Blues in the Night

by Rochelle Krich

  I thought for a moment. “According to the police report, Lenore was hit at one forty-six. I assume that’s when it was called in, right?”

  “Right. And before you ask, Saunders doesn’t know exactly what time she left, or when he drove down the hill.”

  “Very convenient.”

  “Was he supposed to check his watch? Oops, time to drive down the hill and slam the ex-wife.” Connors sighed. “Give it up, Molly.”

  But I couldn’t. There’s a maxim in Judaic law that I learned in my high school Bible class: modeh b’miktzat, modeh b’kol. If someone admits he lied about part of a charge, chances are he lied about the charge in its entirety. Or as Bubbie G would say, “Half a truth is a whole lie.” I didn’t think Connors or a D.A. would appreciate Talmudic reasoning or a proverb.

  “I just can’t believe he didn’t see her,” I said instead. “What if she was trying to run away from him, Andy? Maybe that’s why she didn’t see the car coming. Doesn’t that make him responsible?”

  Connors didn’t answer right away. “It’s a possibility I’ve considered,” he allowed grudgingly. “Another is that he saw her on the way back, after she was hit, and did nothing about it. But we don’t have a Good Samaritan law, Molly. As to the first possibility, I can’t prove it, and unless I can, I’m going to leave it alone. Which is what you should do.”

  “Why?”

  He expelled a deep breath. “Do you know who Robert Saunders is?”

  I frowned. “Should I?”

  “His family is old money. Saunders is a land developer and he’s running for city council. He has a lot of supporters, including the mayor.”

  I’m not much into city politics, so I wasn’t surprised that his name hadn’t been familiar. “You didn’t mention this before.”

  “I didn’t know until yesterday, when Lenore’s mom clued me in.”

  “If Saunders is running for city council, no wonder he doesn’t want all this to come out.”

  “We don’t know that there’s anything to come out.”

  “You know there is.”

  “He’s well-connected, Molly.”

  “So?” I didn’t like what I was hearing.

  “So it’s not a good idea to sling accusations against someone like him unless you have solid proof. Which I don’t have.”

  Anger stirred inside me. “Please don’t tell me you’re backing off because he has money and friends in high places. If you do, I’ll vomit.”

  “Have you forgotten about presumption of innocence? Just ’cause he’s a politician doesn’t mean he’s a liar.”

  “Can you spell Gary Condit?” I asked in a Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood voice.

  Connors hung up. I turned on the radio to KF101, the oldies station. With my mind on Saunders and “My Boyfriend’s Back” in the background, I finished slicing the celery, chunked an onion and four pared potatoes, one red and one green pepper, some mushrooms, and spread everything on the bottom of a foil-lined baking pan. I sprinkled garlic powder and paprika on the chicken, which I placed on top of the veggies, then smothered everything with half a jar of sweet-and-sour duck sauce. It’s my sister-in-law Gitty’s recipe—easy and foolproof—and goes great with rice, which I planned to steam just before I delivered the meal.

  I covered the chicken with tinfoil and set the pan into the oven. I phoned Connors again.

  “What now?” he grumbled when he came on the line.

  “I just remembered something else Lenore told me.”

  Connors sighed. “Why am I not surprised?”

  “When I asked her if she remembered trying to cross Laurel Canyon, she said everyone was asking her the same thing. You, her mother, Robbie. Why would Robbie care unless he was worried about himself? And when did he ask her, if he didn’t visit her?”

  “Okay. Interesting.” Connors’s tone was grudging. “Is that it?”

  “When I asked Lenore about her fight with Robbie, she said she promised not to tell.”

  “This just came to you, did it? Or are you undergoing hypnosis?”

  “Did Saunders say why Lenore was in his house, Andy?”

  “Yeah, he did.”

  “But you’re not going to tell me.”

  “They say women are intuitive. I guess they’re right.”

  “Come on, Andy. Give.”

  “The man’s entitled to his privacy, Molly. I know that’s hard for you to accept.”

  “Her car wasn’t there. So how did she get there unless Saunders picked her up?”

  “She told him she took a cab.”

  “In her nightgown?”

  “Can you drop the effing nightgown, Molly?”

  I could sense that he was this close to hanging up again. “The fiancée wasn’t there Saturday night, and Lenore shows up in a nightgown. What does that tell you, Andy?”

  “That Saunders is a popular guy?”

  “Did you tell him she killed herself?”

  Connors sighed. “Yeah, I did. For what it’s worth, he seemed genuinely upset.”

  Especially if he drove her to it, I thought.

  twelve

  Half an hour later the duck sauce was perfuming my apartment and I located Nina Weldon. I’d spoken to seventeen Weldons the night before, none of them Ninas, and had left my name and phone number for three women whose answering machine messages hadn’t revealed their names. Now one of them had called back.

  “What’s this about?” she asked, more curious than anything else.

  I couldn’t tell her age from her voice, which was tentative and soft. “I’m calling about Lenore Saunders. Her mother said she was going to call you?”

  “God, it’s horrible, isn’t it?” she said. “First the hit-and-run—I just knew something was wrong when she didn’t show up Sunday night. And now this. I can’t believe she’s dead. I just can’t.” She started crying, quiet, whimpering sounds like the bleats of a lamb.

  “I’m so sorry. Lenore told me the two of you were close.”

  “We were best friends. I don’t know what I’m going to do now that she’s gone.” She sniffled.

  “How long did you know her?”

  “A little over a year. What’s your name again?”

  “Molly Blume.”

  “Did you just meet her? Because she’s never mentioned your name.”

  Something new in her voice puzzled me. Not suspicion . . . “I visited Lenore in the hospital. Actually, she said I should talk to you. I’m a freelance reporter.”

  “Oh, is this about Dr. Korwin’s project?”

  She sounded relieved, and I realized what I’d heard before: jealousy. “What project is that?”

  “Dr. Korwin has a clinic for women who are depressed. He’s doing a major study on it. That’s how Lenore and I met. We were in group together.”

  “Do you think I could meet with you, Nina? I’d like to talk to you about Lenore, and what happened.”

  She hesitated. “I don’t know much. Lenore was hardly able to talk when I visited her in the hospital. Are you planning to write a story about her?”

  “Possibly. I’m interested in your impressions. Is today good for you?” I pressed before her hesitation could take root. “I can make it any time until five.” After that, I’d be cutting it too close for Shabbat, which starts before sundown.

  “No, I’m sorry. I’m leaving for work—I’m a medical receptionist—and I won’t be home until six.”

  “How about Sunday? We can meet anywhere you like.”

  “I have no intention of betraying Lenore’s confidence.”

  “Of course not. Whatever you feel comfortable telling me.”

  “I still don’t understand what you want to know.” Her tone was almost plaintive.

  “To be honest, I’m not sure. But when I talked with Lenore, she said, ‘Ask Nina.’ So I guess that’s what I’m doing,” I said, hoping my light tone would relax her.

  “Ask me what?”

  “She said what happened was her fault, that she d
idn’t deserve a second chance. That’s when she told me to talk to you. It sounded important to her,” I added. “The next night, just hours before Lenore died, I guess, she left a message on my machine.”

  Nina sucked in her breath. “What did she say?”

  “Why don’t I tell you when we meet.”

  “Okay,” she said, still reluctant. “Sunday, at ten?”

  “Fine. Where?”

  “My apartment.” She gave me her address on Havenhurst between Romaine and Santa Monica.

  “That’s near Lenore’s apartment, isn’t it?”

  “It’s the building next door. I just moved there four months ago. We were best friends,” she said again, mournful, angry, bewildered, the way I’d felt when Aggie had died.

  On the way to the Birkensteins’ I stopped at a kosher bakery on Fairfax Avenue. When I was a child the three blocks of Fairfax from Beverly Boulevard to Clinton were the heart of a Jewish community that was small and centralized. Today the community is much larger and has mushroomed—east to Hancock Park; west to Beverly Hills, Pico-Robertson, Beverlywood, and Santa Monica; south to the newly gentrified Olympic area; north, across the Hollywood Hills, to the San Fernando Valley and beyond. A venerable dowager showing her age, Fairfax has stiff competition from young, robust upstarts like La Brea and Pico and Ventura Boulevards.

  Several years ago the city council gave Fairfax a face-lift. The sidewalks were repaved and prettied, creating access ramps for the wheelchairs and walkers of the elderly, many of whom reside in nearby retirement facilities. Cheerful green awnings replaced tattered, faded ones, spring hats with veils softening the wrinkles of old faces. Trees were planted. But unlike the Farmers Market and its specialty shops, only a few blocks south, Fairfax will never be quaint, and to the chagrin of the disdainful giant CBS eye two blocks east that pretends not to see her, she will never be a lady.

  Fairfax is an uneven chorus line of banks and bakeries, of social welfare agencies and nail salons and thrift shops and stores that sell produce, fresh fish, pizza, menorahs, nuts, fake Persian rugs, Israeli CDs, smoked cod, shoes, deli, and the mah jongg cards I buy every April for the weekly game my sisters and I play.

  The population of shoppers is still primarily Jewish—first- and second-generation Ashkenazis of western European heritage, Israelis, Moroccans, Russian immigrants—except for curious tourists and an occasional black or Hispanic or Asian student from the high school whose campus borders on the east side of the street between Rosewood and Melrose but is so removed from the neighborhood that it could be miles away. Walk up the block that boasts Canter’s, a celebrity late-night hangout in its heyday that’s making a comeback, and you’ll find one or more of the homeless—malodorous, scruffy, sitting on the sidewalk and leaning against a store window—their lot worse but not so different from that of better-dressed, down-on-their-luck mendicants who ask, usually in Yiddish, for a bissele tsedakeh far Shabbos (a little charity for the Sabbath), all of them looking for crumbs like the pigeons on the corner.

  The smells from the bakery, a heavenly vapor of cinnamon and yeast and chocolate and warm apple, beckoned to me, a genie promising riches. Inside, I took a number, waited patiently behind old Mr. Froman while he counted the coins he’d fished out of his pocket, and chatted with Elsa, the sixty-eight-year-old salesperson who had given me free sprinkle cookies when I was a child and helped me choose my wedding cake. I bought challah and pastries for the Birkensteins—crumb-topped, pocket cheese Danish and an assortment of cookies—and two Danish for myself, along with half a log of the best seven-layer cake I’ve ever tasted.

  I thanked Elsa, and we exchanged the traditional “Shabbat shalom” (a peaceful Sabbath) greeting. Picking up my bags and pink string-tied boxes, I turned around and came face-to-face with Robert Saunders.

  He raised a brow and smiled. “Well, this is a surprise.”

  “Isn’t it.”

  Not a scintillating rejoinder from someone who earns a living with words, but I was unnerved at seeing him, suspicious of this heartiness that rang false in view of the fact that yesterday he’d slammed the door in my face. I wondered how long he’d been standing there and whether he’d followed me.

  “A friend of mine told me Fairfax has the best bakeries,” he said, “so I thought I’d check it out. What do you recommend?”

  “Try the strudel, or the cinnamon buns.” If he’d followed me, he knew where I lived, which didn’t make me happy. I wished I’d used my pseudonym.

  “Look, Miss Blume . . . can I call you Molly?” Without waiting for my response, he continued. “I’m glad we ran into each other. I didn’t handle things well yesterday, and I’d like to explain, to tell you my story.”

  “I’d love to hear it.” The change of heart, if genuine, explained his demeanor but was still puzzling. Maybe it was Connors’s doing.

  Saunders checked his watch. “It’s twelve-fifteen. I have a client at one-thirty. Can we grab a cup of coffee nearby?”

  I was curious to hear the story that had satisfied Connors, but the chicken and rice wouldn’t last long in the trunk of my car. “I can’t do it now. What about after your appointment?”

  “Would three work for you?”

  “Three is fine. There’s a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on Beverly near Robertson.”

  “I know it.” He nodded. “I’ll see you there.”

  With my bakery goods and a bottle of red Joyvin wine from the Israeli-owned grocery a few stores down, I returned to my car and drove to the Birkensteins’ on Curson north of Oakwood, a block that, like most of the streets in this neighborhood, is filled with duplexes and four-unit apartment houses rented by old-timers and, more and more, by young, hip singles.

  Though I write about murder, I’m uncomfortable around death and mourning. Pushing open the Birkensteins’ door (the front doors of a house in which family are sitting shiva are left unlocked during the day), I entered the apartment and found the kitchen, where I deposited the chicken and rice, the bakery goods and wine. The children were at the table, eating lunch and attended to by a woman who must have been a family friend.

  Entering the living room, I counted the heads of ten or twelve visitors and sat on a sofa at a safe distance from the widow, who was perched uncomfortably on an armless chair with truncated legs, on loan from the local Jewish burial society, like the chairs my mom and dad had used when mourning their parents, and the Lashers, Aggie. Mrs. Birkenstein, her hair covered by a kerchief, eyes dazed, was stroking the head of the blond three-year-old boy at her feet whose arms were climbing her leg like vines.

  She seemed lost in thought, and we joined in her silence—according to Jewish custom, it’s the mourner who sets the tone and initiates conversation. I felt awkward at first, compelled to fill the void with words, but after a while I settled into the quiet of the room, my thoughts drifting from the bereaved family to Lenore and her ex-husband and her best friend, and back to the widow, who had broken her silence.

  “You didn’t know him well,” she said to one of the men sitting in the front row of chairs.

  “Unfortunately, no. But even from the few times we talked, he impressed me as being a very kind man.”

  Zack’s voice. I was startled and wondered what he was doing here.

  “And I’ve heard from so many people in the shul how wonderful he was,” Zack said.

  She smiled shyly. “He was a wonderful husband, and a wonderful father.”

  So the Birkensteins were Zack’s congregants. My mother hadn’t mentioned which shul Mr. Birkenstein had belonged to. My father probably hadn’t told her. Even if he had, there was no way she or anyone else could have orchestrated my being here at the same time as Zack.

  “We were planning to go on vacation next month,” Mrs. Birkenstein said, her voice filled with regret and some surprise. “We had so many plans.”

  Shakespeare says there’s Providence in the fall of a sparrow. Bubbie G says much the same thing, that what happens in our lives is bashert—prede
stined—though we don’t understand God’s designs, and we do have the ability to exercise free will (which explains Ron and some other mistakes I’ve made). I tend to agree, because it’s comforting to think that God, who is busy running the world, isn’t too busy to watch over me and nudge me in the right direction. I wondered whether He was nudging me now, and if so, why here, in this house of covered mirrors and hushed conversation, in this room where a new widow, her garment freshly rent, had not begun to absorb the reality of her loss. Maybe that was the point, I decided. Maybe God was reminding me that happiness is fleeting.

  Or maybe this was, after all, just a coincidence.

  Mrs. Birkenstein talked about her husband, her voice quiet but animated, tears glistening in her eyes. After a while, when she had lapsed again into silence, I rose and approached her.

  I stole a look at Zack. He was sitting on a chair to my right. The surprise in his gray-blue eyes turned into something else that made me pleasantly flustered. I bent down and offered my condolences to the widow and left the room.

  thirteen

  Lenore had lived in an apartment building typical of Los Angeles construction in the late Fifties and Sixties—two stories of banana-colored stucco and faded-orange Spanish-tile roof, small wrought-iron enclosed balconies, a center court with a swimming pool, underground parking.

  The managers, Tom and Marie O’Day, invited me into a living room darkened to movie theater standards by double drapes—a necessity, Marie explained, because of the intensity of the afternoon western sun. They wore white Bermuda shorts and white sports-logo-emblazoned T-shirts that set off their darkly tanned, raisined skin, and had almost identical salt-and-pepper short, curly hair and friendly hazel eyes prematurely lined, probably by exposure to the same sun from which they were careful to protect their furniture. A large television screen showed a women’s tennis match in progress, and the coffee table had been laid out with bowls of popcorn and pretzels and cans of soda and beer.

  “We were shocked when her mother told us Lenore died,” Marie said, her voice rising to compete with the droning of a former tennis champion turned commentator and the air-conditioning unit that sporadically emitted a bronchial cough. “Just shocked. Weren’t we, Tom?” She turned to her husband, who was sitting next to her on an avocado green velvet sofa in pristine condition.