“Could’ve. But one was in her purse-and the other one was sold a week later.”
“Do you think she killed her there, at the house?”
“I can’t make up my mind on that. Twenty-five years out-it was a lot, hoping to find a casing, anything like that. I almost wish we hadn’t searched the house because Gelman will pretend that proves definitively it didn’t happen there. And maybe it didn’t. I can see it going down lots of ways. I can see her getting angry, taking a swing-that would have knocked the earring loose, maybe, and she finds it later. But you know what? I can also imagine her hiring someone to take Julie out. And maybe they brought the earring back to her as a trophy or, you know, proof.” He was thinking of Tubman again. “She might have asked her husband’s old friend, the bail bondsman, if he knew some guys who were available for hire. See, I kept thinking he was mooning over Julie, all these years. But maybe he was just guilt-ridden because he helped to kill her. She leaves Bambi’s house, some guy follows her-if she’s really lying, as her lawyer says, it might be to cover for Tubman.”
3:20 P.M.
“Bambi, I’m sure you have a reason for doing this, but you have to understand that I could be disbarred if I permit you to lie.”
“I’m not lying.” A beat. “Besides, how can you know that? You can’t know I’m lying.”
“We were all in Bethany that week-you drove over to spend time with Lorraine and me, at the beach house.”
“Not until the evening. I had all day to myself.”
“But you came over on the evening of the second, not the third.”
Hell, was that possible?
“I’m pretty sure I drove over on the morning of the third.”
“No. No. We had a party on the second. It was Lorraine’s birthday. It was her forty-first. Remember? She refused to have a party for her fortieth, so we had a surprise party for her at the beach, on the second, which was two weeks late-but what could be more surprising than that. We were all there. You, Michelle, even Linda and Henry made it, although Noah was a newborn. You went home on the fourth, after dropping Michelle at a friend’s place in Rehoboth. You said you wanted to be alone.”
“Your memory’s playing tricks on you. I wasn’t there.”
“We have photos. I’m almost sure. Jesus, Bambi, I don’t know why you’re lying about this, but you have to stop. You have a perfect alibi, which isn’t something I’ve been able to say to many of my clients over the years. Just say nothing, okay?”
She felt at once deflated and relieved. She had been relishing the idea of confession, accepting guilt, serving the sentence that Felix had failed to serve, showing him how it was done.
“Okay, I won’t lie, Bert. But I want to hear what they have to say. They know something, something new. I need to know it, too, Bert. Don’t ask why.”
She had known Bert for so long-Lord, more than fifty years now. They had long ago reached a point where she didn’t treat him as she treated most men. He was Felix’s friend, Lorraine’s husband. But he was her friend as well, her only true male friend. So she didn’t widen her eyes, or smile her little half smile, or do anything flirtatious. She simply held his gaze until he nodded.
“Follow my lead,” he said. “Please don’t lie.”
“I’ll try not to,” she said, thinking, No lies that Bert can catch. That’s the new rule. It’s only a lie when someone knows it’s false.
4:00 P.M.
They brought the shoebox with them on the next trip into the interview room. Brown-and-white-striped Henri Bendel’s. Size 7 and a half.
“Fancy,” Nancy had said when she saw it. “And look at the price-two hundred and fifty dollars. That was a lot of money for shoes in 1986.”
“Isn’t that a lot of money now?” Sandy asked, knowing he was making a joke. He had priced Belgian loafers recently and discovered they were over $400. He’d just have to keep taking care of the old ones.
The key receipt was bagged, separated from the others. They wouldn’t let her see that right away. First, they were going to talk about the box itself. Sandy would have to take the lead because he had been the one who accompanied the officers with the warrant. He had taken the box with him because he figured that no one moved that kind of stuff from a house to a condo unless it was deeply meaningful. The receipts were old-some went back to the early 1980s, and they continued through the year 2000. But one receipt stood out. All the other stuff that had been sold had been complete, unbroken-and not particularly valuable. And this slip was for a different store from the rest, a not-quite-as-nice jewelry store downtown. The receipt had stood out like, well, a diamond in a dustbin.
“We’re curious about these receipts. You sold a lot of stuff over fifteen years. Was it yours?”
“I sold those things at my aunt Harriet’s request. She died in September 2001, right after 9/11.”
Right after 9/11. Was that gratuitous detail supposed to import some gravitas?
“Yes, but all these things were sold before that date.”
“You see, she was in a retirement home for almost the last twenty years of her life. Things were tighter for her than people realized, and I was her favorite niece.” A wry smile. “Also her only niece. I was supposed to be her sole heir, so what did it matter if I sold the things before she died. I would sell things for her, and we would split the proceeds.”
“Fifty-fifty?”
“Oh, no. Aunt Harriet wasn’t that generous. I brought her the money and she decided, based on some internal formula I never understood, how to divvy things up. I sometimes got as little as ten percent, sometimes as much as thirty, but never more than that.”
“And you used this place”-he squinted at the slip, as if reading the printed name for the first time, but he knew it by heart-“the Turnover Shop.”
“Yes. They were great to work with.”
“And you went there every time?”
“I went to several places, but that was my favorite.”
“Like jewelry. Did you sell any jewelry?”
“Some.”
“But did you sell it to them?”
“No, I went to a Pikesville jeweler for that. Weinstein’s. I knew the owner back in high school.”
“Yeah, Weinstein’s. We saw those receipts, too. But we found one receipt, and it wasn’t from there.”
“Well, sometimes a piece isn’t right for a certain retailer. They don’t anticipate demand for an item. That’s how consignment works. As you see from the slips, I sold a lot of clothes, too, over the years, but I went down to D.C. for that. People in D.C. are better about the value of clothes. And the clothes were mine, not Aunt Harriet’s.”
“But for jewelry you went to Weinstein’s. Except this once, when you went down to Baltimore Street. Why didn’t Weinstein’s want this piece?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Was it because it was just one earring, one without a mate?”
“Could be.”
Bert was looking at her, trying to get her to meet his eyes. She couldn’t. Her heart was rising like a skyrocket, up, up, up. She saw herself on her hands and knees, dusting. Cleanliness had been Bambi’s only weapon against the house’s encroaching seediness. Down on all fours, trying to get a dust mop under that long buffet in the living room. It was a beautiful piece. She should have sold it. French, antique, worth a lot. But Felix had loved it so. He was never happier than on a holiday when that buffet was piled high with food. Above it was a family portrait, commissioned pre-Michelle, which always irked her petulant youngest. Once, when Michelle was four, she attempted to add herself to it. Luckily, Bambi had caught her before she had a chance to touch a single crayon to the oil paint.
So there Bambi was, on her hands and knees on a wretchedly hot July morning, air-conditioning off because she had learned to pinch pennies until they bled copper, and there it was, winking at her, the beautiful diamond in the distinctive David Webb setting, her tenth anniversary gift from Felix.