Read Online After I'm Gone by Laura Lippman - Free Book Online Page B

Felix. Might be worthwhile to interview him, assuming a guy that fat was still alive at age seventy-five or so. Sandy remembered seeing him once or twice in the courthouse, had to be almost thirty years ago. Always laughing, big as a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloon, the life of the party. A back slapper, a joke teller.
    Everything that Sandy detested in a man.

 
    December 31, 1969
    N ot the way I’d run a lottery—”
    The ambient sound in the country club was odd. Lorraine Gelman was having trouble hearing Bambi, who was right next to her, yet Felix and Bert’s conversation on the other side of the table boomed loud and clear. Their heads were bent together as they lighted cigars, an indulgence for the night. Meanwhile, Bambi’s soft voice was lost in the weird jangle of noises.
    But Lorraine smiled and nodded, sure she would agree with anything Bambi said. Lorraine adored Bambi. Adored . It was hard to remember now that she had been a little snobbish about the Brewers when she and Bert started dating six years ago. “Isn’t he just a crook?” she had asked Bert. Lorraine’s family were German Jews; her great-grandparents had lived on Eutaw Place when Eutaw was nice. Her mother had attended Park School in the early days. Bert, the son of a prominent attorney, had barely met her parents’ standards. And when Bert said Felix Brewer would be best man at the wedding, Lorraine’s parents had tried to dissuade him, to no avail. “He’s my best friend and one of our best clients,” Bert had said. “That’s never going to change.”
    We’ll see, Lorraine thought.
    But her friends’ husbands did seem rather drippy alongside Felix. Plus, Bambi turned out to be so nice. In Lorraine’s experience, women like Bambi usually weren’t nice, not to her.
    Yet Bambi had been a good sport from the start, showing up at Lorraine’s bridal party, trying hard to enter into the fun, although she was a little older and didn’t know the other girls. Lorraine had ended up being embarrassed by her friends, who seemed young and, yes, even a little tacky alongside Bambi, who came from a perfectly nice family, if not as nice as Lorraine’s. Even Lorraine’s mother thought Bambi was someone special, once she got past the nickname.
    So when it became apparent that life with Bert meant life with Felix and Bambi, Lorraine was fine with that. The men talked about the things they found interesting, politics and sports and, more and more these days, Vietnam. For goodness’ sake, they were talking about it again, right now, the draft lottery. Who cared? She didn’t have children, and the Brewers didn’t have sons. It wasn’t their problem.
    “I can’t believe those earrings,” she said to Bambi, looking at Felix’s anniversary gift. “Aren’t you worried they will fall off?”
    “I got my ears pierced, see? At a jewelry store on Reisterstown Road.” Bambi leaned closer to Lorraine, let her examine the cunning catch. Large diamonds, good ones, set in ovals of gold, a new design from David Webb. Lorraine knew because Felix had consulted her before buying them. His taste was okay, but old-fashioned. Safe. Like a lot of people who didn’t come from money, he was almost too cautious. Lorraine had known that Bambi would appreciate this pair, which were trendy, but not so trendy as to go out of style quickly.
    “Incredible,” she said. Felix caught her eye across the table and winked.
    “Put your eyes back in your head, honey,” Bert said. “Bambi had to wait ten years for those.”
    “Ten is tin,” Lorraine said, then wished she hadn’t. Who would know that except a woman who had looked up the anniversary list as she had earlier this year, when disappointed by Bert’s gift of a carved rosewood jewelry box. She had been prepared to argue, but it turned out he was right: Five was wood. And ten was tin. You had to make it to sixty for diamonds. Still, Bert earned as much as Felix, or close. He could afford diamonds, too.
    But