Back home, I squeezed into my new Juicy, reminding myself it was supposed to fit snugly, and checked myself out in the mirror. Hannah Ives, the turquoise sausage.
I clapped a ball hat on my head. A sausage wearing a hat.
I added dark glasses. I was a sausage wearing a hat with dark glasses, but with the addition of the sunglasses, even my sweet, sainted mother wouldn’t have recognized me.
Wearing my disguise, I drove over the bridge into East-port and out Forest Drive to Chesapeake Harbour, fully expecting to have to talk my way through the gate, but when I slowed at the guardhouse, the turnstile was up and the guardhouse abandoned. Dear me, I sighed. Cutbacks everywhere.
Once through the gate, I wound slowly around the complex, a labyrinth of three-story town houses with a numbering system clearly designed by a dyslexic builder. It took several circuits before I figured the system out and was able to pull into a visitor’s space in front of Jennifer’s building.
At the front door, I ran my finger down the buttons on the resident directory until I found the one labeled 3C. There was no answering buzz, of course, and I would have fainted dead if there’d been one.
I wandered back to my car and looked up, counting floors, trying to figure out which balcony belonged to Jennifer’s apartment. Third floor, to the left, I guessed. I could see a hanging plant, a lounge chair. With my eyes still on the balcony, I backed up and crossed to the sidewalk opposite, where I stood on tiptoes. Through partially opened drapes I could see a floor lamp and a portion of a wing-back chair.
“Are you lost? Looking for someone?”
A woman had crept up behind me and was jogging quietly in place. She wore a pink fleece track suit, her brown hair tucked into an Orioles ball cap.
“Morbid curiosity, I guess.” I flashed her a smile. “Isn’t that Jennifer Goodall’s apartment? The woman who was murdered at the Naval Academy?”
“I didn’t know her very well,” the jogger admitted. She poked at the frames of her round, gold-rimmed eyeglasses, pushing them farther up her nose. “But, yes, that’s her apartment.”
Suddenly she stopped jogging and studied me closely, her blue eyes enormous behind the thick lenses. “Who are you?”
“Emily Shemanski,” I ad libbed, using my daughter’s name and hoping the jogger didn’t recognize me from my picture in the paper.
“Sorry, you just looked so familiar,” she said. After a thoughtful pause, she added, “You live around here?”
I smiled. “Just jogging through. I live near Bembe Beach.” I pointed in a vague northerly direction toward a neighboring community.
She smiled. “I’m Marisa Young. I live in the next building over.”
I slipped my fingers into the pockets of my workout pants and smiled at her. “Jennifer and I were in the same book club,” I improvised. “We met at her place a couple of times, but it was always at night.” I turned to face Jennifer’s building. “It’s so strange seeing her apartment in the daytime. It doesn’t look like anybody’s touched anything, though, does it? Her furniture’s still there.”
“Oh, that’s not Jennifer’s stuff,” Marisa confided. “They moved it all out at the end of the month. That hanging basket, barbecue, and stuff belong to the new tenants.”
“Boy, they don’t waste any time, do they?”
Marisa shrugged. “There’s a huge waiting list for these condos. After the cops finished with her place…” Her voice trailed off.
“Who took Jennifer’s stuff, do you know?”
“Dunno. Her parents, I imagine.”
“She must have had a lot of friends in the neighborhood.”
“No, I don’t think so. Jennifer kept pretty much to herself. I sailed with her a couple of times, on the Academy boats, you know. We worked out together on occasion.”
“Worked out? You mean you jogged together?”
“That, too,” Marisa said. “But we usually worked out at Merritt Gym over on Moreland Parkway. We both signed up during one of those open houses. After the free month ran out, it got too expensive for me, but I think Jennifer is still a member.” She swallowed hard. “Was.”
After a thoughtful pause, Marisa patted a chunky thigh. “I should probably give the gym another try.”
“Story of my life. I used to jog with a friend,” I said, “but since she died…” I turned my face toward the bay, fighting the tears that usually came whenever something reminded me of Valerie, who had died tragically, and too young, leaving a four-year-old daughter behind.
Marisa laid a hand lightly on my shoulder. “I’m sorry about your friend.” She let her hand fall to her side and said, “I wonder if what they said in the paper is true?”
“About Jennifer?”
“No. About that terrible woman who killed her.”
I tried to keep my face neutral. “But didn’t Jennifer bring false charges against that woman’s husband?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And pick a big fight with her?”
Marisa nodded. “Still, that’s no reason to kill somebody.”
“I liked Jennifer and all,” I lied glibly, “but she could be a bit driven, if you know what I mean.”
“I think she was lonely,” Marisa said in defense of her friend.
“But someone as attractive as Jennifer must have had boyfriends,” I mused. “Did you ever meet them?”
“She mentioned someone in D.C. she was seeing from time to time, but I never met him.” Marisa adjusted her eyeglasses more comfortably on the bridge of her nose, then began pumping her arms. “Well, it’s been nice talking to you, but I better get back to my run.” She jogged a few steps, turned, and jogged backward. “I just hope they lock up that horrible Ives person and throw away the key. Send her to the electric chair.”
A chill ran along my spine. “I don’t think Maryland has an electric chair,” I told her.
“Lethal injection, then!” she shouted, and sprinted down the sidewalk in the direction of the community marina.
As I watched her go, something occurred to me and I jogged after her. “Marisa!”
“Yes?” she replied, not even breaking stride as I caught up with her.
“Did Jennifer keep anything at the gym, in a locker or something?”
“She did.” As we pounded around the corner past the fuel dock, she added, “Jennifer usually went to the gym before work, so she kept her exercise clothes there.”
“You don’t know the locker number, by any chance?”
“They don’t assign locker numbers at Merritt. You just take one that’s available and slap a padlock on it.”
“Jennifer had a padlock?”
“Yes, a combination lock, and if it’s still there, you can’t miss it. I had to laugh, because it looked so much like everyone else’s that she tied it with a red ribbon.”
“Thanks, Marisa,” I panted.
“No problem,” she said, then stopped. “Why do you want to know?”
“I loaned Jennifer a pedometer,” I said, thinking quickly. “I thought maybe she might have left it there.”
“Oh,” said Marisa. “Well, I hope you find what you’re looking for!”
“So do I, Marisa,” I told her departing back. “So do I.”
Merritt Gym was a long five miles from Chesapeake Harbour, down Forest Drive and across to West Street. The facilities were state-of-the-art, I would soon discover, but so were the Academy’s. Why didn’t Jennifer use them?
Maybe she decided that working out at the Academy would feel too much like going to work early. The Naval Academy was pretty intense. Maybe she needed a break from the place.
As a faculty wife, I was authorized to use the Academy’s equipment, and I’d tried it once or twice, but all the testosterone sloshing about had been too much for me. Maybe it had been too much for Jennifer, too.