“Why should there have been three of them?” Gregor was desperately trying to get back to what he still dimly thought might be the point.
“Because they’re sold in sets of three,” David Goldman said triumphantly. “Oh, I don’t mean every dreidel in Israel is sold that way. Of course it isn’t. But all the kiosks have sets of three all during the Hanukkah season, because tourists like to have more than one to bring home. And the sets are cheaper than buying the same number of dreidels one by one. But that’s why the second one stuck in Lotte’s mind, you see. You find one, you don’t think anything of it. You find two, under the circumstances, you naturally start wondering where the third one is.”
“Could I get one of these dreidels here?” Gregor asked David Goldman. “In the United States?”
David shrugged. “I wouldn’t say it would be impossible, but I would say it wouldn’t be easy. One of the import houses might have them. But why bother? It’s not as if these were the big, ornamental kinds, you know, three or four times the ordinary size and carved into special wood and whatnot. These are the little wooden ones you see everywhere. And an importer who was very religious, as I said about Itzaak, might not want—”
“Yes, yes. Bear with me for a minute, please, Rabbi. I might be able to get one of these here, but it would be difficult, so the chances are that these two came from Israel.”
“That’s right.”
“Meaning that whoever they belong to—assuming it’s one person—had been to Israel.”
“Or been in contact with someone who had been in Israel, yes.”
“But he wouldn’t necessarily have to be Jewish,” Gregor said.
“Oh, no,” David Goldman told him. “Lots of people buy dreidels, even in the United States. Children like to play with them. Adults sometimes just like to have them. And of course, with a certain kind of gentile, especially a certain kind of American gentile—”
“The kind that not only does not believe in God,” Tibor said, “but that has no respect for religion—”
“Yes,” David Goldman said, “well, there is a certain kind of gentile who buys Israeli dreidels in particular for good luck. I remember that from being in Jerusalem. Hardcore gamblers, most of them were. And they’d keep the dreidels in their pockets and then go off to the casinos in Monaco or on Crete. They were not very pleasant people.”
“No,” Gregor said. “I can see how they might not be. The third one, assuming there is a third one, hasn’t turned up?”
“No,” David Goldman said. “A couple of other dreidels have turned up. DeAnna Kroll found one stuck in one of those plastic dry cleaning bags that were covering Lotte’s clothes, but it was an ordinary one. She gave it to Lotte yesterday morning.”
“Has anybody else found any others at all? Ordinary or not?”
“Oh, Mr. Demarkian. Of course they have. It’s like I said. They’re all over the place.”
“All over the place,” Gregor repeated, and then shook his head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“Will you talk it over with the police detective?” David asked.
“Of course I will,” Gregor said. “But I don’t know what good it will do. I don’t know what he can do with the information. I don’t know what I can do with it.”
“You can keep the dreidels,” David Goldman said. “They ought to come in handy. In case they mean anything.”
“Right,” Gregor said.
David Goldman shrugged. “I said it was a little strange. Well, there it is, it’s a little strange. And Lotte is very disturbed about everything that’s been happening, of course.”
Gregor picked up the two dreidels and put them in the breast pocket of his suit jacket, looking them over carefully first, noting the anomalous letter.
“I didn’t say you did the wrong thing. You did the right thing. I’d like to talk to Dr. Goldman about it later, if she wouldn’t mind. I just don’t know if it will lead anywhere.”
“Of course,” David Goldman said.
“It will lead somewhere,” Father Tibor said firmly. “Everything always leads somewhere, Krekor, even if not to the place you would expect.”
“I think I’m going to have another plate of sausage,” old George Tekamanian announced. “Martin said something about a wonderful new kind of tofu burgers.”
On that note, Gregor decided to order himself koritzov gatah.
It wouldn’t be kosher, it wouldn’t solve the murder of Maximillian Dey, and if Bennis saw him eating it, she’d kill him.