Vultures at Twilight (12 page)

‘That would be a no.'

‘Oh my. It's the style of praying, where the men wrap themselves in their
tallisim
and sing the prayers and the responses to the scripture. While upstairs, we'd look through the screens and follow along. I was always jealous of the boys, who every day after school went to study with the rabbi. That was just for boys. And unlike your sister Mona, who had a bat mitzvah, there was none of that when I turned thirteen.'

‘Kind of a rip-off,' Aaron commented.

‘It was disappointing. But you wanted to know about your great-great-grandfather.' She bit down on a flavorful morsel. ‘Hmm,' she said, letting the taste of another time send her back. ‘They moved to Queens, to a big three story house, and that's when things started to fall apart. My grandmother got sick with cancer and Morris apparently had a roving eye.'

‘Really?' Aaron's expression lit at that scurrilous bit of history.

‘It's true. Growing up I'd catch snippets from the aunts and the uncles. It was always, “Poor Rachel” this and “Poor Rachel” that. I just assumed they were talking about how hard it must have been to have nine children. She died before I was born, leaving my mother to raise her brothers and sisters. She was probably twelve or thirteen, had a huge house to run and a father who would disappear for days at a time. Adele and Hector weren't even toilet trained when my grandmother died.'

‘This is like TV,' Aaron offered, while helping himself to seconds.

‘And then Morris moved out altogether,' Ada said.

‘How could he do that?' I asked. ‘He abandoned his family?'

‘Yes, he had another woman, one of the seamstresses. She was an Irish girl who wanted nothing to do with a house full of children. She was supposedly quite pretty, and he gave her expensive gifts, while his own children wore hand-me-downs from the cousins. Things got very bad. There were no child-support laws in those days. Morris had no obligation, other than the ethical one, to care for his children. The family tried to pressure him to make sure there was at least coal for the furnace. My mother would tell me how she and her brother Ben would go scrounging among the neighbors. Or how she'd dress the little ones in rags and take them down to the welfare office to try and get some money. I also think – no, I know – that's why she married so young.'

‘What do you mean?' I asked, trying to reconcile this history of Ida's mother with Rose Rimmelman, the cantankerous nona-genarian who'd stayed here last year.

‘She was fifteen when she got married; my father Isaac was twice her age, and was managing his family's store. I think the idea of having someone to support all those children and that house must have been hugely attractive. And then, just like her mother, the babies started coming.'

‘Sort of like you,' Aaron interjected. ‘Weren't you married super young?'

‘Eighteen, and yes, I also married back into the business. Although Harry had his own store. Oh my—' She stopped short. ‘What time is it?'

I looked at my watch. ‘Nearly seven.'

‘Where has the time gone? Services start in half an hour.'

‘Services?' Aaron asked warily.

‘Yes,' said Ada, in a tone that made it clear attendance was mandatory. Even though more often than not – depending on what we saw at the preview – we'd typically end up at McElroy's auction instead of Grenville's tiny synagogue.

‘Are you going?' he asked me.

‘Yes,' I said with a smile.

‘But you're not Jewish.'

‘Episcopalian.'

‘Then why?'

‘I like to,' I said.

‘She goes out of pity,' Ada responded.

‘I do not. I like going.'

‘You just don't want me to be taking cabs everywhere.'

‘Ada, sometimes you say the meanest things.'

‘You're right, that was unfair of me.'

‘Yes, it was,' I said, feeling a little hurt. ‘I go because it's different from what I'm used to. It's small and everyone seems interested in trying to keep it going. And besides . . . you come with me to church.'

‘Grandma!' Aaron sounded shocked. ‘You go to church?'

‘So what if I do? God is God. Besides, we go to The Greenery afterwards for lunch.' As though eating in the two hundred-year-old inn was justification for her religious infidelity.

‘You two are kind of like a married couple,' he offered, while helping to clear the dishes.

Ada looked at me; I felt the room start to spin.

‘And what if we were?' she asked. ‘Would that bother you?'

I was mildly shocked at what she'd just said, and apparently so was Aaron. An uncomfortable silence followed. I needed to say something, but my mouth was dry and a vein pulsed on my forehead.
Does she know what I feel for her? Could she possibly feel the same?

Instead, it was Aaron that broke the silence. ‘You're just saying that because of what Mom told you. Although –' and a smile crept across his face – ‘it would be pretty cool to have a lesbian grandmother. It would just kill dad.'

‘Seriously?' Ada flashed a wicked grin. ‘Then Lil, it's definitely something to consider.'

I knew that she was making a joke and it bothered me. Because deep down, and there was no getting around it, I wished she weren't.

FOURTEEN

C
arl McElroy looked over the night's auction receipts, and took a much-needed swig of whiskey. All said and done, not too shabby. Although, spotting that woman detective in the audience gave him pause.
Nosy bitch
.
Who the hell does she think she is?
Conroy got what he deserved and Mildred was robbed, tough break, but it happens.

He thought about Hank's warning, and felt an uneasy tingle. He listened hard to the creak and whisper of the ancient floorboards and weathered wood siding that comprised the shell of his auction house, which stood alone on the country road a couple miles from the center of Grenville.
It's nothing,
he thought, and he reached down for the new bottle of CC, and filled the tumbler.
You deserve it, long night.

At least he'd been able to warn off Pete and Sal. It wouldn't have been smart to have them buying back any of their furniture with that detective nosing around. Years back that's what caused the trouble with the Williams bitch. Although if her son hadn't made such a stink no one would have known.

In the end, it didn't make a difference. Tonight had been a good night, although lately, they'd all been good, especially for the high-end stuff and precious metals. The influx of fresh dealers and the increasing desperation among the old-timers had pushed prices to exhilarating highs. All the smaller lots were now simultaneously posted on eBay, so if someone in the audience didn't feel like coughing up thirty grand for a Tiffany tea service, you could bet there'd be some fool in Tokyo who just had to have it. New phrases had seeped into his tried-and-true auction patter; he fed on their fears. ‘Aren't going to see another one like this,' he'd warn, whipping them into a frenzy over a tiger-maple Connecticut highboy. ‘Stuff's really drying up.' Or: ‘Stocks crash . . . Chippendale never does,' he'd commiserate, while bumping up the bid and inciting all the petty rivalries that got dealers and collectors, particularly the newbies, to bid with their hearts and not with their heads.

He'd listen to the dealers as they'd bitch. ‘There's nothing out there anymore,' one had said, echoing the general belief.
Yes and no
, Carl thought. Sure, he had to look a little further, and make deals he had never done before, but every Friday night, like clockwork, he auctioned off over three hundred lots of quality goods.

But in truth, it was drying up. He looked at his ledger, at how incredibly complicated it had become, what with the finder's fees and other costs that had to be massaged into the figures.

It made him nervous the way the detective had so blatantly recorded the selling price of every item that crossed the block. What was her game?

Hank at least turned a blind eye. Hell, why not? It wasn't like anyone got hurt, and by and large the deals he cut kept the merchandise flowing. If you thought about it, the auction house was a public service, part of Grenville's lifeblood. It amused Carl to walk though the shops and see how much had passed across his auction block.

He eyed the locked cabinets where he kept the second set of ledgers. ‘Tomorrow,' he muttered, emptied half his glass and pushed back from his desk; a floorboard groaned loudly behind him.

His head whipped around at the sound; his eyes bulged. ‘You! What are you . . .'

‘Surprise!' the gloved assassin whispered, while squeezing a single shot from the delicately etched 22mm Beretta.

A small dark hole, like a third eye, appeared in the center of Carl's forehead. His mouth continued to move, but no sound came. Blood slowly blossomed around the entry wound as the dying auctioneer recognized his fate, and, with a final angry surge, he lunged from his chair, spilled his drink and crumpled to the ground.

A gloved hand moved to Carl's carotid. Beneath the thin latex glove, the killer felt the last few spurts from the dying heart grind to a sluggish halt.

With an efficiency of movement the killer found Carl's keys next to his bottle of whiskey and unlocked the filing cabinet. Out came the ledgers and McElroy's fiercely guarded address book. Everything was just where it was supposed to be, and working fast, the shooter set about their intended tasks.

FIFTEEN

N
ews of McElroy's murder spread fast, and with it hysteria. Ada and I overheard whispered rumors and speculation in our Sunday morning pew at St Luke's Episcopal:

‘
Who's next?
'

‘
Who's behind it?
'

‘
I won't go out at night.
'

‘
For the first time in my life I'm locking the door and checking the windows.
'

Hattie Cavanaugh, the police chief's sister, leaned over to let me know. ‘Lil, Hank said McElroy's body had been mutilated. We've got a serial killer in Grenville. Although,' she continued, keeping her voice low, ‘I've always thought a lot of the dealers are just out-and-out thieves.'

Ada, in a stunning green pantsuit with an ice-blue blouse, cut her a look.

‘Well,' Hattie persisted, ‘they are.'

‘I didn't say a thing,' Ada whispered, although I knew she was dying for the details, and sickly, so was I.

After church, we walked across Town Plot to The Greenery, one of the oldest continuously operating inns in the United States. Like most after-church diners we had standing reservations. Frieda Auchinstrasse, the proprietress, led us straight to our table with a mullioned window that overlooked High Street.

‘Isn't it terrible,' she commented, handing us our menus, while shooting a glance at the Channel Eight news truck parked across the street.

‘Yes,' I agreed, knowing that she wasn't referring to the notoriously leathery rack of lamb on today's handwritten special board.

‘It's all people are talking about,' she continued, puffing up her tightly curled Lucille Ball perm. ‘You just never think it could happen here.'

‘We've had murders before,' I reminded her, staring out at the news truck and then noticing a second parked at the distant end of Town Plot and a third with the CNN logo in front of that one.

‘Doesn't it scare you, Lil?'

I looked at Frieda with her billowy mess of dyed hair. I had to remind myself that she and her husband Gustav – who ran the antique shop in the colonial next door – were relatively recent additions to Grenville. To my way of thinking, The Greenery was eternal; it had stood and functioned as an inn and restaurant for over two centuries. Its owners, however, seemed to come and go with the seasons. The Auchinstrasses had been in Grenville for less than twenty years. In that time they had systematically bought up High Street real estate, and last year had taken over The Greenery. They had mostly left things unchanged and, to their credit, had attempted to revitalize the sagging cuisine, which had deteriorated into glutinous gravies and over-boiled vegetables. The food had never been the selling point; why we continued to come was hard to define. Yes, the dark ambience, with the open hearth and hand-wrought tools, like stepping back into the eighteenth century was a treat. But something else, looking first at Ada, and then at all the familiar faces at their regular tables; this was my community, and this inn was a part of its rhythm.

‘Why should it scare me?' I asked, and yet I was anxious. ‘I don't fit the profile.'

‘But what about me?' Frieda asked, her eyes comically wide. ‘I have two shops on High Street.'

‘She's got a point,' Ada chimed in maliciously.

As she did, a stocky dark-haired woman in a green turtle neck and khakis eating by herself at the next table looked up. She gave an enigmatic half smile.

I smiled back, recognizing the state detective.

‘She's right, you know.' The woman said, seemingly weighing each word as she made eye contact first with Ada and then with Frieda. ‘There is a pattern.'

Frieda shook her head, sending her curled tresses into a spasm. ‘I don't want to talk about this. I'll have Annie get you your drinks.' Clearly spooked, she scurried off to greet and seat the diners who were backing up into the foyer.

‘Detective Perez, isn't it?' I asked, not about to let the opportunity slip.

‘Yes, and you are . . .?'

‘Lillian Campbell.'

Ada looked at me for an explanation.

‘This is the detective working on the murders,' I told her. Taking in details of this intense woman from her tightly curled hair, with touches of silver, to how she wore no makeup and the two little gold stud earrings that seemed more part of a uniform than any conscious stab at adornment.