"Rabbi, tell me about the Schoenfelds."
He shook his head. "What is there to say? They are a wonderful family, very observant, generous people." He spread his fingers and touched his newspaper with a pinkie.
"You must have known Tovah well."
"Yes, since she was born. A very sweet girl, a wonderful girl." He nodded as if to confirm that to himself.
"What was she like?"
"Like?" He seemed puzzled by the question.
"Her personality, her likes and dislikes. Her hopes and dreams for her life with her husband. Did she love him? Was she excited?"
His features didn't register this line of questioning.
"Did she have boyfriends, someone who might have been disappointed?" April tried again.
"No, no, no," he answered sharply. "I told him yesterday." He pointed at Mike. "She was a good girl. No boyfriends. She didn't know anyone outside of here."
April had the feeling Tovah's spiritual leader hadn't known her very well, or maybe hadn't liked her. It was just a feeling.
"Somebody didn't like her enough to kill her, Rabbi. Somebody didn't want her married."
He made an angry gesture with his hand. "The girl was eighteen years old. She was beautiful. Who wouldn't like her?"
April shifted in her chair. The girl was beautiful. That was all he could say. Was beauty a motive to kill? Well, sometimes it was.
"Tell me some more about your congregation. You have many wealthy members." She tried another tack.
"Wealthy, no. Comfortable maybe ..."
"But the Schoenfelds are wealthy."
The rabbi's fingers played with the newspaper. He glanced at Mike. It was clear he didn't want to talk to April. She waited, sweating a little at the snub. He was pale; he was small. He looked as if he hadn't eaten anything for a long rime. "When can we clean up?" he asked.
"Soon," she said. "Can you tell me anything more about the party?"
"Ah." He became more animated with that subject. "We try not to encourage too much display here. Competition excites envy. People get hurt feelings when they can't do for their children what their wealthier neighbors are doing. But what can you do when people want to share their good fortune?" Again the shoulders went up.
"You should have seen today. Our custom in funerals is the opposite of the joyous occasions. In death we are always simple, modest. The remains of our loved ones are washed by our own members. You'd be amazed the people who choose to do it. The remains are wrapped in white cloth. They go into the ground in a plain wooden box. Everyone the same." His eyes strayed for a moment directly into April's face, and she was surprised to find herself blushing. This was how the women must feel when the men took notice of them. Trapped for a moment in the light.
"We were at the funeral," she murmured. And competition was the same everywhere.
She thought of Ching's upcoming wedding at the Crystal Pavilion on Mott Street. In Chinatown there was the eight-course wedding, the twelve-course wedding, and the twenty-course wedding. Ching was having the twelve-course feast, and she planned to change her clothes three times while the guests stuffed themselves. No one would remember the last two dresses because they'd all be drunk by the time she got them on, but the photos would last forever.
During her years as a cop, April must have seen hundreds of wedding parties coming out of churches and temples all over the city. She'd seen the brides in their white gowns and the men in their tuxedos, but she knew very little about them.
"Can you tell me anything about the wedding that was unusual beyond the extravagance?" April asked.
"They had a wedding planner. That was unusual, since Suri Schoenfeld is such a competent woman."
"Why did they, do you know?"
"I don't know; that woman put everything out of proportion. There was bad feeling about it. The spending was crazy. They had real flowers, real silver. The girl had her own gown from some store in Manhattan. Party favors for everyone. Such a waste."
"I don't know your customs, Rabbi. How is it generally done?" April asked.
"With our large families most people don't go in for too many extras. The trend is for the girls to rent their gowns, use the caterer's centerpieces. They're not real flowers, but they look very good. They might have one or two arrangements of real flowers in the sanctuary. And of course, there's always lots of food." A small smile lit up his eyes at the mention of food.
April nodded. Just like Chinatown. In Chinatown flowers were for funerals. At weddings, the families of the happy couple gave a wedding feast with lots of Scotch or cognac, plum wine, beer, soda. The decorations consisted of a few red carnations set on red tablecloths. For special show there might be red-lacquered chopsticks instead of the generic wooden ones. Personalized banners with slogans for good luck and long life in Chinese characters hung from the ceiling and were stuck on the walls with Scotch tape. Everything was red and gold. And cash went from friends to happy couple. As much cash as possible. The guests went away drunk and full but not with gifts and party favors.
April remembered the baskets of candy, the large floral arrangements so strongly scented, both in the sanctuary and on the tables: the palm trees, the orange trees with real oranges on them, the silver flatware, the gold-rimmed crystal glasses, the blue Tiffany boxes at many of the seats. They'd had favors from Tiffany!
"This party must have excited a lot of envy," April murmured.
"A lot of talk," the rabbi admitted. "Usually our own people make our parties. We've never had trouble before."
Afterward, the two detectives conferred about what they'd learned. April didn't like the way the rabbi kept calling Tovah "the girl" and the groom "the boy," so she was careful to keep Tovah's name in her mind as she made notes to herself.
Fourteen
J
ust before five Louis the Suri King sent his assistant, Tito, out in the van with the completed order for the benefit at Tavern on the Green in Central Park. Then he collapsed in a damp heap on the green Victorian wrought-iron settee in his hothouse of a garden, angry as a hornet at Wendy Lotte.
The sun was as hot as summer. Usually he felt blessed that the town houses around him were low enough for the sun to creep into all the corners of his walled refuge, but today he was exhausted and discouraged, so the heat seemed like just another blight on his world. Still, it was better outside than it would be inside, dealing with the ankle-deep mess of cut stems and leaves that Tito had left on the floor of the shop and Jama wasn't there to pick up because he'd gone to ground.
Louis did not want to be inside and visible to any hapless visitor who might want to get in to buy something. He was through for the day. If someone came and he was forced to speak, he would just scream. His irascibility had cost him bundles in the past, and he knew he mustn't revert to type because of a murder.
In the past Louis had done several funerals where the estate lawyers didn't get around to paying him for over a year because the IRS questioned the expense. He had a policy against working for dead people. And now he'd just sunk more than fifty-five thousand dollars into a wedding for a dead person. He was going to sit there, sweating and cursing Wendy Lotte, until she showed up and reassured him that his investment was not lost.