“Well let’s just say I heard a few things. Some of your explanation sounded suspicious at first, that’s all, darling,” he said as he tried to pull his foot out of his mouth.
“What do you mean, you heard a few things?” I asked him.
“Well, at the synagogue, people are talking about the Rabbi having an affair with one of the congregant’s wives. No one mentioned names. Naturally, I get crazy jealous with someone as young and beautiful as you. You know how much I love you and I get really nervous when it comes to you.”
“So, what you are saying is that you really do believe the bullshit you’re hearing about our wonderful Rabbi and now you don’t even trust me,” I said indignantly.
“Oh, don’t be like that honey,” Jules replied. “Of course, I trust you implicitly.”
Two
When he was ten-years old, John Herbert Pratt loved watching the Johnny Carson show, especially Johnny’s humor, more so than his guests. Because he liked Carson so much, in addition to also hating his own middle name Herbert, he legally changed his name to Johnny H. Pratt, which now became his proper name.
Johnny grew up in a bedroom community a little north of Dallas. From the age of eight until sixteen he played baseball, lacrosse, soccer, and skate boarding, then at ten he had taken up karate and earned a black belt in Tae Kwan Do by seventeen. He intended to join the Dallas Police Academy. His goal was to become a Texas State Ranger.
After having earned his third-degree black belt by the age of eighteen, he became a karate instructor at a friend’s dojo. In just one additional year he achieved two higher degrees of black belts and became a Master Black Belt, the highest form of this martial art. This enabled him to open his own dojo.
He spent three years teaching students from ages eight to sixty-five. He felt that anyone younger or older than those age limits would be too fragile for the sport. At age twenty-two he joined the Police Academy and became a police officer, one of approximately sixty-five hundred already on duty in Dallas.
Three years later he married Denise. Then two years into their marriage, she gave birth to their son, Thomas. Denise worked at an assembly line warehouse, packaging items purchased by television viewers of the “H.O.M.E. TV” shopping channel, which stood for Home Ordering Made Easy. She worked until her water broke while in the ladies’ room. She then took a maternity leave for three months after Tom’s birth.
A few years later, Johnny Pratt was promoted to detective in Dallas but no increase in money came with it. He began looking for employment elsewhere and found that Sedona, Arizona was recruiting for an experienced detective. He flew to Sedona for an interview, met with a Marshal Brian Whitaker who, if Johnny were hired, would eventually become his boss. After the Whitaker interview, both the District Attorney and the Mayor of Sedona saw Pratt for the final stages of the interviewing process.
All three agreed that Johnny was an ace. They made him an offer so much greater than what he was earning in Dallas that he would now be able to move his wife and son, buy a house, and his wife would no longer need to work. He accepted the offer and moved with his wife and three-year-old son to Sedona.
Pratt was now forty-eight. His twenty-year-old son Tom applied to the Dallas Police Academy, like he himself did before he became a police officer in the same city, with the intention of moving back to Sedona once he graduated and becoming a local police officer, but decided to remain in Dallas instead.
After all his years with the Sedona Police, the detective began to resemble Columbo from the old 1980s TV series. Pratt had dark naturally wavy-curly hair and must have loved that show’s re-runs because his appearance was so similar. He even wore a light gray colored windbreaker (rather than a raincoat) even in ninety-degree weather. His wrinkled off-white shirt, thin dark tie, and half-smoked unlit cigar in his right hand completed the Columbo look, though at six-foot-four he was much taller than Peter Falk looked on TV.
Once Tom moved out of their home, Denise had taken a job working for a pharmacy in town handling resident and tourist questions about where they could find certain over-the-counter medications and other products such as hair needs and make-up. When the customers were ready to leave the store, Denise was the one who cashed them out.
Detective Pratt made arrangements for his colleague Detective Jason Somerville of Flagstaff to meet at the hospital where the Rabbi had been taken. The detectives waited for Rabbi Bloom to wake up in his hospital bed after the surgery, so they could come in and speak to him. In the waiting area, Pratt and Somerville dozed off for a few hours while Neil and Carol did the same, dozing on his hospital bed. The detectives never noticed Carol leaving Bloom’s room. Inside the room they found Bloom sitting up and ready to be questioned. They introduced themselves and Pratt began his questions. “Rabbi, when did your wife leave the hospital? I didn’t notice her walk by.”
Bloom was quick to respond. “Oh, that was not my wife, just a visitor who is actually married to one of my congregants. Very pleasant lady and nice of her to come and visit.”
“And a real looker too, as some of the doctors tell me,” commented Detective Sommerville.
“Yes, she is, but my devotion is to God and not to the fine women of our community. That’s not
