Lady in the Lake(72)

Maddie fell in step beside her.

“Did Eunetta confide in you?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.” Eyes still down, as if she were playing the old game. Step on a crack, break a mother’s back.

“Did she tell you she was in love? Did she talk about him?”

“Which time? My daughter fell in love a lot, ma’am. Those two boys, my grandsons—that was love, too.”

Too.

“So she had fallen in love again. Did she talk about him?”

“Not with me, no.”

“But you must have known. That she was with Ezekiel Taylor. A mother always knows.”

Maddie did not believe a word of what she was saying. Her mother had never had the slightest inkling about Allan Sr. If she had—well, her family would have found whatever the Jewish equivalent was to a convent and locked Maddie away.

“I’m not a stupid woman, Miz Schwartz. I know what those clothes had in common.”

Maddie didn’t. Did that make her a stupid woman?

“He gave them to her?”

“They all fit her perfectly, even though the sizes on the labels didn’t match. Fit her like a glove.”

Maddie thought of the shape of the woman she had seen behind the lace curtain. Imploring her—commanding her—to leave. Tall. Not fat, but broader than slinky Cleo. She wondered if Taylor had gone so far as to pilfer some of his wife’s clothes and have them altered to fit Cleo.

“Was it serious between them?”

“He has a wife. How serious could it have been?”

“What do you think?”

“My daughter’s dead. That’s serious. That’s as serious as it gets.”

She had managed the trick of falling back a few paces, so she did not appear to be walking with Maddie. Mrs. Sherwood doesn’t want to be seen with me, Maddie thought in wonder. Was she afraid word would get back to her husband? Or was Maddie simply an embarrassment? Were there tears in her eyes? Step on a crack, break a mother’s heart. She had a block left to get this woman to open up, to trust her, to let her in. Not back into the apartment, she knew she was forever barred from there. But to let her into their lives, let her know the story of Cleo.

“Tell me about the last time you saw Eunetta. Please? I’m a mother too. I understand.”

Mrs. Sherwood sighed, shifting the bag to her hip.

“She brought the boys toys, which made no sense. It wasn’t even a week after Christmas and there she was, with two new trucks. She spoiled them so. Brought them things, when all they wanted was her. My husband says I spoiled her, but I didn’t. She was blazing to do something, be someone. All I tried to do was not get in the way.”

“Is it possible she knew she was in trouble? That she knew someone wanted her dead?”

Mrs. Sherwood stumbled on the raised lip between two squares of pavement. Step on a crack.

“No,” she said. “She said she might take a trip, but she’d let me know if she did. When a little time went by and I didn’t hear from her—I didn’t worry at first. She was careless that way. Then I got to thinking—she gave me a jacket of hers that I always liked.” A pause. “I said, ‘There’s no way that’s going to fit me, your arms are so long.’ But it fit me. So she’d had it altered, just for me. Said it was a late Christmas gift.”

“Mrs. Sherwood—why would someone kill Eunetta?”

“Doesn’t have to be a why, does there? Or if there is a why, it started so long ago, before any of us could know, or see where things were headed. She wasn’t a bad girl. But she spoke her mind. When you are very, very pretty, you start to think you can get away with so much. But I guess you knew that, too.”

Knew? There was something a little barbed about how quickly Mrs. Sherwood had anointed Maddie with the power of beauty, only to imply it was past.

“Did you ever meet him? Ezekiel Taylor?”

“No. There was no reason. I wasn’t going to be his mother-in-law, no matter what Eunetta thought.” She snorted. “That would have been something, to have a son-in-law older ’n me.”

So there it was. Ezekiel Taylor was Cleo’s boyfriend, her mother said so, and Cleo had believed he might become her husband. Would that scuttle his political ambitions? No, because as Maddie now knew, it was not considered news if a man running for office had a young girlfriend on the side.

But what if the girlfriend would not be silenced, what if she threatened to make a fuss?

The status quo relied on women’s playing by the rules of a game they could never win. Cleo Sherwood’s own mother said the only thing to do when Cleo wanted something was to get out of her way. Could Cleo Sherwood truly have wanted Ezekiel Taylor, older than her own parents? She might, at the very least, have wanted the life of a rich man’s wife, or a state senator’s wife.

As they reached the steps of the Sherwood apartment, the sister, Alice, was waiting outside.

“Mama, I told you I needed to go to work—” She broke off, stared angrily at Maddie. “What do you want?”

“Nothing,” Maddie said.





August 1966





August 1966



She bided her time. She was serenely, bizarrely confident that the world would provide her the opportunity she needed. She felt full of energy, even when nights with Ferdie meant she got only four, five hours’ sleep. Pushing back against August’s doldrums, she worked harder than ever, wrapping up her work by three, then dropping by the city desk to tell Cal Weeks she was available if he needed help.