Lady in the Lake Read online

  They walk toward the street, but they’re less urgent now, not so much looking for the perpetrator but trying to comfort the woman, the couple bookending her, taking her arms as if she’s an invalid. I want to yell after them, All I did was touch her knee.

  I go home. My wife is sitting at the kitchen table, working the Jumble. A kids’ game and it takes her almost twenty minutes to do it.

  “How was work,” she says, not looking up, not even letting her tone go up. It’s not a question. It’s just something you’re supposed to say when your husband comes home. She has less affect in her voice than the robot maid on The Jetsons.

  “Okay.” Her pencil scratches away. She uses a pencil on the Jumble. I do the New York Times double acrostic in ink.

  “Sheila, do you like me?”

  She sighs. “This again. What are you, the road show of Fiddler on the Roof? How many times do I have to tell you: I love you.”

  “I asked if you liked me.”

  “Love is better.”

  Is it? Is it? Four years ago, I met a woman at a dance. She didn’t talk much, which made her seem mysterious and alluring. She was as cagey with her body, her kisses and affections, as she was with her words. I projected so much on those silences, those resistances. Still waters run deep, et cetera et cetera. We were married within three months.

  Turns out that even if still waters run deep, there’s no current, they can’t take you anywhere. All they do, eventually, is close over your head.

  June 1966

  June 1966

  When Maddie turned on the street where Cleo Sherwood’s parents lived, she realized the block was one she knew. This strip of Auchentoroly Terrace was not only near the synagogue and the old Schwartz grocery store, it was also along the route that the Schwartzes used to take to downtown restaurants and the theater. Milton liked to go a few blocks out of his way to drive down this street. He had this odd habit, her not-yet-ex-husband, a tendency that Maddie privately dubbed Milton’s Memory Lane. He was forever checking in with his past, showing Seth its landmarks over and over again. The house, the grocery, his schoolyard. Nostalgia was not the point. Milton wanted to remind Seth, and possibly Maddie, that Milton’s young life had been one of hard work and deprivation, that he was self-made.

  “Are these people poor?” Seth had asked when he was seven or eight. It would have been summertime, hot, with people hanging on their porches, kids running up and down the street, maybe even jumping in the spray of an open fire hydrant.

  “Yes,” Milton would say. “But no poorer than my family was.”

  This late June afternoon was not particularly hot. Not outside at least. But the air in the stairway up to the Sherwoods’ second-floor apartment was heavy and stale, the smell of grease so thick that Maddie felt grimy for ascending through it.

  Or maybe the oily sensation on her skin was her own sense of shame, for coming to see the parents of a dead woman, unannounced, and for the questions that she planned to ask them.

  Not that she could have called ahead even if she wanted. There was no phone listed for the Sherwood family. But Maddie was learning not to ask for permission. Permission could be denied, whereas if one acted as if one had a right to be somewhere, that very pretense of self-assurance might carry the day. Wasn’t that what Mr. Bauer had done to her, not that long ago, although it seemed like years since she had been as naive as that Maddie Schwartz?

  She knocked on the door, brisk and ready: “Hello, I’m Madeline Schwartz of the Star and I’m here to ask you some questions about Cleo Sherwood.”

  A younger woman—Cleo’s sister?—had answered the door. Even as she turned her head to look back at someone, Maddie simply walked in. Again, she was done waiting for permission. A man, presumably Cleo’s father, sat in an easy chair near the front windows, reading the newspaper. The Star, Maddie noticed. Her newspaper. He did not look up or acknowledge her in any way.

  At his feet, two children, boys, were playing with toy trucks on the rug. They must have been Cleo’s boys, although they barely looked like brothers. The older one, perhaps four or five, was thick—not fat, but stocky and strong looking, with a capacity for immense concentration. He pushed his yellow truck across the carpet, absorbed in his own game. The younger one looked remarkably like Cleo in the one photograph Maddie had seen in the Afro’s clippings. He had her pale eyes, delicate features, and a dreamy, self-contained quality.

  Mrs. Sherwood came from the kitchen, her tread heavy, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. She did not extend her hand to shake, however. “Is there news?” she asked.

  “No, there’s no news,” Maddie said. “But I want to write about Cleo in hopes that my story will unearth something, jog someone’s memory and help us find her killer. It would not have been easy”—her glance shifted to the boys and back—“it would have attracted attention, I think, whatever happened at the lake that night. An article might make someone reflect on things that didn’t seem important at the time.”

  That was not her real mission today, but she knew enough not to go straight to her harder questions.

  “The Afro wrote plenty about Eunetta before,” Mrs. Sherwood said. “No one cared then, so why would anyone care now?”

  “I think lots of people care,” Maddie said. She disliked lying, but it wasn’t that much of a lie. If the killer were found, especially if it happened because she refused to let go, then people would care, she was sure of it. “I just—is there anything I should know? I was very struck by one detail the psychic shared with me. Madame Claire?”

  “Her. She didn’t help us much.”

  “The colors yellow and green didn’t mean anything to you?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  It was odd, being called ma’am by a woman who was clearly older. But it meant that Maddie had somehow persuaded the Sherwoods that she had authority. Was it the newspaper? Or her whiteness?

  “I was struck by the fact that you brought her a fur stole. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Who gave that stole to—Eunetta?” She had not missed the mother’s use of her daughter’s given name, the implicit rebuke.

  “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  “But it was hers?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “How did you come to have it?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “She wasn’t living here, right? When she disappeared. She kept an apartment with another girl.”

  “Yes, ma’am. She had a roommate. A girl named Latetia. Skipped town without paying her share of the rent, about a week before Eunetta—” She glanced at the boys on the rug, who seemed to be paying them no mind at all. “Well, back in December, Latetia told Eunetta she was going to go to Florida with a gentleman she had met right before Christmas. A couple weeks later, she cabled that she was getting married. Nice for her, but she should have paid her share of the rent for January. And there was no one there to get her cable, although I guess she couldn’t know that. The landlord assumed Eunetta was as flighty as Latetia.” She stopped, seeming to think this had answered everything.

  “I’m still not sure why you had the stole.”

  “It was only a matter of time before he changed the locks and put their stuff out. So I went over there and packed up some things, the nicest things. The stole smelled of smoke and gardenias, so I assumed she had worn it pretty recently. That’s why I took it to Madame Claire. Because I thought Eunetta had worn it maybe a week or two—before.”

  “And who gave it to her?”

  “How could I know?”

  She didn’t point out that Mrs. Sherwood had failed to answer the question.

  “Can I see it?”

  The father rattled his newspaper and cleared his throat, stagelike and unsubtle, but Mrs. Sherwood beckoned Maddie to follow her to the rear of the apartment. She led her to what was once a proper pantry, now a crowded closet, full of clothes and boxes and children’s toys. But Mrs. Sherwood seemed to understand whatever order was a
t work, quickly producing the stole on a hanger, wrapped in plastic. Not the proper way to store a fur, Maddie knew, but she also saw immediately this was not a particularly nice fur. She did not ask permission to remove it from the plastic, just did so, looking for the label. “Fine Furs.” That was Tessie’s family. How small Baltimore was. She inspected the stole carefully, committing every detail to memory.

  “Did she buy this for herself?”

  Stiffly, swiftly: “She didn’t steal. Eunetta was a good girl.”

  “No, I mean—was it a gift?”

  “She made pretty good money. Based on what she gave us for taking care of the boys while she tried to . . . get herself situated.”

  “Right. She was an accountant? Isn’t that what the Afro said?”

  “Not—precisely. She was a cashier, helped behind the bar at the Flamingo Club on Pennsylvania Avenue. We are not a drinking family, but there’s nothing wrong with serving people who do drink. It is legal, after all.”

  Maddie continued to inspect the stole. No, it was not an expensive fur, but it was nice enough. The pink acetate lining looked like silk. And it was well constructed.

  “So she bought this for herself?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  More like won’t.

  “Do you have any more of her clothes?”

  “I wasn’t supposed to—the landlord—”

  “I won’t tell anyone, Mrs. Sherwood. I’m just so—curious. I want to imagine her, to know her. If I could see her clothes—” All she really wanted to do was to prolong the encounter.

  After a slight hesitation, Mrs. Sherwood produced outfit after outfit, clearly proud of her daughter’s wardrobe. Each item was shrouded in a plastic dry-cleaning bag, but it took Maddie a moment to figure out what else they had in common—they were all a little dated. Not this season, not even last season. A sequined dress that was long by today’s standards. One Chanel-inspired suit could have been almost ten years old, while the very tasteful black wool dress with a label from Wanamaker’s looked exactly like one Maddie had worn to her father-in-law’s funeral. It had been the height of style—two years ago.

  Not a single one was yellow or green, Maddie noticed. So much for Madame Claire.

  They walked back to the living room, Maddie’s mind still on those clothes. Wanamaker’s. The Philadelphia department store had never had a Baltimore branch. How did Cleo end up with a little black dress, a good one, from Wanamaker’s? And the label had said size 14, but Cleo was almost certainly no larger than a 10.

  “Mrs. Sherwood, did—Eunetta have a boyfriend? I know she went on a date that night, with someone new, someone that the cops never found and no one seems to know. But was she seeing someone else? Someone who might have given her that stole, those dresses?”

  To her amazement, the question provoked a flood of tears from Mrs. Sherwood, who dropped her face into her hands. “She was a good girl, I don’t care what people say or think, she was young and foolish, but she was good and she didn’t start anything.”

  “She was foolish,” the father said. “I’ll give you that much. She was foolish and spoiled, but that’s on you, Merva. You always made excuses for her, never made her take responsibility for anything.”

  “Are you saying—” Maddie stopped, stunned by the pain of a metal truck that had been hurled at her shins by the oldest boy, shredding her stockings and drawing blood.

  “Don’t you make my granny cry! Don’t you talk about my mother! You get out. Get out get out get out get out get OUT.”

  The other little boy didn’t even pick up his head, just kept pushing his red truck across the carpet as if nothing had happened.

  “Little Man! You stop that right now, Little Man. What has gotten into you?” The grandmother was appalled, but Mr. Sherwood, while his expression was stern—his face seemed set that way, it was impossible to imagine him smiling—nodded, as if the boy had done his bidding.

  Maddie limped out the front door and down the steps, not stopping until she was several blocks away. She caught her breath while sitting on a bus bench, examining the ruins of her stockings. And shins took forever to heal, she knew that. The wounds would keep opening, sticking to her hose, which would then stain as she peeled them off. Her legs were tanned from the sunbaths she took in city parks on these soft summer days, but she could never go bare legged into the office.

  Still, the injury, the torn hose, were worth it, she decided. Her hunch was correct. Cleo had had a lover, someone who could afford such gifts—but couldn’t afford to be known in the world at large. If the man who picked her up for a date on New Year’s Eve was someone no one had ever seen before or again, then who had given Cleo these clothes?

  If her date had given her the stole, wouldn’t she have worn it that night, warm as it was?

  Little Man

  Little Man

  The woman made my mama cry. I mean, Granny. I call her by both names because she is both to me now. When we first came to live here, I had a mama and a grandmama. Then Mama moved out, but she came back all the time, almost every week. She told me she had a job where she had to sleep on the premises, she was working so that one day we would have a new house here in Baltimore, a house with a daddy—not my daddy, but a new daddy—and maybe enough room so that I wouldn’t have to share a bedroom with Theodore anymore. At Granny’s, we sleep in a room with Aunt Alice, Theodore and me in a single bed, and he moves a lot in his sleep and sometimes he falls out. Okay, maybe sometimes I push him out, but it’s only because he’s kicking and throwing his arms around in his sleep and I need some space. My mama used to say that when she lived here. I NEED SOME SPACE! Then she would grab a book and her coat and run out and I was scared that she would never come back.

  Then, one day, that happened. At first, Granny said she was in another city. “Is it Detroit?” I asked. Because Detroit is where my father went to live. My father’s in Detroit and Theodore’s father was killed in a war, although I don’t know where the war is, I don’t think there are wars anymore. But my father is alive, he could send for me, although he doesn’t. It’s probably because of Theodore. “No man wants another man’s babies.” Granddaddy told Mama that before she went to wherever she went, I think it was Saint Louis, it could be Saint Louis, sometimes she talked about Saint Louis.

  Before she went away, she was here in Baltimore and she came to see us every week. She brought us presents. Granny told her that the money she spent on presents could be saved up, put away so we could be together again sooner. Mama laughed and said, “It’s not your money, is it?” Her clothes got prettier and prettier. We had the prettiest mother of anyone, always, but after she moved out she began wearing fancy clothes with lots of fur. Fur on her sleeves, fur on her hat, and then, one day, an entire cape of fur. She said she worked for a clothing store and she was allowed to borrow the clothes if she didn’t spill anything. I don’t know why she had to sleep there, maybe she was the security guard. Anyway, that’s why she got upset when Theodore tried to touch the cape, which she called a stole and I asked: “Stole from who?” Granddaddy laughed at that, but it wasn’t a nice laugh. “Watch out for Little Man,” he said. “Little Man’s the smart one.” “What am I?” Teddy asked. “The pretty one,” our mama said. Who wants to be pretty? Pretty is for girls.

  Then a few days after Christmas, Mama came by, she brought us the best gifts ever, Tonka trucks—a yellow tow truck for me, a red pickup truck for Teddy—even though we had just had Christmas. She gave Granny an envelope and her jacket with the fur on the wrists. “Why are you giving me this?” Granny asked. “I saw how you looked at it,” she said. Granny said: “I got no place to wear it, you know that.” Mama said: “Well, there are always funerals,” and Granny told her not to talk like that, it was bad luck.

  That was the last time we ever saw her. “When’s Mama coming back?” I asked. At first, Granny and Granddaddy said “soon” but I could tell they didn’t know. Granny began to cry a lot, when she thought we couldn’t h
ear her. Aunt Alice cried, too, late at night. Then a couple of weeks ago, a man came to the door and everyone in the family cried, but it was a kind of crying I had never seen, more like shouting. It was almost like watching a scary movie, the kind I sometimes sneak with Aunt Alice, there’s this one about a man who steals ladies and makes them into statues and when the bad thing happens, when you jump, it feels good in a strange way? It seemed to me that it was like that, that the bad thing had happened and now things might get better.

  But Mama’s never coming back, not really, and things aren’t getting better.

  It’s summer now. Yesterday, Granny almost laughed again, at something Teddy did or said. Teddy looks exactly like my mama, only he’s a boy. Aunt Alice used to dress him up like a girl when he was a baby, as a joke, and people said things like, “What’s a boy going to do with those eyes?” “Look at things,” I said, and people laughed and laughed, which I liked and didn’t like. After Mama went away, I kept trying to say funny things and do funny things, to make people laugh. Everybody’s laugh is different now. It used to be so easy for me to make people laugh, but now they rarely do, no matter how hard I try, and when they do laugh, usually at Teddy, they sometimes end up crying.

  So when I see that white woman, with her notebook and her schoolteacher voice, making my granny cry, I get up and I hit her with the truck, the last thing my mama ever gave me, I hit her as hard as I can, in the legs. Everybody begins shouting and I’m in a lot of trouble and Granny says I’m going to have to find a way to pay for the lady’s stockings, which got tore up where I hit her. But I know I won’t have to. Even Granny was secretly happy that I made her go away.

  I make people go away. That’s what I do. I made my mama go away and now she’s gone forever. I used to worry that she was going to come back and take only Teddy with her because Teddy is pretty like her and he belongs in a place where there is fur everywhere. I wasn’t sure I would fit in if we moved to a fancy house. Besides, I have a father and Teddy doesn’t. They called him and asked if he wanted me to come to Detroit, but he’s real busy. Besides, he said, I’d miss Teddy, and maybe I would. Although sometimes, I can almost remember when it was just Mama and me. I think I do.