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After being rushed out of Doctor Einstein’s shop Jake called Pinky.
“I need to finish my conversation with him,” Jake responded when Pinky asked how his meeting went. “Meet me at Blind Faith—I’ll fill you in.”
Jake arrived a few minutes before the café opened, and waited outside for Pinky. He heard the roar of Pinky’s Maserati before he saw it round the corner, then slow to a growl as he prowled for a parking spot.
The two were seated when the doors opened, and were the first and only patrons.
“Turns out the glasses I found at Muttle’s are Dr. Einstein’s own glasses. He recognized them immediately, but seemed shaken when I told him where I found them.”
“Interesting,” Pinky said. “How’d he explain that?”
“He said he musta accidentally left them after going there to pick up an order. But—”
Chatter from the self-service side of the eatery distracted Jake. A young man wearing a knitted yarmulke and a small boy in brown corduroy overalls who Jake gauged to be no older than five were placing their order at the counter. Jake listened as the man coaxed the boy to place his order. “How about those chocolate chip pancakes? You liked those last time.”
“Ya!” the boy gleefully replied. “And root beer!”
The two sat at a table.
“Sorry,” Jake said. “Where was I?”
“You said he left the glasses by accident, but—. What’s the but? You’re killin’ me,” Pinky pleaded.
“Oh ya,” Jake continued. “He found out that the girl in the nude picture was his own daughter, and he placed it at the mikvah.”
“The mikvah? How’d he figure that out?” Pinky asked.
“He recognized the label on a towel. The mikvah has distinct customized labels,” Jake explained.
“Pancakes and root beer!” someone yelled from behind the counter.
Jake watched the man tell the boy to wait at the table while he went to get the food. The man returned with a large cup, and a straw. He set them on the table, and went back for the pancakes. The boy tried to insert the straw into the open cup. He couldn’t quite reach high enough, and tipped the cup over.
The cup hit the floor.
The lid popped off.
Root beer splashed everywhere.
The boy stood over the disaster, tucked his hands under his brown corduroy overall straps, and hung his head like he was assessing the damage.
The man rushed back to the table. The boy conjured up a puppy dog face and said, “I didn’t do it.”
The man motioned with his hands at the empty tables surrounding them. “Then who did?” he asked.
With his hands still tucked under the straps the boy shrugged his shoulders, and replied, “It just spilled.”
Pinky beckoned Jake to return to their conversation with his snapping fingers. “So? He finds out his daughter was photographed nude at the mikvah, and you believe he just went to Muttle’s to pick up an order?”
“Of course not,” Jake said. “Any dad woulda marched over there to confront Muttle. He even implied he knew Muttle photographed her because his residence shares the attic over the mikvah.”
Their meals arrived, and they ate in silence.
After wolfing down their food Pinky took a long drag on his carrot juice straw. “Didn’t you say one of Muttle’s lenses was smashed—only one?” he asked.
“Ya—only one, which is odd,” Jake noted.
Pinky looked up, and placed his index finger on his chin as if he were pressing his thinking cap’s on button. “And when you showed up to get the Torah nobody was there even though that’s when Muttle told you to get it, right?
“Well, I assumed nobody was there,” Jake clarified. “Nobody answered the door, and the place looked dark.”
Pinky took another hit of carrot juice. “Okay, hear me out. Maybe Einstein did go there to confront Muttle. And suppose that was shortly before you arrived.”
“Okay,” Jake said. “Where ya going with this?”
Pinky put up a hand in the stop position. “Let me finish! Maybe the good doctor couldn’t contain himself, and punched Muttle in the eye smashing one lens. And perhaps during that altercation Einstein’s glasses fell on the floor, and he didn’t even notice. If he just left them there accidentally he would’ve left them on the table, not on the floor.”
Jake raised a finger, and opened his mouth to blurt out a thought, but Pinky gave him the stop signal again.
“Let’s take this one step further,” Pinky continued, “maybe he hit Muttle so hard it killed him. Then he heard you at the door so he shut the lights until you left. Maybe he took Muttle’s body, and placed it in the mikvah to look like suicide.”
Jake was dumbfounded.
“That musta been a supercharged carrot juice! I’ll admit it’s possible he hit Muttle and broke his lens,” Jake agreed. “That’s a really good theory, and explains why only one lens was smashed. The timing would be highly coincidental, but it does explain why nobody answered when I got there, and why the lights were off. Plus, I noticed the doctor’s knuckles were roughed up.
“But he couldn’t have killed him because Rose told me Muttle came to bed later that night.”
Pinky put up his stop hand one more time. “Whoa! Since when do you take everyone at their word Sherlock? What if Rose lied about that? Or, what if she found out that Muttle was photographing women in the mikvah, and she killed him? She had access to the mikvah.”