The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress

Chapter Six





BELGRADE LAKES, MAINE, MONDAY, AUGUST 11, 1930



“I WANT you to go back to New York and look for Joe.”

Fred sat at the kitchen counter, cup of coffee in hand, watching sheets of rain slide down the window. The rain had returned and with it Stella’s dismal mood. “You think it’s that serious?”

“I think it’s time we do something other than sit around and wonder. I want you to search everywhere you can think of. Especially the apartment. What if he’s in there …” Stella pulled at a loose thread on her blouse. “What if he’s dead?”

“Mrs. Crater, I don’t think—”

“This will get you in.” She pulled a key ring from her purse and set it on the counter. She pointed at a large brass key.

“You’re not coming?”

How could she answer that question? That she only wanted to know what had happened to Joe? She settled for the easiest explanation. “I need to be here if he comes back.”

“I’ll search for him,” Fred said. “I promise.”

“Write to me if you find anything.”

“Of course.” Fred picked his jacket off the floor and ducked out the door, arms over his face to protect from the biting wind. He was lost in the rain before she could see him run around the cabin toward the car.

When Stella was certain Fred had driven away, she went upstairs and dumped out the clothes hamper. At the bottom were the khaki pants Joe had worn to the Salt House. Stella turned the pockets inside out but found only the wrapper to an after-dinner mint. She stuffed the dirty clothes back in and went to the closet. Joe’s dinner jacket hung on a peg inside the door. Stella reached into the left pocket and found his cigarettes—unfiltered Camels—and a matchbook with the Club Abbey logo. Stella grimaced. She’d never approved of Joe’s patronage of the speakeasy that the papers referred to as a “white-light rendezvous spot.” In Joe’s right pocket were two business cards: one for Simon Rifkind, a law associate of Joe’s, and the other for Owney Madden, proprietor of Club Abbey. Stella tapped the cards against her palm.

“So that’s who he called.” She changed into trousers and tucked the business cards into her pocket. Then she grabbed her raincoat and galoshes and marched into the storm.


“I DON’T know what you were playing at the other day,” Donald Smithson said, laying an invoice on her work table. “But it clearly worked. He paid in advance.”

Maria lifted the sheet of paper and saw an order for five suits, along with a check for $750. “Owney Madden?”

“I will grant that your tactics were effective with him—perhaps due in part to his own lack of breeding—but it’s not a strategy that I want you to employ in the future. Are we clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

Smithson placed his clipboard next to the invoice. On it was recorded all of Owney Madden’s measurements and his choice of fabric for each suit. “He will be back in two weeks for his first fitting. Let’s begin with the classic cut in charcoal wool. You know what to do.”

Maria watched Smithson return to his office. That was the closest he’d ever come to paying her a compliment. But the joy of being vindicated was dulled by the uncomfortable fact that she would have to see Owney Madden again.



IRV BERN’S general store sat at the bottom of a wooded inlet a little over two miles away. But he had a telephone, which at the moment was the most important thing. Despite endless promises from the public works department, phone service had not yet made it to the Craters’ end of the lake, and they were forced to make the trek into town to use the phone. Normally, this was not a problem, given the services of Fred Kahler. But Stella had something to say that she did not want him to hear. So having sent him away, she had no choice but to walk. What would have usually been a lovely trip beneath a heavy canopy of oak trees proved a lesson in misery. Although the branches protected her somewhat from the stinging rain, the little that made it through drenched her head and neck until rivulets of water ran down her spine. It took her an hour to hike down the hill, head bowed and hands tucked beneath her arms. The lights were on when she rounded the last turn in the gravel road. Sodden and dispirited, Stella trudged up the wide plank steps and pushed against the door with her shoulder. The shop bells above her clattered in alarm.

The store was empty, save for Irv himself, stretched out behind the counter on a stool with his back against the wall and his mammoth feet near the register. He had the look of a man lulled to sleep by the sound of rain on a tin roof. Arms crossed. Head tipped to the side. Slack mouth. Scratchy snore. Stella let the door snap closed behind her, and the racket of bells jerked him from slumber.

“I need to use your phone.” She gave no other greeting as he stumbled from his perch and blinked the sleep from his eyes.

“Something wrong?”

“Joe never came back from the city.”

He pointed a long, knuckled finger at the wall. “Phone’s over there.”

Stella wove around the barrels of apples and crates of Sunkist soda toward the back wall, where, partly hidden behind a shelf of canned goods, a box phone hung. She waited until Irv was out of sight to lift the business cards from her pocket. Owney Madden first. She lifted the receiver and turned the crank until static crackled onto the line, followed by a tired-sounding voice, then requested an operator in Manhattan. Stella read the Greenwich Village exchange and the five-digit number that would connect her to Club Abbey.

Irv was silent behind the counter, most likely straining to hear her conversation, and she bent closer to the wall. A metallic ringing erupted in her ear. One minute stretched into three before someone answered. He sounded young and half asleep.

“Abbey.”

“Who is this?”

“Stan.” A yawn, and then, “The bartender.”

“I need Owney Madden, please.” Stella was surprised at the authority in her voice.

He laughed. “Listen, Owney ain’t awake right now, much less here.”

“Then give me his home number.”

“I ain’t got it. And even if I did, I ain’t stupid enough to hand it out.”

“I need to talk to him. It’s important.”

“Then you can do like all the other broads. No shortcuts. Come by around midnight and show Owney what you got.”

“What I’ve got, Stan, is a missing husband.” She took a deep breath and lowered her voice, mindful of Irv’s affinity for gossip. “And seeing as how your employer’s card was in his pocket, that’s a matter I’d like to discuss with him. Unless he’d rather I take my questions to the police.”

She paused, waiting for his reply. He had none.

“So you tell Mr. Madden that Joseph Crater’s wife needs to talk. Can you remember that? Or do you need to write it down?”

Stan’s voice took on a decidedly more respectful tone when he said, “Joseph Crater. Got it.”

“He knows how to reach me.” Stella set the receiver back on its cradle, picked up the other card, and gave her instructions to the operator.

This time the phone was answered on the first ring. “Have you seen Joe?” she demanded.

Simon Rifkind did not sound pleased to hear her voice. “Stella?”

“He was supposed to be back last Wednesday, and I’ve not heard from him.”

“Slow down. Tell me what happened.” He sounded small and distant on the other end, as though he spoke through a culvert, and he listened in silence as she explained the urgent phone call that had lured Joe back to New York City and how more than a week had come and gone without word. “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,” Rifkind finally said.

“You would let me know if Joe got himself into trouble?”

She wondered what he was thinking in the long pause before he answered. “No need to worry. I’m sure all is well. He likely got caught up with business. You know how Joe is.”

“You have to find him.” She looked around the shelf and looked back at Irv, who was studying an inventory sheet with exaggerated interest. Her voice fell to a whisper. “I need money.”

“I’m sure he’ll turn up, Stella.”

“You don’t understand. There is Fred’s salary to pay, and a lot of other things as well.”

“Can’t you—”

“You know he takes care of all that.”

“How about I go by the courthouse and collect his check. I can deposit it for you. Would that help?”

“Yes. Very much.”

“Which bank?”

On Joe’s insistence, they held accounts at several banks. She had to think of the one for their personal checking. “New York Bank and Trust.”

“I’ll ask around. You stay put, and I’ll be in contact the moment I find something out.”

“Thank you.”

“And, Stella?”

“Yes?”

“Best not to talk about this in public just yet. Joe’s spot on the bench is still so … tentative. There’s his reelection to consider. You wouldn’t want people to think him unreliable.”

“Of course not.”

“Right, then. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

A puddle had grown around her feet by the time she slid the cards back in her pocket. When she returned to the counter, Irv stared at her with the sort of curiosity that turns to gossip if left to marinate long enough.

“Your floor.” She pointed at her muddy galoshes. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “This isn’t exactly Saks.”

Irv looked out the window at the ropes of rain coming in sideways. “Let me get my coat. I’ll drive you home.”

“Thank you.”

The tree limbs hung heavy with rain, brushing the windows of his flatbed as they bumped along the back road toward the cabin. He was quiet, eyes locked on the windshield, and Stella did not attempt conversation. Irv dropped her off with some trite words of sympathy that she quickly forgot, and then Stella walked through the door of her cabin—the one piece of property in her name—and took in the magnitude of Joe’s disappearance.