Bar Mitzvah Murder A Christine Bennett Mystery

PROLOGUE I have more or less grown accustomed to change. While the biggest change in my life happened several years ago when I was thirty and was released from my vows as a Franciscan nun, the more recent changes have also had a great impact on me as well as on my family. When I met Jack, my husband of most of my secular years, he was a detective sergeant with NYPD, going to law school at night. Today he is both a lawyer and a recently appointed lieutenant, having passed his test with flying colors. He says that after law school everything else is easy. As I watched him study, I wasn't so sure that was true, but I'm glad he thinks so. When Jack finished law school, he left the Sixty-fifth Precinct in Brooklyn, where he had worked for many years and where I had met him when I was researching a 1950 murder. At that point, he began the first of a couple of jobs at Police Headquarters, generally referred to as One PP for Police Plaza, more commonly known among cops as the Puzzle Palace. But once he passed the lieutenant's test and received his promotion, commemorated by a big ceremony at One PP followed by a smaller one for the family in his office, a familiar cycle began again. He was transferred to a precinct following the rule from the Personnel Bureau that "new bosses of all ranks have to return to a uniform field command, a precinct, for at least six months after promotion." For various reasons Jack had thought he might get a pass on the rule, but it didn't happen and his life and therefore mine were turned upside down again. He began to work on rotating shifts. The chart, with its many changes and exceptions, can make family life very hectic. I am a creature of habit and I like to sleep when it's dark and do everything else when it's light. Having a four-year-old just seemed to reinforce what I think of as a normal schedule. But crime doesn't adhere to any schedule and I suspect there's more of it in the dark hours than the light, so Jack psyched himself up and fell in step with four of these tours, then three of those followed by two days off, or was it three off? Talk about ships passing in the night. A couple of days after Jack began the new assignment, someone called here at home and asked me if the boss was there. I was a little taken aback but realized he meant Jack. When Jack came home a little while later, I teased him about it. "Yeah, I'm a boss," he said. "OK, boss. Just checking." I started calling him that now and then, and one afternoon Eddie asked when Daddy Boss was coming home. That really tickled Jack, and the name stuck for the duration of the assignment. They were a tough six months for me and for Eddie, who couldn't figure out why Daddy was here one day but not the next, but I noticed something both interesting and amusing; Jack loved it. Yes, he complained about the shifts, but his spirits were high. He loves the action of a precinct, the interaction with the men and women on the job. He is really so well suited to that kind of life that I sometimes wonder what made him decide to get a law degree. To add to his enjoyment, if you can call it that, he was assigned to what is officially Midtown South or MTS, as the cops in that precinct call it. It's over on West 35th Street and is billed as "the busiest police station house in the world." That's no exaggeration. It's always buzzing. I was almost afraid he'd ask to stay on, but happily, when the six months were almost over, something unexpected came up. Although the commanding officer of the precinct, a full inspector, wanted to keep Jack there, just last week word came "from on high," as he told me, that he was wanted back in the Puzzle Palace.Harris, Lee is the author of 'Bar Mitzvah Murder A Christine Bennett Mystery' with ISBN 9780449007297 and ISBN 0449007294.