Lady in the Lake

Yet who was I to argue with EZ Taylor? He’s rich. I’m a kid from Remington who worked for a two-bit criminal who ran up a gambling bill with Shell Gordon, then sold me. Anyway, I liked EZ. Everybody does. Nicest, gentlest guy you ever met. He doesn’t deserve to have some reporter digging in his life. He didn’t do anything, that’s for damn sure. EZ is entitled to coast, not knowing what’s going on beneath the surface of things. That’s one of the best things about being rich. You get to coast.

I still liked EZ even when he started to fall for Cleo Sherwood. Lots of men took a shine to Cleo. I’m one of them. Not that there was ever anything between us. Cleo required one of two things to be interested in a man—good looks or a healthy wallet. I know I don’t have either. Never going to have the first and it’s not looking too good for the second.

But that was okay. Then I saw her falling in love with Mr. Taylor, which I didn’t expect. I mean, really falling, not just taking him for the gifts he handed out. Oh, she didn’t tell me anything, but I could see the shine on her. He took her places she had never been before. Restaurants, trips out of town even. I kept thinking, This has to be for show, she can’t love an older man like that, no matter how much money he has. Soon, the shine on the two of them was so bright that Mr. Gordon couldn’t help noticing. He was not happy.

“That’s gotta stop,” he said to me. I just nodded. I’m not Cupid. I don’t decide who loves who. But we put Cleo behind the bar with me, didn’t let her circulate in the club when Mr. Taylor was there.

Mr. Gordon also had a little talking-to with EZ. He said yes, yes, yes, he understood, he needed to be a happily married man if he was going to help Mr. Gordon realize his dreams. Then Mr. Gordon had a sit-down with Cleo and she promised she would break off with him, gentle like. But all Mr. Gordon achieved was to drive them deeper into hiding, which made it more exciting. Now they were going behind everyone’s backs, not just Mrs. Taylor’s. Cleo’s eyes glowed like emeralds. It was a contest and she was sure she was going to win. She couldn’t have told you what the prize was if you asked her. I know. I asked her. All she wanted was to win. She talked about going to Mrs. Taylor, telling her everything.

Then a day came when Mr. Gordon asked me to do something terrible. I said I couldn’t. He said if I didn’t do it, he’d ask someone else, someone who wouldn’t care how it was done. Cleo had to go. Didn’t care how, didn’t care when, but it had to be me. And if I wasn’t willing to do it, then maybe I wasn’t someone he could depend on. Maybe I needed to go, too. It was crazy, what he wanted. It wasn’t even good business. It wasn’t business, period.

Do I have to paint you a picture?

After I put the reporter lady in the cab, I don’t want to go back to work. My heart is sore and lonely, as it’s been every night since December 31. I remember asking Cleo questions about her clothes. “Whatta you call a coat like that, open in the front? What’s the point of gloves with holes in them?” Because I knew I had to be able to give a very specific description later.

I miss her. I miss her every day. I might miss her more than anyone else in the world. I didn’t mind that she didn’t love me.

The other thing—well, I try not to think about the other thing.



Oh, Tommy.

Oh, Tommy. I was the only one who called you that, remember? Not Spike, never Spike. Tommy. Spike is a dog’s name and you were nobody’s pet. Not even mine. I underestimated you, Tommy. But so did everybody else.

But look at me, apologizing to you. Your life might not be much, but it’s still yours, you still have it. I don’t blame you, but I’m not going to feel sorry for you.

Tommy.



July 1966



July 1966

“They’re very . . . vibrant,” Judith said, looking at the fabrics displayed on the counter at the Store.

“I’ve got my sewing machine back from the house,” Maddie said. “I could run up a summer dress for you, no trouble. That Butterick pattern I used for this shift I’m wearing—I think it would work for you, with just a little alteration.” Judith was broader through the hips than Maddie, narrower in the bust, but not by much and the pattern was a forgiving silhouette.

“I don’t wear a lot of prints,” Judith said. “Let me think about it.”

Maddie was rebuffed. No, she felt as if she should feel rebuffed, then realized that her taste was more modern than her young friend’s. Judith was a conservative young woman in so many ways. She still wore her hair teased, with a flip at the end, whereas Maddie now wore a chignon to the office, literally letting her hair down when she was on her own time. And, no, Judith didn’t wear a lot of prints. She liked a matchy-matchy style, shoes and purse and dress all the same color. Living at home as she did, she was able to afford quite a wardrobe for a young woman. Today, she was all in yellow—yellow pumps, yellow shift, a pastel yellow linen cardigan cinched at her shoulders with a butterfly clip-chain.

“That’s pretty,” Maddie said, touching the butterfly’s golden head lightly with one finger. Its green eyes glowed.

“Korvette’s,” Judith said. “Only two ninety-eight.”

Maddie widened her eyes, as if amazed by the detail. The clip was pretty in its way and did not look as if it had come from Korvette’s. But here, among Betty Cooke’s creations, the fake gold butterfly with its green glass eyes seemed almost an affront. She decided to buy a bolt of fabric for herself, all the while glancing longingly at the jewelry. Oh, to be able to afford these lovely things. But it would be a rare man who understood how beautiful these items were. Men were so traditional in their idea of what women desired. Cleo Sherwood’s mysterious boyfriend, the one Maddie had yet to identify, had bought her clothing, not jewels. That detail still stuck out. A fur stole, not at all surprising. But the other clothes—a Chanel suit. (Well, a copy, but an excellent one.) That striking dress, something one of the Supremes might wear. The perfect little black dress from Wanamaker’s. These did not seem like typical gifts to a mistress, if Cleo Sherwood could be called that.

Not that it mattered. Maddie had wasted so much time in looking into Cleo Sherwood that no one cared what she had discovered. She had proposed a piece on the psychic, then another one on the grieving parents, only to be told, no, not now. “Maybe a year from now,” Cal had said. “On the anniversary.”

“Anniversary?” How could such a lovely word be invoked for this circumstance?

“You know, a year to the day she went missing or, better, a year to the day she was found. Rutabaga, rutabaga, rutabaga.”

June 1967, maybe January if she was lucky. It felt like a lifetime.

Over lunch at the Village Roost, she brought up her work woes to Judith. She and Judith had an odd way of relating to each other. They shared the conversation, as women are wont to do, but it was as if they were delivering unconnected monologues, cut down to socially acceptable chunks. Maddie talked about her job. Judith hinted, not for the first time, at how she wished she had a private place to “visit” with her boyfriend.

“Doesn’t Paul have a place of his own?”

“Not Paul,” Judith said. “Someone new. His father is gone, so he lives in the family house with his mother and has a much younger sister—there’s no privacy to be had there.”

“You have a new boyfriend?”

She blushed. It was possible, Maddie saw, for a woman to blush with pride. “I guess I have two! I don’t know how I got myself into this situation, Maddie. This guy, Patrick Monaghan, he totally bird-dogged me after we double-dated at the drive-in two weeks ago. I wouldn’t normally dream of going to a drive-in if it wasn’t a double date because, well, you know.”

Maddie did, although she had never attended a drive-in without Seth in the backseat. How seven-year-old Seth had thrilled to the adventure of going to the movie in his PJs, watching it through the windshield. It was funny about drive-ins. Almost everything about the moviegoing part of the experience was subpar—the sound, the film, the film’s appearance, the refreshments, for which one had to trudge such a long way. Yet for a child, novelty trumped everything. How had that little boy, so easily excited by the world around him, ended up surly and monosyllabic? Was he that way with Milton? She wished she could ask.

“Paul knew Patrick from high school and I had seen him around at the Stonewall Democrat meetings. We fixed him up with a girl I know. I swear I didn’t plan this.”

So you planned it, Maddie thought.

“Anyway, he called me the very next day and there’s just something about him. But—Monaghan! My parents would die. And he’s not much more respectable than a cop. He works for the state liquor board. But, well, he’s cute. The strong, silent type. I think I could really fall for him.”

“It sounds—premature to be meeting him somewhere privately.”

“We have to be careful! I mean, I’m still seeing Paul and it would hurt the other girl terribly if she knew that Patrick was pursuing me. We’re just thinking about others.”