Hill of Secrets: An Israeli Jewish mystery novel

by Michal Hartstein

  I sat in the waiting room and ignored his non-stop crying while he was being washed. I leisurely read a newspaper, completely ignoring his ceaseless pleas for my attention. I couldn't do anything, not even pet him, because he was completely covered in the medical shampoo.

  To my great surprise, despite the relatively early time of day, there was another young woman in the waiting room. She was waiting for her beloved dog that’d undergone emergency surgery to remove a malignant tumor. She was constantly calling her partner and her mother and informing them of every single detail.

  I had the sense she was looking at me with an accusatory gaze. How could I sit so leisurely while my dog was undergoing such torture?

  That feeling was replaced with knowing a few minutes later.

  Emily washed Tsumi and went outside with him to comb and dry him off.

  "Is that your dog barking out there?" She roused me from a titillating article about twenty-one ways to improve your sex life (but not one tip about how to get a sex life).

  "Yes," I answered without lifting my eyes from the paper.

  "Why is he barking?"

  "Because he doesn't like being combed."

  "But he's not being combed," she said, shaking her head in repulsion.

  I went outside. Emily had tied Tsumi to a pole and gone in to the vet. I hadn't noticed since I was so absorbed in the paper. I released Tsumi and brought him into the waiting room together.

  Tsumi rubbed up against me and hysterically licked me. He was finally rescued from the hands of the terrible Emily and back with mommy.

  "You see?" she said. "He wanted you! Why weren't you sitting with him?" she added, rolling her eyes.

  I didn't answer. What could I say? She was right, but I'm not as evil as I appeared to her. During the treatment, Tsumi needed to see me as little as possible, because I couldn't touch him. When he was crying outside, I hadn't noticed he was alone.

  I thought about Hanni—how much criticism I’d heard from those close to her in the last few days. It seemed that everyone approached parenting in his own way.

  Chapter 18

  Wednesday 5.27.09

  I was ten minutes late to the meeting I had scheduled with Aviva, Hanni's mother, at the station. She was fifteen minutes early, so she ended up waiting for me for almost half an hour.

  She sat at the entrance of the station, with an angry glare and her crossed leg restlessly jiggling. I asked her into the interrogation room.

  "You know I waited for you for forty five minutes?" she rounded up her waiting time.

  "I apologize," I lied. "I'm currently working on solving your daughter's murder. I don't have so much control over my schedule, and besides, we made our appointment for twelve, I was ten minutes late."

  She noticed there wasn't a hint of apology in my voice. "You could be a bit more respectful towards me. After all, my taxes pay for your paycheck."

  "I want a raise then!" I smiled.

  Aviva didn’t think I was funny and she demanded to see my superior.

  Fifteen minutes later, Alon came out of the interrogation room with a look that said, "Why must I deal with this kindergarten?"

  "Apologize to the lady and we'll be done with this."

  "No problem." I looked down; I had not an inkling of regret about what I'd said.

  "She wanted me to replace you, you know that?"

  "Really? Why?" I was surprised.

  "She thinks you're not impartial."

  "What?" I didn't believe it.

  "You knew her daughter."

  "So? That means there's a chance I'm a suspect? I haven't spoken to her daughter in fifteen years, and even when we were in high school together we weren't exactly best friends."

  "You don't have to convince me; I told her there was no reason why you shouldn't be able to run the case and that, anyway, there's no other available manpower and it would be a shame after all of the hard work you've done."

  "And was she convinced?"

  "I don't think so, but she understands she doesn't really have a choice."

  *

  I sat down across from Aviva, whose face bore such a sour expression that I knew nothing I could say would calm her down.

  "I apologize," I said in a weak voice. She rolled her eyes. "We have the same objective, I want to understand who killed your daughter and grandchildren and why."

  "I thought the 'who' had already been determined."

  "It's true; the chances are your late son-in-law killed your daughter and grandchildren and committed suicide, but we want to be certain there isn't a killer walking among us, and also to try and understand the motive that led to this horrible act."

  "This won't bring them back," she said sadly.

  "True, but in my experience, it's easier to deal with these kinds of situations when the picture is clear."

  "Okay." She brought her hands together on the table. "What did you want to ask me that you haven't yet?"

  I sifted through some of the papers I had brought. "Did you know there was a deep rift between Hanni and Meir and Meir's parents?" She heavily nodded her head. "I need you to say it for the recording."

  "Yes." She answered almost in a whisper.

  "What did you know?"

  "I knew she didn't get along with Meir's parents, especially with his mother."

  "Why?"

  "Sarah Danilowitz is a good woman, but she kept involving herself with Meir and Hanni's life. I have three more sons besides Hanni. All of them are married and I really try to stay out of my daughters-in-law's business." I had a sense that reality was far from what she was describing. "I understand you're divorced," she added.

  Turns out Mrs. Danilowitz did some research about me, a pretty simple thing to do in religious circles, where everyone knows everything about everyone, "so you used to have a mother-in-law." She went on analyzing my personality. "You surely know how irritating it is to have your mother-in-law meddling with everything, even if she's right."

  To be honest, Hava, Yinon's mother, didn't involve herself in any aspect of our life. She was one of the few people who didn't drive me crazy with the pregnancy issue, for instance.

  "How was this meddling manifested?" I got back on track.

  "Comments about how to clean and do the laundry, how to raise the children, where to shop, questions about their financial situation."

  "But don't you think that if they were supporting Meir and Hanni, it was her right?"

  "To tell her how to raise the children?"

  "What did she have to say about how the children were raised?"

  "Mostly comment about how much shopping she did and all sorts of recommendations about Ariel."

  "What recommendations?"

  "Sarah thought Ariel needed therapy."

  "What kind of therapy?"

  "She didn't know which, but she kept pressuring her to send him to be evaluated."

  "And did they evaluate him?"

  "Not because Sarah told them to. The boy was having trouble in class, so we went to a children's psychologist."

  "And what did the psychologist say?"

  "He sent them to a psychiatrist."

  "And what did the psychiatrist say?"

  "He recommended the boy be given Ritalin."

  "Ariel was given Ritalin?" I was surprised. According to the Department of Health's listings, there was no prescription for Ritalin on his name.

  "No, of course not. Hanni didn't want to drug her child. She went to another institute and they told her she could forgo Ritalin and administer alternative treatment."

  "What kind?"

  "May I know what this has to do with the investigation?" she asked angrily. She was right, and I decided not to start another front with her.

  "You're right. My question is, don't you think it was Sarah's right to make comments to Hanni since they were still supporting them, financially?"

  "I think if you give, give wholeheartedly and unconditionally. From what I understood from Hanni they didn't even
give them that much, surely far less than they were able to."

  I decide to confront her with the numbers.

  "Between the years 2005 and 2007," I looked through the pages again to be sure, "Natan and Sarah transferred about three hundred thousand shekels to your daughter and son-in-law." It was evident in Sarah face that she was surprised. She didn't know we were talking about such a large sum.

  "Very nice," she said.

  "You didn't know how much money they’d given them?"

  "No."

  "Hanni didn't share these things with you?"

  "No."

  "You never asked her about it? After all, there was a period when Meir was unemployed."

  "I can't remember… maybe I asked her about something, but she never willingly shared that subject and I never asked her about it."

  "Are you telling me you had no idea they were deep in debt?"

  "Deep in debt?" she asked in wonder. "They were deep in debt? From what exactly?"

  I sift through my pages again. "They owed banks over two million shekels."

  "What?" she almost yelled in shock. It was clear she didn't have any idea how bad Meir and Hanni's situation was.

  I looked at her as she processed the information. "How did they get into such a state?" she finally asked. "They didn't live a very luxurious life."

  "They went on a family trip abroad, bought a fancy new car, remodeled their house, bought a lot of clothes and toys." I tried to explain the balance.

  "Which is what everyone does," Aviva shrugged, "so does that mean everyone is in that kind of debt?"

  "I don't know; I haven't conducted a survey. You have to understand that in addition to all their expenses they kept recycling loans and were actually paying more and more interest and returns for previous loans. This was from the end of 2007, when Meir's parents stopped assisting them financially and their situation got even worse."

  "Wow, I didn't know."

  "You didn't know Sarah and Natan stopped supporting them?"

  "That, I knew." She grimaced in disgust. "That was the last straw for Hanni, after all of Sarah's intrusions. Hanni stood up for herself so they decided to stop helping them."

  "And Hanni reacted by freezing out Meir's parents?"

  "I must say I didn't like that. Parents are parents, but she was so hurt that I didn't butt heads with her about that matter. I hoped that, in time, the anger would subside and both sides would calm down. In fact, she recently invited them to the party she organized for Noale's birth."

  "Why was she so hurt?"

  "She always felt rejected at their house, that she was always disrespected, discriminated against."

  "How was her relationship with Meir's sisters?"

  "She really liked his elder sister, Meirav. She had less of a connection with Michal, but the unpleasantness she sensed wasn't from her sisters-in-law, but from her father-in-law."

  "And how did Meir feel about all of this?"

  "About how his parents treated Hanni?"

  "No, about the fact that Hanni excommunicated his parents?"

  "I’ve no idea. I'm sure he didn't like it, but I think that he, like myself, thought she'd get over it."

  "To what extent was Hanni involved in managing the family's finances?"

  "Not too involved, I think. I think she would have told me they were so deep in debt if she knew. We hardly kept any secrets from one another."

  "You mean Meir kept this situation from her?"

  "I think he did."

  "Why?"

  "I really have no idea. Meir was a very quiet, introverted guy, maybe he was embarrassed that he couldn't manage the bills."

  "And maybe she was embarrassed and chose to hide it?"

  "I don't think so. Hanni wasn't afraid to ask," she smiled. "I know some grandmothers love to complain, but I love being a grandmother and my daughter, bless her, knew to ask for my help, and since she stopped asking Sarah for help, all the load was suddenly on me." She sighed. "Not that I'm complaining, of course."

  "You mean helped with raising the children?"

  "Of course. What did you think I was talking about?"

  "She never asked for financial help?"

  "Here and there, nothing out of the ordinary. I can tell you one thing for sure, if my husband and I knew what a mess they were in, we would have given them everything we could, which might not be as much as Sarah and Natan could give, but it's substantial," Aviva clarified.

  "In the last year, did you give Meir or Hanni cash?"

  "No."

  "Are you sure your husband didn't either?"

  "A million percent. In our house I'm the one who handles the money. I worked as a bookkeeper for a few years."

  "According to the data we have, there was about one hundred and forty five thousand shekels in cash deposited into your daughter and son-in-law's account in the last few months. Do you have any idea where that came from? Maybe something Hanni and Meir were doing on the side?"

  She shook her head. "Hardly, they didn't have a minute."

  I decided to reveal some more cards. "We have reason to believe that Meir was extorting someone."

  "What?" she gasped, putting her hands on her chest, as if trying to keep her heart from leaping out from the scare.

  "So Meir could be a victim, just like my daughter and grandchildren?"

  "I wouldn't jump to conclusions. All the signs still point to Meir killing them all and committing suicide."

  "But it's possible to fake a suicide."

  "It is possible, but we doubt that's what happened."

  "But you're telling me you think Meir was extorting someone and the fact is, Meir deposited a lot of money into their account."

  "Right."

  "So there's a likely chance that whoever killed my daughter, grandchildren and son-in-law is walking among us?" I wasn't sure if she was happy the tarnish of a murderer for a son-in-law has been removed or angry that the killer was still free.

  "There is such a chance, but the forensics team are skilled professionals, and if they determine this is a suicide, then the likelihood is that they are right."

  "But these things have happened."

  "They have." I sighed. I somewhat regretted revealing this information to her. My objective was to discover whom Meir was blackmailing, not stir her hopes about Meir being innocent. "So do you have any idea who Meir could have been blackmailing?"

  "Not at all." She shook her head. "Maybe someone from work?"

  "We're looking into that. I'm asking you in the context of friends and family."

  "Not that I know of."

  "Did Meir and Hanni have close friends that we haven't spoken to?"

  "I have no idea who you've spoken to."

  I went over the list of those interviewed with her and she immediately interjected. "You didn't talk to Iris Green?"

  "Who is that?"

  "She was like a sister to Hanni. They met in the Civil Service and became a pair of kindred spirits. If there’s anybody who could tell you what Hanni was going through, it's her."

  "Where does she live?"

  "She lives in Raanana. There are a lot of Anglo-Saxon Jews there. Iris's husband came to the country from England with his parents twenty years ago." She dictated Iris's cell and home phone numbers to me. The name and number looked familiar.

  "Is it possible that Iris is out of the country right now?" I remembered that when I was going through the phone records, Iris's number came up, and when I tried to call it I was asked to type in a secret code.

  Aviva thought for a moment. "Yes, of course, how could I forget? She called me during the Shiva. They went to visit her husband's family in England—some cousin got married. They should be back right after the holiday."

  Aviva left the interrogation room thinking Meir was innocent. I felt this line of thought made it a bit easier for her. Meir was her son-in-law for years, and it's hard for people to see their relatives as vicious killers, it's easier to get caught up in a fantasy about
an anonymous murderer. I would also be happy to discover that it was a different killer. The thought of a father shooting his children like that is beyond understanding, but I knew the chances of that were slim. The evidence was unequivocal and the chances of faking them, tiny.

  Chapter 19

  Thursday, 5.28.2009. Shavuot Eve

  Yinon called in the morning and said he was stuck at work and would come pick Tsumi up the next day. I explained to him that I had to leave early because I was going to the Inbal Hotel in Jerusalem with my family, a fact that I thought was well known to him, since it was the reason I asked him to watch Tsumi over the weekend. I had the feeling he was doing everything he could to not see me again, after what happened the week before. He probably thought there was a chance for us getting back together and was very hurt when I made it clear to him that was a mistake that would not be made again.

  He promised to pick Tsumi up in the afternoon and let me know he’d bring him back at noon on Saturday, before I got back. On the one hand I didn’t like the fact that my ex-husband still had the key to my apartment, but on the other hand it was very convenient. I didn’t feel like seeing him either. I’m not made of steel.

  *

  When Yinon and I were married and my parents invited us over for a holiday or Shabbat at a hotel, we would always leave a minute before the holiday began and leave the hotel before it had ended. My parents didn't like this, but they'd rather we come, and desecrate Shabbat, than not come at all. Now, divorced and alone, I left for my parents' house at one o’clock, a solid five hours before the holiday began.

  I never liked going out of town and of all the places in the country, the one I least liked going to be Jerusalem. That city confused me. In the absence of a husband or driver, I had to go with my parents, who refused to go into Tel-Aviv in order to pick me up.

  There's something a little sad about sleeping in a hotel room alone. I’d been living alone for several months, but it felt far less lonely surrounded by all of my personal objects. The neat, cold, hotel room made me feel lonelier than ever, and I decided to go down for a dip in the pool.