Long Time No See

by Susan Isaacs

  “They’re all possibilities,” I agreed. “But listen, Nelson. Under normal circumstances, you get a receipt, you put it in your bag. It’s yours. If you’re insanely organized you keep it. Or you throw it out when you get home. But most of the time a receipt just lives there for a while, until spring-cleaning or whatever. Now, if you’re preoccupied with more important things—the way Courtney was after the summer—and you catch your kid chewing gum, you reflexively wrap it up in whatever you’ve got—a tissue or in any piece of paper you’ve thrown into your handbag.”

  “So you’re saying that in your opinion, most likely Samantha R. and Courtney are one and the same.”

  “Well, this isn’t a normal situation, what with suburban women being missing or getting murdered and fake credit cards and questionable stock trades and all that, but still, yes, in my opinion they’re one and the same.”

  “So how come”—he broke down and borrowed my reading glasses—“how come it says ‘Luggage’ here?”

  “Because they sell luggage, too,” I explained.

  “Courtney was murdered on the thirty-first?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Doesn’t it strike you as funny,” Nelson said, “that six days before she was killed, at a time of year hardly anyone takes a vacation, and a little too early for Christmas shopping, she was buying luggage? Where was she planning to go?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I BEAMED AT Nelson. “You can find out where Courtney was planning to go!” Standing motionless about two feet apart in front of the cabinet where I stored my mixing bowls and baking gear, we were gazing down again at the American Express receipt. I’m not sure why we couldn’t seem to move from it—whether we were still awed at finding that rectangle of paper that could prove a memento of Courtney Logan’s secret life or if each believed the other would make a grab for the receipt and run like hell: him to police headquarters, me to Fancy Phil.

  “What do you mean, I can find out?”

  “I mean, don’t you have a number to call and get a printout of whatever charges were on that card?”

  His eyebrows strained toward each other. He couldn’t figure out how come I was asking a question that had such an obvious answer. “Of course I do.” If he’d been his children’s age, he would have said Duh.

  “I don’t get you,” I told him. “I know it’s not your unit, and maybe if this case gets solved you won’t get enough credit, or any credit. But don’t you have an overwhelming need to know? Now?”

  “My sweetheart,” Nelson said sweetly. He’d always been a lot of good things—thoughtful, friendly, intuitive, tender, fair. Loving, too. But sweet he wasn’t.

  “What’s the bad news?”

  He put his arm on my shoulder and pulled me close so my head bent to his shoulder, the kind of playful embrace football players give each other. “Judith,” he said so warmheartedly that I immediately understood why a criminal would confess to him. “I’ve already done much more than I ought to. Going to New Jersey, checking Emily’s phone records, the cell phone purchase. And then talking to you about them. You may not think so, but I’ve gone out on a limb.”

  I pulled away not so much in anger, though I was less than delighted, but because I couldn’t converse with my neck stretched out and my head resting on a shoulder that felt surprisingly bony for a guy with actual muscles. “I know you have. I appreciate it. I’m grateful for the faith you have in me.”

  Thankfully, he dropped the sweetie-pie and good-buddy acts. “I haven’t told my guys in Homicide how come I’m so interested in the Logan case. They think it’s because of the Phil Lowenstein connection, or because I miss the unit so much. I definitely haven’t told Carl Gevinski. He’s the asshole in charge of the investigation. It’s been just you and you alone.”

  I leaned against the cabinet, but far enough from the receipt that he’d be assured I couldn’t execute a deft spin and snatch, though I suspect he knew that for me, deft was not an applicable adjective. “I don’t know what to say, Nelson. The last thing I want is for you to get into trouble on my account. And I understand that it probably wouldn’t look good for you to be consorting with a person who has ties to Fancy Phil, a guy involved in a case you’re investigating—although obviously that could be explained.”

  “Explained is one thing. Believed is another.”

  “I don’t want you to compromise your integrity or your livelihood.”

  “I know that.”

  “The only solution I can think of is to let you call the shots if you can promise me an honest and thorough reinvestigation of Courtney’s murder. If you can’t, I have a responsibility to Phil and his son—” He didn’t like the last remark. He slammed his hands down into his pockets and began one of his staring contests. “If you can’t share any of this information with me, then I’ll write up whatever I already have and let Phil turn everything over to Greg’s lawyer.” Naturally, he was still looking directly into my eyes. Supposedly with men the staring business is about who gets to be the alpha male, but since I was willing to yield to Nelson the right to the biggest chunk of woolly mammoth, I didn’t have to feel like a bug-eyed fool. So I signaled my beta status by glancing back at the receipt. Nevertheless, I wasn’t about to forgo my argument. “Greg and his attorney have an absolute right to know what I’ve found,” I informed him. “Look, she won’t like it; no criminal lawyer is going to be thrilled that Fancy Phil has had a secret, parallel investigation going on, except her detective hasn’t produced any miracles. But chances are, the guy being a pro, he has a contact at American Express who’s either sympathetic or bribable. He can find out what Samantha R. was buying before Halloween.”

  While Nelson stayed in the kitchen to make some calls, I went upstairs to slip into something more comfortable, which in my case was a pair of baggy navy shorts (my legs being fairly sensational until three inches above my knees), a big white shirt, sleeves rolled up, and thongs. Still, I didn’t know if Nelson was staying or going until I came back down and saw him standing before the open refrigerator with a bunch of tired parsley in his hand. “Believe it or not,” he told me, “you have a better refrigerator than most single women.”

  “That’s because I eat more than most single women. Are you cooking?”

  “Sure.” Right after high school, Nelson had gone into the air force and been assigned to a stove instead of a jet fighter. He bragged his most brilliant dish was barbecued chicken for three hundred, though he’d always claimed he could pull together a decent meal for a smaller group, like two.

  “What are you making?” I asked.

  “Pasta with a sauce made out of whatever you got.” He pulled out an onion, a stray clove of garlic, and a red pepper so old it had imploded upon itself, then opened the freezer and discovered half a French bread I had no memory of buying, eating, or serving.

  “How do you know so much about single women’s refrigerators?” I asked.

  “From when I was between marriages. And you know, on the job.”

  With that cheerful thought, I got busy setting the table. “Do you know what I’m thinking?” I asked.

  “You’re going to tell me, aren’t you? Where do you hide your canned tomatoes?”

  I pointed to the pantry and said: “About Emily. That Josh Kincaid I told you about, the one who’d worked with Courtney at Patton Giddings, who met Emily at a real estate closing? The way he described her—”

  “‘Her’ meaning Emily?”

  “Yes. He made her sound so bland and quiet that she must have been close to invisible. I guess she had a good relationship with the bank’s big client, that Saf-T guy. But I don’t know about other relationships. When I spoke to her mother, she didn’t know anything about Emily’s friends. Maybe there weren’t many, or any. By the way, the mother was not from the big conversationalists, to put it mildly. And Emily’s neighbors, that nice young couple you spoke to also—Beth and Roberto—their description was of someone really quiet or extremely shy.”


  As Nelson was opening the cans of peeled tomatoes, I got to thinking that this sort of intimacy was probably more threatening to my peace of mind than the sex part of the relationship. Such welcome coziness, and from the very man I’d yearned to be cozy with for much of my adult life. I recalled that in the first years after we parted, I’d often excuse myself when the family was watching TV together in the evening and go upstairs to a bathroom, lock the door, and sob. “So what about her being quiet or shy or unassertive or whatever?” he asked. “How many hundreds of times have you seen neighbors of a guy who’s just gunned down ten people being interviewed? They all say, ‘But he was such a nice, quiet person.’ Quiet people kill. Shy people kill.”

  “I know. But it’s so weird to me to have to think of someone that retiring as a criminal mastermind. Look, she accepted the glass ceiling at work. Her whole career she’d been at only one job, and it didn’t sound like a particularly thrilling one.”

  “Not everybody is ambitious.”

  “I know that. She could have done better, but she stayed and stayed in a boring, safe job. Sure, maybe that was how she was, someone who didn’t like challenges. But that’s what’s so amazing, that she plotted this whole criminal scam, using insider information. She had Courtney, or Courtney and some offshore corporation, buying the stock low and selling it high.”

  I had to give him credit; he could listen and chop the onion with the boldness of a television chef at the same time. “First of all, my sweetheart, this is just your theory. It could be that Emily Chavarria and Courtney Logan met each other at that women’s thing in Baltimore and became friendly. The reason Emily called Courtney a few days before Halloween was that she was going to a party and couldn’t decide whether to go as Snow White or the Seventh Dwarf.”

  “I know it’s just a theory,” I conceded. “Anyone could have killed Courtney. Greg, the au pair, the high-school classmate who wound up taking the blame for the candy-bar-money theft, Mr. or Mrs. Fancy Phil, the guy who built and serviced the Logans’ pool. Just give me another theory that fits as many facts as mine does. I’ll be glad to consider it.” He turned away to think and chop.

  All I wanted to do was stand there and watch him, so I made myself go upstairs to my office. I got on-line and did one of those People Searches. A few Vanessa Russells, though I sensed none of them was Emily since killers probably prefer unlisted numbers. Still, I printed out the page.

  I pushed back from the desk to avoid one of my flake-out attacks: I’d begin at a music site ordering a Sinatra CD, wind up reading personal accounts by Japanese-Americans of life in internment sites during World War II, then shut down the computer having no memory of why I’d turned it on in the first place. Focus, I ordered myself: Even a big baby like Josh Kincaid had landed himself a job at Patton Giddings. True, after a year he’d been asked to leave, but if he hadn’t had the family mortgage company to fall back on, he probably could have chosen from a couple of non-dead-end, semi-interesting jobs in finance. I had no idea how much discrimination against women there was in the field, but even assuming a great deal, Emily might have gotten out of the Red Oak Bank and gone elsewhere. Well, I thought, maybe she had a mad crush on an unattainable man there and couldn’t bear to leave. Or maybe, despite having the Mr. Saf-T seal of approval and thus kept on by Red Oak, she was a noticeably dim bulb or a bad egg nobody else would hire.

  The aroma of sautéing onions wafted into the room and I felt myself getting teary—not from the onions but from the perfection of having Nelson in my house and the knowledge that sooner or later he’d be leaving for his own. For his wife. From wife, it was just my usual happy hop to contemplating the possibility that she’d decide on a late-in-life baby—Surprise, honey!—thus guaranteeing their marriage for the next twenty or so years.

  I pulled my chair back to the computer and typed in “Samantha R. Corby.” Eight S. Corbys, with addresses and phone numbers. I printed out that page, too, then switched to a general search engine and gave “Samantha R. Corby” a shot. Nothing, which didn’t cause me to reel with shock. However, knowing the mindless literalness of computers, I typed in “Samantha Corby.” One item came up.

  I double-clicked and there I was, at the Web site of the Wiggins, Idaho, Star, a newspaper that made the Shorehaven Beacon read like the Christian Science Monitor. Right there, in the November 19,1999, issue, in a small box titled “Welcome New Neighbor!” between “Arlene and Arnold Chester” and “Dr. and Mrs. Alwyn Rossi” was “Samantha Corby.” I had no idea of what to do next, but since no mellifluous calls of “Dinner!” were rising up the stairs, I pulled up a map of Idaho and made Wiggins the center of that universe. Just a few millimeters above it, a direction some might call north, past towns called Bellevue, Hailey, and Ketchum was Sun Valley. Resort, I thought. Famous resort. Hadn’t some Olympics been held there?

  I got on the phone. The woman at the Star, who sounded as if she might be the paper’s entire staff—or the only one there so late in the day—said the names for “Welcome New Neighbor!” came from local real estate brokers. She gave me a few numbers. I kept making calls until Nelson bellowed: “Ready when you are!”

  I came down bubbling about my Samantha Corby discovery. “Could be,” Nelson said, actually pulling out a kitchen chair for me.

  Whatever parsley he hadn’t used he’d stuck in a glass and set it on the table as the centerpiece. “When Steffi talked about the woman she saw leaving the Logans’, the woman who might be Emily,” I said a few minutes later as I pierced a couple of pieces of fusilli, “she described her as a little gray mouse.” Busy admiring either my shirt or my cleavage, Nelson nodded in a polite, uninterested way that was almost husbandly. I thought I deserved a little more heed, having already lauded his tomato sauce at length, with absolute sincerity. He was a natural cook, at home in any kitchen. He’d even discovered my vegetable patch and picked some lettuce and radishes for the salad. “Nelson.”

  “What?”

  “I want you to pay a lot of attention to me right now.” He smiled, nodded okay, took a bite of the garlic bread he’d made, then refilled our glasses from the bottle of red wine I always kept on hand for Nancy so she wouldn’t get d.t.’s or bitchy or whatever. “Okay,” I said, “remember ‘little gray mouse,’ but put it on the shelf for a minute.”

  “It’s on the shelf. I’m listening, Judith. I’m fascinated by everything you say.”

  “Good.” I made a big deal of clearing my throat, probably because I wasn’t completely clear about what I was going to say and I guess I wanted Nelson to approve of every syllable. You think you get to a point in life when other people’s opinions don’t matter. You are who you are; you won’t be destroyed if someone doesn’t like you or mocks your ideas. I knew Nelson liked me—loved me—and he wasn’t going to laugh his head off if he thought I was wrong. He’d say straight out that he disagreed with me. At best he’d be kind. At worst, polite. Sure, if I’d say something blatantly idiotic he’d respond with “Give me a break,” but I knew he was well aware I wasn’t a blatant idiot.

  “Come on,” he said encouragingly.

  “To me, it seems that when you’re searching for the whodunit in a murder case, you have to have the pertinent facts. But if the facts aren’t enough to help you to solve it, you also have to search out the emotional or psychological truth. I keep thinking about the sort of person Courtney was and I keep coming up with the feeling there was something fundamentally wrong with her.”

  “Homicide victims are dead because someone perpetrated a crime against them,” Nelson retorted. “They’re no better or worse than anybody else. Saints get murdered. So do monsters. If you’re right about Courtney, she was involved in a serious mess. She was greedy, arrogant, and a lousy judge of character.”

  “Right, but let me go on from this. At first I thought of her as a perfectionist, but I think it’s equally about control. She wanted to be in charge. She was the one who set the rules. No sugar for the kids. Only an hour of TV. The au pair ha
d to wait until after the kids were asleep before she could watch television in her own room. The young woman who did the videography for StarBaby told me that until Courtney lost interest, Courtney practically breathed for her. She didn’t hire an interior decorator the way a lot of women in her economic class do. She did it herself. Perfectionism or control, but nothing was left undone. The chandelier in the front hall: it had teeny lampshades over each bulb, and each shade had a scalloped trim. She lined the bathroom wastebasket with a doily.”

  “I can’t believe someone thought she deserved to die for that,” Nelson said.

  “No. That’s not why Mack Dooley got a big surprise when he took off the pool cover. But before I get to that, let’s talk about how other people saw Courtney. Greg? He’s not going to say he hated her. There’s no way of knowing what he felt. The same with the au pair. She seems to have genuinely idolized Courtney, but if she had a mad pash for Greg, requited or unrequited, she’s not going to tell me that Courtney was a domineering pain in the ass.”

  “Do you have a mad pash for me?” he asked.

  “No, I’m just toying with you until I can find something better.”

  “That’s what I figured you’d say.”

  “Courtney was pretty, or at least cute, kind of a Princeton amalgam of Sandra Dee and June Allyson.” Nelson laughed, but then he’d always reacted that way to my movie analogies, so I flicked my hand to brush him off. “But so many people seemed to think there was something not right about her.

  “First and foremost, that woman she went to high school with, Ingrid Farrell. Ingrid took the hit when Courtney stole that candy-bar money. It’s really not a juvenile prank, because everyone believed Ingrid was guilty. Even Ingrid’s parents believed she’d done it, and so they made restitution. The cloud of that incident has been hanging over her ever since. It was a terrible thing for Courtney to do. Okay, next: Jill Badinowski, one of StarBaby’s clients: She described Courtney as being an ice-cold businesswoman, that she could be selling videos of babies or poison gas, it made no difference. Fancy Phil told me that if you looked for personality in Courtney, it wasn’t there. He described her as lukshen, Yiddish for noodles.”