Knot My Sister's Keeper

by Mary Marks

  Detective Eric Rohrbacher, on the other hand, lived in Las Vegas. I showed the note to Giselle. “We should visit this guy next.”

  “Let’s call him right now,” she said. “I’ll tell Sam to file a flight plan for Vegas.”

  God must’ve been smiling on us, because Rohrbacher agreed to see us that afternoon. Before we left Tucson, we stopped at La Migra Grill for a lunch of authentic Mexican carne asada tacos, guacamole, and a chilled rice and fruit drink called Adios Arpaio. An hour and a half later we were airborne, heading for Nevada.

  Air traffic on a Sunday afternoon in Las Vegas was super busy with weekend vacationers flying back home. We circled for ten minutes over a brown landscape with garish hotels punching the skyline. Another white limo waited for us as we taxied to the hangar. I’d hoped to escape the oppressive Arizona heat, but Las Vegas was just as miserable as Tucson.

  This time Giselle ordered our bags to be transferred to the car. “By the time we’re finished with the detective, it’ll be way too late to fly to New York. Let’s stay and have a little fun tonight. What do you say, Sissy?” An expectant smile sparkled on her face as we settled in the backseat.

  “I’m not keen on staying here, G. I don’t gamble, and I don’t really drink.”

  “We don’t have to go to the casinos. We could take in a show or sit in bed and watch movies with a huge bowl of popcorn and a box of Milk Duds. Come on, Martha. It’ll be a chance to bond.” Her face suddenly turned serious. “Aside from my son, Nicholas, you’re the only family I have.”

  For the first time, I realized Giselle might be lonely. Her tactless behavior probably didn’t win her many real friends. In addition, her husband was dead and her only child lived three thousand miles away. I knew how that felt. Besides, I couldn’t resist the eager, puppy-dog look in her eyes. “Yeah, okay.”

  She reached over and hugged me—yet again. “I’m so happy. We really are becoming best friends.”

  Oy vey. What next?

  CHAPTER 11

  At four that afternoon, our limo pulled up in front of a rambling, ranch-style home in an upscale neighborhood. I unbuckled my seat belt. “How does a retired detective afford a house like this?”

  “Captain Farkas said Rohrbacher moved here five years ago.” Giselle counted backward on her fingers. “That was at the height of the great recession when property values were in the toilet. He probably paid way under market for this place. Even now you can get a good deal on Vegas properties.”

  “Maybe. But it’s still Las Vegas, and it’s still in the middle of the desert.”

  As we approached the front door I said, “I’m begging you, G, to keep your mouth shut. You only manage to piss people off and make things harder.”

  Eric Rohrbacher was pushing sixty. He had a two-day growth of beard and a sparse, gray ponytail. “Welcome to Vegas,” he said as we stepped inside a living room full of black leather, chrome, and a shaggy white area rug. A deer’s head with dusty antlers and sad, black marble eyes hung on the wall over a glass-enclosed fireplace.

  He grinned at Giselle. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. Yet, here you are, all grown up. Can I get you girls something to drink? Beer? Soda? Martini?”

  “No thanks. We’re good.” Giselle shrugged off her jacket.

  “Actually, I’d love some water.” I was annoyed she had tried to speak for me again.

  When he left the room, I made a zipping motion across my lips and steered her toward the sofa. “Remember, be nice.”

  Rohrbacher returned with tall glasses of ice water, relaxed in his chair, and placed one ankle across his knee. “When the captain phoned and asked me to see you, he told me what you were up to. I don’t know what more I can add.”

  “Maybe you could begin by telling us what you think happened to our father.” I took a sip of the icy water.

  Giselle sat on the edge of the sofa.

  “There were rumors he had a gambling problem and owed a lot of money to the wrong people. My sources also said Jerome Eagan had to bail out his son-in-law several times. Maybe Eagan got tired and refused to pay off the debt. The theory was your father was desperate and scared and disappeared to save his own skin.”

  “That’s a lie! Daddy would never leave me like that.”

  I closed my eyes. So much for keeping quiet. I put a restraining hand on Giselle’s arm. “Why wasn’t any of this noted in the missing-persons file?”

  Rohrbacher frowned. “I’m sure I wrote it in one of my notes. I remember rejecting the gambling debt theory because it didn’t make sense. Especially in the face of testimony that he carried a lot of cash on the day he disappeared. If my notes are missing, someone removed them.”

  Oh my God. How far has the cover-up extended?

  I told him about Quinn’s affair with my mother. “We know our father was a philanderer. Captain Farkas believes he could’ve been killed by a jealous lover or husband. What do you say?”

  “I say anything’s possible. And we would’ve followed up on that angle, too. But since you’ve spoken to the captain, you know we were ordered to drop the investigation.” He directed his next remarks to Giselle. “Powerful people live in Beverly Hills, and your grandfather was one of them. The powerful get to live by different rules than the rest of us.”

  “What about your partner, Meredith Gomez?” I asked. “What did she think?”

  “Merry? She always said your father was still alive. She believed he’d skipped town with a bankroll big enough to start over somewhere far away from his troubles in LA.”

  “After time passed without any trace of him, did she ever change her mind?”

  He looked apologetically at Giselle. “She said if he was dead, someone in the family must’ve killed him.” Giselle opened her mouth to object, but I squeezed her arm.

  “Did she point to anyone in particular?” I asked.

  Rohrbacher shrugged. “Not seriously. Merry joked that the killer always turned out to be the spouse.”

  Giselle crossed her arms. “I refuse to believe anyone in my family could’ve killed Daddy! Especially my mother. She loved him too much.”

  “Then why did your grandfather stop the investigation?” Rohrbacher asked.

  Giselle repeated the explanation she’d given Captain Farkas. Her grandfather wanted to protect the family from scandal.

  The detective shrugged skeptically. “Maybe.”

  Didn’t Captain Farkas react the same way?

  “What else could it be?” she demanded.

  “Like my partner said, maybe he absconded to another country with enough cash to start a new life. Or someone who knew about the cash robbed and killed him before he could leave town. Or . . . I hate to repeat myself . . . but someone close to him killed him in a moment of rage. It happens.”

  Back in the limo, Giselle said, “Can you believe that guy? What a nerve to accuse my family like that!”

  “I’m proud of you, G. You showed remarkable restraint.”

  All the traveling and running around had made every muscle in my body tense and the nerves in my right hip felt like fire. I helped myself to some bottled water from the tiny refrigerator built into the side of the limo, swallowed my pain meds, and rubbed my hip. “I hope we’re headed for our rooms now. I could do with a nice, hot bath. Which hotel are we staying at?”

  “Hotel? Those sleazy germ factories? Oh no. No way. We’re going to my house.”

  My jaw dropped. “You have a place here?”

  “On the links at Anthem. It’s a private club. There’s a wonderful restaurant where we can either go to eat or order in.”

  “You also live off the links at the Riviera Country Club in LA. You must be an avid golfer.”

  She waved her hand. “No way. But my husband, Ryan, was. And he taught our son, Nicholas. That’s why I hang on to all of our places. For Nicky’s sake.”

  “All? How many houses do you own, anyway?”

  “My main house is the one you visited in the Palisades. It’s
where I feel most comfortable. Then there’s Granddad’s estate in Beverly Hills, where I sometimes entertain clients, this one in Vegas, an apartment in Manhattan, and a house in Hilton Head. Oh, and I bought a loft for Nicholas near Harvard.”

  “Who looks after all these places when you’re not there?”

  “If I’m going to be away from LA for longer than a couple of days, I take Isabella along with me. She’s the woman you met in the Palisades. Otherwise, I employ one full-time caretaker for each residence and hire extra staff if I’m having guests.”

  Must be nice.

  I noticed the houses we passed kept getting larger and larger, with lush, green lawns spreading over acres. Where did all the water come from to sustain this thirsty landscaping in the middle of the desert? At last we pulled into the driveway of a stone-clad three-story mansion with a fountain in the middle of a circular driveway. Giselle smiled. “Home, sweet home. You’ll have your pick of eight different bedrooms, not counting Nicky’s or mine.”

  The interior space soared under the tall ceilings. Plush fabrics in neutral grays covered the king-sized overstuffed furniture—in sharp contrast to the riot of color and prints in her French-inspired LA home.

  “This was my husband’s favorite retreat,” she said. “He chose all the furnishings for the downstairs.”

  “Judging by the size of everything, he must have been a big man.”

  Her eyes misted over. “Yes. He was six-four. I really miss him.”

  “What happened?”

  “He died four years ago. Heart attack at the seventh hole.” Her lips trembled and she blinked back tears. “He was only forty-five.”

  “I’m really very sorry, G.” I put my arm around her and gave a little squeeze.

  We took an elevator to the second floor, where Giselle showed me four bedrooms in addition to her own giant suite of rooms. “There are five more bedrooms upstairs, but I thought it would be more convenient if we camped out on the same floor.”

  “I’d hardly call it camping.”

  Each room was beautifully appointed with antique furniture and fine linens and had its own luxury bathroom.

  “Have you decided which room you like the best?”

  “I like the one with the robin’s-egg blue walls. There’s a big Jacuzzi tub in the bathroom that’s calling my name. I also noticed a framed pencil drawing on the wall that looks an awful lot like my mother.”

  “Hmm.” She tilted her head. “I know which one you mean, and I’m pretty sure that drawing was one of Daddy’s. You should take it.”

  A plump woman in her fifties, wearing an apron over a cotton dress, stepped off the elevator with our luggage. “Where shall I put this, Mrs. Cole?” She pointed to my small suitcase with her chin.

  “In the blue room, Parker. And please make sure there are fresh hot towels and a fluffy robe for my sister.”

  The woman looked at me with curious, wide eyes and quickly recovered. “Yes, ma’am.”

  I spent the next half hour making good use of the bubbling spa in my bathroom. Then I wrapped myself in a plush terry-cloth robe and settled against the crisp white pillows on the queen-sized bed and dialed Quincy’s number. “Did you arrive okay?”

  “Yes. Noah picked me up at LAX two hours ago. We’re at his house in Sherman Oaks now.”

  I heard a male voice murmuring in the background, and Quincy giggled.

  “I’ve gotta go, Mom. Talk to you later.”

  I didn’t want to think about what they might be doing. To distract myself, I opened the manila envelope and pored over Captain Farkas’s notes.

  At six-thirty I changed into a gray linen dress and my grandmother’s pearls. Giselle said I could have the pencil drawing of my mother. I lifted it off the wall and turned it over. The back had been left open in order to expose a message written by the artist on the reverse side of the drawing: For the love of my life. Your Quinn. Really? He declared my mother was the love of his life? So, what was Giselle doing with her picture?

  At seven that evening we sat at a table in La Grenouille with a pink linen cloth and lots of crystal glasses. Dark wood paneling covered the walls and a dozen waiters scurried around like black beetles wearing white gloves. Thanks to the hot soaking and the meds, the pain in my hip had subsided.

  Giselle picked up the menu. “This restaurant is famous for their frogs’ legs. They’re my favorite. You should try them, Sissy.”

  Was I ready to give her a long explanation about why frogs weren’t kosher? “No thanks, G. Frogs are on the list of forbidden foods for Jews. I’ll have the poached sea bass instead.”

  “What list is that?”

  I decided not to give her the talk about why certain animals were “unclean,” because I didn’t want to spoil her enjoyment of the meal. “It’s in the Bible, actually. I’ll show you one day if you’re interested.”

  The waiter took our order and left as silently as he’d appeared.

  Giselle buttered a hot roll. “I told you before, I’m very interested in everything you do. You’re like some exotic bird who flew into my garden. But it seems like being Jewish is awfully complicated. So many rules.”

  “You’re right. There can be a lot of rules. Especially if you’re Orthodox. But there’s also great comfort to be found in ritual and clear boundaries. Especially in today’s world, where social media has blurred the lines of privacy.”

  Ten minutes later the waiter placed our hot plates on the table. Giselle cut into a crispy piece of breaded meat that looked like fried chicken. “Where do we go from here? We’re pretty sure there are two reasons why Daddy could’ve been murdered. Womanizing or gambling.”

  “It could be either, or both. Don’t forget, we also have one detective who imagined our father could still be alive somewhere far away.”

  “Do you believe Captain Farkas? That it was Granddad who stopped the investigation?”

  “I read the captain’s notes this afternoon. You’re not going to like this, G, but he said after Chief Nelson ordered the investigation to stop, Quinn’s missing-persons file was sanitized. Someone in the department removed a statement from a witness close to the family, along with Detective Rohrbacher’s notes on the possible connection to gambling or robbery.”

  “Oh my God,” she gasped. “Did he say who the witness was?”

  “Your housekeeper, Anna Figueroa. Do you know where she is after all these years?”

  “Figgy? Yes! I kept her on as the caretaker for the estate in Beverly Hills. It’s an easy job for an older woman, especially since I’m rarely there.”

  “We should talk to her as soon as we get back to LA. Find out what she told the police that was so bad it had to be scrubbed from the file.”

  “Okay, but first thing in the morning we’re flying to New York. While you were resting this afternoon, I found Jayda Constable.”

  CHAPTER 12

  We left Las Vegas at eight Monday morning, right after an early breakfast. Giselle wore a blue pantsuit, but I dressed comfortably in my jeans for the five-hour flight to New York.

  I felt a stab of pride as I watched Giselle on her laptop efficiently conducting company business. She spoke to someone on her computer screen.

  “I’m sorry, Harold, but you’ll have to find another way to handle our Arab friends. You need to grow a pair. Tell them they can lower their price to zero dollars per barrel, but we won’t give in. We’ll simply stockpile current production until they begin to choke. I refuse to blink first.”

  She ended the call and closed her laptop. “My grandfather almost ran this company into the ground by surrounding himself with his old cronies. Once I took over, I got rid of all the deadweight and replaced them with really smart people. Harold was my study partner at Wharton, back in the day. Together we’ve managed to pull the company from the brink and make it profitable again.”

  “You studied at Wharton? I’m impressed.”

  “Yeah? Well, Jews aren’t the only ones who can be shrewd in business.” She stop
ped when she saw the expression on my face. “What now?”

  I decided her insensitive remarks were made out of ignorance, not malice. “I’m amazed at some of the things that come out of your mouth, G. Not all Jews are in business. We’re involved in every aspect of life. You name it, there’s a Jewish person who does it. The only generalization you can make about us as a group is that we place a high value on education. That’s why we’re called the People of the Book.”

  “I’ve never heard that expression.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  Three hours in, the hostess, Earline, served a lunch of chicken Caesar salad along with fresh, hot rolls she’d baked in the galley. Airplane food never tasted this good. Another great thing about traveling in a private jet was that there were no lines to wait in. We landed in Teterboro, New Jersey, at four, Eastern time and went straight from the plane to the backseat of a town car waiting for us on the tarmac. Giselle gave our driver the address and we headed for Jayda Constable’s apartment in Brooklyn Heights, fifty minutes away.

  “What did she say when you called her yesterday?” I asked as we traveled toward the New Jersey Turnpike.

  Giselle rolled on a fresh coat of lip gloss and rubbed her lips together. “She said, and I quote, ‘It’s about damn time. I’ve been waiting years to tell someone all the crap I know.’”

  “Good. It sounds like she’s more than ready to talk.”

  The artist’s apartment was a third-floor walk-up in a building next to a small produce market. The large windows were thrown wide open to let in the sultry summer air. I could see why Jayda chose the apartment; it was full of light and overlooked a small garden slowly going to weeds in the back of the building.

  A plush, purple velvet sofa shared the small living room with an old-fashioned phonograph and tall bookshelves overflowing with everything from paperbacks to oversized art books. An unfinished canvas stood on an easel near the windows, featuring an elephant painted with primary colors in a primitive, folk-art style.