“Motives,” Sandy said, not bothering to suppress his sigh. “Well, no one benefited financially from this lady’s death.”
Lady. Would he have called her that a week ago? Maybe not. But the more he knew about her, the more he liked Julie Saxony. She was a go-getter.
“I’ve always been curious-do the police have a lot of access to financial information in a murder? Can you get people’s accounts, do a kind of credit report? I mean, my wife-” He suddenly busied himself, wiping “pupcake” from his daughter’s face, which hadn’t bothered him at all a minute ago. Sandy suspected the kid was about to incriminate his wife, reveal that she had sources that got her information through not exactly legal methods. Must be nice, but she didn’t have to stand behind her work in court, delineate every piece of evidence and how it was obtained. Divorce work was like going to war, and all was fair in love and war.
All was fair in love and war. His brain replayed his own thought, telling him to pay attention, not to let go of what might seem like just another cliché passing through.
“Sure, with the proper paperwork I can get what I need. I mean, it’s not like the movies where I go click, click, click, and some amazing document opens on the computer. But there’s no money to follow here. She had a nice business. Her disappearance didn’t benefit anyone, and it screwed up a lot of people-her employees, her sister. In her absence, they couldn’t work it out. Business went bust.”
“Ah, so what do you think happened? I mean, where do you start?”
“With the original witnesses, every single name in the file-and this file runs to almost eight hundred pages. Of course, I can only get to those who are still around. Twenty-five years, things happen.” He considered the youth of the man in front of him, the sunny disposition. “People die.”
The kid nodded. “Or disappear, or don’t remember. Or they think they remember, which is even worse. Did you know the more we tell a story, the more degraded it becomes? Factually, I mean. It’s like taking a beloved but fragile object out of a box and turning it over in your hands. You damage it every time.”
“That’s interesting.” Sandy wasn’t being polite in this instance. He had begun to pay careful attention to the subject of memory, key in cold cases. He worried that there would be a day when defense attorneys could jettison all testimony based on memory. He really thought the United States ought to go the way of the UK, put cameras up everywhere. Oh, all the ACLU types would howl, but if you’re not a criminal, why would you care? All was fair in love and war.
Love, he thought. Love. It didn’t rule out stupidity or impulse. In fact, love tended to run with that crowd.
“Gotta go,” he said abruptly, aware he was being rude, unable to stop himself. “She’s a cutie.”
He went into a diner, an honest one that dated back to the Avenue’s pre-chic days, and ordered a cup of coffee. He got out a notepad and began doodling. Sometimes, it was better not to have the file in front of you, just your head and some paper.
He re-created the shapes in his head-the major triangle of Julie, Felix, and his wife, who didn’t even show up until the murder file was opened in 2001, and she had been eliminated pretty definitively. Everyone had fixated on Felix when Julie disappeared, but what good does it do to kill your husband’s girlfriend ten years after he’s gone, having left both of you? But there were other triangles. Felix-Julie-the sister. Julie had kind of dumped Andrea for her boyfriend, hadn’t she? Moved out, moved up. He drew another triangle: Felix-Julie-Tubby. The former fat man had met her first, brought her to Felix. Tribute? Or had he wanted her for himself and been surprised when she chose Felix?
Sandy paid for his coffee. A buck twenty-five and this place was cheap by today’s standards. Had he really once lived in a world where a cup of coffee cost a quarter, candy bars were a nickel, hamburgers could be had for less than fifty cents? He never flinched at the gas station, no matter how high the prices got, because it made sense to him that something like gas kept going up, up, up, controlled by all those sheiks. It was the small items of his youth that he remembered. And they had seemed expensive then, coming from Cuba. Expensive and bountiful. The first time he had walked into the pharmacy on Twenty-ninth Street, the one with the soda fountain, he had been overwhelmed by the sheer abundance of his new life. It had taken him forty minutes to choose a candy bar. He told that story to Mary, told her it was a Marathon bar. Mary pointed out that Marathons weren’t around when he was fourteen.
So the kid, Crow, was right. The things Sandy thought he remembered best were the things he was getting wrong. In which case-what did that say about his memories of Mary? Were they wrong? As long as they were loving, did it matter if they were wrong? He wished, as he wished every day, for her company. True, she could drive him mad with her endless analysis of every single personal interaction, but that was what women did.
He doodled a name on his pad: Lorraine Gelman. Indirectly brought the chef and Julie together. Knew Bambi and Felix, probably knew Tubman through her husband, the criminal attorney. She would be protective of her old friends. Wives side with wives. But she might know stuff, might have spotted the dynamic he suspected. The only worry in Sandy’s mind was that a woman married to one of the best criminal attorneys in the city wouldn’t talk to him without lawyering up.
Lawyering up. She might even say that. I’ll have to lawyer up. Jesus. Sometimes, Sandy felt like a magician in a room where even the youngest kid yelled out: “It’s a trick box! She’s pulled her knees up to her chest!”
June 18, 1991
Michelle was aware of the impression she made as she walked out to the pool in high-heeled sandals and a pink bikini. She strolled the full length slowly, toward the deep end where the adults-her mother, Bert, Lorraine-were seated. She then had to go back and procure one of the chaises at the other end. Again, she made a show of it, letting the wheels clatter, refusing the help of the all-but-panting teenage boys who offered to do it for her. How could her mother possibly think that Michelle-eighteen, a high school graduate-should attend a party of sixteen-year-olds. It had been bad enough, having Sydney’s company pushed on her all these years, but to attend a Sweet Sixteen on the first beautiful Saturday in June-torture. Especially when her boyfriend had wanted to take her to Philadelphia for dinner, to Le Bec Fin. But her mother couldn’t possibly know that, right? She didn’t even know about the boyfriend.
Michelle had come up with such a good plan to get away, too. She told her mother that she was going to Philadelphia for the day to visit an art museum with a girl she had met on the College Park visit, a girl who might be her roommate if she proved, on this outing, as collegial as she seemed. This should have been a no-brainer for Bambi-art, a girl, Michelle trying to be sensible and optimistic about the whole College Park thing, which had been a bitter pill to swallow. Not because she was a brainiac like Rachel, or a grind like Linda, but because she had wanted to go someplace fun. ASU, Tulane, University of Miami. Only she hadn’t got into any of them. Bambi said Maryland was a bargain and if Michelle wanted to go out of state, she should have put more effort into high school, as Linda and Rachel had.
“You might also want to consider if the number of tanning days belongs on a list of things you need in a college,” she had added.
Tanning days. Michelle flipped on her stomach, reached behind her and unsnapped her halter top, then slid the top beneath her and onto the table where her Diet Coke was sweating. Her mother and the Gelmans were enjoying Bellinis, although the kids-the kids!-had been promised sips of champagne when the cake came out. Michelle’s own sisters-well, Linda at least-had been able to drink at eighteen, but the law had changed. Just another entry on Michelle’s List of Everything Unfair.