Father's Day Murder (4 page)

But each day as I read the
Times
, I looked at them, letting my eye move over the names to see if one sounded familiar, so I knew what form they took. I had seen similar phrases, “Suddenly on the twenty-seventh of November,”
and understood the shock that a family felt at the unexpected passing of someone loved. But this one was somehow more poignant: “Suddenly on Father’s Day,” as though there were some significance to the fact that the death happened on that day.

I would have to ask the good doctor when I saw him tomorrow after his last morning patient.

3

Dr. Morton Horowitz’s office was on Lexington Avenue in the Seventies, not far from Hunter College. I had forgotten to ask Lila what kind of doctor he was, but I found out when I reached his address and read the brass sign next to his door: gastroenterologist. That stretch of Lexington had doctors’ offices at just about every ground level door of apartment houses, often two or three together. You could walk up the street and pick an obstetrician, a cardiologist, an internist, whatever your body needed.

I rang the bell next to the barred door, and the receptionist buzzed me in. When I gave her my name, she said the doctor was expecting me and should be available quite soon. I took a copy of
The New Yorker
off a table and sat down to wait.

It was the kind of old-fashioned office that made me feel comfortable and secure. The furniture was both leather and upholstered, with mahogany showing here and there. The carpet was worn, the pictures on the wall dark prints of old masters. The obstetrician I had used when I was pregnant was young, and her office was new and high tech. Here I felt as if I were visiting someone’s parents.

Except for me the waiting room was empty so I assumed the doctor was treating his final patient of the
morning. As I sat, I heard a buzz and then a man’s voice asking for something. The young woman at the desk got up and disappeared.

About ten minutes later, a middle-aged couple came into the waiting room with a man I recognized as Dr. Horowitz. They had a brief, pleasant conversation and then the couple left.

“I bet you’re my lunch date,” the doctor said with a smile, holding out his hand.

I stood and shook it. “I’m Chris Bennett. Glad to meet you.”

“So am I. Come with me and I’ll give you a menu. The restaurant isn’t the Grill Room but it’s second best. It serves very good food.”

We went into a large room filled with bookcases, a mahogany desk, family pictures almost everywhere, and a barred window looking out onto Lexington Avenue.

“First things first. Here’s your menu. Pick anything, eat hearty, and we’ll have it delivered in fifteen minutes or so.”

I thanked him and looked at the card. There were several selections, all appearing more like dinner than lunch. I must have taken a long time because he said, “It’s all good. Close your eyes and point to something. You won’t be sorry.”

At his insistence, I started with a seafood salad and then took a veal dish that sounded wonderful. He gave our order to his receptionist and then sat down on his side of the desk and smiled.

“Explain to me how I come to be having lunch with someone like you.”

“Your granddaughter took a poetry course from me. She called yesterday and asked if I could help with the investigation
of Arthur Wien’s murder. Your daughter took us both to lunch and told me all about it.” I showed him the envelope. “And I’ve read a xerox of your notes and looked at all the pictures.”

“Gotcha. Well, I don’t really know what you—or anybody else—can do about this. Somebody murdered poor Artie last Sunday night while we were all celebrating, and I’d vouch for every man in the group.”

“What about the women?”

“The women, yes. Well, he was found in the men’s room so I’d think that would exclude the women. Wouldn’t you?”

“It’s rather early to exclude anyone. I can imagine a woman getting inside a men’s room. How big a room was it?”

“Not big. You’re right. At this point, anything’s possible. The police seem to think one of us did it—that’s not an unreasonable assumption from their point of view—but nothing’s turned up pointing to anyone. I found the body; Lila probably told you that. So I seem to be suspect number one. And since my lawyer is my best friend since boyhood and a member of the group, I can’t even use him. He’s also a suspect. It’s a mess, Ms. Bennett.”

“Chris,” I said. “I read the
Times
obituary and the paid notice that Mr. Wien’s family put in. Tell me about his first wife and what happened.”

“His first wife was a lovely person, someone he met after school and before his first book was published. She loved him, she struggled with him, she bore his children, enjoyed their rise into affluence as his books began to sell, and watched as he became disenchanted with her and enchanted with other women.”

“Did he go directly from wife number one to wife number two?”

“No, they lived apart for some time. I’m sure she hoped he would return to her, but those of us looking in from the outside knew it would never happen.”

“Where is she now?”

“I think she still has an apartment here in New York.”

“How did his children feel about their relationship?”

“As you might expect, not very happy. From what I know, they maintained separate relationships with their parents. And if you wonder whether he paid her alimony, my understanding is that he did. If there had been any court battles, I would have heard.”

Since his best friend was an attorney, I could see why that was so. “The other men,” I said. “Are any of them divorced or widowed?”

“There was one other, George Fried. But he died several years ago while married to his second wife.”

“Who is now his widow.”

“Right.”

“Did he die a natural death?”

The doctor smiled. “You are certainly a suspicious young woman. But it turns out that that’s an interesting question or at least a question that has an interesting answer. His wife wrote a letter to each of us after he died, after the funeral, after it was too late for us to go to see him for the last time.”

“How strange. Was there a problem? Was he angry at the group?”

“Not at all or, at least, not that I know of.”

“Where did he live?”

There was a knock on the door and the receptionist brought our lunch inside, set the bags on the desk, and said
she would bring fresh coffee. She returned with a silvered flask that she set down beside two mugs. It occurred to me that the doctor must visit with people from time to time over this lunch.

We got our lunches out and began to eat, my pen and notebook near my right hand. After a few minutes, Dr. Horowitz said, “You were asking me something about George Fried.”

I glanced at my notes. “I think I was asking where George Fried lived.”

“Yes. George was one of two in our group who hated living in New York. George’s father died when he was pretty young; I remember when it happened. His mother couldn’t quite accept that she had been widowed, that she had a son she had to bring up alone. They had a hard life, the two of them. Add to that that George never liked the winter weather, never liked living in an apartment. Finally, when he was in his twenties, he and his mother picked up and moved out to southern California, somewhere around San Diego.”

“That’s certainly a place with warmer winters,” I said. “It’s too bad he didn’t live longer to enjoy it. And he had two wives, you said?”

“He married a few years after he moved west. Most of us flew out there—or took the train; that was a long time ago—for the wedding. The marriage didn’t last all that long, maybe ten or fifteen years. When he married his second wife, we heard about it afterward.”

“Did you ever meet her?”

“Oh yes. They came east for a reunion or two. I’m afraid I can’t tell you the dates.”

“Perhaps before I leave you’ll give me the addresses and phone numbers of these people, dead or alive.”

“I will certainly do that.” He opened a Rolodex on his desk and began to look through it.

“And the other man who was missing, Fred Beller, what can you tell me about him?”

“Fred just doesn’t come. He’s alive and well as far as I know, but he doesn’t want to see us. At least, he doesn’t want to see us in a group.”

“Is there someone he doesn’t get along with?”

“Chris, we are a very agreeable group of aging boys. We’re probably split down the middle politically, and we have spent many hours raising our voices in a very ungentlemanly manner when we argued politics. But we were friends. We care about each other more than we care about who is running the government or how. We all get along.”

“Can we go through the group that came to the Father’s Day reunion?”

“That’s easy. I don’t even have to look at the picture to see where we’re all standing. It’s the same place we were standing when we were kids. Dave Koch, who I already told you was my best friend, is a lawyer. He’s a liberal lawyer but he’s managed to make a lot of money anyway. He went to the Bronx High School of Science even though he wasn’t much of a scientist.” The doctor smiled. “Good marriage, good wife, nice kids. And he’s in good health. Next in line is Bernie. He’s a teacher, a very good one. He’s given his heart and soul to his students. He should lose a little weight but shouldn’t we all? He went to Taft—”

“Taft?”

“High School.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. And then City. Met his wife there, I think. She
taught too. Sometimes in the summer they’d lead a group to some exotic place somewhere in the world. I believe he’s had a rewarding life. Ernie’s a doctor, a researcher as it happens, went to Bronx Science with me. Then we both went to Cornell and on to Cornell Med. So now you know about me. I’m married to the same wonderful woman I was married to when I graduated from medical school. And then next to me in the picture is Bruce Kaplan.” He stopped as though it were my turn to ask a question.

“Your daughter said something about him.”

“There was a troublesome incident. It happened a good many years ago, and you can be sure I don’t know the whole story. Bruce worked for his father-in-law. Some money disappeared, and the long and short of it is that Bruce stood trial and was convicted of embezzling. He served about a year in prison.”

“How terrible.”

“More terrible than anything I can imagine ever happening to me. Not only did he have to spend that time incarcerated, but his parents, his wife, his children all suffered with him. When he got out, we had a reunion to welcome him back.”

“You’re a very kind group of people.”

“He was one of us. I don’t think any of us believed he had done what he was charged with.”

“Do you think he was protecting someone, like his father-in-law?”

“I suppose that’s the obvious answer, but personally I don’t know.”

“Was Arthur Wien involved with that incident in any way?” I asked.

He looked at me across the desk, a look of confusion on his face. “It never occurred to me.… I thought—when
Lila told me about you, I thought asking you to investigate was rather foolhardy, but I see the relevance of your question. Sometimes resentments do take a long time to boil over. But I’m afraid this is a dead end. If Artie had anything to do with that incident, I know nothing of it, and I don’t think that Artie and Bruce were particularly close, that they had anything to do with each other between reunions.”

“Sometimes people need money,” I said. “Sometimes they give the appearance of having it when they really don’t. If a man suddenly needed a great deal of money, which of the members of your group would he go to?”

“No one’s ever come to me, I can tell you that. I don’t know the answer, but it’s a good question. Bruce did well. And from the time Artie’s first book was published, he always seemed to have plenty of money. Some of us—Dave and myself—were starting out in professions that required expensive equipment, insurance, nice offices, and we sure didn’t make a lot in those early years.”

“Why don’t you think about it, Dr. Horowitz? I’ll leave my name and phone number with you. Something may come to you over the next few days.”

“Yes.” He looked troubled. He took a sheet of paper and copied something from a Rolodex card, then flipped to another and wrote some more.

“Tell me about the boys in the front row,” I said.

He put his pen down. “Fred Beller married a girl from the Midwest and moved to Minneapolis or just outside Minneapolis. I visited him there once. He seemed very happy, had a huge house, nice kids. He said he’d never really liked New York and that was one reason he didn’t come for reunions. It can happen. I don’t think he had any
beef with Artie. In fact, he had Artie’s books on a shelf in his bookcase.”

“The next one is Mr. Wien, then George Fried. You’ve told me about him. And the last is Joe Meyer.”

“Joe is the gentle soul in our group. How he managed to play ball with us when we were kids is still a mystery. His great love was playing the violin. He started young and spent more hours at it than I spent studying. His mother was always afraid he’d break a finger, and he nearly did once,” the doctor said with a smile. “But his parents wanted him to have a normal childhood and they sent him out to play with us. He wasn’t much of a hitter, but he could catch pretty well. I mean in the field, not behind the plate. And we played other games besides baseball—stoopball, handball, stickball. We managed to break a few windows while we were at it. And paid for them, God help me. Joe went to Music and Art.”

“Is that a high school?”

“Yes, in New York. He took the subway every day, carrying his violin back and forth. He went to Juilliard when he graduated and got himself auditioned for professional playing. He picked up jobs here and there and then landed the big one with the New York Philharmonic, and he’s been there for his entire career. I’ve gone to some of his recitals. He’s very good. He’s taught students in the past but he hasn’t been well lately.”

“I gathered that from your notes.”

“It’s cancer. He’s in remission now. I hope it lasts another twenty years.” He spoke with great sadness.

“What was his relationship with Arthur Wien?”