The Bar Mitzvah Murder

by Lee Harris

  I knocked on the door. A woman opened it only as wide as the heavy chain allowed. Perhaps, I thought, they were afraid angry husbands would burst in to reclaim the wives they had abused so badly that the women had felt it necessary to leave.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Christine Bennett. I’d like to talk to whoever’s in charge.”

  “You OK?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. I’m not looking for shelter. I need some information.”

  She opened the door and reclosed it securely. “I’ll tell Kim you’re here. Christine Bennett?”

  “Yes. She doesn’t know me.”

  The woman trotted away. I stood in the foyer, waiting. A young pregnant woman carrying a toddler walked by, looking at me curiously. From not too far away I heard the kinds of sounds I had heard over the phone, crying, laughing, small children giggling and talking. I was pretty sure I had made a long trip for nothing.

  “Ms. Bennett?”

  “Yes, hello.”

  “I’m Kimberly West. Kim. We can probably find a corner to sit in in my office.”

  I followed her through a maze of hallways and rooms to a small office in a rear corner of the house. She sat on her rolling chair and I sat on the only other chair in the room, a wooden ladderback that had probably been swiped from a dining table.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I believe Gabriel Gross made contributions to your shelter.”

  “Mr. Gross? Yes. Very generous contributions. I heard something . . . Is it true?”

  “That he died? Yes.”

  “How awful. He was young and he seemed to be in very good health.”

  “He was. He was murdered.”

  She stared at me.

  “Had he been contributing to the shelter for long?”

  The phone rang and she excused herself, reaching for it across the desk. The conversation was short and monosyllabic. She dropped the phone back in its cradle. “You were saying?”

  I repeated my question.

  “About three years, I think. It could be more. I met him somewhere, a fund-raiser, I think, and buttonholed him. We always need money. We have more people here than we can sleep and feed. He was very sympathetic, asked for my card.” She laughed. “If I spent money on cards, two people would miss out on dinner. Anyway, I got a check in the mail about a week later. A nice one. And there have been others since. Is there a problem?”

  I admitted there wasn’t and I thanked her for her time. I asked if I could use her phone to call New York and promised to pay for the call.

  “I appreciate the gesture. Be my guest.”

  Someone somewhere was calling, “Kim? Kim, where are you?” She jumped up and left.

  I called Gabe’s lawyer’s office and asked if I could talk to him in about an hour. The secretary said yes. I left a fivedollar bill for the call and took off.

  “Mrs. Gross told me to expect to hear from you.”

  Harold Singer was about Gabe’s age and graying. He gave the impression of being easygoing, but I assumed he could be tough as nails when he had to be. He knew what I had been doing, and if he felt at all skeptical about my abilities or thought I might be interfering, he kept it to himself.

  “I understand from Mrs. Gross that there seem to be few leads to Mr. Gross’s killer.”

  “That’s what I understand. They have two men in custody in Jerusalem, the men who kidnapped Gabe in a fake ambulance and probably killed him, but they haven’t said anything that goes anywhere. They claim they don’t know who they were working for and, of course, they didn’t do the killing; someone else did.”

  “Someone else always does.”

  “Here’s my idea.” I sketched it out for him.

  “I may be able to help you a little. I don’t know the beneficiaries personally, but when Gabe gave me his notes I questioned him about each person.”

  “Do you have those notes?” I asked with hope.

  “I doubt it, but I can look.” He picked up a phone and asked someone to get the Gabriel Gross file. “As I recall, they were handwritten and as I made my own notes I think he crossed each name off the list so that nothing was left. He may have taken the notes with him or just tossed them in the wastebasket.”

  There was a knock at the door and a woman came in, dropped a file on his desk, and left without saying a word. He put glasses on and started looking through the many papers in the jacket, shaking his head as he turned the pages.

  “His notes aren’t here. In fact, I don’t even see my notes.” He frowned.

  “You don’t keep your original notes?”

  “It depends.”

  Not much of an answer. “Everything look in order?”

  He was holding the document that I assumed was the will itself. As I watched, he turned the pages, moving his index finger down each page from the top. “Looks in order to me.”

  “You said you might be able to help me with the beneficiaries.”

  “Yes, of course.” He flipped a couple of pages. “These look like what he gave me. His wife, his ex-wife, his children.” The finger moved across the page, back and forth. “Looks OK to me.”

  “And the other beneficiaries?”

  “The big ones are well known. But Gabe had a soft heart. He would go to dinner with friends and someone in the group would have a special hobbyhorse, you know, something he was very interested in, dedicated to, and he would talk to Gabe. I’m sure some people lined up for the chance to be in the same room with him. If Gabe liked what he heard, he’d send a check.”

  “But these are sizable bequests.”

  “As I said, he had a good heart. Here’s one, this shelter for abused women in New Jersey. I’d say this place is marginally legitimate. They take in more women and children than they have beds and cribs for. Sometimes there isn’t a lot to eat. But Gabe made them one of his own.”

  “How do you know this?” I asked.

  “I actually took a drive out there when he put it in the will. I thought he might have been vulnerable to a request delivered with a sweet smile.”

  “I see.”

  “But they’re on the up-and-up. They have the proper accreditation; they keep their heads above water. I’m sure his bequest will keep them going for a good long time.”

  “And the others on the list? Did you look into all the rest of them?”

  “I didn’t really have the time, and to tell the truth, Gabe didn’t want me to. He knew who they were and he wanted them remembered.”

  “Did he ever change this will after he signed it?”

  “No. I would know if he had. I haven’t seen him for a couple of years although we spoke now and then. You don’t look happy, Ms. Bennett.”

  “I don’t like dead ends. Someone developed and executed a complicated plot to kidnap Gabe. Whether the murder was in the original plan or not I don’t know, but it happened. There has to be something somewhere that gives me a lead.”

  “Some homicides go unsolved.”

  “I know, but I really want this one cleared up. I know several of Gabe’s relatives and I’ve gotten to know his wife. She’s devastated.”

  “Understandably.”

  “Mr. Singer, does the name Simon Kaplan mean anything to you?”

  He pursed his lips and thought about it. “Can’t say it does. I’ve probably met one in my life and forgotten him. He’s not on the list, is he?”

  “No.” I described him and told Singer what had happened in Jerusalem.

  “Can’t help you, I’m afraid. I didn’t know Gabe’s father, and if Gabe ever mentioned this man it didn’t stay with me.”

  I reached down to pick up my bag from the floor, where I had left it. “If someone had gone into your file and removed, say, your notes or Gabe’s notes, would you have any way of knowing it?”

  “No one went into that file without authorization, Ms. Bennett,” he said testily.

  “Well, I guess I’ll just keep making my phone calls and hope to learn something useful. T
hank you for seeing me.”

  He gave me a warm smile. “I’m glad you came down.”

  I offered him my hand and we shook. “If you think of anything—”

  “Of course. I’ll get in touch with you.”

  I left my name and phone number with the secretary and thanked her for arranging for me to see Mr. Singer so quickly. If something came up, she might remember I had been polite to her.

  26

  It was early evening when Marnie called. I had gotten back to Elsie’s in the afternoon and spent an hour telling her about our wonderful trip. My narrative was frequently interrupted by Eddie, who had his own stories to tell. The one of his packing Dead Sea mud all over his body made Elsie laugh till she lost her breath.

  “I hear you visited Harold Singer,” Marnie said when I answered.

  “Yes. I checked out a charity mentioned in the will and then I went to see him.”

  “Which charity?” Marnie asked.

  “A home for abused women.”

  “Oh, yes, I remember that one. Gabe was very moved when he heard about it. They do good work there.”

  “It looks that way.” I waited, wondering why she was calling.

  “You know, Chris, I don’t think what you’re doing is going to go anywhere.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I went through the list of beneficiaries and they all seem legitimate.”

  “That’s what the lawyer said.”

  “And the charities—Gabe had so many he cared about. Whatever they do, he thought they were worthwhile, and it’s not up to us to fault his judgment. You’re not going to find anything there.”

  “So you’re asking me to stop looking for his killer?”

  “No, of course I’m not doing that. I’m just saying I don’t think you’ll find it by calling Gabe’s secretary or his alma mater.”

  “OK,” I said, not sure what she was suggesting.

  “But if you do learn anything—”

  “You’ll hear from me.”

  I felt unsettled after our conversation. Why had she called? It seemed her intent was to tell me to stop looking into Gabe’s death, but she had not wanted to say that in so many words. I have conversations from time to time in which I sense that the person I’m talking to is trying to get me to say what the caller doesn’t want to say himself. It’s as if it will come out better if it’s my suggestion or my theory or my conclusion.

  Marnie wanted me to back off the investigation. She knew something today that she hadn’t known when I saw her last week. I opened my copy of the will and looked again at the list of beneficiaries, both individuals and organizations. The lawyer had pretty much vouched for the individuals, and they certainly seemed like people Gabe knew well. There were a few charities I hadn’t contacted personally. Maybe if you could buttonhole Gabe at a party and get him to send a check, you might be able to deceive him about the work the charity did, although from what I had heard about Gabe, I thought he probably had someone check out these organizations before he gave them gifts. Tomorrow I would pursue the ones I wasn’t so sure of.

  When we were having coffee and Elsie’s wonderful cookies after Eddie went to sleep, I asked Jack something that was bothering me: “If you were an estate lawyer and had made handwritten notes while talking to a client, would you throw out those notes after the will was finalized?”

  “Hard to say. Since I’m not an old hand at being an estate lawyer, my instinct would be to keep them. They don’t take up much room, a sheet or two of paper. But I can see tossing them when you don’t need them anymore.”

  “I was just thinking that if there were ever any questions about beneficiaries, it might be helpful to go back to the original notes.”

  “Sure, and that’s probably why lawyers keep all that stuff. Someone objects to an heir getting so-and-so much, you go back and say, ‘Look, here’s what he said when he came to my office seven years ago.’ ”

  “Gabe’s attorney’s original notes aren’t in the file and I thought he looked a little uncomfortable about it. As if he thought they should be there and he was surprised they weren’t.”

  “You saw him today?”

  “I wanted to ask him about the people and organizations that are inheriting Gabe’s money.”

  “And?”

  “He looked over the list and thought everything was OK.”

  “But he didn’t have his original notes to compare the will with.”

  “No.”

  “Could mean something, but I don’t know what.”

  I left it at that. A couple of hours later, when I was walking up the stairs to our bedroom, something struck me. The note in Marnie’s safe. Maybe she had figured out who had written it. And maybe she was afraid that if I kept poking around, so would I.

  The next morning I called the teacher who had taken over my classes at the college and got a report on how things had gone. I had hastily e-mailed him, via Jack’s computer at the Jerusalem police station, to ask him to fill in for one more class after we delayed our homecoming. He didn’t seem at all bothered by the additional work and volunteered that teaching mysteries was a fun job.

  I got my lesson together and then took the phone into the family room with my papers. There was something called the School of Good Friends that I had not reached the other day, so I called them now.

  The woman who answered described herself as the secretary to the principal and said he could not be interrupted at the moment.

  “Can you tell me a little about the school?” I asked.

  I heard her expel air from her mouth in an annoyed manner. “Can I send you a brochure, ma’am?”

  “I think I’d really like to see the school myself.”

  “Do you have a child who’s planning to attend?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “We have very strict guidelines for our students.”

  “I would hope so,” I said. “But I’m also interested in the school itself.”

  “I can give you an appointment next week.”

  If she was trying to discourage me, she was doing a good job. I didn’t think I’d want my child in a place with someone like her in the front office. But as I was a person interested in whether the school had a building with classrooms and toilets, she was simply making me more suspicious by the minute. “Fine,” I said. “How would Monday be?”

  She turned a page. “Tuesday’s better. Ten A.M.?”

  “Thank you. I’ll be there.” I gave her my name, address, and phone number and hung up. Then I wrote a big red question mark next to the name of the school.

  I then called the Double Eagle organization. For the second time, an answering machine responded. I didn’t leave a message. Instead, I called Marnie. Perhaps she knew these two beneficiaries and could tell me something about them.

  The housekeeper answered the phone. When I asked for Marnie, she said, “Mrs. Gross has left for a short trip.”

  “Oh.” I was taken by surprise. “I just talked to her last night and she didn’t mention that she was leaving.”

  “I’m sorry. She left about an hour ago.”

  “When will she be back?”

  “I’m not sure. I can give her a message. She may call.”

  I declined her offer and hung up, feeling very uncomfortable. Something had happened. I had touched a raw nerve or Marnie knew who had put the diamonds in her safe or both. For all I knew, Marnie was home, having given instructions that she did not want to talk to me. Or she was away, perhaps to think over what she knew or suspected about the murder of her husband.

  I looked at my watch. I still had most of the day ahead of me. I called Elsie, who had said she’d pick Eddie up at school, and I took off, armed with maps and addresses. My first stop was the School of Good Friends. This one was just north of the New York City border. I found the street and drove down it slowly, a residential street with people of different races walking themselves, their children, and their dogs. The school was on a corner, a
brick building one story high with doors to each classroom. It was comparatively new and the grounds were clean, including a play area that contained equipment in happy colors for children.

  I inched my way down the block and turned the corner to see the other face of the school. There were colored cutouts in many of the windows, and I could see children inside, some looking down at desks, some looking toward an invisible teacher. Satisfied, I found my way to the parkway and turned south toward the city.

  The Double Eagle charity had an office in an old building on Tenth Avenue. I got off the West Side Highway at 79th Street and went down West End Avenue until I got to where I thought I was in the right area. East of West End most of the avenues are one-way and Tenth went north. I got on Tenth and found I had overshot a little, which was fine with me. I found a parking lot and left my car. I was getting hungry, having passed my usual lunch hour, but I decided to find the address before thinking about food.

  The building was the usual five-story walk-up and I found a sign for Double Eagle on the ground floor, so at least I knew they really had an office, not a mail drop. I walked up to the third and found the door, which was locked. The name Double Eagle was painted on the wood in gold letters, but there was nothing else except the mail slot. I knocked and got no answer. I put my ear against the door and heard nothing.

  I went down the hall to the next door and knocked, then opened it. Inside, a man in shirtsleeves sat at a messy desk, a bunch of papers in front of him and scattered all over the rest of the desk. He was holding a fat pen in one hand. Nearby was an empty crockery coffee mug.

  He looked up at me. “You lookin’ for me?”

  “I’m looking for whoever works at Double Eagle.”

  “They don’t come in much.”

  “Do you know their names?”

  “Not offhand. It’s a man sometimes, a woman sometimes. She’s young. I guess he’s young, too, if I think about it.”

  “And you don’t know who they are.”

  “Never had the pleasure.”

  “Do you have the landlord’s name?” I asked.