The Bar Mitzvah Murder

by Lee Harris

  The detective cuffed him, taking the mail from his hand over his objections. The group stood on the street just long enough for the detective to recite the litany of the Miranda warnings to Gary Helfer. His grunts were duly noted as “yes” to each part.

  Then Jack confronted him. “Where’s Judy Silverman?”

  “How should I know? I want a lawyer right now!”

  “Do it,” Jack said to me, and I took off with the second detective, Kevin McHugh, for Judy’s address, which Jack had given me last night.

  “What are you talking about?” Judy Silverman asked.

  I was in her living room in the apartment she shared with her husband, who wasn’t there. Outside the door, Detective McHugh was waiting for trouble or to make an arrest. He had given me an alarm I could squeeze in case I sensed danger. What I wanted was a confession. They’d never get one from Gary Helfer. I had just told Judy that Helfer had picked up the bequest check for Double Eagle. She looked blank.

  “Didn’t he tell you?” I asked.

  It was obvious that he hadn’t. “I don’t know what check you mean.”

  I tried to assess her veracity. “The reason Gary broke into your father’s safe. The reason your father was murdered.”

  “I don’t know why they killed my father. All they were supposed to do was get the key to the house and the combination. Gary was going to steal Marnie’s jewels and the cash my father kept in the safe. He kept a lot of cash there. They were supposed to let my father go as soon as Gary got into the safe.”

  “Who told you about the cash and jewels?”

  “Gary did. He heard it from Marnie after she married my father.”

  “And you believed him.”

  She stared at me, saying nothing.

  “What about the charity?” I asked, not wanting to give away something that she might not know about. “Double Eagle.”

  “What about it? Gary started it up. It did a lot of good and he was able to use some of the money to improve his lifestyle.”

  “And the will?” I said. Was it possible she didn’t know?

  “What about the will?”

  I think that was when I realized she didn’t know what Gary had done. He had let her in on only part of the plan. “Was Gary going to share the proceeds with you?”

  She nodded, still looking confused.

  “He was arrested about half an hour ago.”

  “I see.”

  “Did he give you any of the money and jewels?” I knew none had been taken, but it appeared that she didn’t.

  “Not yet. He was waiting for something, he said, something to come in the mail. I suppose I won’t get it now. It doesn’t matter. I didn’t do it for the money.”

  And there was her admission that she had done it, that she was in on it. “What did you do it for?”

  “To teach my father a lesson. To make him hurt. He wasn’t supposed to die, you know. I’m not a killer.”

  “Gary left some diamonds in the safe,” I told her. “What can you tell me about them?”

  “Gary’s involved in certain businesses that don’t pay in cash. He was paid in diamonds for something he did and the diamonds were traced. I think Interpol was involved. He was afraid they’d find them, so he put them in my father’s safe. Marnie would never turn him in. At least, that’s what he thought.”

  “She didn’t,” I said. “How did he intend to get them back?”

  “Get them out of the safe when he visited her sometime. They’re pretty close. He could have done it. If that didn’t work, he would ask her for them. He had a story ready. Gary always has a story ready.”

  “But then she would know he had ordered the killing of your father.”

  “He had a story ready for that, too. Gary is very resourceful. He’s a clever man. This was all his idea. I met him at a party and told him what I thought of my father. He picked up on it and called me a week later. He wanted to wait until my father gave Marnie some special jewels and they would be out of the country for some time. This turned out to be the right time.”

  It was strange hearing this young woman brag about her good deeds when she had just admitted to being in on a murderous plan with her own father as the victim.

  “You worked on this plan for a long time.”

  “Since they married. I was very distressed when you found out I was at that hotel. I was there to make sure everything went the way it should. It did, you know. Except that my father died.”

  “Who gave your father the drug that knocked him out?”

  “One of the men in the ambulance. Then he dashed back and got in so they could drive over and pick my father up.”

  “And where did you go when you checked out of the hotel?”

  “I flew to Frankfurt. You knew I was going to London— I told you the truth—so I got on the first plane with a free seat that wasn’t going there. Then I took a train to Cologne, stayed with a friend from college, and went on to London to meet my husband. We had a lovely time,” she said, smiling.

  “I’m sure you must have. Who is Simon Kaplan?”

  “Simon? He’s a dear old man who’s known Gary’s family for years. Do you know him?”

  “I met him in Jerusalem. I thought he was a friend of your family and he was trying to help solve your father’s murder.”

  “He’s good, isn’t he? He didn’t know everything that was going on, but he served his purpose.”

  “Are the diamonds from him?”

  “I really don’t know who the diamonds came from. Gary and I didn’t tell each other everything. Are we done here? I have an appointment.”

  I told her I didn’t think she would get to the appointment. Then I opened the door and let Detective McHugh in. He cuffed Judy, read her her rights, and led her downstairs. I took her key and locked the door for her. No use inviting a burglar in.

  EPILOGUE

  Jack came home one evening with several huge boxes and spent some time setting up the new computer. Eddie glowed. Within days I knew he would soon be the expert in the family, which was fine with me.

  The case against Judy Silverman and Gary Helfer was built in two countries. Judy’s husband hired one of the well-known criminal lawyers we’ve all heard about to defend his wife, and I expect she’ll get off with a light sentence. But Gary Helfer won’t. The second man in Israeli custody eventually identified Helfer also, and he will stand trial in Israel after he stands trial here for fraud. The check made out to Double Eagle was returned to the estate.

  I have enjoyed wearing my wonderful beads and the beautiful cross made of silver and Roman glass and have received so many compliments that I wrote the artist a letter. Jack wears his religious medals on his new chain and I notice him fingering it sometimes. It’s really beautiful.

  Eddie says he wants to go back to Israel with Grandma and Grandpa and put some more of that great mud on him. The pictures are hilarious, a small black figure with eyes and little else. He took it to school and everyone got a good laugh.

  Joshua and Rachel Davidson are planning a trip to New York in the new year, and we intend to take them around and show them a piece of our country. We’re all very excited at the prospect. I have never had friends from another country before, and I feel my life is better because of it.

  Much later the intifada began and then grew worse. We had really hoped to visit Israel again and spend more time touring, but the trouble put a halt to all that. We both hope and pray that the country will see peace very soon.

  No one ever found or heard from Simon Kaplan again.

  If you enjoyed this mystery, look for

  MURDER IN HELL’S KITCHEN

  The debut of a new series by Lee Harris.

  Now available from Fawcett Books.

  For a preview of

  MURDER IN HELL’S KITCHEN,

  please read on . . .

  FOR SEVEN DAYS the picture had haunted front pages and small screens. In the overcast haze of a fall afternoon in downtown New York was the eerie im
age of the wheelchair with its small, lifeless occupant alone on the grass. The photograph had become the symbol of the dangers of a city so preoccupied with its own needs and wants that it ignored or overlooked a killing in its midst, that it passed alongside death and never stopped to look even once.

  The City Hall Park Murder, as it came to be called, had promised to be the case of a lifetime, the capping of a career, the most fitting of departures. But that was a week ago. Today Jane Bauer’s life was upside down and she hadn’t thought of the little figure in the wheelchair for at least eight hours. She looked at her watch once again.

  “We’ll get there,” Det. Martin Hoagland said.

  “I know. I just can’t help looking.”

  He was traveling north on Riverside Drive to avoid the problems on the Henry Hudson Parkway, which ran just west of the drive along the river of the same name. At red lights, he edged forward, then shot across. They drove along the western end of the Twenty-sixth Precinct, the Two-Six, her first assignment out of the Academy. Almost twenty years had passed since she had put on her blues, “the bag” as most cops called it, for the first time and reported there in the center of Harlem. Before graduation, still wearing her cadet grays, she rode for a week as the third person in a radio motor patrol car in the Two-Six so that the sergeant in the car could assess her ability to handle “jobs.” He had been impressed and she had gotten the assignment at the Two-Six on graduation. Her father had beamed with pride; her mother had barely accepted it with tight-lipped apprehension.

  They passed the street where she had seen her first dead body in a fifth-floor walk-up during a twelve-by-eight, a midnight-to-eight A.M. shift, early in her career when she was given the crap details. Just stay with it, kid, the veteran cop on the scene had said as she tried to control her trembling and her queasy stomach. Don’t leave till the body’s picked up, the area secured, and all the paperwork’s done. If the smell gets too bad in here, just light a cigar. Then he laughed and wished her a nice tour.

  Looking out the window Jane thought that she could relive her entire career by driving the streets of Manhattan. Who would have thought nostalgia was so easy to come by?

  “I’ll pull into Emergency and wait for you there,” Marty’s voice said, piercing her recollections. They were long past the Two-Six now.

  “You don’t have to wait, Marty. I can take the subway back.”

  “I’ll wait for you.”

  It was the kind of firm reassurance that tended to settle stomachs in times of less distress. Not much would work this afternoon.

  She thanked him in her head, her apprehension growing as they approached Columbia Presbyterian, the huge hospital complex just south of the George Washington Bridge overlooking the Hudson River and, on the other side, New Jersey. Marty turned and turned again, pulling in close to the Emergency entrance.

  “Go,” he said as the car came to a jerky stop in front of the door at the covered dock, now almost empty of ambulances.

  She went.

  Her heart was pounding as she made her way through the sick and the bored to the woman with the records. “John Bauer. I’m his daughter.”

  “Yes, Ms. Bauer. Your dad’s been admitted. You can go up to see him.” She wrote the room number and floor for her on a slip of paper and gave brief but good directions.

  Jane ran. Arrows on floors and walls directed her around corners and down halls to the elevators and past frequently visited units. A rainbow of color coding indicated one specialty after another. The elevator took forever to arrive. Then it stopped on every floor. Then she ran again.

  Her gun was in her large shoulder bag, which she held tightly to her side as she looked at room numbers. Two more. She slowed, trying to calm herself, not wanting her anxiety to become his.

  The door was open and she walked in. A curtained bed stood near the window, and her father, a little pale, rested in the nearer bed.

  “Janey,” he said, seeing her, his face lighting up. “You didn’t have to come, honey. I’m just fine.”

  “You look pretty good,” she said grudgingly, edging up to the bed.

  “I’m just fine. I’ll be outta here tomorrow.”

  “What happened? You forget to take your medicine?”

  “Nah. I took it just like you set it up for me, one of these, one of those, one of the other.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “They gave me too much is what happened. They overmedicated me,” he said, articulating the word carefully. “Doc’ll come by; you’ll talk to him.”

  She sat down hesitantly. “You were taking too much?”

  “That’s what he said. Gave me palpitations. Made me dizzy. Got my stomach all upset. I thought I ought to come in and they decided to keep me overnight. It’s nothing, Janey. Believe me.”

  She started breathing again. “You look pretty good.”

  “Better’n you look.” He laughed. “Like you’ve seen a ghost. You shouldn’ta come all this way. I’m fine. Really.”

  “Who’s your doctor?”

  “Swinson, Swenson, something like that.”

  “Mind if I go find him?”

  “Be my guest. Look at you. You look like you’re the one needs a night in the hospital.”

  She felt like it. She went down to the nurses’ station and asked for the doctor. He was there, writing on a clipboard.

  “I’m John Bauer’s daughter.”

  “Glad to meet you. Dr. Swenson.” He offered a slim, pale hand. “Good thing he came in when he did. We’re cutting down his medication. That should do the trick. You’re the police officer?”

  “I guess he talked about me.”

  “Didn’t talk about anything else. He’s fine, Miss Bauer. Officer. Once we get the medication straight, he’ll be fine.”

  “He said he was taking just what he was told to take.” She wanted to hear him say it, that they had made a mistake, that it wasn’t her father’s fault, that they had put her father’s life in jeopardy by prescribing the wrong amount of drugs.

  “He probably was.” The doctor looked at her directly. He was a thin, bony man with pale gray eyes behind large thick glasses. “Sometimes the medication needs a little fine-tuning. This should do the trick.”

  “Thank you.” She went back down the hall to her father’s room.

  “You get the whole story?” he said. He seemed in a good mood, just missing his usual robust color.

  “Confirmed every word you told me. I’ll come by in the morning and pick you up.”

  “Don’t bother, Janey. Madeleine’ll come for me. She’s got nothin’ better to do. You go to work. You got a big case to work on.”

  She considered letting it go by. He had been so excited when she was picked for the City Hall Park Murder team. She could tell him another time but he was sharp; he would pick up on the delay and be hurt that she hadn’t taken him into her confidence. “I’m off the case, Dad.”

  He stared at her, shaking his head as if to push away spiderwebs that had clouded the transmission. “What’s that you said?”

  “They took me off the case. I just got the word yesterday. A telephone call and I’m on a thirty-day assignment as of this morning. I’m on a steal with a new task force.”

  The phrase captured his attention, his eyes widening. “What kinda task force?”

  “The mayor wants to clean up old unsolved homicides. We got a lot of briefings today. Tomorrow I’ll get to look at a file.”

  “That’s terrible, Janey. It’s a waste. They need you on that City Hall case. Who cares about an old murder that happened in the Dark Ages? Some cases are so old they got whiskers, for cryin’ out loud.”

  “Too many unsolved homicides, Dad. Someone’s got to give them another look. Get the averages up.”

  “They know you’re pullin’ the pin?” He loved cop lingo.

  “Probably.”

  “You shouldn’ta said anything. You should’ve kept it to yourself. You’d still be on the case.”

 
He was probably right. “Don’t worry about it. Just rest; get a good night’s sleep. Marty’s downstairs waiting to drive me home.”

  “Thanks for comin’, honey.”

  She smiled, then bent and kissed his stubbled cheek. He hadn’t felt well enough to shave this morning. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Take care of yourself.”

  “You too, darlin’.”

  She had Marty drop her off at the new apartment. It was closer to where he was going anyway, and she felt like seeing it again. She had taken possession only two days ago and had the key with her. It was down in the West Village, south of Fourteenth Street, not far from Abingdon Square. The building was old, what was still called “prewar” more than half a century after that war had ended, with beautiful floors that would be scraped and refinished before she moved in at the end of the month, thick walls that kept sounds within them, fine details in the moldings, and, her greatest joy, a working wood-burning fireplace.

  As she got out of his car, she thanked Marty again. It wasn’t so much that she entrusted her life to him; it was a long time since either of them had drawn a weapon. It was that when the ordinary miseries of life exploded, he was there. That was what partners were all about.

  She turned the key, pushed open the heavy door, and went inside. There was an echo of emptiness as she walked, the smell of fresh paint. It was clean, had just needed the paint and the work on the floor. The kitchen had been updated recently and the appliances were nearly new and actually filled the space as though designed for it. All four burners of the gas stove worked. That would give her a third more firepower than she had in the old place. When she got some money together, she would change the floor, maybe put in some fancy tiles with a little color. She was almost forty-one. It was time to live like a grown-up.

  There were two bedrooms, the smaller one perfect for an office or a den or a guest room. Dad would enjoy staying over, helping her hang curtains and pictures. She walked over to the windows, moved them up and down, then locked them.