Lady in the Lake(83)

Outside, she heard a car starting. She peered through the window, saw Mrs. Corwin behind the wheel of an older-looking car, comically small. Was Maddie safe? She was probably safe. By the time police arrived—seconds, minutes, hours later, she couldn’t tell—the burst of adrenaline that had saved her was long gone. She pressed a kitchen towel to her middle, watching the blood seep out. She was going to be okay, she thought. She was almost certainly going to be okay.

Then: She did it. She all but confessed she did it. Even if Stephen twisted the girl’s neck, it was because she told him to. Tessie Fine was alive when his mother got there.

The police would talk to her at the hospital. She would have to tell them what had happened, what Mrs. Corwin had said to her. Then what? Should she call the Star, tell them what she had learned?

No, she thought. They’d just make her talk to rewrite.





November 1966





November 1966



They took her to Sinai, the same hospital where she had given birth. Milton insisted they keep her overnight, and Maddie was almost weepily grateful to him for being there, taking charge. Later, she learned that he knew having her spend even a night in the Pikesville house would mean resetting the clock on their legal separation, which would slow down his marriage to Ali Whoever. But she didn’t mind even when she understood. She didn’t want to be in the Pikesville house, either, but she was too tender, in body and mind, to be alone in her apartment.

She was given a private room with her own television and watched through the evening as the story unfolded. Mrs. Corwin had not gotten very far; she had crashed her car on Northern Parkway. She was in custody for stabbing Maddie and was expected to be arraigned for her role in the murder of Tessie Fine. She was her son’s accomplice and she had stabbed Maddie because she believed he had told her as much.

It was very satisfying, hearing her name in Wallace Wright’s mouth. He described her as a reporter on assignment. Not accurate, but who cared. She had assigned herself. She had not broken her promise to Ferdie. The paper’s top editor called her, ever so solicitous, making it clear that he expected Maddie, once recovered, would give the Star the scoop.

“We’d have you write it in the first person,” he said. “Face-to-face with a killer. I could put you on with rewrite now, or in the morning if you need to sleep—”

But Maddie was an old hand at not making promises to men and she glided through the call with her usual grace. “I’ll call when I feel up to it,” she said.

She was exhausted, sincerely, yet had trouble sleeping. It was almost midnight when she closed her eyes. A few hours later, she woke disoriented from a thankfully dreamless sleep. Where was she? What was going on? She was in the hospital. She had been stabbed. She had helped police find the accomplice—perhaps the perpetrator. With the two of them charged, police could then press one to cooperate, ensuring the death penalty for the other. Surely, that mother happily would see her son dead, would make that deal in a heartbeat if it meant a better outcome for her. How unnatural she was, but then—what is natural? People might call Maddie unnatural, too, if Seth were to screw up one day. What do you expect when his mother up and left when he was just sixteen?

While she had required stitches, Mrs. Corwin was an inept assailant. The scar would not be pretty—Maddie thought of Ferdie and his bumpy navel—but it would seldom be seen by anyone. Maddie, eight days away from her thirty-eighth birthday, was past the time for two-piece bathing suits, never mind bikinis.

Someone was in the room. A nurse? No, this was a Negro woman, fiddling with the trash. How inconsiderate, Maddie thought. Surely the trash could wait until tomorrow.

The woman turned and said to her: “What have you done now, Madeline Schwartz?”

“Maddie,” she corrected, automatically, stupidly. “Only my mother calls me Madeline. Do I know you?”

“No, but not for lack of trying.” The woman sat in the Formica chair for visitors, the one where Milton had sat not even six hours ago. Even in the dim light, Maddie could see that the drab uniform was baggy on the woman’s slender frame, that her bone structure was striking, her eyes pale beneath dark lashes.

“Who are you?”

“I was Cleo Sherwood.”

Maddie was hallucinating. Or dreaming. She gave herself a small pinch near the base of her elbow. But the woman didn’t disappear; quite the opposite. As Maddie’s eyes adjusted to the light, her face came into sharper focus.

“Cleo Sherwood is dead.”

“Yes, she is, always will be. But, man, you couldn’t let her be, could you?”

“I don’t—”

“No, you don’t. You don’t understand anything and you never will.”

“I just wanted to know who killed you, how you came to be in the fountain. When I realized whom you were dating—”

“Whom.” The repeated word felt like an accusation. But what, exactly, was the charge?

“Who killed you?”

“Shell Gordon ordered me killed. Because it was the only way to keep me from becoming the second Mrs. Taylor. That was going to happen. Ezekiel—not EZ, never EZ, not to me—didn’t care about the state senate. He didn’t care about Shell, and that was the real problem. One thing to be married to Hazel and to tomcat around Baltimore with any old piece. But to find love? To know happiness? That ate Shell up inside. Ezekiel was going to choose life with me and there was no job, no woman that Shell could dangle in front of him that would get him to change his mind.”