After I'm Gone

by Laura Lippman

  “Who knows?” Rachel said. “But, no, that’s not why we got married.”

  “Don’t expect me to babysit,” Michelle said. It was surprising how easy it was to watch The Real World without sound. She had no problem following it whatsoever. It was basically fight-fight-fight montage fight-fight-fight montage.

  “I wouldn’t,” Rachel said. “But what if you decide you want to? What if you get married young, like all the Brewer women?”

  “Oh, I might get married young. But I’m never having kids. Never.” Michelle hadn’t had her childhood yet. She wanted to find a job or a man that would allow her to live very well. She wasn’t naïve. She realized that both required effort. Different kinds of effort, but effort. And while it would probably surprise her sisters, she had decided that a job was better than a man. For one thing, you could move from job to job with much greater ease than you could move from husband to husband. She was going to find whatever job paid the best for the least amount of work, even if it was boring as hell.

  She rode down to Fells Point with Rachel and Joshua. She had forgotten that Joshua was part of the equation now, even though he and Rachel had been sharing her apartment for more than six months. Joshua was just that kind of guy, easy to forget. Once in the apartment, he seemed comically out of place in the feminine environment that Rachel had created in the little one-bedroom under the eaves of an eighteenth-century rowhouse. Michelle realized they would probably be moving before long. She wondered if she could take over Rachel’s lease. Again, that would require a job.

  Rachel and Joshua did not go to bed right away. Michelle had the sense they were waiting her out, trying to keep her entertained so she wouldn’t go out, after all. Good luck, she thought. Toward midnight, as Rachel struggled to keep her eyes open, Michelle said sweetly, as if conferring a kindness: “I’ll let you two go to bed. But I’m restless. I think I’ll go get a nightcap over at John Steven’s.”

  “So late?” Joshua said. Already trained to do Rachel’s dirty work. Oh, won’t you be a good little Brewer man, following your wife around like a dog.

  “It’s not late at all for someone my age. And if that storm comes through as promised, there will be plenty of time to sit indoors.”

  “It’s just not safe,” Rachel said. “For someone alone, I mean. I worry.”

  Michelle laughed as she adjusted her coat and scarf. Their grandmother had given Bambi an old mink and Michelle had taken it over, even had it tailored and repaired at great expense. A boyfriend’s expense. She loved it when someone—always a girl, and almost always an unattractive one—said: “Fur is murder.” Michelle would say blithely: “No, it’s the consequence of murder. As is most of human history, all the way back to Cain and Abel, so get over it.”

  “I really wish you wouldn’t go out,” Rachel said. “We have bourbon here, a bottle of Romanian wine, from the cheap barrels at Trinacria—”

  “Oh, what’s the big deal, Rach? Do you think I’m going to go out the door and never come back?”

  “Well,” Rachel said, “it wouldn’t be unprecedented in our family history.”

  Michelle wavered for a moment, but she had too much pride not to follow through on her plans. She went out into the night, snug in her coat, giddy with her prospects. Attention, sex, money, love. The first two were almost always available to her and she was after the third now. Love could wait. The sky was clear, and even in the city one could see the stars. It was impossible to imagine a blizzard was coming.

  When Rachel and Joshua woke up the next morning, Michelle was sitting in the little kitchen with a cup of coffee from the Daily Grind, reading a Beacon-Light she had found on their neighbor’s doorstep. Neither Rachel nor Joshua asked her about her evening, and she didn’t volunteer any details. She was her father’s daughter. Free as the breeze, accountable to no one, hardwired to understand probability, if not possibility.

  March 21, 2012

  Susan Borden had told the original investigators many things about herself, as detailed by the witness sheet. There was her full name (Susan Evelyn Borden). Her date of birth, February 25, 1956, in Salisbury, Maryland. Social Security number, her address at the time, which turned out to be only a few blocks from her current home, which had popped out of the MVA files in a matter of seconds. She had given a detailed history of her employment at the bed-and-breakfast, said she counted herself a friend of the owners, for whom she had worked about two years. But she had been away the week that Julie went missing, down the ocean with a new boyfriend. Total shock, never saw it coming, didn’t have any insight. When Baltimore City cops picked up the case fifteen years later, they hadn’t done much more than call her and review her statement from ’86.

  Rereading this file now, Sandy could see the gaps. Susan—Susie—didn’t say how she knew Julie, just left the impression that the friendship had been subsequent to the work relationship. She gave up Salisbury, her hometown, but she didn’t volunteer where she had been between Salisbury and Havre de Grace. Her work history included: “Hostess, various Baltimore restaurants.” Yes, Susan Borden had been very careful to omit any detail that led back to Susie the dancer.

  He made a strategic decision to let her stew a little bit before they met. She was a responsible citizen, at the same address for more than twenty years now. She wasn’t going to bolt. He called and left a message, asking her to call him back and set up a time to discuss an old case. He said case on purpose, leaving it general.

  Two days later, he called and left another message. Detective Sanchez, would like to talk to you about the disappearance of Julie Saxony.

  The next day, he called and repeated the same message, almost word for word.

  By the fourth day, he was pretty sure he was being ignored. Okay, she could be out of town, on vacation. She could be one of those people who no longer listen to their messages, just check the caller ID and call back the numbers they know, ignore everyone else. He called a neighbor, using a reverse directory to pinpoint the number. He said he had a delivery for Susan Borden but couldn’t get an answer at her house.

  “Her husband is always there. He’ll sign for it. Assuming he can.”

  That was interesting on a lot of levels. Husband? Not according to any records he had found. And—assuming he can. What was that about?

  “Has to be her, nobody else. It’s certified.”

  “Well, she gets home at four. But, seriously, you could leave it on the steps. It’s not like people around here steal.”

  Oh, country people, so smug. Go read a copy of In Cold Blood, you all so safe in your houses.

  Sandy arrived at 5:45, although he had intended to be there closer to 5:30, figuring that gave a woman enough time to take off her pantyhose and put on comfortable shoes, maybe get a snack, but not start dinner yet. That was what his guardian, Nabby, had done upon her arrival home each day. Mary had changed to flat shoes, but stayed in her work clothes, as pretty and fresh at the end of the day as she was at the beginning.

  A man, the alleged husband, answered the door. Sixtyish, Sandy guessed, a true apple shape in a red sweater that made him look even more like an apple, and very high, ruddy color in his cheeks. It wasn’t a healthy color, though. His eyes were rheumy, his manner vague. Alcoholic, or maybe one of those big boozers who somehow kept it in check, watering himself all day long, like a plant.

  Assuming he can.

  “What do you want?” Grumpy. Ill at ease.

  “I’ve been trying to get in touch with Susan Borden. Left her a couple of messages.”

  “She never checks the landline, and I never answer it.”

  “Why not?” Sandy was genuinely curious. He couldn’t imagine sitting in a house, listening to a phone ring, no matter how swozzled a guy might be.

  “It’s never for me. And it’s never really for Susie. People who know her call her cell.”

  “It’s a business matter,” San
dy said. “Not a big deal. I’m”—his instincts told him to lie, or at least obscure the nature of his mission—“I work as a consultant for the Baltimore City Police Department and I’m—I’m closing down a file. There’s paperwork that I need permission to shred.”

  “She should be here any minute. Went to the store for something we didn’t have.”

  And with that the guy left Sandy in the foyer, went back somewhere in the house. A television room, based on the sound, the rhythms of people talking in a not-quite-real way. Sandy imagined the guy in an otherwise dark room, drinking steadily from something that looked like a glass of water.

  He was still trying to figure out what to do when a woman came in behind him with a grocery sack. She was startled, but only mildly. He had a feeling it wasn’t the first time she’d found some stranger in the foyer.

  “What the dickens! Did Doobie leave you here?”

  “Doobie?”

  “My husband.”

  Uh-huh, Sandy amended in his head. Not unless you kept your own name, and you’re not the type. You are the type to call a live-in your husband, though, and he probably is, by the standards of common law. He wondered how long they had been together, if it had ever been good, or if she had almost always been his caretaker, trading her competence for whatever checks he brought to the household. Not unlike Sandy and Nabby, come to think of it, although the scales had balanced in the end. He had taken better care of her than she ever had of him.

  “He said you’d be back soon.”

  “Are you the guy with the mystery package?”

  “You got me. Yes, I’m the one who called your neighbor. You didn’t answer my messages.”

  “What messages?”

  “On the home phone.”

  “Oh, God, I never listen to those. They’re just solicitations. Anyone who knows me knows to call on my cell.”

  “Like, say, Tubman Schroeder?”

  That got her attention. She was tiny, as Lorraine had mentioned, and, for fifty-six, incredibly cute. There was no other word for it. She was like a miniature Marilyn Monroe, if you could imagine Monroe living another twenty years, toning down the hair, but still dressing to flatter an hourglass figure. Staggeringly high heels added to her height, yet she was still short of five-five. He felt a pang for the young woman in the inappropriate hostess dress, all those years ago, chattering about her plans to the more sophisticated Lorraine Gelman.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “I told your husband that I’m a consultant from the police department who needs permission to shred certain files. Only the first part is true. I am a consultant. I have been looking at a file, but it’s not going to be shredded. We’ve reopened the Julie Saxony case.”

  She nodded. She looked frivolous, but she was quick, practical. She walked back into the house. “Doobie?” Her voice was loud, clear, and deliberate. “This man needs to talk to me. We are going to sit in the front room and talk. So dinner might be a little late.”

  “What are we having?”

  “Turkey burgers and a salad.”

  “And french fries?”

  “No, no french fries.”

  “But a burger.”

  “Yes. A turkey burger. I’ll bring you a plate of crackers and carrot sticks for now.”

  Sandy remembered that he had taken a similar tone with Mary in their final months. But Mary had fought back, lost her temper, said: Don’t treat me like a child. Mary’s mind had been sharp, all the way to the end.

  He went into the front room, taking Susie’s words to Doobie as an invitation. She returned a few minutes later.

  “He doesn’t know about Julie, does he?” he asked.

  “He knew her, actually.”

  “But not how you two knew each other.”

  “Wouldn’t matter if he did, not now. He won’t remember meeting you tomorrow.”

  He waited to see if she would fill in the gaps. Alcoholism? Dementia? Both? Maybe she was a woman long practiced at not saying more than was necessary.

  “So I’ve reopened the investigation into Julie Saxony’s murder.”

  “You said. Why?”

  “It’s my job. I take on cold cases.”

  “Why Julie? Why now?”

  “No reason.”

  She laughed. It was a delightful sound. Could Tubman really have done better?

  “Right. Well, join the club.”

  “The club?”

  “The not very discriminating club of men taken in by Julie Saxony’s smoldering gaze. That’s what Felix called it. Juliet Romeo’s smoldering gaze. Everyone fell for her, until they saw it was impossible.”

  “Did that include your old boyfriend, Tubman?”

  “In the beginning? Sure. But he was practical. He wasn’t going to get her, so he took up with me.”

  “That would bug a lot of women.”

  “Not me. I’m practical, too. I liked Tubman. He was a good time, very generous. It was never serious between us, though.”

  “That’s interesting,” he said. “Because part of the reason I’m here is because Lorraine Gelman told me you spent an entire party acting like Tubman’s wife, babbling about Julie and Felix.”

  She wasn’t fazed. “It takes two people to be serious. Tubby wasn’t never serious about me. I knew that, and I accepted it. I probably talked too much to Lorraine because she made me so nervous. The Great Lady. I could tell she didn’t want to be at the party, that she found everything there tacky—Tubby, his friends, me. Is that why you’re here? Because a young woman once said some nonsense at a party? You’ll never lack for work if that’s the case.”

  “I think you know why I’m here. You worked at the B and B. You were on the interview list. But nothing in the notes indicates that you told investigators that you and Julie were old friends, back in the day.”

  “I told them we were friends, that we had met through our work. It’s not my fault if no one followed up. Doobie and I had just started dating, and I wasn’t keen for that information about my past to get out. I don’t think he would have cared about what I did, but it’s a small town and I wanted to stay here. I knew that would be easier if people didn’t know I danced on the Block twenty million years ago.”

  Sandy couldn’t speak for the original investigators, but he believed they probably had asked how Julie and Susan knew each other. Which meant she had lied. Then and now.

  “You know, people always think they’re good judges of whether information matters. But that’s like a person holding one piece of a puzzle while I’m on the other side of the wall with this whole jigsaw put together. You don’t see it, but I do.”

  “I wasn’t there that day,” she said, defensive and defiant. “July third, I mean. She had given me a week off. Doobie and I were in Ocean City. It was a last-minute thing.”

  “You decided to go away for the Fourth of July the last minute?”

  “Julie asked if I wanted the week off, so I went.”

  “Generous of her. Especially with her own big holiday weekend coming up.”

  “That was Julie. Look, I didn’t even have the skills to be a proper housekeeper. But Julie took it in her head that she was going to rescue me, get me away from the Block. She tried me out at the Coffee Pot Shoppe, as a hostess. Like that place needed a hostess. It was four booths and a counter. But she knew I couldn’t wait tables. Physically, I mean. I couldn’t carry the trays. I was weak and didn’t have the wing span.”

  She spread her arms, as if to demonstrate.

  “But Julie’s attitude was, ‘We are both going to get up and out. Up and out.’ No more dancing. No more unavailable boyfriends, whether they were married or just, you know, out for a good time.” She looked wistful. “She approved of Doobie. That was another reason she gave me the time off. He was different then, of course. Worked at the marina.”
>
  “Going over the notes, I saw you told the detectives at the time that nothing unusual happened that week. But she gave you a week off, out of the blue.”

  “Like I said, Julie was generous. And she really liked Doobie.”

  “Man, you are a loyal friend, aren’t you?”

  That caught her. Good. It was his intention.

  “I would hope so, yes.”

  “I mean, I can see keeping a secret when you thought she might still be alive . . .”

  “I never thought she was alive. Never. I agreed with Chet and, trust me, that big-headed cook—oh, pardon moi, chef—and I did not agree on much. But I suspected she was dead almost as soon as she left. Always.”

  “So why didn’t you tell police everything?”

  “What everything?”

  He was fishing, sure. But he was fishing in a stocked pond.

  “Here’s what I think. You didn’t hold back the whole story about your relationship with Julie because you were worried about being in the papers. You held it back to protect her. What were you protecting her from?”

  “How could I protect someone I thought was dead?”

  “I don’t know. But she is dead, more than twenty-five years now. Who knows what might have happened if you had been more forthcoming twenty-five years ago?”

  Susie let out her breath.

  “It was just so unfair.”

  “What?”

  “Everyone thinking that Julie had Felix’s money, when she didn’t. Julie wasn’t a thief. If she kept the money, it was hers. That must have been hard to hear, but it was true. It’s not her fault. I’m sure there was some other plan for the family, but it fell through, or there wasn’t enough.”

  “What money, Mrs. Borden?” He knew she wasn’t a Mrs., not officially, but he wanted her to feel dignified, respected. He needed to make her feel the exact opposite of whatever she had felt when she babbled to Lorraine Gelman. Safe, trusted, respected. Yet he also needed her to babble just the same.

  “It’s not just Julie.”

  “What do you mean?”