The Bar Mitzvah Murder (16 page)

“I keep thinking there's something in that database of yours that would help us in the Gabe Gross homicide,” I said.

“There probably is. We just don't know what to look under.”

“Simon Kaplan seems to have disappeared.”

“Means you made him nervous.”

“That works both ways,” I said.

23

Simon Kaplan didn't show up again. On Monday morning I drove over to the hotel where the Gross family had stayed and walked around the lobby. I bought my
Herald
Tribune
and planted myself in a visible spot, keeping the paper low enough that he would see my face if he walked through and glancing up frequently to look at passersby. No Mr. Kaplan. Finally I went to the front desk and asked the young man if he had seen someone of Kaplan's description. He hadn't. That didn't mean Kaplan hadn't been there, only that he hadn't been noticed by this particular person.

When I had done justice to the paper, I folded it, went out to the car, and drove away.

I spent the last two days visiting places I had missed and returning for a second visit to places I had enjoyed the first time. I had a good feeling of knowing the city, at least the part of it that Mel and Jack and I had driven through and wandered through. On Monday night Mrs. Davidson called and asked if I had visited Mea Shearim, the Orthodox section of the city. I hadn't gotten there and she offered to take me on my last morning.

She was an early bird, as I am, and at eight-thirty my phone rang and she said she was in the lobby. I went downstairs to find a young and very beautiful dark-haired woman waiting for me near the elevator. She introduced herself as Rachel and gave me a firm handshake. Then we went out to her car and drove.

She had warned me on the phone to wear something with long sleeves and no miniskirt. I had smiled at that. I am not a miniskirt person.

“You're dressed exactly right,” she said as she pulled into a spot just vacated by a car the same size as hers. “The people here are very religious and the women are expected to cover up.”

“What about in summer?” I asked.

“In summer, too.”

“That must be very uncomfortable.”

“I'm sure it is. But they do it.”

We walked around and I saw young girls and women in their long sleeves and longish dresses in dark colors. Most of the men wore the little round caps that covered their heads. We passed a bakery where there was a line of women waiting to be served and a few feet from them a line of men. When I commented on it, Rachel said men and women did not touch each other and would not stand in the same line.

“This is really different from the rest of the city,” I said.

“That's why I wanted you to see it.”

“That's very kind of you. This is one of those places that shouldn't be missed.”

“I have some time. If there's somewhere you want to go, I'll be glad to take you.”

“I'd like to buy a present for my husband,” I said. “But I don't know what. He's very hard to buy for.”

“How about a silver key ring? I could take you to a place where they're handmade.”

“I gave him one when he graduated from law school,” I said.

“Your husband is a lawyer?”

“Yes. It took a long time, but he did it.”

“It sounds like we're both married to very energetic men intent on moving upward.”

I smiled. “Jack thinks your husband is very good at his job.”

When she smiled back, I could see she was as proud of her husband as I was of mine. “Thank you,” she said. Then, matter-of-factly, “Now, what about the present?”

“I wish I could think of something. He doesn't wear rings; he has a fairly new wallet; he loves the key ring I got him—”

“Something religious?”

“He wears a silver cross that he's had most of his life.” I thought a moment. “And a religious medal he's had for almost as long.”

“Also silver?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps a chain to wear them on.”

“They're on a chain.”

“Come with me.”

We drove to an unfamiliar part of the city, leaving me disoriented, and finally she parked in a lot and we got out and walked.

“This is Ben Yehuda Street,” she said, “our walking street.”

“Yes, now I know where we are. That's King George Street up there.”

“You've learned our geography, I see. Come. There's a shop with a million chains.”

She was right and I found one that I liked very much, just the right length and handmade. After I asked the price, Rachel began to talk to the owner in Hebrew. It sounded slightly like an argument, but when she was done, the price of the chain had come down substantially and I realized she had been bargaining on my behalf. I kept quiet, paying for it in traveler's checks and thanking the man very much.

Outside I said, “What was that all about?”

“Oh, in that shop you must never pay the first price he asks. Only tourists pay.”

“Well, thank you. I'll remember that on our next trip. I'm really glad you suggested this. It's a beautiful chain and I think Jack will like it very much.”

She took me back to the hotel then. She was cooking dinner for us and had to get started. We were expected at seven, and while she cooked I had to pack my clothes and all the wonderful things we had gathered on the trip.

That evening was surely the best we had had on the whole trip. I wore the necklace of beads Jack had gotten me a week earlier and loved the way it looked. Jack insisted that Joshua call him by his first name, and reluctant as he was, he finally did. I felt better not hearing the respectful “Lieutenant” and “sir” every minute or so, and Rachel and I were already on a first-name basis.

Her cooking was wonderful. She was a Sabra, a native Israeli, she told us, born of parents whose parents had survived the Holocaust in Europe. She had recipes from her European grandmother and others from her Israeli mother. And she offered us hummus as an appetizer before we sat down.

“I'm looking for a service that'll ship Chris a supply of that once a month,” Jack said.

“Well, if Joshua gets his trip to the States next year, we'll take some along.”

“Maybe Jack can pull some strings to make sure the trip happens,” I said.

“Hey, why not? There have to be some perks to being a lieutenant.”

It was a marvelous evening and we would have stayed later, but tomorrow was our flight home and Jack hadn't packed yet. Our farewells were warm and our invitations to them to visit very sincere.

Back in the hotel I decided I should give Jack his present, as we would have to declare our purchases when we arrived in New York. I didn't want any unpleasant surprises.

“I have something for you,” I said when we got to our room.

“For me?”

I told him Rachel had taken me to a shop after our visit to Mea Shearim. The little box was in my purse and I handed it to him.

The result was more than I expected. “It's beautiful,” he said, holding the chain across his palm and admiring the links. “I've always wanted a nice chain.”

“You did? You never said a word.”

“Well, you know me.”

“It's handmade, Jack. Rachel insisted I not get one that was machine-made.”

“It's great.” He gave me a kiss, then another. “Really great. Would you believe I have something for you?”

“You mean you bought something while my back was turned?”

“Better than that. Take a look.” He went to his suitcase and took a box out of the pocket along the side. “I hope it's what you want.”

I couldn't imagine what it would be. The box was familiar, but I couldn't remember where I had seen it. I opened it, took away the soft cotton covering the contents, and gasped. Inside was the cross of Roman glass and silver Mel and I had seen at the wonderful jeweler at Hutzot Hayotzer. “Jack.” I was stunned. “How—? I can't believe this. It really is what I want.”

“I figured. I knew you wouldn't tell me.”

“Then how—?”

“I gave Mel carte blanche. I said, ‘Get whatever you think Chris wants most.' ”

“Oh.” I sat on the bed and just stared at it, feeling moisture in my eyes. “Thank you. Thank Mel. I am just speechless.”

“There's a chain, too, by the way. It's in another box. I wanted you to see that first.” He gave me the second box and I found what was obviously also a handmade chain.

“I guess we really were made for each other,” I said. “We gave each other almost the same gift.”

“Yeah. Is this O. Henry's ‘The Gift of the Magi' or something?”

“Something like that, but with a happier ending. How literary. How nice. How wonderful.”

“Nice trip,” Jack said. “Let's do it again.”

In the morning, while Jack finished packing, I drove the car back to the car rental agency. It didn't take long to return it, and we saved Joshua the hassle. When it was done, I went outside and found a taxi.

“The American Colony Hotel,” I said. “Please.”

The driver took off and I realized the meter wasn't running. “Would you turn on the meter, please?” I said.

“I'll give you a good price. Twenty-five shekels.”

“I don't want your price. Just turn on the meter.”

“It's too late. We already went a kilometer. Twenty-four shekels.”

I felt my heart pounding. “Turn on the meter,” I said very sternly.

He flipped a hand at me in anger, an insulting gesture. I was fuming. I could feel my own anger mounting. I hated being treated this way, as though I were stupid, as though I were completely naive and he could put anything over on me that he wanted. I didn't know how to get him to turn on the meter, and I refused to ask him again.

He stopped at a traffic light, honked his horn at the car ahead of him for no reason I could determine, and muttered something in Hebrew. That's when I decided to do the only thing I could. I opened the door of the taxi, got out, and shut the door behind me. I crossed through traffic to the sidewalk, my hands trembling, my skin breaking into a sweat. I could hear him shout after me. Then the light turned green and he gunned the motor, still shouting, and continued down the street.

I calmed myself for a minute, then hailed another taxi, immediately asked him to turn on the meter, and gave him the address. In ten minutes I was back at the hotel.

24

When we arrived home, I felt almost light-headed, happy in a way I had never felt before. It was hard to believe this incredible trip had happened, that we had gone where we had gone, seen what we had seen. Eddie was glad to see us, and Jack's dad drove up to Oakwood to take his wife home so we wouldn't have to make the trip. We were five happy, contented people.

Jack had the rest of the week off, but he spent a lot of time on the phone with his office. I did the necessary shopping and Jack promised to cook through the weekend, as he was starting to feel rusty. He asked me to buy a can of chickpeas, and I had a good feeling about what that would turn out to be.

I called Marnie on Friday.

“Chris, I thought you'd forgotten.”

“We needed a day to get back on schedule and get our clothes clean. But I'm available now.”

“Please come here, OK?”

She gave me directions and I promised to leave after lunch. It turned out she lived in New Jersey, not far from the George Washington Bridge. I hadn't been there since the first case I'd looked into, the murder of the mother of idiot savant twins back in 1950. I got involved in that one forty years after the fact but managed to find the killer and make a good friend while I was at it, Arnold Gold, a lawyer in Manhattan.

The Gross house was a few miles north of the bridge, and it was a magnificent residence. I turned into the private drive and parked near the house. The housekeeper opened the door and ushered me inside. As we walked toward the rear of the house, Marnie appeared.

“Chris, thank you for coming.”

“How are you doing?”

“Nothing's easy.” She led me to a small sitting room, and we sat at right angles to each other. She had closed the door when we entered, and now I saw why. She took a small gray pouch out of the pocket of her skirt. “This is what I found.” She handed it to me.

I could feel the hard stones inside the pouch. “Have you touched them?” I asked.

“Several times. I checked every item in the safe, as you suggested, and this was one of them. And the jeweler I took them to handled every one.”

That meant there were no prints on the stones that would be of use anymore. I opened the pouch. As Marnie had said over the phone, there were several wrapped diamonds inside. I opened one, the largest, and looked at it. I am no expert on diamonds or any other stone, but this one glittered with internal color. I held it up to the natural light coming in through the window and admired it. “It's very beautiful.”

“And very real. It's worth—let me just say tens of thousands of dollars.”

I rewrapped it and put it back in the pouch. “And you have no idea how they got in the safe or who put them there?”

“I have no idea who put them there, but I assume, if Gabe didn't buy them, that whoever broke into the house put them there. I just don't know why.”

“I don't know, either, Marnie.” I thought again of Simon Kaplan and asked if she was sure she had never heard of him.

“Positive. I called Gabe's secretary and asked her. She checked her Rolodex and all the files. His name didn't come up.”

“He said he'd done business with Gabe.”

“Chris, they don't throw files away. If he ever did business with Gabe, his name would be in some file or record somewhere.”

“Then maybe he lied to me.”

“Who is he?”

“If I knew that, I might know who killed your husband.”

“This is so frustrating.”

“My word exactly. It seems to me either he lied about having a business relationship with Gabe and his father or somehow that relationship has been deleted from Gabe's company.”

She bristled at that. “Gabe was an honest man and an honest businessman. He didn't delete embarrassments.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound accusatory.”

“Chris.”

She was pressing her lips together, her face uncertain. I waited.

“There's one more thing.”

“What do you mean?”

She reached back into the same pocket that had held the diamonds. “I found this on the shelf in the safe under the pouch.” She leaned over and handed me a small piece of paper.

It was a note written in block letters with blue ballpoint. It said:

MARNIE, THESE DO NOT BELONG TO YOU. THE OWNER WILL RECLAIM THEM. LEAVE THEM WHERE THEY ARE AND KEEP QUIET ABOUT THEM. VERY QUIET
.

The last two words were underlined. I realized she had known since the first moment she had talked to me about opening the safe that this note had been there. She had been trying to decide whether to tell me everything or just that she had found the stones.

“I wasn't sure whether to tell you,” she said.

“Do you recognize the handwriting?” I asked.

“I probably know ten people who would write like that if they printed in capitals. Gabe could have. I could have.”

That sounded about right. As I examined the writing, I felt I could have written it myself. “Someone is hiding the diamonds here.”

“And I'm quite frightened.”

“I think you have reason to be. He has a key to your house—”

“I changed all the locks,” she interrupted, “and added some new ones, very big locks. I also changed alarm companies and had the system upgraded with new passwords and some new equipment. The safe combination was also changed. No one has a key to this house except me. And my lawyer, for the time being.”

“That's a good idea. Whoever this person is, he can disarm the security system, but he can't get in the house without a lot of trouble. I think—” I stopped, not sure whether I should say what was on my mind.

“What?”

“Marnie, someone who knows Gabe well did this.”

“I don't believe that.”

I thought she looked a little tense as she said that. “I don't think that person is going to try to break into the house and the safe again. He knows you're smart enough to change the locks. He's going to come to you and ask for the stones back.”

“How is that possible? Then I would know who killed Gabe.”

“He doesn't care if you know. He has some reason not to fear a reprisal from you.”

“How so?”

“Suppose it's Gabe's son,” I said, pulling the first person out of my head. “He thinks you wouldn't go to the police because of his relationship to Gabe.”

“But I would. I wouldn't let his son get away with murder.”

“Maybe this person knows something that would keep you quiet.”

“This is too complicated. It's outrageous. Gabe's son didn't kill him. Don't you understand? Gabe was generous to his children. This is crazy. This is just crazy.” She took the note and the pouch and stuck them in her pocket. “I don't keep these in the safe anymore.”

“That's a good idea. Marnie, why did you tell me this?”

“I thought you might see something that I've missed.”

“I think I have. I think you have to sit down with yourself and make a list of people close to Gabe. Maybe one of them is running an illicit business. Maybe one is being paid off in stones instead of cash so there's no record of payment. Maybe the police are on to him and he wants to hide the stones where they're not in his possession. Marnie, this person knows both of you. He didn't address you as ‘Mrs. Gross' in the note. He called you Marnie. He spelled it right, too.”

“I know.”

“So someone who knows both of you is involved. I think you know this person, even if you're not aware of it right now.”

She looked down at the beautiful Oriental carpet at our feet. Then she faced me. “Are you done investigating, Chris?”

“I'm going to research the charities mentioned in Gabe's will. I sat on that plane the other day for more hours than I've ever sat before and thought about this. The former wife got a bequest. The children got money. You got the most, as you should have. Other people known to you got bequests. Then there are the charities. Did you look at the list?”

“Briefly.”

“Anything stand out?”

“Gabe gave a lot of money to worthy organizations. We didn't discuss that. When we made out our wills, the ones he wanted remembered were listed. I have a different list, a smaller one, in my will.”

“It's the only thing I can think of that I haven't checked out, that and the individual beneficiaries.”

She stood, her right hand running down her skirt to reassure herself that the pouch was safely stashed. “You'll keep in touch?”

“Yes. One more thing. Do you have Gabe's lawyer's name and address?”

“I'll get it for you.”

I waited for several minutes. When she returned, a piece of notepaper in her hand, I noticed that her skirt was flat again. She had put the pouch away somewhere.

“If you want to talk to him and he says he's too busy, refer him to me. I'll see to it that you get a quick appointment.”

“You'll hear from me,” I said. “I promise.”

When I got home, Jack was whipping up a storm in the kitchen. He shooed me away as he usually does and I went without reluctance. Anything he cooked for us would be better than anything I attempted. And I wanted to think.

I spread my things out in the family room, which is just off the kitchen. From there I could smell Jack's cooking and occasionally hear a syllable or two muttered under his breath, reassuring me that even the best of them make mistakes now and then. I took out Gabe's will and went over it again very carefully. A lot of it was boilerplate, phrases describing one's possessions, like furniture, clothes, cars, and so forth. I paid special attention to the individual names of people receiving bequests. The first ones were family, and they were dealt with generously. It was the ones on the second list that I looked at more carefully.

I didn't know who any of them were, and I hadn't asked Marnie. All of them had little descriptive phrases after the names: “the best friend a man could ever have,” “more of a friend than an employee,” “a secretary who earned more than I could give her,” and so on. The secretary gave me pause. She was the one who couldn't find Simon Kaplan's name in the company files. But how could she benefit from Gabe's death? She probably didn't know he had left her a bequest. I have never heard of people going around telling their friends and employees that they'd been remembered in a will. Unless the diamonds would eventually go to her. And perhaps she knew something so damning about Gabe that when she claimed the diamonds, Marnie would not turn her in to the police. It was something to think about.

I decided to call the charities and inquire about the nature of their work and Gabe's relationship with them. Had he made an annual contribution? For how long? What was their mission?

I started with the largest ones, the most well known names on the list. I didn't get very far with them, and I wasn't surprised. “Records are private,” “we cannot disclose,” da-dah, da-dah. But I established that they existed at the addresses given in the will. I called what I assumed was Gabe's alma mater and couldn't get them to confirm even the year he graduated, but they did say he had been a student there.

One of the bequests was made to a home for abused women. The woman who answered the phone sounded harried and had never heard of Gabe, but she assured me they were at the listed address and that she was very busy and please call back another time. In the background I could hear voices and more than one baby crying.

I called what appeared to be a school for poor children and got an answering machine, which gave the school's hours as nine in the morning to four in the afternoon. I checked my watch. It was almost four.

By the time the business day had ended, I had checked most of the charities out and not learned a lot except that they all had telephones. When real people answered, they were forthcoming about their purpose, the people they helped, their goals. Most of them recognized Gabe's name, and several were aware that he had died tragically.

Jack's dinner was fabulous, which wasn't a surprise. And we started with hummus, as I had suspected. I told him it was every bit as good as what I had eaten in Israel and he grinned.

“I'll make an international gourmet out of you after all.”

“You just may.”