holding the sarong I intended to hang in there. Leah opened the door and looked at it questioningly.
“Are you going on a cruise?”
“These are for the mirrors. I didn’t have any black cloth.”
“Are you kidding? It’s going to look like we’re holding a luau.”
“A very somber luau.”
Leah shook her head. “Sophie.”
“I put the black one with the purple and turquoise fish in the living room.”
“I gave that to you when you got accepted into USF! I can’t believe you still have it!”
“I take it with me on every beach vacation.”
“Well, I guess it’s okay. After all, you’re putting the red one in the bathroom and the one I gave you is predominantly black….”
“And if you’ll recall, the fish on it are wearing very serious expressions.”
“Bob loved fish.” And that was it—Leah was in tears again.
I hugged her and tried to conjure up some fond memories of Bob ordering halibut. I wanted to feel more sad about this, if for no other reason than to prove to myself that I wasn’t a sociopath, but my main emotion at the moment was relief. If Leah could just have another breakdown over Bob’s eating habits in front of the police, that might sway their opinions in the right direction. Leah wiped her tears and tried to smooth a crease in a skirt that I had lent her. I slipped past her and covered the last mirror. I heard Leah gasp in what I took to be horror as I pushed in the last thumbtack. “Oh, come on, Leah, it’s a mellow red.”
“It’s not the sarong—I just remembered what I forgot.”
“Which is?”
“Mama.”
“Shit!” I locked eyes with Leah. If Mama came for a visit and discovered a tube of Monistat 7 in the bathroom drawer you could count on her demanding to know why the offending offspring hadn’t called her the minute she felt an itch. Forgetting to call to let her know her son-in-law was murdered was not going to go over well. I glanced at my watch. “She must not have watched the morning news or she would have called by now—”
The phone rang. Leah looked like she had just swallowed her tongue and I felt the threat of a migraine.
“It could be a reporter looking for a quote,” I said.
“Do you have caller ID?”
“No, but I’m going to get it any day now.”
“How helpful.”
Leah and I walked over to the phone and stared at it as it rang for the fourth time. I decided to live dangerously and pick it up right before the answering machine did it for me. “Hel—”
“What kind of child doesn’t call her mother when her sister’s schlemiel husband has come to a schwartzen sof?”
The more excited Mama got, the more Yiddish she used. I wasn’t exactly fluent in the language but I knew that to come to a schwartzen sof was to come to a bad end and that schlemiel was a polite way of calling Bob a prick. I cleared my throat.
“Mama, it really wasn’t my place to call you—Leah should have done that.” I winced as soon as I said it. It was an unfortunate force of habit to transfer my mother’s wrath onto my younger sister. I mouthed the word sorry to Leah. She in turn gave me what I had come to know as the “I’m going to get you for that” look.
“So where’s your sister and the lobbus? Are they all right?”
“Leah and Jack are fine. Jack slept over at a friend’s house and Leah’s…” Leah began to shake her head furiously at me. “Leah’s here, but she’s asleep.”
“At ten in the morning she sleeps?”
“Well, she didn’t sleep much last night. As you pointed out, her husband was killed.”
“So who shot him? Was he some kind of criminal? If I find out that he got my Leah mixed up in any kind of monkey business I’ll…I’ll give him the Einhoreh, that’s what I’ll do.”
“What good—or bad—is the evil eye going to do now that he’s already dead?” I heard Leah choke back another sob and I mentally slapped myself.
Mama muttered some more Yiddish before coming back to English. “Enough with the sleeping—put Leah on the phone.”
It was tempting to think that Mama was just being insensitive to my sister’s need for rest, but it was more likely that she knew I was lying, which was impressive because I’m a pretty good liar.
I took a moment to weigh my loyalty to my sister against my desperate desire to get off the phone. Fortunately, I didn’t have to make the choice because Leah, in what I assume was an unexpected attack of altruism, took the phone from me.
“I’m here, Mama. Yes, I’m okay…Jack’s okay…No, I haven’t eaten anything today…”
I left the room to allow Leah some privacy and to avoid being stuck with the phone again.
CHAPTER 3
Alicia let out an exasperated sigh. “Dead people are always so much more likable than the rest of us.”
—Words To Die By
Leah and I were only fifteen minutes late in meeting Anatoly at her house. This was a new record for Leah, but for some reason Anatoly didn’t look like he was in the mood for handing out gold stars.
“Can we go in now?” he asked.
“Hello?” I suggested. “When you greet someone you’re supposed to say hello. Otherwise people accuse you of having Asperger’s.”
Leah looked around the front yard and then stared at the still closed front door. “Where’s the police tape?”
“What’s the point of having police tape if there are no police here to enforce the restriction?” Anatoly asked. “Unless the goal is to entice troublemaking teenagers to mess with the crime scene.”
Leah threw him a confused look. “But in the movies…”
“Hollywood has a very different approach to crime fighting than the police.” Anatoly looked at his watch impatiently. “The police may or may not come back to look for more clues, but they have to accept the fact that by that time things will have been altered.”
“Okay, so let’s go in and alter them.” I looked expectantly at Leah, who was examining the doorknob as if it were attached to the gates of hell.
Anatoly cleared his throat. “Leah, if you want to wait out here I’ll understand. Just give me the keys and I’ll come get you if I have any questions.”
Leah shook her head. “I’ve got to go in eventually.” She
