Lady in the Lake Read online

  She didn’t need to feel safe anymore.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t done anything about the divorce. But it’s almost a year now. I’ve been advised I can file on grounds of abandonment.”

  Strangely, she almost wanted to defend herself. Abandonment. She hadn’t abandoned anyone. She had been saving her own life.

  “Would I receive alimony?”

  “Do you need it?”

  Ah, that question hurt because the answer was yes, she did. But she could not bring herself to say that. “I’m merely curious about how the law works, in general. We were together almost twenty years.”

  “I’ll probably sell the house. Seth wants to go to Penn.” A non sequitur. Or was it?

  “There’s money enough for that, isn’t there? Without selling the house?”

  “Money’s not the issue. Maddie—I’ve met someone.”

  Of course. Of course.

  “And she doesn’t want to live in ‘my’ house.”

  “She hasn’t said as much. But with Seth going away—she’s quite young.”

  “What’s young?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  Of course.

  “So I’m not quite old enough to be her mother, but you could have been her father.”

  Milton looked disappointed in her. It was the first time he had ever looked at Maddie like that, as if to say: Maddie, this is beneath you. It was. It wasn’t even accurate. Technically, Milton could have conceived a child at sixteen, but it seemed unlikely. He had not been precocious in that way. Between the store and his studies, he hadn’t had time for girls.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Ali.”

  “Is that short for something?”

  “I—I don’t know!” Bemused at his own besottedness, the fact that he was unsure of his true love’s name.

  What else should Maddie ask? It was a one-of-a-kind conversation, one she had never had before and would never have again, discussing her husband’s new love. She didn’t feel dog-in-the-mangerish, not quite. She didn’t want Milton. She didn’t want the life he was about to create with this Ali, which was going to be essentially a do-over of his life with her. Oh, Milton, she wanted to say. You’re still young. There’s so much to do and see in this world. Don’t go back to diapers and Donadio the Clown.

  “You should grow sideburns,” she blurted out.

  “What?”

  “I just think they would look good on you.” She did. He had kept his hair, so far. It was thick and had almost no gray. She wondered what Ali looked like. She was going to either look exactly like Maddie or be as opposite as possible. Maddie would find it more flattering if he had chosen her opposite number. Another blue-eyed brunette would indicate that she was just a type, whereas a wispy blonde would suggest that he would never quite get over her, that she would be with him forever, sort of like chicken pox.

  He did insist on walking her home and she toyed with the idea of taking him upstairs, of showing him what her body had learned over the last few months. The temptation to mark him as hers was strong. But also, she knew, unfair and petty.

  “You’ll need a lawyer,” he said. “I’ll cover the costs. And it will be simple, I promise. I’ll do right by you.”

  Of course you will. Ali is eager to get married. The advantage is mine.

  But she would not abuse her power. She gave him a polite kiss on the cheek, realizing that they would be going forward as an odd triangle. Maybe eventually a quadrangle, and it made her smile to imagine Milton and Ali, Maddie and Ferdie, showing up for Seth’s milestones. High school graduation, senior prom, too. College graduation, his marriage, grandchildren. All those things were to be. Of course, Ferdie would not be with her. Eventually, another man might, if that was what she wanted. What did she want?

  She was going to have money now. Not a lot, but enough. She could find a better apartment, maybe try to find a job where she would have an opportunity to advance.

  As Milton said good night, his old look, the worshipful one, returned for a moment. But she also saw confusion in his gaze. He did not know her anymore. Fair enough. She didn’t know herself, either.

  October 1966

  October 1966

  It was Halloween, of all things, that broke her. A Halloween with no trick-or-treaters. At the corner of Mulberry and Cathedral, it could have been just another Monday night. The only bright spot was Ferdie, tired from the day’s petty assaults on law and order, but also fired up.

  “I talked to Pomerleau today. Just in passing. He visited the district.”

  “The new commissioner?” There was a time when Maddie would not have recognized the name. But she read the paper now, front to back. Read the competition, too. Her mind was stuffed with the news of the day.

  “He announced that the department ended up with a net gain in men this month. That reverses a trend of more than a year, in which the resignations and retirements outnumbered the new recruits. Now that morale is improving he’s going to start promoting Negro cops. Things are going to change, Maddie. I could make detective, and fast. Maybe even homicide. I’ve been cultivating one of the guys there. He trusts me. He tells me stuff.”

  “That’s nice,” she said absentmindedly. This conversation was beginning to remind her of how she and Milton spoke to one another. And that was not a good thing.

  But the sex that followed was very good, so she decided not to worry. In fact, something about Ferdie’s professional dreams seemed to make the sex even better, as if he were a different man, in his own mind, and therefore she was new to him and he was new to her.

  “Detective,” she purred at one point, and it excited him. His eyes grew wide, and without bothering to ask if it was what she wanted, he flipped her on her stomach, then used the belt from her bathrobe to tie her hands behind her.

  “You’ve been warned about shoplifting, miss,” he said. “I have to take you in.”

  There had always been a sense of play for them in the bedroom, probably because this was outside of life, proper. They could afford to be silly, to expose parts of themselves that no one else had seen.

  “I’ll do anything,” she said. “Anything.”

  And she did. This was the one part of her life where things continued to grow, change, where she could meet her potential. The night was cool, but they needed a shower when they were done. They crowded together into the ridiculously small stall, started over again, needed a shower from the shower. It was almost two a.m. when they finally began to fall asleep. At least, she was falling asleep. Ferdie was wide awake, stroking her hair.

  “My friend in Homicide, he told me something about Tessie Fine.”

  “What?”

  “They’re pretty sure they finally know the accomplice. The woman who came and got him.”

  “Woman?”

  “His mom, Maddie. They think he called his mom and she came to get him. But all the detectives can prove is that he called his mother from the store. They both agree that he was calling only to say he would be late that night. They’re rock solid on that. The detectives have been pushing him hard and now he’s willing to plead, but only to manslaughter. Of course, there can’t be a plea.”

  She sat up in bed. “That’s a huge story.”

  Ferdie grabbed her arm as if she might bolt for the door. “No, Maddie. No. You can’t write about this. They’ll know it was me.”

  “You gave me the tip about Ludlow.”

  “That was different.”

  “How?”

  His gaze slid away from hers. “A dozen people could have told you about that. And no one knows about us.”

  Maddie thought about Diller’s staring at her malevolently in the city editor’s office.

  “If no one knew about us then, then no one knows about us now. That hasn’t changed. This is sensational stuff. The mother covering up her son’s crime.”

  “She’s not trying to cover up for anybody. She’s trying to save her own neck. And the son’s going along with it, s
o far.”

  “Could I say that police have identified the long-elusive accomplice?” She was already writing the story in her head.

  “No, Maddie.” His voice was sharp, almost a shout. “This information has been held very close. They’ll know it was me. You cannot write about this.”

  “But—Tessie Fine was my murder. I found her.”

  He got up, began to dress. He usually waited until she was asleep to go.

  “I don’t know what it is about you and dead people, Maddie, but it’s getting out of hand. Can’t you find another way to get ahead?”

  “Can’t you? You’re the one who wants to be a homicide detective, after all.”

  “Do you even see how much this means to me? I joined the department almost ten years ago. There’s no place for me to go, not really. Or there wasn’t until Pomerleau started a month ago. It’s going to change, Maddie. It’s been dirty, a place where Negroes can’t advance. I know you know what it feels like to have a dream. I’d never do anything to get between you and yours. You cannot take this information out of this room.”

  “It’s in my head now. It’s not like I can forget it. It goes where I go.”

  “You know what I mean. You can’t tell anyone. Look, if I find out there’s a break, if they’re on the verge of arresting her, something like that—I’ll tell you. Until then, you cannot write about this.”

  She said carefully, “I won’t write anything about the police developments.”

  “Don’t be cute, Maddie.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “I promise you—I won’t write anything that could be linked to you.”

  Not even eighteen hours later, she knocked on another mother’s door.

  November 1966

  November 1966

  What were you thinking? Maddie was asked frequently in the weeks that followed her visit to the home of Angela Corwin on the afternoon of November 1. Is that question ever really asked in an open-minded, non-accusatory way? Is one ever asked, What were you thinking? as a prelude to a compliment? Maddie thought not. Still, she told the truth, more or less:

  “I thought Mrs. Corwin might talk to me, mother to mother, in a way she had not talked to police detectives.”

  It was true. True enough. She had rationalized that if she could get Mrs. Corwin to confess to her, or at least make a little slip, then she had not violated Ferdie’s confidence. She wasn’t really sure that Ferdie would see it that way, but she believed she could persuade him this was so, eventually. The son had spoken to her. Why not the mother? Maddie had found the body of Tessie Fine. She had gotten the killer to tell her a detail he had omitted in the police interview, the very detail that had led to the hunt for his accomplice. People kept stealing her story—stories. This one would be hers.

  And, at first, it seemed to be going so well. Mrs. Corwin was a tiny woman with lovely manners. “Oh, yes, I remember your name,” she said. She invited Maddie in, asked her if she wanted tea or coffee. She brought out a plate of cookies, bakery cookies. “From Bauhof’s in Woodlawn,” she said. “They make Silber’s look like trash.” Maddie helped herself to one, a pink-and-white refrigerator cookie. It was outstanding. If she lived closer to Woodlawn and still entertained, she would have served them to guests and pretended they were homemade.

  “I love my son,” Mrs. Corwin said, “but you know he’s quite mad. Insane. But they won’t let him enter an insanity plea. They don’t want the information to get out.”

  “The information?”

  “About the experiments at Fort Detrick.”

  “Ah, yes, Bob Bauer wrote about that. Operation Whitecoat.” She didn’t point out that this meant that information had gotten out, that the world now knew—and didn’t care—about the germ experiments.

  “He was a conscientious objector. We’re Seventh-Day Adventists.” She sipped her tea. “We don’t mind Jews, though.”

  Maddie could not tell if that assurance was meant for her, Tessie Fine, or both of them.

  “So there’s no doubt in your mind that your son did kill her.”

  “I wouldn’t want to gossip about Stephen with a stranger.”

  “In his letters to me, he didn’t admit guilt. I hear now he’s trying to plead to manslaughter and they won’t have it because he hid the body.”

  “Well of course not. They’re determined to make a liar out of him, if you ask me. They rejected the insanity plea, said he doesn’t meet the standard, when he’s clearly crazy. So he keeps saying what they want to hear, but it’s never good enough. I hate to say it, but—he was never very bright, my Stephen. It was such a disappointment to me. I went to Woodlawn High School and made straight A’s.”

  Maddie widened her eyes as if this were a singular achievement.

  “His father’s genes were—not what I thought they would be. Not at all. Then he left us. It was almost a relief. But I see him every time I look at Stephen. How odd to have married a redhead when I don’t care for them at all. I think it was because I was scratched by a ginger tabby when I was small. My family was very well-to-do.”

  Maddie let the woman talk and talk and talk, although she quickly despaired of the idea that Mrs. Corwin would ever say anything relevant. Her voice was bizarrely hypnotic—squeaky, yet low in volume. It was like trying to listen to a mouse. A garrulous mouse.

  After a very confusing story about her father’s golfing at Forest Park—“We could afford a private club, but he was very egalitarian, when you are truly to the manor born, you don’t worry about such things”—Maddie tried to jump in.

  “You know, they still think your son had an accomplice. If they could find that person, it would give your son leverage. Or the accomplice would have leverage. That’s how it was explained to me.”

  “Stephen didn’t even have friends, I find it hard to believe he could find anyone to help him.”

  “He called here, right? The afternoon of Tessie Fine’s murder?”

  The woman pursed her lips. All her life, Maddie had heard the phrase and failed to understand it, but she saw it now, the way Mrs. Corwin’s thin lips snapped together.

  “How did you come by this information? Have the police been telling their tales?”

  Maddie remembered she must be careful about referencing the police. “A little bird told me. A little bird from C & P.” Then, gently, almost as if she were offering an apology: “It was you, wasn’t it, Mrs. Corwin? Who helped Stephen?”

  “Does my boy talk to you?”

  “What? No, never. I mean, he wrote me a couple of letters last spring but stopped speaking to me after they were published.”

  “Yes, he wrote to you. And that’s why he’s in this fix. There was no accomplice. He had the car that day. I don’t know why he keeps lying about that. He did something very bad and he has to face up to it. It’s not really his fault. The experiments—”

  “At Fort Detrick.”

  “Yes.” She looked at the plate. “I’m going to get you some cookies to take home, Miss Schwartz.”

  “Mrs.” Maddie wondered if she still was that, or would continue to be. She was going to be divorced soon. What did people call divorced ladies? At any rate, there would be a new Mrs. Milton Schwartz. Ali, whatever that was short for. It had to be short for something.

  Mrs. Corwin returned from the kitchen with a white cardboard bakery box, tied with red-and-white string. “Oh, I couldn’t take so many—” Maddie was saying as she brought a hand up in protest, only to have Mrs. Corwin insistently thrust the box toward her. It felt almost as if the woman had tried to punch her in the midsection with the box, only to drop it. Why was the box red now? How had paint gotten on the box?

  A steak knife, she saw it now in Mrs. Corwin’s tiny fist. It was not large, but it was large enough. The woman made a second ineffectual pass, this one at Maddie’s chest. She managed to block her hand, to grab her wrist and twist it, so the knife clattered to the floor. Mrs. Corwin screamed in pain. Why are you screaming when I’m the one who’s stabbe
d? Maddie thought. She was experiencing a sensation wholly new to her—a supercharged energy, a clarity of thought. She was aware that she should be in pain, but there was no actual pain.

  Beneath the screams were words, sputtered, hissing words. “Stupid, stupid, stupid. I was being kind, helping him put that girl out of her misery. I’m trying to be kind to you.”

  Oh lord, the mother had instructed him. Was it possible that she had even—

  “Just like the chickens on Auntie’s farm, just like the chickens on Auntie’s farm, what was the big deal? Easier than the chickens because the chickens run from you, before and after.”

  Given enough time, the woman would kill her, Maddie did not doubt it. She had to get away, but how? Could she run? She felt as if she could. She felt as if she could run, climb mountains, do whatever she had to do to survive.

  To her amazement, the first thing she chose was to box the woman’s ears and shout in her face: “Naughty!” Where was the phone? Was there a phone? Of course there was a phone, Stephen Corwin had called his mother from the fish store that day.

  She pushed the older woman away with tremendous force, hard enough to knock her flat on her back, and bolted for the kitchen, where she shoved a chair beneath the doorknob and dialed 0.

  “Send the police, send police,” she panted. “A woman is trying to kill me.” They asked for the address and she went blank, then remembered it. Even as she spoke, she was rummaging through the drawers, looking for a knife of her own. “A knife,” she told the operator. “She stabbed me with a knife.”

  Outside, she heard a car starting. She peered through the window, saw Mrs. Corwin behind the wheel of an older-looking car, comically small. Was Maddie safe? She was probably safe. By the time police arrived—seconds, minutes, hours later, she couldn’t tell—the burst of adrenaline that had saved her was long gone. She pressed a kitchen towel to her middle, watching the blood seep out. She was going to be okay, she thought. She was almost certainly going to be okay.