After I'm Gone

by Laura Lippman

  Interesting that she provided that detail automatically, as if it were still uppermost in her mind. It wasn’t like he was going to ask. Wonder, but not ask.

  “We rented a room on Biddle Street and got hired at Rexall Drugs. Clerks. One day, two guys walked in, took one look at Julie and said she should be a dancer. A dancer. We may have been hicks from West Virginia, but it was 1972, we knew the score. One of the guys introduced her to his friend Felix and that was that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Love at first sight. I guess I should be grateful it was a respectable strip joint, where the girls wore pasties and G-strings, because Julie would have done whatever Felix asked her to. She was a goner. I never got it. Then—I never got men.”

  “You married, though?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Isn’t Norr your married name?”

  “No, it’s our given name. I’m a happy spinster. Saxony was something that Felix hung on her. It wasn’t enough to give her that stupid stage name, Juliet Romeo. He had to rechristen her completely. She made it legal, down at the courthouse. Although—well, she was prone to that. Trying to make herself into what she thought Felix wanted.”

  He was stuck on that tantalizing although, wished she had followed it through. “Yeah? What else did she do for Felix?”

  A vague hand, waving at nonexistent flies. “Silly stuff. Not important. You know how women are.”

  No, he knew how one woman was, Mary. And, he supposed, Nabby, but he didn’t think Nabby’s behavior reflected on anyone but Nabby.

  “Did your sister know where Felix was after he left?”

  “No.” Fast, emphatic.

  “Did she know anything about the circumstances of his flight?”

  “No.” Too fast, too emphatic.

  “You know the statute of limitations is long past on that.” He should check to see if that was true. Might be important in dealing with people as he went forward. “And your sister’s dead. She can’t get in trouble for something she might have done in 1976.”

  “Not everyone is dead.”

  “You know there was always this rumor about Felix, how he escaped in a horse trailer.”

  “Rumors are just that. Rumors. It’s not my fault I work as a trainer, or that my sister dated that crook.”

  He let it drop. He didn’t want her as his antagonist, not at this stage.

  “Ever strike you as weird, the timing?”

  “Timing?”

  “Your sister disappeared almost ten years to the day. You think he came back for her?”

  “To kill her? Even I don’t hold Felix in such low esteem.”

  “No. But maybe someone else was looking for Felix. Someone who followed her that day—I mean, in 1986—in hopes of finding him.”

  “It was the government that wanted Felix. I don’t have much affection for the federal government, but I don’t think they kill people.”

  “Other people might have wanted him, too. Like the bail bondsman, for example.”

  Andrea laughed. “You didn’t do all your homework, Mr. Sanchez. Remember those guys who walked into Rexall? One of them was Tubby Schroeder, Felix’s best friend. He wrote the bond, he took the loss.”

  He did know. That is, he knew that Tubby Schroeder was a bail bondsman, a big fat guy, everybody’s friend. Sandy knew that Tubby had written the bond for Felix and been awfully philosophical about his best friend skipping out on him. Everyone assumed Felix had made good on the hundred thousand in cash. Sandy had thrown out the fact about the bond to see what she knew.

  “Thank you for your time,” he said. “And the tea.”

  “You barely touched it.”

  “I don’t eat between meals,” he said. “Nothing but water. Doctor’s orders.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say something?”

  “I forgot.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Sandy was at Chesapeake House, enjoying an early lunch at Roy Rogers. En route, he had passed the exit to Havre de Grace. The two sisters couldn’t have lived more than ten miles apart, yet they hadn’t seen each other for six months when Julie disappeared. Interesting. Nothing more at this point. Just another line in the geometry he was building, a distance between two points.

  He was even more interested in the fact that Tubby Schroeder had seen her first, brought Julie to Felix. Might be worthwhile to interview him, assuming a guy that fat was still alive at age seventy-five or so. Sandy remembered seeing him once or twice in the courthouse, had to be almost thirty years ago. Always laughing, big as a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloon, the life of the party. A back slapper, a joke teller.

  Everything that Sandy detested in a man.

  December 31, 1969

  Not the way I’d run a lottery—”

  The ambient sound in the country club was odd. Lorraine Gelman was having trouble hearing Bambi, who was right next to her, yet Felix and Bert’s conversation on the other side of the table boomed loud and clear. Their heads were bent together as they lighted cigars, an indulgence for the night. Meanwhile, Bambi’s soft voice was lost in the weird jangle of noises.

  But Lorraine smiled and nodded, sure she would agree with anything Bambi said. Lorraine adored Bambi. Adored. It was hard to remember now that she had been a little snobbish about the Brewers when she and Bert started dating six years ago. “Isn’t he just a crook?” she had asked Bert. Lorraine’s family were German Jews; her great-grandparents had lived on Eutaw Place when Eutaw was nice. Her mother had attended Park School in the early days. Bert, the son of a prominent attorney, had barely met her parents’ standards. And when Bert said Felix Brewer would be best man at the wedding, Lorraine’s parents had tried to dissuade him, to no avail. “He’s my best friend and one of our best clients,” Bert had said. “That’s never going to change.”

  We’ll see, Lorraine thought.

  But her friends’ husbands did seem rather drippy alongside Felix. Plus, Bambi turned out to be so nice. In Lorraine’s experience, women like Bambi usually weren’t nice, not to her.

  Yet Bambi had been a good sport from the start, showing up at Lorraine’s bridal party, trying hard to enter into the fun, although she was a little older and didn’t know the other girls. Lorraine had ended up being embarrassed by her friends, who seemed young and, yes, even a little tacky alongside Bambi, who came from a perfectly nice family, if not as nice as Lorraine’s. Even Lorraine’s mother thought Bambi was someone special, once she got past the nickname.

  So when it became apparent that life with Bert meant life with Felix and Bambi, Lorraine was fine with that. The men talked about the things they found interesting, politics and sports and, more and more these days, Vietnam. For goodness’ sake, they were talking about it again, right now, the draft lottery. Who cared? She didn’t have children, and the Brewers didn’t have sons. It wasn’t their problem.

  “I can’t believe those earrings,” she said to Bambi, looking at Felix’s anniversary gift. “Aren’t you worried they will fall off?”

  “I got my ears pierced, see? At a jewelry store on Reisterstown Road.” Bambi leaned closer to Lorraine, let her examine the cunning catch. Large diamonds, good ones, set in ovals of gold, a new design from David Webb. Lorraine knew because Felix had consulted her before buying them. His taste was okay, but old-fashioned. Safe. Like a lot of people who didn’t come from money, he was almost too cautious. Lorraine had known that Bambi would appreciate this pair, which were trendy, but not so trendy as to go out of style quickly.

  “Incredible,” she said. Felix caught her eye across the table and winked.

  “Put your eyes back in your head, honey,” Bert said. “Bambi had to wait ten years for those.”

  “Ten is tin,” Lorraine said, then wished she hadn’t. Who would know that except a woman who had looked up the anniversary list as she had earlier this y
ear, when disappointed by Bert’s gift of a carved rosewood jewelry box. She had been prepared to argue, but it turned out he was right: Five was wood. And ten was tin. You had to make it to sixty for diamonds. Still, Bert earned as much as Felix, or close. He could afford diamonds, too.

  But Bert was handsomer, Lorraine decided, swinging back to her husband’s side. And while he might represent criminals, he wasn’t one. Lorraine was forever cataloging the differences between Felix and Bert, Bambi and Lorraine, the Brewers and the Gelmans. Bambi was older. She’d be thirty next month. Bambi was beautiful, whereas Lorraine was only well put together. Good haircut, perfect clothes, and, most important of all these days, thin, which required living on Tab and carrot sticks and, after a vacation binge, some pills. She had tried the Dr. Stillman diet that so many Pikesville ladies swore by, but it gave her horrible gas. Bambi carried a few extra pounds, but men never seemed to notice.

  The two couples did everything together. Vacations—cruises, Ocean City in the summer. The symphony, plays at the Morris Mechanic. Shopping for the women, sporting events for the men, although Felix considered that work. And when their men stayed out late, which they did often, Lorraine went to Bambi’s and drank sweet vermouth, gossiping into the night.

  And life was fun, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it? Here they were at the club on New Year’s Eve, which also happened to be their dearest friends’ wedding anniversary. There was a band, the kind of band that Lorraine preferred. Lorraine liked to be held when dancing. Besides, musicians were getting so dirty. They looked dirty, they acted dirty. That nasty Jim Morrison, down in Florida. Who does such a thing? A few months ago, at a party, one of Bert’s friends had followed Lorraine to the powder room and tried to put her hand on him, through his trousers. She had told Bambi, expecting her to share her shock, but Bambi had just shrugged, said some men were flirts when they drank. Then Lorraine realized that such things must happen to Bambi all the time and she felt bad that it didn’t happen to her more often.

  Sometimes, with Bert, handsome as he was, she thought about what it would be like to be with someone else. Bert was all she knew. She had asked Bambi one time if Felix was her one and only. “Of course,” Bambi said. “I was only nineteen when I married him.” “I didn’t mean—” “What did you mean?” Bambi had asked, with a hard look, and Lorraine realized Bambi thought she was asking if Bambi had taken a lover to get back at Felix. Lorraine would never suggest such a thing. Out of loyalty to Bambi, she wouldn’t even listen to gossip about Felix’s girls. When she said to Bert, just the once, that Felix was attractive in a weird way, he had seemed upset: “Watch out for him. He likes women.” “Oh, I’m not his type,” she had trilled, embarrassed but emboldened, for saying a crush’s name out loud is the same as admitting the crush. Then Bert had to go and say, “No, you’re not his type.” That had kind of ruined it. He added, seeing her face: “You’re much too classy for Felix. As is Bambi, if the truth were known. Felix likes a rough girl.”

  If Bert were to cheat on Lorraine—but, no, Bert would never do that, good-looking as he was, as much female attention as he got. Bert liked being respectable. He had been drawn to Lorraine because her family was good, solid. Not as much money as people thought, but socially on a par with the old families, the Meyerhoffs and the Sonneborns. Lorraine’s father was president of the temple board this year, her mother was a former Hadassah president.

  Lorraine was optimistic about 1970. Certainly, she would get pregnant this year. Although, like Bambi, she had married at nineteen, she had stayed in college and earned a degree. True, she had expected motherhood to interrupt her education—she didn’t try to get pregnant, but she didn’t try very hard not to—yet there she was three years later, graduating cum laude from Goucher. She wanted three children, spaced out two years apart. If she had the first one by the end of this year, that meant another in ’72 and then she would be done by ’74. So she would be twenty-nine when her youngest child was born, which meant she would be forty-seven when that child headed off to college. Forty-seven. It sounded so old. Bambi was going to be thirty in the coming year, Felix would be thirty-six, closer to forty than thirty, and Bert was twenty-eight. Lorraine liked being the baby of the group even if they did gang up and tease her sometimes, act as if she didn’t know anything about the world before she was born. She had skipped a grade in elementary school. It felt natural to be the youngest in a group.

  The band began playing one of Lorraine’s favorite songs. “Our song,” Felix said with a significant look at Bambi.

  “How can that be?” Lorraine asked.

  “I slipped the band a twenty.”

  “No, I mean—this song was on the radio just a few years ago, when Bert and I were living in the apartment near Mount Washington. You were old married folks by then.”

  “That was the remake. The original was 1952, but it was also recorded by Connie Francis in 1959 and the Orioles had a hit with it as well. It was playing the night Bambi and I met. Remember, Bert?”

  “What I remember is that I was left alone with Tubby and a bunch of fraternity punks who wanted to beat us up, so it doesn’t have the same romantic associations for me.”

  But Bert held out his hand and led Lorraine to the dance floor. He was a very good dancer—better than Felix, who was a little hoppy for Lorraine’s taste—but she couldn’t help being aware that Bert’s eyes were everywhere, surveying the room over her shoulder, keen to know who was here, who they were with. If Bert were a woman, he would be considered a gossip. Meanwhile, Felix held Bambi as if she were the only woman in the world. Yet Felix was the one who cheated and Bert was the trustworthy one. It was confusing. Lorraine wanted the kind of attention that Felix lavished on Bambi, but she could never work out if such intense devotion was the by-product of cheating, in which case wasn’t it better not to have the attention?

  The music shifted to something a little fast, so Bert and Felix were out. Lorraine sometimes tried the new dances, home alone, watching Kirby Scott. She thought of it as exercise. But the clothes—the truly mod clothes—did not suit her, thin as she was. They made her look old, mutton trying to pass as lamb. The same with the short haircut she had tried with the two side curls, coaxed out at night and held down with Scotch tape. What are those, payos? Felix had teased her. Yet Bambi, so much older, looked divine in her Pucci shift tonight.

  She and Bambi went to the powder room together, checked their hair and lipstick, taking their time in front of the mirrors. It was a little hard, being side by side in a mirror with Bambi, but Bambi smiled encouragingly at Lorraine as if she understood, as if even she found her beauty burdensome. It was going to be hard for her daughters. Linda and Rachel. Lorraine could imagine boys falling in love with Bambi when the girls began to date. Lord, it was hard enough to be her friend, to notice how men noticed her. Bert, out of courtliness, always insisted Lorraine was prettier.

  “It’s exciting,” she said, “being at the start of a new decade. The last time that happened, I was fourteen years old. I couldn’t have begun to imagine where I’d be tonight—married to someone like Bert, getting ready to start a family.”

  “Ten years ago tonight, I couldn’t really imagine my life, either,” Bambi said, taking out a cigarette and lighting it. Lorraine looked at it longingly—so much easier to stay thin while smoking—but she had quit the moment the surgeon general’s report came out. “I thought I could, but I didn’t have a clue.”

  “Where did you go for your honeymoon?”

  “We spent the night at the Emerson Hotel, before going to Bermuda the next day.” She exhaled. “The Emerson Hotel was sold at auction this year.”

  “We got married at the Lord Baltimore,” Lorraine said.

  “I know. I was there.” Bambi was staring into space, not even making contact with her reflection as she usually did in such a space. Bambi liked mirrors.

  “Of course. That was a wonderful night. Maybe the best night of
my life.”

  “I hope not,” Bambi said with a shudder.

  Lorraine was offended. “What do you mean?”

  “Because then it would be all downhill from there, no?”

  “Well, I mean the best night of my life so far. I know there will be better ones to come. Having children.” She ran her hand over her flat stomach. There was a slight bulge, probably from the indulgent meal, although wouldn’t it be exciting if she were already pregnant. “A year from now, I’ll have a baby.”

  Bambi pointed her cigarette to the ceiling. “Man plans.”

  “What do you mean?” Lorraine felt as if she were saying that a lot tonight.

  “It’s an old saying. Man plans, God laughs.”

  “You’ve never had any problem getting pregnant.” She realized this made it sound as if everything Bambi had, she should have, too, which sounded grudging. Luckily, Bambi didn’t seem to notice.

  “Very true. But I can’t help it, I still have the evil eye thing. I know it’s silly, but some of the old folklore—it’s there. Felix doesn’t have a superstitious bone in his body. Everything is numbers with him, straight math. He laughs at the people—the people who have reasons, as he calls them.”

  “Reasons?”

  “Oh, you know, people who pick a racehorse based on its name, or bet their ages at the roulette tables, or—well, you get the picture. That kind of thing.”

  Lorraine realized that Bambi had been on the verge of saying that Felix laughed at his own customers, the people who placed dollar bets on sequences of numbers they found intensely meaningful. But Bambi never spoke of her husband’s work. No one did. Lorraine supposed Bert and Felix talked about it at times. Bert was Felix’s lawyer, after all. But everyone else played along. Here, at the country club, where Felix’s gift had meant improvements, and at temple, where he gave generously to the building fund. He would never be president of the temple, but Felix didn’t want to be. He spread his money around like a kind of insurance, spending enough so that no one wanted to alienate him or his family. His girls went to Park, and Lorraine, a very involved alum, knew that Felix had been generous with the school, too. Well, when she had children, they would be third generation at Park and that would make them special, more special than money ever could. Some things can’t be bought.