Dirty Harriet Rides Again

by Miriam Auerbach

  “Oh, hell.” I sighed. “I’m the one that should be sorry. I want to do it all myself. That’s why I snapped at you. I’m sorry, and I’m grateful for your help.”

  “We don’t want Wonder Woman,” Keisha LaReigne said. “We want Dirty Harriet. All you have to be is you.”

  Now I hung my head. They’d just given me the gift of pure acceptance. How rare was that?

  “Thanks,” I mumbled.

  Then I fired the hog back up, put on my helmet, and headed for home.

  I SPENT THE NEXT morning, Friday, recuperating from the battle. I took a long hot shower (well, as long as my small water tank would allow), then sat down in my rocking chair on the porch to bask in the sun. Lana was nowhere in sight. Since it was springtime, she was probably off somewhere mating. It was a pretty sad state of affairs if a gator was getting more action than I was.

  Just as that thought passed through my mind, the phone rang.

  “Horowitz, where are you?” It was Lior. “Why aren’t you in class?”

  “Huh?” I said.

  “Your twelve o’clock class.”

  “Oh. I had a rough night. But believe me, I got enough Krav Maga practice to make up for a couple classes.”

  “What happened?” he asked, and I explained.

  “So you’re beat up and all alone.”

  “Yep, that’s about the sum of it.”

  “Well, I’m coming out to bring you some matzo-ball soup and give you a massage.”

  “What? No way. I don’t need anything. I’m fine.”

  “Sure. See you in a few hours.”

  What the hell was wrong with him? Had he just turned into a Jewish mother?

  I didn’t need any man to take care of me, for Christ’s sake. Hadn’t I worked long enough to become the independent superchick that I was? Why did he have to come along and disrupt my well-ordered existence?

  But come along he did as promised—or threatened. He pulled up in a canoe, tied it to the porch, and disembarked, bearing a plastic container.

  This was weird. I’d never had company here in my remote hideaway.

  His size seemed to overwhelm the small porch. He wore black jeans and a white T-shirt that stretched over his pecs and biceps.

  His dark eyes looked me up and down, noting the bruises and scratches on my bare arms. “You look like shit,” he said.

  “Thank you, that’s very kind of you. How’d you find this place, anyway?”

  “Horowitz, do you forget that I’m a former high-ranking officer of the Israeli defense? Do we ever have trouble finding who we’re after? Besides, this was child’s play. I just used my GPS tracker to get your coordinates from your cell phone.”

  Great. I guess I could run from civilization, but I couldn’t hide.

  “You got any eating utensils in this shack?” he asked.

  “Yeah, they’re in the kitchen. There are only two rooms, so I’m sure you can find it, ace tracker that you are.”

  He went in, then came out a few minutes later with a bowl of steaming soup and a spoon.

  “I heated it on the stove,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I grumbled and sipped a spoonful. Hmmm. It was piquant and buttery, with thick chunks of chicken and vegetables. This wasn’t like any matzo-ball soup I’d ever had. Mine always came out of a can.

  “Who cooked this?” I asked suspiciously. “Some girlfriend of yours?”

  “Do I detect a hint of jealousy? Well, let me allay your fears. This is of my own making.”

  “You mean you cook?”

  “I fail to see why you find it necessary to insult me. I do not cook, I create culinary sensations.”

  “No kidding.”

  Gee, it might be nice to have a hot-looking chef around to serve—and service—me. Why, it would be like having a wife.

  There I went again. I didn’t need this complication in my life. I was doing just fine as a loner.

  I finished the soup while he sat in silence beside me on the wooden floorboards of the porch.

  “Well, thanks a lot,” I said. “I feel better now. You can go.”

  “Hold on, that was only part one of your therapy. Part two is the massage.”

  “That’s really not necessary.”

  But he’d already gotten up, set the bowl aside, and stood behind me with his hands on my shoulders. Before I knew it, a long “Ohhh” escaped my lips. I leaned back in my rocking chair until my head rested against him and closed my eyes as he continued to gently knead my aching shoulders and neck. I was drifting off to sleep when I felt his lips atop my head. Then those lips traveled softly and slowly to my ear, then my neck. His hands slid around me and cupped my breasts. I moaned.

  Suddenly a huge splash of dirty swamp water hit us both square in the face. Lior pulled back, and I wiped the scum from my eyes. When I opened them I saw Lana whipping her tail and sporting a shit-eating grin.

  My faithful neighbor had come to my rescue just as I was about to slide down the slippery slope of sexual surrender.

  I leaped out of my rocking chair. It rocked back and hit Lior right in the anatomical part under consideration.

  “Shit,” he cried and collapsed to the ground.

  “Jesus,” I said, kneeling beside him. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine,” he croaked.

  “Can I do anything?”

  “No, I think your diabolical pet has done enough.”

  So I just sat beside him for ten minutes, my hand on his arm, until he finally sat up.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “You are? Well, in that case, you can make up for it. Come with me to Shabbos services tonight and ask for forgiveness.” Shabbos, the Jewish day of rest, started at sundown on Fridays.

  “What? Are you nuts?”

  “Actually, yeah, right now all I feel is nuts.”

  “Look, you know I’m not religious. And I’m only half-Jewish, on my father’s side.”

  “So expand your horizons a little. You owe me.”

  “Fine. Fine. Let’s go.” I didn’t even know why I said that. Did I really believe I owed him something? Did I just want to get him off my back? Or did I actually care for him? No, that couldn’t be it. Uh-uh.

  “Fine.”

  “I’ll have to change at the office, though.”

  “At the office?”

  “Yeah, that’s where I stash my one suit. It’s normally for undercover operations. But I can’t go to temple like this.” I gestured to my black stretch leggings and tank top.

  “Right. I’ll follow you to your office.”

  We tied his canoe to my airboat and took off for land. Once there, he fastened the canoe onto a rack on top of his jeep. I rolled my hog off the airboat, climbed on, and we rode separately to my office.

  He waited in the Jeep while I went in and changed into the suit, a white Dolce & Gabbana with a short skirt and fitted jacket and matching four-inch vamp shoes. It was the one outfit I’d kept from my Boca Babe days. Then I reached deep into my bottom desk drawer and pulled out my secret stash, a Ziploc bag stuffed with leftovers. Not food—cosmetics. Again from my past life. I went into the bathroom and applied the stuff.

  Finally I emerged from the office, locked the door and climbed into Lior’s Jeep. He gave me a long, slow stare from the top of my head to my tit cleavage to my toe cleavage.

  “Who are you?” he asked. “What did you do with Horowitz? Have you got her tied up in there?”

  “Very funny,” I said. “Let’s just go.”

  Ten minutes later we arrived at the Temple Beth Boca, a large, white modernist structure with an irregular gabled roof that rose to a triangular peak with Chagall stained glass on two sides. As we pulled up, I had a sickening sense of dé
jà vu from Chuck and Enrique’s wedding. But wait. This wasn’t a déjà vu. It really was a repeat performance. Police cars were everywhere, red lights flashing. The white CSI van was there again, as was the throng of celebrity-seekers.

  A few well-dressed men and women, apparently congregants, were gathered in a corner of the lawn under a royal palm tree. We got out of the Jeep and walked over to them. I stumbled as my fricking four-inch heels sank into the soft ground. Lior took my hand. I wanted to pull away, but I wanted more to find out what was going on. So I let him hold on until we reached the group.

  “What’s happening?” Lior asked.

  A matronly woman with a head of platinum helmet hair came up to him and grabbed him.

  “Lior, darling, you haven’t heard? The rabbi . . .” she sobbed. “The rabbi has been killed.”

  “What? How? When?”

  “Strangled with his own prayer shawl. This morning, they say.”

  Lior’s face turned pale.

  “But I just saw him here this morning. He was fine when I left. I can’t believe it.”

  At that moment Detective Reilly came up to the group. He took a quick look at me, eyes narrowed.

  “Detective Horowitz? Is that you? At another of my crime scenes?”

  Before I had a chance to reply, he turned to Lior.

  “Lior Ben Yehuda, you are under arrest for the murder of Rabbi Lev Zelnik.”

  Chapter 14

  THE CONGREGANTS and I looked on helplessly as two uniformed cops handcuffed Lior and hauled him off. Infuriated, I stalked after Reilly, who was conferring with the crime-scene investigators.

  “What the hell’s going on?” I demanded. “Why’d you arrest Lior?”

  Reilly slowly turned to me.

  “Ms. Horowitz,” he said evenly, “I would like to have a chat with you. Shall we go inside for a cup of coffee?”

  More déjà vu. I followed him into the temple and down a hallway into a kitchen. A pot of coffee was already brewed, and he poured me a cup.

  “I know, black, no sugar,” he said as he handed it to me. He poured one for himself and said, “Let’s go sit.”

  He led me into the main part of the temple, and we sat in a pew. The setting sun filtered through the stained-glass tower above, casting multicolored hues around the room. Reilly was bathed in a pool of green. It did not enhance his pale, freckly Irish complexion. He looked like a frog with chicken pox. Red was shining on me. In that femme fatale Babe outfit, I probably looked like a scarlet harlot.

  Reilly didn’t seem to notice, though.

  “Now, will you kindly explain what you’re doing here?” he asked. “Do you habitually hang around religious murder sites?”

  By now I’d calmed down a little. I figured I’d get more from him if we exchanged some tit-for-tat, so I ignored his snide remark and explained my presence.

  “How long have you known Mr. Ben Yehuda?” he asked.

  “A few years.”

  “And what is the nature of your relationship?”

  Shit. How could I explain the nature of my relationship with Lior? I couldn’t even explain it to myself.

  “He’s my Krav Maga instructor. Recently we’ve become . . . friendly.”

  “I see. Do you happen to know where he was this morning?”

  “He said he was here.”

  “Were you with him?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know he was here?”

  “I didn’t say I knew he was here, I said he said he was here.”

  “So you don’t actually know if he was here.”

  “That’s what I just said.”

  “You said he said he was here. You didn’t say you didn’t know if he was here.”

  “Exactly. That’s what I said.”

  “Exactly what?”

  Oh, my God. This had to stop.

  “Look, let me be perfectly clear,” I said slowly. “I do not know where Lior was this morning.”

  “Okay, that’s all I was asking.”

  Jeez. “So now that you have my information, how about sharing a little of yours?” I asked.

  “Well, seeing as you’re a fellow investigator, albeit of a different sort,” he said condescendingly, “I’ll extend you the professional courtesy of giving you advance information that will shortly be released to the media, anyway.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “In fact, Mr. Ben Yehuda was here this morning, meeting with the rabbi.”

  “If you already knew that, why’d you ask me?”

  “Please, Ms. Horowitz. You have your investigative methods. We have ours.”

  He took a sip of coffee, then continued, “Upon interviewing several members of the congregation, I learned that Mr. Ben Yehuda is the president of the synagogue and that there has been some major discord among the temple members, which was the subject of his meeting with the rabbi.”

  “What kind of discord?”

  “Apparently, it concerned the price of tickets for the High Holidays. The rabbi and some members felt that the tickets should have varied price levels, with the best seats costing the most. Like at a concert, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Others, including Mr. Ben Yehuda, thought that the temple was no place for ostentatious displays of wealth. They argued that all tickets should he priced the same, with seats going on a first-come, first-served basis.”

  I stared at the man. “So you’re suggesting that Lior killed the rabbi over some petty dispute over ticket prices?”

  Reilly smiled indulgently. “Ms. Horowitz, you are clearly not a regular temple-goer or churchgoer. If you were, you would know that houses of worship are the scenes of some of the worst backbiting and backstabbing that you could ever imagine. Believe me when I say that these battles get way uglier than any catfights or dirty politics you may ever have witnessed. So yes, to answer your question, that is precisely what we think happened. And we have probable cause to arrest him.”

  “This is insane,” I said. “There’s no way Lior would . . .”

  “Ms. Horowitz, you just said yourself that your relationship with this man has been quite superficial until recently. So you don’t really know him all that well, do you?”

  I swallowed hard. Could he be right? Could Lana have been right? Could I be involved with a killer?

  I shoved that thought out of my mind.

  “No way,” I said. “That’s just ridiculous. Don’t you see there must be a connection between this murder and that of the Reverend Botay? Come on, what are the odds of two clergy in Boca being killed within days of each other?”

  “There are no signs of a serial killer or a copycat killer. The methods of murder are totally different, as are the victims.”

  “But it doesn’t have to be a serial or copycat killer, someone who kills just for thrills. It’s the motive that could be the same. Don’t these look like hate crimes to you? The Church of the Gender-Free God was pro-gay, and the temple is, obviously, Jewish. And isn’t this the temple that had swastikas painted on it a while back?”

  “Yes. Nonetheless, we do not see these murders as connected.”

  “Well, I do. In fact, I have some suspects you should check out.” I was thinking, of course, of Hollings, Morse, and the Loyal Brotherhood of Assholes.

  “Mr. Horowitz, we’ve already arrested and charged our suspects. Now if you have a different theory, you’re certainly free to pursue it. But our job is done.”

  “Wow, your arm must really hurt, Reilly,” I said.

  “From what?”

  “From patting yourself on the back.”

  I got up, turned on my heel, and strode out. His job might be done, but mine sure as hell wasn’t. I knew damn well that someone was out to send Boca’s
clergy to their heavenly rewards. And I would prove it.

  Chapter 15

  SUNDOWN HAD come and Shabbos had arrived by the time I left the temple. But there would be no rest for me until this case was solved.

  As I rode home, a light drizzle started to fall. I gently downshifted and slowed. Rain is a serious issue when a bike is your only form of ground transportation. A light sprinkling like this is okay if you take it nice and easy and don’t need to look presentable wherever it is you’re going. But a real downpour, the kind we get in South Florida every summer afternoon, will stop you in your tracks. Unless you’re suicidal, you’ll hide under the nearest overpass and wait it out.

  When all you’ve got is your hog, you’ve got to be flexible. You’ve got to surrender to nature instead of riding roughshod over it with your self-imposed deadlines and pressures. That’s why a lot of real bikers—not the weekend road warriors—operate outside the rat race. It’s where we want to be.

  As I rode through the mist, my mind entered that altered state induced by the sound of the pistons’ syncopated repetitions. In this alternate frame of mind, I realized what my next step had to be. I had to find out what the two victims had in common that would have led to a single motive in their killings. The murders could be hate crimes, as I’d indicated to Reilly, but I still thought I needed to stay open to all possibilities. After all, my investigations of Hollings and Morse hadn’t yielded anything solid about the Reverend Botay’s murder.

  By the time I got home, the drizzle had developed into a real shower. Inside the cabin, the noise of the heavy raindrops hitting the roof was intense. I dried myself off, got my Hennessy, and went out to sit on the covered porch to observe nature’s power.

  My front “yard” contains a few mangrove trees, distinctive for their gnarled, tangled, aboveground root systems. Now, their branches were bent over, hunched against the liquid onslaught. The fresh raindrops appeared to bounce off the murky swamp water before melding into it. A blue heron swooped onto the edge of the porch, stood tall, folded its six-foot wingspan into its sides and shook off the water. Nearby, tree frogs serenaded us with their croaks.

  I love a good storm. I lost myself in its sounds, sights, and smells.