The Letter
Winter was almost over, or what passes for winter in Southern California, and the threat of spring lurked right outside my window. Any other time I would be happy to see the warmer days and longer nights, but I was in no mood for sunshine and happiness and, everywhere I looked, signs of love. I’d just returned from a week in Big Bear, where I didn’t want to be to begin with. While there I helped solve a complicated murder case, assiduously avoided snow, and accomplished a possible permanent breakup with the woman I loved.
Right now I was sitting in my office, staring at the envelope I held in my hands. It was handwritten and looked almost like a child’s scrawl. “I wonder what this is?” I asked the empty room. My partner, Sean Donahue, an ex-cop who kind of stumbled into my life after my original partner died, had left the office quietly. He suggested I get a dog to take my mind off things; I appreciated the sentiment but not the particular suggestion. There was no dog on the face of the earth capable of making me forget the disastrous crash-and-burn breakup I’d just lived through. But the envelope in my hands just might.
I opened it carefully, not at all sure of what I would find inside. On a piece of lined notebook paper was written a simple plea, in the same child’s scrawl on the envelope: My sister Leeba is trying to hike across the country with her friend Hannah and fly to Jerusalem. I am ten years old and don’t want her to go. I’m afraid for her. Can you please find her and bring her home? I can pay you. I have $5.00. Thank you, Mr. Simon. Sophie Kohen. The letter included a five-dollar bill folded up inside.
I’m not accustomed to receiving letters offering me such a vast sum of money. Nor do I regularly accept jobs from young girls. But there was something so plaintive about the request that I couldn’t ignore it. And helping someone that age was more appealing than adopting a dog to keep me occupied while I figured out what I wanted from life. There was an address at the bottom of the page, 632 Old Park Way, Los Angeles, California. I got up from my desk and took the letter into Sean’s office. “Read this, please,” I asked as I handed him the single sheet of paper. He did and looked up at me.
“You’re not thinking of doing this, are you?”
I didn’t respond at first, just laid the five-dollar bill on his desk. “I have a client that needs my help. Of course, I’m going to do it.”
Sean shook his head and stared at me. “And you thought a dog was a bad idea? If you can’t track down her sister, you’re going to break that child’s heart.”
“And if I can?”
“Are you sure you won’t break yours? I thought you needed time to figure out your and Dani’s relationship.”
Dani Coleman was a good friend of Sean’s and the woman with whom I’d fallen in love. She wanted to go skiing in Big Bear; I abhorred snow. Not the idea of snow, the stuff itself. We finally went, and I made Dani and myself miserable until the local Sheriff’s office asked for my help. It was a sensational murder committed in the same lodge we were staying in, and I used the request to avoid skiing at all costs. Dani resented it, I resented Dani, and we both did our best to be wretched with each other. I loved her; I truly did, but I should have refused to go from the very start. I couldn’t manage to tell her I was honestly afraid I’d die if I tried to ski, and she was unhappy about the time I gave to the case. At the end of her patience, she drove home and left me there until I identified the murderer and returned to Southern California. By that time she’d flown to New York on business, and I was left wondering if love was enough to make a relationship work. She left a message with Sean – don’t call her; she’d call me when she returned. It almost broke my heart, being told to go without talking to her.
I wanted time to sort out my feelings . . . I’m sure she wanted the same thing. But I couldn’t sit and do nothing, and I had no pending cases. Thus, Sean’s suggestion about a dog. Which is why I grabbed so frantically onto Sophie Kohen’s request to find her sister.
“I do need time, but I can’t just sit around and think. I need to work. And there’s nothing on my plate right now. That’s why this seems perfect. How difficult can it be to find a sister that’s trying to run away to Jerusalem? When I’m not occupied, I can try to put my life in some order.”
Sean shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. “It’s your life. Just remember what I told you about breaking a little girl’s heart.”
“That seems to be the only thing I’m good for recently.” I picked up Sophie’s letter and went straight to Robin’s desk. Sean was probably right, but I wasn’t about to admit it. “See if you can get me a phone number for this residence, would you?” I headed back to my office and sat down, sensing growing frustration as I did so. I had the feeling none of my recent decisions were going to turn out well for me or anybody else, and I reverted to my old habit of throwing something at the wall. The only thing within reach was the stapler on my desk, and it shattered when it hit.
Robin was at my door in seconds. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the glass ashtray I kept was still in one piece, then picked up what was left of the stapler and threw it in the trash can. “What brought that on?”
I stared at the picture on my wall, right above the spot the stapler hit. “That,” I told her, and pointed at the oil painting. Dani was an artist, and the picture was one of hers.
Robin closed my office door, then came back and sat down. “What happened up there, Rick?” She, of course, was asking about Big Bear.
“We made each other miserable until she finally left.”
“Have you called her since you got back?”
“No,” I responded. “Dani flew off to New York to see about a gallery show, and left word not to call her. We’d talk ‘when she got back.’ Whenever that is.”
“Don’t you know?” I shook my head. “Does Sean know?” Again, I shook my head. She decided to change the subject. “What’s this you gave me?” She handed Sophie’s letter back to me, with a name and a phone number on it.
“Busy work,” I responded. “Something to keep me from going to Miguel’s every night and getting drunk.”
“You’re a better man than that,” Robin insisted.
“Am I? Am I really? I seem to have run Dani off, and it certainly wasn’t a good man that did that.”
“You didn’t run her off, Rick. She chose to go.”
“I did everything wrong, Robin. I didn’t tell her about my fear of snow; I should have sent her with her friend Mika. I could have insisted to the Sheriffs I was on vacation and wouldn’t get involved in a case. Every time I turned around, it was the wrong move. And I should have come back to Southern California with her and tried to work things out. I was a royal screw-up all the way around.”
“There were two of you up there . . . did she do everything right while you did everything wrong?”
I thought about the first night when she got sloshed and threw her drink in my face. Then there was the familiarity she greeted the ski instructor with, refusing to tell me who he was and if she’d known him before. Followed by the coldness in her attitude toward me, and finally, her insistence on driving back home whether I went with her or not. I still thought everything was mostly my fault, but I had to admit she’d contributed to the problems we had. “I guess not, but I can’t say I blame her, Robin.”
“That wasn’t the question, Rick. I’ve watched you work for over five years, and I know how you are. When something goes sideways you assume full responsibility for the problems, whether you had anything to do with them or not. Very rarely have you ever been one-hundred percent to blame, and I’m sure you’re not this time, either. So how about cutting yourself some slack and concentrating on your busy work, at least for the time being?” Robin got to her feet and left me sitting alone in my office.
I wasn’t sure she was right, but it was probably the best idea, anyway. I finally read what she’d written on Sophie’s letter. Rabbi Jacob Barak Kohen, 310-364-8254. Sophie hadn’t told me her father was a Rabbi, but that might explain why Leeba Kohen was running away. Or maybe that she was running toward something. I took a quick check of my watch – it was almost five-thirty on Friday evening. I knew enough about Judaism to know that Shabbat began at five on Friday night and lasted until sundown on Saturday. That meant I couldn’t phone Rabbi Kohen until Saturday evening. Well, I could phone, but no one would answer. And I couldn’t leave a message. I would just have to wait until Saturday to call.
I heard noises from the front office that told me Robin was getting ready to go home. Before I could address the issue, she’d once again stuck her head in my office doorway. “You going home anytime soon?”
“I haven’t decided. There’s nothing to go home for, but it won’t do me any good to sit here all night, either.”
“Why don’t you follow me home? I’ve got a crock-pot full of that beef stew you like, and it’ll keep you busy for a while. And we can always open a bottle of wine.”
“I shouldn’t, you know. I should go home and wallow in my misery.”
“That’s preferable to spending an evening at my place?” She sounded insulted, and that’s not what I intended. I decided to back-peddle while I still had the chance.
“No, I’d much rather follow you home. Your cooking is about a thousand percent better than mine, and I won’t have to talk to the television.”
“You might have to talk to me.”
I closed my computer and met her in the doorway, where I put my arm around her shoulders. “That sounds like a delightful evening.”
“Good,” and she nodded her head. “I didn’t want to eat stew for the rest of the weekend, anyway.”
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