Another Three Dogs in a Row

by Neil S. Plakcy

  “You want me to come over there? I can help you sort through everything.”

  “I can’t do that, Steve. Because your prints are going to be in the house, and in that office, I have to consider you a suspect.”

  “Me!”

  “Look, I know you, and I very much doubt you drove over to this old man’s house, hit him over the head, and ransacked his office. I wish I could use your help, but I have to play this one by the book.”

  My stomach roiled. Daniel Epstein was dead, and I was one of the last people to see him alive. Though he was elderly and somewhat frail, when I’d spoken with him he had been lively and animated. I’d visited his house, looked through his files, become a part of his life—and now he was dead.

  “Here’s what you can do,” Rick said. “Make a full inventory of the material you took away from Epstein’s house. Maybe you have what Epstein’s murderer was looking for.”

  Great. In a flash I had gone from suspected killer to potential victim.

  “You think it’s someone from Shomrei Torah?”

  “I’m not making any assumptions. Both Mr. Epstein and Joel Goldberg were connected to that synagogue, and my coincidence radar is ringing. But is it possible that the two deaths are unrelated, and I’m going to investigate every angle I find.”

  I heard him speak to someone in the house with him, and then he came back on the line and said he’d come over when he was finished.

  Rochester clambered up onto the bed and slumped down beside me, his head resting on my chest. “Who’s Daniel Epstein?” Lili asked. “You look very pale.”

  “A very nice older man from the Talmud study group at Shomrei Torah,” I said. “He’s the one who translated that piece in Yiddish for me.”

  “Sometimes I worry about you, Steve. People around you have a nasty habit of dying.”

  “I hardly knew the man,” I protested. “I met him at Talmud study, and then Rabbi Goldberg suggested him as a translator.”

  “And?”

  “And I went to his house with Rochester.”

  “Who Rick calls the Death Dog.”

  Rochester nuzzled me. “You don’t like that nickname,” I said as I scratched behind his ears. “Uncle Rick is just jealous of your crime-solving abilities.”

  I explained what Rick had told me, and that I’d have to go through Epstein’s files.

  “Did he have a family?”

  I told her what I knew about Epstein’s life. “He sounds like a very nice man, and it sounds like he lived well,” she said. “Try to remember that. My father would have called him a tzadik, a righteous man. We should all live to be remembered that way.”

  “You’re right. And he deserves to have justice for his death.”

  “You’re going to go need a good breakfast,” Lili said. “How about a cheese and mushroom omelet with a side of bacon?”

  Rochester’s ears perked up, whether because he heard breakfast or bacon.

  “That would be awesome,” I said. “There’s a roll of those quick-bake biscuits in the fridge, too.”

  “Don’t push your luck, Hardy Boy,” she said, but she smiled. “Come on, Rochester. Let’s go make breakfast.”

  I appreciated Lili’s offer, but I thought calling me a Hardy Boy was a little harsh, not just because a man I had met and liked was dead. It was one thing for Rick or me to call ourselves the Hardy Boys, but when Lili used the term it sounded demeaning, like we were kids playing at crime-solving. There were bad people out there, and Rick was one of the bulwarks who protected society from them. I was honored to be able to help now and then.

  I took a quick shower and got dressed, and by the time I got downstairs Lili had breakfast on the table. “What’s on your agenda today?” I asked.

  “I’m meeting Tamsen for a mani-pedi at eleven,” she said. “I need a little pampering after all that aggravation in Florida.”

  She left a short time later, and after I cleaned up the kitchen I sat down at the dining room table with my laptop and all of the files I’d taken from Daniel Epstein’s house. I opened a new spreadsheet and began cataloguing everything.

  Every now and then I’d stop and consider. Was it this file that the murderer had been looking for? This article, this clipping, this photograph?

  It all seemed so harmless to me, from so long ago. I saved the information on Rabbi Sapinsky’s murder for last. That had to be the connection, didn’t it? Suppose the rabbi’s killer was still alive, and believed that Epstein had incriminating evidence?

  But all Epstein had saved were a few newspaper clippings. Nothing that pointed to a particular individual.

  I opened a new file and began to type. “Who is still alive who might have known Rabbi Sapinsky?”

  I thought of the elderly men I knew from the Talmud study group. Aaron Feinberg, Saul Benesch and Henry Namias had been involved with Shomrei Torah for as long as I could remember. But had they worshipped at Shomrei Torah when they were younger?

  Epstein had told me that he had celebrated his bar mitzvah there, the service officiated by Rabbi Sapinsky. I went back to the oral history Victor Namias had dictated to my mother and scanned through it. Toward the end, I found a mention that because there was no Sephardic congregation in Trenton, Namias and his family had joined Shomrei Torah at Esther Namias’s urging.

  So Henry Namias had to have known the rabbi. But he was only ten years old—way too young to have committed murder.

  He was the one who had discovered Myer Hafetz’s body, though. So he was connected to both victims. Could his father have been the killer? Namias had told me that his mother and Myer Hafetz were close, spending hours together speaking Yiddish. What if Victor had gotten jealous and killed his rival? And then the rabbi found out, and had to be silenced as well?

  Pure speculation. And even if it was true, what would have prompted Namias to kill Joel Goldberg and Daniel Epstein? His father was long dead.

  I had finished my inventory by the time Rick arrived. He brought Rascal with him, and the dogs immediately began to romp together, chasing each other’s tails around the living room. I went into the kitchen to get tumblers of ice water for both of us, and when I returned to the living room, Rick was on the floor with both dogs jumping on him. He was laughing and scratching them, but when I came in he sobered up and stood.

  “When was the last time you saw Daniel Epstein?” he asked.

  “I joined this discussion group at Shomrei Torah a couple of weeks ago. We meet in the rabbi’s study on Wednesday mornings. After the session was over I spoke to Epstein and asked him if he knew anything about the death of Rabbi Sapinsky, back in the forties. He told me that he had a lot of files and invited me to his house to look through them.”

  I scratched behind Rochester’s ears. “I followed him to his house, and I was there until about noon on Wednesday. Do you know when he was killed?”

  “The ME will have to do an autopsy. The air conditioning was on in the house and the body was cold, so it’s hard to speculate, but at least a day or so.”

  “Were there any signs of forced entry?”

  Rick shook his head. “No broken windows, no pry marks on any door. So I’m assuming that Mr. Epstein knew his killer and let him into the house.”

  Rick had spoken to Epstein’s son and daughter. Neither of them knew anyone with a motive to kill their father, nor did they believe that their father kept anything in the house worth killing for. “He had a floor safe in the upstairs bedroom with some gold coins, legal papers and a couple hundred bucks in cash, but the safe wasn’t opened,” Rick said.

  “Do you have an inventory of what was stolen?”

  “Not completely. The son is meeting me at the house tomorrow morning to go over the list the cleaning lady and I put together and see what else we can add to it.”

  “He hire any handymen or other workers in the last few weeks or months?”

  “I’ll be going over that with his son.”

  We went through the inventory of the files
I had taken from Epstein’s house. “Nothing seems that damaging to anyone who’s alive today,” I said. I showed him the list I’d begun, of who might have known Rabbi Sapinsky.

  “What about these other two men,” Rick asked. “Benesch and Feinberg?”

  “I don’t know. I was thinking I’d try and speak with each of them, maybe at the study group, or maybe at Daniel Epstein’s funeral.”

  “Just be careful. From everything I’ve heard, Mr. Epstein was a kind man without enemies. If one of those men killed Epstein, you don’t want to put yourself in his sights.”

  23 – A Place to Rest

  The ME expedited the autopsy and released Daniel Epstein’s body quickly so that his funeral could be held on Sunday morning, graveside services in the same cemetery in Trenton where my parents were buried.

  It was a gray day, and a restless wind scattered dead leaves along the gravel paths between sections of the cemetery. I parked and headed toward the green awning in the oldest section, where aged granite tombstones, faded after years in all weathers, stood erect over the final resting places of generations of Trenton’s Jewish dead.

  Epstein’s son and daughter, along with their families, took the seats in front of the open grave, and Saul Benesch and Henry Namias sat behind them, along with other elderly people I assumed were Epstein’s contemporaries and friends. I stood in the back beside a woman I recognized from the Talmud study group.

  Rabbi Goldberg gave a brief eulogy, focusing on Daniel Epstein’s dedication to his family, his heritage and his synagogue. Then Epstein’s son spoke about the example his father had set for him.

  My eyes teared up and I wondered about my father’s funeral. Had anyone spoken in my place? Had my cousins been there, had they wondered about my absence?

  One by one, Epstein’s family and close friends stepped up to sprinkle dirt over the coffin, and I had to turn away because of how deeply the experience affected me. I had not been there to speed my father along on his journey to the afterlife, and I would forever feel that pain.

  I stood beside an elaborate tombstone dedicated to Philip Gross, “husband, father, grandfather and Holocaust survivor.” Beneath it was inscribed “Never Forget.” I heard the sound of the Kaddish prayer, and then the gears grinding as Epstein’s coffin was lowered into the ground, quiet sobbing coming from the family.

  It was difficult to compose myself, and I took a couple of deep breaths and wiped the tears away from my eyes. I turned to find Saul Benesch approaching me. He wore a khaki trench coat over a dark suit, and he seemed somehow smaller than I remembered.

  “It’s a terrible thing,” he said. “We’re not safe in our own houses anymore.”

  “Did you know Mr. Epstein for a long time?”

  “From the old days,” he said. “I had trouble with the Hebrew for my Torah portion, and he coached me. He was a mensch, even back then.”

  “Was this at Shomrei Torah?” I asked.

  Benesch nodded. “I was raised Orthodox, but my wife, may she rest in peace, was an Italianer, a Catholic. The only rabbi who would marry us was the one at Shomrei Torah, so we joined here.”

  “The Jewish community back then must have been very close,” I said. “Did you know Mr. Feinberg back then, too?”

  He shook his head. “Aaron? He’s a baby. I knew his father of blessed memory—he was a big macher at Shomrei Torah when my wife and I joined. But Aaron is fifteen years younger than I am. It wasn’t until he came home from college and got involved in the temple that I got to know him.”

  The family left the gravesite and began to walk toward their limo. “You’re going to the son’s house for shiva?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t… I can’t…”

  Benesch put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s all right,” he said. “We each grieve in our own way.”

  I watched him walk slowly back toward the line of parked cars, and then turned to walk toward where my parents were buried. When my mother passed away, my father bought a joint headstone and had everything engraved on it except his date of death. He had also bought a pre-need package that paid for all the expenses of a coffin, opening the grave and so on.

  I thought it was morbid at the time, but when he died I was grateful that I could handle everything long-distance. Now I stood in front of the grave and looked at the stone. “Levitan” was engraved at the top, with my father to the left and my mother to the right.

  I realized that was the way they’d always slept in the wood-framed double bed they had bought, along with a whole bedroom suite, soon after they married.

  A tilted water pitcher had been engraved above my father’s name, with the words “Husband, Father” beneath it. Our last name implied that we were Levites, from the ancient clan whose members were responsible for washing the hands of the priests at the Temple in ancient days.

  As is common for women, a candelabra was above my mother’s first and maiden names – Sylvia Gordon – with “Wife, Mother” beneath it.

  What would my stone say? I was no one’s husband, no one’s father. I wasn’t a Holocaust survivor like Philip Gross. What would stand for my life?

  My eyes teared up again. Where would I go, when my time came? A single plot there in the same cemetery? Would I be buried beside Lili? If we didn’t marry, we’d need separate stones, wouldn’t we? Was it too early to consider buying the plots?

  Maybe Lili would want to be in a cemetery with her parents. Her father had been buried somewhere in Miami; I knew that she’d gone to visit his grave while she was there to look after her mother.

  I shook off those grim thoughts. I found a pair of small pebbles and placed on one each side of my parents’ headstone, in the Jewish custom. As I was walking back to my car, the rabbi intercepted me.

  “Have you learned anything from Joel’s emails?” he asked.

  I told him about the man Joel had corresponded with, who went by the moniker NotwhoIthinkIam.

  “From some details in his messages, I have the impression that this person lives somewhere in Trenton,” I said. “Have you spoken to anyone in the congregation who had similar concerns?”

  “Not that I can recall. Do you think this is the person who killed my brother?”

  “That’s a big leap, Rabbi,” I said gently. “Right now I’m just following leads.”

  He nodded. “I appreciate that. It’s just… officiating at this funeral, when Daniel Epstein died a violent death just like Joel, I can’t help but think of him.”

  He looked at me as if the connection had suddenly appeared to him. “Do you think the same person could have killed both of them?”

  “I don’t know. There are certainly connections – for example, that document in Yiddish that I found in the ruins of Shomrei Torah, where Joel had been camping. Daniel translated it for me. But it’s also possible that Daniel was the victim of some kind of home invasion, as scary as that sounds.”

  “It’s times like this that I have to remind myself that everything that happens is part of God’s grand plan,” he said. “Even if His purposes are unclear to us.”

  I remembered my conversation with Rick about how a benevolent God could have allowed a tragedy like the Shoah to happen. “That’s the definition of faith, isn’t it?”

  He smiled. “Maybe you should lead the Talmud study sometime.”

  “Oh, no, I’ll leave that to you,” I said. “You’re continuing the group, aren’t you?”

  “Of course. I have to believe that it is what God would want.”

  We shook hands and he strode back to where the line of cars was snaking its way out of the cemetery.

  I looked around me at all the graves and stones, those with an accumulation of pebbles on the top and those that looked like they had been ignored, that there was no one left to mourn those who had been interred there. I felt a sense of peace wash over me. The Jewish people had survived centuries of slavery, persecution and exile. Trenton, while by no means a garden of Eden, was at least a place where these sou
ls could rest.

  Could there be rest, though, for Daniel Epstein, for Joel Goldberg, Rabbi Sapinsky and Myer Hafetz, if we did not know the truth of what happened to them?

  That, it occurred to me as I walked back to my car, was where I came in. Was I terminally nosy, as I often wondered? Or was the curiosity I felt about solving crimes really God’s hand moving through me?

  Either way, I still had more investigating to do.

  24 – Good Men

  When I got home from Daniel Epstein’s funeral I went back to the file I’d created on my laptop and added in the information I’d gotten from Saul Benesch. He had known Daniel Epstein when they were children, both studying at Shomrei Torah, which meant he knew Rabbi Sapinsky.

  Lili and I had plans to go out to dinner that evening with our friends Gail and Declan, so I pushed aside my research and we drove up to Le Canal, a French restaurant in New Hope. On the way I asked, “How is your mother today?”

  “Complaining about the food at rehab. It has no flavor and there isn’t enough of it. Sara has been making empanadas but they aren’t as good as the ones my mother makes.”

  “So basically she’s back to normal,” I said. “That’s good.”

  We met Gail and Declan in the parking lot. She was a young blonde in her late twenties who had grown up in Levittown, gone to the Culinary Institute of America, and snagged a prime job as a pastry chef in New York. When her mother was diagnosed with cancer, Gail had moved back to Bucks County to look after her, and eventually opened the Chocolate Ear café in the center of Stewart’s Crossing.

  Declan had known her back then, when he was an MBA student at Columbia, but she was dating his jerky roommate at the time, and he had to wait until she was free to make his move.

  In New York, Gail had worked with the chef at Le Canal, and that connection was always good to get us comped something, an appetizer platter or a special dessert. And it was a lovely, romantic restaurant on the Delaware Canal, so it was good all around.

  We sat at a four-top with a view of the river as evening drew around us. We chatted for a couple of minutes about the new dog-friendly annex Gail had added to the café, so that during the chill of winter or the heat of summer, you could spend time with your canine companion in comfort, avoiding health code restrictions about animals in food service areas.