“Tell me.”
“Well, you remember I mentioned that Iris was too young to get Social Security and too young for the company pension, so I didn’t know how she’d manage. This morning I went into the old payroll files. We’ve always paid every Monday, and a check was sent to Iris the Monday after the Friday she announced she was leaving.”
“That was for the previous week,” I said.
“That’s right. And that should have been her last check. If there was accumulated vacation, that would have gone out the same day. But there was no notation that I could find that she had left GAR. And sure enough, the following Monday, another paycheck went out to her.”
“As though she was still working?”
“Exactly as if she was still working. It was a couple of days later that she disappeared and died. The Monday after that, we sent her a final check and a notation was made in the record that she was deceased.”
“So the records look as if she never quit.”
“That’s right.”
“Can you think of any reason why that would be?”
“The only reason I can think of is that she didn’t quit at all. But for the life of me, I don’t know what she was doing for GAR if she wasn’t coming into the office.”
“Thanks, Cathy. I don’t understand it either, but I’ll see if I can figure it out.”
“If I find anything else, I’ll give you a call.”
I thanked her, but she had already done more than I had hoped for.
14
“You make a good cup of coffee,” Jack said, leaning back on the sofa. “You didn’t learn that from me.”
“Since I couldn’t do anything else at St. Stephen’s, they made me chief coffee maker—and taught me how to do it.”
“Good enough. You make a damn good stew, too.”
“Five nights a week.”
He smiled. “Not quite. You know, I was thinking. We should put a family room on the house.”
“Where?” I asked with some alarm.
“Out back, behind the kitchen.”
“But I’d lose my windows and my view of the garden.”
“You’d still have windows on the side, and we’d put the windows on the back of the family room so we could sit there and look out. And the light would still come into the kitchen.”
“Let’s think about it,” I said uneasily.
“You worried about the cost?”
“A little.” It was something I always worried about, and he knew it.
“Well, don’t. The house’ll be worth a lot more with the addition. And we’ll love it.”
“Let’s think about it.”
“Eileen said you called yesterday.”
“Uh-huh.”
“She thinks you’re great.”
“Well, I think she’s pretty great. Didn’t she give us the best wedding we could ever have had?”
“She did.”
“She’s a terrific person, and if I can help her, I want to.”
“She’s thinking about your offer.”
“Good. I’m glad she didn’t just reject it.”
“What’ve you got for me tonight?”
I told him about Cathy Holloway’s news.
“That’s really interesting. So Iris quits, but she doesn’t quit. Looks like she’s on special assignment for her boss, doesn’t it?”
“Like being his mistress?”
“Why not? You said yesterday his wife said Iris was going to take a trip. Maybe Garganus concocted a story for his wife, to put her off the trail. If the wife thinks Iris has left her job and gone around the world, she can stop worrying.”
“So then what happens?” I picked up. “She mentions to him she’ll be at her brother’s for Passover, and he says he wants to see her and he’ll walk over around eleven o’clock. She goes down to meet him and they have a fight.”
“He couldn’t have walked over,” Jack said. “He would have had to drive over. I wonder if he had a driver.”
“Even if he did, he could always drive the car himself if he felt like it.”
“Possible,” Jack said. He got up and came back with a sheet of blank paper, folded it twice, and started to write notes on the short, folded edge. “Couple of things I don’t like. One, he’s not the kind of man who does the killing himself. I bet he was perfumed and manicured.”
“His driver?”
“Could be.” He made a note. “Chauffeurs know more about their bosses than wives do. Like partners on the job.” He gave me a smile and patted my thigh. “Number two, I’m no expert on adultery, but this was a guy in his sixties, right?”
“Right.”
“And a woman in her late fifties.”
“Yes.”
“When men get to be that age, don’t they start looking at women in their twenties and thirties?”
“This was a very beautiful woman, petite and well dressed. She was charming and kind and a friend to everyone.”
“OK, say I buy that. There’s one more thing that doesn’t fit. No way does Wilfred Garganus have an M in his name.”
“But the
M
was on the day for the second seder. Whoever the M was that she was planning to meet, she died before she saw him.”
“Or at the last minute he called and said he’d see her the first night. Well, we’ve got a lot more to work with now. You meet the old boyfriend today?”
“This afternoon. He’s an awfully nice man, Jack, very tall for his age. You don’t see many men around eighty over six feet tall. He’s good looking and I think he got dressed up for me, shirt and tie. And it’s pretty clear Iris was the great love of his life. If he has a flaw, it’s that he could never bring himself to leave his wife. Even now he doesn’t enjoy living with her, but he does.”
“It’s called inertia.”
“Whatever it’s called, he knows it’s his failing. He told me one interesting thing that may develop. Iris was once married.”
“Sounds good.”
“A long time ago, like fifty years or more. She was divorced soon after she was married; at least that’s what she told him. He says that she was the smart one. It’s what he should have done. He thinks Iris told him the name of her husband, but he can’t remember it.”
“So we have another nameless suspect. I don’t suppose you could narrow down when they were married.”
“Late thirties or forties.”
“Not my idea of narrow.”
“I bet Marilyn doesn’t even know Iris was married, but I bet her father and Aunt Sylvie do.”
“If they know, then they know a name.”
“I really don’t want to talk to Marilyn’s father, but maybe Sylvie will tell me. She said she knew something no one else would tell, and this could be it.”
“And they kept all this stuff to themselves when the police questioned them after Iris’s death.” I could hear the disappointment in his voice.
“A divorce in the thirties or forties was a family catastrophe,” I said.
“So was a murder.”
It was a little too late to argue the point with the Grodniks.
I called Marilyn early on Wednesday and said I had learned a lot and we should talk. She said she would be there in an hour. I spent the time cleaning up the kitchen and getting bags and bins ready for recycling. It’s amazing how much we accumulate that we used to throw away, and Oakwood keeps telling us how much they’re earning by collecting and selling all this material.
Marilyn pulled up the driveway and came to the door, carrying a shopping bag.
“Good morning,” I said, opening the door before she rang.
“Chris, it’s nice to see you. I have a little something for you and Jack.”
The “little something” was a chocolate cake that smelled so good I knew I would have to restrain myself to keep it whole until tonight. “I guess Mel comes by it naturally.”
“Oh, Mel is a much better cook than I am. I just gave her the impetus and she took off on her own.” She took her coat off and hung it in the closet before I could take if from her. “Now, what’s all this you’ve got for me?”
We sat in the living room, and for the first time I thought about what Jack had said last night, that it would be nice to build a family room behind the kitchen. I had to admit it would be a comfortable place to sit with a friend and chat, looking out over the garden with all that wonderful sunlight coming in.
“Did you know Iris was married when she was quite young?”
“Never heard a word. Are you sure about this?”
“I found Harry Schiff, Iris’s old boyfriend, and had a long talk with him yesterday. She told him she’d been married, although I don’t believe he or anyone else told the police. I bet your father knows all about it.”
“I agree with you, but I don’t think you should ask. Something’s happened that I have to tell you about.”
“Is he all right?”
“The same. It’s not his health. I was talking to him on the phone and I told him we’d been to the apartment on Seventy-first Street. He blew up at me, Chris.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I certainly wouldn’t have suggested we go there if I’d known it would upset him.”
“I truly don’t understand it. Maybe the illness is getting to him, although he said he was feeling all right. But he’s decided to leave my sister’s and go back to Seventy-first Street.”
“Can he care for himself there?”
“I don’t see how. I’ve been on the phone for the last twenty-four hours trying to get someone to live in. I think I’ve found a woman, someone from my town, who’ll agree to go to New York for as long as she’s needed. The whole thing is very upsetting. He’d be a lot better off at my sister’s or at my house.”
“Do you think he’s doing this to keep us from snooping around?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“I’m terribly sorry, Marilyn. The ripples are really spreading much wider than I ever expected. Why don’t you tell him I have no intention of going into his apartment again?”
“I already promised him we’d keep away. He doesn’t care. He wants to be there and that’s it.” She picked up some notes of mine that were lying on the coffee table in front of us. “Let’s talk about Iris. Is that all Harry Schiff told you?”
“All that matters. But I’ve learned some other things that may surprise you. I told you Iris quit her job at GAR more than a week before the Passover seder.”
“And I still think that’s impossible. Why would she quit? And if she did, she would have told us.”
“Maybe she was intending to. I’ve seen the police file and talked to the detective on the case. The police knew she had quit.”
“And they didn’t tell us?”
“They interviewed Mr. Garganus and he told them. The detective probably didn’t think there was anything unusual about it. People quit their jobs all the time and for one reason or another don’t tell their families.”
“She loved that job, Chris. It was her life.”
“There’s more to the story.” I told her of my conversations with Cathy Holloway.
“So she quit and she didn’t quit.”
“That’s the way it looks. I can’t tell you why, and maybe there’s no good reason, but I thought maybe she and Mr. Garganus had decided to take a little vacation together or get themelves a love nest somewhere.”
Marilyn shook her head. “You’re off base on that. I know it’s easy to misjudge people we love, but I don’t believe Iris ever thought of Mr. Garganus as anything but a wonderful man to work for.”
“Be that as it may, I spoke to his wife.”
“You
did.”
“I persuaded someone at GAR to give me the address, and his granddaughter opened the door and let me in. It was a stroke of luck. If the maid had been there, I would have been sent on my way.”
“Well, thank goodness for small favors. What did you find out?”
“That she knows more than she will admit to. She started out by saying she knew nothing about Iris and then she went on to tell me things no one in the family knew.”
“Like what?” She was suddenly very interested.
“Like she said she didn’t know Iris had quit her job and a minute later she was telling me that Iris wanted to travel to Europe—she mentioned Switzerland specifically—while she was still young enough to enjoy it.”
“She told you that Iris was planning to go to Switzerland?”
“That’s what she said.”
“Iris didn’t say a word. I wonder if she told my mother. She spent the whole afternoon cooking with her for Passover.”
“Then your father would know.”
“I’ll have to ask him, if he’s cooled down.”
“Marilyn, it seems to me that after the kind of tragedy that happened to Iris, a family does a lot of second-guessing. If we had only known this, if we had only done that.”
“We did it, Chris. After we knew she was dead, we sat shiva for a week.”
“Excuse me?”
“After a death, the family mourns. In the old days the mourners actually sat on wooden crates, and I think we went out and found one for Pop. Nowadays they make special cartons with a design on the outside that makes it look like a wooden crate, like the old orange crates that you’re too young to remember. When you mourn, you’re not supposed to be comfortable. And each member of the immediate family tears a piece of clothing or wears a black ribbon that’s been symbolically torn. Anyway, during that time, people visit the family—and plenty of people did—and the family comes together. I came in every day to be with-Pop and Mom; my sister was there, my brothers came. And we went over and over what happened that night at the seder. We talked about Iris’s life, her job, her apartment, her clothes, for heaven’s sake. What could have happened that would make her end up a dead body in an oil yard? We took apart her life and her death. We got nowhere.”
“And in all of that no one mentioned that she had been married?”
“Believe me, that’s something I would remember. I told you, my parents’ generation kept its secrets. Maybe when I wasn’t there, maybe when only Sylvie was there, they talked about it. But you see, they never told the police. If they knew about it, and you’re right, they probably did, they didn’t think it was anyone’s business, even the police investigating her murder.”
“Marilyn, think about what happened after Iris’s death. Did your father do anything unusual that you might be able to explain now that you know there was once a husband?”
“My father didn’t do anything; my mother did. My mother and Sylvie cleaned out Iris’s apartment. Pop wouldn’t get involved in anything like that. Mom and Iris were close. They were sisters-in-law, but they were close. Pop loved her and she visited them a lot. He was the oldest and she the youngest, and he watched over her, all her life, I think.”
“What did your mother do?” I prompted.
“She spent so much time at Iris’s apartment we started to worry about her.”
“It must have been a big job to clean it up.”
“Well, it was, but it seemed more than that. I had the feeling—how can I put it?—that she was fixing things up, arranging things, taking care of things.”
“You said Iris didn’t leave much money.”
“Not enough to make someone want to kill her, and remember, what there was went to Melanie’s generation. They were kids, young people. No one got rich on Iris’s money, and no one would kill for her fur coat or gold necklace.”
“This is very tough, Marilyn. We’ve got to find out who Iris’s ex-husband was. If he’s still alive, I want to talk to him. If he’s dead, I want to know whether he died before or after Iris.”
“I think we just have to ask Sylvie.”