After I'm gone

In 1959, Felix Brewer meets Bernadette "Bambi" Gottschalk at a Valentine's Dance and wins her over with extravagant promises, a few of which he keeps. His businesses are profitable, though not all of them are legal, and Bambi and their three young daughters live in comfort.

That comfort ends on the Fourth of July, 1976. Felix has just been convicted and faces prison, and he disappears. Bambi has no idea where he or his money has gone, but she suspects his mistress, Julie, does.

Ten years to the day after Felix goes on the run, Julie vanishes too. People assume she has gone to join him, until her remains are found. Twenty-six years after her disappearance, Roberto "Sandy" Sanchez, a retired Baltimore detective who takes cold cases for extra income, opens an investigation into her murder.

His inquiry leads into a web of connections that runs across three decades and links five women, with the missing Felix Brewer at its center. This is a crime novel that moves between past and present, following Sandy as he works through secrets and lies toward an answer that will alter the lives of everyone it touches.