Yet-she knew he loved her best. If he had to choose, he would choose her. But she was too proud to make him choose.
Besides, she had agreed on their honeymoon to do everything his way when it came to the business. Whatever it takes to make us rich. Work nights in disreputable places, bring home all that cash. So her husband went off to Baltimore Street in a suit and a hat at two in the afternoon, acting as if he were as normal as apple pie, and Bambi played along. “My husband works in the entertainment business,” she told those nosy enough to ask. “I guess you’d call him an impresario. He books the talent.”
Oh, yes, he booked the talent.
She was finally falling asleep when he slipped into bed at five. He was freshly showered. Why would a man smell of soap at 5:00 A.M.? He gathered Bambi in his arms and inhaled deeply, as if she were a bouquet of roses.
“I love you,” he said. “Do you love me?”
She wanted to claw him and cry. Instead she said: “I suppose I do.”
“Things are going to be so great when we move into the new house. It will be beautiful. It’s beautiful,” he said. “You’re beautiful. And we have a beautiful daughter. We are going to fill that house with children.”
“It has only four bedrooms,” she pointed out. It wouldn’t be motherly to object to his inaccurate description of wrinkly Linda, all nose, that dark hair creeping so low on her forehead.
“We’ll build an addition. We’ll do something with that space over the garage. You’ll make it beautiful.”
Five beautifuls in the space of less than a minute. She knew what Felix valued about her, and it had never been her parents’ modest bank account. Beauty and the slightest bit of reserve, as if she didn’t need anyone. The key to keeping him was to never let him feel too comfortable, to maintain that cool competence. The other women would come and go, come and go. She was his wife and he would never embarrass her. Or their children. She hoped there would be lots of them, enough to make up for all the brothers and sisters she never had, and the husband who wasn’t home as much as he should be.
“It’s going to be a great life,” he said.
“Isn’t it already?”
The question seemed to surprise him. He pulled his face from her neck, didn’t answer right away. “Of course. But it can be better. It can always be better. Don’t think small.”
“How can we afford the house on Sudbrook Road, Felix?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“No one we know has a house like that. Not starting out, not in that neighborhood.”
“That’s ’cause they’re all coming slow out of the gate. I run wire to wire, baby. Wire to wire.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m always in the lead. Some horses have to hold back, wait for others to tire, then surge. I’m always out in front. No one can catch me.”
“I caught you.”
“I caught you.”
“You wanted me.” This was their litany.
“You bet I did. From the moment I saw you in that dress. You thought you were so grown up, with that little boy of yours.”
“I was grown up.”
“You were born grown up. That’s why you were so bored with those little boys. You needed a man. You needed me.”
She was drifting off. It was all well and good for him to talk, but she would have to get up with the baby very soon. Felix had a night job. She had an all-day one.
“I love you, Bernadette.” He used her real name when he wanted to be serious. When he wanted her to know he was serious. The first time he said it, under the chuppa-“I take thee, Bernadette”-she had almost started, wondering why he was saying another woman’s name at such a sacred moment. But now she was used to it. Liked it, enjoyed having this private persona with him. In all the world, only Felix called her Bernadette.
“I love you,” he repeated more insistently, demanding an answer.
“I know you do.”
March 7, 2012
Next of kin. Sandy mused on the phrase as he drove. Next of kin. It’s one of those expressions that people use every day, then you stop to think about it, wonder what it means. Next of kin. Kin, obvious, but next of? Next to what? Did it imply a hierarchy-there was next of kin, then the next of next of kin?
More than fifty years after arriving in the United States, Sandy still found that English tripped him up at times, brought out these literal turns. When it came down to it, Sandy didn’t have much use for words because so many of the ones he had heard over his life had been lies. Words had been the weapons of choice in the interrogation rooms, used by both sides. By the end of the day, he was done with words. Mary seldom complained about anything, but sometimes she admitted that she wished Sandy would talk a little more when he came home. To Sandy, that was like asking the guy who worked in the ice cream parlor to come home and make himself a sundae. Sure, some murder police were big talkers, storytellers. He wasn’t one of them. Sandy got more done with a steady stare.
Not that he planned to stare at Julie Saxony’s sister. He’d have to talk a lot, probably, prod her to tell the stories she had told so many times before.
Typically in a cold case, Sandy left the relatives alone as long as possible. Didn’t want to get people’s hopes up. But Andrea Norr was all he had, so he was going to pay her a visit. Not unannounced-he wanted her to be prepared, to have thought quite a bit about things. He had called Monday and now it was Wednesday, one of those gray, drizzly days that feel so much colder than what the thermometer says. As he pulled into the long driveway for the horse farm where she lived, he wondered if she were as pretty as her sister, if she had aged better.
No and no. Or, maybe, no and who knows? The woman who greeted him was short and stocky, with thick gray-blond hair in a no-nonsense cut. Her body was thick, too, but not from inactivity. Sitting still in her own kitchen seemed to make her crazy and she kept jumping up. Brewing tea, putting box cookies on a plate, suddenly washing a dish that had caught her eye.
“So, something new?” she asked after the teakettle sang and she had settled down with a cup. He accepted one, took a sip. Jesus, it was awful. How did someone make bad tea from a bag of Lipton’s?
“No, nothing new. But I have a good track record on these cold cases.”
“Person who killed her is probably dead.”
He was on that like a cat.
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know why I said it.” She was convincing in this, seemed surprised and confused by what she had blurted out. “I mean, it’s not like everyone’s dead who was alive then. I’m alive. But then-I didn’t keep the kind of company that Julie kept.”
“I thought she was on the straight and narrow for some time when she disappeared.”
“Yeah, she was, but she still had ties to those bums she knew back on the Block.”
“You’re saying she still had business with Felix’s old bookmaking buddies?”
“I’m not saying anything like that. I’m saying that my sister danced on the Block, hung out with crooks. Lay down with dogs, et cetera. She actually used to defend him to me, say it was only gambling and that no one got hurt. Lots of people got hurt by Felix Brewer every day. Gambling is a terrible thing.”
“Aren’t you a trainer?”
“Show horses, not racehorses.”
He was curious about what she did, how it worked, if it paid the bills, why she thought it so pure. He had heard there was plenty of fraud in the show horse world, too. Sometimes, it was helpful to give in to his curiosities. Put the person at ease, primed the pump. But Andrea Norr did not seem like a woman who would have much patience for digressions.