Laura Lippman - Another Thing to Fall

The production office parking lot was filled with patrol cars, and for one paranoid moment, Tess thought that someone had called the police to report Selene missing. Shit, what if something had happened to her while I was out? But then she registered the evidence unit and the yellow tape, and her self-centric fear was replaced by something more substantial.

She found Lottie in a cluster of people standing just outside the front door. Lloyd was in the group of production employees, and part of Tess’s mind registered that fact, pleased he had shown up on time for his second day of work with no adult oversight whatsoever. She hoped he wouldn’t be denied a third day on the job because of her ineptitude.

“What-” She stopped at the sight of Lottie’s face, about as gray as any face Tess had ever seen.

“Greer. She was working late and – they don’t know. They just don’t know. A break-in – but I don’t see how. Or why. There’s nothing of real value here, nothing worth – and, Greer, who would-”

Lottie bit her lip fiercely, as if she’d rather inflict pain on herself than cry in front of employees.

Homicide detective Martin Tull, Tess’s one true friend at the Baltimore Police Department, came out of the building just then, snapping off his rubber gloves.

“Hey, Tess,” he said, not the least surprised to see her there. Life in Baltimore was full of such coincidences. “You working on this show?”

“I was,” she said. “I’m not sure where I stand just now. What happened?”

He glanced at Lottie and the other Mann of Steel types, then motioned Tess to walk with him toward his car, out of earshot. “She was beaten to death. The office is trashed, but all the major stuff, the computers and television, were left behind. That woman, Lottie, is going to look around once the evidence techs get through, see if anything was taken. But there’s enough small valuable shit – iPods, laptops – that it’s hard to see it as a burglary.”

“When?”

“Last night, after ten. They say she worked late a lot, so it’s either someone who knew that – or someone who didn’t expect to find her here late.”

“Weapon?”

“We haven’t found it yet. If the guy’s smart, he tossed it in the harbor as he left.”

“They’re not always smart, of course.”

“No, and this looks impromptu as hell. The little lady” – he jerked his head back toward Lottie – “says there was a fiancé, though, and that there’s been some trouble there, a bad breakup, maybe.”

“You have any information on him?”

“John ‘JJ’ Meyerhoff – not one of those Meyerhoffs,” Tull added at Tess’s sharp intake of breath. It was a surname that one found on big buildings all over Baltimore, most notably the symphony hall. “I have a feeling I’m going to be making that point all day. This is a rough-and-tumble family out in the county. We’ve already sent a car there, but Mama Meyerhoff says her son took off for a fishing trip about two A.M. – she doesn’t have any idea where he goes to fish, of course.”

Of course , Tess thought. An ex-fiancé. That made more sense than anything running through her head. It looked personal, it looked like an act of passion, and only a foolish detective would disdain such an obvious answer. So there was every reason to believe that this was a huge coincidence, someone at the production getting killed while Tess was in New York, sleeping off a roofie-in-duced coma. She wasn’t on the hook for this. Then why did she feel so guilty?

Someone grabbed her elbow. It was Flip, flipping out, and now her guilt was earned.

“Jesus, Tess. I just got off the phone with Selene’s driver and he told me what happened, how you were in New York -”

She stopped him, unwilling to hear her incompetence rehashed. “I’m sorry. It was a complete screwup on my part, and I know I have to resign and refund your retainer. There’s no excuse for what I did. But if you could, consider keeping Lloyd on, okay? Don’t hold him accountable for my mistake.”

“Resign? Because that little bitch drugged you and dumped you? This just convinces me more than ever that she’s behind all the shit that’s been happening.”

Ben had taken to writing in a local Starbucks, much as he loathed the cliché of the whole enterprise, the screenwriter at Starbucks. But the room at the Tremont got old fast, and when he tried to write in his office in Locust Point, there were always interruptions. Flip could sequester himself in his office and no one would get past his little pit bull, Greer, but Ben’s closed door didn’t persuade anyone that he was working. Lottie, especially. Granted, Lottie had caught him napping once. It was after his first night with Selene, and he was exhausted because seducing her had required an actual courtship, the big buildup of dinner and talking, not just the usual hump-and-dump, but he couldn’t exactly explain to Lottie that he was worn out by the demands of getting a twenty-year-old girl in bed. A twenty-year-old girl who knows far more than I do , not like I was her first, he told himself now.

Even so, when he had come to work the day after he was discovered napping, the little sofa in his office was gone. Lottie had given him a supercilious smile, daring him to object. He hadn’t said a damn word, just gone online and ordered another sofa from Pottery Barn, a much more expensive one that actually had a foldout bed, then put the bill on his expense account, with the scrawled notation: writing supplies .

The irony, of course – one of the ironies; there were ironies upon ironies in his relationship with Flip – was that Ben was the real writer of the two, the one who took the final -final pass on all the scripts. Everyone thought that Flip was carrying him, but Flip would be lost without Ben. Oh, Flip pretended to go over Ben’s scripts, but it was acknowledged between them that this charade was for everyone else, because Lottie, the directors, and the various department heads were less likely to argue with Flip, whereas they would happily bust Ben’s balls over any detail. When they had the tone meeting for one of the early eps, Lottie had tried a little divide-and-conquer. “I’m not so sure about this beat,” she had said. “It’s a little glib, don’t you think? The kind of conventional sitcom scene that you’re trying to avoid.” The director, the has-been of the week, had nodded, although it wasn’t clear that the guy could read, much less form an opinion about the words in front of him. Flip said: “Well, it was my idea, but if you think it could change…” “No, no, no.” Lottie had backtracked so fast that she almost ended up leaving the room. “I guess I just didn’t get it. Now that I see – sure, of course. And the next scene is even better, really pulls it all together, pays off the conceit.” “Ben thought of that,” Flip said cheerfully. Yes, after that meeting, no one had tried to worm between them again. And when they were alone, Flip was generous in his praise for Ben. Plus, Ben finally had an executive producer’s title and a “story by” credit on every episode. What more could he want?

To do it by myself.

He glanced around the Starbucks, wondering if he had spoken this traitorous thought aloud. It had actually been hard finding a Starbucks in Baltimore. There was only one within walking distance of his hotel – well, two, if one took a more generous view of what was walking distance, but he was a California boy through and through – and almost nothing was near the production offices, stuck as they were on that godforsaken peninsula. Out there, they had to drink the coffee from a local purveyor, which tasted funny to Ben, although everyone swore it was better. Locally roasted, blah, blah, blah. As if local was necessarily a good thing here in Charm City, where the people, even the people in Starbucks, all looked weird to Ben. Pale, pasty. All right, downright doughy. Not to mention the teeth – God, the teeth. Living in California, where almost everyone had veneers and whiteners, one forgot what real teeth looked like. These relatively normal mouths were as shocking as a Shane McGowan convention. Worst of all, Baltimoreans also had this – how to describe it – bovine happiness. No one seemed rushed or impatient here, a fact that drove Ben mildly insane when he was trying to order his morning mocha and get to work. The people around him were too dumb to know how miserable they should be.