The Passover Murder by Lee Harris Page A

dinner.
    “You called just in time,” the aide who answered the phone said. “We’re almost ready to sit down.”
    “I’ll be there in five minutes. Don’t let him eat a bite.”
    “You got it,” she said with a laugh.
    I put my coat on and went out to the car.
    We had a good time together, my cousin and I. We grew up together in the happy years when both my parents were alive and both of his were, too. During the years when I was a nun, I drove to Oakwood regularly to visit him. He was the reason I owned a car, the reason Aunt Meg maintained a room for me in this very house, covering the bathroom mirror before my arrival and uncovering it after I left. They were all that was left of my family, and now it was only Gene.
    We ate together and then, because I knew he would appreciate it, I took him out for ice cream before dropping him off at Greenwillow. Then I went home, read for a while, and went to bed.
    It wasn’t the best night of my life. I read for a long time, till the words were swimming and I could no longer keep my mind on what I was reading. I turned off the light and fell asleep quickly, but I awoke about an hour later and worried about what it was that had kept my husband away from me. I had no answers, no hints, no vague ideas. Eventually I slept.
    The phone rang when the night was still dark and I was disoriented and groggy. I reached for Jack and had a shock when I felt his absence, then found the phone and answered.
    “It’s me. I’m sorry to get you up.”
    “Jack?”
    “Yes. You OK?”
    “I think so. I was sleeping.” The way I felt, I still was.
    “I can’t talk long. I’m in the kitchen and I don’t want to wake everybody up.”
    “Did something happen?”
    “I just missed you.”
    “Oh, that’s nice. I miss you, too.”
    “I’ll see you later.”
    “OK.”
    “Go back to sleep.”
    “Mm.” It was a piece of advice I didn’t need.
    His car turned in to the driveway just before three and I went to the door to meet him. We hugged as though we hadn’t seen each other in months and then we kissed like lovers meeting at a trysting place.
    “We going somewhere for dinner?” he said, taking off his coat.
    “I called Ivy’s and they said they had a table at seven.” Ivy’s was a small French restaurant in the next town where you could bring your own wine and the food was good and not very expensive.
    “Good. I’m in the mood for Ivy’s.”
    “Do I get to hear what the problem is or do I start biting my fingernails?”
    “Anything but that. Can I make some coffee? Mom’s started drinking decaf and I need a shot of high octane.”
    “Go to it.”
    He was already in the kitchen. “It’s my sister,” he said.
    “Your sister. ”
    “She and her friend Taffy have been building up their catering business, doing better and better, everything looking real good, and suddenly—” He stopped and got the coffeemaker going.
    “Suddenly what?”
    “Suddenly the impossible happens. You hear about these things, but you never think it’ll happen to you. Taffy took a vacation. She’d been planning this for months, got tickets to somewhere, hotels, everything. She leaves last weekend, and yesterday morning Eileen gets a call from her bank that the catering account is overdrawn.”
    “A check bounced?”
    “She wrote a check a couple of days ago, and today she’s told there isn’t enough in the account to cover it. But she knows for sure there’s plenty of money there.”
    I could feel ice work its way down my neck. “Her partner?”
    “Taffy emptied out the checking account before she took off.”
    “That’s terrible.”
    “It’s worse than terrible. It’s grand larceny.”
    “You think she stole the money, Jack?”
    “She wrote the check and cashed it at the bank before she left. It’s her signature; the girl at the bank remembers cashing it for her.”
    “I can’t believe it.”
    “Eileen can’t either. They’ve been friends since first grade at St.