After they’d stuffed themselves silly, Rina tried to make everyone feel more virtuous. “It’s mostly fruit except for the crumble topping.”
“That’s the best part,” Koby told her. “I’ll have another piece.”
“I can always count on you, Yaakov,” Rina told him, spooning another scoop of the streusel-topped concoction onto his plate.
“That’s because I have no stop button when it comes to food.”
“Lucky you,” Decker muttered.
Rina tossed her husband a “behave yourself” look, even though she knew what he meant. At six two, one-fifty, Koby was as thin as grass. A wiry man, but deceptively strong. Like Decker, he was also handy around the house. In honor of Shabbat, he wore a white shirt and black slacks and loafers without socks. Cindy wore a black knit skirt and a turquoise sweater that set off her red hair, courtesy of her father’s DNA. Hannah and Cindy had nearly identical coloring, red hair, red eyebrows and eyelids, and clear alabaster skin that freckled in the summertime. The difference was only in the eye color: Cindy’s eyes were brown whereas Hannah’s were green. The sisters resembled each other even though they had clearly come from different mothers.
“Are you two getting any vacation time?” Decker asked his older daughter.
Cindy said, “Nothing definite yet.”
Koby said, “We’re trying for a weekend in Santa Barbara.”
“Do you need help clearing?” Hannah asked her mother. She and her two friends had finished dessert ten minutes ago. They were itching to leave and talk about important issues-school, poetry, alternative rock, Gossip Girl books, and boys, boys, boys.
Rina said, “Just bring in your plates and load them in the dishwasher. I’ll do the rest and call you when it’s time to bench.”
“Are you sure?” Hannah asked. But it was clear the girl was grateful to be dismissed.
“Positive.” Rina turned to Cindy. “Your father installed a new Shabbat dishwasher that has been an absolute godsend. I don’t know what in the world took us so long to buy it.”
“Those built-in dish drawers?” Koby asked.
“Yes, from the same company. We bought the full-size dishwasher for meat and a dish drawer for dairy. I lost a bit of cabinet space, but what we save on time spent doing dishes more than makes up for it.”
“We’re thinking of pushing out the kitchen,” Cindy said. “That’s why we’re asking.” When she noticed her father’s face, she smiled. “No, I’m not pregnant, but we do want a family. And it would be nice to have a genuine room for our future progeny.”
Koby added, “With home prices so expensive, we both think it is better to remodel.”
“Who’s going to do the work?” Decker asked.
“I am…and whoever else wants to help,” Koby answered.
Three pairs of eyes focused on Decker’s face. “Like I don’t have enough to do?” But he knew he’d cave in. That’s the way it was with children.
Cindy said, “We’re a ways off from lugging around two-by-fours, Dad. We’re still gathering information.” She turned to Rina. “The food was delicious. I’m stuffed.”
“Thank you. Can I make you a care package?”
“I was hoping you’d offer.” Cindy stood up and began to clear.
“You sit,” Decker told his daughter. “I’ll help.”
“Age before beauty,” she replied. “Actually, Dad, I am so full that it feels good to move.”
Decker said, “You know what? Why don’t you and I clear together and let Koby and Rina relax?”
Koby said, “It is an offer I won’t refuse.”
Rina smiled. He was trying to get time alone with his girl. “Great. I haven’t read the paper yet.”
“Neither have I.”
“Then we’ll share,” Rina said. “I’ll even pour you a scotch, Yaakov.”
The two of them retreated to the living room while father and daughter cleared the dining-room table of dishes and brought them into the kitchen.
“I wash and you dry?” Cindy offered.
“All you have to do is rinse them and put them in the dishwasher. Why don’t you let me do that?”
“You put away the food. I don’t know where it goes.”
“Deal.”
Cindy turned on the tap. “This is nice. Doing dishes together. Like old times but better.”
“Yeah, the old times were pretty good, too.” He gave her a brief smile as he scraped food into the garbage. “How’s GTA?”
“Busy. You know how it is. The weather starts getting warmer, it’s open season on cars.”
“Crime in general. When it’s wet and nasty outside, no one wants to work-even the psychos. How do you like teaming with Joe?”
Joe Papquick was her partner. “He’s fine. Not exactly loquacious, but he tells me what I need to know. It’s pretty routine, actually. You wind up investigating the same shops, the same junkyards, the same people. It seems the thieves rotate through twenty or so auto yards and it’s just a matter of the choppers getting caught with their pants down.”
“Be careful,” he warned her. “Routine doesn’t exclude bad surprises.”
She smiled. “Joe has this saying. If you don’t treat every call like it’s your first, it could be your last.”
“He is so right. If you’re feeling too comfortable, you let your guard down.”
“I’m careful. And it’s not always routine. Every once in a while, you make a good guess, and because of it, you get another sleaze bucket off the streets.”
“Makes you feel pretty good.”
“Very good, even though most of the time it’s grunt work.”
“That’s being what being a detective is.”
“I would think homicide’s a little more exciting.”
“It is more exciting, even though you get your obvious smoking gun cases. Then you spend lots of time trying to extract a confession.”
“There’s an art to that.”
“Absolutely. But sometimes no matter how skillful, you don’t get what you want. Then you hope forensics will buttress the case. And when that doesn’t work…that’s when it’s really frustrating. The ‘what did I miss?’ second-guessing game. First question is always Did I get the right person? You go through the file over and over, trying to find the magic bullet.”
Cindy said, “How often do you actually find something you missed when you look through an old case?”
“More than you think. The key is to put it away for a while so you review it through fresh eyes. Even with that, I’d say the success rate is maybe…I don’t know. I’d say you have a fifty percent chance that you find something that’ll jump-start something dead in the water.”
“Not a bad baseball percentage.”
“But dismal in murder,” Decker said. “It’s always hard to watch a case go cold. Then there’s the occasional cold case that falls in your lap.” He told Cindy about the sudden appearance of a disinterred body. As he spoke, she listened carefully, adding a word or two at the right spots. If she hadn’t chosen to be a cop, she would have made a hell of a shrink.
She said, “And forensics is sure that the body isn’t the flight attendant?”
“I went down to the Crypt and saw the sets of radiographs myself. So now instead of a solve, I’ve got two open cases.”
“That’s a pisser, but it’s really interesting. Did the apartment building have a basement?”
“No, it was a typical California building: wood-framed stucco, no basement.”
“What about subterranean parking?”
“I believe it had a lot in the back…built in days when land was a lot cheaper. I’m remembering it as one parking space per unit and the rest was street parking.”
“And how many units did the building have?”
“Fifteen. Why do you ask?”