by Lee Harris
“Well,” Joseph said. “Finally.”
“Finally what?”
“Finally something concrete, something that isn’t hearsay. I imagine Alice Wien was quite shocked.”
“Quite shocked, yes. Very shocked. This was her prize, Joseph, her reward for being married to Arthur Wien. This was her children’s inheritance and her husband ruined it for her. Not only that, he did it in a deceitful way, probably when she wasn’t home, removing the typewritten pages from the manuscript and typing them over with so many mistakes she could see immediately that she hadn’t done it herself. He didn’t bother rewriting the pencil edition because it didn’t matter. I suppose one day when she carried out the garbage, she was disposing of her most treasured possession.”
“That depends,” Joseph said.
I looked across the table. “On what?”
“On when those pages were removed from the pencil manuscript.”
“The typed pages had to have been removed before he submitted the manuscript to a publisher. He could have disposed of the pencil pages at the same time, or however many years later, he could have pulled them when his creditor insisted on holding the book as collateral.”
“That’s one possibility,” Joseph said distantly. “Do you have more for me?”
“A little.” I told her about my lunch and conversation with George Fried at Newark Airport, including my shirt cardboard with his name on it so that I looked like a limousine driver waiting for a passenger. That had been yesterday, and when I had gotten home, there was a message on the machine from Alice.
I told Joseph about what the missing manuscript pages had probably contained.
“A love affair between a different man and one of the wives,” she said. “That’s the stuff of blackmail, isn’t it?”
“Probably.”
In the evening I had spoken to Cindy Wien, who also had no suspects, and with Kathy Greene who thought there was something strange about Bruce Kaplan.
“Then you must call him, Chris. Whatever Kathy Greene meant, she’s a person whose perceptions are useful in her work. I know this will be painful, but please give him a call.”
“I will,” I promised. “And that’s the last thing I have in my notes. We got up this morning and I packed Eddie in the car and here we are.”
“Give me a moment.” Joseph turned her sheets over to the first one, leaving me surprised at how many notes she had taken. She went through them, picking up a red pen and marking some places. “Everything I’m going to suggest will cause you embarrassment, I’m afraid,” she said apologetically. “You’re going to have to ask people things they don’t want to talk about, and if they refuse to answer, I think your duty will be to take what you have to the police.”
“I know I have to do that.” I scanned my notes. “You want me to press Mrs. Horowitz on her visits to Arthur Wien.”
“That’s one. Another is Fred Beller. You must find out why they didn’t meet Arthur Wien when he went to Minnesota.”
I had guessed that was coming simply because I had thought of it myself and declined to make the phone call.
“And Bruce Kaplan, as I’ve already said. And I’m afraid you really need to get back to Mrs. Koch and press her on the tantalizing information she volunteered to you. Am I to believe that someone told her a woman she knew and a man she knew were having an affair and she forgets not only who the party to the affair was but also the name of the person who told her? I can almost believe she could have forgotten the source of the information—I do that myself from time to time—but she knows who the woman was.”
“Do you?”
“I may, but I’m not speculating.”
“I’ve sprung this on many of the people I’ve interviewed and not one of them thinks it’s credible. Everyone says Arthur Wien liked his women young.”
“That may be. But the wives weren’t always middle-aged. Now let’s get back to those missing pages. I agree that Arthur Wien threw away the typed pages before the manuscript went to his editor or agent or whoever was the recipient of the unpublished book. And he went to some lengths to hide what he did from his wife. But I think there may be another explanation of what happened to the missing pencil pages.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I would think that an author, especially one who wrote in the days before computers, would have a sentimental attachment to his first draft, especially to the first draft of his first book, a book that went on to be very successful.”
“I agree.”
“And since no one was likely to read those pencil pages for many years, possibly until after his death when he wouldn’t care any more who knew what, I think he kept the pencil manuscript intact.”
“Until he gave it to someone.”
“Suppose he gave it to one of the people involved in this allegedly fictional love affair.”
“The person he borrowed money from.”
“Exactly. And that person removed the pages.”
“Did Arthur Wien know the pages were removed?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. There are several possibilities. One is that the person removed the pages and returned the manuscript without telling the author what he’d done. It never occurred to Wien that anything was missing so he didn’t check. Another possibility is that the person refused to return those pages, to ensure that the affair would never be revealed. And the third possibility is that the person simply didn’t want to return the manuscript under any conditions.”
“So that he could sell it for a tidy sum himself.”
“Perhaps. If the second explanation is the correct one, then the dickering wasn’t over the money Wien owed or how much extra he was being coerced into paying, but just getting those pages back so the manuscript would be intact.”
“And Wien lost. He got the manuscript back without the pages and he never told anyone.”
“He couldn’t tell his first wife. She might have gotten a warrant to find the pages, feeling they properly belonged to her husband and then to her.”
“Do you think this person still has the pages?”
“I think it depends on the reason they were withheld.”
“Money or keeping a secret.”
“There might be a third possibility,” Joseph said thoughtfully, and I knew enough not to press her.
“So you think the person who had the manuscript is the killer?”
“I’m not at all sure of that, but it’s possible. I would very much like to know what Mrs. Horowitz was seeing Arthur Wien about. And I think you should try to put together all the times in this case, Chris. When did Arthur go to Minnesota? When did Mrs. Horowitz visit Arthur Wien? When did Mr. Wien marry his second wife? When did George Fried ‘die’? When did Bruce Kaplan allegedly take money illegally?”
I was writing furiously. “Anything else?”
Joseph smiled. “There is one other thing, an event you mentioned rather quickly, almost as an afterthought. Think about it. It might be important.”
That is Joseph’s way. I knew I had my work cut out.
21
Our lunch was delivered while we were still talking and we put aside the Wien homicide to enjoy it and talk about other things. St. Stephen’s, like other convents, uses the talents and skills of its nuns to best advantage. I never learned to cook, and I was rarely asked to prepare a meal, only when no one else was available. And then I wasn’t asked again for a long time.
In my honor, today, several of the sisters living in the Villa, the home for retired nuns, had whipped up a fine lunch that included fresh biscuits and still warm cookies, a specialty of Sister Dolores. I knew there would be a bag of them downstairs for me to take home and I hoped Eddie wasn’t overdoing it on sweets, but these visits were far from frequent and I wanted everybody to be happy we had come.
When Joseph and I had finished, we went downstairs where Eddie was sleeping in his stroller in a shady spot outdoors, one of the older nuns crooning a lullaby as she sat in a chair beside him. Since bo
th my son and his sitter were quite happy to remain where they were, Joseph and I took a walk across the convent grounds and the adjoining campus to admire the new plantings and get a good dose of the fresh air of upstate New York.
It’s difficult to communicate a love of place. I have not traveled much in my life and very little outside the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut area in which we live. I have managed to drive through a good deal of New York State and dip into Pennsylvania, but aside from that, there is most of the country and a whole world that I have not seen. And yet I am certain that if I am fortunate enough to visit the many wonders of that world, places of great interest, beauty and charm, I will still return to this place and feel that its beauty and its peace are unchallenged. Joseph knows how I feel because she feels the same way.
So our walk was satisfying and refreshing, the scent of grass almost overwhelming, the quiet blissful. The college semester had ended and the students were gone. It was the way I liked it best.
Joseph’s main concern was the dearth of future nuns. The convent was down to a few novices, one of whom she had doubts about. I could not imagine this wonderful place closing forever as a convent although I knew of other convents that had merged or dissolved. Joseph was hoping to avoid either fate, and I could not have wished her better if I tried.
Back at the shady side of the Mother House, I found my little son still fast asleep; the nun in the chair beside him had fallen asleep herself. When she awakened, I took the stroller and walked to the Villa to say hello to the elderly women who lived there and thank them for the sumptuous lunch. They whispered to let Eddie sleep, and then we walked away and chatted in normal tones. A nun I had known since I was fifteen had died during the past year, and a tree had been planted in her memory. We walked outside to admire it, to feel her presence in the strong green leaves.
And then it was time to go. Eddie stirred as I lifted him into his seat, but he went back to sleep after a whimper. Angela came out for a last hug and Joseph came to see us off.
The last thing she said to me was, “Remember it was Father’s Day.”
Eddie woke up cranky while I was still driving. I gave him a pretzel which ended up thrown on the front seat beside me, but the second time I offered it he thought better of it and took it. When we got home, I marinated some beef cubes for shish kebab and then, taking Eddie with me, went out to the backyard to pull some weeds. My vegetable garden was starting to look good; the little seedlings I had nurtured through the cool spring were now a darker green with buds promising flowers and fruits. I may not do well in the kitchen, but I have managed to become an estimable vegetable gardener. I was hoping that this year Eddie would grow to love cherry tomatoes off the vine as I did.
Today was Jack’s last day at the precinct he had worked at for many years, and I knew he would be in a precarious state when he got home. I was pretty sure the detectives would throw him a party this afternoon so I didn’t call. We could talk about everything later.
I gave Eddie his dinner and his bath and read him a story. He was in blue summer pajamas that his grandparents had given him, and he looked as adorable as they had intended. I was about to put him to bed when I heard Jack’s car drive up. I said, “Here comes Daddy.”
Eddie ran to the window overlooking the driveway and stood there smiling till Jack got out of the car, looked up and saw him, and waved. When Jack came upstairs, he put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a small box, which he handed to me. Then he went over to Eddie and picked him up.
I opened the box. In a soft, suedelike pouch was something made of metal. I pulled it out and gasped. It was a gold key ring with a gold disk that had a raised scales of justice hanging from it. Engraved on the back was his name, rank, and the date. He was a lawyer all right. Even his colleagues had acknowledged it.
“Did you know they were giving me a party?” We were eating a melon whose name I have forgotten, sweet and small, while the shish was grilling.
“Nobody told me but I guessed they would. Who was there?”
“Everyone in the house who could avoid work. It was at O’Boyle’s down the street. That’s some gift, isn’t it?”
I had teared up when I looked at it. “It’s wonderful, Jack. And all your keys will fit on it.”
“I think I’ll save it for a while.”
“Nothing doing,” I said with more insistence than I usually projected. “You will pass these exams in the fall, and you’re not waiting for that to happen to use this beautiful gift from your friends. You’re starting a new job Monday as a lawyer, and you’re going to have that in your pocket when you leave the house.”
“Well, that’s reading me the riot act.”
I grinned. I was very happy and I felt I was right. I wanted him to enjoy everything that was there for him.
We started eating—the marinade was Mel’s and the cooking courtesy of a great barbecue, leaving little to my ability to massacre a meal—and talking first about his day and then about mine.
“You were up at St. Stephen’s today, weren’t you,” he asked, as though he had just remembered it, “seeing my favorite people?”
“And talking about the Arthur Wien murder.”
“Sister Joseph pull it out for you?”
“Not exactly. What she did was tell me I have to call a number of people back and ask every embarrassing question that I was afraid to ask the first time around.”
“Like ‘did you go to jail for something you did or were you covering for somebody?’ ”
“You knew I’d have to ask him, didn’t you?”
“Hey, for all you know, that guy — what’s his name?”
“Bruce Kaplan, and he’s a very nice person.”
“Bruce Kaplan, and maybe he is and maybe he isn’t. For all you know, he took money that didn’t belong to him to lend to Arthur Wien and he never forgave him for it. Maybe Wien didn’t pay it back in time and an audit found it missing.”
“I think I’m going into early retirement,” I said, not entirely facetiously.
“Nobody likes to ask questions like those,” Jack said sympathetically. “Nobody gets a kick out of humiliating another person. Do your usual best. He’ll know you’re not doing this for fun.”
I went through the rest of Joseph’s comments, all of which I had taken down, some legibly, some in an almost unreadable scribble that I would never have accepted from a student. He agreed that almost everything she suggested was relevant and therefore necessary, except calling the Bellers. I asked why not.
“Fred Beller didn’t like Arthur Wien. That was clear early on. When you found out that Wien had taken Beller’s girlfriend away, that said it all. Beller didn’t want anything to do with Wien, whether he was in Minnesota or New York or anywhere else. I don’t blame him. But make the call. Sister Joseph is better at these things than I am.”
So I made that call first. Mrs. Beller answered and listened to my request.
“You’re making a mountain out of a nothing event,” she said, happily mixing metaphors. “Art was very busy when he came to Minneapolis. They wined and dined him. That’s all it was.”
I didn’t believe her. “Do you remember when Mr. Wien made that trip to Minneapolis?”
“I’d have to think about that. It was after our trip to California because that’s where we ran into him the first time. We took that trip—let me see—” She said “Mm” a couple of times while I waited. “I think it’s three years since California so it’s less than that, maybe two and a half?” She said it as though I could give her the answer.
“OK,” I said, writing it down. “Mrs. Beller, if you decide to tell me what really happened when Arthur Wien came to Minneapolis, I’d appreciate your calling me.”
“I’ve told you.” She sounded almost plaintive.
I had thought about letting her know that I knew she had been at the restaurant the night of the murder, but I couldn’t bring myself to threaten her. “Please,” I said. “Whether you liked him or not, he di
dn’t deserve to die.”
“I’ll talk to my husband,” she said and hung up.
That struck me as progress. Then, just to see if I could come up with some answers through the back door, I dialed Cindy Wien.
“Do you have something?” she asked almost eagerly.
“I have a couple of questions. How long were you married to Mr. Wien?”
“We were together a long time.”
“About how long?”
“Seven years, maybe a little longer.”
It occurred to me that she might have been in her twenties when they started going out. “And when were you married?”
“Two years ago. We just had our second anniversary.”
“Were you with your husband when he visited Minneapolis?”
“To publicize his book? No, I stayed in California. He said those were dreadful trips, being whisked from one place to another with hardly enough time to grab a sandwich.”
“Did he mention to you that he might see the Bellers there?”
“Fred and his wife? You know, he did. He had bumped into them in California and they had invited him to visit if he ever got to Minneapolis.”
“Do you know what happened when he got there?”
There was some silence. “He didn’t see them, I know that. He said they pulled out at the last minute.”
“They pulled out?”
“Yes. He was going to take them to dinner. They said something else had come up unexpectedly and they couldn’t make it. I’m sure of that. He told me when he came home.”
I thought about it after I hung up. Another lie by Arthur Wien? Or had the Bellers decided they really didn’t want to spend an evening with him? Among the living, only Fred and Marge knew the truth.
* * *
I saved the call to Bruce Kaplan until after Jack and I had had coffee and the wonderful cookies I had carried home from St. Stephen’s. To say they were a success is to downplay his reaction by decibels. There were so many in the bag, I didn’t need to remind him to leave some for Eddie for tomorrow. They were loaded with chocolate chips and were absolutely huge. The bag they had given me had contained half a dozen biscuits as well, and we had eaten them for dinner.
