Chanukah Guilt, page 15
Before leaving the police department, Steve had asked a clerk to make a copy of Madison’s file for me. When I got to the synagogue, I declined Liz’s offer of help and made another photocopy and put the original file into a locked cabinet inside a locked closet in my office. I wasn’t being paranoid, just careful. I didn’t want to have to ask Steve for another copy when I lost the first one.
There were no messages on my voice mail and only offers to increase my manhood on my e-mail. I tried not to feel sorry for myself that no one needed me and called Trudy.
“No,” she answered the phone without any preamble, “I haven’t had a chance to check the laptop yet.”
“I wish you’d stop doing that,” I said. “It gives me the willies.” Caller ID may be ubiquitous, but most people do at least say hello when answering the phone. “And why haven’t you checked it? I thought it was going to be fun for you.”
“It wouldn’t be fun. It would be too boringly easy to be fun. But right after you left this morning, I got a panicked phone call from a client who didn’t bother activating the firewall I’d installed and whose records have been consumed by a voracious worm. I just walked into the house to see Josh—he’s home with a cold—and then I’ve got to get back to the client’s office. I’ll probably be there all night. Or all week. But I promise I’ll take care of your job ASAP. If I get home to catch some sleep tonight, I’ll look at the laptop to unwind. Bye.”
Well, at least she had said “bye” before hanging up. When involved with a project, she often just grunts.
I looked at the time. It was just after four. I wondered if I had time to see Tyler before my appointments this evening. I decided I didn’t have time not to see her.
I called Caryn to see if she had an address or phone number for Tyler. “Hey, girlfriend, wuzzup?”
“What’s with the street slang?” I asked.
“Too much time with Jon. He’s supposed to be studying for finals, so he’s been hanging around the house complaining and eating. I keep trying to convince him to go to the library instead, but he said it’s too depressing there. Everyone’s reading and no one’s jus’ chillin’. Although, I tell you, he’s pretty depressing himself these days. Test anxiety, I guess. Anyway, I was just about to call you. I hear you had a fruitful afternoon with your ex. And that you’re investigating Madison’s death.”
“What is this? A provincial town in a Masterpiece Theater series?”
“I can’t believe you haven’t figured out after all these years that you can’t sneeze without someone buying you a box of tissues. But before you tell all, I’ve got some news. Guess who has a job?”
“Dan?”
“Fat chance. He’s now saying he might stay on and get a Ph.D. in public policy studies. No, Alan!”
Alan was Caryn’s ex-husband. He had always claimed he was unable to work because of some vague disease or other. At the same time, though, he refused to go for any medical tests. He said it was because traditional medicine is a scam, but I think he was afraid the doctors wouldn’t find anything wrong except for the requisite mid-life crisis.
Alan was also a lazy bum, and even before he had contracted Lyme disease or Epstein-Barr syndrome or whatever—his self-diagnosis changed each time he surfed the web—he had never really been a success. But at least he had brought some income into the family, usually working in sales. If nothing else, he was charming.
“That’s great,” I tried to sound enthusiastic. I failed. And I certainly didn’t sound supportive when I added dryly, “Maybe he can help with the kids’ tuition payments now.”
“I doubt it. He’s only a manager at a health store. You know, the one near Triple-U? It’s called ‘Healthy Life.’ The salary’s not much. But at least he’s doing something he’s good at—telling people what vitamins they need. We’re going out to dinner tonight to celebrate. He’s even paying.”
“You’ve got a date with your ex-husband?”
“Um, no, not a date. Well,” to my dismay she actually giggled, “maybe it is. So, now you know why I was going to call you. Why did you call me? To fill me in on your investigations? I hope you’re not going to grow a moustache and start talking in a Belgian accent.”
“No, I’ll just answer to the name of Jessica from now on. Actually,” I continued, “I called to find out if you have a way for me to contact William Phillips’ … um … ‘bit on the side.’”
“Wait, let me check the Phillips’ file and see if the name is there. I know it was one of those trendy names….”
“Tyler,” I interrupted.
“Let me see….” I could hear the clicking of her computer keyboard in the background. “Here we go. Tyler Jackson. That’s all I have on her.”
“Okay, thanks. I’ll see if I can find a number for her in the book.”
“I wonder why Jennifer Phillips hadn’t divorced her husband. Obviously, she knew about Tyler, or she—Tyler—wouldn’t have been at the funeral.”
“I don’t know. Phillips’ son Brian said that, appearances to the contrary, Jennifer is a sharp lawyer, so maybe she’d negotiated a pre-nup.” I was sure Janet would know, since she seemed to know everything, but I didn’t know how to ask her without rousing her curiosity about why I wanted the information. I wasn’t sure myself why I wanted to know, except curiosity.
“Sounds likely. Anyway, why do you want to talk to this Tyler person?”
“Confidential. Can’t tell you. Well, could, but I’d have to kill you.”
“Haha. Stale joke. Truth now.”
“Nothing specific. Just something she’d said after the funeral that I want to follow up on. I’ll call later and fill you in. Better yet, let’s do lunch.”
“Right. I’ll have my girl call your girl.”
“Or we could meet tomorrow. We still haven’t gone to the Mexican Food Factory, and I’m in the mood for their mango-brie quesadilla.”
“Let me check my schedule…. You’re in luck. I’m not ‘on duty’ until late in the afternoon. How’s one o’clock sound?”
“Should be okay. I’ll pencil you in. Or touch you in,” I laughed, as I entered our lunch date on the calendar on my cell phone. “See you then.”
I logged onto a phone book site and looked up Tyler Jackson. There was a T. Jackson in Walford with an address in the Willow Run Condos, a development built by Phillips’ company, so I figured I would give it a try. Of course, I got an answering machine, since she was probably still at work. And I had no idea which of the myriad health clubs in the surrounding area she worked for. “This is Rabbi Cohen,” I told the machine. “I would like to speak with you at your convenience. You can reach me at the synagogue. If I’m not here, please leave a number and time when I can call you. Thanks.” I left the synagogue’s phone number and disconnected the phone.
A rumble in my midsection reminded me I hadn’t eaten for a while. I also hadn’t fed Cat, cleaned his litter box, filled the bird feeders, or taken in the mail. There was enough time for me to get home, take care of some chores, and have some dinner before heading back to the office. I told Liz where I was going and started out the door when the phone rang. I waited to see if it was someone looking for me, which it was.
“Rabbi Cohen speaking,” I said as I perched on the edge of Liz’s desk, to her displeasure. For one thing, I was rifling through her papers. For another, I was tying up her phone.
“Hi, um, is this Rabbi Cohen?”
Uh, no. I was making it up. “Yes. May I help you?”
“Um, you called me? Um, this is Tyler Jackson.”
“Hold on a moment. I want to switch phones.” I put the call on hold and went back to my office, closing the door behind me. I didn’t need Liz to know I was doing non-synagogue business on company time. On the other hand, if I could save my reputation, the synagogue would only benefit. Nice bit of rationalization.
“Hello, Tyler. Thank you for calling me back. I don’t know if you recall, but we met at William Phillips’ funeral.”
“Yeah, I remember. I told you he’d been murdered, but you weren’t interested.”
“It’s not that I wasn’t interested. I just didn’t know what I could do to help. Have you spoken with the police?”
“Yeah. They didn’t care. They said he’d died of natural causes in the hospital. But I know he didn’t.”
“Are you comfortable discussing this on the phone, or would you rather meet in person?”
I was afraid that I might have given her too many choices to make. Either/or questions may have been beyond her brain capacity. Finally, she responded, “I guess the phone’s okay. But I can’t stay on long. I’ve got to go back to work later, and I just came home to do some more packing. Can you believe the Bitch is evicting me?”
I was guessing that the Bitch and the Slut were one and the same. I don’t know why Jennifer bothered even having a first name. “Do you mean that Jennifer Phillips has asked you to move?”
“Isn’t that what I said? Yeah, she’s selling the condo as soon as it’s hers. I can’t afford to buy it, so I’m moving in with my boyfriend.” Boyfriend?! Didn’t take her long to bounce back. I wonder if he had a motive to get rid of Phillips?
“Oh, I’m glad you have some place to go. Let me ask you, why are you so sure William Phillips was murdered?”
“I saw him taking some pills. I asked him what they were for and he said ‘energy.’ I took one of them and asked a friend who works at a drug store what they are, and she asked the pharmacist, and he said ‘ephedrine.’ It’s a diet pill. And an upper. And can cause heart attacks if you’ve got problems. Well, he had problems, but we were trying to control them with diet and exercise—if you don’t mind me saying so, you could use the same.” Yeah, I did mind, but I didn’t want to interrupt the flow. “Come see me and I’ll give you a free evaluation. Anyhow, that’s how we met. His doctor wanted him to start exercising and he joined the gym I work at. Anyway, he hated to exercise and loved to eat, so he said Jennifer gave him the pills to help him lose weight without his having to exercise as much. I told him he was being silly. He couldn’t lose weight unless he ate less and moved more. But he wanted the easy way out. Anyway, Jennifer knew he had a heart condition, but gave him the pills anyway. So she killed him.”
Interesting. I could understand why the cops hadn’t been interested—hearsay, and besides ephedrine was legal. Regulated, but legal. There really wasn’t anything to investigate. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if Tyler was right, if maybe Jennifer had given Phillips the pills hoping he would have a heart attack.
“How long had you and … Billy … been seeing each other?” There was no reason I needed the information. I was just curious.
“For about six months.”
“You mean, while his wife was pregnant?” I was afraid she would hear the dismay in my voice and hang up, but, as difficult as it seems, I had actually overestimated her sensitivity to nuances.
Tyler snorted, “Yeah, she was pregnant all right, but by who?”
Whom, I mentally corrected. “Do you mean that the baby isn’t Phillips’? Then who’s the father? And why didn’t Phillips divorce Jennifer? Why did he let everyone accept that he was the father?”
I was afraid I had asked too many questions again, but Tyler rose to the occasion. “Ego. He didn’t want anyone—including her—to know he’d had the snip right after they’d gotten married. He thought people would think he was less of a man. But he told me he had enough kids, didn’t want more. He said he wasn’t gonna get bamboozled—his word, not mine—into marriage again by a pregnant mistress. It had happened to him twice, which was two times too many, he said. Especially since this last time it was a trick.” It looked as though Marilyn wasn’t the only one suspicious about Jennifer’s first pregnancy.
“And he just accepted her adultery?”—of course, what was he doing with Tyler?—“Why didn’t he divorce her? I mean, ego goes only so far.”
“The pre-nup.” It looked like I was right, but it turned out that he was the shrewd one, not Jennifer. “He made her sign one. If he divorced her, she got a lump sum. I don’t remember how much, but it was a lot of money to someone like me. But I doubt it would of kept her in shoes for more than a month.”
“And if she divorced him?”
“She got nada. Well, a tiny fraction of what she’d get if he divorced her. Anyway, he got the best deal of all—she would never divorce him, and he could divorce her if he wanted. But he didn’t want. He said he’d done it twice already and didn’t need the hassle of another divorce. He said he’d never marry again anyway, and this way he could look respectable in public and still play around.”
“Did he ever speculate—guess—who the father might be?”
“He wasn’t sure. He thought maybe her personal trainer. For all he knew, he said, it could have been anyone. She wasn’t getting much from him, so she had to get it somewhere.”
“Did Jennifer know about the vasectomy?”
“Yeah, he told her after she said she was preggers. He said her punishment would be to stay married to him, while he’d play around as much as he wanted, and she couldn’t do anything about it. Not if she wanted to live in luxury.”
“I’m surprised—I mean, I admire you. Most people would have threatened to tell everyone about the vasectomy, especially since Jennifer’s evicting you.”
“Oh, I tried. But she just laughed at me. Said who would people believe—her, a lawyer, or me, an aerobics instructor who barely made it through high school? She said people would just think I was bitter or angry, ‘specially ’cause she’s got a birth certificate with his name on it as the father. She said they were legally married when the baby was born, so his name was on the certificate, unless she said otherwise. Which she didn’t. She said she’d sue me for slander if I spread what she called ‘rumors.’”
“Then why are you telling me?”
“I figure I got nuthin’ to lose. I mean, she’s not really gonna sue me, is she? It’s not like I’m puttin’ it in the paper or nuthin’. And there’s no way she can prove I started the rumor—maybe it was the personal trainer or someone, ya know?”
“You didn’t mind the arrangement with … er … Billy?” It was really hard for me to say the nickname.
“Hey, I knew the score. I enjoyed my life with him—got the condo rent free, lots of spending money. His wife knew about me, so he didn’t have to hide me. And he hated that big fancy house of theirs, said he felt more comfortable in the condo. So we were together a lot. We even went out publicly. But not to any of his business dinners or charity stuff. Just movies and supper type things. Nah, I didn’t mind. He had the best of both worlds, and so did I—a rich guy—a rich old guy—and no strings. He didn’t care I had another boyfriend, and he never demanded much in the sack, if you get my drift.”
I couldn’t help but recall Mae West’s bon mot: “I was Snow White, but I drifted.”
She sniffed—between the snorting and the sniffling, I wondered if she snorted cocaine while we spoke. “And I really did, well, sort of did, love him. I’ll miss him.”
Or his money. I’m just a cynic at heart.
I had the information I wanted—more, actually—so I said, “Thanks. You’ve been a big help. I’ll call you if I hear anything else suspicious. In the meantime, good luck with your move.”
“Yeah. Whatever. Thanks, I guess.”
Chapter 23
Tuesday Evening, December 3
Fifth Chanukah Candle
I finally headed for home where there was a full mail box, a hungry cat, a smelly litter box, empty bird feeders and wilted plants. I was able to take care of everything but the bird feeders, since it was dark out already. But I would make sure to fill them the next day—I had heard the “s” word on the weather report for Thursday, and the birds really needed the feeders when it snowed.
While I was home, I pulled out the list of “facts” and added the supposition that Phillips had been given ephedrine by his wife, even though he had a heart condition. I wasn’t sure how, or even if, it was relevant, but I added it anyway.
I made myself a veggie burger with cheese—the closest to a cheeseburger I had eaten since I started keeping Kosher in rabbinical school—while reading through the paper. Then I headed back to Mishkan Or to meet with the Silbermans.
Thelma was a beautiful woman—small boned, with a delicate peaches-and-cream complexion. Even dressed in casual clothes, she looked elegant. She hadn’t yet started her latest round of chemo—it was scheduled for after their renewal of vows—and her hair had grown back a silvery white which she wore in a flattering pageboy. You’d never know to look at her just how ill she was. She also had a fantastic attitude and was always upbeat and optimistic.
Ted was tall and distinguished looking with a full head of thick white hair and a well-trimmed goatee and moustache. He walked with a silver-tipped cane, necessary after his leg had been broken in an automobile accident several years earlier. The injury made it difficult for him to stand for any period of time to conduct autopsies, which was why he had decided to teach instead. From what I heard, he was a master teacher.
We discussed the upcoming ceremony. They had scheduled it for the middle of December, despite the possibility of bad weather, before Thelma started chemo again. Thelma may have been cheerful on the outside, but she was still a realist. And, as a physician, Ted knew exactly what was happening and what the prognosis was.
“Thanks for helping us with the ceremony,” Thelma said, getting up from her chair. “I’m looking forward to it.”
“So am I,” I said. “Before you leave, Ted, I have a favor to ask.”
