The Passover Murder (19 page)

“But I’ve come close,” I said.

“Very close. Miss Bennett, I don’t know who killed her. I tell you honestly, I don’t know if my husband knew who the killer was, but I don’t think he did and I didn’t want to know. We had enough to worry about at that time in our own family.” She wheeled herself a little closer. “Our daughter was a troubled child. We gave her everything, we did everything for her. No school had the right friends for her. No doctor was able to activate in her the strength of character I knew she was born with but which she was unable to summon when she needed it She got mixed up with the wrong people, she drank alcohol at an age when I would not have considered it, she used drugs. She was our only child and we were desperate and unable to help her.”

“I’m sorry. I understand how hard it must have been and how hard it must be now to talk about it.”

She glanced at the staircase and turned back to me. Erin was in her room, the good student doing her homework. I hoped.

“She became pregnant about sixteen years ago, a little more. We found out who the boy was—the young man. They were both in their twenties. Take my word for it that he was worthless. I didn’t want her to marry him any more than she wanted to. First she said she wanted the baby, then she said she didn’t, and finally it was too late to make a decision. Nature had made it for her. She was too far along for an abortion. We talked about the baby and never came to a decision. Would she give birth and give it up or would she try to be a mother? I thought having a baby might turn her around, might give her a reason to stay sober and off drugs. If I was naive, I apologize. This was my only child and she was carrying what might be my only grandchild. But I did not want the world to know what was a private, family matter.”

“You wanted her to go away to have the child.”

“Precisely. But we couldn’t let her go alone. I could have gone with her—I was up and about in those days—but there would have been too much explaining to do. I don’t know when we thought of Iris, but the moment her name was mentioned, we knew she was the perfect person. She had no family responsibilities, we had known her for years, and Wilfred trusted her as much as if she had been a sister. And there was another thing,” she said, cocking her head to the side. “She had a wonderful personality. She was a happy, upbeat person. She got along with people, and people liked her. Wilfred asked her one day at work. It was short notice because I wanted Partie, that’s our daughter, out of here before her condition became noticeable. I remember that Iris said she couldn’t leave immediately. Her family was getting together for her holiday, Passover, I think it was. And one of the girls in the office was getting married and she had promised to go to the shower. But after that, she would be ready to go anywhere.”

“So she pretended to quit her job.”

“Yes. She left on a Friday and took a couple of weeks to put her affairs in order. She said there were people she had to see, plants in her apartment she had to give to friends who would care for them, clothes she had to buy. Of course, we paid for everything, you understand.”

“She hadn’t told her family anything about it,” I said. “They didn’t even know she had quit her job. The only person who knew was her oldest friend.”

“I’m sure she would have taken care of all that the following week. I know that she had ordered her passport. It probably came after she died. And Wilfred booked airline tickets for her and Pattie and arranged for a place for them to stay in Switzerland. It was the tickets and the cash that he was giving her the night she was taken away.”

“He gave her cash?”

“He didn’t want a record of a lot of money going into her bank account. Wilfred was very concerned about appearances. If she was audited, how would she explain a large deposit? He gave her enough money to get them comfortably to where they were going and intended to send more along later. She was going to take the money and buy traveler’s checks the next day, except she never did.”

“Do you know how much he gave her?”

“I don’t know for sure, but it was at least a thousand.”

“So she had a thousand dollars and an airline ticket in her hand or her coat pocket.”

“Probably in her purse.”

“We found her purse last week in her brother’s closet. It had been there for sixteen years hidden among boots and umbrellas. She went down to meet your husband without taking it with her.”

“She intended to go back up, I suppose. She told him she would slip out for a few minutes and meet him downstairs.”

“Did he walk or drive, Mrs. Garganus?”

“He walked. He used to enjoy a walk at night. When the weather was fair I would go with him. That night he went alone.”

“What happened when he came home?”

“He was upset. He said Iris had been there, he had given her everything, but he was upset about something. He didn’t want to tell me about it, I suppose to spare me anxiousness, but after Iris’s body was found, he said that as he was leaving her, someone called her name.”

“A man?”

“That was the impression I got. Whoever it was, he had a car nearby and Iris got into it.”

“Did she struggle? Cry out? Argue?”

She looked pained. “It was Wilfred’s feeling that she didn’t want to go, but she didn’t do any of the things you suggested. She got in the car, Wilfred waited for a minute or two, and saw the car drive away.”

“Did he get a license plate number? A description?”

“Miss Bennett, he had no idea at the moment that the man was a killer. It was obviously someone she knew because he knew her name. In fact—wait a moment.” She furrowed her forehead as though the wrinkle would extract the memory. “Wilfred said the man called her I.”

“I? As in Iris?”

“Yes. He said, ‘I? Iris?’ That’s how Wilfred repeated it to me. Anyway, by the time we heard she was dead, it was too late to think about a license plate or a description.”

“He didn’t tell the police any of this, did he?”

“I don’t honestly know what he told the police, but I expect he didn’t discuss any of it. What he went to see her for was our concern, not that of the police. And since he couldn’t furnish any description of the man or the car, why should he mention it?”

I could think of some reasons, but it was sixteen years too late to make an issue of them and I didn’t want to hurt this woman who had not herself been involved. “What happened to the airline tickets?” I asked.

“After her body was found, he canceled the reservations.”

“I see.”

“We made other arrangements for Pattie,” she said, as though I needed to know the end of the story. “And when Erin was born, they came here to live. Eventually we adopted her.”

“It seems to have worked out very well.”

“Yes.” She looked down. She had lost her daughter, but she had done her best. “So far I seem to have succeeded at motherhood much better the second time.”

“I’m sure you succeeded the first time, Mrs. Garganus. A mother can’t control everything in her daughter’s life.”

“Perhaps,” she said with a small smile, “she can try a little harder.”

24

Iris had met two men in the street that night, and she had known them both
. Joseph was right; one of them had given her something. But the Grodnik family was just as correct; the other had taken something from her, eventually her life. Two men, and she had known them both. But had the meeting with both men been planned or had the second one been accidental? There was no notation for any meeting at all the night of the seder.

Perhaps, I thought, walking to my car from the Garganus town house, the arrangement to meet her boss had been made late, possibly just that afternoon over the telephone. And the second meeting, the one that ended her life, could have been a coincidence. It was even possible that the M who had planned to see her the night of the second seder had changed his mind and decided to drop by on the night of the first. And he had known where it would be and that Iris would be there.

I got my car and drove uptown, thinking about that and a few other things. Mrs. Garganus’s mention of the passport had also caught my attention. When Marilyn’s mother found it in the mail at Iris’s apartment, it must have prompted a lot of discussion and questions in the family. Perhaps that was one of the papers Abraham had incinerated yesterday morning. What had they thought? I wondered. That Iris had planned to run away with someone? That she had retired without telling them and was moving to Europe? That she was going to visit the mythical son that apparently existed only in my imagination? Abraham Grodnik would never tell me and I could not ask.

I picked up the FDR Drive and drove up to the George Washington Bridge. I had Shirley Mandelbaum’s address with me and a map of Bergen County. Jack was coming home late tonight, so it didn’t matter when I got home, and if I could corner her, now that I had information from Mrs. Garganus, maybe she would tell me something more. I crossed the bridge and found my way to Teaneck. I had been here once before when I had investigated the first homicide of my amateur career, but I was going to a residential area this time, not a Catholic church. I made a few wrong turns and stopped to ask directions twice and then I was on a quiet street with lawns and trees and shrubs, not unlike the one I live on in Oakwood. Children were playing outside several houses, and three women with strollers stood at the curb talking as their toddlers looked around and chewed wetly on snacks.

The Mandelbaum house was at the far end of the street, one of several older houses built long before the group I was driving through. Here the trees were taller and thicker, the shrubs woven together in a natural fence, the houses stone. I parked at the curb and walked up a slate walk to the front door.

The woman who opened the door could have been a sister to Iris Grodnik. Small and very thin, she had a full head of gray hair and bright eyes that might still be looking for mischief.

“Mrs. Mandelbaum, I’m Chris Bennett. We spoke last night.”

She shook her head. “You didn’t have to make a big trip. Come in. I’ll give you a cup of coffee, but there’s nothing else I can tell you.”

“I spoke to Mrs. Garganus today, just a little while ago. She told me about the trip Iris was going to make.”

“She told you?”

“All of it.” I took my coat off and she hung it in a closet. “About how her daughter was pregnant.”

“I can’t believe she told you. Can I get you some coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

“Then let’s sit in the living room. Harold’s in the family room watching a thirty-year-old baseball game on cable.” She smiled. “What is it with men? It happened thirty years ago and he sits and agonizes like it’s happening now.”

I couldn’t help but like her. I sat in a chair in a living room that looked as though it didn’t get much use. Everything was blue and puffy and had the undisturbed quality of a museum. Shirley sat in a hard chair, explaining that if she took the sofa, she’d never get out of it.

“Shirley?” a man’s voice called. “Someone come in?” He appeared suddenly, an old man in corduroy pants and a flannel shirt.

“Go back to your game, Harold. This is the lady I told you about, who’s trying to find out who killed my friend Iris. We’ll talk a little and then I’ll get your dinner. Go or you’ll miss your ball game.”

He greeted me and left. “Have you lived here long?” I asked.

“Almost thirty years. Harold was a widower with two kids. I was very lucky.”

I was pretty sure they were even luckier. “No one even referred to you by your married name.”

“No, I guess I’m Shirley Finster forever for the Grodniks.”

“And you were Shirley Finster when you talked to the police.”

“You know that, too.”

“I’ve talked to the detective.”

“There was nothing I could tell him. Why should I have a policeman on my doorstep? Chris, what can I tell you that could help you find Iris’s killer?”

“I think you’re the one who knows that.”

“She was killed by a man who probably robbed her. How could I know who he was?”

“Because he knew her. The night Iris left the seder, Mr. Garganus met her outside her brother’s house to give her money and the plane tickets to Europe. Mrs. Garganus told me this afternoon that her husband heard the other man call Iris by name.”

“Oh.” Her lively little face clouded. “You’re not making this up?”

“No. Mr. Garganus should have told the police what he saw and heard, but he didn’t want to have to talk about why he was meeting Iris that night. So he never told them he was there and that he saw Iris get into a car.”

“My God. It was someone with a car?”

“Someone with a car and he knew her. Do you think it was Harry Schiff?”

“Harry? Never. Harry was crazy about her. He would never have hurt her.”

“Was it a new boyfriend then? Someone who was very jealous and didn’t want her going away to Europe for six or seven months?”

“Honey, if there was a new boyfriend, I never heard about him.”

“Could it have been Martin Handleman, her ex-husband?” I asked, running out of possibilities.

“What, from 1939, that idiot she married? That’s ridiculous. She never saw him again.”

“Could it have been a son that she had by Handle-man? A son who came back to her and wanted money from her?”

She shook her head, her face tight, her forehead creased. “She had no son. I’m telling you, she had no children.”

I could see that something was now bothering her. It was as though with each suspect that she crossed off my list, we came closer to someone she did not want to name. “You know who it is, don’t you?” I said.

“You’re sure he called her name?”

“It’s what Mr. Garganus told his wife.”

“My God, I can’t believe it.”

“He called her I, Mrs. Mandelbaum. He said, ‘I? Iris?’ ” I imitated Mrs. Garganus’s imitation.

Shirley paled.

“Who was this man?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t have the right. Abe is still alive?”

“He’s dying, but he’s still alive.”

“Go home, honey. Forget it. Pretend it never happened.”

I got up, my head almost throbbing. There was something I had seen or heard and it hadn’t registered. Someone had said something to me, but what? There were so many people who had talked to me, so many bits of information. My head cleared and I saw that I was standing opposite Shirley, who was watching me as though I might do something violent or at least discourteous. But I was just searching, back through the people and the places and the memories.

A loud shout went up from the family room. “Atta boy,” Shirley’s husband roared. “You can do it. All the way. They can’t stop you.”

She smiled and I thought of her husband cheering on a ballplayer whose bat had connected thirty years ago. And then I had it.

“What happened?” Shirley said, seeing the change in my face.

“I know who it was. There’s something I have to check.”

“Wait a minute. You don’t have any idea—”

“But I do. He worked at the oil yards. Joseph was right.”

“You’ve got me all confused.”

“I’ll call you, Mrs. Mandelbaum. Thank you. You’ve been a great help.”

“Whatever you do,” she said, taking my coat out of the closet, “don’t tell them I told you.”

The answering machine was flashing, but I didn’t want to take the time to listen to messages. I called Marilyn.

“Chris,” she said, “I’ve been thinking about you all day. You must have something to tell me.”

“I do. I learned a lot this afternoon. Mrs. Garganus finally told me the whole story. Her husband is the person Iris went downstairs to see. He gave her something—I’ll tell you about it another time—and he saw her get into a car and drive away with a man.”

“And he never told the police?”

“She went willingly. It was someone she knew, someone who called her name, someone who called her
I
.”

“I
for Iris?”

“Yes. Do you know anyone who did that?”

“Not offhand. Mel said something like that when she was little,
I
or Ice, but I don’t remember any of the adults saying it.”

“Do you know where Iris was intending to go to the second seder?”

“Good question. Sixteen years ago I might have known. Usually my parents made the first one and they went somewhere else for the second. Maybe my brother that year. I think we were going to my in-laws’.”

“Your brother Dave?”

“Yes. He’s the oldest.”

“What’s his last name, Marilyn?”

“Gordon. Both my brothers changed their names.”

My heart was absolutely thumping. I had met her youngest brother, Sandy, a few months ago and completely forgotten that his name was Gordon. “When you were outside the shack at the oil yards, the guard told me that a man named Gordon had worked there for a short time.”

“Chris, neither of my brothers killed my Aunt Iris. Dave was at the seder and Sandy was with his wife’s family. If Sandy hadn’t been there, you can be sure his wife would have made a stink about it. She made a stink about everything else.”

I knew that she and Sandy had eventually divorced. “I’m going to call the security guard and see if he remembers the first name of the Gordon who worked there.”

“You’d better get back to me,” Marilyn said, her voice without its usual firmness.

“I will.”

I dialed the number in Manhattan, but there was no answer. A security guard has to make his rounds, I thought, and maybe this was one of those times. I cut a slice from the roast beef in the refrigerator, wrapped it in foil, and put it in the oven to heat. Then I opened a can of mixed vegetables, my way of seeing that I got a little of everything, and warmed it on the stove. A half grapefruit started me off and I read the morning paper while I ate it. Half an hour later, dishes done, I dialed Juan Castro once again.

“Security, Castro.”

“Mr. Castro, this is Chris Bennett. We talked yesterday.”

“Oh sure, about the woman’s body.”

“You said some people had worked for short periods of time as security guards.”

“Right. Giordano was one of them.”

“And there was a Gordon.”

“Yeah, there was a Gordon. It was a long time ago.”

“Do you remember about how old a man he was?”

“Not young. He could’ve been sixty.” That was almost Iris’s age.

“Do you remember anything about him?”

“A little. He’d been around, traveled. Said he’d come back to New York because he knew people here. He’d lived here when he was young. You know, it’s not like an office here. You don’t get to talk to a guy very much because he walks in as you’re walking out. It’s just a few words now and then. I was interested because he said he’d traveled. It’s something I’d like to do myself.”

“Do you remember his first name?”

“Oh boy.” There was silence. “Uh, something like Morrow? Uh, Maurice? It’s hard to remember. It’s been a long time.”

“Morrow or Maurice,” I repeated.

“Something like that. Morris maybe. Yeah, I think that’s it. Morris Gordon. The old brain’s still working. Maybe I’ll go for a Ph.D.”

“I bet you’ll get it, Mr. Castro. I can’t thank you enough.”

I put the phone down and looked at the name I had written on the back of an envelope. Morris Gordon. There wasn’t any Morris Gordon that Marilyn knew about, so that had to mean there was one that she didn’t know about. My eye fell on the blinking answering machine and I pushed the Play button.

“Hiya, Chrissie, this is Arnold. Got some very juicy news for you. Give me a call when you come in.”

Arnold’s paralegal had been going to dig up some marriage and birth certificates. I dialed his number at work and, not surprisingly, found that no one was there. I checked my book and found his home phone number.

Harriet answered. “Good timing,” she said. “Himself just walked through the door bitching about something. I couldn’t tell if it was the subway system or the legal system.”

“It’s both,” Arnold’s voice said. “Get my message?”

“Got a lot more than that, Arnold. Tell me what you know.”

“Found her marriage license and the address Martin Handleman lived at when he married her, but the building’s been razed and I don’t have anything else on him. But we looked up your Iris Grodnik’s birth certificate. Did you know she was part of a multiple birth?”

“She had a twin?”

“Looks like it. We called the hospital, where they keep all those little details forever. Morris and Iris Grodnik were born of the same mother on the date you gave us.”

“It had to be a brother,” I said. “Arnold, you’re wonderful.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far. Thank the City of New York for keeping good records. Is he your killer?”

“I think so. I don’t even know if he’s still alive, but I’ll pass all this along to the detective.”

“If he killed, there may be a file on him.”

“I doubt he got into much criminal type trouble. He once worked as a security guard at the oil yards where the body was found. They would have checked up on him.”

“Not the way you think. Till recently they’ve been pretty lax on background. Half the crimes in New York are committed by security guards,” Arnold said with typical exaggeration. “But you made a connection the cops didn’t. Make sure you point out their failings when you call your detective.”