Free The Passover Murder by Lee Harris Page A

watch. “You must be starving. It’s a long time since we left Oakwood.”
    “Let’s have lunch. There are plenty of places around, and it’s my treat.”
    “Thank you.”
    “Let me get a bag first. You’ll take Iris’s purse home with you and give it a good once-over. Maybe you’ll learn something the police didn’t know.”
    “I’ll do my best.”
    “That’s all we ask.”
    Marilyn always seems to know some wonderful place to eat, wherever she happens to be. Today was no exception. We walked into a little restaurant on Lexington Avenue that managed to have exactly one small table for two empty, and we sat down to a lovely lunch.
    “I think I’ll have the salade niçoise,” Marilyn said, her face half-covered with the menu.
    “A what?” I asked.
    “Niçoise,” she explained. “That means it’s from Nice, you know, the city in the south of France.”
    “Yes, of course,” I said with some embarrassment, remembering high school French a few minutes too late. “What’s in it?”
    “Lots of nice things, tuna, potatoes, green beans, little cherry tomatoes, even some anchovies.”
    It was the tuna that caught my attention. “I’ll give it a try. It sounds good, and I don’t think I’ve ever had it.”
    “You and Jack should think about a vacation in Europe sometime. He gets a lot of vacation time, doesn’t he?”
    “He does, but he’s always working on his law books.”
    “How’s he doing?”
    “Not bad,” I said with pride. “He was very unsure of himself when he began, but he’s gained a lot of self-confidence. I think he was afraid he’d be looked down on because he’s over thirty and a cop. But he’s gotten some admiration for both of those things. He has first-hand knowledge that almost no one else has, and there have been a couple of times when he was able to quote a relevant part of a law.”
    “I’m glad he’s as smart as he is nice. I could tell the minute I met him he was a good man. He looks you in the eye when he talks to you, and I think that’s very important.”
    It was more a comment on Marilyn, I thought, than on Jack, but I thanked her for her kind words. Marilyn is a very aboveboard person. That’s probably why she gets along so well with her adult daughter. She doesn’t manipulate. If there’s something going on in Mel’s life that she doesn’t approve of or has questions about, she asks openly. I suppose childless people always have strong feelings about how to raise children—and they’re often wrong—but I liked the way Marilyn and her daughter interacted, and I always sensed the respect each had for the other, over and above the affection.
    My salad was a happy new culinary experience, although Marilyn assured me they were better in Nice. For my part I was delighted they were this good on Lexington Avenue.
    “When we finish, I’ll pick up the car and we’ll drive down to Kips Bay. Then what?” Marilyn asked.
    “Well, it’s been a long day. Jack and I can take a ride over the weekend. He can tell me what precinct it’s in, and I’ll see if I can find the detective who handled the case.”
    “Do you think he’s still there? Sixteen years is a long time.”
    “If he isn’t, he’s probably somewhere else in the city. And in any case, Jack can get a copy of the file and go through it with me.”
    “It doesn’t sound like fun. It must be a very nasty job, reading autopsy reports and looking at ugly pictures of victims.”
    “It is. But you keep telling yourself, this is going to help me find a killer.”
    “A beautiful little woman that didn’t weigh a hundred pounds. I will never be able to accept what happened to her.”
    “How did she die, Marilyn?” I asked. It was a question I needed an answer to, but she had never volunteered it and I had been reluctant to ask.
    “She was beaten to death,” Marilyn said sadly. “I think he broke her neck.”
    “How awful,” I said aloud, and to myself I thought: This was no case of random