Hill of Secrets: An Israeli Jewish mystery novel (14 page)

Although Meir had returned to work at the bank about two-and-a-half years earlier, none of the staff could tell us any personal information about Meir. He didn't connect with anyone or share his personal life. The worker whose bonus was taken from him told us that, despite his anger, he felt a little sorry for Meir because he seemed like a miserable, lonely guy. When they worked together on a case, he remembered that Hanni was at the end of her pregnancy and didn't stop bossing Meir around.

"I didn't know him well enough," he told us, "so I wasn't comfortable saying anything about it or asking him, but I really never saw a guy whose wife drove him crazy like that. Pregnant or not—and my wife was pregnant too—she never drove me insane like she did him."

Meir's parents and sisters finished the
Shiva
that morning. At their request, I came to their house in the afternoon. Natan and Sarah Danilowitz had lived for the past four years in a private ground floor apartment in Kfar Ganim C neighborhood in Petach Tikva. I asked Shira about it before I arrived and she told me it was the most prestigious neighborhood in Petach Tikva, mainly for the religious public.

Even if the bank manager and Hanni's parents hadn't told me anything, I could have guessed that this was a family with money in its pockets. On the outside, the house looked like the rest of the houses on the street. The neighborhood was new and the style of construction was more or less uniform, but once you entered the house, the visitor had no doubt that a considerable fortune was invested in each and every corner of it. A reserved sort of wealth, not ostentatious.

The obituary notice about the death of their son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren was still on the front door. The house itself was deserted. There was no sign of the masses of people who usually visit grieving homes. Natan Danilowitz opened the door and I entered the massive living room that was floored with giant tiles. (My younger sister Ayala is a design buff and she once explained to me that the larger the tile, the more expensive it is.) Beige hues clad sofas and antique wood furniture.

On the walls and the display cabinets were many pieces of art and Judaica. I couldn't evaluate it, but I got the sense that each item was meticulously selected and cost a considerable sum. Next to the living room was a giant dining area, a heavy wooden table and a dozen matching chairs. By the dining area was a spacious, lit, fully-equipped kitchen, the dream of every homemaker. Ayala would sell her soul to the devil to live in a house like this. I could only imagine the amount of energy that would need to be invested in cleaning such a fort, although I guessed the family had a full time housekeeper.

I stood in the middle of the living room and Natan went to the kitchen to get me a glass of water. Sarah Danilowitz entered the living room from the patio door which led to a well-kept garden.

"Hello." She approached me and warmly shook my hand.

I introduced myself, but she knew who I was. Natan returned with a cool glass of water, and I downed it quickly.

I looked at Natan and Sarah Danilowitz and my heart sank. They had to take most of the fire and criticism. They bore and raised a despicable killer. I didn't know them, but they seemed like good people to me. Meir looked exactly like his father. His mother, a small, frail woman with a warm gaze, offered to sit in the living room or the garden.

"I have to sit with each of you individually," I explained and they nodded their understanding. "I thought Meir's sisters would be here too. I'd love to talk to them as well."

"They went back home," Sarah explained. "They’d been gone almost a week."

Sarah led me upstairs to the second floor. On the second floor were a number of bedrooms. In the large space connecting the rooms was a lounge with a TV and dozens of toys scattered every which way. This was, apparently, where the couple's grandchildren played. I tried to imagine little Ariel and Galit playing with their
cousins and grandparents. Sarah opened one of the doors and we entered a study full of books. Another door in the room led to a pleasant sun deck overlooking the garden and attached to Sarah and Natan's bedroom.

Sarah sat on one of the two chairs by the desk and I sat on the other chair. She crossed her legs and gently placed her hands in her lap. Her gaze was slightly lowered and her eyes were sad.

She stated her details for the protocol almost in a whisper. I asked her to state them again so there would be no problem with the recording and she repeated them in a quivering voice.

"Tell me a little bit about Meir - what kind of child was he?"

"Meir was our little boy. He was born following two girls, Meirav and Michal, who cared for him like he was their little boy. In fact he had three mothers, his two sisters and me." She broke down in tears and wiped her nose with a tissue from a pack she prepared beforehand.

"Do you want a moment to calm down? I can start with Natan," I offered.

"It's okay," she wiped her nose again, "I can go on. Meir was always a good boy. He was a beautiful boy, very popular, very well-liked. I'm afraid that we spoiled him a little bit, after all, he was an only boy after two sisters who were quite a few years older than him."

"How many?" I stopped her.

"Meirav was born in 1966 and Michal in 1968. They were eight and six years older. Both of them married very young and from about the age of fifteen he was actually the only child in our house, until he got married eleven years later."

"He lived with you until he got married?" I asked in amazement. Meir was twenty-six years old on his wedding day.

"In our circles it isn't so rare. And back then we were living in a private house and had a separate annex for him. I know it sounds like he was spoiled, and I guess he got much more than other boys, but we had it, so we gave it to him. He never took what we gave him for granted. He was always grateful and as long as he was living in our house, he helped us and followed the rules of our household. He never talked back rudely, not to us and not to his teachers, never rebelled or even tried to rebel. Really a good kid."

"What kind of student was he?"

"Very studious, though I have to admit it wasn't easy for him. He had decent grades, but he had to work very hard for them."

"Tell me about how he met Hanni."

"He met Hanni when he was a guide in Bnei Akivah. He led a group at the Malabes branch and met her for the first time at a Bnei Akivah summer camp. I remember, he returned from the camp completely enamored."

"He told you about it?" I was astonished.

"Of course not," she smiled, "but a mother knows."

"You knew he’d fallen in love with Hanni?"

"I didn't know with whom, but I saw that he fell in love at camp… I didn't have the details. Years later, they met again at university and started going out, and then he reminded me of that summer. He thought it was fate that reunited them. When they met again in university, Meir was in his first year and Hanni had graduated, although she was three years younger than him—she’d skipped a grade and only did one year of service. Meir was an officer in the army and served an extra year. After the army, he went abroad for a little while and improved his grades and took the psychometric test."

"What did you think of Hanni when Meir brought her home?"

"We thought she was a good girl. A little bit uptight, but a quality girl with a head on her shoulders. She was - still is - was," Sarah was flustered, "a very beautiful girl."

"What do you mean, uptight?"

"Well, it was manifested in a lot of things, but what I remember from when they started dating is that from a very early stage she pressed him to get married. I didn't understand why she was in a rush, Meir had only begun his studies and she was barely twenty-two years old."

"You said your daughters also married young."

"Even younger. Meirav at twenty-two and Michal at twenty-one. But we never pushed them to get married so young, it just turned out that way."

"Isn't it common in your circles to marry at a young age?"

"Religious Zionists are now much more modern than they used to be. They do marry younger than secular Jews, but we don't run to get married at twenty."

"So, eventually, Meir gave in?"

"There was nothing to give in to. He knew, and also told her pretty quickly, that he wanted to marry her, but he didn't think they needed to rush, especially in light of the fact that he was still studying and she was so young."

"What broke him in the end?"

"After ten months together, she left him, and our boy was just devastated. He really wanted her, but he also wanted to be financially independent, or at least have a degree, before they get married. He didn't understand the rush. He was broken down like that for a month until my husband and I couldn't take it anymore and we promised him to support them financially, so they could get married. You need to understand, we had no problem supporting them financially, it was Meir who didn't want us to, he really wanted to be independent, maybe to prove to all of us that he wasn't everybody's little boy."

"Did you support his sisters?"

"Of course; my husband and I were blessed—thank God—with means. My husband owns a pretty successful company for importing raw materials for the food industry, and I inherited quite a bit of money and a number of apartments from my parents. Let's just say, we can fully support our three children, but it was always important to us that they know the value of money, so we didn't buy an apartment for any of them. We gave each of them half of the apartment's value.

Meirav, my eldest, was lucky, and the other side of the family gave them a similar amount. Michal and Meir were a little less lucky and they had to take out mortgages. But apart from the help in purchasing an apartment, we helped each of our children immediately after the wedding, each of them according to their needs."

"How did you and Hanni get along?"

"We didn't mesh well." She looked down.

"May I ask why?"

"Even before Meir and Hanni got married, Hanni was very angry at us. When Meir begged her to return to him and they decided to get married, it was very important to Hanni to have a big, lavish wedding. I know in your circles, that is, in the secular world," I didn't correct her mistake; she continued, "There are many lavish weddings, but in our sector the weddings are a bit more modest.

“I didn't think for a second to hold my son's wedding at a soup kitchen, but since we knew we'd have to support the young couple, we didn't think it was appropriate to hold an outlandish wedding. Meirav's wedding was certainly grand, but like I said, her husband's parents were of similar means to us. Michal had a much more modest wedding and we thought that's what Meir and Hanni's wedding was going to be like as well. We also thought, we didn't have the same means as Hanni's parents and we didn't want to burden them."

"And what actually happened?"

"Hanni wanted a wedding at the Tel-Aviv Hilton, just like the one we held for Meirav. We didn't have to convince her to forget it—her father did the job. Shimon Levin is a successful engineer in Israel Aerospace Industries, but he doesn't have the means to pay for a wedding at the Hilton. If you ask me, both Hanni and her mother had no problem with us paying for the entire wedding ourselves, but Shimon had a little more self-respect, so Hanni and Meir had to settle for the Dan Panorama Hotel, which was also, in my opinion, a little out of Shimon and Aviva's scope.

“To this day, they don't know that we actually paid more than they did, even though they had more cash. We didn't want to embarrass them and we noticed the costs were too high for them. In short, although it was a very beautiful and detailed wedding, Hanni was bitter towards me from the beginning because she didn't have a big, lavish wedding like the one we organized for Meirav."

"And she bore that grudge against you all those years?"

"I'm sure she didn't let it go, but over the years she found other reasons to get mad at me and feel deprived. Michal—our second daughter—dher husband’s an accountant. He worked in a medium-sized accounting firm and after a few years he went to work at my husband's company as an accountant.

“The accountant before him was older and retired, and David took his place. This was about five years before Meir and Hanni got married, six years before Meir even finished his economics degree. David may not be our son, but he's married to our daughter. Hanni thought David should give his spot to Meir. She didn’t think it was fair that David gets his salary from the family business. She ignored the support we gave them over the years with no return and meddled quite a bit with how high David's salary is."

"She asked you about her brother-in-law's salary?" I asked in amazement.

"Not outright, but she really involved herself with the matter. When Meir finished his studies, she asked at one of the family gatherings on Shabbat if he intended to go back to work at the accounting firm he used to work in. We were all a bit stunned by the question and Hanni explained without thinking twice that she thought David was a sort of stand in until Meir graduated."

"Was there any basis for her to think that?"

"To be fair, there was some basis to it. Giora, our former accountant, surprised us and retired early. David wasn't depending on this job, but he's great at it, and after all, he's close family. Of course we wouldn't push Meir into such an important position in the company a minute after he finished school. I was glad when Meir found a nice job at the bank pretty quickly after this and Hanni calmed down. Her comments to David completely disappeared when Meir got a job as a finance manager for that start-up, Fiber-something."

"Fiberlight." I refreshed her memory.

"Yes, that’s it. When Meir worked at Fiberlight, we had some peace about this issue, but two-and-a-half years later, when Fiberlight shut down, Hanni involved herself again with the matter. I assume she pestered Meir about it. He didn't tell me everything she said to him, but he asked me once how much David earns. I asked him why he was asking and he made an excuse about wanting to know how much to ask for when he went to job interviews.