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After I took Rochester home, fed and walked him, and kissed Lili goodbye in the midst of her phone call with her brother, I drove into the center of Stewart’s Crossing. The Drunken Hessian has been at the corner of Main and Ferry Streets, right by the town’s only traffic light, since Revolutionary times. For Rick and me, it was more important as a part of our youth, when the drinking age in Pennsylvania was twenty-one but sometimes you could get a sympathetic bartender at the Hessian to slip you a beer on the sly.
Rick was already in a booth in the back with a pitcher of beer and two glasses. I slid in across from him and poured a beer for myself. “Tough day?”
He nodded. “Any day that begins with a dead body qualifies.”
He lifted his glass I touched mine to his in a toast. “To both of us staying alive another day,” I said.
He sipped his beer, then put it down. “So what were you doing at the synagogue this morning? I didn’t think you were that religious.”
I explained about going to Shomrei Torah as a kid and then returning for Yahrzeit prayers, and then the blessing of the animals on Sunday. “The rabbi invited me to join his study group, and when he said I could bring Rochester that clinched it for me.”
“What do you know about him?” Rick asked.
I passed on what I had learned about the rabbi’s background, as well as Joel’s outburst in Milwaukee, and the congregation’s refusal to continue his contract. But I added that the temple had closed down soon, so it was hard to be certain.
“Do you think the rabbi had a motive to kill his brother?” Rick asked.
“Is Rabbi Goldberg a suspect?” I asked.
“I’m not eliminating anybody. The rabbi lives alone, and nobody can verify his whereabouts last night. He was pretty shaken up, and that could be grief—or guilt. Maybe he was worried that Joel would screw up this job for him. Sounds like he’s been working pretty hard to hold onto it.”
“He wouldn’t be the first to commit fratricide,” I said. “That goes all the way back to Cain and Abel. He seems like a nice guy, and he was definitely broken up by his brother’s death.” I took another sip of beer. “You know what killed Joel?”
“Preliminary report from the coroner is that he suffered a heavy blow to his head with a blunt object. Not much to go on.”
“I assume you didn’t find any suspicious blunt objects around the body?”
“Nope. I had the evidence techs comb the area but they didn’t come up with much. The guy had a couple of bucks in his pocket and a bus ticket stub, and that’s about it.”
“And that photograph in his shoe. The rabbi showed me the copy you left with him. You think it’s a clue to something?”
“No idea. The guy was schizophrenic, right? So it could mean anything or nothing.”
“Time of death?” I asked.
“Sometime late last night. Coroner will get a more precise time to me tomorrow.”
“You got my email, right? If we eliminate the cantor as suspect, and assume that she wouldn’t have locked up and left the property if Joel was hanging around, then we can time his arrival at the temple between seven and the time of the last bus, around eleven PM.”
The waitress came over and we ordered cheeseburgers and fries. “I spoke to her this morning,” he said. “She confirmed what the rabbi said, that she’d locked up at seven. The boy’s mom dropped him off at six, and they spent an hour in the sanctuary going over the prayers. When the mom came back at seven, the three of them walked out together. She didn’t see anyone around the property, but she admitted that all she did was lock the front door and set the alarm.”
He sipped at his beer. “I called the mom, and she confirmed the story. She said she and her son walked out with the cantor, and that theirs were the last cars in the parking lot.”
“You had a busy day.”
He nodded. “I also interviewed the receptionist and Walter Johnson, the property manager. Johnson didn’t know anything about the rabbi having a brother, but the receptionist said she overheard the synagogue president complaining to the rabbi about what happened on Sunday. That was the first she heard of the brother.”
“They’re the only staff?”
Rick nodded. “You said the rabbi asked you to figure out where his brother had been in Trenton.” He poured another round for both of us. “How are you going to that?”
“On Sunday, Joel was pretty agitated, and it sounded like he had some kind of problem he wanted to talk to his brother about. I asked the rabbi, and he said he didn’t know. His computer was on when he got back, and from the search history he realized that Joel had spent some time on the computer looking up the names and addresses of members of the congregation’s board of directors.”
“Interesting.” He pulled out his small spiral-bound notebook and wrote something down. “Any idea why?”
“The rabbi thought perhaps he disappeared without saying anything more was because he was upset at the way a couple of the members tried to strong arm him off the property on Sunday. Maybe he wanted to know their names.”
The waitress brought our cheeseburgers, and I resolved to give Rochester an extra-long walk that night to work off a few of those calories.
“I wonder why Joel Goldberg came to the temple last night,” I said, after a couple of minutes. “Did he know that his brother wouldn’t be there? Maybe he intended to vandalize the place? Leave some message for the men who tried to kick him out on Sunday?”
“You don’t need a reason to do things when your brain doesn’t work right.”
“Did you ask the rabbi what kind of drugs his brother was supposed to be taking?”
He opened his notebook again and flipped back a couple of pages. “Thorazine, which lots of doctors prescribe to treat symptoms like hallucinations and delusions. But if he was homeless, then there was a solid chance he’d didn’t have a way to refill his prescriptions and he went off his meds. I asked the coroner to run screens for common anti-psychotic drugs.”
“The rabbi he said he didn’t know that his brother was in the area,” I said. “So what brought him here unannounced?”
“That’s a big question,” Rick said. “I pulled up Joel’s police record. Last arrest was for vagrancy in Trenton, three weeks ago.”
“So he’s been in the area at least that long. But no contact with his brother. Where was he picked up?”
“Why does that matter?”
“Dunno. Just curious.”
“I think it was somewhere on Market Street. Mill Hill neighborhood?”
“My mother lived near there for a while when she was a child,” I said. “Once as we were passing she pointed out this house with two red doors. Her father broke his leg when she was in elementary school, and they had to live somewhere on the first floor so he didn’t have to climb steps.”
“Is there a point to that stroll down memory lane?”
“Just that it was a Jewish neighborhood, back in the day. Maybe Joel was drawn there for some reason.”
“More likely because there’s a homeless shelter not far away,” Rick said. “And that Mill Hill neighborhood is getting gentrified, bit by bit. Government workers buying houses there and renovating them.”
“Panhandling targets?”
He nodded. “And there’s still some crime of opportunity there. I have a friend who works over in Trenton. We get together and compare notes now and then.”
We finished up, and Rick insisted on paying the tab. “Thanks for the conversation. I don’t like to talk about this stuff with Tamsen. She has enough on her plate already.”
I thought Rick was probably sheltering Tamsen too much, but didn’t say anything. She had survived her soldier husband’s death in Iraq, created a successful business, and raised her son by herself. She was strong enough, and smart enough, for Rick to confide in her. And this wasn’t as upsetting a case as some he’d handled; Joel was a stranger, and the crime hadn’t been overly gruesome. I wondered if he’d be able to open up more once they were committed and living together.
When I got home, Lili was pacing around the living room, which I assumed meant that the conversation with her brother had gone about as well as she expected. Fedi and Sara were reaching the end of their rope in dealing with Senora Weinstock and decisions would have to be made soon.
I went upstairs and climbed into bed with a book. Rochester followed me, sprawled sideways with one foot resting on my leg. Lili joined us a half hour later.
“Do you think our parents are ever happy with us?” she asked, as she sat on the bed beside me.
“You’re asking me? The convicted felon? That was something my father bragged about, for sure.”
“But he loved you. I can feel it in the stories you tell.”
“He did, and my mother, too. I was very lucky that way. I only wish they were still here. They’d love you, and my dad would get a kick out of playing with Rochester.”
“You miss them,” Lili said.
“Of course. Not on a daily basis, you know, but when I hear something they said coming out of my mouth, or something triggers a memory. You miss your dad, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes. He used to call me mi nena bonita, my pretty girl. He spoiled me, and my mother was the same way with Fedi. The sun shone on her little papito.”
“And now your dad is gone, and you’re stuck with your mom, knowing you weren’t her favorite.”
“It’s not like that,” Lili protested, though it was clear to me it was just like that. “She had different aspirations for each of us. She wanted me to get married, settle down and have babies. And that wasn’t in the cards for me.”
She sighed. “She’s my mother. I love her. And she’s always been huge on the subject of taking care of your parents. None of my grandparents wanted to leave Cuba, but after my mother’s father died, my mother forced my abuela to come to Kansas City and live with us. She hated it, and she died only a few years later, but my mother always bragged that she had done what was right.”
It sounded like a move Mary would have made, forcing an elderly woman to bend to her will. Lili was the opposite – she would do whatever made her mother happy. And that attitude was why I loved her.
We spent the rest of the evening lying beside each other, both of us reading but comforted by the proximity. Rochester repositioned himself at the end of the bed, keeping an eye on both of us.
Eventually we readied for bed, and as I turned out the lights, I said, “Tomorrow night I want to go to services at Shomrei Torah. I think the rabbi could use someone to talk about his brother with.”
“I’ve been thinking about him, too, and how sad he must be about the loss of his brother,” Lili said. “I liked the way he spoke at the blessing of the animals. And I could use a little spirituality myself. I think I’ll join you.”
We curled into each other. I may not have had much family left, I thought, but I had Lili and Rochester, and they were all I needed.
