Dog is in the Details

by Neil S. Plakcy

  “Lili has a brother down in Florida who’s been looking after their mom,” I said. “She’s lucky. So I am I, I guess. Otherwise we might have to have her move in with us.”

  When there was no more pizza crust for them to snarf down, the dogs went back outside, raced around for a few minutes, and then sprawled together under an oak tree that had turned gold. Rick and I joined them in the autumn evening, sitting on a picnic bench.

  “So I have some news,” Rick said. “I’m going to ask Tamsen to marry me.”

  “Wow! That’s great. Congratulations.” We fist-bumped and both laughed.

  Tamsen Morgan was the woman Rick had been dating for almost a year by then. She had lost her husband to the Iraq war a few years before, leaving her with a young son whom Rick coached in Pop Warner football. She had a big family in Stewart’s Crossing—parents, sister, cousins—and Rick spent all the holidays with them.

  “Have your folks met Tamsen yet?” They had moved to Florida a few years before I returned home.

  “Yeah. Remember when my cousin got married in Virginia and Rascal came to stay with you? Tamsen went with me.”

  “They all got along?”

  “What do you think? Tam’s beautiful and accomplished and she comes with a ready-made grandson. They were in love.” He sat back. “You think I can borrow Lili one Saturday? I need a woman’s advice on a ring for Tamsen. I can’t ask her sister for help because Tam would kill me if she found out Hannah knew before she did.”

  I clinked my bottle against Rick’s. “I’m sure she’d be delighted. You’re making a good move, pal.”

  “I’m not always sure of that myself, what with my history with Tiffany. But Tam’s different, and I feel like a different guy when I’m with her. Better.”

  “That’s the way I feel about Lili. She makes me want to be the guy she deserves. Even if she gets cranky sometimes.”

  Rick lifted his bottle. “To both of us being better men.”

  “I’ll toast to that.” Our bottles clinked once more, and this time the dogs jumped up and rushed over to us, eager to get into the celebration. They were part of our family, too, after all. I was glad that Rick and Rascal had been able to merge so easily with Tamsen and her family—would Rochester and I be able to do the same thing with Lili’s?

  When I got home, Lili was on the phone with another relative, and I had to wait until she was finished to tell her about Rick’s plan to propose to Tamsen, and his request that she help him pick out a ring. Lili was delighted to help, and immediately called Rick. I listened to her side of the conversation, how she thought Tam would like a diamond set off with her birthstone emerald because it matched her green eyes.

  I was fascinated by how happy Lili seemed with all the marriage and ring stuff, and I wondered if she was being completely honest with me about not wanting to get married again. She’d been through it twice—a city hall visit with her first husband, a ceremony at a palazzo in Venice with her second—and since both marriages had ended in divorce she’d always said she wasn’t eager to replicate the situation.

  But hearing her talk, I wondered if she was secretly harboring a desire for a proposal from me. I’d only been married once, in a big traditional Jewish ceremony complete with a huppah, monogrammed yarmulkes and the broken glass. I’d never formally asked Mary to marry me—we’d mutually decided that if we were going to move to California together so that she could accept a big promotion, it made sense for us to marry so that I’d get health coverage through her, at least until I found a job myself.

  Not the most romantic of situations, but then, our marriage had been like that—doing the things we thought we should, like buying a house and trying to have children. When I went to prison and she divorced me, I was sad and felt like a failure, but my heart wasn’t broken.

  If something happened to Lili, or we split up, though, I had a feeling the emotional fallout would be much worse. I had much stronger feelings for her than I ever did for Mary. We punctuated our conversations with “love you” all the time. When I saw sappy movies I felt a twinge in my heart that made me connect with those emotions on screen. Flipping through channels one day we’d landed on Grease, and when Danny and Sandy sang “You’re the one that I want” I felt my eyes well up as I reached for Lili’s hand.

  Despite that, I believed that a marriage license was just a piece of paper, one that often caused more complications than the joy it brought. Earlier that night, Lili had said she was feeling some wanderlust, and yet here she sounded so enthusiastic about marriage. Was putting a ring on her finger the way to keep her beside me?

  Women. Who could understand them? Good thing Rochester was a boy dog or I’d be completely lost.

  6 – Fog

  A cold front moved in that night, and Wednesday morning when I took Rochester for his walk around River Bend, fog lingered on the manicured lawns and the piles of fallen leaves. I fed Rochester, hurried through my own breakfast and skipped the crossword puzzle so that we could get to the Talmud study group on time.

  Lili was still asleep by the time my dog and I were ready to leave, but I lingered a moment in the doorway of the bedroom. She always scrubbed off whatever makeup she’d worn as part of her bedtime ritual, and in the clear light coming in through the window I could see every laugh line, every crow’s foot, a few strands of silver in her auburn hair. Those little imperfections made me love her even more, and as I blew her a goodbye kiss, I vowed I’d do whatever I had to in order to keep her by my side.

  Since there was little to see through the fog, Rochester slumped into the front seat beside me as we drove through what had been farmland when I was a kid but was now a welter of suburban developments. He perked up as I pulled into a parking space in the lot at Shomrei Torah, perhaps remembering the blessing of a few days before and hoping for another.

  Or thinking of Sadie, the female golden.

  The rabbi’s hybrid sedan was parked in his reserved spot, along with a half-dozen other cars in the lot. Aaron Feinberg, the synagogue president, pulled up and parked as Rochester was nosing a row of azalea bushes. “Your dog is a Talmud scholar, too?” he asked. He held out his hand for Rochester to sniff, but the big golden was too intent on pulling toward some other scent.

  “He likes to get his nose into everything.” At that moment the golden’s big black nose was down to the ground, intent on something ahead of us.

  Feinberg wore a dark blue pinstripe suit with a white shirt and a red power tie, and I worried that I looked like a schlep in my polo shirt and khakis. Saul Benesch and Henry Namias arrived together, and Feinberg waited in the parking lot for them as Rochester tugged me forward.

  He wanted to go in the wrong direction, though, toward the sanctuary, and I had to keep a tight hold on his leash and nearly drag him around the corner to the entrance to the rabbi’s study.

  There were three other men and two women sitting in a semi-circle of chairs in the room when we walked in, all of them in their forties or fifties. Rabbi Goldberg sat in his ergonomic desk chair facing them. His desk was in one corner, crowded with papers and framed photos of him and Sadie. On the edge of the desk was a bright green piece of malachite, with a depression in the center that made me recognize it as a worry stone, the kind you rubbed with your thumb whenever you were stressed. I should probably get one of those. It would come in handy when Rochester was getting into trouble.

  I sat beside one of the women and let Rochester off his leash. He immediately hustled over to Sadie to give her a good morning sniff. While I waited for the session to begin, I looked around at the walls lined with bookshelves, most of them half-empty, the gaps between books filled with menorahs, a statue of a fiddler on a roof, and other bits of Judaica.

  When Feinberg, Namias and Benesch arrived and took the last three seats, the rabbi introduced me to the group, and everyone seemed very welcoming. I was curious to know how such a study session would operate – had there been homework I didn’t know about? Would we be reading in Eng
lish or Hebrew – which I could only sound out if the vowels were present?

  “This is an interesting time in the annual cycle of reading the Torah,” the rabbi began. “We’re wrapping up the past year and preparing for the new one. Since a year encompasses a great deal of events, so do our services in the month of Elul. As we prepare for the redemption offered us by Yom Kippur, we focus on what I like to call the three T’s: Torah, tefilah, and tzedakah.”

  He smiled. “Unfortunately saying Torah, prayer, and deeds of kindness doesn’t give that satisfying sense of alliteration.”

  Now the rabbi was speaking my language – peppering English-major terms like alliteration into his speech, and it didn’t look like there would be any reading. I relaxed.

  It had been a tumultuous year since last Rosh Hashanah, I thought. Rochester and I had been involved in several murder investigations, and we’d put ourselves in danger more than I was comfortable with. I hoped that the new year would be one of peace.

  Then the rabbi continued. “The blessings for this service are found in this week’s Torah portion, Parshas Ki Seitzei. This deals with a Jew’s ‘going out to war,’ i.e., going out to involvement within our material world.”

  Uh-oh. That didn’t sound good. Rochester and I had seen enough of our own kind of war.

  We began to talk in Socratic fashion, as Rabbi asked us how we thought we could spread tzedakah, or blessings, in the material world, to prepare our souls for our reckoning with God during the Days of Awe between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

  Rochester eventually settled down between me and an older man named Daniel Epstein, whose name I knew because he was often listed in the program for Sabbath services as the greeter, who handed out prayerbooks and welcomed everyone to shul.

  In response to the rabbi’s question about tzedakah, Epstein said that in the past he’d made his charitable contributions at the end of the calendar year, for tax purposes. “But I’ve begun to spread them out during the year,” he said. “I know a lot of charities rely on contributions to function, and it’s hard to budget if all your donations come in during a few weeks in December.”

  “That’s an interesting approach,” Rabbi Goldberg said. “And it provides you the blessing of tzedakah throughout the year, instead of just in a short period.”

  “When I was in Sunday school here, my parents gave me a dime every week for keren ami,” I said. “Do kids still do that?”

  The rabbi laughed. “Yes, we still collect charitable contributions for the State of Israel from Sunday school students, though they usually bring a dollar now. You’re right, it’s an excellent way to get them into the habit of making regular charitable contributions, though most often that money comes from their parents rather than their own pockets.” He sat back in his chair. “And you, Steve? How do you prepare?”

  “Well, I work for Eastern College,” I said. “So I’m still in that academic routine of believing that the year starts in September, like on the Jewish calendar. My regular job involves computer work and administration, but I occasionally teach a course as an adjunct instructor. This fall I’m teaching one on Jewish American Literature, so I’ve been reading a lot about the immigrant experience and thinking about my own family history, in the old country, in Trenton, and here at Shomrei Torah.”

  We continued around the room. Feinberg spoke about how his father survived the Holocaust and what that meant to him. I noticed that Henry Namias glared at him as he spoke, and I wondered why. Was it bragging to say you had a survivor in your family? Why would Namias be bothered?

  My reverie was interrupted by a knock on the door, followed by a middle-aged black man stepping inside. “I’m sorry to interrupt, rabbi, but there’s a problem.” He was out of breath, as if he’d been running, and his hands were shaking.

  The man was dressed like I was, in khaki slacks and a polo shirt, but his was embossed Temple Shomrei Torah, and he wore a name tag that identified him as Walter Johnson, Facility Manager.

  “What is it, Walter?” the rabbi asked.

  “I had to call the police. There’s a man’s body behind the sanctuary. I found him when I was walking around the property.”

  “What do you mean, a body?” Feinberg demanded.

  “He’s dead, Mr. Feinberg.”

  The group erupted in murmurs to each other as Johnson moved over to the rabbi to speak more closely to him. Johnson had left the door to the study open, and as he passed me, Rochester jumped up and took off out the door.

  “Rochester!” I scrambled out of my seat. “Sorry, sorry,” I said as I moved past Johnson and hurried out the door, leaving behind a hubbub. I followed Rochester’s erect, plumy tail as he rushed along the side of the sanctuary building. Then he disappeared around the corner.

  That was the direction where he’d been trying to go as we walked in. Had he scented the body and tried to tell me about it? Dumb human that I was, I had only about five million scent glands in my nose, whereas a large breed like the golden retriever had nearly three hundred million. So I hadn’t sniffed out the problem the way he had, and instead of following his instincts, I’d dragged him into the rabbi’s study.

  I heard a siren in the distance as I rounded the corner. Tendrils of fog still hung in the air, but I saw Rochester sitting at his alert position beside a man’s body, on the ground beside the back wall. The man’s face was turned away from me, but as I observed him I got a sinking feeling. He wore a gray T-shirt torn at the neck, then a plaid shirt, with a pea coat over that. His jeans were ragged at the cuffs, and he wore stained white tennis shoes. His brown hair was shaggy and his beard was unkempt. There was a dark stain on the grass beside him that I thought was probably blood.

  When I moved around so that I could see his face, I realized my instinct had been correct. It was Joel Goldberg. The rabbi’s brother.

  7 – Bad Times

  Rochester looked up at me woefully from his position beside Joel Goldberg’s body. How long had the man been dead? Could we have saved him if I’d listened to my dog’s instincts? From the way the dark fluid had congealed on the ground, and the stiffness in Joel’s limbs from the onset of rigor mortis, even if we’d gotten there a half hour earlier, we couldn’t have done anything to save him.

  The rabbi arrived behind us a moment later, Sadie by his side. “My God! Joel!” A dozen feet behind him the rest of the Talmud study group rushed toward us.

  Rochester arose from his position on the ground and moved over to join Sadie by the rabbi’s side. Rabbi Goldberg began to kneel, but I took his arm. “In case this is a crime scene, Rabbi, better not to compromise it.”

  “A crime scene? But why would someone kill my brother?”

  “I don’t know,” I said gently. I pointed at the pool of congealed blood around Joel’s head. “But it looks to me like someone did.”

  The rabbi looked down at his brother. “What were you doing here, Joel?” he asked. “What did you want from me?”

  I looked at the rabbi. His face was a rictus of grief, his lips turned down, his eyes watering. His back was slightly hunched, as if he’d lost the will to stand upright.

  I had a different question. When did Joel arrive at the temple? Buses did not run all night, so assuming he was still reliant on public transportation, he had to have gotten there the night before.

  “When was the last time you saw your brother?” I asked.

  “Sunday. He ran off before I could talk to him.”

  A police cruiser arrived, lights flashing and a siren going.

  The rabbi’s mouth dropped open, and he said, “My parents,” in a broken voice, as a uniformed officer got out of the car. “I’ll have to call them.”

  He looked around as if he was searching for his phone, and I put my hand on his shoulder. “That can wait a few minutes,” I said. “They’re in Arizona, aren’t they?”

  He nodded.

  “Then it’s a couple of hours earlier. Let them have their sleep.”

  The officer came up to
us, a stocky young guy in a black uniform, his belt laden with the apparatus of criminal justice. The rabbi, the two dogs and I stepped back to allow him officer to examine Joel’s body, and it was clear from his face that Joel was dead.

  As the other members of the Talmud study group came to comfort the rabbi, I pulled out my cell phone and hit the speed dial button for Rick Stemper. As one of only two detectives on the Stewart’s Crossing police force, he was likely to be called to this scene.

  “Can’t talk now,” he said. “On my way to a dead body.”

  “At Shomrei Torah. Rochester and I are here.”

  He groaned. “Not the dog again. He didn’t find the body, did he?”

  “Not for want of trying.” I explained how we’d been walking toward the rabbi’s study, and Rochester was eager to head off to where Joel’s body had been discovered.

  “I’m almost there. Don’t go anywhere.”

  When I hung up I looked over at Rabbi Goldberg, who was crying. Aaron Feinberg had his arm around the rabbi’s shoulders, speaking quietly to him. Walter Johnson and the group from Talmud study stood awkwardly aside, no one sure what to do.

  The uniformed officer asked everyone to stay a few feet away from the body as he began laying out crime scene tape. Then Rick arrived, his police badge at his hip, right in front of his holstered pistol. He introduced himself and asked that everyone wait for the officer to get all our details, so that he could interview us later.

  “Why us?” Saul Benesch asked. “We didn’t see anything.”

  “How long will this take?” another man asked.

  “I have to get to work,” one of the women said, though I was pretty sure the Talmud study group would have still been going on, if not for the interruption.

  “We’ll get you on your way as soon as possible,” Rick said. He glared at me, which I took to mean that I was exempted from that order.

  I didn’t want the rabbi to have to stand there in the dissipating fog and watch as his brother’s body was investigated by the police and the crime scene team. “The deceased is Rabbi Goldberg’s brother,” I said to Rick. “Why don’t Rochester and I take the rabbi into his study and wait for you there.”