The Bar Mitzvah Murder (9 page)

“Can you put your finger on the problems?” I asked. “Is it possible Debby was having a fling?”

“Interesting question.” Hal leaned back and considered it. “Gabe did a fair amount of traveling, it's true. That's often when these things happen. But again, I have to say there was no family gossip.”

“Debby wouldn't have leaked it to your family,” I reminded him. “It would have been her family that heard about it.”

“Right. I forget there are two families involved in a marriage, his and hers. OK, it could have happened that way. But I don't know anything about that.” There was a certain sound of appeasing me in his voice.

“Just trying to look everywhere,” I said. “Getting back to Marnie for a minute. Wives and ex-wives always seem to be the best suspects in a case like this.”

Hal laughed. “More like husbands and ex-husbands, but I suppose I can make the leap. You want to know if Marnie's capable of doing what happened to Gabe? I can't for the life of me think why she'd want to. If they were having problems, I didn't hear about them. I think Gabe was crazy about her. She had some kind of job in public relations when they met, but she gave it up when they got married. She wanted to travel with Gabe; she wanted to be there for him. Did you see her last week?”

“I did. Mel and I talked to her. She seemed devastated.”

“She
was
devastated. I know I've gotten rid of your prime suspects here, but that's the truth. Marnie was as crazy about him as he was about her. They were a great couple. They were planning—”

“Hal? Chris?”

I looked up and saw Mel coming across the lobby, her children in her wake. “Hi, Sari. Hi, Noah. How are you doing? Having a good time in Israel?”

They started talking at once, but Mel shushed them.

“Lenny got a call from Marnie late last night. She's been home for several days, but she had so much to do, she never got around to calling until now.”

“What happened?” Hal asked.

“Something weird. Looks like her house was broken into while she was gone. Or at least the security system was turned off. You guys think it's relevant?”

14

As soon as Mel's words registered in my brain, I said, “Of course it's relevant. Do the Israeli police know?”

“Can't say for sure. I just ran into Lenny and that's all he told me.”

“Someone disengaged the security system?” Hal asked.

“That's what it looked like to Marnie. She didn't go home right away when she got back to New York. Her sister picked her up and took her to her place. She had a funeral to arrange and all that stuff. Anyway, when she got back to the house, the alarm system wasn't working right and she finally got around to calling the security people yesterday. At least, that's what Lenny said.”

“What's missing?” Hal asked.

Mel shrugged. “Maybe we should call Marnie. All this secondhand information is suspect.”

I agreed. “Let's give her a call at home when it's afternoon there.”

“She'll be sitting shiva this afternoon, I would think.”

“Sitting shiva,” I repeated. “That's staying at home and accepting condolences after someone dies. I remember when your grandfather died and the family did that.”

“Right. They do it for seven days.
Shiva
means ‘seven.' It isn't always seven days anymore and they don't sit on wooden crates the way my grandfather used to.”

“You can't get wooden crates,” Hal put in. “They don't make them.”

“Right. So sometimes they print cartons to look like wooden crates on the theory that it's the thought that counts.”

“Are you telling me they're supposed to be uncomfortable?”

“That's the point,” Hal said. “To remind you it's a sad time. There are other things, too. You cover the mirrors in the house—”

“The mirrors?” I asked.

Mel smiled. “I remember when you told me about the mirrors in your aunt's house.”

“How interesting,” I said. “I had no idea.” I had visited my aunt once a month while I was a nun and she arranged to cover the mirrors while I was there, as we were not allowed to look at our reflections. And now I was hearing of something similar in the Jewish religion.

“Chris, you should let Jack know about this. He can find the Israeli cops that are working on Gabe's homicide.”

“I think my telephone card's at the hotel.” I sighed.

“Go up to our room and use our phone,” Hal said.

“Take the kids?” Mel asked hesitantly.

Hal gave her a big grin. “Of course I'll take the kids. Come on, guys. Let's see if we can find a
Herald Tribune
somewhere in this hotel.”

“Daddy, would you buy me the hat we saw in the store with the newspapers?” Sari said.

Hal laughed and led them away.

“He's good,” Mel said as we walked toward the elevators. I agreed.

It was a pretty long conversation, because Jack wanted to get everything right. “This is a good one,” he said finally, after he'd checked names and addresses and times and events. “We've got police departments five thousand miles apart working on the same case.”

“I'm not sure we'll ever get everything coordinated,” I said.

“We've really got to find out what, if anything, was taken or disturbed in Marnie's house.”

“Mel and I are going to call her, Jack. Mel says she'll be home accepting visitors, so we shouldn't have too much trouble finding her.”

“Ask if she has a home safe. And know what? She might just call the office where Gabe worked and find out if anyone broke in there, especially if they have a safe.”

“I'll ask.”

“Tell her to call the local police and ask them to look for prints on the safe, if she has one. There shouldn't be any except his and hers. She mustn't touch it till they've been there. And I'll let Joshua know. I doubt whether the police in the States have been in touch with the cops here.”

“Interestingly complicated.”

“See you later.”

I wrote down the things he was interested in and looked at my watch. It was too early on the East Coast to call. We went downstairs and Mel rescued her husband and took over their children. Hal had made arrangements to spend some time with a couple of his cousins and he took off. I rather wished I had my own son with me so he could have the pleasure of being with friends for a few hours, but that wasn't possible. So I decided to hook up with Mel and her kids till this afternoon.

What we did was take a taxi to the Old City to visit the Citadel. The taxi turned out to be a problem. Mel gave our destination and we had gone about a block when I realized the driver hadn't turned on the meter. I leaned forward and asked politely that he do it.

“It's too late,” he said. “I have to charge you five shekels from where I picked you up.”

“Five shekels!” Mel said with feeling. “It's a block or two. Just turn it on.”

“I make you a special price,” he said.

“I don't want a special price,” she countered. “I want the meter.”

He said something neither of us could understand. Then he repeated that he would give us a special price. We looked at each other. There seemed to be nothing we could do. When we reached the Citadel, we argued—or rather, Mel argued—that his price was too much and he dropped it two shekels. I felt very uncomfortable about the whole thing. I wasn't used to haggling over prices and I was used to having taxi drivers turn on their meters the minute you sat down in the cab. I was sure Mel and I had overpaid, but I couldn't determine how much.

“Let's forget about it,” I said when we were walking toward the ticket window at the Citadel.

“Hal warned me.” She sounded angry.

“Officer Davidson warned me, too. I see what he meant.”

But the tour around the Citadel was wonderful and made up for the trouble we had getting there. An American man who had lived in Jerusalem for twenty years was our guide, and he took us through the ins and outs and ups and downs of the ruins, stopping frequently to give us a piece of history. The kids enjoyed the beginning and got bored as we went along, but they hung in till the very end. We stopped and bought postcards, and I got a beautiful book full of pictures of the ruins. If Jack couldn't enjoy them with me, at least he would be able to look at what he'd missed.

Near the Jaffa Gate, where we had entered the Old City, we found some taxis waiting for customers.

“I'll handle this,” Mel said sternly as we got inside one of them with a big, hefty driver encouraging us to enter. Inside, she said, “Please turn on the meter.”

“What you want the meter for?” he said, pulling away toward the gate.

“Because that's the way it's supposed to be.”

“I give you a good price.”

“Turn on the meter!”
There was no mistaking Mel's fury.

“So who are you,” the driver asked with annoyance, “a colonel in the Israeli army?”

“A general,” she retorted. “Turn on the meter.”

He turned it on.

The trip back to the hotel ended up costing considerably less than the “good price” we had paid without the meter in the other direction. The driver grumbled as he drove; traffic was against him and the lights weren't working right. Mel and I stifled giggles.

“Glad I teach third graders,” Mel said when we had both gotten out of the taxi. “It prepares you for the tough times in life.”

I laughed. “You were wonderful, Mel. I couldn't have done it myself.”

I went up to her room and we placed the call to Marnie. Someone who wasn't Marnie apparently answered and called her to the telephone. Mel talked to her for a few minutes, asking about the funeral and a few other things. Then Mel brought up the break-in, or whatever it was. “My friend Chris is here,” she said finally. “Do you have the energy to talk to her? . . . OK then. We'll talk again. Here's Chris.”

I took the phone and said a few polite words to Marnie. Then I asked about the security system.

“Chris, I was so depressed and confused, it didn't even register that something was wrong. I went inside, pushed the buttons, and hung up my coat. It took a while before I realized something was wrong.”

“What exactly was wrong?” I asked.

“The whole system wasn't working. I mean you could lock and unlock the door and the system didn't do anything. I suddenly saw that there weren't any lights flashing on the panel. I called the company and they said they'd noticed something was wrong but hadn't had a chance to send anyone out here. But they did. He looked it over and said someone with a lot of knowledge about that system had disengaged it.”

“I suppose he didn't know how long ago that had happened.”

“Actually, he thought it was sometime on the Sunday Gabe was kidnapped.” She sighed. “I told Gabe I didn't like them. We should have gone with another company.” She spoke as though what had happened was a mere annoyance.

“Marnie, do you keep a safe in the house?”

“Yes. No one could find it without a thorough search.”

“Have you checked to see if it's been disturbed?”

There was silence.

“Marnie?”

“You think someone came in to steal something?”

“I'd like you to do a couple of things if you can. First, without touching the safe, see if the dial is on the last digit you turn to to open it.”

“OK. I'm on my way to it now. Just a minute.”

“Remember, don't touch it.”

She made a sound as though she was pushing something, perhaps moving a piece of furniture out of the way. “The safe's locked,” she said. “I just pulled it with a napkin and it didn't yield. And it's not set on the last number in the combination. It's a different number.”

So the last person to open the safe had rotated the wheel after closing it. “OK. Leave it alone for now.”

“What now?”

I could tell she was walking away from it. I could hear the sound of voices somewhere, people visiting to comfort the widow. “Have you notified the police?” I asked.

“No. Why should I?”

“Because your security system was tampered with. Somebody may have gotten into your house. Ask the police to come out and check the safe for prints.”

“This is unbelievable.”

“And call your husband's office and see if they've had a break-in recently.”

“You're serious.”

“Very. If we're going to find out who's behind this tragedy, we've got to look into everything.”

“Yes. All right.”

“After the police leave, you should open the safe and see if anything is missing.”

“Chris, do you honestly believe this has something to do with Gabe's murder?”

“It's a coincidence, and it's good to be skeptical of coincidences.”

“I suppose so. When is this going to end?”

I felt sorry for her. To have all these burdens at the same time must be shattering. “Who has the combination?”

“No one except Gabe and me.”

“What do you have in there?”

“Jewelry, papers.”

“Expensive jewelry?”

“Yes. Very.”

“What kind of papers?”

“I really don't know. Our wills, I suppose. Life insurance. Maybe the deed to the house.”

“Let us know what happens. Please check with Gabe's office. And call the police as soon as possible.”

Mel and I hung around, hoping Marnie would call back. We weren't disappointed. About an hour later Mel's phone rang. She handed it to me right away.

“I called the police as you suggested, Chris,” Marnie said. “They dusted the safe, put tape all over the door, then pulled it off and opened it. Then they took my fingerprints to compare with whatever they find. I assume someone in Israel has Gabe's.”

“Probably,” I said, hoping the medical examiner had done a thorough job.

“I won't get an answer on that till tomorrow at the earliest. But after they left, I opened the safe and looked inside. Chris, if anyone got in there, they must have just looked. I swear, nothing's been touched; nothing's been moved.”

“Do you keep a list of what's in there?”

“I do. The insurance company said I should. I didn't have a chance to check everything, but I'm sure it's all accounted for. I would have opened the safe myself if you hadn't gotten to me first. I need all those papers when I see the lawyer.”

“I'm sure you do. Did you reach anyone at Gabe's office?”

“Yes. I called them before the police came. There hasn't been any break-in. They seemed surprised that I asked.”

I noticed Mel was writing something on a piece of hotel notepaper. When she finished, she passed it to me. I looked at the note and asked, “Does anyone live in the house besides you, Marnie? Like a housekeeper or gardener or caretaker?”

“Yes, I have a housekeeper. But I told her to take as much time off as she wanted while we were gone. Honestly, I didn't expect trouble.”

“So it's possible no one was in the house for a number of days.”

“Very possible.”

“Marnie, ask the housekeeper when she was away. Try to get exact days and times. This may help the police and the alarm company determine what happened and when. And I'll call you or Mel or somebody when I know what's going on.”

I hung up and shook my head.

“You think Gabe was killed so someone could steal Marnie's jewelry?” Mel asked.

“It's possible. The men who kidnapped him may have beaten him for the safe combination. It was a great time to rob their house. No one was home.”

“I'm sure they must have lights that go on and off and people who are paid to look out for the house.”

“They can't do it every minute of the day,” I said. “If you're an expert on security systems, you probably know how to disable them. Then all you need is a key.”