The Passover Murder (17 page)

“I am.”

I put my arms around him. “Let’s go in.”

“Is it the family room that’s troubling you?”

“It’s everything. It’s Iris and Eileen and my own pig-headedness.”

“Being afraid of something isn’t being pigheaded. I know where you’re coming from. You’ve never spent money and everything looks like a lot.”

“When the college gave me my first paycheck, I looked around for someone to give it to.”

“I know, honey. And you don’t want a new car and you take tuna fish sandwiches with you because they’re cheaper than a coffee shop. The only one you spend money on is me.”

“Well, you’re worth it.”

“But you’re worth it, too.”

“It’s not just the money, Jack.” I slipped my arm around his waist and walked him over behind the house, passing the stakes he had left in the ground. “Aunt Meg spent so much time on that garden. Her bulbs come up in the spring like magic, the perennials never forget to bloom. If we add onto the house, I’m afraid we’ll lose that and I’ll lose part of her gift to me.”

“Then we’ll move them. I don’t think the bulbs are a problem. We can get the guy from the Oakwood Nursery to move the bigger stuff like the shrubs.”

“That would be nice.” Something weighty inside me dissolved. “I think Gene would miss those things, too, when he came to visit.”

“We’ll keep them. There’s lots of land here. We can find a good place for everything.”

“I don’t want to lose her,” I said.

“We’ll move slowly.”

“OK.”

“And we won’t spend too much. There are things I can do myself. My dad put a hammer in my hand at an early age.”

“I can paint. I painted at St. Stephen’s.”

“You never told me.”

We started walking back to the driveway. “It was easier than cooking,” I admitted.

“Who picked the paint?”

“Probably Sister Clare Angela. She was the Superior at the time. I think she got a deal from the hardware store.” We went into the house.

“Man, it was cold out there.”

“Want some hot chocolate?”

“Why not? I suppose you wouldn’t consider skipping mass.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“That’s pretty open-minded of you.”

“I’m a pretty open-minded person.”

“You are. You know that?”

I kissed his cold cheek. “Except where debt’s concerned. Then I’m pigheaded.”

“I’ll deal with it. Make me my cocoa.”

21

Marilyn called Sunday evening. “I’ve been with Pop most of the day,” she said. “He’s weaker than he was last time I saw him. And a lot thinner.”

“I’m sorry to hear it. This must be very difficult for you.”

“Think how difficult it is for him.”

“Yes. Is he comfortable in the apartment?”

“Actually, he’s a lot more comfortable than he was at my sister’s. I think he was right to go home.”

“It’s nice to be in your own home.”

“He wants to talk to you, Chris. Would you be willing to go into New York tomorrow?”

“Sure.”

I wasn’t looking forward to it. I wanted to remember him as I had seen him at the seder when his grip on my arm had been strong and he had been in control as the senior member of the family. But if he wanted to see me, I was certainly not going to deny him.

Since we were driving into the city, I called Sylvie and asked if we could talk again. She said yes, I could come over, and we set up a time.

When I got off the phone, I told Jack about my appointments. “If we finish late enough, I think I’ll ask Marilyn to drive up to the oil yards and see if I can talk to Juan Castro.”

“Tell him to walk you back to your car. I don’t want you up there in the dark with just another woman.”

“I will.”

“That’s a busy day for you, three interviews. You bucking for a gold shield?”

“Just a break in this case soon or it’s all over. I want Sylvie—or Mr. Grodnik—to give me Shirley Finster’s name and address. I don’t think he will, but maybe Sylvie can be persuaded.”

“What about the Garganus angle?”

“Maybe Tuesday after my class. I’d like to be there when her granddaughter comes home from school. Erin might just let me into the house before her grandmother knows what’s happening.”

“Get ‘em while they’re vulnerable.”

“Brooks’s rule?”

“Everybody’s rule.”

“I’ll take it under advisement.”

A stout woman with a nice smile opened the door of the Grodnik apartment. “Come in, Mrs. Margulies,” she said, and smiled at me, too. “He’s in the living room, all dressed and ready to see you.”

Marilyn introduced Mrs. Hires and me, then we hung up our coats and went to see her father.

“You look good, Pop,” Marilyn said. “You sleep well?”

“Pretty good. I don’t sleep the way I used to.”

“None of us do. Here’s Chris.”

He held out his hand and we shook. The hand was thin, but the grip was firm.

“It’s nice to see you again, Mr. Grodnik.”

“We have some talking to do. Make yourself comfortable. Marilyn.” He turned to his daughter. “Sit down somewhere. Stop looking around as if you could find a speck of dust. Just sit and let us talk. You can listen, but try not to butt in.”

I had a feeling he wanted to make sure she wouldn’t leave the room and start to look for missing papers, but however she felt, she sat obediently.

“Christine,” he said, turning to me, “you enjoyed the seder?”

“It was a wonderful experience. I’m grateful to have had the opportunity.”

“When I was a boy my mother used to invite people who didn’t have a place to go for Passover. Sometimes a man would come over from the old country and leave his family behind until he could save enough to have them join him. There were always a couple of men I didn’t know well at our seders. Well, I’m glad you enjoyed it. My daughter told me you had a beautiful wedding last summer.”

“Very beautiful, and thanks to her. Marilyn helped me with a lot of things I couldn’t have done alone.”

“Marilyn is good that way. All my children are good people. My wife and I did the best we could for them, and they all went on and did better. I leave a better world than I came into.”

“You’re part of a better world,” I said.

“Yes, for a little while, maybe. I understand you are trying to find out who killed my little sister, Iris.”

“I’ve been looking into it.”

“The police never found the killer.”

“I’ve talked to the detective, Mr. Grodnik. That case is open and it still bothers him after all these years.”

“Unfinished business. Everybody feels the same about unfinished business. I don’t think you’ll find a killer. It’s a long time ago, people move around, the snow melts and the footprints disappear.”

“We found Iris’s pocketbook in your front closet.”

“Marilyn told me.” He smiled. “That closet. Nobody ever looked in there. Maybe you could find a million dollars in there if you looked hard enough. Where is the pocketbook now?”

“I gave it to the police.”

“What was in it?”

I wondered if that was the reason for this meeting. He might be afraid that an address book or a checkbook had been inside it, giving information that he wanted to keep to himself.

“Her keys, her lipstick, her wallet, her credit cards, a little date book. Not much else.”

“So it didn’t help.”

“It told us she was planning to come back to the seder. She had no money with her and no keys.”

“I see. So you think she went downstairs to say hello to an old friend and the old friend killed her.”

“I think it was something like that. Do you happen to have Iris’s address book?”

“Why should I have her address book?”

“Because when Iris’s apartment was cleaned out, her things must have been taken somewhere. I thought maybe they came here.”

“Some of them did, but I don’t remember an address book.”

“I’d like to get in touch with her friend Shirley Finster.”

“Shirley,” he said. “I remember Shirley.”

“Do you know how I can find her?”

“I wouldn’t have any idea. But I remember Shirley when she was a little girl. She was a good friend to my sister.”

“Did Shirley marry?”

“It’s possible.”

I sat back in my chair. This meeting had been at his request. If he wanted to tell me something, he knew how to do it. From the little I had asked, it was clear he wasn’t going to answer the questions I needed answered.

“What I don’t understand,” he said after a moment, “is why you are looking into something that has nothing to do with you.”

“I asked her to, Pop,” Marilyn said. “You know that. I told you.”

“But you,” he said, looking at me. “What makes you so interested?”

“Homicides are interesting. I’ve worked on a few since I moved to Oakwood.”

“Do you know something now about my sister’s murder that I don’t know?”

“I know that Iris quit her job about a week before the seder.”

“She quit her job? Who told you this?”

“The company she worked for, GAR.”

“It can’t be true.”

“It is true, Pop,” Marilyn said.

“She never told us.”

I didn’t say anything.

“There’s more?” he asked.

“She may have been planning a trip to Europe.”

“This I don’t know either.”

“Switzerland,” I added.

“Switzerland is a nice country, I hear. How do you know these things?”

“I talked to Mrs. Garganus, her boss’s wife. She knew that Iris was going to Europe.”

“Her boss’s wife knew something her family didn’t know?”

“I’m sure she would have told you before she left. Maybe she was just making plans. She had a date in her book for a bridal shower after Passover. I think she intended to leave after that.”

“She was going with Shirley?” he asked.

“I don’t know. If I could find Shirley, I would ask her.”

“You know something about this, Marilyn?”

“Just what Chris told me. You never heard about it?”

“Never. Iris spent the whole day with your mother before the seder. She never said a word. You think maybe she was going with that boyfriend?”

“Harry?” Marilyn said. “She wasn’t seeing Harry anymore.”

“Harry didn’t know about the trip,” I said.

“You talked to Harry, too?” Abraham Grodnik said, his surprise apparent.

“We talked last week. He saw Iris once in a while and he talked to her on the phone. She didn’t tell him.”

“So she was saving it for a surprise. It would have been nice, a trip to the mountains, some good fresh air. She deserved a trip like that. You know anything else?”

“I know Iris was married,” I said.

His eyebrows went up and his shoulders moved. “Married,” he said disdainfully. “Married is when two people live together and have a family, not when you put someone’s ring on your finger because he has a pretty face. Iris’s marriage lasted fifteen minutes. There was nothing to it. It broke my mother’s heart. She was a young girl. She didn’t know any better. It was a marriage like they have in Hollywood.”

“Did she stay friends with him?” I asked.

“Friends? She never saw him again. He went to the war.”

“Did he come back?”

“Maybe he came back. I don’t remember.”

He was starting to look tired, and I felt uneasy about staying. I had told him what I knew, and he had added nothing. I didn’t think that staying longer would change that. The effects of his disease were all over his face and body, and I didn’t want our presence to drain his energy further.

“It was nice of you to come,” he said, taking the initiative. “Talking makes me tired. If you find out anything else, I hope you’ll let me know.”

“I will,” I said, standing.

“Iris was a very independent woman,” he said, his eyes closed. “From the day she was born, she did what she wanted. Usually she got what she wanted, too, but not always. She didn’t get Harry. It’s too bad. Harry was a nice man. She could have had a good life with him, even with her problems.” He closed his eyes.

Marilyn went over and ruffled his hair, then bent and kissed his forehead. I touched his arm and we left the living room, walking up the two steps to the foyer.

“He’s asleep,” Marilyn said to Mrs. Hires.

“Well, it’s no wonder he’s tired. He had a big morning.”

“Did he go to the doctor?”

“Oh no. We didn’t leave the apartment. He spent the morning cleaning up.”

“Cleaning up what?”

“Throwing away junk.” She pulled out the drawer of a secretary that stood in the foyer. It was nearly empty. “He took everything out, looked at it, put it in the garbage, a box, some loose papers, a lot of stuff. It took an hour, I’m sure.”

“Do you have the papers?” Marilyn asked.

“He made me go out to the incinerator and throw it all away.”

“I guess he’s done it then,” Marilyn said. She took a deep breath. “Come on, Chris. Let’s have some lunch.”

We walked down the hallway to the elevator and I stopped and pulled open the door to the incinerator, just on the chance that something was there, an envelope, a slip of paper that had fallen to the floor. But the room was clean except for a cigarette butt. Mrs. Hires had done her job well. The papers Abraham Grodnik wanted destroyed were gone.

22

“This must be very hard for you,” I said after we had been shown to a table in a small Italian restaurant.

“It is.” She looked as if the visit had worn her out. “I think I’ll have a drink for a change. How about you, Chris?”

“A glass of white wine.”

She ordered Scotch for herself and she sipped it before speaking again. “He’s gotten rid of everything,” she said. “How can he not want us to find out who killed his sister?”

“Maybe that’s not what he threw away. Maybe it’s documents that show Iris had a child or went to jail or had a second marriage.”

“Iris didn’t go to jail.” She picked up the menu and looked at it briefly. “I’ll have their pasta and salad,” she said. “They’ll put any sauce on that you ask for.”

“Sounds good.”

We picked different sauces and different salad dressings and sipped our different drinks.

“I offered yesterday to move in with him, but he wouldn’t have it. He said everything was fine just the way it is.”

“He’s a very independent man. You’re like him, Marilyn.”

“I suppose I am. He looked terrible, didn’t he?”

“I haven’t seen him since the seder, and he looked thinner to me. Paler, too, I think.”

“He doesn’t get out much. If he would come and stay with me … Well, this doesn’t get us anywhere. He’s not going to change at his age. He seemed genuinely surprised when you told him Iris had been planning a trip.”

“He was. I’m sure he’d never heard about it before.”

“Did you notice how he shrugged off her marriage? Just tossed it out as though everyone had always known about it? That secret was kept from me my entire life until just now.”

“Maybe it doesn’t seem quite so important to him anymore.”

“But something was important enough to throw in the garbage before we came.”

“Marilyn, maybe we should set this all aside. Your father’s illness is enough for you to worry about.”

“The truth is, thinking about this takes my mind off the other. I rather enjoy this little bit of intrigue. You don’t want to stop, do you?”

“No. I want to find Shirley Finster.”

“Well, Pop’s not giving anything away. Let’s hope Sylvie does.”

We took our time with lunch and then headed up to the Bronx. Sylvie was my last hope, too.

“Marilyn, I wasn’t expecting you,” Sylvie said, a trifle disappointed, I thought.

“I had to go in to see Pop, and Chris said she was coming here, so we just got together in one car. I’ll sit in the bedroom, dear. I’m not going to bother you.”

“Well, take a magazine with you.” Sylvie picked up a couple that were on the sofa and handed them to Marilyn. When Marilyn had left us, we sat at the kitchen table where a pot of tea was waiting and a box of cookies.

“I used to go to the bakery and buy good cookies,” Sylvie said, pouring tea, “but the bakeries closed down a long time ago. Nothing’s the same.”

“These are fine. How are you feeling?”

“So-so.” She sipped her tea and ate a cookie.

“Sylvie, when I was here the first time, you told me Iris had a new boyfriend.”

“Did I?”

“I think you did. Did you ever meet him?”

“I never met anyone after Harry.”

“Are you sure she had a boyfriend?”

“She would say she had to meet someone, she was busy, someone was visiting her. Who else could it be?”

“I don’t know. Is it possible she had a child back when she was married and he found her later and came to see her?”

“Iris? A child? Iris never had a child. I saw Iris all the time. You can’t hide something that big. And she was very small. I would have known.”

“And you don’t think she was mixed up with Mr. Garganus?”

“Never.”

“Sylvie, did you ever own a car?”

“Me? Never. But my son did. Bought it with his own money when he was in college.”

“Was he at the seder when Iris died?”

“Oh, he was gone by then. He didn’t live in New York anymore.”

So much for a quick trip down from the Bronx. “What about Iris’s friend Shirley Finster? Do you think you could find an address for her?”

“Oh, Shirley, yes. After I finish my tea I’ll have a look.”

That was the end of our conversation. Sylvie started talking about other things, her children, her late husband, her friend who lived in Florida. I worried that she would intentionally forget to look for Shirley’s address, and I didn’t know whether to suggest that Marilyn be invited to join us since we had stopped talking about Iris.

But she didn’t forget. When she finished her cup, she said, “Let’s go look,” and I followed her to the back of the apartment. “Marilyn?” she called. “Go into the kitchen and have some tea. Chris and I are looking for something.”

“Finished already?” Marilyn said, opening the door of the bedroom.

“Almost,” Sylvie said. “There’s cookies and tea. You know where the cups are.”

Sylvie went right to her closet and pulled out a box that was on the floor. Dust covered the top and she made a sound of annoyance but didn’t bother to remove it. She took the top off and laid it carefully on the floor without disturbing the dust. The box was square and was marked “Bergdorf Goodman,” and I guessed it had belonged to her sister.

“I have a few of Iris’s things here. Let me see if the address book is there.” She poked around without finding anything, then began to remove mementos of her sister, envelopes of photos, a silk scarf, a small hat with a veil that must have come from the forties or fifties, a leather belt, a framed picture of an unsmiling couple in clothes from early in the century. “My parents,” she said, looking at it for a moment. “I should keep it out, shouldn’t I?” She put it on her dresser and came back to the box.

“This is the book she kept by the telephone,” she said, pulling out a worn binder about four by six inches. “Let’s see if Shirley’s in it.” She flipped to
F
and I saw her run her finger down the page. “I don’t see it here,” she said.

“Maybe it’s under her married name.”

“I don’t remember her married name.”

“Could I look through the book?”

Sylvie shook her head. “I guess it’s not here.”

“She might have put it under the S’s.”

She flipped the pages. “Oh, there’s lots of S’s here. Let’s see. You’re right, Chris. Shirley. It’s the first one on the page.”

I had my pencil handy. “That’s wonderful, Sylvie. Is the last name there?”

“Finster Mandelbaum. Three seven eight Prince Street, Teaneck, New Jersey. And here’s the phone number.” She recited it, then closed the book. “I guess you came to the right place.” She smiled and put the book in a dresser drawer.

“Thank you very much, Sylvie.”

“Don’t say I didn’t help you now.”

“You’ve been a big help. I really appreciate it.”

“Let’s have some more tea.”

* * *

“So it was there all along,” Marilyn said. “And she knew it, didn’t she?”

“She went right to the box. I wonder what changed her mind.”

“Sylvie’s a funny one. She’s always been that way. Sometimes you think you can push her around, make her do whatever you want her to, and other times she’s as stubborn as my father. Maybe she liked you. Maybe she found out Shirley’s been dead for years so it didn’t hurt to give you the information.”

“I’ll call her tonight.” I looked at my watch. “Marilyn, I know this isn’t on our itinerary for today, but it’s almost four and the four-to-twelve security guard at the oil yards comes on soon. Would you mind driving over there? It’s not far and I’d like to talk to him.”

“Why not?”

I directed her and she was surprised at how close the yards were.

“I thought someone in Sylvie’s family might have driven by the oil yards and knew where they were.”

“And killed Iris? I don’t think so. Her son’s a nice person. He was living up in Boston around that time. What would ever make him want to kill Iris?”

“Somebody must have had a reason.”

She parked the car just as the security guards changed. We waited until the early one left, then walked over to the shack. I knocked.

“Come on in.”

The man inside was a handsome Hispanic in his mid-forties, tall with skin that looked lightly tanned and a build that he took care of. “Help you ladies?”

I introduced us and started to tell him why we were there.

“I think I’ll wait outside,” Marilyn said. “The heat’s a little too much for me.”

“I won’t be long,” I promised.

“It is pretty warm, isn’t it? But after my rounds, it’s nice to come back inside. You were saying about the body.”

“Did you find her?”

“Well, I heard the dog barking. I was on my rounds and realized there was a lot of noise. I went over to see what was wrong and I saw the body.”

“What was your first impression?” I asked.

“That she’d been dead for a while, that she’d been beaten. I didn’t have a cellular phone at that time, so I ran back to the shack and called the police. The two kids with the dog were pretty shook up, and I told them to come around and sit in my shack. The cops came pretty quick.”

“You’re here from four to twelve?”

“Yeah.”

“I guess you don’t know if her body was dumped during your tour.”

“Coulda been on mine, coulda been on the next guy’s. I don’t think it happened during the day.”

“Had you ever seen her before?”

“Never. You better believe the cops talked to me for a long time.”

“Is there anyone who worked here who could have known her?”

“You mean like the other security guards? It’s possible, but I don’t think so. One of those guys is dead now. The other retired.”

“Do most of you hold this job for a long time?”

“Most, yeah, but not all. We have guys come on and they just can’t take it. Some of them last a week, some of them last a year. They just find out it’s not for them and they quit.”

“Do any names come back to you, Mr. Castro? People that might have worked here around the time the body was found or just before that?”

“That’s a tough one,” he said. “Going back that far. There was a guy named Mauer or something like that. Stayed maybe six months. I remember him because he was taking courses during the day, and that’s what I do. But he got a degree and left.”

I wrote the name down, mostly because it began with
M
. “Anyone else?”

“Uh, guy named Scott was here for a while, midnight to eight. There was a Gordon, a Giordano. I couldn’t tell you if they were here before or after, but none of them lasted. You have to have a certain temperament to work midnight to eight. It’s not easy.”

“I couldn’t do it myself,” I admitted. “What kind of courses do you take?”

“I took a degree. Now I’m working on my M.B.A. Someday I’ll go into business for myself.” He smiled. He was a handsome man with perfect teeth.

“Thank you for your time.”

“It’s nice to talk to someone. You got any more questions, I’m here Monday through Friday.”

I thanked him again and went outside. Marilyn was standing near the sidewalk.

“Get anything?”

“I don’t think so, but I had to ask. Does the name Mauer mean anything to you?”

“No.”

“Nobody Iris ever knew?”

“Not that she told me about.”

We got in the car. “Well, there’s Shirley Finster Mandelbaum and a return trip to Mrs. Garganus.”

“And then all the leads are dry.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Mauer,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”