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,” Sandy 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.”