“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?”
“It’s not just Julie. There’s someone-that’s why I never spoke of it. It’s what Julie would have wanted.”
“Someone else? Her sister?”
Susan nodded.
“I can promise you the statute of limitations has run out on that.” He really needed to check that detail. “No one’s going to care about Andrea Norr being an accessory to Felix’s escape. But that was it, right?”
So the old rumor was true. They drove him out of state in a horse trailer. He couldn’t help being a little impressed with himself, ferreting out this fact, confirming an old legend. Too bad that he didn’t have anyone in his life to tell the story to.
She gave the tiniest nod.
“And she got paid? The sister?”
“Something. Not a lot. And all Julie got was the coffee shop and a little cash for herself, too. But she didn’t believe it, she wouldn’t hear of it. She said she knew that Julie must have gotten lots of money, or how else would she have bought the inn, opened the restaurant? She was-kind of crazy. Not yelling, but loud enough that I could hear her. They were in the kitchen and I was in the laundry room off the kitchen. This was about a week before. She asked Julie for money, said it was only fair. And Julie said she just didn’t have it.”
Susan had made the mistake he had hoped she would make, rushing ahead, babbling, assuming that he knew more than he did. She? Who she, what she? Not Andrea Norr.
A silence of a sort. They could hear Doobie’s television set, the familiar chime of the Law & Order theme. Must be six now.
“Did you see her?”
“No. And if I thought she had anything to do with Julie’s murder, I would have told. I would have. But she was soft. Julie always said that. Soft, not used to doing things for themselves. The wife and the daughters. All spoiled, the whole lot of them.”
“So there was a confrontation, a week before. Where someone accused Julie of taking money and she said she hadn’t.”
“She hadn’t. Julie was really shaken up. She worried that the wife knew how to get to Felix, that the wife had told him these lies about her. That’s what really bugged her.”
“So she didn’t know where Felix was?”
“No. And she was okay with that, as long as Bambi didn’t, either. The day the daughter came, that was all she wanted to know. Had anyone spoken to Felix, what was going on with Felix.”
The day the daughter came. He didn’t let on that he had assumed Bambi Brewer was the she in Susie’s tale. He flipped open a notebook. “Right, that was-Linda, right? The oldest one.”
“I don’t remember the name. The middle one, I think. The smart one, who went to the fancy college.” She looked defensive. “Julie kept tabs, a little. She paid attention to Felix’s family. Maybe more than she should. She accused the girl of doing her mother’s dirty work. The daughter said her mother didn’t know she had come.”
“Susan,” called Doobie, his voice as querulous as a child’s after a nap. “Susan?”
“Yes, Doobie?”
“What are we having for dinner?”
“Turkey burgers and salad.”
“And french fries?”
“No french fries.” She looked at Sandy. “He’s older than me, by a bit. The doctor says something happens to the brain and we become like little kids again. Fewer inhibitions. We want what we want, we don’t care as much about saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ He’s a good guy. We’ve had a great life together. I’d be a shit to kick him to the curb now. Look, I’m sorry if you think what I did was a big deal. I had to ask myself what Julie would want, what was most important to her. Even if what I knew might have solved her murder-it would have hurt her sister.”
“She wasn’t known for putting her sister first when she was alive, not according to her sister.”
“All the more reason to do it after she died. Julie felt bad about her relationship with Andrea, wanted to make things up to her. She didn’t get the chance. I did.”
On the drive back to Baltimore, he replayed the conversation with Susan Borden. She was one of the more credible people he had interviewed. Everyone lied, but Susan had been pretty straightforward about her lies of omission and why she had committed them.
And her loyalty to Doobie, the child-man with the childish name and the enormous gut-it spoke well of her. We’ve had a great life together. They weren’t now and yet there he was, every day, totally reliant on her. Would Sandy have traded for more time with Mary if it had meant being with someone who wasn’t really Mary? Would he have traded Bobby-as-he-was, now in his thirties and lost to him, for a normal Bobby who died at age five?
You can rewrite life all you want, Sandy thought. It’s still a play where everyone dies in the end.
Miss Me
September 23, 2001
Is there room in the refrigerator for another platter?”