After I'm Gone (11 page)

“It might be closer than you think,” she told Bert. He laughed and ruffled her hair, as if she were still eleven or twelve.

But this morning, only eighteen hours ago, Linda still believed that anything was possible, that improbable victories could be pulled out in the final moment of any contest. During the Nixon years, people had spoken of a Silent Majority. Reagan had invoked the term during this election. But the true silent majority, in Linda’s mind, were young people like herself. Oh, they made a lot of noise, but they forgot to follow through with the actions that really counted. It almost didn’t seem right for people over the age of sixty-five to vote. They had so little time left. Shouldn’t the policies affecting the future be set by candidates chosen by those who had to live in the world longer? If you were going to weight the importance of certain states, why not weight individual votes? When Linda was eleven, a film called
Wild in the Streets
had shown up on a second-run bill at the Pikes Theater and it centered on the nation’s first twenty-two-year-old president, made possible when the voting age was lowered to fourteen. Linda had gone to see it three times. (The lead actor was very handsome.) Crazy, yes—but it made more sense to her than the Electoral College. She wanted to pound her fists on the bar, say
It’s so unfair
.

Instead, she asked Victor for another white wine.

A man came into the bar. He glanced around in confusion, taking in the barely audible television, Greg and Norman wolfing down appetizers, Linda staring into her wineglass.

“Are you still open?” he asked. “Is this a private party?”

Although the question was addressed to Victor, Linda answered. “It’s clearly not a party,” she said. “As for
private,
anyone is welcome, but do you really want to be a part of this group?”

“Did someone die?”

The man was in his twenties, Linda guessed, with the most amazing eyelashes.
He has eyes like a giraffe,
she thought. Linda liked giraffes.

“Just my hopes and dreams.” She meant to sound blithe, devil may care, but her mouth crumpled, ruining the effect. “We all worked on the Anderson campaign.”

“Well—” He cast around for something to say. “Well,” he repeated. “Good for you. You did something you believe in.”

“But we didn’t change anything,” she said. “We didn’t even
matter
.” While it would have been awful to be the spoiler, to be blamed for Carter’s loss, it was worse, she decided now, to have had no effect at all.

“You don’t topple giants the first time out, despite what Jack and the Beanstalk, or even David and his Goliath, would have you think. It takes years of work.”

His kindness felt patronizing, as kindness often can. Linda drew herself up haughtily. “Really? Have you climbed any beanstalks lately?”

“I’m a public defender,” he said. “Which is as close to being Sisyphus as any mortal might ever know.” A sweet smile. “Don’t be mad at me.”

“Who says I was?”

“I can’t seem to get on the right foot with you. Should I go out and come back in again?”

And with that, he walked out of the bar, then returned, hopping on one foot.

“I’m a unipod,” he said. “I’m here to audition for the role of Tarzan.”

“You stole that,” Greg said. “Dudley Moore and Peter Cook.”

But Linda had to laugh. Her father had tried such stunts when Bambi was stewing. No, not
stewing,
quite the opposite. Bambi had gotten cold when angry with Felix. Very cold and quiet and grim. They called her the Frigidaire when she was angry.

Linda did a swift, familiar calculation—should she sleep with this man tonight? She had slept with exactly four men since she lost her virginity at seventeen, and she liked to think of herself as progressive, the kind of woman who took what she wanted when she wanted it, although it was a lot trickier since she had moved home.

No, not tonight. It might not be love at first sight, but she was in for the long haul if he was, she knew that much. Her next campaign, only with a lot more potential. She wondered how he would feel when he found out she was a college senior, living at home. She wondered what he looked like naked.

“I’m Linda,” she said.

“Henry,” he said. “Henry Sutton.”

By three that morning, they were making out in her car. It was hard to say who pulled back that first night. Both would claim later that they were waiting for a more genteel first time. That opportunity presented itself two weeks later, when Bambi went to New York with Michelle, Lorraine, and Lorraine’s daughter, Sydney. It was designed to be a whole Eloise-at-the-Plaza experience for the two girls, although Michelle, at seven, considered herself too sophisticated for both Eloise and five-year-old Sydney. If Linda hadn’t been so anxious to have the house to herself, she might have used Michelle’s antipathy to dissuade Bambi from such an extravagance. Her mother was good, most of the time. But in New York, with Lorraine, she would buy clothes she couldn’t afford, try to keep pace with her old friend, who was privy to Bambi’s difficulties. Maybe that was why it was so important to Bambi to try to hold her own with Lorraine.

But, for once, Linda forgot about everyone else—her mother, Michelle, Rachel, John Anderson, all the sad men she had to prop up. She even forgot about the phantom sister who had passed through the Lord Baltimore Hotel and may or may not have been Julie Saxony. For one blissful Saturday evening, she thought only of herself and what she wanted, opening the door to long-lashed Henry Sutton, who actually brought her a bouquet of supermarket daisies. She was mindful, as the door swung open, of the story of her parents’ courtship, how they had married less than eleven months after her father had found his way to her mother’s door the day after meeting her. And Linda had long ago deduced that she had attended her parents’ marriage in utero, not the cause of the nuptials, but a happy by-product of a progressive courtship.

There are worse ways to begin,
she thought, lying beneath Henry in her mother’s bed, the only double bed in the house, taking care to cheat her face to the left so she would not be staring into her father’s eyes in the framed photograph on the nightstand.

Yes, they were very large and brown. She knew that.
She knew that.
But the man with her—he was gentle, a dreamer and idealist, someone who would never agree that the game was rigged. He probably thought she was a dreamer, too, given the circumstances of their meeting, but even as Linda was abandoning herself in this moment, she was also giving in to the pragmatic person she was meant to be. She would have to take care of both of them, she thought, circling her legs around his waist. She had to take care of everyone. That was okay; she was used to it. She remembered walking up the front walk, after the fireworks at the club. Her mother knew before they crossed the threshold. How had she known? Bert had taken Bambi to the side at the club, but Bert was forever taking her mother to the side over the last few months, since the indictment, then the trial. Bambi had run up the walk, thrown open the door, run from room to room, calling his name. “Felix? Felix?” There was no note, no reason to believe he was gone, yet Linda slowly began to see the details that made the case—the small gap in the closet so packed with suits, a drawer in his valet, opened and emptied of his best cuff links. Michelle was upset by their mother’s tears and shouts, so Linda put her to bed, singing to her as the little one cried, “Tummy hurts, tummy hurts.” She had gorged herself on ice cream and cake at the club. Then Linda and Rachel came into this very room and sat on this very bed with their mother’s arms around them. “He better be alone,” their mother had said, mystifying them. “Will we ever see him again?” Rachel had asked. Linda knew they would not.

“What are you
thinking about?” Henry asked, tracing her jawline with his finger.

“The last time I saw fireworks,” she said.

And he kissed her, believing himself complimented.

March 13, 2012

W
henever life took him outside the Beltway, Sandy felt as if he were escaping Earth’s orbit, breaking free of a particularly harsh gravity. As built up as the suburbs got, as bad as the rush-hour traffic was, a drive west on a bright March day lifted his spirits. Maybe he should go for more drives in the country. Did people still do that? Probably not. Most people spent too much time in their cars to consider driving fun, or recreational.

Sykesville,
Andrea Norr had said when she called out of the blue this morning.
Go see this guy in Sykesville.
Despite five decades in Baltimore, Sandy needed a moment to remember where Sykesville was. Those towns between Baltimore and Frederick kind of blended together for him—Sykesville, Westminster, Clarksville. Sykesville was the closest of the three, it turned out, not even twenty minutes from the Beltway, and Sandy took the exit with something akin to regret. He’d like to keep going, driving on this straight, uneventful highway, past Frederick, into the mountains. And he could. No one would notice, no one would care.

But there’s no point in running away when no one wants you back, so he might as well go interview Chef Boyardee.

“Bayard,” Andrea Norr had said. “Chet Bayard. I was reading Chowhound, and it turns out he has a new place after all these years.”

“Reading what?” She had called Sandy at 8:00
A.M.
, which probably seemed late on a horse farm, but Sandy enjoyed taking his time in the morning, inching into the day. He had worked midnights much of his life and was still barely on speaking terms with the hours between six and ten.

“It’s a website for people who are interested in food.”

“I know that.” He did. He thought about the woman he had met. Short, stocky, but it had seemed like her natural build, not a body nourished on particularly good or bad food. She had made that god-awful tea, too, and gone back for seconds. Someone who ate for fuel, someone who didn’t pay attention to restaurants.

“He was on the Eastern Shore ten years ago,” he said, the file alive in his mind. “When the body was found. Cops took a statement then.”

“Well, he’s in Sykesville now, got a new place.”

Hadn’t Tubman suggested that Andrea Norr had reasons to divert attention away from her? “So you just happened to be reading this website and you just happened to see this guy’s name and you just happened to remember he was the last person to talk to your sister that day and, bam, there he was?”

“No, I did a Google search on him and he came up. I’m surprised you haven’t done that.”

“He was on my list. There are a lot of people in that file. And I thought he was all the way down to Cambridge or something.”
And I have better sources than Google, for Christ’s sake. Everyone with a computer thinks they’re so slick.

“That place in Cambridge closed a few years ago, but he’s trying his luck again.”

“Poor sap.”

“What?”

“Never mind.” He would humor her, go out there. He didn’t like relatives telling him what to do. Usually, he had already done it. But he wanted to keep Andrea Norr as his ally in this. She knew something. He just wasn’t sure what it was, or if she even realized she had something of significance to share. He’d prefer that she be a liar, actually. You could break a liar down.

Poor sap
. Sandy couldn’t help evaluating Sykesville as a location for what was supposed to be an upscale French restaurant. The heart of the old town was charming, but it wasn’t a
destination
. The way Sandy understood it—and he had learned much of what he knew about the restaurant business in hindsight—you really needed an inn to make a go of a place like this, either one that was connected to the restaurant or a place within walking distance. The Inn at Little Washington, or even Volt out in Frederick. That had been Julie Saxony’s business plan when she disappeared—add a big-time restaurant to a B and B, then people would have a reason to come to the B and B. But she had been in Havre de Grace, which had the river, things to do. Sykesville struck Sandy as too close in for a weekend getaway, too far for a big night out.

But the place looked nice enough, and the posted menu was promising. Very traditional French, so old-fashioned as to feel new again. Coq au vin, daily fish specials, lentils, cassoulet.

He tried the heavy wooden door, found it unlocked.

“We’re closed,” a young woman said without looking up. “No lunch during the week.”

“I’m not here for a meal. I’m here to talk to”—he squinted at a piece of paper in his hand, although he knew the name—“Chester Bayard.”

“Chester—oh, Chet.” She called back to the kitchen. “Chet, some guy for you.”

The man who came out of the kitchen wore a chef’s coat with his full name embroidered on the breast pocket:
Chester Bayard
.
Cocksman,
Sandy thought. Sandy could always tell. It was in the tilt of the head, the predatory nature of the man’s eyes. He was probably sleeping with this girl, who was much too young for him. He probably screwed every attractive woman with whom he worked. He had probably screwed Julie Saxony, or tried. He was one of those guys. It was what he did, automatic as breathing.

“I’m an investigator with the Baltimore City Police Department.” When he came in cold like this, he never said
homicide,
not first thing.

“A detective?”

“Once, but I retired. I’m a consultant now. I do cold cases.”

“Murders.”

Everyone was so goddamn savvy these days. Or thought they were. Yet this guy, this chef, would probably be appalled if Sandy presumed to know
his
trade based on watching a couple of shows on the Food Network.

“Yes, Julie Saxony in this case. I’m going to assume you remember her.”

Bayard nodded. “I’m glad you’re taking an interest. She was a nice lady, gave me my start as a chef. You want to sit?”

He indicated a table, then picked up a bottle from a pine buffet—Ricard. He poured the yellowish liquid into a small glass, added water from a ceramic pitcher. He was way too into the ritual, which meant he was either a show-off or a boozer. He offered Sandy a glass, but he passed. He drank with friends. Well, he used to. He hadn’t really kept up with any of the other detectives after he retired. Bayard then waggled his fingers at the girl, her signal to leave. She flounced out, clearly miffed, although Sandy couldn’t tell if it was the fact of being dismissed or the way it had been done.

“Why now?” Bayard asked. “It’s been—”

“Twenty-six years since she disappeared, eleven since a homicide was established.” Sandy was aware that he was finishing the sentence, but not answering the question.

“Has something happened?”

“Not really. Sometimes cold cases are nudged back into being by new information, but sometimes we just look at the file and decide there are things that were never properly explored.”

“Is there new information?”

“I wouldn’t tell you if there was.”

“The detectives, the first time around. Small-town cops, didn’t know what they were doing. They did a shit job, no?”

“No. They did okay. It’s hard without a body. Not impossible, but hard. Havre de Grace police don’t work a lot of murders, but their file was complete. Woman drove away, was never seen again. They talked to a lot of people, followed every lead they had. They talked to
you
.”

“Well, I was the one who reported her missing. They kept asking me about the boyfriend.”

“You mean Felix Brewer?”

“Yeah. That guy. Stupid waste of time.”

Sandy couldn’t help himself. “Everyone thinks everything’s a waste of time when it’s not the thing that leads to an answer.” He paused, taken by his own turn of phrase, considered its larger implications. It could be a philosophy, almost. Then he realized it was a variation on that hippy-dippy shit about life’s journeys. Still, it was a good rule in police work. Ruling stuff out was a kind of an answer. “It would have been irresponsible not to consider it, given the world in which he moved.”

“She never spoke of him.”

“Really?”

“Not to me. Never mentioned him or her past. She was hurt when the business became successful and he was always part of the things that were written.”

“Never” was a big word, in Sandy’s experience. If love and hate were intertwined, so were never and forever.

The girl came back with a wooden board of cheese and fruit, a long loaf of French bread already sliced.

“Dig in,” the chef said. “It’s almost noon, no?” It was the second time he had allowed himself that Gallic inflection, but Sandy thought this guy was about as French as French’s mustard.

“No, thanks.” He noticed that the girl lingered, pretending to be busy in the immaculate dining room.
Ears big as pitchers
. Nabby’s expression, a mangling of what other people said about little pitchers and big ears.

“What kind of relationship did you have with Julie?”

“Very good. She was a great boss. And she gave me my start, got me out of the catering business.”

“Was the relationship strictly business?” Bayard’s girl was so fair that Sandy could see the tips of her ears flame red.
Honey, this guy is in his fifties. Do you think he’s never been laid before?

“We were friends.”

“More than that?”

Bayard glanced at the young woman. Her back was still to them, but her posture was so rigid that it seemed as if she were literally holding her breath, waiting for the answer.

“I would have liked that. But she was past having lovers. A young woman, still in her thirties, and she claimed she was ‘done with all that.’ ” He made air quotes with his fingers. “She needed me as a friend and I was that. I was—”

He stopped.

“Go on.”

“No place to go. I was her friend.”

“A friend with—hope?”

He laughed. “Where there’s life, there’s hope. Although—not to be cruel—she wasn’t aging well. She dieted herself until her figure was very severe—anything to get rid of her curves, to hide her old self. She didn’t want people to see the dancer in her.”

“Dancer’s a nice way to say it.”

“Ah. Now see, that was the problem, no? People are so judgmental about strippers. She wasn’t a whore. I’m not saying that girls on the Block didn’t do tricks back then, but she didn’t. She was Felix Brewer’s girl within days of starting there.”

The details were awfully specific, Sandy thought, given she had never spoken of her old life to Bayard.

“She danced in a G-string and pasties. Girls today, they go to the beach in less clothing.” The chef’s eyes rested on his girl, now trying to create busywork over at the bus station, unfolding and folding napkins. He was bored with her, Sandy decided. He was a man who got bored quickly.

“Did she carry a torch for Felix?”

Something caught light in Bayard’s eyes, and he aimed his forefinger at Sandy’s nose. “Do you know you are the first person to ask me the question in that way?”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“No insult intended to your brothers in blue, but no one ever asked me what was in Julie’s heart. It was always—‘Was she in touch with him? Were there mysterious calls?’ They checked her phone bills, her bank accounts. I think they even pulled the records on the pay phone a few blocks away. They were very interested to know if there had been contact, if she had any knowledge of him. As far as I know, there wasn’t, she didn’t. But she
was
still in love with him.”

“How could you know that if she never talked about it?”

“I know women.”

A smug thing to say, something only an asshole would say. Didn’t make it untrue.

“That bug you? Her carrying a torch for this long-gone guy, while there you were, right under her nose?”

The name is always in the file. Always.

Bayard laughed. “I suppose you have to ask that. But I also have to assume that you have reviewed all the information and know that I spent July 3, 1986, prepping for what we expected to be a very big weekend. We were doing—not exactly a soft open, more of a test for friends. The restaurant was months from its official opening, we hadn’t even finished the renovation of the dining room. I was pretty much in full view of my staff from the moment she drove away. I asked her to go to a kitchen-supply place for me.”

Sandy did know that.

“You reported her missing that very day, right? She tells you she’s going to Baltimore to go shop at Saks Fifth Avenue and you make the first call at ten thirty that night. What made you so sure that something had gone wrong? There are all sorts of reasons for people to stay out late. Traffic jams, a breakdown, running into an old friend, having dinner.”

“The car had just been serviced two days before. And stores close, you know, around nine, and she had already been gone so long.”

“Some women can easily shop that long.”

“Not Julie. She was very decisive. And she had a woman who pulled things for her, to make it easier.”

“Pulled things?”

“Oh, you know—what do they call it? A personal shopper.”

“Did you mention that to the police at the time?”

“I think so. I don’t know. They did take it seriously. Her failure to come home that night, the following day. And the kitchen-supply store was pretty definitive that she had never made it there. But there was the boyfriend, the car—where did they find it?”

“At the Giant Foods on Reisterstown Road, more than a month later.”

“Right. So I assumed they were thinking—well, that fits. She met someone, left the car, didn’t plan on coming back. The thing is, she made no provision for the business. Once she was gone, it went to shit. I didn’t have power of attorney. Neither did her sister. It was a mess, straightening all that out. She had consulted her lawyer a week earlier, but she hadn’t
done
anything. This was not a woman planning to leave.”

“How did you meet her in the first place?”

“Catering business.”

“Yours or someone else’s?”

“Someone else’s. Julie was looking for a great chef, but she needed someone she could afford. She was very cagey, putting the word out for someone who was good, but not in a position to open his own restaurant. I was practically an indentured servant. I did all the work, the owner reaped the benefits. But I had no name, no backers willing to take a chance on me.”