The Silent Bride awm-7

by Leslie Glass

  "Wow." April whistled as they came to the tiny dead-end road of Alderbrook, a lane so narrow it didn't look wide enough for a moving van to get in or out. Tucked into a cul de sac th«t dated from early in the last century were six old houses. Parked cars and TV vans blocked the road and lined the roads around it. Mike had to backtrack and leave his unmarked vehicle in the circle of a giant apartment complex two blocks away. They plowed through a bunch of reporters who tried to get them to say something.

  The Schoenfelds' house was at the end, in the curve of the U. It was a sturdy structure, built for a family just the size of theirs. It was pale gray-painted stucco with an orange-tiled roof and a covered veranda in the front. More reporters jammed the front lawn. Mike shook his head at them.

  "You take the girl's family/' he murmured to April.

  "Tovah," April corrected softly.

  Tovah,

  she repeated to herself as she rang the bell.

  Less than a minute later Mr. Schoenfeld opened the door. He was a tall, heavyset man, at least six-two. He didn't appear to be in good shape, but he looked young for a man with a daughter of marriageable age. He had curly light brown hair on a big head, a Roman nose, a strong chin thickly packed into a roll underneath, angry blue eyes.

  "This is not a good time. We're sitting shivah," he said curtly.

  "We're sorry to intrude," Mike told him.

  Schoenfeld glanced quickly at April, dismissed her. "That other detective was already here. Isn't that enough for one day?"

  "We have a few more questions."

  Schoenfeld blocked the door. "What exactly do you want to know?"

  "We need information about the party vendors," April said, not wanting to get his back up about their looking into his daughter's activities in the last few months, weeks, days, hours of her life.

  "My wife and my daughter would be the ones who dealt with the . . ." He hiccuped and closed his eyes, swaying on his feet like a big tree caught in a wind. April saw that he'd been drinking.

  He blinked, recovered his focus and balance, pushed away the hand the Mike held out to him. "Come in," he said abruptly.

  The smell of food twitched at April's empty belly as she followed him into the kind of home she'd seen often on Central Park West. The living room was furnished with many traditional chairs she recognized as antiques and fat sofas upholstered in heavy brocade. A thick, patterned carpet partially covered the wide-planked wood floor. Voluminous drapes with tassel fringe, crystal lamps, inlaid tables, and gilded mirrors on the walls, now obscured by a soapy film, finished the look. From another part of the house came the muted sound of children's voices. About thirty well-dressed males sat and stood around with plates of food in their hands.

  In the dining room, a spread of party food was laid out on a huge slab of a table, a crowd of women were loading their plates, and a heavy woman with a blond wig was directing traffic. April had forgotten the Styrofoam head with Tovah's wig on it, but she remembered it now. Her mother had one, too.

  "Suri, these detectives want to talk to you," Schoenfeld said to the woman. Then he returned to the living room, where the men were.

  "We're sorry to intrude. I'm Sergeant Woo; this is Lieutenant Sanchez," April said.

  The woman put her hand out to a smaller woman near her, wiry with steely blue hair and a hard expression. "My mother," she said faintly.

  "I'm Belle Levine."

  The two women led the way through the kitchen out of the house onto the back porch, where there was outdoor furniture, a large table, a love seat, chairs, and a glider. There Mrs. Schoenfeld started to cry. "Why would anyone do this?"

  "Tell me about your daughter, Mrs. Schoenfeld,"

  April said gently. Mike gave April a sympathetic look and went into the house.

  "She was a beautiful girl. Eighteen years old, nothing but childhood behind her, her whole life in front of her. What is there to tell?" her mother said.

  "What was Tovah like? Who did she know?"

  "A girl who led a quiet life, didn't know anybody, never dated a single boy but Schmuel," her grandmother said.

  "He was a terrible choice. I'll never forgive myself," Tovah's mother sobbed.

  "A terrible choice?" April murmured.

  Suri Schoenfeld stopped crying abruptly. "Are you Chinese?" she demanded.

  "Yes," April told her.

  "You people have arranged marriages, don't you?"

  "Some do," April admitted.

  "You see." Suri pounded the arm of her chair. "I wanted the best for my daughter. Who wouldn't?" A wail escaped her.

  "Suri," her mother said sharply. "Don't blame yourself. Tovah chose

  him."

  "But I chose the family. Terrible family. Look. They won't show their faces here. It's a

  shanda.

  You should check those people. They're criminals, Russians with relatives in the mob."

  "Suri, you don't know that," her mother said sharply.

  "They took the ring off a dying girl's finger!" Surf's grief poured out. "What kind of people would do that? Now there's a curse on all my children. I'll never marry any of them. Murderers," she wailed.

  "Tell me about the last two weeks," April said gently. "Tell me everything you did."

  Suri wanted to talk. She told about Tovah's visit to the

  mikvah

  last Thursday, the ritual bath. April made a note to ask Jason Frank about it.

  "And the wig maker to pick up the wig, also Thursday."

  April finally had the chance to ask about the wigs. She opened her mouth to ask, but Suri Schoenfeld anticipated the question.

  "We cover our hair after marriage," Suri said. "Modesty."

  "Ah." April glanced at Suri's mother, with her own steely blue hair.

  "Not all of us," Belle said pointedly, ending the inquiry.

  Then Suri told her about the many calls back and forth to Wendy Lotte, the wedding planner, because the Ribikoffs had been so difficult about the final lists. People who hadn't been invited were coming. People who said they were coming couldn't come. Not only that, Schmuel's father was allergic to fish, nuts, and gluten and didn't want anything with those ingredients at the dinner. That was about as difficult as people could get.

  "Nothing with flour!" Suri was still reeling over it. "It was a nightmare. Why couldn't they have told us that before?"

  April noted everything, their trips to Manhattan to meet with the florist, a person improbably called Louis the Sun King, and with the caterer to constantly revamp the menu. Their meetings with Wendy Lotte, and their visits with Tang Ling and her fitter Kim. Suri went with her mother, Belle, most often. When necessary, they took Tovah with them.

  "Tovah didn't always go with you?" April asked.

  "It was so tiring." The two women exchanged glances.

  "Tiring? Tovah was a young woman."

  "She had migraines."

  "What was her mood in the last few days?"

  "Except for the migraines, she was fine."

  "Was she anxious about getting married? You said she had no experience with boys."

  Suri looked exasperated. "I went to college. I dated. What's so great?"

  "She was not anxious," the grandmother insisted. "Every girl wants to get married. Who wants to be an old maid?"

  April hid her ringless ring finger under her notebook.

  But maybe not everybody wants to be married at eighteen.

  April had barely graduated from high school at eighteen.

  Then Suri launched into an explanation of their preparations for the Sabbath, the reason she'd hired a party planner. "I start on Wednesday. For a family this size, we need ten loaves of bread, six chickens, fish. I cook everything myself and always do five courses. I couldn't do that and a wedding too," she explained.

  Such elaborate cooking and arrangements for a twenty-four-hour period every week! It was as bad as being Chinese.

  "This was my first break in nineteen years. My husband owed it to me,"
Suri said tearfully.

  "Can you think of anyone who disliked your daughter, Mrs. Schoenfeld?"

  "Rich and pretty girls always excite envy," Suri said smoothly. "I know that from my own experience. But it couldn't be one of us. Jews don't have guns." She was certain about that.

  "One more thing. Did you notice anyone leaving the sanctuary before the ceremony? Someone from either family missing?"

  "Oh, I have no idea. The only person I couldn't find when we came in was Wendy. I needed her to do something. I looked for her, but she wasn't around. Can I go back in the house now?"

  Wendy again. April nodded. "How long do you sit shivah?"

  "Seven days," Suri said. "I don't know how I'll get through it."

  "You will," April assured her. Somehow they always did.

  Sixteen

  C

  hing didn't watch Channel Twelve all day to keep track of all the terrible crimes that happened in New York City and April's role in solving them, but her mother Mai Ma Dong did. Mai followed April's career with avid interest, collecting the news clippings about her cases and recounting her successes in the police department to her daughter and anyone else who would listen. To Mai, her own daughter was a difficult rebel, but Sai's daughter was a real star. Sai, of course, felt exactly the opposite.

  When they were little, the two best-friend mothers took turns dragging Ching and April to Chinese school on weekends to learn calligraphy and other Chinese arts. They'd taken them to martial-arts classes and taught them to cook traditional meals. Ching had incurred her mother's wrath by not being interested in any of it. She'd been the math genius and longed for escape from the narrowness of Chinatown. April had been the fighting beauty, the black belt who won all the matches—the stay-at-home who supported her parents and went to college at night. To Mai, who'd missed Ching when she was away in California for many years, April remained the loyal daughter and became the famous cop she saw on TV.

  Mai was the one who sighted April and Mike during the coverage of the terrible shooting in the Bronx. They were coming out of the house of a murdered bride shaking their heads. "No comment at this time." And right away she called Ching at work to warn her.

  "Bad luck," she cried. "Terrible luck to happen just before your wedding."

  Oh, God.

  This was the last thing Ching wanted to think about. "It's the Bronx, Ma. A Jewish wedding. Nothing to do with us."

  "Poor April," Mai wailed. "Bad luck for her."

  "No, no, Ma. Don't say that."

  "Yes, yes, now she'll never get married," Mai predicted unhappily.

  "But this is her job. One thing has nothing to do with the other!" Ching argued.

  "I don't know. Bad luck," Mai insisted.

  The reasoning was nuts. "Come on, terrible things happen every day; that doesn't mean they'll happen to us."

  "You better call April," Mai concluded. "Tell her."

  "Tell her what, Ma?"

  "No more murders before the wedding," Mai said.

  Ching groaned. Oh, sure, as if April could keep the whole city crimeless for ten whole days.

  "Okay, Ma. I'll tell her." She hung up and scratched the side of her mouth the way she did when she was troubled. Her mother was a management problem at the best of times. April was not so easy, either. All Ching wanted to do was keep her mother quiet for a few more days, and get April away from her work long enough to be her maid of honor. She wanted to have a happy wedding, and go on her well-deserved honeymoon to Venice.

  Seventeen

  Wendy checked her caller ID. When she saw it was Kim again, she smiled at the two detectives in her living room and dropped the ringing cell phone back in her pocket.

  "I'm devastated to have missed the funeral. I called this morning to see what I could do to help, but no one picked up." Wendy appraised the two cops. A Chinese woman, young, very attractive. No wedding ring. She noticed these things. A Hispanic man with a mustache like the other detective. No wedding ring either. Like the Bronx detective, these two were dressed in plain clothes and didn't look terribly intelligent. Wendy didn't know she was just slightly dulled with drink. She always felt she could talk her way through anything no matter how much hooch was in her. And she'd had plenty of experience with both cops and vodka.

  "I had no idea they'd bury her so fast. It's so difficult with all these restrictions." She hurriedly ticked them off on her fingers. "No communication on Friday after dark until Saturday after dark. That's twenty-four whole hours of every week out the window. Believe me, that can be quite a hurdle when you have details that need attention. I had to learn all this. I've never done Orthodox before. You know anything about them?"

  "No, tell us," the Chinese said.

  "No answering the phone when you're in mourning. Who would think of it? I can't imagine how the arrangements get done." Wendy lifted her eyes heavenward. "Not that I'm judgmental about customs. I work with all kinds of people," she amended quickly. Now the phone rang in her office. She ignored it.

  "How do arrangements get done?"

  "I gather there's some sort of temple fellowship that takes care of everything so the family doesn't have to think about it. They don't allow flowers." Wendy glanced at her watch, blew air out of her mouth to control her impatience.

  "I asked the caterer to help. They're a very nice kosher couple, by the way. They wanted to know what to do with the food from yesterday. No one ate. Mr. Schoenfeld didn't want to

  pay

  for it after what happened, so I told the Goldsteins to take that food right over to the house and set it up for the shivah." Wendy was proud of this maneuver. The delivery of the food was done in the guise of kindness, and she knew Mr. Schoenfeld would have no choice about paying for it now. Luckily she'd learned a long time ago to take her own cuts up front and in commissions along the way. A lot of vendors could go unpaid for this kind of disaster.

  "And the Goldsteins did it?"

  "Oh, yes. Smart people always take my advice. Thinking ahead is the key to my business." Wendy wanted to be alone and wondered what she should do to make these two cops happy and go away.

  "Would you like something to drink, a glass of champagne?" she offered. She was longing for a glass herself.

  "No, thanks."

  "Are you sure, April?"

  Wendy was good at names. April Woo. She wouldn't forget it. Mike Sanchez. She wouldn't forget that, either. They were sitting there like two Do-bermans, waiting for a reason to attack. She could see the gun on one of them, but they weren't acting like any cop from any cop show she'd ever seen on TV, or like that Bronx detective who kept calling and harassing her just because she was out of sight for ten lousy minutes.

  She glanced pointedly at her watch again. Nearly eight-thirty and she had fifty messages to return.

  Please go home now,

  her smile said. No such luck. At the sound of her name the Chinese frowned. Wendy's agreeable expression didn't change. She knew that look. Chip-on-the-shoulder look.

  I'm a sergeant. Don't call me by my first name.

  All that garbage.

  "Then how about a glass of water, Sergeant?" Wendy sweetened her tone, aware that she was taller than both cops, had good breeding, was well dressed. All that made her feel in control.

  "Maybe later," the sergeant replied.

  Wendy smiled at the rebuff and crossed her legs for Lieutenant Latino, who was staring at her with undisguised interest. Wendy had good long legs. She was wearing a short skirt and beige-and-camel alligator pumps, good copies of the real Hermes ones. She thought of herself as a beautiful woman and sat at ease on her modern modular sofa. She'd had a few drinks to calm down after her fight with Louis. But not too many to lose her edge, she thought. Like her mother and father, she could hold her liquor. And then she'd opened her last bottle of Tovah's wedding champagne. Alcohol didn't bother her. She was still in control.

  The telltale signs of her solitary tippling—the open bottle and empty crystal flute—were on th
e cocktail table, but they didn't bother her, either. She was in her own home; there was no law against having a glass of bubbly at the end of a long day.

  She smiled again at the Latino wearing cowboy boots. "How about you, Lieutenant?"

  "Nice place you have," he remarked.

  "Thank you." But Wendy knew it was just okay. She lived on Seventy-second Street and Lexington Avenue. Her five rooms were light and airy. Her wood floors were pickled white and her decor was modern. Beige was the darkest color in her decorating palette. But it wasn't Park Avenue. Not at all what she would have if she married someone who could double her income. She tapped her foot, anxious for them to go.

  "Do you mind if I use the bathroom?" the Latino asked.

  "Of course not. Right this way." She led him through the office. He went into her second bathroom and closed the door. She hesitated at the desk, listening for the sound of water in the bowl. She waited in there for the toilet to flush. She did not want him opening her closets or files, or messing with her computer. The toilet flushed. He took some time running water. She began to worry about the cop in her living room. Which one should she watch? Finally he opened the door.

  "May I look in your albums? I'm getting married myself," he said.

  "Congratulations," she said curtly. "Why don't you bring it into the drawing room with you?"

  He picked one up and took his time slowly turning the pages of an album featuring table settings with elaborate centerpieces. Wendy ducked out the door and was alarmed not to see the Chinese in the living room. She hurried out of the office to find her, then exhaled with relief. Woo was standing at the window, studying the photos in a

  Bride.

  Sanchez came out of her office with two albums. "Sergeant, this may interest you," he said.