The Witch and the Borscht Pearl (16 page)

“What’s wrong with Roselle?” asked Mrs. Risk.

I turned to face her, biting my lip. She took one look at my face and said, “Ah. What did you say to her, dear? Something a little too truthful?”

I nodded.

“Did your deadly honesty include Simon also, so that you, and therefore I, have made enemies among people who already don’t want us around? People who we need to tell us things so that Pearl and/or Bella won’t be accused of a murder they didn’t commit?”

I gave her a weak smile.

“Rachel, darling, we’re going to have to work on your tact.” She shook her head, tsk-ing, then forged past me and plowed ruthlessly through the crowd blocking her way. I hurried to keep up. “Yes,” I heard her say, although her voice was muffled among the cashmere and mink-draped shoulders, “honey attracts so much more than vinegar.”

Suppressing a giggle, I leaned forward to hiss in her ear. “You’re not exactly the best role model for honey. Besides, honey draws flies, don’t forget. And thanks for the great order from Bart.”

She waved a hand negligently in the air, then turned her head slightly. “What happened with Roselle?”

“Well, I told you she came in just as I was leaving, but what I didn’t mention was how she popped in on us as if trying to catch us naked on the couch. It was insulting.”

“And?”

“I told her she was worried about nothing. No female on this planet would go near him because he stunk like a dirty ashtray.”

Her voice cracked in an explosion of laughter which she hurriedly covered with a cough as a couple of curious men turned their heads towards us.

Suddenly a man and a woman in front of her separated and Pearl stood before us.

Mrs. Risk embraced Pearl. Pearl’s eyes were pink-rimmed and she looked exhausted, but less agitated than yesterday afternoon.

“Hi, Pearl,” I murmured in my turn, clutching her hand. She nodded and smiled down at me. Mrs. Risk had instructed me to reserve any sympathetic words for after the funeral. She’d blathered something confusing about not being certain whether Solly was conservative, reformed, or orthodox, and she wanted to be sure we didn’t blunder. She meant, that I didn’t blunder.

Sometimes I think Mrs. Risk works too hard in the detail department. I could tell her that Solly was very conservative, just from the way he’d dressed. Of course, if he’d been responsible for Pearl’s wardrobe, maybe I was wrong. Better keep to Mrs. Risk’s script, I decided.

Bella stood nearby, but merely flicked a glance at us and kept talking to a couple standing beside her.

Solly’s casket was placed immediately to our left. At least, I assumed it was Solly, since the lid was shut. To my surprise, it was made of a plain wood that looked like pine.

An older man in a white silky shawl and the small hat of a Jewish man stood nearby. The Rabbi, I suppose. He nodded to people as they drifted by. Several of the men, I noticed, wore the small hat like the Rabbi, mostly dark blue or black. White roses draped the lower half of the casket, but, to my surprise, few other flowers among the funeral home’s potted palms could be seen.

I nudged Mrs. Risk when she’d released Pearl’s attention to other condolers. “Why so few flowers?” I whispered at her. “Didn’t anybody like him?”

She explained in a low murmur that Jewish people usually make a donation to charity, called a tzedakah, in the name of the deceased instead of sending flowers to the funeral.

“Yeah? That’s nice,” I said.

Mrs. Risk smiled. “I’m glad you approve.”

“Hey just because I sell flowers doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like the idea. Sounds like a good thing to do. Something that can sort of live on after you.”

“I agree,” she said, then she went on to answer other questions I hadn’t asked. Yet. She’s good at that.

“The men’s hats are called a kipah or yarmulke, and the prayer shawl around the rabbi’s shoulders is a talit. On the talit, the tassels, or tzitzit, and the knots tied in them, represent the 613 mitzvot, or good deeds, a Jewish man is obligated to perform in his adult life. In the casket, Solly is probably draped in his very best talit, with one of the tzitzit cut off to signify that Solly is no longer held responsible for the performance of the good deeds.” Her eyes glittered as she glanced at me. “They’ve probably placed a little bag containing earth from Israel inside the casket. It’s every observant Jew’s wish to be buried in Israel, but barring that possibility, this bag is intended as a symbolic ‘homing device’ in hopes of being included in the resurrection in Israel when the Messiah arrives.”

Before I could respond to this, a tall man standing near the head of Solly’s casket suddenly cleared his throat in that way people do who are about to announce something. He held up both arms for attention, which he got, and then announced that the ‘shivah’ would be held at Solly’s house in East Hampton. He said some other things I didn’t catch, and then suddenly there was a surge towards the chairs.

“Let’s find a seat,” said Mrs. Risk.

Bella, Pearl, and the ever present Zoë had already gone to a small side alcove at the head of the room, to the left of the casket. We found two chairs together at the back of the room. Roselle, Simon, Leeann, Ilene Fox, and others I recognized took up the first few rows.

Dr. Savoia sat just behind Pearl with his elegant wife, Fran. His presence reminded me of Pearl’s heart condition and I had a hard time tearing my attention away from her.

Suddenly the Rabbi entered from the right, clothed now in a robe beneath his silky tasseled shawl, and positioned himself behind a narrow podium that’d somehow appeared in front of the casket.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “I’m Rabbi David Gessner. We’re here today to pay our respects to a beloved friend, Solomon ben Mordecai. I regret that I never met Mr. Mansheim. What I’m about to say here has been given me to say from his friends. Solomon—Solly, as he was most often called—although never having married, and not blessed with siblings or relations like most of us,” intoned the Rabbi, “was not a solitary man. He had a family to which he was devoted, a unique family: his business associates, which is also to say, his friends. He gave himself entirely and tirelessly to the nurturing of these friends. Until just recently.

“Before being stricken down in this untimely manner, Solomon had finally found a lasting love with the sister of his long time client and friend, Pearl Schrafft. In the November of his life, he met someone with whom he wanted to unite in the eyes of God. I’m speaking of his fiancée, Mrs. Bella Fischmann.” He bowed deeply towards Bella.

“Our sympathies are with Bella, for not only has she been abruptly deprived of her promised life with the man whom she loved, but she never had the chance to get to know him through long, loving years, like his closest friends all knew him. This loss can never be remedied. He was a loving man, a compassionate man. His many generous contributions to …”

My attention wandered back to Pearl. She sat staring bleakly across the floor, past the Rabbi, off into some space and time of her own. I wondered if she would be able to fulfill her commitment at Krasner’s Hotel on Thanksgiving, and resolved to ask Mrs. Risk more about it. She might have talked things over with Pearl again since yesterday. Maybe Pearl was going to cancel. I would’ve. Careers are great, but when you’re already financially secure, and when a suspicion of murder is hanging over your head, and the head of the only other member of your family, how could you concentrate? I drifted from that line of thought and wondered what it was like to have a sister, even a sister as apparently troublesome as Bella had been to Pearl.

I’d been alone all my life, it seemed, including during my fatal marriage, until I met Mrs. Risk and started my florist business. My parents had evidently not been thrilled with parenthood enough to try it twice. I, like Solly, had no family anywhere, as far as I knew. Just as well. I wasn’t too excited to run into more people like my mother and father. I took a moment to test myself with an exercise I practiced now and then: I tried to remember what they looked like. I brightened when even their vaguest outlines couldn’t be fetched from memory at this moment.

How long I sat in a reverie, musing randomly about families and so on, I have no idea. But eventually I felt Mrs. Risk move beside me, which brought me back to the present.

“Is that it?” I asked.

“No. We’re traveling to the grave now. Thank heaven the rain stopped yesterday. Pearl told me that Solly outlined in his papers just how he wanted things done.”

“That’s gross. I’ve never given a thought to how I want to be buried. He must’ve been one of those compulsively organized guys.”

Mrs. Risk glanced sideways at me. “Planning one’s own burial is not something a woman your age usually thinks about. I, myself, have left detailed instructions with my lawyer on the same subject. Many people do.”

“Yes, well, you’re a control freak. But we put up with you.” I mugged a smile.

She made that noise of hers, ‘tchah!’ that means she can’t think of a clever reply. It felt sweet to get in the last word—this time. A friendly little competition we have going.

Being last in, we were also last out of the parking lot, so at the cemetery we were forced to take a space at a curb practically two blocks from the grave site. We reached the grave just as Solly’s casket had finished its slow trip on the shoulders of the pall bearers from the hearse to the tent that’d been set up. I trailed unenthusiastically behind Mrs. Risk, who I knew wanted to find a place as near as possible to Pearl and Bella. The pallbearers paused before lowering the casket. The rabbi chanted something rapidly in a sing-song baritone.

I looked around with a shudder. The misty grey air limited visibility and made the treeless cemetery look like a decayed forest of dirty giant’s teeth. The chill damp permeated the wool of my coat and crept into not only my bones, but my mind, oppressing me. We seemed to be the last people alive on this drab breast of earth, and we were here to celebrate death.

I pushed down my panicked impulse to burst through the cocoon of people and run.

Mrs. Risk managed to wedge us immediately behind Pearl and her sister, who were seated side by side in small chairs beside the grave. A tent had been erected over the site, but as wide as it was, not everyone could crowd beneath. More people were still arriving.

As the attendants slipped Solly’s casket into place in the contraption straddling the waiting hole, I noticed Mrs. Risk scanning the crowd, so I glanced around, too.

Zoë and Ilene stood together across the grave from us. The bosomy still-attractive middle-aged bottle blonde who’d badly wanted a maroon Mercedes stood behind Zoë and next to Leeann. Mr. and Mrs. Simon Lutz stood together further down the line. Roselle busily whispered to the bleached blonde woman and Leeann, but it seemed to me that she studiously avoided looking in my direction.

Pearl and Bella, in front of us, had the only chairs. Dr. Savoia stood beside Pearl, with a hand on her shoulder, while beside him his wife, Fran, struggled to maintain her balance on the soft ground in her spike heels.

Suddenly, deep within the crowd across from us, I noticed the blue eyes of Detective Sergeant Michael Hahn gazing steadily at me. They crinkled momentarily into a smile as he caught my eye, then abruptly became grave again as his gaze moved on. Working.

I nudged Mrs. Risk and flicked a silent glance Michael’s way. She followed my glance, then gave me a faint nod and continued her concentrated observation.

A faint wave of involuntary movement, like a slow shudder among the crowd, caught my attention. The Rabbi recited something in Hebrew within which I only caught the name, ‘Solomon ben Mordecai’. The mechanism holding the casket began to move, hydraulically lowering Solly into his resting place.

The blonde woman with cleavage standing behind Zoë let out a steam whistle sort of noise, like an uncontrollable shriek through compressed lips, making everyone jump. As I watched, she pushed her hand, balled like a fist, against her mouth, as if corking a leak. Zoë gave a small shudder then encircled the blonde woman with an arm and hugged her. They huddled together like abandoned orphans.

Ignoring this by-play the rabbi continued with the task at hand, which was to stow Solly away for eternity.

As if she’d heard her name called, Pearl suddenly stood up and made her way to the place where the rabbi stood waiting—at the head of the open grave. The crowd stirred and muttered as if there was some significance in Pearl appearing just now.

She looked around for a moment and everyone grew quiet. Into the stillness, she said, “Forgive me, I—I have to say good-bye. I know it isn’t customary … but … Solly, since the day he saw me bomb so horribly in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania,” she paused as if to catch her breath. Bella leaned forward in her chair as if poised to rush to her sister’s side, but Pearl pulled herself together with a shudder and went on.

“He told me then that I would hire him some day.” She gave a tremulous smile. “He never warned me that he would end up running my life and would become indispensable to me.” Her performing habit caused her to unconsciously project her voice, and we could all clearly hear her slightest word.

We were breathless with fascination, but our motives varied. Most, I’m sure, were wondering what Pearl would say—she who twice had been rejected romantically in favor of her own sister, the second time by Solly himself And now she was cast in the role as the main suspect in Solly’s murder. Would this be her public confession? Frankly, if Pearl was the one who’d murdered Solly, I think she killed the wrong one. It would have been a better idea to kill Bella, seemed to me. But then I hadn’t been consulted.

Pearl went on. “Solly meant many things to me. Not only was he judge and jury over my material, but he was my mother when I was sick, and my best friend when my feelings became trampled. And in this rough business, it’s best not to own any feelings, as some of you know. But I did, so he was my best friend … often.” She paused and looked away to her right, over the people’s heads, over the blackened skeletal trees and into the lead-colored sky, as if she saw someone hovering there, listening. The wind suddenly gusted in a soft moan of acknowledgment.