The Others by Sarah Blau (e reader for manga txt) 📕

both members of your Others gang, and this was significant to the murderer. He turned them into the same biblical figures they dressed up as for your freshman Purim party.” Eli’s fingers type quickly, his face screwed up in concentration. “Dina went as Miriam the prophetess and Ronit was Lilith. They both chose these costumes themselves?”

“Of course. You think they’d let anyone tell them what to do?”

“The question is if there’s anyone else who can understand these allusions – other than you. I mean, I want to expand our suspect pool.”

My ice cream has already started to melt, the raisins drowning in the creamy rum. I fish out a frozen raisin, bite into it, and my teeth go numb with cold. What are the chances it was all staged in my honour? A diabolical play staged for one spectator? My teeth chatter in pain.

“And what was the endgame here? The purpose of all this?” Eli enquires.

Yes, what are they telling you, these two dead mothers?

Thank God for Eli and his accountant’s common sense.

Watching him type in figures and data, assumptions and theories, I finally start to calm down, imagining Hercule Poirot and his notepad, or Jane Marple and her excellent memory, but Eli and his phone will do just fine.

“Since the police focused on you as their primary suspect, it’s possible that the murderer was actively trying to frame you, but not only are you off the suspect list, you even got a quasi-fling with the detective out of it.” He doesn’t type that last bit.

“Thanks for the reminder.”

“Sheila, I’m going to have to hear so much about him in the foreseeable future, the least you can do is let me laugh about it.”

I let him, and he carries on. “Another question worth asking is, why now? Anyone who has ever read a crime novel knows the starting point is paramount. So what was the starting point in our case? When did it all begin? What changed?”

Get the hell out of here.

“I’ll tell you what changed. Avihu. That little shit is back in Israel.”

“Avihu?”

“Avihu Malchin, you know, Naama’s husband.” And Gali’s father, but I didn’t mention that. “I checked, and he was in the country during both murders.”

“Good job!” Eli seems genuinely impressed, and I realize how seriously he’s taking his new role. He taps the new note button and calls it “Suspects,” then immediately changes the title to “The Usual Suspects.” I think I’ve already mentioned that he is a man of many fine qualities, but originality isn’t one of them.

“So we have suspect number one,” he says. “Who else?”

“It has to be someone who for some reason hated them both, and was probably at the Purim party.”

“It can also be someone who was told about the party. I’m not ruling out Naama’s daughter yet.”

“Fine. Then add Neria Grossman and Taliunger to the list. They were both at Ronit’s party.”

They both also nurtured a secret hatred at some point, and both had good reasons. Good? Excellent reasons. Especially him. Although deep down, I’m slowly starting to think that these crimes were committed by a woman, something about the aesthetics of the murder scenes, the toys, the red lipstick, someone here has been playing with dollies.

“Anyone else?” Eli asks, and despite his professionalism and innate powers of deduction, I realize this is a conversation I’d like to be having with Micha, compiling a suspect list, adding and editing out names, rallying around a cause, there’s nothing like a common goal to bring people together! But I know I wouldn’t be able to have such a rational, constructive conversation with him. I guess it’s true what they say, love really does screw with your head.

“Anyone else?” he repeats the question. “Look, I know it’s not easy,” he says, putting his hand on my shoulder, stirring up the memory of the hand that gently placed itself on me at the Purim party. The small hand of Dina Kaminer’s brother Yaniv.

I still remember the slow, pleasurable crackling of electricity between us, until Dina came and put an end to it. Dina, who protected her little brother, from what exactly, from you? Just like Miriam peeking from between the reeds, watching over her baby brother floating in a straw basket on the River Nile…

“Yaniv Kaminer,” I reply.

“The nut job? The guy who lost his marbles?”

“He’s no nut job,” I say, “trust me, he isn’t.”

Kaminer and his little hands. A few years ago, there was a deluge of rumours about him. He had left his wife and children, his promising job at the Technion, and become a hardcore Breslov Hasid. The kind that drives around in vans blasting techno music, stopping traffic every few blocks to get out and dance in the middle of the street. I remember thinking about him with a curious mixture of jealousy and concern, the same way I feel about anyone who steps outside the familiar frame of his everyday life, How did he do that? How did he pull it off?

Two years ago I bumped into him at a bus stop. At first I didn’t understand why that bearded Breslover was staring at me. Then our eyes met, and behind their glossy haze I recognized Yaniv Kaminer.

The most interesting thing about that chance run-in was the fact that until my bus arrived, we engaged in perfectly normal, polite chit-chat – from the general “How are you,” and “How’s Dina,” to the obligatory “How are the kids,” and the perfunctory “Are you still in contact with any of our old classmates?” – never once acknowledging the giant Breslov elephant between us.

“Good, good,” Eli says, “because our killer isn’t a crazy person. He follows a strict, even obsessive logic.” Yaniv’s name is added to the list of suspects.

“You actually think he’d murder his sister?”

“I think it wouldn’t be the weirdest part in all this,” he replies. “Intra-family murder happens all the time. What doesn’t make sense are the dolls, the lipstick, the whole obsession with motherhood.”

I don’t respond, still feeling the