The Passover Murder by Lee Harris Page B

Margaret’s.”
    “Friends don’t do things like that,” I said.
    “Chris, honey, friends do everything enemies do.”
    “She must be a wreck.”
    “She is. She’s scheduled to do a big party next weekend, they’ve put down a hefty deposit, and she doesn’t have enough money to pay the bills for it. She’s a very together person and I’ve never seen her like this. But what’s really eating her is that Taffy would do this. Those girls grew up together. Taffy was always underfoot. I used to step on her when she was a kid.”
    “Something must’ve happened to make her do this.”
    “It wasn’t spur of the moment, Chris. She didn’t wake up one morning and turn crazy and decide to empty the checking account and hop on a bus. She planned this for weeks, maybe for months.”
    “Eileen’s heart must be broken.”
    “It is. Broken into little pieces. But the important thing right now is to keep the business going. If Eileen disappoints this client next week, they could take her to court and that could be the end of her.”
    “How much is involved?”
    “She wasn’t clear on that. She just isn’t thinking straight at this point. But I think Dad and I can come up with a couple of thousand to get her through. She has almost nothing of her own in savings because she wanted to keep a comfortable cushion in the business account.”
    “Jack, I have whatever she needs.”
    “Forget it. That’s your money. You know what Arnold Gold would say if I let you use that money for Eileen’s business?”
    Arnold Gold is the lawyer I met on my first case, the man I work for, the substitute father who gave me away at our wedding last August. He is also a person very concerned about protecting me from dangers I can neither see nor imagine.
    “Jack, this isn’t a question of you letting me do anything with the money. You just said it’s my money. Last I looked, I was an adult of reasonable intelligence and a mind of my own. I happen to have plenty of cash in that account because one of the bonds Aunt Meg bought just came due. Let me think of this as an investment. Investments don’t always yield cash dividends. Sometimes they help deserving people.”
    “Chris, I can’t let you—” He stopped to rephrase. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. That’s your inheritance. It’s there for you, your future, your old age. Look, the truth is, you may never get it back. I don’t know if Eileen can handle this business by herself, and she’s in no shape right now to go looking for a new partner, not that she could trust anyone ever again after this.”
    “Then let me give it to her as a gift.”
    “Did anyone ever tell you you were impossible to reason with?”
    “Dozens of people, most of them students who thought I was cruel, heartless, and totally devoid of understanding.”
    He shook his head. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
    He meant that. He refused for the rest of the day to discuss his sister’s problems. I suggested I could call her, and he said he thought it wasn’t such a good idea. Eileen and her mother were working together to prepare for the party next weekend, and Eileen was too close to tears to carry on a conversation. Exhausted from his long ordeal last night, Jack took a nap, waking with just enough time to shower and dress for dinner at Ivy’s.
    On the way, we stopped at a liquor store and he picked up a bottle of red wine. “OK,” he said, getting back in the car. “Now tell me about the mysterious disappearance and death of Aunt Iris.”
    “I found something that was overlooked for sixteen years.”
    “Hell, I could’ve told you you would. You take this stuff seriously. What did you find?”
    “Her pocketbook, the one she had with her that night and everyone thought she took with her because they didn’t find it in the apartment.”
    “So you turned the light on and there it was.”
    I laughed. “It was a little like that, now that I think of it.”
    “Sitting in the open for