The Bar Mitzvah Murder

by Lee Harris

  “Have a good trip home. I hope we meet someday in happier circumstances.”

  They echoed my good wishes and I got up to go. I had the list of guests in my purse, but they were all strangers to me except for Lenny. I didn’t have to pick up Jack for a few hours, so I thought I might as well talk to whoever happened to be around, not that I thought I would get any more out of the others than I had out of Lenny and Sharon.

  I found a house phone and asked for the first person on the list, a woman named Barbara Abramawitz. There was no answer. I went to the next name, Susan Greene. This time a woman answered.

  “Mrs. Greene, I’m a friend of Hal and Melanie Gross.”

  “Yes. Is anything wrong?”

  “Everything’s fine. I wondered if I could talk to you for a minute.”

  “Sure. Mind if I meet you downstairs? They haven’t made our room up yet.”

  I told her where I’d be and went to wait for her. She came down about five minutes later, a forty-ish woman with a few extra pounds, wearing dark gray pants and a matching shirt and carrying a black sweater.

  “Mrs. Greene?” I said.

  “Yes. Hi. Why don’t we sit over there? My husband’s out for his morning walk and I’ll be able to see him when he comes in.”

  We walked over to an arrangement of couches and comfortable chairs and sat.

  “Mel mentioned you the other day when I saw her. You’re trying to figure out what happened to Gabe.”

  “And not getting very far.”

  “Well, the police haven’t done very well.” She sounded annoyed. “It took them twenty-four hours to take us seriously.”

  “I know. How are you related to Gabe Gross?”

  “I’m his cousin on his mother’s side. I’m not a Gross. I’m a Morrison. That’s his mother’s maiden name.”

  “Did you know Gabe’s first wife?”

  “Sure. We all did. We went to the wedding. I was just a kid, but I remember it.”

  “I’m told there’s a lot of anger in that relationship.”

  “What else? That’s what happens when people divorce. And Gabe got married again. Debby hasn’t.”

  “The children sided with her.”

  “She brought them up. What do you expect? My children would side with me, too. Not that anything like that is going to happen,” she added.

  “It seems to me that someone who was invited to the Bar Mitzvah must have killed him or arranged for the killing,” I said.

  “What—one of my cousins? You’re crazy. Is that what Mel thinks?”

  I stopped her before she could launch into a tirade. “No, Mel and I haven’t really talked about that. What I meant was, this was a carefully planned murder. Whoever did it knew Gabe would be here, knew he would be at that particular hotel on Sunday afternoon, and made elaborate plans to kidnap him.”

  “Doesn’t mean it’s a relative.” She spoke with great certainty. “It just means it was someone who knew where he’d be. Lots of people knew. You think he sat down at the phone and made the arrangements himself? Of course not. His secretary took care of that. Talk to her. She knew every step of his itinerary. Maybe she gave the information to someone. Maybe she sold it.” She nodded her head once, indicating she had hit on something important.

  “That’s possible,” I agreed. “And I assume the police in one place or another will follow up on that. I just thought maybe there was some problem in the family, someone who didn’t get along with Gabe. Maybe a person who was angry enough to do this.”

  “Gabe wouldn’t have invited anyone he didn’t love and trust completely. And you know who you’re talking about? My brothers and sisters and cousins and aunts, people I trust with my life. You’re off base here. You can put every guest through the wringer, you won’t find a killer. Ah, there’s my husband.” That was the end of the interview.

  I decided to give up on the guests. Probably I would find very few of them in the hotel by this time of morning and those I did find would represent a point of view similar to Susan’s. These were all relatives by blood or marriage and she was right: if there was bad blood, they wouldn’t have been invited. I would have to figure out some other way of gathering information or let the police do the job.

  12

  It was a pleasure spending the afternoon in the car with Jack. To be truthful, what I liked best was not driving. Israeli men are aggressive drivers, and while you feel this a little in the city, it’s even more prevalent on the open road. Jack is able to deal with the flashing lights urging you to move a lot better than I.

  He had gotten directions from a policeman on how to get to the road we needed, and for most of the trip we drove north not far from the Jordanian border. I had seen Jordan across the Dead Sea on the trip to Masada; now we saw it closer at hand, but there was little to see except desert. I thought that someday I would like to return and visit Petra, the city carved out of stone. That would necessitate at least an overnight trip and would be better done when Jack was strictly on vacation, not just a weekend tourist.

  In the meantime, we talked as we drove, looking at the sights, at Jordan off to the right, slowing for the occasional village.

  “So what progress have you made?” Jack asked finally.

  “Not much beyond the initial things we learned at the beginning of the week.”

  “When you were way ahead of the police.”

  “Right. Now I’m not sure I am anymore. I have no idea where Judy Silverman is or if she’s involved in her father’s death. I talked to the doctor this morning, and if he knows something he’s keeping it to himself.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “I suppose because he doesn’t want to implicate a relative.”

  “Sound conclusion, but I bet you don’t think it’s a relative.”

  “And I bet you do.”

  “Hey, they’re not only dearest but nearest. Every one of them had access to Gabe, including the doctor.”

  “Jack, if one of those people hated Gabe, Gabe would have known it and he wouldn’t have invited that person to the Bar Mitzvah.”

  “Maybe Gabe didn’t know it.”

  “How could someone close to Gabe hate him enough to kill him and Gabe didn’t know there was a problem?”

  “Have you thought about the wife?” Jack always goes to the most obvious suspects first.

  “She’s devastated, Jack.”

  “And maybe before she married she did some professional acting and learned how to appear devastated.”

  “There’s no motive.”

  “There’s no motive that you know about. There’s a lot of opportunity.”

  “Forty shots at opportunity,” I said. “They all had access.”

  “But someone had ties to Jerusalem. Someone was able to get that truck set up to look like an ambulance, to get a couple of guys to play a part at the right moment.”

  “Gabe’s secretary,” I said.

  “Was she at the Bar Mitzvah?”

  “I don’t think so. Mel and Marnie gave me thirty-eight of the forty guests’ names and they were all relatives by blood or marriage. Maybe an old friend thrown in.”

  “The secretary didn’t have to be here. She just had to know the contacts. Trust me: she had them. In her position, she’s got a Rolodex you wouldn’t believe.”

  “There’s no motive,” I said with a sigh.

  “Well, let’s start thinking of motives.”

  I looked out the window. “I can’t see the Jordan River, but I know it has to be there.”

  “The guy who routed me said when we get up north we’ll see where it comes out of the Sea of Galilee and on the other end we’ll see where it goes in. It’s not much more than a trickle, he said. Not the mighty torrent most people expect.”

  “The Jordan River,” I said. “I wish Joseph were here. For that and a lot of other reasons.”

  Sister Joseph, the General Superior of St. Stephen’s, was my spiritual director for all the years I lived there and has remaine
d my best friend. In addition, she has a real nose for murder and has steered me in the right direction so many times, I wonder if I could have accomplished all that I have without her help.

  “I’m afraid this is one time you’ll have to do without, although you could call her and talk.”

  “Too expensive.” I would be on my own this time. Come on, Kix, I said to myself, using the name my cousin gave me when we were kids and which the oldest of my friends still use when they see me. “Motives.” I thought about it. What would Judy Silverman’s motive be, since she’s the only suspect who’s disappeared? I can’t think of one. What about Dr. Leonard Gross? I closed my eyes and tried to imagine this very nice man killing his cousin because of some bequest. It was just silly. “How about Hal?” I said brightly, referring to one of our closest friends, Mel’s husband.

  “Hal didn’t do it.” Jack sounded about as final as he ever did, and a little annoyed besides.

  “Well, that’s how I feel about the others. You know what? We need to see the will. There may be all kinds of interesting things in it. Like maybe there’s a bequest for Gabe’s first wife and it turns out she’s running out of money.”

  “Could be. Ex-wives are good suspects.”

  I smiled. “You think it’s possible he left her something in his will?”

  “Not out of the question. It may have been part of the divorce settlement.”

  “It’s too complicated. I’ll never figure this one out.” Jack patted my thigh. “Whoever’s behind this didn’t want him dead, Chris. At least not right away. If they had, they’d’ve killed him at the party. They had the chance. Instead of giving him something to knock him out, they could’ve given him something lethal. But they didn’t. So what does that tell you?”

  “They wanted something from him. The question is what.”

  “It sure wasn’t the money he had in his wallet.”

  “Maybe they wanted to know something he knew, like where something was hidden, like a key to a vault. Or maybe they wanted the combination to a safe.”

  “Two good ideas. See, what I’ve been trying to figure out is whether they intended to kill him from the start or he didn’t cooperate and they killed him in anger.”

  I thought about it. If he had a key on the key ring in his pocket and they took it from him, they’d have to hold him till the key was used, or he would see to it that they were picked up. The same thing would hold if it was a combination or a computer password. But once the safe was robbed, why should they hold him or kill him? They could phone the information to an accomplice in New York or some other place, and as soon as the safe was emptied they could let him go.

  “They didn’t have to kill him if all they wanted was that kind of information,” I said. “You told me he’d been beaten. That’s the kind of thing you do when a victim doesn’t cooperate. I don’t think they meant to kill him, Jack. They wanted something from him, they didn’t get it, they tried to beat it out of him, and he died.”

  “I think I go along with that. I’m not sure Joshua does. He thinks they worked out this elaborate kidnapping for a couple of reasons. They couldn’t get him alone long enough to kill him. They didn’t want to use a gun because they’re loud. They wanted a quiet killing. Gabe was always surrounded by the family, because they were going from one place to another together. At the Sunday party, the tables and chairs were in one place, the band was in another, the dance area was somewhere else. Joshua thinks Gabe left the crowd to tell the headwaiter it was time for the cake.”

  “But he never got to the headwaiter and someone was waiting for him.”

  “Something like that. They just needed him alone for half a minute.”

  “If all they wanted was to kill him, why does Joshua think he was beaten up? And why did they wait twenty-four hours to dump his body?”

  “About the beating up, Joshua thinks someone with a lot of hate killed him, or ordered him killed. That accounts for the beating. Why they waited so long, well, maybe they just wanted him to die slowly. Maybe they drove around looking for a good place to dump him and couldn’t find one right away.”

  I shook my head. “This was so carefully planned. They had to know in advance where they’d dump him. I bet they watched the place day and night to make sure it was safe.”

  “I agree with everything you’ve said. We have a certain mind-set; the Israeli police have another. Eventually we’ll find out who’s right.”

  I saw a sign at the side of the road and looked down at the map. “I think we’re getting close. Let’s leave the murder for later. We should be coming to a turn. Tiberias should be off to the left.”

  “We won’t miss the turn. If we do, I think we’ll find ourselves in the Sea of Galilee.”

  “I wonder what kind of mud they have at the bottom.”

  Jack laughed. “That mud must have been some experience. No salt here, I don’t think. You’re right. Here’s where we go west.”

  We reached our hotel a little while later and carried in our suitcase. This was a great way to travel, I thought, a single suitcase and a small car. I pulled the confirmation number out of my purse and put it on the registration counter.

  As Jack was signing us in, the man behind the counter said, “You are Lieutenant Brooks?”

  “Yes. Who wants to know?”

  “You received a phone call about an hour ago, sir. One moment.”

  Jack turned to me. “You didn’t give my name with ‘Lieutenant’ in front of it, did you?”

  “No.”

  “It must be Joshua. They’d better not want me back tonight.”

  “Here you are, sir.” The man was very deferential, as though the title had made a difference.

  Jack opened the envelope and looked in. “Let’s go to our room first,” he said. “Whatever it is, it can wait.”

  We went upstairs and found our room, a small, neat place with two beds. I opened the suitcase and took out the change of clothes. There weren’t many hangers, but there were enough. I put Jack’s shaving kit on the bathroom sink and went back into the bedroom. He was sitting on his bed. “It’s from Joshua. He wants me to call him.”

  “You think there’s a problem?”

  “I hope not.” He called the operator and had the call put through.

  Joshua must have answered immediately, because the conversation got started right away. I didn’t really follow it, although I was pretty sure it had nothing to do with Jack’s project. I walked over to the door and looked at the notices posted on it. There was the usual map of the floor with fire exits noted. What amazed me was the number of languages represented. After Hebrew and English, there were German, French, and what looked to me like Japanese. What a variety of tourists must come to this place, I thought.

  “OK, got a little something for you,” Jack said.

  “They find the killer?”

  “Nah. They just located your prime suspect.”

  I thought for a moment. “Judy Silverman?”

  “The one and only.”

  “Where is she?”

  “In London with her husband.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Apparently, she stayed in Germany overnight the day she left Israel, then flew or drove to London a day or so later.”

  “I saw her on Tuesday, the day she left. Today’s Friday. She told me she was meeting her husband in London ‘in a few days.’ Sounds like she was right on schedule. Did Joshua talk to her?”

  “Apparently. She wasn’t very forthcoming about where she was in Germany. She didn’t fly out of Frankfurt, which is where she landed.”

  “What did she say?”

  “That she had planned to meet her husband, that they were spending a few days in London, and that they would fly back to the States when they were ready. He said she sounded annoyed and probably was intentionally vague to be annoying.”

  “I can’t blame her, Jack. She had the right to leave Israel whenever she wanted and she has no obligation to tell an Isra
eli cop what her travel plans are. I’m glad she surfaced. It means she’s no more a suspect than all the sisters and the cousins and the aunts.”

  “But she was at the top of the list.”

  “True. And now she’s not. I started with no suspects and it looks like I’m right back at the starting gate again.”

  “Hey, that’s life. Let’s see what dinner is around here.”

  After a very nice meal, we took a long walk, stopping at the edge of the sea. I knelt and touched the water, Jack holding my other arm so I wouldn’t tip over. The water was cool even though the night air was pleasant.

  “This is a wonderful trip,” I said.

  “I’m glad they gave me the weekend.”

  I stood and touched Jack’s hand with the water. He put his arm around me. “You’re a good person to travel with,” he said. “You want to see everything and you don’t complain.”

  “There’s nothing to complain about.” We started walking away from the sea.

  “My imperturbable wife. Listen, I’ve been doing some thinking about this homicide. The Israeli cops don’t have a clue where that ambulance is or who the guys are who were on it. They’ve talked to the relatives who are still in Jerusalem, but they missed some who went home right away. I don’t know if they’ll ever find who’s behind the killing, but you’ve got your own way of doing things. Maybe you can sit down with Hal after the weekend, find out what he knows. I don’t think he’ll give you a runaround.”

  “OK. They’re coming back Sunday, too. I’ll give him a call.”

  “Getting cold. Let’s go back to the hotel.”

  Saturday was an incredible day. We took a slow drive around the sea, talking about Jack’s work on the database, which he was happy to have a break from this weekend. We stopped to see churches and the places where the Jordan River entered and left the sea and ate casually when we got hungry. We especially liked the Church of the Loaves and Fishes and decided to return Sunday morning for mass there.

  The Jordan River was a muddy trickle where it entered the sea, and there wasn’t much more than that where it came out, halfway around the sea, to continue its trip south. We took pictures, though. It was something we wanted to remember.