No, no.
Did you-
No, Michelle. I think Mom thinks she’s protecting me or something, but I didn’t do anything. Honest, I didn’t. I mean, I didn’t do anything really bad.
But Michelle had. Michelle had done something very bad. She had come so close to telling Rachel, the day of the shower, before Hamish III was born. But she had a moment of-what to call it? Clarity. She wanted to confess to Rachel because it would make her feel better. She wanted to tell her sister about the worst thing she had ever done, in hopes of forgiveness that she didn’t deserve. She still yearned to be forgiven-and still understood that she didn’t deserve it. That was the price she had to pay. For six, almost seven years now, she had tried to persuade herself that her life was proof that she had done the right thing. Hamish, the children-a bad person would not be given these things. And a remorseful person was not bad, right? She used to be bad, but she wasn’t anymore.
“Mine,” Helena said, snatching another toy from Tatiana’s hands. Tatiana never countered, never complained, just went searching for something else. Was Michelle supposed to check her bandage soon? She needed to read the sheet Rachel had left for her.
She sipped her cappuccino. She was really enjoying being nice, if not the Nice One, the role that still belonged to Rachel. It had been a revelation, learning that being nice wasn’t for suckers, that living a life in which one could like one’s self was akin to being softly massaged, all the time. Every “please,” every “thank you”-it was like a coin dropped into a bank. No-a coin tossed into a fountain, like the old wishing fountain at the Westview Cinemas. You gave the coin away. It was no longer yours. It had no currency. And yet you still felt rich somehow, in the moment you released it. I can afford to surrender this quarter. I can afford to say please and thank you and no, you were ahead of me, because I can afford to be nice now because someone finally loves me. Someone I don’t deserve. If Hamish knew-if Rachel knew-if her mother knew-
“Mine,” Helena said again. Tatiana moved on, unperturbed.
She probably should call Linda.
1:00 P.M.
Sandy felt as if he had been working with Nancy Porter forever. He had never been partnered with a woman before. There had only been two in homicide, and one of them was a head case. But Nancy Porter was the real deal. He had trouble remembering she was a woman, even though she was pretty girly. She was good police. Even had the old-school Baltimore accent, all those vowels.
Plus, she agreed with him, most of the time. That never hurt.
“How do you want to play this?” she asked now, very deferential, although it seemed increasingly evident that it would be a county case. Later, if it got written up in the papers-and this case was definitely going to get written up in the papers-his decision to execute the search warrant on Bambi Brewer’s apartment would be called a hunch. True, he hadn’t known what to expect. He just believed that Julie Saxony went to that house on July 3, 1986, and probably died there. He had thought he might find a gun among Bambi’s possessions, maybe even a casing in the old house. But it was the oddity of that one shoebox, in what was otherwise a very uncluttered, serene apartment. An accumulation of papers so meaningless that they had to be meaningful.
“She’s not an experienced liar, this one,” Sandy said. “Her mom’s not very good, either, but she’s even worse. She’s a nice lady, she’s used to doing and saying things that people want to hear. I think everything she’s told us is the truth. She stopped talking, though, when things got serious. She shut down fast.”
“Is it possible that she thinks her mom did it?”
“I think it’s more likely that she realizes her mother suspects her and is trying to save her. Mom probably thought it was slick, but it gives us more leverage. This isn’t a girl-”
“She’s a woman,” Nancy said, manner mild. “She’s fifty.”
Why had he said girl? “But she seems young, doesn’t she? Younger and older than she should be.”
Nancy thought about this. It was another thing he liked about her, how she wasn’t a rat-a-tat, wisecrack person. He had never been good with those types.
“She takes care of others,” Nancy said. “Even more than an average mom would. I can see why she wanted to be a mother badly enough to do it so old. I’ve got two kids now and I can barely keep up with them and I’m only thirty-five. I had this aunt, whose father died when she was really young, eleven or so, and she had to become her mother’s mainstay. That was my mom’s word-poor Evie, she’s the ‘mainstay.’ If Rachel didn’t do this, she knows who did, or thinks she knows. She’s still in protection mode. She knows something and she’s desperate not to tell us.”
“Desperate enough to take a murder charge?”
Nancy smiled. Lenhardt had told Sandy that she particularly loved interrogations, especially with women. It was a specialty of sorts with her. “Let’s go find out.”
1:00 P.M.
Bert met Rachel at the Baltimore County police headquarters. He looked as exhausted as she felt. They were left alone in a room that was far more like the rooms she had seen on television than Rachel would have thought possible.
“Bert, why is Mother claiming she killed Julie? She couldn’t possibly have.”
“Of course she didn’t do it. But she was clever enough, if you want to call it that, to say she did it on July fourth, not third. She was at the beach until the evening of the third. She couldn’t have been home much before eight or nine.”
Rachel sighed. “I was there. On the third. Julie Saxony came by and said our father had sent for her. I hit her, Bert. I actually tore an earring out of her ear. I was so mad-first our money, now our father himself. I know it’s not her fault that Daddy got arrested, or even that he ran away. But everything else, all the hardships-that was because of her greed. And for Daddy to send for her-”
“She was probably lying, just to hurt you. Your father’s women-look, I can’t change the fact that they existed, but none were special. The girls were like Cadillacs to him.”
“You mean, he drove them for two to three years then traded them in.” She was trying to make a joke, but her mouth crumpled and it was all she could do not to cry.
“Yes, pretty much. But-it was changing, Rachel. He was changing. Do you want to know why? It was because of you and Linda. As he saw you come into womanhood-I mean, Julie was what, seven years older than Linda? I think, in some ways, running was part of changing for him. He saw a chance to start over, to be a better person.”
“Mother said he was a coward.”
“Well, he wasn’t brave. But he didn’t think he would survive prison. He had some blood pressure stuff, cholesterol. A family history of diabetes. He wasn’t built to serve time, Rachel. He knew that about himself. Your dad, whatever his faults-he never had any bullshit about who he was. Your mom is a thousand times braver than he is. That’s why she’s willing to go to prison for you.”
“But I didn’t do anything. I mean, okay, yes, I assaulted her. But you know what I did then? I apologized. Yes, I apologized to my father’s girlfriend for what I had done. Helped her clean up, offered to take her to an ER. And you know what she said? ‘That’s okay, I’m headed to Saks. I’ll buy something nicer. And I’ll be on the Pacific coast of Mexico before the day is through.’ ”
“She said that?”
“Yes. Uncle Bert-for years, for fifteen years, I assumed that she was with Daddy and it broke my heart. Then her body was found and I was, like, ‘Oh, so she was lying.’ I decided she must have ripped someone else off. I mean, if she stole from us, then she might have stolen from any number of people. I figured she burned someone and finally got what was coming to her. I didn’t see how it could be connected to Daddy. But the detective said, ‘Why not?’ and now I wonder: Why not? Did he set a trap for her? Did she have something on him? Maybe he found out what she did and arranged for her to be killed. He would have been angry, right, if he knew that she had stolen our money?”