“I’m saying I have a trained nose and, baby, I smell a rat.” He turned away from her. “Let’s go to bed.”

Rina waited a beat, then shut the lights off.

At his desk at seven the next morning, the first thing Decker did was call up West LA. His intentions were to leave a recorded message for Detective Sturgis, the one who had been assigned to Honey’s abandoned van. But to Decker’s surprise, Sturgis was in.

Decker filled him in. “Anything new I should know about?”

“Not on my end.” Sturgis paused. “What’s your make on the drowning?”

“Someone was working the guy over and didn’t want to leave marks. You know. Dunking his head in the toilet. Meanwhile, the wife was conveniently out of town. It could have been mob. But it sure could have been an arrangement made by the wife. But if she actually arranged the water torture, what was she trying to gain? To get any kind of renumeration like an insurance policy, her husband would have to kick.”

“He did kick.”

“A messy way to arrange a hit, don’t you think? Especially if you’re going to shoot him anyway. No, I’m thinking something got bungled. They were working him over but he wasn’t supposed to die.”

“Or could be someone meant to drown him. The head shot was done to confuse us. Which is precisely what it’s doing. Has anyone checked out the insurance policies?”

“Dintz from Manhattan said there’s none to speak of. But Gershon Klein was a diamond dealer. I’m sure he has some fancy stones in inventory.”

Sturgis said, “You want to know my take? She ripped off her husband, hired thugs to pop him, cashed out her stones here, then went underground.”

“But, Sturgis, she didn’t go underground. She came out here, to LA with her family.”

“To throw everyone off track before she made her big escape.”

“She’s religious. She’d have a hard time hiding.”

“Unless she decided to become un-religious.”

Decker thought about that. Honey was a religious woman swathed in clothing and custom—a lady who covered her hair practically all of her adult life. To change her appearance all she’d have to do would be take off her wig, put on some tight jeans, and eat tref. No one would recognize her.

“You still there?” Sturgis asked.

“Yeah, sorry. I was just thinking about what you said. If Honey decided to become un-religious, she could hide very easily. But, no pun intended, old habits die hard. If Honey chose to remain Orthodox, a religious lady just doesn’t have too many hiding spots in this country. I think there is a very real possibility that the lady bolted to Israel.”

Sturgis paused. “Yeah, could be. You know anything about Israel?”