Death Will Pay Your Debts

by Elizabeth Zelvin

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Bruce

  "This is the most exasperating case," Cindy said.

  I had lured her up to my apartment with a promise of gourmet goodies from Dean & DeLuca and all the winsome charm I had been saving up for years for just such an occasion, not to mention the humility and sincerity that AA had made me cultivate since I got sober. Now we were sharing a postcoital picnic on my bed. No wine, of course, but I had supplied romantic ambience by setting dozens of lit candles all around the bed and perched on every horizontal surface except us. They did it in the movies all the time without disaster, but I kept checking the flames in my peripheral vision and hoping the evening wouldn't end with the whole place burning down.

  "More exasperating than our relationship?" I asked. "Or does that fall under the ban against questions related to the case?"

  "What relationship?" Cindy said. "One date at a time, remember? Don't you dare get complacent. I can't do this if I'm always going to have you pulling me one way and the job the other."

  "I'm not doing it on purpose," I said.

  Jimmy would no doubt have been able to tell us which ancient Greek or Roman charioteer had succumbed to just that predicament. Tonight I wasn't going to mention Jimmy, the ghost of Christmas Past, or anyone else who might distract us from the business at hand, which was to demonstrate beyond all doubt that Cindy was happier when I was around than when I wasn't.

  "I know," she said. "I can't even say I wish you were a cop."

  "Because then I wouldn't be me," I said, scootching up close behind her so I could sit with my arms around her and my lips brushing the top of her head.

  Cindy looked great by candlelight with her honey-colored hair fanning out around her ears like a silky dandelion and nothing on but a dab of whipped cream on one cheek and a few cake crumbs between her breasts.

  "I can help you with the case," I said. "Don't worry, no questions. All you have to do is listen. I have a name for you: Rod Prentice. He lives in Texas, and he was Sophia's lover, though not necessarily her only lover. They went to college together in San Diego, and they would meet up once a year. I bet you've never heard of him. But he came to New York for the funeral."

  Cindy twisted away from me and wound a sheet around her with the same motion. We ended up face to face.

  "You met this guy at the funeral?"

  "No. I heard about him from someone who saw him there. If I tell you who, will you keep me out of it?"

  "I've been trying to keep you out of it this whole time!"

  She gave me a relatively sedate version of the werewolf snarl, baring her teeth with the errant canine, as always, leading the pack.

  "So do you want to talk to him or not?" I asked.

  "I guess so," she said, "though if he lives in Texas, the chances are slim that he was in New York when Judith died and even slimmer that we could ever prove it. Can you give me contact info for the person who spotted him at Sophia's funeral?"

  "Sure," I said. "Her name is Tracy Miller. She was Sophia's college roommate. Are you working Judith's murder too? Have they accepted that the two deaths have to be connected?"

  "Why do you always have to ask so many questions!"

  "The same reason you do, detective," I said, my hands moving on her body, which I admit was unfair of me. "We want to know the truth. That's not such a bad thing to have in common, is it?"

  "The two squads are cooperating," she said.

  "Like this?" My lips were busy too now. "Like this?"

  "Mmm. Stop! No, don't stop. We're proceeding on the premise that they're connected, but we're a long way from proving it. The search of her apartment didn't turn up evidence of her program relationships the way Sophia's did."

  "Maybe she got rid of all the twelve-step stuff when she started drinking again," I said. "I can imagine doing that high."

  "I had the same thought," she said. "I earned brownie points with my sergeant by asking if any papers had been burnt, and they had."

  "The Big Book would be pretty hard to burn," I said. "What about electronic files and emails?"

  "Deleted," she said. "Our computer guys are working on it. That's probably our best chance of finding a connection."

  "So who's your prime suspect in the meantime?"

  "The lover who gave Sophia a diamond bracelet," she said.

  "That sounds dramatic," I said. "Who is it?"

  "We don't know yet," she said. "But I tracked down the jeweler who sold it to him. He remembered the guy, and he said he sounded like a lawyer."

  "Larry Kane is a lawyer," I said.

  "It's not him," she said. "He gave us the bracelet, and anyway, he could give his wife diamonds any time. The building where both Larry and Sophia worked is crawling with lawyers. Oh, and he thought the guy was Jewish. Apparently something about their conversation made him think so."

  "The killer and the jeweler?"

  "The lover and the jeweler. We don't know if the lover was the killer. Where would you look for Jewish around these people? The Schofields are WASPs."

  "That's where I'm a step ahead of you," I said. "Larry Kane's brother, the rabbi, sat shiva, and we went. Ask the rabbi who-all was there. My guess is most of them were Jewish. You might uncover a whole new bunch of people who could have killed her."

  We ended the conversation by making love again. I slept better than I had in weeks, and so did she, so I had done NYPD two favors, not just one.

  "It could have been the rabbi," Jimmy said the next time we had a chance to talk, over coffee after a meeting. "Have you thought of that?"

  "I hadn't," I said, "but sooner or later, I'm sure Cindy will."

  "So you two are back together, huh?"

  "More or less." I could feel my grin stretching toward my ears.

  "What's your next step?" he asked. "What do you want?"

  "I want Cindy to catch the killer," I said, "and make detective and live happily ever after. Speaking of happily ever after, how are the wedding plans going? Is it like the movies? Are you having to taste a dozen cakes and sit on a little chair all embarrassed while she tries on wedding dresses?"

  It's not that I'd never been to a fancy wedding, but I'd never been to one sober. Well, once, but I had never been the best man before. I'd been saving myself for Jimmy all this time.

  "Barbara keeps saying nothing's set in stone," he said. "Her parents are willing to pay for whatever she wants, including a three-ring circus, but she hasn't ruled out our eloping or anything in between."

  "If you eloped, would they give you the money they'd save as a wedding present?" I asked.

  "Probably," he said. "I'm not so sure that would be a good idea. I ran it by Dan and Eleanor. They didn't veto it, but they told me to ask myself if I wanted to start my marriage in debt to my in-laws."

  "One of the mysteries of DA," I said. "Somehow, 'in debt' has nothing to do with whether it's a loan."

  "Even normal people worry about in-laws coming with strings attached," he said. "I guess they could give the money to Barbara. They're not her in-laws, and she's not a debtor."

  "So she's not thinking about cake."

  "According to Barbara," he said, "she's always thinking about cake. It's tormenting her to have a free pass to taste a dozen high-end cakes on account of being a bride and not be able to do it because she's afraid she’ll binge. She's rounded up some friends who aren't compulsive eaters to pick for her. But then she keeps calling them up and telling them not to choose any of her favorites—which she describes in loving detail—so she won't blow her OA recovery on her wedding day."

  "What about the long white dress?" I asked.

  "She says white would be ridiculous," he said. "So far, there are two dress issues, the cost and her fear of getting fat between the fitting and the wedding. If it's a circus type of wedding, she'll need bridesmaids' dresses too."

  "Just like the movies," I said. "Bridesmaids in ugly dresses."

  "Yeah, well, that's one of the many details that she cares deeply about. She d
oesn't want the bridesmaids' dresses to be ugly. She wants every single one of them to love the dress."

  "It's her codependency," I said.

  "That's what she says," Jimmy said. "She wants them to love her, and they won't if she makes them not only wear but get their pictures taken in ugly dresses. How did you know? Does the Al-Anon literature cover bridesmaids' dresses?"

  "Hey, I've been in therapy," I said. "You might point out to her that if you elope, none of the women who would have come to the wedding will love her. On the other hand, the men who'd have been forced to dress up and dance will adore her. With all this hoopla going on at home, how's the job?"

  "I don't know why I didn't get one years ago," Jimmy said. "Barbara says she told me so, but she didn't. She bought my line about having to protect my creative freedom. I believed it myself. You know how convincing your own blarney can be to others as long as you've convinced yourself first?"

  "Oh, son, I wrote the book," I said.

  "To tell the truth, I like everything about it," Jimmy said. "I like the paycheck. I like the work. I like not having to be a businessman. That's Graham Costello's job, and he's very, very good at it. And I like the people. In fact, I hope the rabbi doesn't turn out to be the lover or the killer, because I like his wife Miriam a lot. It's not only that she got me the job with Costello. She's fun, and she's very smart. I have no trouble believing that she was a hacker."

  "How did the rabbi feel about that, as Barbara would say?"

  "I don't know if they were married then. She doesn't talk about it. You met the rabbi. What did you think of him?

  "I tend to tune out when people start praying in languages I don't understand. So now you're buddies with a rabbi's wife, huh?"

  "Barbara thought it was funny too," he said. "She keeps teasing me about the rebbetzin."

  "That's the technical term, huh?"

  "Yep. She's not much like a rebbetzin at work. In the office, she's a total geek. It's not just what she wears, either."

  "I know," I said. "It's the crazed expression in the eyes. And the conversation. Don't forget I've known you a long time. Have you talked with her about the murder?"

  "She was shocked by it, of course," he said, "but they weren't close. Neither were the brothers. Seymour, Miriam's husband, didn't like Larry changing his name to Kane. Kahn sounded too Jewish for an ambitious lawyer. Barbara says it's like a Jewish girl getting a nose job. It's a betrayal."

  "Is that what Miriam said?"

  "No, I don't think she cares. But Miriam is proud of her husband. She says somebody in the family has to stand for faith and ethics, and in their family, it's the rabbi, not his brother, the lawyer."

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Cindy

  "We dropped the ball on this, Cinders," Natali said. "We knew the rabbi was the victim's brother-in-law. We saw him at the funeral. We should have interviewed him."

  "He was hiding in plain sight," Cindy said. "On the other hand, we didn't have the bracelet or the information that a guy who could quote Talmudic scholars bought it for Sophia. He didn't witness the murder, and we had no reason to consider him as a suspect. We would have asked the wrong questions and gotten useless answers."

  "Let's get him in," Natali said. "We've got some good questions for him now."

  "It's kind of mind-boggling," Cindy said, "a rabbi having an adulterous affair with his sister-in-law, much less murdering her. What about the Ten Commandments?"

  "What about them?" Natali said. "Human nature is what it is. By the time you make detective, your mind will have left boggling far behind. He wouldn't even be the first. There was a rabbi in New Jersey who hired hit men to kill his wife."

  "Oh, New Jersey," she said.

  "It's no excuse."

  "Before my time, anyhow," she said. "So we check his alibi. He wouldn't have attracted any attention in Starbucks. Without a yarmulke, he would have looked like just an ordinary guy. How about motive?"

  "Same as Kerensky," Natali said, "if Kerensky had turned out to be the lover. She got pregnant, and the pregnancy was a game-changer. Say she wanted them to get divorces and go off into the sunset together. What are the odds against?"

  "He had a lot to lose," Cindy said. "If she went public, she'd destroy his family, maybe his career too. Would he have lost his job if it came out?"

  "Let's find out," Natali said. "Anyhow, it might not be him. While we're at it, we'll get a list of everyone who visited during the time when they sat shiva and cross-check it with the people who attended the funeral. Religion aside, there were three opportunities to mourn. If my girlfriend died, I'd go to all of them, even if I'd killed her."

  "I didn't know you had a girlfriend." Cindy grinned.

  "Hypothetically speaking," he said.

  "Do you want me to go talk to the rabbi?" she asked.

  "Let's bring him in," Natali said. "And don't forget his alibi for the Orson murder."

  "If he says he was meeting with members of his congregation," Cindy said, "we might need to take it with a grain of salt. A friend of mine who works with his wife told me she says the rabbi's groupies are all in love with him."

  "I suppose that means you're seeing your boyfriend again." It was Natali's turn to grin. "Don't get your panties in a twist. Just make sure you do your job. No more mistakes, okay? This case is dragging on too long. We need a result. And if the rabbi did buy those diamonds for his girlfriend, let's find out exactly how much he paid for them. You said the wife has a good job?"

  "Probably six figures," Cindy said, "based on what my friend is making, and the potential to make a lot more if one of her designs takes off."

  "She'd still be plenty pissed if she found out what hubby was spending on the girlfriend." Natali stuck a finger inside his shirt collar and eased it around his neck. "My wife would have my balls if I tried a trick like that. You know what? Go downtown and get that diamond bracelet from the Property Clerk. I want to see what the amorous rabbi has to say about it."

  The following afternoon, Cindy found Rabbi Seymour Kahn in his office at the synagogue. He accepted with composure Cindy's explanation for inviting him to discuss his sister-in-law's death on police premises. Following the script Natali had given her, she told him that they hoped that he could help them get a fresh perspective on Sophia's life from a family member whom they hadn't interviewed before; that it might take some time; and that they didn't want to cause any awkwardness in the synagogue.

  "I appreciate your consideration," the rabbi said. He closed his laptop, stood, and buttoned his jacket. "I'm glad to be of assistance."

  Sergeant Washington had given them the nicer interview room, the one they used when they had to break bad news to families. They offered coffee, which Rabbi Kahn refused. The detectives settled into their seats. Natali had told Cindy to lead off with the easy questions. How long had he known Sophia at the time of her death? How did he get along with his brother? How often did they see each other at family events? What kind of social relationship did he and his brother have? Did they socialize as couples? Could he elaborate on that? Did he and Sophia ever get together without their spouses? Did they ever exchange phone calls? How about text and email?

  "He'll lie about one-on-one contact the first time," Natali had told her. "Don't press him. Just move on. When we're ready to start pushing, I'll take over."

  Cindy made sure to ask about the shiva visitors and the night of Judith's death before anything was said that might put him on the defensive, or worse, refuse to speak without his lawyer present. As they had anticipated, he said he had been in the synagogue, first meeting with the committee responsible for organizing the weekly Oneg Shabbat, an informal gathering with refreshments after the Sabbath services, and then in his office, working on his sermon. To her eyes, Rabbi Kahn seemed more relaxed once the interview shifted away from the topic of Sophia. She shot Natali an inquiring glance. He nodded and leaned forward.

  "What if I told you, Rabbi," Natali said, "that your sister-in-law's phone records show that
she called your number at the synagogue three or four times a week?"

  Kahn shifted in his chair and moistened his lips, looking uncomfortable for the first time.

  "We were family," he said. "Sophia was well organized, and she liked to give parties. She would call now and then to make arrangements."

  "Isn't it more usual for the women of the family to put their heads together on social events? Not to be sexist about it." Natali winked at Cindy. "I'm just saying."

  "Not in this case, Detective," Kahn said. "There are certain social demands on a rabbi's family. We can't afford to offend the congregation, so I have to ask my wife to take time from her own career in electronic design, in which she's highly regarded, to support me there. In return, I take on as many of the family obligations as I can."

  "Are you saying your wife doesn't participate in family events?" Natali asked. "Did she and her sister-in-law, Ms. Schofield, not get along?"

  "They got along perfectly well," Kahn said. "I only meant that if contact had to be made about social engagements, it would normally be between me and Sophia."

  "Why didn't Sophia's personal assistant handle it?" Cindy asked.

  "We were family," Kahn said. "It would have been rude to conduct business through an employee. I don't have a full-time secretary myself, so naturally I would take the calls."

  That was three reasons, two too many. The rabbi was getting flustered.

  "How close are you with your brother, Rabbi?" Natali asked.

  "We're as close as any brothers, I suppose," Kahn said. "We have different wives--sorry, I meant to say, different lives. A slip of the tongue."

  Sure, Dr. Freud, Cindy thought, resisting the temptation to look at Natali. There are no slips.

  "Was there any tension between you and your brother?" Natali asked. "Any disagreements at all?"

  "Not really," Kahn said. "Only the usual minor differences you'll find in any family."

  "Really?" Natali said. "Can you give me some examples?"

  "Politics, I suppose," Kahn said. "He wasn't interested in supporting Israel. I was. He didn't share my commitment to Jewish observance, either. Well, it's only natural. I'm a rabbi. But I wouldn't call that a disagreement. People have divergent paths, that's all."