Sandy would never know what Bambi Brewer said to get Bert to confess, and he didn’t much care. It was his case, his stat. He had brought her in, and the daughter. He had played them against each other, sure that one of them would give him a confession he could use, and Bambi had done that, indirectly. Sandy had found the sales slip, matched the description of the earring to the one in Julie’s purse. Without those factors, Julie Saxony’s death would still be unsolved. Bert’s name, true to Sandy’s credo, had been in the file.
What did bug him was how bad he looked on television. It wasn’t the pounds that TV added, he wasn’t that vain. But-was he really that rumpled? Had his once beautiful clothes aged that badly? Mary would be embarrassed. But now, with his consultant’s contract almost up, he was going to be making more money, could afford to buy the good stuff again. He hoped.
His first stop was a row house in Butchers Hill. You had to look closely to know it was an office-very discreet sign by the door, with no hint of the business done within Keyes and Associates. He rang the bell, heard the tumblers turn. Good girl, he thought. No unlocked door for you in this neighborhood, not even in the daytime.
Eddie’s girl-the kid had said wife, why did Sandy doubt him?-was as he remembered her from his onetime glimpse. Tall, broad-shouldered, more handsome than pretty, but with the kind of expressive face that grew on you. Firm handshake, clothes that looked nice, if kind of forgettable.
“So Crow said if I’m serious about expanding, I should talk to you,” Tess Monaghan said, after bringing him into an office where a neon sign advertised HUMAN HAIR and a neon clock said it was TIME FOR A HAIRCUT. Her hair seemed normal enough, though. “Do you really think you’ll like PI work? It’s a lot of document stuff, talking to people, sweating the details. Incredible boredom at times.”
“Sounds like police work to me.”
“Are you comfortable with a little gray area? I sometimes fudge things to get what I want. Is that going to be a problem for ex-po-po?”
She grinned, letting him know that po-po was ironic, that she was making fun of herself. He liked that.
“I’m not a police anymore. I work on a contract, no gun, no badge. I could do the same thing for you. Only for more money, I hope.”
“Depending on the caseload, there should be more money in it. And the fact is, I need another equity partner. I have a young child, I can’t do eighteen-hour days anymore.” She smiled with only half her mouth. “What am I saying? I still do eighteen-hour days, I just don’t do eighteen hours of PI work. It’s hard, finding the balance.”
He nodded, as if he knew. Mary had been Bobby’s full-time caretaker until he went away. That’s how it was, even with normal kids, back then. Sandy had loved his son. He just hadn’t known what to do with him when all the little father-son dreams turned out to be beyond his reach. He wasn’t going to teach him to play sports or drive a car or how to fix things. They weren’t going to have father-son chats. Mary knew how to be Bobby’s mother in spite of his limitations. But that was another thing that made Mary special. Maybe instead of thinking what a failure he was, he could just remember how great she was? Problem was, that just made him miss her even more.
He really needed this job. He needed something, anything, to keep him away from his own thoughts.
“I don’t get a lot of cold cases here,” Tess said. “It’s dull, dull, dull most of the time.”
“I could do dull. I like dull.” He decided to try to make a joke, although it was not his forte. “I am dull.”
She laughed. He felt as if he had just scored a goal in a soccer match, even if he hadn’t played soccer since he was thirteen.
“Want to start after the holidays?” she asked.
“Christmas, you mean?”
“Why, yes. Christmas, New Year’s. It’s a slow time of year for me, but it picks up around Valentine’s Day. That’s a big holiday for this business, I’m sad to say.”
“I just wanted to be clear because Hanukkah starts tomorrow.”
“I hate to stereotype, but I didn’t think that would be something on your radar.”
“The next lady I’m going to see-she told me.”
“Well, Baruch atah Adonai, Sandy.”
“What?”
She laughed. “There’s a Weinstein lurking under the Monaghan freckles.”
That name rang a bell. “Like the jewelry store?”
“The same, although that’s my uncle’s business.”
“This lady I’m going to see-she has a connection to it.”
She shrugged. “In Baltimore, you’d be lucky to make it to six degrees of separation. Usually two, tops. Isn’t that what brought you here?”
Sandy had not crossed Bambi Brewer’s threshold since he searched it almost nine months earlier, and he was not sure how she would feel about his request to see her. He tried to tell himself it wasn’t his fault. You couldn’t close Julie Saxony’s file without dredging up the Felix stuff. Even if he hadn’t been connected, it would always be there, a part of Julie’s identity. Four years of her life, 1972 to 1976. She had gone on to run a couple of successful businesses. Helped other people-gave the chef a chance to start his own restaurant, pried Susie out of the Variety. But when it came down to it, she was Felix Brewer’s girl, and when her murder was solved, the newspaper ran the photo of her in her glory, the same one Sandy had found in the file. Juliet Romeo trumped Julie Saxony every time.
Then again, Julie threw everything away when she got the phone call. Felix wants me? Screw the restaurant, screw Chet, screw my sister, screw Susie. Given the choice, she would be Felix’s girl.
When Bert had come to Sandy and Nancy with his own lawyer that night, Sandy had gotten angry. He was so sick of this shit. How many people were going to try to cover for Rachel Brewer, who had to be the killer, even if her name wasn’t in the file? Opportunity, impulse, and stupidity-she had them all in spades. She and her mother had sat in their respective interview rooms late into the evening. When Bambi reneged on her promise to provide a confession, Sandy had shooed the other daughters away from Rachel, put her back in a room. He felt like a dad in that moment. No supper for any of you until you stop lying. Then Bert had returned with a criminal lawyer even better than himself, although Bert probably didn’t concede there was a better criminal lawyer than himself. They wanted to bargain, right off, but the state’s attorney wasn’t having it. Ultimately, Gelman agreed to twenty years, no parole. He was a healthy man, but he was already seventy and prison life was hard. It was unlikely he would ever see the outside again.
And all for money. Your best friend blows town, you shortchange his widow, then kill the one person who knows where the suitcase ended up. Didn’t some people ever have enough?
Not that Bambi Brewer appeared to be hurting. Her apartment was in a high-rise called HarborView. When it was built, it had seemed ridiculous, this high-rise in low-slung South Baltimore, a sore thumb. A giant’s sore thumb. Now there was a Ritz-Carlton within spitting distance, a Four Seasons across the water. And the place must have views forever, across the harbor, into the mouth of the bay.
Bambi’s apartment faced west, though. The view was rooftops and the big green hump of Federal Hill.
“Let’s sit in the living room, Detective,” she said, gracious in tone but without any of the offers of hospitality that would signal she wanted him to tarry. Ah, well. It was just a little crush. Not even he took it seriously. Plus, she had a few years on him. But what could he say? She was a good-looking woman.