Laura Lippman - No Good Deeds

She gave a tiny, embarrassed shrug.

“Have you told the police about the safe-deposit box?”

“No. It’s not required, not by law.”

“But it could be relevant to his murder.”

“I don’t see how.”

“Neither do I. But that’s because we don’t know what’s in it. And maybe it will be something silly or inconsequential. But the fact of its existence is not going to go away.”

“You promised not to tell.” Said swiftly, almost accusingly.

“That I did.”

“We told each other everything, Greg and I. Everything. We didn’t have secrets from each other.”

“With all due respect, you clearly had at least one.”

To Tess’s horror the woman burst into tears-gusty, loud sobs that seemed all the more enormous coming from this doll-like woman. Tess and Wilma were the only customers in this part of the bar, but it was still mortifying. Luckily, her sobs ended as quickly as they came, like a summer cloudburst.

“Sorry,” she said with a sniffle. “Hormones.”

“Ms. Youssef-”

“You may call me Wilma.”

“Wilma. That’s a hell of a name to settle on a kid.”

“Yes, a life of Flintstones jokes. When I found out I was having a boy, I immediately insisted that he would be called Gregory Jr.”

“Anyway, Wilma”-it was hard not to give it the Fred Flintstone inflection, now that the fact had been acknowledged, but Tess resisted. “What exactly is it you want from me? To break the promise I made to someone else while keeping yours? To assure you that what I know can’t have anything do with a safe-deposit box in Laurel? Or do you want my permission to keep your secrets as I’m keeping mine?”

The woman sat quietly, her hands folded in her lap. “I want the truth, but I’m frightened.”

What could Tess say? It was in the end what everyone wanted-painless truth. Problem was, she wasn’t sure such a thing existed.

Wilma Youssef, however, had the damnedest ability to squander whatever sympathy she managed to arouse. She continued, “My husband and I were good people. We worked hard. We didn’t deserve this.”

“The implication being that some people do deserve what happens to them.”

“Well…yes. Yes. I’m sorry, but people who take drugs, who sell them, who live without benefit of marriage, who have children as if they’re throwing litters of puppies-they bring their problems on themselves. Greg was trying to do good in the world.”

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

“The only way of looking at it.”

“No. No, not even close. Imagine being born into that world. Remember how it was said that Bush, the first one, was a guy who was born on third base and thought he’d hit a triple? Well, these kids aren’t even in the ballpark and they don’t have any equipment-no bats, no balls, no field. It’s like they’re in some weird reality show where they have to play the same game with rotted tree limbs, spoiled grapefruits, and hundred-fifty-pound sacks of rocks tied to their backs.”

Wilma’s cool blue eyes were thoughtful. Shrewd, actually. Tess remembered, perhaps a beat too late, that Wilma Youssef was a lawyer, too, already back in the office less than three months after her baby’s birth-and less than four months after her husband’s death. A tough cookie and an analytical one, accustomed to parsing every word.

“So the source is someone young,” Wilma said. “Relatively. A juvenile?”

Tess waved a hand as if impatient, although her only frustration was with her own big mouth. She had been so strong, so taciturn in the police interview, only to natter away with Youssef’s widow.

“I’m speaking in generalities.”

“Sure. Of course.” Wilma sipped from her water glass, her gaze downcast. Tess had a sickening feeling that she was being played.

“Is there really a safe-deposit box?”

“What? Oh. Yes, of course.”

“And is that the reason you came to see me? Because you think what I know can somehow render that fact inconsequential? That whatever your husband may have hidden becomes irrelevant as long as his murder is solved before you gain access to it?”

“What could my husband possibly have to hide?”

“You tell me.”

Wilma Youssef took some bills from her purse. “I really shouldn’t impose on my mother-in-law. She adores Gregory Jr.-I sometimes think his birth is the only thing that kept her grief from tearing her apart-but I don’t like to leave her alone too long. And it’s such a trek down to Sherwood.”

“What about your father-in-law?” Tess meant only to be kind. “How’s he holding up?”

Wilma allowed herself another tight, mirthless smile. “Hasan has been dead for almost a decade. He was shot to death in Detroit. A robbery in the neighborhood deli that he owned, where he had done nothing but perform a thousand kindnesses to the very people who ended up killing him. So you see, my husband knew something about being born outside the ballpark, too. Perhaps you’d like to come home with me, explain to my mother-in-law your theories about the underclass and why they deserve your sympathy and protection more than her son.”

It wasn’t often that Tess allowed someone the last word, but Wilma Youssef had earned it. She bent over her drink, her face hot in a way that no cocktail could ever cure, no matter how light and springlike the recipe.

When she looked up again, Wilma Youssef was gone.

Tess never pretended to greater street smarts than she had. There was strength to be gained by admitting one’s weaknesses, if only because one could then compensate for them.

But even her most naïve neighbor-that would be Mrs. Gilligan, a blithe eighty-five-year-old who still slathered pinecones with peanut butter in order to bring chickadees to the evergreens outside her kitchen window-would have made the car parked outside Tess’s house as a government vehicle. Boxy and nondescript, it could serve no other purpose than the transport of Very Official People on Very Official Business.

I could just keep going, Tess thought. Head to Mr. Parrish’s drinking spot of choice, the Swallow at the Hollow, down a few beers, eat some fried mozzarella sticks. Wilma Youssef had put Tess over her daily limit for unplanned encounters.

Problem was, she was going so slowly that she had already been made by her men-in-waiting. There was nothing to do but suck it up and find out what they wanted.

The three men who emerged from the car struck Tess as a mismatched set, although she couldn’t have said why. One of these guys is not like the other, as they might have sung on Sesame Street . It wasn’t that two were white and one was black, or that two were young and one was on the far side of middle age. If anything, she would have picked the young white guy as the odd guy out. He was so filled with nervous energy that his dark, bristly hair practically danced with static. The other two seemed calm and stoic, more self-contained.

“Miss Monaghan,” the manic one began, giving it a hard g .

“Let me guess, you’re here from the government and you want to help me.”

At least the older one smiled at the old joke, or pretended to.

“We want you to help us, actually,” he said, stepping neatly into the role of good guy. So what was the third one’s function? “If we could go inside…”

“IDs,” she demanded. “Not business cards, but whatever official-issue stuff you’ve got.”

She studied the two badges and plastic ID that were handed to her as if she could spot fake ones: Barry Jenkins, FBI; Mike Collins, DEA; Gabriel Dalesio, U.S. attorney.

“Quite the task force,” she said. “No ATF? Customs? Postal inspectors?”