Alon Davidson had lied about his alibi and had tried to lie about kissing Esther. He might have lied about not having an affair with her. Moshe Klinger had lied—or obfuscated the truth—about the timing of his family's move from Haifa to Netanya, and his wife, Yael, had lied about the reason why they had stopped sheltering immigrants. Leah Goldin had not told me about the affair she'd had with Strauss, and I was beginning to suspect she had also lied to me, but I wasn't sure about what. She had also called Strauss, presumably to inform him of my talk with her. Strauss, in turn, had lied about the reason why Esther had been troubled during her final days.
Each of them could have perfectly innocent reasons for their lies and evasions, or they might be trying to cover their tracks. I needed to find a way to separate the innocent from the guilty.
The second problem was that, as far as I knew, apart from Alon Davidson, none of the men and women on my list had a motive to kill Esther Grunewald. And none of them, including Davidson, had a motive to kill Willie Ackerland, not to mention deface the bodies. Maybe one of them had gone crazy, as Rivlin believed the killer had done. If so, the killer just might be some random stranger, but I had based my entire investigation on the assumption that he or she knew Esther and had a reason to kill her.
My instincts told me that assumption was correct. This was no random murder, but a targeted killing. The killer had gone after Esther specifically. My task was to figure out the
Which was easier said than done.
I let out a grunt of exasperation and stopped walking, leaned against the fence of a deserted schoolyard, blew some cool air down the front of my shirt, and fired up a cigarette.
Raising my head to blow out the first plume of smoke, my eyes lighted on the display window of the store directly across the street. It was a bridal shop, and three female mannequins draped in wedding dresses stood erect behind the glass. Shifting my gaze away, I took another drag, then paused as an itch started in the back of my mind. I pushed myself off the fence, waited for a bus to burble by, and crossed the street.
The leftmost mannequin was in a clingy gown, high at the neck, made of some smooth fabric—silk or satin. The middle one wore a conservative number, with long sleeves and lots of lace, a small white bag hanging from the crook of an arm. The third had on a low-cut dress with frills and a cap with a veil on its head. But the dresses weren't what had brought on that itch. It was what encircled the long neck of the third mannequin. A pearl necklace.
Twenty minutes later, I stood on her threshold. She wore a smile on her face when she cracked the door open partway, but it would not have fooled a blind man. She wasn't happy to see me.
"Mr. Lapid," she began, aiming for and failing to achieve a lighthearted tone, "I was not expecting you."
"I have a few more questions to ask you, Mrs. Goldin."
She had on a green dress that went an inch past her knees and clung advantageously to her heavy breasts. Her mid-heel shoes were black. She'd swept back her curls, clipping them on either side of her head. Like last time, she looked to be in her teens.
"I'd be happy to answer them, but I'm afraid that this is not a good time. Perhaps if you came by tomorrow…"
"Just one question regarding Esther's lover, Amir Davidovitch," I said, making up a name similar to Alon Davidson.
"All right," Leah Goldin said. "What about him?"
Closing my eyes, I inhaled a deep lungful of air and let it out one molecule at a time. My head throbbed. The bruises on my torso tingled. So Davidson had been telling the truth. He had not been Esther's lover. Leah had lied to me. I felt a mixture of disappointment and anger. I'd wanted Davidson to be the killer, but that had just become a little less likely. I had lost my best suspect.
I opened my eyes and stared silently at Leah. Her eyes narrowed under my gaze, her frown adding years to her childlike face.
"What?" she said. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"His name is not Amir Davidovitch, but Alon Davidson," I said. "You never heard either name until I told it to you, did you? He wasn't Esther's lover. You lied to me."
She froze for just an instant, recovering quickly. "No, of course not. Why would I? I just got the names mixed up, that's all." She let out a self-deprecating chuckle. "I'm very bad with names, and the children kept me up half the night, so my mind is—"
"Is your husband home, Mrs. Goldin?"
