The Passover Murder by Lee Harris Read Free Book Online Page A

shelves, bringing out the color in the furniture and rugs. It was a comfortable room, pleasing to the eye and body. The Grosses didn’t spend much time here, and it seemed a shame that the prettiest room was used the least.
    “There you are.” Mel stood at the entrance to the living room. “You slipped away so quietly, I thought you’d gone home.”
    “Like Aunt Iris,” I said.
    “Is that what you think, Chris?”
    “It’s certainly the simplest explanation.”
    “Come back and join the crowd.”
    I followed her into the family room, set my cup and saucer down, and sat in my chair. “I really need something to convince me that Iris didn’t just decide to go home, maybe because she had a headache, maybe because she was just plain tired.”
    “She wouldn’t have left without saying something,” Marilyn said.
    “I know that you feel very sure of that, but look at it from my point of view. Here’s a sweet, thoughtful woman who’s had a big day helping her sister-in-law in the kitchen. She’s already drunk a couple of glasses of wine and eaten a big meal. She’s exhausted. Maybe tomorrow she’s helping someone else prepare another seder, and if she doesn’t get home and get a night’s sleep, she’ll be a wreck. When she gets home, she’ll give you a call so you don’t worry.”
    “I see what you mean,” Mel said. “You look at it that way—and I’m sure that’s the way the police would look at it—and it makes perfect sense. I guess if a neighbor of mine told me that kind of story, I’d be inclined to see it that way myself.”
    “Does it mean you’re giving up?” Marilyn asked.
    “It means I have to find something compelling that someone knows of that’s been overlooked that would give me a reason to come up with a different theory.”
    “How are we going to do that?”
    “You said your father still keeps the old apartment.”
    “Yes. It’s a beautiful apartment, prewar, big rooms. It’s not in the best condition anymore. It hasn’t been painted in years and the curtains are old. After my mother died, it wasn’t taken care of as well as before.”
    “It doesn’t matter. May I see it?”
    “Of course. I have the key. When would you like to go?” She seemed ready to take me there right away.
    “How about tomorrow?”
    “Tomorrow’s fine.” Marilyn smiled. “I thought you were giving up, Chris. You really had me worried.”
    “I haven’t given up, but I need something to explode in front of me, something that screams, ‘Look, this woman wasn’t just mugged on the way home.’ Maybe that apartment will do it. And anyway, I’d like to see it, get a feel for where the seder took place, where the rooms were in relation to each other.”
    “How’s nine-thirty tomorrow morning?”
    “Give me the address and I’ll be there.”
    “I don’t really know what I’m looking for,” I told Jack when he came home from his law school classes. “I just got the feeling while we were talking this afternoon that there was nothing sinister about Iris leaving the seder. She was tired, she saw a chance to slip out with no one watching or asking questions, and she took it, grabbed her pocketbook, put on her coat, opened the door for Elijah, and went home. The tragedy is, she never got there, but I think she may well have been the victim of random violence.”
    “You’re starting to sound like a cop, my lovely wife.”
    “Is that good or bad?”
    “Forget the value judgment. It’s what happens when you’ve investigated a lot of crimes.”
    “It sounds bad to me,” I said. “I thought I had a unique point of view. If I lose it, there goes my advantage.”
    “You haven’t lost your unique point of view, and I don’t think you ever will. You just see what the rest of us see, that there are reasonable explanations to crimes, not satisfying explanations, not the kind of answers friends and families want to hear, but answers that fit the facts and often turn out to be the right