The Passover Murder (3 page)

“Near the door to the apartment. She could have grabbed her coat and run out of the house, and no one would know it until she didn’t come back. And don’t bother asking about her purse. I have no idea where she put it, but most of the women left their bags in the foyer, either on the floor or on the little table. I couldn’t even tell you if she carried one with her that night, but she must have. How could she have left home without one?”

“Is there more, Mel?”

“Oh, yes, there’s more. What happened was—and I’m leaving out the misery the whole family lived through for the next forty-eight hours—what happened was that about two days later her body was found in a fenced-in area in a place she would never have gone to either alone or in company. She was wearing her coat, so we know she put it on before she left the apartment. I think one shoe was missing, and of course, her purse wasn’t there. I had gone back to school by the time they found her, so I heard this from my mother, who’s probably a better source than I am. I don’t know what else I can tell you, but now you know why my aunt Sylvie breaks down every Passover and has to be taken away from the table. She was very close to Iris and she’s a very emotional and sentimental person.”

“Mel, you’ve never said whether they found the killer.”

“They didn’t. That’s the long and short of it.”

“Did the purse turn up?”

“I’m not sure, but I think the wallet did. My mother would remember.”

“And your grandfather?”

“He remembers everything. If my grandmother were alive, she would, too.”

“So the case is still open,” I said.

“If open means unsolved, I guess it’s still open. If they ever arrest someone and he admits he killed Aunt Iris, then we’ll know who it is. But that’s not going to happen sixteen years later, is it? He’s probably dead by now.”

“But, Mel, it had to be someone she knew.”

“Because she took her coat and purse?”

“Yes. It means she went outside to meet someone. Don’t you agree?”

Mel smiled. “It’s your suspicious, investigative nature, Chris. Maybe she was hot and decided to run downstairs for a breath of fresh air.”

“Without telling anyone?”

“She wasn’t a child. Would you announce that you were going out if you intended to come right back?”

I thought about it and I wasn’t sure of the answer.

“You girls talking up a storm?” Hal was standing at the entrance to the living room with Jack beside him.

I looked at my watch. “I think it all just ended, Hal. It’s been a wonderful evening.”

Five minutes later we were on our way.

3

A couple of weeks went by, and although I thought about Mel’s story once or twice, I was too busy with other things to be concerned about it. My friend Arnold Gold, a lawyer for whom I work on an as-needed basis, had lots of work for me, and I continued teaching the poetry course that I began the September after I left St. Stephen’s. I saw Mel as I often do during our morning walks, but neither of us mentioned Aunt Iris. It was as though she had gotten it off her chest and was done with it, although I knew it was the sort of event that no one is ever really done with, least of all those close to the victim.

When Jack and I had gotten home the night of the seder, he had been so tired we had just gone to bed, and I had not mentioned Mel’s story. Later, when he was out from under the big case he had been working on, he found he had accumulated a lot of time he could take as vacation and he boldly suggested we go away for a weekend, and I equally boldly said I thought it would be a terrific idea. So we hopped into the car early one morning and drove to Washington, D.C., my first trip there and a memorable one. The weather was mild, the trees were in bloom, and we visited one wonderful place after another and took a lot of pictures.

I felt happy and refreshed when we returned, looking forward to digging in the garden now that spring was really here and the days were longer. On the Wednesday after our return, I put on a heavy sweater, left Jack to make breakfast, and went out the side door and down the driveway to the street. Turning left as I always did, I loped along at a comfortable pace toward the Grosses’ house. Sure enough, their side door opened just as I approached, and Mel jogged down the driveway toward the street.

“How was Washington?” she called, joining me.

“Wonderful. Relaxing, interesting, beautiful. I’ll show you the pictures when I get them developed. It was a great vacation. You should take the family down there.”

“We will. We just want to wait till the kids are big enough so that they won’t demand to be picked up when they get tired. Maybe next year.”

“We’re going to have nice green leaves soon, Mel. I can’t wait.”

“And nice black earth to turn over. I can almost smell it. You working today?”

“I have stuff for Arnold, but I’m doing it at home. I’ll get started as soon as Jack leaves, and I should be done by early afternoon.”

“How about a little kaffeeklatsching at three?”

“Sounds good. Anything up?”

“I just feel like talking.”

“Me, too. I’ll see you at three.”

* * *

I wrapped up my work before one, had some soup for lunch, and drove to the post office to get the material in the mail for Arnold. That gave me a little time to shop at the supermarket and get to Mel’s house by three. I could smell the coffee as I stepped inside, and a coffee cake on her kitchen counter assured me she had been busy and I was in for a treat. Mel does all these things with the ease of a professional. Before I bake, I make lists, check my pantry, and figure out how much time is needed and how much time I have. I keep hoping that her self-assurance will rub off on me, but I don’t think I’ll ever achieve her complete offhandedness when it comes to baking.

“Get your work done?” she asked as we carried things into the family room.

“Everything. Printed, posted, on its way.”

“Arnold’s lucky to have you.”

“And vice versa. For a man with a very cynical view of a large part of life, he’s the kindest, most thoughtful employer in the world.”

“I have some terrible news, Chris,” Mel said.

“Mel, what happened?”

“What you said about my grandfather, it’s true. I asked Mom after the seder, and she had a heart-to-heart with Grandpa. He has a malignancy and they’re not going to treat it, partly because of his age and condition and partly because he put his foot down and said he didn’t want it.”

“I’m so sorry. Your Passover seder will never be the same again.”

“Nothing will ever be the same. I can’t imagine the family without that man at the head. I just heard the news over the weekend and I can’t stop thinking about it. He’s always been there. I keep wondering if we’ll still be a family without him.”

“You will. You have a very solid family. Everyone there that night wanted to be there. They weren’t just doing it to please your grandfather.”

“You’re right. We all get along. There’s some backbiting, but down deep, we all pull together.”

“Your mother must be very upset.”

“She is. She spoke to his doctor yesterday and confirmed everything. She was really hoping—” Mel stopped. “But there isn’t anything they can do. It’s just a matter of time.”

I decided not to utter a platitude. She knew far better than I what a great man her grandfather was, how he would be missed, how strong he had been and how strong he continued to be. Saying it would neither help nor comfort her. “I’m glad I had the chance to meet him,” I said. “Even more, I’m glad I had a chance to sit next to him during the seder.”

“Yes.” She smiled. “So am I. You’re another person who’ll remember him.” She drank some coffee and looked as sad as I knew she felt. “Chris, Mom and I did a lot of talking over the weekend. I told her you and I had discussed Aunt Iris. We want you to do something for us.”

I knew what was coming as though I had written the script myself. “No, Mel,” I said firmly. “I can’t. I would do anything for you, you know that. I will help you nurse your grandfather if you need me. I’ll watch your kids while you go to see him. But I can’t do what you’re about to ask me to do.”

“But you’re the perfect person. You’re not part of the family, but you’ve met us all. You can keep a secret so if someone tells you something, it won’t go any further. And you have the background and the common sense to know where to look and what questions to ask. Grandpa deserves to know what happened to his youngest sister. There isn’t much time left and the police have failed. If there’s an answer, Mom and I think you can find it.”

“Did it ever occur to you that your grandfather might not want to know what happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean suppose it’s something sordid and ugly. Shouldn’t something like that stay unknown?”

“Aunt Iris? Sordid and ugly? It’s not possible.”

“Mel, you’re talking like the seventeen-year-old you were when it happened. You’re in your thirties now. Think about it. She was a single woman in her fifties. She dated, she was a natural flirt—these are all things you told me that night. She wasn’t a mousy little girl who clung to her parents and never left home. She lived by herself, she had a private life she may not have shared with her family. You were a kid, Mel. You had no idea what kind of life she led when she wasn’t being your adoring aunt. You don’t know who her friends were, how she spent her free time, who she spent it with.”

“You’re right. I don’t know.”

“And you don’t want to know. Why don’t you just leave it as it is? Your beloved aunt went out for a breath of fresh air, and someone trying to rob her ended up killing her. That’s probably what the truth is, and if it is, I can’t do anything the police haven’t already done.”

“I never thought of it that way,” Mel said, “about her having a life outside the family, but you’re right. The only time I saw her was in a family setting except maybe if she took me to the zoo when I was little. But I was never part of a group that included her friends. I only met one of them in my whole life, but there must have been others. What you’re suggesting—”

“I’m not suggesting anything,” I said. “I’m saying that as a child, as a teenager, there’s so much about the older members of the family that you didn’t know.” I was speaking from a fairly new experience of my own. “One generation keeps secrets from the next generation. So you see why I can’t investigate and why it’s really better to leave it alone.”

Mel got up and went to a shelf in the bookcase that filled one wall of the family room. She took down an album, opened it, and flipped several pages. “I can’t leave it alone,” she said. “This is a picture of Aunt Iris and me when I graduated from high school.”

There was Mel’s familiar sweet face with her marvelous, encompassing smile. Beside her was a shorter, slim woman with a strong family resemblance. She was dressed beautifully for the occasion in a pale peach suit that could have been linen, a strand of pearls sitting at her throat, an elegant bag in one hand. Her grandniece looked almost tall by comparison in her white academic robe and mortarboard.

“She’s very pretty,” I said. “You look like that side of the family, don’t you?”

“Except I’ll never be as slim as Iris. I think she had magic hormones or got all the good genes. Look at that waist. I wasn’t that thin when I was ten.”

“She’s lovely. What kind of work did she do?”

“She was a secretary, the kind a boss couldn’t live without. She used to get terrific bonuses at the end of the year. She probably spent all of it on my cousins and me.”

“You have such wonderful memories,” I said.

“Chris, I have got to know.” She took the album, looked at the picture, turned a page and looked at some more before closing it. “If she went out for fresh air and was killed by one of those nameless monsters that commit random violence, so be it, but I think there’s another explanation. I think she went out to help someone she knew, maybe someone who lived near my grandparents, and something happened—maybe an argument—and he killed her.”

“Why do you think that?” I asked.

“Because she was a good person and she was generous. Maybe someone at work asked her for a loan, a hundred dollars, and Iris said, ‘Meet me tonight at eleven o’clock in front of my brother’s apartment house and I’ll give it to you.’ I think that’s what happened.”

“Then why did this person kill her?”

“He wanted more,” Mel said with fervor. “A lot more. He looked at how she was dressed and he guessed she had a lot of money. He made demands and she turned him down and he—or she—I don’t know. These things happen. People have tempers and the wrong word sets them off. The other is too easy, that someone walked down the block at the exact moment she went outside, that he robbed her and then killed her. Why did he kill her if he had her money? And how can you explain how he got her body half a dozen miles away from Grandpa’s? How many muggers do you know that come equipped with their own cars?”

“OK, I agree it wasn’t a simple mugging.”

“Chris, once you agree with that, I’ve got you.”

I laughed. “Is all this about tripping me up?”

Mel smiled and relaxed. “You bet, and now I’ve done it and you owe me. Look. Mom and I put our heads together over the weekend and we came up with all the names and addresses you need to begin. Not only that, but my car and I are available to bring people to your doorstep so you don’t have to run around yourself. Am I making it appealing?” she asked in an almost plaintive voice.

It was appealing. If Mel had been a stranger, I would have been sorely tempted. I didn’t believe any more than she did that her great-aunt had gone out for a walk and been robbed and murdered. It was even possible that some member of the family knew things about Iris that he had not admitted to the police for the reason I had brought up a little while ago, that there was a sordid, ugly side to her life. I didn’t want to be the person to uncover such information. I thought Abraham Grodnik, in particular, would die a happier man if he didn’t know the details of his youngest sister’s life and death. But here, on my lap, were sheets of paper with names and addresses on them, Mr. Grodnik’s at the top, Marilyn Margulies’s next, Aunt Sylvie’s near the bottom. There was a list of people who had been at the Passover seder the night Aunt Iris walked out the door, never to be seen again alive. There was even a sketch of the apartment showing how impossible it would have been for anyone to have seen Aunt Iris after she left the table.

“You’ve done a lot of work,” I said.

“Because we care. Nobody cares as much as a family does. All due respect to Jack and the police department, but when they’ve looked in the usual places and talked to the usual suspects, there isn’t much motivation for them to continue. I think someone killed Aunt Iris intentionally or because he became enraged with her, someone who knew her, someone she trusted, someone she made an appointment to see that night. Even after all these years, he shouldn’t get away with it.”

I agreed with everything she said, but I still didn’t want to be the one to ask the difficult questions and come up with the awful answers. And yet it tugged at me, the memory of the snapshot, the beautiful smiling woman who was so good to those who loved her.

“Did she drive?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” Mel looked distressed. “It’s terrible, Chris. You ask these perfectly reasonable, simple questions about a woman I knew from the day I was born, and I can’t answer them. I never saw her drive. When we went somewhere together, we always took the subway or a bus or sometimes a taxi. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t know how to drive. I just don’t know.”

“Where did she live?”

“When I was young, she had an apartment in the Bronx on the Grand Concourse, but a few years before she died, she decided it wasn’t a safe place to live anymore, especially if she came home at night by herself, and she went out a lot to concerts and the theater and lectures. So she moved to Manhattan. It was a small apartment in a good building and it was very nice and she furnished it beautifully. I used to love to go there.”

“Did she leave a will?”

“Yes. My cousins and I inherited her money. My parents put it away for me.”

“Mel, I really think—”

“Don’t say it.” Mel stood and came over to my chair. “Take the papers with you. Think about it. Think about the seder, about someone saying it was time to open the door for Elijah and this eager voice pipes up, ‘I’ll get the door.’ Listen to it in your head. ‘I’ll get the door.’ And then watch this small, lovely woman leave the table, walk out of the room, and never look back.”

I told her I would think about it and I went home.