The Passover Murder (18 page)

23

Hoping Shirley was still at the same number, I dialed it and a man answered. “May I speak to Mrs. Mandelbaum?” I said.

“Who is this?”

“Christine Bennett.”

“Are you selling something?”

It was that time of night, not long after the dinner hour, and I didn’t blame him for asking. “No I’m not. It’s a personal call.”

“Just a minute.”

The sounds were not intelligible, but a moment later a thin female voice said, “Hello?”

“Mrs. Mandelbaum, my name is Christine Bennett.”

“Could you speak up, please? I don’t hear too well.”

I repeated my name louder. “Iris Grodnik’s niece, Marilyn, asked me to look into her murder.”

“Oh, you’re the one Sylvie said would be calling.”

So Sylvie had gotten there first. “Sylvie gave me your name this afternoon. I wonder if I could come over and talk to you.”

“It would be a wasted trip. I don’t know what I could tell you. Iris was my best friend since kindergarten. I told the police everything I knew, which was nothing. They said she was downstairs in the street the night of the seder and someone came along and took her away. They never found him.”

“Mrs. Mandelbaum, did Iris know anyone whose name was Mauer?”

“Bauer?” she said.

“No, Mauer.” I spelled it for her.

“She never told me. But she had friends at work, and there were people she knew in the building she lived in.”

“Did she talk to you about her boss?”

“Mr. Garganus? She loved him.”

“Do you mean he was her boyfriend?”

“Oh no.” She laughed a tinkly little laugh. “I mean she thought he was a wonderful man to work for.”

“Did you know Iris quit her job about a week before she was killed?”

There was a silence. I had hit her with a tough question. I clung to the phone, hoping she would say something new, something I hadn’t heard from anyone else. “She didn’t really quit,” she said hesitantly. “She expected to go back.”

I felt a rush of success. “But she told you she was leaving GAR for a while.”

“She told me. It was a little sudden. She was going away somewhere. She was—she was doing a favor for someone.”

“Do you know for whom? Or where she was going?”

“Maybe she was going to Europe. When she told me, it wasn’t settled yet.”

“Do you know who she was doing the favor for?”

“I couldn’t tell you, Miss—”

“Chris. Chris Bennett. Mrs. Mandelbaum, someone murdered your best friend. I want to bring him to justice.”

“They didn’t kill her,” she said mysteriously. “They were good people. Iris told me things she didn’t tell anyone else because we were such good friends and she trusted me to keep a secret. It isn’t right for me to say what it was. It had nothing to do with her, believe me. It was just a favor she was doing.”

“Mrs. Mandelbaum, do you have a pencil? I’d like to give you my phone number.”

“There’s nothing more I can tell you. It won’t bring Iris back and it could hurt somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

“Please write it down,” I said. I dictated the number, then said my name again.

“OK,” she said lightly. “It’s right here where I’ll see it. Maybe I’ll think of something.”

“Thank you.” It wasn’t a matter of thinking of something; it was deciding to tell me. I had been right about her. She knew everything.

Eileen called before Jack came home. “Feeling any better?” I asked.

“I do. I’ve heard from Taffy. I think we have to talk, and we can’t do this over the phone.”

“I agree. Being in the same room would be better. If you think you can manage it.”

“I think we can. Could we use your living room?”

I took a breath before answering. “Sure. Do you want me here or should I get in my car and disappear?”

“I’d like you there, Chris. Will you do it?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll get back to you and we’ll make an appointment. I know you teach on Tuesday so we’ll make it some other day. I don’t want my brother around. He goes ballistic when I mention Taffy.”

“I know what you mean. It’s because he has your best interests at heart.”

“Whatever. We’ll make it a weekday.”

I told her I would be available.

I made a quick call before I left for the college on Tuesday morning. Cathy Holloway came on the line and I told her who I was.

“Yes, Chris. How are you? Have you found out who killed Iris?”

“Not yet, but I’ve dug up a lot of old information. I wanted to ask you about the Garganuses’ son.”

“They had a son?” she said. “Are you sure?”

“Well, I thought they did. You think they didn’t?”

“They had a daughter. I never heard about a son.”

“I see.”

“It was very tragic. They tried to hush it up, but I’m pretty sure she committed suicide. She was a girl with a lot of problems. Some of the older people here had heard gossip.”

“Would you share it with me?”

“Just that when she was younger she was troubled, alcohol, drugs, the usual.”

I swallowed hard at her characterization of the daughter’s troubles. “Do you remember when she died?”

“Five or six years ago. It could be more. I think Mr. Garganus died about a year later. It really broke him up. He tried very hard with her. Both of them did.”

“Was she their only child?”

“I never heard of any other. Unless there’s a son I don’t know about.”

“I may be wrong on that, Cathy. But thanks very much. You’ve got me thinking along a new line, and that may be for the best.” I looked at my watch, said a quick good-bye, and ran off to teach my class.

    We were talking about the English Romantic poets that morning, and I always enjoyed the reactions of my female students to some of the sentiments that group of poets expressed. Shelley’s frequent weeping did not go over well with most classes, but
Ozymandias
held its own. Keats, my personal favorite, fared better, especially when they realized how young he was when he died, an age that most of them would achieve in a few years and I had left behind. It’s always a pleasure when they discover a wonderful line whose origin was unknown until they opened their book and found it there. “Beauty is truth,” “the alien corn,” “Here lies one whose name was writ in water,” and my favorite, “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.” When we read and discuss some of these poems, I see a lot of smiles on otherwise sullen or neutral faces, which accounts for a lot of my joy in teaching this course.

I had a satisfying lunch in the cafeteria, sampling the products of the food service department. While they sometimes forgot to salt the soup, an easily remedied oversight, their food was always well prepared and interesting, and I treated myself to a wedge of warm blueberry pie for dessert.

The poems were still ringing in my ear as I drove to New York. I let my mind wander beyond the words and the sentiments, resting for a while on Eileen and Taffy and Taffy’s sister, on Shirley Finster Mandelbaum, who may have given me the tiny opening I needed to push forward. There was still a lot that was missing, a lot I couldn’t explain, and maybe there was no Grodnik family secret beyond Iris’s long-ago marriage, and if they were holding anything else back, it might have nothing whatever to do with the killing of Iris.

I got into New York before the time I estimated school would be out and found a place across the street from the Garganus home to wait. It’s hard to be unobtrusive on a street that has few passersby and I find it easier to walk than to stand, so I kept moving around, standing only when motion sickness threatened. I had no idea whether Erin would come home in a taxi, a limousine, a car, or on foot. Was her grandmother nervous enough about her welfare to forbid her to walk? Of course, I didn’t know what school she was coming from, and although there were some good private schools in the area, there were others a great enough distance away that she would need some kind of transportation.

But although plenty of cars went down the street, none stopped in front of the Garganus house, and when I was starting to think that Erin had stayed after school for sports or some other activity, she drifted down the block like a happy waif, her books in a canvas backpack that was probably the height of style but looked a little ratty to me. She walked slowly, half dreaming, and had I been closer, I would not have been surprised to hear her singing.

I crossed the street and walked towards her, but she seemed oblivious until we nearly collided.

“Hi, Erin,” I said, “I’m Chris Bennett. I talked to you and your grandmother last week.”

“Oh, hi. I remember. It was the day I was home sick.”

“That’s right. You just coming home from school?”

“Uh-huh. It’s a nice day, isn’t it?”

“Beautiful. How old are you, Erin?”

“Fifteen and a half. You live around here?”

“No. I just needed to ask your grandmother something. Can I come in with you?”

“Sure. She should be home. If not, she’ll be back soon.” We had reached the front door with its gleaming brass trim and she rang the bell.

The door was opened by a maid in uniform who smiled at Erin and looked questioningly at me.

“Hi, Elena. Grandma home?”

“She’s upstairs.”

“This is Chris. She has to see Gram. It’s OK.”

Elena’s face showed that she didn’t agree with my acceptability, but I scooted in and followed Erin up the beautiful stairs to the beautiful living room.

“Hi, Gram,” Erin said, dashing lightly across the rug to where her grandmother sat reading. They kissed and Erin said, “Chris is here. She wants to talk to you again. I’m gonna do my homework so I can go to Jennifer’s tonight and work on the language project.”

Mrs. Garganus gave her a smile and then looked at me sourly. “We have nothing to talk about, Miss Bennett,” she said when Erin had bounded up the stairs.

“I think we do. I think your husband saw Iris Grodnik the night she died.”

“Miss Bennett, this is absurd. Miss Grodnik no longer worked for GAR. What would my husband need to talk to her about?”

“You tell me.”

“There is nothing to tell you because they had nothing to talk about.” Her pretty face was grim and she touched a gold choker at her neck as though to reassure herself that it was still there.

“Erin’s about fifteen and a half, isn’t she?” I said.

Her face came alive. “What business is that of yours?”

“I think Erin and Iris Grodnik had a connection.”

“That’s ridiculous. Erin was born after Iris died. There is no connection.”

“How does Erin come to have the name Garganus?”

“Because she’s—Miss Bennett, this is not your business. If you don’t leave, I’ll call the police and have you removed.”

“If you don’t tell me the connection, if you don’t tell me what your husband was doing on East Seventy-first Street the night that Iris disappeared, I will tell Detective Harris White what my suspicions are and he will reopen the investigation and center it on your husband.”

She touched the gold again. I noticed she hadn’t moved toward the bell that would summon the maid or the telephone that lay on a table many feet from her wheelchair. The last thing she wanted was the police, whether she called them or I did.

“You seem to have come to several erroneous conclusions,” she said with forced composure.

“Iris was doing your husband a favor,” I said. “She was doing both of you a favor. They met that night so that he could give her something. What was it, Mrs. Garganus, money? Was it the key to an apartment where she would stay with someone?”

She looked a little paler. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. This is worse than conjecture; this is pure malicious fantasy.”

“Did they argue about the amount? Did he drag her into his car and drive her somewhere? Was he alone in the car or did he have a driver who witnessed the whole thing?”

“This is nonsense, this is slander, and I don’t have to listen to it.” But she made no move. She sat perfectly still.

“Tell me what happened that night.”

“I will not.”

“But you know, don’t you?”

“My husband was here with me. We heard about Iris’s death after they found her body. That’s all I know.”

“What about your daughter?” I hadn’t wanted to say it. The thought of her daughter must have been so painful that I had hoped not to have to bring the matter up. If she wanted to talk about it, it was her option.

“What about my daughter?” she said in a low, quivering voice.

“She was pregnant.”

“Get out of here.”

It had been Taffy’s story to Eileen that had eventually made me think about it. Erin Garganus had been born after Iris died, enough afterward that his might have been the person chosen by the family to stay with their pregnant daughter. Perhaps she was suicidal even then, perhaps she wanted an abortion and the Garganuses could not condone it. But they could trust Iris. Iris could take their daughter to Europe, to Switzerland or wherever the parents wanted her to go, and she could stay with her till she gave birth. Then she could come back and resume her job, having taken a wonderful midlife sabbatical. She could talk to the old gossips in the office about the beauty of Switzerland, the charm of Paris, the rest and relaxation in Spain. But something had gone wrong the night of the seder, and instead of going to Europe, she had ended up dead among rusting trucks in the oil yards.

“Tell me, Mrs. Garganus. I will do everything I can to protect your privacy—and Erin’s—and to protect what’s dear to you.”

“I have nothing to say.”

“The Grodnik family wants to know what happened to their sister. Her oldest brother is dying now. Her sister cries every year at the Passover seder. Please tell me what you know.”

“My husband didn’t harm her.”

“Then what was he doing there that night?” I was sure now that Wilfred Garganus had been the person Iris had gone downstairs to meet. I hadn’t been sure when I walked inside this house with Erin, but I was now. Now I was certain that my vague suspicions were founded in truth. If I didn’t know exactly what happened, I was close enough that Mrs. Garganus was afraid that I knew as much as she did.

“Take your coat off and sit down. I can’t bear having you stand there.” She turned her chair to face the sofa I sat on. “I have never told anyone what I know. The police interviewed my husband after they found Iris’s body, and he told them the truth, or as much of it as he felt was necessary. He didn’t know what happened to her, and since he wasn’t involved, he felt it wasn’t necessary to discuss family matters that had nothing to do with her murder.”