“I dropped her at a diner on Route 40, where someone else was to meet her and drive her the rest of the way. That’s all I know. Really. Today, I haven’t left anything out.”
Sandy believed her.
It was a few minutes shy of 11:00 A.M. when Sandy made his way back down Andrea Norr’s driveway. He was hungry, although he shouldn’t have been. He stopped at the Chesapeake House rest stop and pushed a tray along the metal bars at Roy Rogers, feeling that it was too late for the breakfast sandwiches, which looked pretty old under the heat lamps, yet too early for the fried chicken that was just coming out. In the end, he settled on a holster of fries and a cup of coffee.
Andrea Norr had committed a felony, helping Felix escape, taking money for it. She wasn’t pure, and she had reasons to lie. About the suitcase, the money, all that. Problem was, there was a detail that had never been made public, a detail that served her version of things. When Julie Saxony’s body was found in Leakin Park, part of the reason that word traveled so fast, in advance of an official autopsy, was because cops had found two forms of ID-her driver’s license and her passport, which had survived that damp, wild place because it was in a plastic case inside a leatherette purse, the kind of thing that never decays. The passport, good for ten years, had expired on July 1, 1986. It was blank, utterly blank, not a single stamp in its pages.
February 14, 2004
While the rest of her family had been seated at table number 2, Michelle was at number 12, with all the strays. She was outraged on principle, although she planned to sneak away after the entrée was served, table-hop her way right out of the ballroom and upstairs, where she had taken a room in order to meet the man she was seeing for a Valentine’s Day tryst. Still, that didn’t excuse Lorraine Gelman for sticking her at such a lousy table.
Her lover had been nervous about the meeting, said it was a risky thing to do with so many people around. But it was important to Michelle to see him on Valentine’s Day because that would prove his loyalty to her. She had insisted, and she usually got her way with him. Usually. She glanced at her watch-Cartier, a gift from him. As was the BMW she had driven here tonight, the diamond earrings, and the fur coat she had refused to check because she wanted to be wearing it, and nothing else, when he knocked on the door of the room.
She pulled her phone out of her bag and typed: “1212/2030.” Room and time. It wasn’t the first time they had met in a hotel.
“What are you doing?” asked the man seated next to her. Barry something. Friend of Adam’s from Northwestern or maybe law school.
“Texting.”
“That’s a rip-off on most plans.”
“I’m not worried about it,” she said loftily. She wasn’t. The phone was another gift. She didn’t even see the bills. She wasn’t sure exactly how things worked, but it was her understanding that the phone, along with the credit card he had given her-they were all assigned to some fictitious employee. It was a little worrisome that there was a practiced slickness to the setup. How long had he been catting around? Yet he swore he had never done anything like this before, that she had pursued him. She remembered a chance encounter, a stolen kiss outside the Red Maple, wasabi and sake on his breath. Had she really initiated it? Probably.
“And it’s generally not deductible, a mobile phone plan. People assume it’s a deductible business expense, but that’s not always true.”
“Are you an accountant?”
“Of sorts. I work for the government.”
He grinned as if he had made a joke, but Michelle didn’t get it.
“You knew Adam at school, right?” She gave him her attention, if not the full wattage of her charm. Back at Park, when they had read the Greek myth about the birth of Dionysus, how his mortal mother had demanded to see Zeus in godlike splendor and he had chosen his smallest lightning bolts hoping in vain not to kill her, Michelle had felt a rare moment of connection with the bookish world in which her sisters excelled. This guy required only her smallest lightning bolts and he, too, was still at risk.
He nodded. “Alec, too, of course. You can’t really know one without the other. I’m surprised Adam isn’t taking Alec on the honeymoon. They are thick as thieves.”
“Those of us who have known them all their lives are surprised that they didn’t turn out to be thieves. Or, you know, serial killers.”
He laughed, taking it for a joke, or at least hyperbole.
“No, seriously, they should have been voted most likely to be hit men. They were awful when they were young.”
“Maybe,” said Barry something. “But they’re nice guys now, and isn’t that what matters? Not who we were, but who we become?”
“Adam had a crush on me for years.”
She hadn’t planned on saying that. Why had she said it?
“Oh, I know. He told me he was doing me the enormous favor of making sure I got to sit next to you tonight.”
So it wasn’t Lorraine’s fault that she was at this awful table. Michelle was mollified, although now skeptical of Adam’s intentions. Was he punishing her? Or playing a joke on both of them? He couldn’t possibly think she would be interested in this Barry guy.
Besides, these days she just wasn’t in the market at all. There was no one else for her. But her lover wouldn’t leave his wife, and even if he did, there would be such a shit storm. No, they could never be together. This would be the romance that kept her alive, inside, like-oh, Lord, was she really comparing her life to The Bridges of Madison County? Or some Nicholas Sparks book?
She picked at her steak, unimpressed. There had been too many filet mignons wrapped in bacon, too many blinis, too many cheese puffs over the last few years as all her friends got married. Food was becoming excitingly expensive, another luxury to pursue, although one had to range beyond Baltimore to get the really good stuff. Just this month, a new restaurant had opened in New York, Per Se, and it was said to be impossible to get a table. She had told her lover that she wanted to go there for her birthday. It was a test-not of his ability to snag a reservation, but of his commitment to her. If he didn’t find a way to be with her on her birthday, she would-what? Her only power over him was her ability to wreck his marriage, and he had to know she would never do that.
“What do you do?” Barry asked, her least favorite question.
“I work for a tech company,” she said. “Marketing. I hate it.”
“Stock options?”
“Some.” Worthless, or soon to be.
“Still, you’re doing well.” His eyes rested on the watch, the earrings, the fur on the chair, and-oh so inevitably, and oh so boring -the neckline of her dress, which a man would never recognize as expensive, much less Prada. Her mother had, though, reaching out to touch the fabric, torn between approval and suspicion. She knew Michelle couldn’t afford a Prada dress, and she sure as hell hadn’t procured it through Bambi’s discount.
She opened her purse wide, letting him see the tampons inside, then took out a small bottle of ibuprofen, a time-tested conversation ender. “I hope the ladies’ room has a place where I can lie down.”
“Oh,” he stammered. “Well-feel better.”
She went up to the room, 1212, and ordered champagne, the best available. It was already 8:30-2030; he insisted on military time for some reason, one of his quirks, he said it was common in the United Kingdom, where he traveled on business-but she understood that he might be in a situation where he couldn’t call her. He often was. She treated herself to some TV. He hated her taste in television, said it was base, but so what if she liked Extreme Makeover: Home Edition? If she kept the remote close at hand, she could click it off as soon as she heard his knock at the door. She had left it imperceptibly ajar so she could remain on the bed, the beautiful coat pooled around her, its platinum silk lining so close to her skin tone that she all but melted into it. God, she couldn’t believe she had ever worn that made-over mink passed down by Bambi-