Hill of Secrets: An Israeli Jewish mystery novel (8 page)

"Okay," I cut her off. I didn't have time to hear Aunt Henia's complete medical history. "I'll send you a text message after I check."

"But go now, it's very dangerous."

"Okay, okay," I answered impatiently and made a U-turn to get to my parents' house.

Lately, I'd been getting quite a few of these calls and texts from my mother. If I wasn't worried about her I'd be annoyed with her constantly rushing me to her house to check that the gas/oven/iron/boiler is shut off. They always were.

She never did this to my sisters, because they had kids. Evyatar got the calls sometimes, mostly when I was unavailable.

The iron was, of course, disconnected. I went to the refrigerator and pulled out a box of cubed watermelon. How simple to buy a watermelon, cut it up and put it in the fridge. How come I never do that?

I sat down in the study and stared at the library. The room was surprisingly similar to the study at the Levin house, where I had sat a few minutes earlier. I stared at the holy books and the different albums. Suddenly my photo album from high school caught my eye. I began leafing through it and saw that most of the pictures were of me with my Convent friends. I looked at the image of sixteen-year-old me. I hadn't changed much. Apart from the religious-girl clothes and the zits, I’d stayed exactly the same. Not only externally.

Toward the end of the album, I stopped and froze. There was a picture there of Hanni and me, standing side by side in the high school graduation ceremony. The only reason that brought fate to put us in the same picture together was the fact that we had similar last names and were called after one another to receive our diplomas. Maybe Hanni's mother also had this picture in which Hanni is smiling with a wide grin and I'm standing next to her with a forced smile. Maybe she’d also perused her daughter's albums, as many grieving families do, and saw this picture and felt a tinge of sadness. Two girls graduated high school side by side, and fifteen years later one was investigating the murder of the other one. I felt sorry for her.

I took the picture and closed the album, even more determined to find out what happened to Hanni.

I remembered that I hadn't yet called Riki to get the Danilowitz family's phone number. Meir's sister picked up the phone and called her father.

"Natan Danilowitz?" I asked carefully.

"Who's asking?"

"Hadas Levinger from the central unit, Israel Police."

"Hello, Hadas," he said and loudly moaned.

"Hello, Sir, first of all, allow me to express my condolences for your tremendous loss."

"Thank you."

"I was just with your in-laws, asking them some questions. I wanted to know if I could possibly come to see you as well."

"Could it wait until after the
Shiva
?" His voice was shaking. I didn't know if he was angry or sad.

"It's your choice."

"Then we'd rather leave it until Monday."

"When do you want me to come?"

"We can come to you," he answered courteously and surprised me. I’d sensed he was angry, but now I realized he was just deep in his grief.

I thought for a moment. I’d prefer to see the Danilowitz's home. "I'll come to you."

"We finish the
Shiva
on Monday, so you can come Monday afternoon."

"No problem." I hung up quickly. It was difficult for him, and I didn't want to pester a person in such deep grief.

The whole way to the station, I thought about the conversations I had earlier with Hanni's parents. I had pretty good intuition about people. Hanni's mother seemed as if she had something to hide, while her father was open and matter of fact.

I still didn't have a lead as to Meir's horrible motive, if it really was him. I got the impression that the couple were having financial problems that pushed Meir to the edge. It wouldn't be the first time a person committed suicide because of financial pressures. To kill off your entire family as well because of financial pressures is a bit more unusual, though not something that has never happened.

But since Meir's parents were very wealthy, my line of thought began to quaver. I'm not a mother, but I assumed that a parent would do anything for their children, even when they're adults. It was hard for me to believe that Meir's parents allowed him to fall upon hard times.

I don't know if there were infidelities in their marriage, but DNA samples had proven Meir's paternity of all of the children.

What could be the story here? By the way Hanni's body was placed, there were no signs of struggle, meaning this wasn't a fight that got out of control, though they may have fought earlier and Meir couldn't calm down.

I got to the office, and on the desk waiting for me were the Danilowitz's bank statements, printouts of data that I had requested from the Office of Internal Affairs and the Income Tax Department, and all of the numbers called in the last six months from all of the landlines and cellular phones belonging to the couple.

According to the bank statements, Hanni and Meir were up to their neck in debt: accounts with 150,000 shekels overdraft, loans as high as 600,000 shekels, and a mortgage of 1,400,000 shekels.

Assuming the worth of the apartment they were living in was about a million and a half shekels, even if they sold their apartment to cover their debt, they would still be left with a negative balance. There was good reason to talk to the branch manager and understand the issue of their debt.

I looked over the analysis of the printout of their phone calls. The landline in their house was hardly ever used. Most of the calls were made using their cellular phones, and specifically by Hanni's cell phone. Most of the calls were to the number belonging to Hanni's mother. After this were many calls to the number of a user called Iris Green, as well as calls to Meir's number. Meir's cell phone wasn't as active as Hanni's; most of his calls were to Hanni.

I called Iris Green's number and was asked to type in a secret code. She was probably out of the country.

*

"You have people here to be interrogated," Riki informed me on the phone; I went to the reception desk.

A young religious man accompanied by his pretty wife were there waiting for me, also the neighbors from the apartment above. Riki had contacted some friends and neighbors from the building and the neighboring building. Some had been questioned immediately after the bodies were discovered. I sat with each of them separately in the interrogation room. Amazingly, none of the neighbors heard the gunshots. The killer made sure to shut all of the house windows tight and wrapped the gun with a piece of mineral wool to dull the sound of the gunshot.

Mineral wool is a material used for insulation used mainly by building contractors. The fact that Meir, allegedly, equipped himself with a piece of mineral wool raised the assumption that the murder was premeditated. The friends and neighbors testified that Hanni and Meir were the model family. Hanni was very involved in the community life of the neighborhood, Meir and the kids came to synagogue every Shabbat and participated in many of the events organized by the synagogue committee. Their shock at this story was evident in their faces.

At eight o’ clock, after hours of the same questions and answers, I took a short coffee break, and when I returned, the last neighbor of the day was waiting for me.

She was Orit Sagiv, the neighbor from the next building whose apartment overlooked the balcony of the Danilowitz apartment. She sat with her legs crossed on the interrogation chair, her top leg moving impatiently, holding a plastic cup of water given to her by Riki.

"Hello," I said and quickly sat down. "Sorry about the delay. I had to breathe for a minute. I've been interrogating for hours."

Orit rolled her eyes. I saw my excuses didn't especially interest her, but, like most civilians, she chose not to yell at me, and in a police station no less.

I explained to her that the conversation between us was to be recorded and asked her to state, for protocol, her identifying details.

"My name is Orit Sagiv, thirty-eight, from Givaat Shmuel."

"Where do you work?"

"For Teva." 

"How do you know the Danilowitz family?"

"I've known Meir since he was a kid." She surprised me. I’d thought she was just a neighbor.

"How exactly?"

"His sister, Michal, is a childhood friend of mine from Petach Tikva."

"And what can you tell me about Meir?"

"Not too much. He was a cute kid. As a teenager, he was quite popular. He was very good-looking and his family's pretty rich, so he stood out at Bnei Akivah." 

"Do you remember an aggressive or violent boy?"

"Not really, but I have to admit I didn't know him. Michal was my friend in high school and then we parted ways. I met her accidentally a few years ago, just when Meir and Hanni moved across from us. She came to a housewarming and told me that her brother was moving in right across from me."

"Do you remember when this was?"

"Chanuka of 2003."

"How do you remember?"

"I was pregnant with my third daughter. Hanni was also pregnant with her second."

"So you were on maternity leave together."

Orit snorted in contempt. "Hanni didn't need maternity leave, she didn't work."

"So you raised your daughters together?" I corrected myself.

"Not really. We never really gelled."

"Why?"

"Listen," she sipped the last drop of water from the plastic cup, "I'm an honest person, and I don't like hypocrisy or falseness. I can tell you that just now my sister-in-law, my husband's sister, left her home and husband for another man. There’s no normal person who isn't shocked by a young woman taking two little girls and wrecking their home, but I just told her to her face what everyone’s thinking and too afraid to say. Hanni wasn't my sister-in-law and I really didn't care for her and her family, so she never heard what I think about her, but I think she saw that I can't really stand her."

"How did she see that?"

"I didn't initiate any social relationship with them, even though I actually knew her husband from childhood."

"Did she have many social connections?"

"She was pretty popular in the neighborhood."

"What does popular mean?"

"She’d sit a lot in the coffee shops in the mall, or gossip with moms in the park while her kids were going wild."

"Her kids were wild?"

"Mostly the big one—he had no boundaries."

"And was the little girl friends with your daughter?"

"They were in the same kindergarten, really a sweet girl, it's a shame."

"Then why couldn't you stand her?"

"Put it this way...” She took a deep breath and continued. "Whatever I think of Sharon, my sister-in-law, I think even she was a better mother than Hanni."

"But Hanni was a full-time mom."

"Even worse. My sister-in-law, for example, is a lawyer, and she still finds the time to devote to her girls. Hanni sat at home all day, or in cafés to be exact. I don't think I'm perfect, but once I get home, I'm fully with my kids, or at least I try to be. Any working mom knows how difficult it is to juggle everything, and sometimes it's impossible. I, personally, work mainly because of the money, also for interest. But if I worked only, maybe, part time, which is impossible in my field — if I didn't work, like Hanni, for instance, I don't know if I'd leave my kids in afternoon daycare. If all my mornings were free I'd use them to do errands and socializing so I'd have all the time in the world with the kids."

"And Hanni wasn't like that?"

"I don't think so. I'd often see her walking around in the mall in the afternoon, and when she was with her children she didn't seem too attentive to them. I'll never forget how—about two years ago—my daughter and her daughter played together in the sand box in the playground. I sat near them and watched them and she was sitting at the other end of the playground chatting with her friends, not even bothered. How can you sit like that, not even knowing where your three-year-old is? It drove me crazy. At some point I wanted to go home and I didn't want to leave the little girl by herself so I took her to her mother. She saw that I was stunned by her and immediately attacked me, saying she didn't ask me to babysit. I asked her how she could let such a small child play unattended and she yelled at me that I couldn't educate her and teach her how to be a mother."

"What else do you remember about her?"

"The playground… in September or October. In August of the same year we went for a vacation, to a country house in the north with friends. I don't remember the name of the place, but it was very nice, if a bit simple. In the afternoon we sat on the lawn and had a barbecue with our friends. It was very quiet and nice until we suddenly heard shouting from one of the houses nearby. A woman was yelling—screaming, really—at her husband."

"What?" I was curious.

"Something along the lines of, 'What kind of a dump did you bring us to? The one time I ask you to take care of something and we end up in this dump!'  The man was trying to calm her down and tell her this was what he was able to get in their price range. It was a site that included a number of country houses—some of them made of wood which were newer and some made of stone which were quite old. The whole site wasn't very luxurious, but in August everything is insanely expensive and it was a vacation for the kids, so it was more important to us that there would be a lawn, a pool and nearby attractions than a fancy room.

The woman went on screaming and then Meir came out of their cabin and walked towards Reception. He came back a few minutes later and we understood that he tried to switch to a fancier one but they were all booked. A few minutes later, Meir, Hanni, and both their kids came out of the cabin in bathing suits, and only then did Hanni notice me. I think she was embarrassed because she realized that we’d heard her; she walked away quickly and didn't stop near us."

"Did you ever hear her shout like that at home, in Givaat Shmuel?”

"Not as clearly as in the cabin—they always kept their windows shut, as if they were trying to keep all of the shouting inside. I heard her numerous times, reprimanding and yelling, at her husband and at the kids, but because the windows were shut, I couldn't clearly hear what the yelling was about."

"Can you tell me how it's possible that none of the other neighbors heard the shouting you're describing?"

"I’ve no idea. You have to understand that our study overlooks their balcony directly, so I guess I had the best spot. When we were in the country, there were no other people from the neighborhood there and the windows were also open, unlike their house."

She went silent. I sensed she had something else to tell.

"Is there anything else you want to tell me?"

"Uh…" she began stuttering, "I'm not sure… I could really be wrong."

"Tell me what you think you know. My job is to check the facts."

"When we were in the North, I think I also heard her hit her son. I don't know if it was a one-time thing or something that happened regularly, I only came across it there, so maybe there she didn't hide it as well."

"What did you hear?"

"When she was yelling at Meir and he went out, her boy was crying and getting a little wild so she screamed at him and I heard hitting sounds. After that the boy was only crying. When they went out, his eyes were red and she was tugging him forcefully. It was only when she noticed us that I got the feeling that she toned her behavior down."

"And you didn't hear or see her hitting her kids at home?"

"Of course not. If I was certain this was an ongoing thing you can be sure that I would have made a complaint to the police. Unfortunately, she wasn't much different from parents who smack their kids now and then, but would never do it in public, surely not anywhere anyone knows them, and surely not in a neighborhood like Givaat Shmuel where every little thing immediately turns to neighborhood gossip. There in the North, she thought she was alone so she allowed herself to be a little less cautious."

"Did you hear the gunshots this Monday?"

"No, but the windows were shut as usual and as far as I understood, the shots were fired when we were sleeping."

"What do you think about what happened? You’ve known Meir since childhood—does he seem like someone who's able to get up one morning, kill his entire family and shoot himself?"

"My degree is in chemistry, not psychology, but I have to say I was shocked. Specifically because I’ve known Meir since childhood. He was a super normal guy, even a little bit of a nerd. If anything, out of the two of them, she was the violent one. Not that, God forbid, I think she was able of committing murder, but he was kind of ‘whipped’. Like, during that vacation, we saw them at breakfast in the dining room a few times. She gave him the runaround. I remember I joked with my husband that I should act a little more like Hanni, then maybe he'd appreciate me."