The Passover Murder Read Online Free PDF Page A

bag in one hand. Her grandniece looked almost tall by comparison in her white academic robe and mortarboard.
    “She’s very pretty,” I said. “You look like that side of the family, don’t you?”
    “Except I’ll never be as slim as Iris. I think she had magic hormones or got all the good genes. Look at that waist. I wasn’t that thin when I was ten.”
    “She’s lovely. What kind of work did she do?”
    “She was a secretary, the kind a boss couldn’t live without. She used to get terrific bonuses at the end of the year. She probably spent all of it on my cousins and me.”
    “You have such wonderful memories,” I said.
    “Chris, I have got to know.” She took the album, looked at the picture, turned a page and looked at some more before closing it. “If she went out for fresh air and was killed by one of those nameless monsters that commit random violence, so be it, but I think there’s another explanation. I think she went out to help someone she knew, maybe someone who lived near my grandparents, and something happened—maybe an argument—and he killed her.”
    “Why do you think that?” I asked.
    “Because she was a good person and she was generous. Maybe someone at work asked her for a loan, a hundred dollars, and Iris said, ‘Meet me tonight at eleven o’clock in front of my brother’s apartment house and I’ll give it to you.’ I think that’s what happened.”
    “Then why did this person kill her?”
    “He wanted more,” Mel said with fervor. “A lot more. He looked at how she was dressed and he guessed she had a lot of money. He made demands and she turned him down and he—or she—I don’t know. These things happen. People have tempers and the wrong word sets them off. The other is too easy, that someone walked down the block at the exact moment she went outside, that he robbed her and then killed her. Why did he kill her if he had her money? And how can you explain how he got her body half a dozen miles away from Grandpa’s? How many muggers do you know that come equipped with their own cars?”
    “OK, I agree it wasn’t a simple mugging.”
    “Chris, once you agree with that, I’ve got you.”
    I laughed. “Is all this about tripping me up?”
    Mel smiled and relaxed. “You bet, and now I’ve done it and you owe me. Look. Mom and I put our heads together over the weekend and we came up with all the names and addresses you need to begin. Not only that, but my car and I are available to bring people to your doorstep so you don’t have to run around yourself. Am I making it appealing?” she asked in an almost plaintive voice.
    It was appealing. If Mel had been a stranger, I would have been sorely tempted. I didn’t believe any more than she did that her great-aunt had gone out for a walk and been robbed and murdered. It was even possible that some member of the family knew things about Iris that he had not admitted to the police for the reason I had brought up a little while ago, that there was a sordid, ugly side to her life. I didn’t want to be the person to uncover such information. I thought Abraham Grodnik, in particular, would die a happier man if he didn’t know the details of his youngest sister’s life and death. But here, on my lap, were sheets of paper with names and addresses on them, Mr. Grodnik’s at the top, Marilyn Margulies’s next, Aunt Sylvie’s near the bottom. There was a list of people who had been at the Passover seder the night Aunt Iris walked out the door, never to be seen again alive. There was even a sketch of the apartment showing how impossible it would have been for anyone to have seen Aunt Iris after she left the table.
    “You’ve done a lot of work,” I said.
    “Because we care. Nobody cares as much as a family does. All due respect to Jack and the police department, but when they’ve looked in the usual places and talked to the usual suspects, there isn’t much motivation for them to continue. I think someone killed Aunt