, and he was half asleep when he finished his milk. I carried him upstairs and put him in his crib and then did a lot of thinking over my tuna salad sandwich.

Jack called while I was thinking and eating. He sounded more relaxed than he had been over the weekend so I assumed no one had called with an unanswerable legal question between nine and noon. He gave me his new
phone number and I wrote it down in my book. I was glad he had called. I told him quickly what I had learned and what I thought it meant, and he agreed I was likely on the right track.

Finally I called one of the numbers I had taken down. When a man answered, I said, “Joshua?”

“Yes, who’s this?”

“My name is Christine Bennett. I’m trying to reach your sister, Marsha.”

“Is this connected to her music?”

“It’s connected to it, yes,” I said.

He gave me the phone number and I thanked him. “Is she usually home in the afternoon?”

“Sometimes. Give her a call and see.”

I did. A machine picked up on the fourth ring and I hung up. It didn’t mean much. She could be out now and back soon. I decided to take a chance. I called Elsie and asked if she could come over. Twenty minutes later I drove into New York.

The address was in the Village and I couldn’t find a place to park. The Village is mostly old buildings without underground parking so I drove around till I found a lot, then walked back to the address I had found in the phone book. It was one of those fine old buildings that had been refurbished and had an elevator. I rang the bell of 4E and announced my name to the staticky voice that responded. I assumed I sounded equally staticky, but she buzzed me in and I rode the elevator to the fourth floor.

“I’m Chris Bennett,” I said when she opened the door. “I’ve met your parents. I need to talk to you about something. May I come in?”

She frowned but she let me in. She was about my age,
the same beautiful young woman of the picture I had seen, but she walked with a cane and her hands were unpleasant to look at. I followed her into the small living room where she sat in a firm chair.

“What is this about?” she asked.

“The accident,” I said. “Who was with you in the car?”

“I can’t talk about that.”

“Why not?”

“There was an agreement.”

“You were given a sum of money to keep quiet?”

“I was given a sum of money so that I could live and also so that I could get therapy and maybe play the cello again.”

“And also to keep you from telling who was in the car with you.”

“For the record, I was alone.”

“But you and I know someone was with you.”

She didn’t answer. She had a beautiful face, a perfect amalgam of her parents’ faces, but she was better looking than either. At this moment she looked very sad.

“It was Arthur Wien, wasn’t it?”

She didn’t answer.

“He was a friend of your parents, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, he was.”

“You grew up knowing him.”

“That’s right. And many other friends of my parents.”

“When did he start taking you out?”

She sat without speaking.

“Were you in love with him?” I asked.

Tears ran down her cheeks. “I wasn’t in love with him. I was never in love with him.”

“But you went out with him.”

Silence.

“Were you driving when you had your accident?”

“I was alone in the car so I must have been driving.”

“What happened after the accident? Did he run away and leave you? Did he get help? Did he make you promise while you were sitting there in pain that you would tell no one what had happened?”

She put her head in her hands. I walked over to her and patted her back. “I’m sorry to ask you these things,” I said, feeling sorrier than I could express.

“Then please don’t ask. Just go away. I’ve told you all I can. There isn’t any more.”

“I think there is. I think Arthur Wien was in the car with you. Maybe he was driving. I think he left you after the accident to protect himself. He got married not long after that, but I’m sure you know that. Your parents were his friends. They admired him because of his writing. He visited your parents’ apartment, and he knew you when you were growing up.” As I spoke, it all seemed right, the facts and suppositions blending into one easy story that had ended in disaster. “I suppose you threatened to sue him after the accident, but someone who knew him and knew your parents helped to mediate an agreement. Someone else lent him the money to pay you.”

“What?”

“I don’t know the sum, but I know he borrowed from an old friend. And part of the agreement was that you would never say he was in the car with you the day of the accident.”