Lady in the Lake Read online

  An early mentor once told me that the secret to getting by at work was to carry a legal pad and frown; everyone assumes you’re doing something important. But I feel as if that’s my life, too, that I am charging down the streets of Baltimore with an invisible legal pad always in my hand, brow furrowed in concentration, and no one sees what I’m really up to. “He’s married to his job,” my mother says, with equal parts pride and exasperation.

  It’s true. What other option do I have?

  July 1966

  July 1966

  She had worried that Judith’s brother might insist on walking her to the door, maybe even make a pass. As soon as she was a block west of Charles Street, she hailed a cab.

  Men were no help, after all, she had decided. Men kept each other’s secrets. Men put men first, in the end. It made no sense for Cleo Sherwood to be killed by some strange man in a turtleneck who was never seen again. Sure, it could have happened. Bad things happened to women all the time. But Maddie was sure that Ezekiel Taylor was the link. And no one cared because no one cared about Cleo. Well, Maddie cared. She cared enough to challenge Mr. Taylor’s alibi. And there was only one way to do that, one person.

  The cab took her to one of the still-grand blocks near the park. Not that far, her mind registered, from the lake, the fountain. Her own maternal grandparents had lived on this street once; The Park School had started not far from here. It was still relatively early. She was betting that Mr. Taylor was not someone who rushed home. Married men who dallied with young women did not rush home; Maddie knew that about them. She knew more than she wanted to know about married men. It was time to put that knowledge to use. Just as she had drawn on her memories of her old necking spot to find Tessie Fine’s body, she would now rely on her regrets to inform her quest into the life of a young woman who had made a similar mistake. Maddie had never confronted her lover’s wife. But she would come face-to-face with the woman married to Cleo Sherwood’s lover.

  The Taylor house was a grande dame among ruffians. Most of the other big old houses had been subdivided; there were telltale signs of a neighborhood losing whatever self-respect it once had. The tiny yards were not being maintained and in the meticulous hedges guarding the Taylor home, someone had left a Zagnut wrapper. The better-off Negroes were beginning to abandon the neighborhood, just as the Jews of Milton’s generation had. These beautiful old town houses—not rowhouses, not here, they were too wide, too architecturally distinct—had stood for so much once. For dreams and aspirations. But there would come a day when they were all cut up into makeshift apartments. She was surprised the Taylors had remained.

  Once the cab let her out, she stood for several minutes on the sidewalk, knowing how out of place she looked, not caring. She was tired of caring what others thought about her, more tired of how they thwarted her. First and foremost, Shell Gordon and those who worked for him. But also the cops, reporters, even Judith’s brother Donald. The world kept telling her to look away, to pay no attention to an age-old system, in which men thrived and inconvenient women disappeared.

  Maddie wasn’t having it. She set her jaw, squared her shoulders, and marched up to the lovely house with the stained glass features and rang the doorbell.

  The Wife

  The Wife

  When I glimpse that white woman standing on my porch, bold as brass, I wish for the first time that I had listened to Ezekiel when he suggested we have servants. Of course, we have help—a young girl (not too young), who comes once a week to do the heavy cleaning—but Ezekiel took the notion a few years back that we should have live-in staff. At least, that’s how it was presented to me.

  I had come downstairs one day to find him at the kitchen table with a young couple, a husband and wife (or so they said, or so I thought, they could have been a brother and a sister, I suppose). They were country and fresh off the bus. I could smell the farm life on them, they had probably done their chores before leaving that morning. They were running away from something, I was sure of that.

  But Ezekiel, who always took an interest in young people because, he said, we had not been blessed with children of our own, had seen them at that horrible coffee shop near the Greyhound station and brought them into our home. At least he had the good sense not to let them track up our rugs, to bring them through the back door and into the kitchen.

  “This is Douglas Frederick,” he said, “and Claudia Frederick. They’re from Dorchester County.” Notice he did not tell me why they shared a surname. So they could have been husband and wife or brother and sister. “They have gotten themselves in a spot of trouble, through no fault of their own, and they felt it was better to leave Cambridge.”

  “Hmmmm” was all I said, but I knew what was going on in Cambridge in the summer of 1963.

  “Family reasons,” the man put in. He was slick, I saw that right away, but he wasn’t as slick as he thought he was, he was never going to be slick enough to get by Ezekiel Taylor. He had mistaken my husband’s kindness for weakness, whereas the truth about Ezekiel was that he could afford to be kind because he had no weaknesses at all. Well, just the one. It’s in his blood, he can’t help it. When a thing is in your blood, what can you do?

  The girl didn’t say anything. She looked as if she were used to menfolk speaking for her, around her, about her. She had pale eyes. Not blue, not green, not hazel. Just pale. If I had to put a color to it, I’d say yellow, as faint as yellow can be, the color of urine when you’re healthy.

  Ezekiel picked up the conversational reins. Some men, when they’re trying to get something past you, they talk fast. Not my Ezekiel. He slowed down, let his words roll along, meandering like a stream as if they had no particular place to go. But a stream is busy, a stream has purpose. A stream is full of life and agendas, many of them in conflict. It’s a microcosm, a world. In a stream, there is life and death.

  “So I see these two, looking overwhelmed, studying the menu, two little rabbits, counting their money, not enough to buy a decent breakfast between the two of them, he was feeding her bites from his plate, and I thought—we could use a couple around the house to help us out.”

  A couple of what? I was thinking.

  “A handyman and a live-in girl to do the cooking and the cleaning.”

  “I’m a good cook, Ezekiel,” I said. “You like my cooking.”

  “I love your cooking, sweetheart. I still want my breakfast to come from your hands, no one else’s, but wouldn’t it free you up if you didn’t have to be the one putting dinner on the table every night?”

  Free me up to do what? Free him up to do what?

  He can read my mind, my husband, always could. He said: “More time for your church activities and whatever you want to do. I just want to give you the best life I can, Hazel. Let me do this for you.”

  The girl was looking down at her lap, where her hands twisted like two squirming animals, something newborn and blind, helpless. They were hard-looking hands, dry and cracked, but they weren’t hardworking hands. I can tell the difference. I was country, too, once upon a time, but it was so long ago people tend to forget, even Ezekiel. He forgets that I was young and sweet and slender, with a downcast gaze and a laughably homemade dress, and that he had never wanted anyone like he wanted me. So he got me. Ezekiel Taylor tends to get what he wants.

  But not this time, I decided that day. Not under my roof. I had to draw a line. So I said no to Douglas and Claudia. That was three years ago and I hadn’t given them a thought until I saw that white lady on my front steps and wished I had someone who could answer the door for me and say, “Go away, Mrs. Taylor is resting now.”

  I can just not answer the door, I think. No one can make me open my own door. But if I can see her aspect through the lace curtain, she can see mine. Maybe, I think, she’s selling cosmetics. And, like a child, I believe my own wishful thought the moment I express it and by the time I open the door I am surprised that this woman does not have a valise. Ding-dong, Avon calling. Not a lot of Avon women ar
e working Reservoir Hill these days.

  “I’m Madeline Schwartz,” she says, bright as a new penny. She’s in her late thirties, a little older than she looked through my etched glass. I’m in my fifties, but I appear much younger than my years. I can pass for my forties, easily. But it was never about being young. Like I said, it’s in his blood.

  “Yes?” I don’t tell her my name. If you’re standing on my doorstep, I assume you know who I am, where I stand.

  “Is Mr. Taylor home?”

  “He is not.” I know how, in three words, to say everything I need to say. And she’s smart enough to hear what isn’t said: And I wouldn’t call him to the door if he was. We do not do business in this house. If you really need to talk to Ezekiel Taylor, you should know that. No business is transacted here, ever, even of the non-financial kind. Not under my roof. You think I let Shell Gordon come to my house? Never. Ezekiel goes to him.

  “My name is Madeline Schwartz,” she repeats. “I work for the Star. I’d like to talk to you about the night Cleo Sherwood disappeared.”

  “Who?” I say.

  “The young woman whose body was found in the lake.”

  “Why?”

  “She worked at the Flamingo, a place your husband frequents.”

  “Hundreds of people frequent the Flamingo, miss.” This woman has not said she is a “miss,” but what proper married woman would ever be on my doorstep, asking about my husband?

  “Still, I thought—”

  “This is not my husband’s place of business. It is our home. We believe in—” My words falter and she jumps in:

  “A strict separation of church and state?”

  I understand the reference. I am a well-educated woman. I was, after all, attending Coppin, studying to be a teacher, when I met Ezekiel. But it hits me wrong, the way she says it, almost as if it’s a joke. There is nothing funny about church. Without church, I don’t know who I’d be, how I would go from day to day. Church, specifically, not Jesus. Of course I love Jesus, he gives my life meaning, but the church, its schedule and rituals—the church gives my life shape. Maybe it sounds funny to some, but I see my days as trees, like in the Tarzan movies. Every morning I get up, grab a vine, and hope it’s long enough, my arms powerful enough, to carry me to the next one. I go to church, I change the altar cloths, the seasons pass, the years pass. Christ is born, Christ dies, Christ rises. Again and again and again.

  “This is my home,” I say, well aware that I have shifted from our to my. But it’s true. I have absolute domain here. Here, things are proper. Here is under my control. Cleo Sherwood and her ilk have never crossed my threshold. A thought streaks across my mind—what if I had allowed Claudia and her “husband” into the house? What if there had been a baby in here, after all? Maybe she would have given it to me, let me have it. A baby could have changed everything. EZ wanted babies.

  “I came to talk to you. Specifically about what you and your husband did New Year’s Eve. Was he here with you? The whole night?”

  But I am shutting my door. Slowly, majestically. I want her to glimpse the world behind me, the beautiful rooms, the fine antiques, some of them French. God did not give me children, so I have made our home—our home, Ezekiel, yours and mine, the place you come back to, eventually, every night or early morning—a blessed place, a beautiful place. I keep a fine house, I set a fine table, I make good meals. I listen to the radio, I am up on the news. I have done everything that a man can ask a woman to do, other than give him children. He has forgiven my body’s shortcomings, so I forgive his.

  That bold piece lingers on my doorstep for a minute or so, rings the bell a second time, as if her first conversation with me was a dress rehearsal. It was not. We are done.

  It’s not my fault that Cleo Sherwood was a careless young woman who couldn’t stay alive. It’s not my fault. Ezekiel doesn’t even realize that I knew she existed. And if I didn’t know she was alive—and isn’t pretending someone doesn’t exist the same as not knowing they’re alive?—then how can I know anything about how she died?

  Maybe I should have let them stay, Douglas and Claudia. Maybe everything would have been different. She could have been a daughter to me. She was country, poor and rough, but I was country, too, once upon a time. Now look at me. I have beautiful clothes and pearls, a house full of satin and brocade and velvet. Maybe if I had been content to let these things happen under my roof, I could have kept everyone safe.

  But I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. A lady has her limits. That’s part of what makes one a lady, knowing her limits, respecting them. Whatever Cleo Sherwood was to my husband, she was not and never could be a lady. She was never going to be his wife, and I don’t care what she ran around blabbing to people. She was deluded.

  And now she’s dead.

  You went to her door, rang the bell.

  You went to her door, rang the bell. I am almost impressed in spite of myself, Madeline Schwartz. You did the thing I longed to do, the thing I swore I was going to do. Oh, I talked a good game, that’s for sure.

  Do you realize that’s why I’m dead, Maddie Schwartz? Because I talked about doing that, nothing more. Said I was going to confront her. Promises had been made and I was ready to call them in. Would I have done it? I don’t know, but others made sure that I never had the chance to make good on my angry boasts.

  Oh, Maddie Schwartz, do you have any idea what you have done?

  Part III

  August 1966

  August 1966

  “Cleo Sherwood was seeing Ezekiel Taylor. I’m sure of it.”

  Bob Bauer, his mouth full, was in no hurry to speak. He had just taken a bite of what appeared to be a Reuben sandwich and he was determined to enjoy it. He was a remarkably neat eater, Maddie noted, and not the type of person to rush his chewing just because someone was waiting for a reply.

  “What of it?” he said at last, dabbing the corner of his mouth for a nonexistent drip of coleslaw.

  “She was dating a married man, a politician—”

  “A candidate, and not much of a candidate at that. Name recognition isn’t everything. Just because you can get spots out of silk doesn’t mean you can be a senator.”

  “I hear he’s playing a long game.” She asked for a coffee and, after a brief inward struggle, an order of fries. “He doesn’t expect to win this time, but he had to start somewhere.”

  Bob Bauer smiled as if she had meant to be funny. “You hear things, huh? In the ladies’ room at the Star? At the hairdresser’s?”

  “I have my hair ironed in the Fourth District, as a matter of fact.” This was true, although the kitchen magician that Ferdie had recommended was silent as the Sphinx, providing commentary on nothing, not even the weather. “So, yes, I do hear things. Although my source on this is a legislative aide.”

  “And does your source work for another candidate? Or have reason to support another candidate? If he’s an aide, chances are he favors the status quo.”

  “No—I mean, I don’t think so. Besides, he didn’t tell me about the affair. I put that together on my own, by talking to her mother, some other people.”

  “So he was having an affair,” he said. “You can’t write a story about that.”

  “She worked in Shell Gordon’s club and he’s backing Taylor for the Fourth District.”

  “Maddie, have you noticed how many pieces the Star has run about the Fourth District senate race?” His index finger and thumb curved until they met. “None. Zip. So Ezekiel Taylor had a girlfriend and she got herself killed. How is that a story?”

  “What if she was killed because she was Taylor’s girlfriend?”

  “Do police say he’s a suspect?”

  Maddie had, after seeking John Diller’s permission, asked the homicide detectives assigned to the case if Taylor or Gordon had been considered a suspect in Cleo Sherwood’s death. “Just off the record,” she had said, feeling very grand. “I have information that she was having an affair with Mr. Taylor, which wasn
’t good for his political ambitions.” The detectives, who seemed to find everything about her mildly hilarious, had shrugged, told her that motives were for Perry Mason. They had reminded her that Cleo Sherwood’s death was not, officially, a homicide. And then one of them, the younger one, had asked her out, but she had pretended not to understand the invitation.

  “They still believe the bartender,” Maddie said. “But if you ask me, his statement is fishy. There’s almost too much detail. Why did he pay such attention to the man who picked her up, what he was wearing, what she was wearing? Men don’t notice clothes that way. Certainly not a man called Spike.”

  “Still, the story is that you suspect a prominent Negro was having an affair, and that’s it. You can’t write that and we won’t print it. It’s libel, Maddie. It’s also nobody’s business. It would look as if the paper were peddling gossip provided by another campaign.”

  “He gave her clothes,” Maddie said.

  “Well, stop the presses.”

  “Clothes stolen from his customers,” she said. “At least, I’m pretty sure that he took them from his cleaning business. You see, one of the dresses had a Wanamaker’s label and it wasn’t this season’s—”

  “You want to cover police or fashion? Seriously, you keep jumping to conclusions you can’t support. You saw some clothes. Maybe they were left behind. You know the small print? ‘Clothes left for ninety days will become the property, et cetera et cetera.’ And even if you were right, what’s the lede, Maddie? ‘Ezekiel Taylor, candidate for the Fourth District senate seat, helped himself to some clothes from one of his five EZ locations’? Look, it’s great that you’re trying so hard, but this one’s a dead end. A girl died. We don’t even know how she died. If she had been found in a car or a bed, you wouldn’t even care. The only interesting thing about it is where her body was discovered. Let it go. August is a slow month. Keep your eyes and ears open, volunteer to help out on cityside. You’ll find a story you can actually get into the paper.”