March 21, 2012
Susan Borden had told the original investigators many things about herself, as detailed by the witness sheet. There was her full name (Susan Evelyn Borden). Her date of birth, February 25, 1956, in Salisbury, Maryland. Social Security number, her address at the time, which turned out to be only a few blocks from her current home, which had popped out of the MVA files in a matter of seconds. She had given a detailed history of her employment at the bed-and-breakfast, said she counted herself a friend of the owners, for whom she had worked about two years. But she had been away the week that Julie went missing, down the ocean with a new boyfriend. Total shock, never saw it coming, didn’t have any insight. When Baltimore City cops picked up the case fifteen years later, they hadn’t done much more than call her and review her statement from ’86.
Rereading this file now, Sandy could see the gaps. Susan—Susie—didn’t say how she knew Julie, just left the impression that the friendship had been subsequent to the work relationship. She gave up Salisbury, her hometown, but she didn’t volunteer where she had been between Salisbury and Havre de Grace. Her work history included: “Hostess, various Baltimore restaurants.” Yes, Susan Borden had been very careful to omit any detail that led back to Susie the dancer.
He made a strategic decision to let her stew a little bit before they met. She was a responsible citizen, at the same address for more than twenty years now. She wasn’t going to bolt. He called and left a message, asking her to call him back and set up a time to discuss an old case. He said case on purpose, leaving it general.
Two days later, he called and left another message. Detective Sanchez, would like to talk to you about the disappearance of Julie Saxony.
The next day, he called and repeated the same message, almost word for word.
By the fourth day, he was pretty sure he was being ignored. Okay, she could be out of town, on vacation. She could be one of those people who no longer listen to their messages, just check the caller ID and call back the numbers they know, ignore everyone else. He called a neighbor, using a reverse directory to pinpoint the number. He said he had a delivery for Susan Borden but couldn’t get an answer at her house.
“Her husband is always there. He’ll sign for it. Assuming he can.”
That was interesting on a lot of levels. Husband? Not according to any records he had found. And—assuming he can. What was that about?
“Has to be her, nobody else. It’s certified.”
“Well, she gets home at four. But, seriously, you could leave it on the steps. It’s not like people around here steal.”
Oh, country people, so smug. Go read a copy of In Cold Blood, you all so safe in your houses.
Sandy arrived at 5:45, although he had intended to be there closer to 5:30, figuring that gave a woman enough time to take off her pantyhose and put on comfortable shoes, maybe get a snack, but not start dinner yet. That was what his guardian, Nabby, had done upon her arrival home each day. Mary had changed to flat shoes, but stayed in her work clothes, as pretty and fresh at the end of the day as she was at the beginning.
A man, the alleged husband, answered the door. Sixtyish, Sandy guessed, a true apple shape in a red sweater that made him look even more like an apple, and very high, ruddy color in his cheeks. It wasn’t a healthy color, though. His eyes were rheumy, his manner vague. Alcoholic, or maybe one of those big boozers who somehow kept it in check, watering himself all day long, like a plant.
Assuming he can.
“What do you want?” Grumpy. Ill at ease.
“I’ve been trying to get in touch with Susan Borden. Left her a couple of messages.”
“She never checks the landline, and I never answer it.”
“Why not?” Sandy was genuinely curious. He couldn’t imagine sitting in a house, listening to a phone ring, no matter how swozzled a guy might be.
“It’s never for me. And it’s never really for Susie. People who know her call her cell.”
“It’s a business matter,” Sandy said. “Not a big deal. I’m”—his instincts told him to lie, or at least obscure the nature of his mission—“I work as a consultant for the Baltimore City Police Department and I’m—I’m closing down a file. There’s paperwork that I need permission to shred.”
“She should be here any minute. Went to the store for something we didn’t have.”
And with that the guy left Sandy in the foyer, went back somewhere in the house. A television room, based on the sound, the rhythms of people talking in a not-quite-real way. Sandy imagined the guy in an otherwise dark room, drinking steadily from something that looked like a glass of water.
He was still trying to figure out what to do when a woman came in behind him with a grocery sack. She was startled, but only mildly. He had a feeling it wasn’t the first time she’d found some stranger in the foyer.
“What the dickens! Did Doobie leave you here?”
“Doobie?”
“My husband.”
Uh-huh, Sandy amended in his head. Not unless you kept your own name, and you’re not the type. You are the type to call a live-in your husband, though, and he probably is, by the standards of common law. He wondered how long they had been together, if it had ever been good, or if she had almost always been his caretaker, trading her competence for whatever checks he brought to the household. Not unlike Sandy and Nabby, come to think of it, although the scales had balanced in the end. He had taken better care of her than she ever had of him.
“He said you’d be back soon.”
“Are you the guy with the mystery package?”
“You got me. Yes, I’m the one who called your neighbor. You didn’t answer my messages.”
“What messages?”
“On the home phone.”
“Oh, God, I never listen to those. They’re just solicitations. Anyone who knows me knows to call on my cell.”
“Like, say, Tubman Schroeder?”
That got her attention. She was tiny, as Lorraine had mentioned, and, for fifty-six, incredibly cute. There was no other word for it. She was like a miniature Marilyn Monroe, if you could imagine Monroe living another twenty years, toning down the hair, but still dressing to flatter an hourglass figure. Staggeringly high heels added to her height, yet she was still short of five-five. He felt a pang for the young woman in the inappropriate hostess dress, all those years ago, chattering about her plans to the more sophisticated Lorraine Gelman.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I told your husband that I’m a consultant from the police department who needs permission to shred certain files. Only the first part is true. I am a consultant. I have been looking at a file, but it’s not going to be shredded. We’ve reopened the Julie Saxony case.”
She nodded. She looked frivolous, but she was quick, practical. She walked back into the house. “Doobie?” Her voice was loud, clear, and deliberate. “This man needs to talk to me. We are going to sit in the front room and talk. So dinner might be a little late.”
“What are we having?”
“Turkey burgers and a salad.”
“And french fries?”
“No, no french fries.”
“But a burger.”
“Yes. A turkey burger. I’ll bring you a plate of crackers and carrot sticks for now.”
Sandy remembered that he had taken a similar tone with Mary in their final months. But Mary had fought back, lost her temper, said: Don’t treat me like a child. Mary’s mind had been sharp, all the way to the end.
He went into the front room, taking Susie’s words to Doobie as an invitation. She returned a few minutes later.
“He doesn’t know about Julie, does he?” he asked.
“He knew her, actually.”
“But not how you two knew each other.”
“Wouldn’t matter if he did, not now. He won’t remember meeting you tomorrow.”
He waited to see if she would fill in the gaps. Alcoholism? Dementia? Both? Maybe she was a woman long practiced at not saying more than was necessary.
“So I’ve reopened the investigation into Julie Saxony’s murder.”
“You said. Why?”
“It’s my job. I take on cold cases.”
“Why Julie? Why now?”
“No reason.”
She laughed. It was a delightful sound. Could Tubman really have done better?
“Right. Well, join the club.”
“The club?”
“The not very discriminating club of men taken in by Julie Saxony’s smoldering gaze. That’s what Felix called it. Juliet Romeo’s smoldering gaze. Everyone fell for her, until they saw it was impossible.”
“Did that include your old boyfriend, Tubman?”
“In the beginning? Sure. But he was practical. He wasn’t going to get her, so he took up with me.”
“That would bug a lot of women.”
“Not me. I’m practical, too. I liked Tubman. He was a good time, very generous. It was never serious between us, though.”
“That’s interesting,” he said. “Because part of the reason I’m here is because Lorraine Gelman told me you spent an entire party acting like Tubman’s wife, babbling about Julie and Felix.”
She wasn’t fazed. “It takes two people to be serious. Tubby wasn’t never serious about me. I knew that, and I accepted it. I probably talked too much to Lorraine because she made me so nervous. The Great Lady. I could tell she didn’t want to be at the party, that she found everything there tacky—Tubby, his friends, me. Is that why you’re here? Because a young woman once said some nonsense at a party? You’ll never lack for work if that’s the case.”
“I think you know why I’m here. You worked at the B and B. You were on the interview list. But nothing in the notes indicates that you told investigators that you and Julie were old friends, back in the day.”
“I told them we were friends, that we had met through our work. It’s not my fault if no one followed up. Doobie and I had just started dating, and I wasn’t keen for that information about my past to get out. I don’t think he would have cared about what I did, but it’s a small town and I wanted to stay here. I knew that would be easier if people didn’t know I danced on the Block twenty million years ago.”
Sandy couldn’t speak for the original investigators, but he believed they probably had asked how Julie and Susan knew each other. Which meant she had lied. Then and now.
“You know, people always think they’re good judges of whether information matters. But that’s like a person holding one piece of a puzzle while I’m on the other side of the wall with this whole jigsaw put together. You don’t see it, but I do.”
“I wasn’t there that day,” she said, defensive and defiant. “July third, I mean. She had given me a week off. Doobie and I were in Ocean City. It was a last-minute thing.”
“You decided to go away for the Fourth of July the last minute?”
“Julie asked if I wanted the week off, so I went.”
“Generous of her. Especially with her own big holiday weekend coming up.”
“That was Julie. Look, I didn’t even have the skills to be a proper housekeeper. But Julie took it in her head that she was going to rescue me, get me away from the Block. She tried me out at the Coffee Pot Shoppe, as a hostess. Like that place needed a hostess. It was four booths and a counter. But she knew I couldn’t wait tables. Physically, I mean. I couldn’t carry the trays. I was weak and didn’t have the wing span.”
She spread her arms, as if to demonstrate.
“But Julie’s attitude was, ‘We are both going to get up and out. Up and out.’ No more dancing. No more unavailable boyfriends, whether they were married or just, you know, out for a good time.” She looked wistful. “She approved of Doobie. That was another reason she gave me the time off. He was different then, of course. Worked at the marina.”
“Going over the notes, I saw you told the detectives at the time that nothing unusual happened that week. But she gave you a week off, out of the blue.”
“Like I said, Julie was generous. And she really liked Doobie.”
“Man, you are a loyal friend, aren’t you?”
That caught her. Good. It was his intention.
“I would hope so, yes.”
“I mean, I can see keeping a secret when you thought she might still be alive . . .”
“I never thought she was alive. Never. I agreed with Chet and, trust me, that big-headed cook—oh, pardon moi, chef—and I did not agree on much. But I suspected she was dead almost as soon as she left. Always.”
“So why didn’t you tell police everything?”
“What everything?”
He was fishing, sure. But he was fishing in a stocked pond.
“Here’s what I think. You didn’t hold back the whole story about your relationship with Julie because you were worried about being in the papers. You held it back to protect her. What were you protecting her from?”
“How could I protect someone I thought was dead?”
“I don’t know. But she is dead, more than twenty-five years now. Who knows what might have happened if you had been more forthcoming twenty-five years ago?”
Susie let out her breath.
“It was just so unfair.”
“What?”
“Everyone thinking that Julie had Felix’s money, when she didn’t. Julie wasn’t a thief. If she kept the money, it was hers. That must have been hard to hear, but it was true. It’s not her fault. I’m sure there was some other plan for the family, but it fell through, or there wasn’t enough.”
“What money, Mrs. Borden?” He knew she wasn’t a Mrs., not officially, but he wanted her to feel dignified, respected. He needed to make her feel the exact opposite of whatever she had felt when she babbled to Lorraine Gelman. Safe, trusted, respected. Yet he also needed her to babble just the same.
“It’s not just Julie.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not just Julie. There’s someone—that’s why I never spoke of it. It’s what Julie would have wanted.”
“Someone else? Her sister?”
Susan nodded.
“I can promise you the statute of limitations has run out on that.” He really needed to check that detail. “No one’s going to care about Andrea Norr being an accessory to Felix’s escape. But that was it, right?”
So the old rumor was true. They drove him out of state in a horse trailer. He couldn’t help being a little impressed with himself, ferreting out this fact, confirming an old legend. Too bad that he didn’t have anyone in his life to tell the story to.
She gave the tiniest nod.
“And she got paid? The sister?”
“Something. Not a lot. And all Julie got was the coffee shop and a little cash for herself, too. But she didn’t believe it, she wouldn’t hear of it. She said she knew that Julie must have gotten lots of money, or how else would she have bought the inn, opened the restaurant? She was—kind of crazy. Not yelling, but loud enough that I could hear her. They were in the kitchen and I was in the laundry room off the kitchen. This was about a week before. She asked Julie for money, said it was only fair. And Julie said she just didn’t have it.”
Susan had made the mistake he had hoped she would make, rushing ahead, babbling, assuming that he knew more than he did. She? Who she, what she? Not Andrea Norr.
A silence of a sort. They could hear Doobie’s television set, the familiar chime of the Law & Order theme. Must be six now.
“Did you see her?”
“No. And if I thought she had anything to do with Julie’s murder, I would have told. I would have. But she was soft. Julie always said that. Soft, not used to doing things for themselves. The wife and the daughters. All spoiled, the whole lot of them.”
“So there was a confrontation, a week before. Where someone accused Julie of taking money and she said she hadn’t.”
“She hadn’t. Julie was really shaken up. She worried that the wife knew how to get to Felix, that the wife had told him these lies about her. That’s what really bugged her.”
“So she didn’t know where Felix was?”
“No. And she was okay with that, as long as Bambi didn’t, either. The day the daughter came, that was all she wanted to know. Had anyone spoken to Felix, what was going on with Felix.”
The day the daughter came. He didn’t let on that he had assumed Bambi Brewer was the she in Susie’s tale. He flipped open a notebook. “Right, that was—Linda, right? The oldest one.”
“I don’t remember the name. The middle one, I think. The smart one, who went to the fancy college.” She looked defensive. “Julie kept tabs, a little. She paid attention to Felix’s family. Maybe more than she should. She accused the girl of doing her mother’s dirty work. The daughter said her mother didn’t know she had come.”
“Susan,” called Doobie, his voice as querulous as a child’s after a nap. “Susan?”
“Yes, Doobie?”
“What are we having for dinner?”
“Turkey burgers and salad.”
“And french fries?”
“No french fries.” She looked at Sandy. “He’s older than me, by a bit. The doctor says something happens to the brain and we become like little kids again. Fewer inhibitions. We want what we want, we don’t care as much about saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ He’s a good guy. We’ve had a great life together. I’d be a shit to kick him to the curb now. Look, I’m sorry if you think what I did was a big deal. I had to ask myself what Julie would want, what was most important to her. Even if what I knew might have solved her murder—it would have hurt her sister.”
“She wasn’t known for putting her sister first when she was alive, not according to her sister.”
“All the more reason to do it after she died. Julie felt bad about her relationship with Andrea, wanted to make things up to her. She didn’t get the chance. I did.”
On the drive back to Baltimore, he replayed the conversation with Susan Borden. She was one of the more credible people he had interviewed. Everyone lied, but Susan had been pretty straightforward about her lies of omission and why she had committed them.
And her loyalty to Doobie, the child-man with the childish name and the enormous gut—it spoke well of her. We’ve had a great life together. They weren’t now and yet there he was, every day, totally reliant on her. Would Sandy have traded for more time with Mary if it had meant being with someone who wasn’t really Mary? Would he have traded Bobby-as-he-was, now in his thirties and lost to him, for a normal Bobby who died at age five?
You can rewrite life all you want, Sandy thought. It’s still a play where everyone dies in the end.