Father's Day Murder (24 page)

“I really hate this.”

He wrapped me up in his arms and held me tight. He was starting a new job on Monday and he was nervous. I had to call people and ask them the kinds of things polite people don’t talk about, and I didn’t want to. But here we were in our own backyard, under our own lights, with our own little boy upstairs in his crib. It was almost enough to make me forget everything else.

22

I read
The Lost Boulevard
before I turned off the lights. I fell asleep pretty quickly, and then something woke me, a noise or a feeling, I wasn’t sure. I put my slippers on and went into Eddie’s room. He was sleeping soundly in his little blue pajamas, the light cotton blanket kicked to the bottom end of the crib.

I watched him for a moment, then left the room. I didn’t feel sleepy so I tiptoed back into our bedroom and got
The Lost Boulevard
from my night table. My bookmark was near the end, and I really wanted to see how it all came out, whether the Koches married each other, whether the musicians married each other, whether the doctor made of two separate human beings would work out the problems he had with his family and marry the woman he loved.

I took the book downstairs, turned a light on in the family room, and snuggled into my favorite chair. It was the fifties and the lives were moving forward, the blind dates yielding relationships that became marriages and families. It was interesting that the George Fried character had been combined with the Fred Beller character, the distinctive characteristic about the two men that they disliked New York and wanted to get away. It didn’t seem very distinctive to me; half the people I knew disliked the city
enough that they refused to go there alone. I had always liked it myself, going back to when my wonderful father took me in to meet the people at the small company he worked for in downtown Manhattan.

I looked hard for some indication of a temptation, two people meeting accidentally or clandestinely, or almost. There was none. The young man who wanted to get out of New York was perceived as a misfit while the doctor who had fallen in love with a non-Jewish woman was seen as admirable, as though disappointing his parents gave him a certain panache in the eyes of the narrator. It was hard, really, to put the name of a real person on a character. Wien had done a good job of fictionalizing them. With a sure hand, he had made them go the way he wanted them to go.

When I finally became too tired to read, I had only a chapter left to go and I was still without a motive for murder.

I never heard Jack get out of bed in the morning and when I finally opened my eyes, I couldn’t believe I had slept till almost nine. I dashed into Eddie’s room, but he was gone, probably eating a better breakfast than his mother would have made for him.

“That’s a first,” Jack said as I walked into the kitchen. “You get up in the middle of the night?”

“Something woke me, and I decided to sit downstairs and read Arthur Wien’s book.”

“Well, we’ve been having a good time here fixing breakfast and eating. Care to join us?”

I did. Eddie pointed out the glass, the cup, and the muffin. “Not bad,” I said. “You’re a regular vocabulary builder, Daddy.”

“You bet. Need a good vocabulary if you’re going to communicate.”

Jack joined me for another cup of coffee. Coffee seems to be the lifeblood of police officers; they can never get enough of it. Eddie was tired of sitting at his feeding table and Jack had sprung him loose. At the moment he was in the family room and I had my eye on him.

“That information you got on Robin Horowitz,” I said. “Do you have any idea when she made those visits to Arthur Wien’s apartment?”

“Got the dates.” He got up from the table and came back with a piece of paper. “No one kept a record, you understand. This was just the doorman’s recollection. He was able to place the time because he filled in for several months for the daytime doorman who had some surgery and it happened during that period. It was only weekdays because he didn’t work weekends and the weekend guys didn’t pick up on the picture. He’s sure there were three visits but there could have been four or five. They were made more than two years ago and less than two and a half. He thinks about two and a quarter.”

“Was Cindy Wien living in the apartment?”

“There was no Cindy Wien. They hadn’t gotten married yet. Miss Porter wasn’t there. She didn’t always accompany her boyfriend to New York.”

“That’s why they met in the apartment,” I said. “If Cindy had been there, they probably would have met somewhere else and we’d never have known about it.”

“That’s why we ask, because sometimes we get lucky.”

“So these meetings were a few months before the Wiens married.”

“You sure of that?”

“I talked to Cindy last night. She said they’d just had their second anniversary.”

“OK.” Jack nodded, got up from the table and came back with a sheet of blank paper, which he folded twice in his usual way and started to write on. “So Mrs. Horowitz and Mr. Wien could have been involved in last-ditch negotiations on their future together.”

“Or apart.”

“Which is the way it turned out. You gotta press her, Chris. If she doesn’t have a better story to tell than what it looks like, either she or her husband is in big trouble.”

“She follows Wien out and kills him and then her husband goes to the men’s room and finds the body—an unfortunate coincidence.”

“It’s certainly the closest thing you have to a motive.”

“I’ll give her a call,” I said, feeling very unhappy.

I reached her later the same morning.

“I have nothing further to say to you,” she said. “Please consider the matter closed.”

“It isn’t closed, Mrs. Horowitz. It’s very open. The person who saw you go into Mr. Wien’s building is an employee there. He has been talking to the police.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I’m telling you the truth. You were seen going to Mr. Wien’s apartment at least three times about twenty-seven months ago.”

She said nothing.

“Can we talk about this?” I asked.

“Not now.”

“I think the sooner we talk about it the better off you will be.”

“Just a moment.”

She put the phone down, and I waited, wondering if she was looking through an appointment book and assigning me a time next week when her husband might already be in jail.

“Two o’clock,” she said, startling me.

“Today?”

“If you can make it. Do you know where Neiman Marcus is in White Plains?”

I gulped. The very idea of Neiman Marcus made me tremble. “Approximately,” I said.

“I’ll be on the third floor, in the gift department. It’s a small store. We’ll find each other.”

Before I could say anything else, she hung up.

“Why don’t you treat yourself to something special?” Jack said when I told him.

“Please,” I said. “I’m already a nervous wreck just thinking about walking through an expensive store. Remember ‘Lead me not into temptation’?”

“Chris, maybe it’s time you let yourself be tempted.”

“I can’t afford it.”

“Sure you can. Buy yourself a lipstick. How much can that be? I bet they put it in a nice bag.”

I shooed him away. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. If Eddie gets up—”

“I know, I know. Calm down. You’re more nervous about where you’re going than what you’re going to do.”

It was true. I looked at my watch, grabbed my bag, and started for the door.

“Open a charge account,” Jack called after me.

The store had told me on the phone how to get there, and I made only one wrong turn that led me astray. I was in
their parking garage by a quarter to two and on the escalator to the first floor a few minutes later. I didn’t want to be early so I got off and walked through the men’s department. There were beautiful ties on a table in an array of colors. That would make a great gift for Jack, a tie that would tell the world he was an attorney-at-law. I picked one up that had mostly blues in a neat pattern and turned it over. The tag said sixty dollars. I swallowed, the tie still aloft in my frozen hand. Did I live in a world where men’s ties cost sixty dollars?

Carefully, because I knew how valuable it was, I put it back where it came from and moved slightly away from the table. I had never bought Jack a tie in the nearly three years we were married although we had shopped together several times and I had helped him select some.

“May I help you?”

I looked toward the voice, a youngish man in a dark suit with a beautiful tie against his white shirt. I shook my head. “No thanks,” I managed to say. “I have to be upstairs in three minutes.”

“Come back when you have time.”

I wondered if I would ever have time for a sixty-dollar tie.

I rode the escalator up to three and found myself looking at what I supposed was the gift department. There were large hand-painted plates in wonderful colors, shimmering crystal vases and plates that looked almost too heavy to lift, place settings of china framed by shiny silverware, and beautiful table linens. Most of what Jack and I used had belonged to Aunt Meg and I had never thought of replacing it. If ties were sixty dollars, what
must these household articles cost and how could anyone afford to get married nowadays?

I shook my head to clear it of these irrelevant and expensive thoughts and walked around till I spotted Robin Horowitz. She looked up from a table of pottery and saw me. I walked over.

“Where’s the baby?” she asked.

“He’s home with his father. It’s his nap time.”

“Oh.” She seemed disappointed, as though she had made the appointment just to see Eddie.

“Please tell me why you visited Arthur Wien in his apartment.”

“It was a personal matter that concerned only Arthur and myself.”

“And someone else?” I asked.

She looked very concerned, her forehead lined, her mouth set. “Perhaps.”

“The wife of one of the Morris Avenue Boys?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Have the police questioned you about this yet?”

“No.”

“It isn’t worth getting into trouble with the police over this,” I said.

“A confidence is a confidence. And what makes you think that everything I do concerns my husband’s friends? I know plenty of people outside that group, many more than I know inside it.”

“People who also know Arthur Wien?”

“I am a member of a library support group. What makes you think I wasn’t asking him to speak to our group?”

“Then what’s the secret?” I asked. “And why several visits to his home? Don’t you make arrangements like that on the phone?”

She picked up a piece of pottery and held it in front of her, as though appraising it. “It’s a room with a lot of beige and pale yellow. How would that be on the wall?”

“Lovely,” I said. “It’s a beautiful piece.”

“I think so too.”

“Mrs. Horowitz.”

She laid the large plate on the table. “I served as a mediator,” she said. “There was a problem between Arthur and another person. It was impossible for them to talk about it face to face or any other way. I helped arrange a settlement.”

“Was it a woman he had had an affair with?”

“I’ve said all I’m going to say. You know as much about it as I’m going to tell you. Arthur is dead but the other party is still alive. That’s it.”

“Why you?”

“Why not me? I’ve done counseling for years; I suppose you didn’t know that. I knew the parties involved, I liked them, I wanted to save their feelings for each other as much as was possible. When I was asked, I stepped in.” She picked up the plate and looked around, signaling a saleswoman who was nearby. “I’ll take this,” she said. “I’ll need it gift wrapped.” She took out a credit card as the woman took the plate from her.

“That’s it, Chris. I’m done here and we’ve spoken for the last time.”

“What will you tell the police when they ask?”

“I haven’t thought about that yet. Probably nothing. I know nothing that can help them.” She looked at her watch. “Kiss the baby for me.”

On my way out, I avoided the men’s shop.

23

“What do you pay for your ties?” I asked Jack later that afternoon when the three of us were outside, Jack rolling a ball to Eddie across the grass and Eddie attempting to return it, giving Jack most of the exercise.

“I don’t know. Depends what I’m going to wear it for.”

“What do you mean?”

“I spent a lot for the tie I wore to our wedding. I spend a lot less for ties that I wear around the squad room.”

“I saw a tie for sixty dollars at Neiman Marcus.”

He grinned at me. “Well, it’s a pretty pricey place. I’ve never spent that. You feel better?”

“I don’t do much comparison shopping. If I need something, I go and get it. I didn’t know men’s clothes were so expensive.”

“I guess you pay for a tie now what you used to pay for a suit.”

“I see.”

“My dad always says you pay for a car what you used to pay for a house.”

“It’s scary. I realized that when we shop together, you never let me see the price tags.”

“I hate to shake you up. I remember when you told me
you used to leave the convent with fifty cents in your pocket.”

I thought about it. “I bet they need a dollar now.”

He came over and gave me a kiss. “I told you to stick with lipsticks.”

I wanted to call Ellen Koch and press her about Robin Horowitz and her relationship to Arthur Wien, but I didn’t. She had been pretty definitive the last time we spoke that she knew nothing about such a relationship and she had nothing further to tell me. I had managed to alienate the two women who seemed to know more than anyone else in the group, which meant I had to come up with new information or I was finished. But aside from Marge Beller, I just didn’t know where to look.

Since I had nothing scheduled, I called Greenwillow and arranged to pick up my cousin Gene tomorrow morning for mass and to bring him home with us for dinner. Jack gave up playing ball and went out to shop for tomorrow’s dinner since he’s the weekend cook by mutual agreement.

While Jack was gone, I took Eddie for a walk, stopping to talk to neighbors, lingering for a while at Mel’s, where I updated her on the case. Sometimes Mel has very good ideas about where to go next or even where to go first, but today she agreed that I had hit a wall. I promised to keep her posted and we toddled home to wait for Jack.