The Silent Bride awm-7 Page 12

"No, it can't wait. I know your father is slowing down," Ching told her.

  April groaned. She had to look at Wendy's client list, see if there was anything funny about any of the other weddings she'd done. She had to stay focused on finding Tovah's killer. But she couldn't resist the sore subject of her father slowing down. It would be a disaster if he retired.

  "Who says?" she demanded. Her father looked pretty good to her. As long as she could remember he'd been bald and skinny, had worn thick glasses, and stumbled around with his buddies after drinking too much Johnnie Walker. As far as she could tell, he was still energetic on the two-P.M. to two-A.M. schedule.

  "This is what I heard. You with me? Gao is interested in meeting him. He's very good. They come from the same area, you know, speak the same language. I thought it might help you out."

  April didn't see how it would help her out.

  "April?"

  "Yeah."

  "You're very stubborn, anybody ever tell you that?"

  "Yeah." Everybody told her that. Her parents, her bosses, Mike, now her sister-cousin. What were they talking about? She wasn't stubborn. She was the essence of flexible.

  "Look, I don't want you to have bad luck. Be an old maid. Do I have to spell this out for you?" Ching was getting impatient.

  "I don't have any idea what you're talking about," April said huffily.

  "Oh, come on, April. I wanted to marry an American. I

  intended

  to marry an American. My parents flipped; I'm not kidding. Boy, did we fight. Every time we talked it was a fight."

  "I remember. But you didn't marry an American." End of argument.

  "Where Matthew grew up, he was like the only Chinese in school, okay? He's as American as they come, hot dogs and pizza every day, no Chinese food at all, and he doesn't speak a word."

  "Ching, I have to get up early tomorrow."

  "And frankly, he didn't want to marry Chinese any more than 1 did. He thinks Chinese girls are bossy. Our falling in love was an accident."

  "Ching! Stop already."

  "You love fighting with your ma. Get over it. Just make it happen. Take control. Listen to the

  I Ching,

  Apr 0."

  April snorted. The

  I Ching

  was the Chinese oracle, possibly the world's oldest fortune-telling device and guide to correct behavior. April did consult the I

  Ching

  from time to time, but it never gave her any advice she wanted to have. Patience, patience, patience. That was about it. But that wasn't the

  I Ching

  Ching meant.

  "Look, you and I go back a long way," Ching said.

  True, all the way back to birth. Ching had a fat mother. April had a skinny one. In middle school they used to roll around in bed laughing about it. Same mother, different sizes. Ching ended up going to college in California and dating a bunch of American boys. She'd gotten out. April had always been jealous. Now Ching was marrying a Chinese after all and was considered the good and golden daughter by everyone. April's concessions to her parents left her with nothing but the unpleasant label "worm daughter" because she wasn't doing better.

  "Stubborn!" Ching repeated. "If your dad retires without choosing his replacement, he'll have no one owing him. He'll get nothing out of it."

  "So you're thinking of Gao as his replacement," April said slowly. That would mean she wouldn't have to take care of him and Skinny in their retirement, as they threatened every time she talked about marrying Mike.

  "Do I have to spell it out for you?"

  "Ah, so. Replace me," she murmured thoughtfully.

  "Yes, replace you," Ching said. "Duh!"

  April wondered why she hadn't thought of this before. Outsourcing children was a ten-thousand-year-old Chinese tradition. No son, adopt a son. When April started dating Mike, she'd given Skinny Dragon the poodle Dim Sum as a peace offering. The dog was cute but couldn't pay the rent or fix the toilets, couldn't have a grandchild. Brilliant, Americanized sister-cousin understood Chinese manipulation better than she. Interesting.

  "Gao had a good position in Hong Kong. He just threw it off and came here with the wrong people. You know your dad's a good guy. If he thinks Gao is a comer, he'll help out. If Gao caters to your mom, she'll like him. You leave. Gao takes your place and pays the mortgage."

  "Does he have the money?" April said finally, a little breathless with the possibility of escape.

  "He will as soon as he gets the job."

  "Ching, you're amazing." In all the years that April's father and mother had schemed and plotted to get her to do what they wanted it never occurred to April that she might actively manipulate her parents right back. Ching interrupted her reflection on the subject.

  "April, you know that murdered girl?"

  Again

  that girl.

  "Her name was Tovah," April said softly.

  "She was wearing a Tang Ling gown. I saw Tang today. She's very upset about it, but doesn't want her name in the paper. It's bad luck for her too."

  '7esus." April was stunned. She'd forgotten Ching's acquaintance with the famous designer. "Did Tang know her?"

  "Yes. It was a custom gown. She'd met the girl and her mother. It's just so terrible."

  "Yes, it is, Ching," April murmured.

  "One more thing," Ching said, suddenly hesitant.

  "What's that?"

  "Tang offered me a gown," she said meekly.

  "Wow. Lucky you," April said lightly, though her head spun a little with the happy news. Not only a Chinese groom, and a Chinese wedding, but a famous Chinese designer gown, too! Skinny was going to have a field day with this.

  "My mother doesn't know. She's going to kill me because she wants a traditional wedding, the whole bit. No white gown."

  "No, no, Ching. Don't worry. It's your day. You get to choose. Mai will understand. Everything's going to be fine," April told her. The magic words finally got the happy bride off the phone.

  Twenty

  O

  n Tuesday morning at quarter to eight April called in for her messages at Midtown North. Lieutenant Iriarte himself instantly came on the line.

  "You in today?" he demanded.

  "No, sir."

  He grunted. "What's the story with that bride

  case?"

  "Unclear," she murmured, wondering whether she should ask for his help.

  "Had a gypsy case a few years back," he mused, trying to be friendly. "Let me tell you, those Romanies sell their girls, too. At the weddings, they take over a trailer park or a motel. Relatives come from all over. Crime goes way up in the area. People don't know what hit them. They get ripped off every which way. You hear about that?"

  "Yes, sir, there was a seminar about it a few years ago," April replied. Gypsies posing as plumbers, driveway pavers, phone repairmen, utility workers, went into people's houses, got them all confused, stole their money and everything else they could carry away. The victims were mostly old people, no longer sharp and thinking defensively. It didn't apply to midtown Manhattan, or to Riverdale.

  "I could go on and on about those Romanies. Their weddings are just an excuse for a big brawl. They get drunk, gamble money and women, knife each other. When we bring them in, they run riot over the precinct. They have it all over us. I'm telling you these people have no rule of law. We've seen some pretty bad stuff. Killings, knifings, rapes ..."

  "Yes, sir," April said. But it didn't have anything to do with her law-abiding Orthodox Jews.

  "Anybody who'd sell a little girl is sick in the head. You got a line on that?" he said finally.

  "Not yet." But after a late-night conversation with Inspector Bellaqua, April did have a slightly different take on the matter. Turns out it was the girls' families that enticed the boys' families. They didn't

  sell

  their daughters; they bought husbands for them. Quite the opposite of the Chinese way. During a restless night, April tried to imagine her paren
ts putting out a nickel to impress a son-in-law. She thought about Ching agonizing over wearing an extravagant Tang Ling gown, and her auntie Mai worrying that she would never get married. This started her thinking about something Mike had said last night, but she couldn't tease out what it was.

  "Thanks for the input, sir, I'll look into it," she said about the gypsies. Should she ask him?

  "And you're getting behind here. That's not good," he grumbled, abandoning friendly. "Don't drop the ball."

  "No, sir," April said.

  Iriarte was always worried about her dropping the ball. But she never did. Last week she'd been working a car theft. A tourist from Tennessee had left his Mercedes unattended on Sixth Avenue in front of

  Radio City Music Hall. She also had a home invasion on Central Park West. A white male posing as the decorator had forced his way into a co-op, tied up the maid, and stolen some expensive jewelry and silver that turned out to be the owner's family heirlooms. Neither exactly major crimes. She also had a court appearance on another case for which the DA's office needed to prep her. But it was nothing hot-button like this major homicide racing toward the forty-eight-hour mark with no resolution in sight. Should she ask him?

  "Oh, and by the way, you got Doled," Iriarte said.

  "What! Are you sure?" Was he pranking her?

  "Dead sure. The notification's for today, so you gotta go, you hear me?" he demanded.

  "Yes, sir," she said.

  She was in her car on her way up to the Bronx to warn Hollis off Wendy before meeting Mike and Poppy Bellaqua at headquarters to view the wedding video, which had been viewed so far only at the Five-oh. She'd left Queens and just entered the Bronx going west on the Major Deegan Expressway toward Riverdale. Now she had to get off, turn around, and head back around the heel of the Bronx to the Bruckner Expressway that followed a northeasterly course in the direction of White Plains and New England.

  Shit.

  Dole was random drug testing. This was the one Department order that put all other orders, including major homicides, on the back burner. There was no getting around it, no missed appointments, no changing days, and nobody was exempt, from the police commissioner on down. Names were drawn every day, and the day you were picked you had to

  go up to Health Services and pee into two vials. The second vial was kept in case there was a challenge on the first one. If the drug test was positive, you were fired. Period.

  It was absolutely firm that you had to go that day so there was no chance for the passage of time to get anything funny out of your system. And there was no chance of cheating because someone came into the room with you and watched you provide your sample. In April's case, this was a particular agony because she had a major peeing-in-public phobia. Major. Everybody else breezed right through the nothing ordeal, but to April it was not a nothing ordeal. She didn't like even a female person in there with her, didn't like it at all.

  "Listen, you could help me out," she said slowly.

  "Oh, yeah?" Iriarte's voice brightened.

  "You could save us some time and have Charlie do some background work for me."

  "You got a suspect?"

  "Could be."

  "You got a name on that suspect?"

  "Yeah. Wendy Lotte. That's Lincoln, Oliver, double Tom, Eleanor. Got it?"

  "Yeah, yeah. Lot with two Ts and an E. Would that be Gwendolyn?"

  "No, just the W."

  "Would there be anything else?"

  "Tang Ling."

  "The dress designer?"

  "Yeah. The bride was wearing a Tang gown. Just indulge me a little."

  "Okay, can do."

  The Schoenfelds had five girls and four boys. April

  finished her Dole in record dme and spent an hour in the Schoenfelds' finished basement, talking in turn with all five girls and two of the boys while upstairs more sitdng shivah was going on, and outside a dozen reporters were taking photos of mourners and trying to get them to speak.

  April had totally expected to waste her time. Unlike in the movies, investigative interviews were never wrapped up in five minutes. First of all, it took hours of traveling time, across a bridge, two bridges, traffic all the way. When she got wherever she was going, sometimes the person she wanted was available, sometimes not. If she was really lucky, the person was there and willing to talk. But a lot of people thought they didn't know anything worthwhile and didn't want to talk. April had learned a long time ago that she couldn't ever go anywhere cold. She had to do some homework first, had to have some idea of what kind of information she wanted to elicit. And she had to know something about the person she wanted to question so a connection could be made.

  Usually it took hours and she went away with a little something, a tiny tidbit that might be important down the line and might not. What April knew about Tovah was that she was spacey, not all there. She wanted to know what that meant.

  At the same time Mike traveled to the Ribikoffs' three-story brick house in Flatbush, Brooklyn. He hadn't slept well without April. But after their dim sum dinner last night, he hadn't felt like spending the night with her and took her right home. A first. Now he was wide-awake and focused on his interview with the groom's family.

  He'd done some research on the family, and the background check had uncovered an uneventful life. The Ribikoffs were registered Republicans, had traveled to Israel in 1998 and 2000. They paid taxes every year and had never been audited. Their credit cards were far from maxed out. They owned their house and '94 Ford Explorer. No vehicular violations. They had four children of which Schmuel was the second. Their oldest child was a girl, married last year, now living upstate. The wedding had cost in the neighborhood of twenty thousand dollars, about ten percent of what the Schoenfelds had put out for Tovah's. The Ribikoffs' two younger boys were still in high school. Neither of them had ever been in trouble, nor had Schmuel, who was highly regarded by his teachers and classmates. The family business was real estate—not big-time like the Schoenfelds—but the Ribikoffs were not doing badly, either. They were connected to some recent Russian emigres, who hadn't been invited to the wedding. Was that good enough motive to kill the bride? Mike didn't think so.

  Unlike the Schoenfeld house, this one was comfortable but had little display of major wealth. Mr. Ribikoff himself answered the door. Thin, balding, sad-looking, and small, he didn't look like the kind of man who would seize a valuable diamond ring off a dying girl.

  "I don't know how I can help you. I told the detective yesterday I don't know why anyone would do something like this," he said, reluctantly offering Mike a seat in his living room.

  "How well did your son know Tovah?" Mike got to the point right away.

  Ribikoff lifted a hand. "The boy saw her picture.

  She was a pretty girl." The almost-father-in-law's face became animated for a moment as he thought of how pretty his son's wife would have been. "A nice, quiet girl, not a chatterbox. He liked her; what else did he need to know?"

  "How did they meet?"

  "My wife's friend, Ruth Lasker, she had the photo. My wife, she liked the girl's face, too. I liked her. Rebecca told Ruth we were interested." He dipped his chin. "Then he came to take a look at Schmuel praying."

  Mike frowned. "Who?"

  "Schoenfeld. He came to the Yeshiva, looked at the boy, liked what he saw." Mr. Ribikoff had moment of pride for his son, who'd attracted the interest of a rich and important family.

  "Then what happened?"

  "Naturally my wife wanted to go to the house, have a cup of coffee, eat a piece of cake, and see the girl before they started to date. But Suri Schoenfeld refused. That's the kind of person she is."

  "Why?"

  "She didn't want us telling Schmuel what to do. She insisted it was up to the children to decide if they liked each other." He rolled his eyes. "My wife is not like Suri Schoenfeld with the airs, but she does have a mind of her own. Why are you asking this? Who do you suspect?"

  "We're looking for anything unusu
al."

  "Oh, there was plenty unusual." Ribikoff made a face. "We live in a tight community here. You can get everything you need here. You never have to leave. Everybody understands the rules. My wife complains that the whole world knows your business,

  knows your kids' business. They see you coming, they see you going, and the talk keeps up all day long. That's why it's a tradition to find new blood for the children, people outside your own four corners. But new blood that's the same blood. You know what I'm talking?"

  Mike nodded. He knew exactly what Ribikoff was talking.

  "Tovah was a religious girl and the family would have been good for Schmuel, but they polluted us."

  "Polluted?"

  "Yes, we do things simply, in a family way. We stick with the people we know. We don't bring in goyim—

  shfartzes

  from Africa to arrange the flowers. No offense, but you see what I'm saying? Look at the shame they've brought us," he said sadly.

  Mike changed the subject. "Tell me about Tovah's ring," he said.

  "It was a very costly ring. That's all I'm going to say." His eyes strayed toward the ceiling.

  "Why did you remove it from Tovah's finger?"

  Ribikoff closed his eyes, opened them, avoided the steady gaze of the detective. "It has nothing to do with this."

  "Did you think the girl was dead?" Mike persisted. Did he want the girl dead?

  "I didn't know. I wasn't thinking." Ribikoff crossed his legs.

  "It seems an odd reaction."

  Ribikoff clicked his tongue. "It was what it was."

  "You just wanted it back?" Mike probed softly.

  The man erupted. "Well, of course I wanted it back. The boy couldn't have married her after that, could he?" he said angrily.

  Mike frowned. "Even if she'd recovered?"

  Ribikoff shook his head as if only a dummy would think otherwise, then jabbed his chin belligerently at Mike. "It was a costly item. They would never have given it back."

  Mike was chilled by these answers. He had his suspicions about the whole arrangement. Bad feeling rocketed back and forth between the two families. The Ribikoffs were not sitting shivah with the Schoenfelds. Something was way off the normal about the Ribikoffs, but that didn't make them killers. Mike questioned Schmuel and his mother closely but learned nothing really useful.