Laura Lippman - Another Thing to Fall

They settled on a bench overlooking the harbor. He extended his long legs and stared straight ahead, which suited Tess fine. There were advantages to talking to a profile. The eye was freer to roam, notice body language.

“About Greer-”

“Fucking tragedy, that.”

“The cops like the ex-fiancé for it.”

“Well, that makes sense, doesn’t it? Isn’t that how most women become homicide victims, at the hands of a husband or boyfriend?”

Normally, Tess would like a man who had that information at his fingertips. But Ben’s use of the statistic struck her as glib and incurious, a way of trying to shut down the topic.

“Actually, about one-third of the homicide cases in which women are victims are classified as ‘intimate’ homicides. So the majority aren’t .”

“Still – the broken engagement, the threats…”

“Was there a broken engagement, much less a threat? Lottie told police that you mentioned something to her yesterday, but no one else seems to know exactly where they stood.”

He crossed one leg over the other, resting his foot on his knee. He wore jeans and sneakers, with an Oxford shirt that he hadn’t bothered to tuck in, or maybe he just couldn’t keep his shirt tucked in for long.

“I was just inferring. Greer had been pretty jumpy the past couple of weeks. And there were other signs that seemed to indicate a breakup.”

“She was still wearing an engagement ring when I met her.”

“Yeah, well, Greer wasn’t one inclined to let go of anything once she got it in her grasp. I guess she persuaded herself that she was within her rights to keep the ring. Look, why do you care? This is what homicide detectives do, right?”

“I was hired because of problems on the set. This could be connected.”

“Then the problems will stop, won’t they, once they have the guy locked up.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

Ben was getting irritated. “Fuckin’ Flip. Look, I know what he thinks. It’s not Selene.”

“How can you be so adamant?”

“Because, well…” He scratched his cheek. At least he shaved every day, didn’t cultivate the stubble look. “Because that girl doesn’t have the necessary IQ to organize a trip to the 7-Eleven, much less play these kind of pranks. As for murder-”

“Selene went to a lot of trouble last night to get out of town, establish an alibi.”

“She went to a lot of trouble to dump your ass the way I hear it, Sam Spade.”

“I fancy myself more as the Continental Op. After all, he has his roots in Baltimore.”

“Bullshit. Hammett wrote about San Francisco.”

“He was born in St. Mary’s County and grew up in Southwest Baltimore, and started work as a Pinkerton here. In the Continental Building at Baltimore and Calvert streets. Which, by the way, has two birds above the front door, birds that were once painted black.”

Now he was interested. “No shit?”

“Why would I make up something like that?”

“I live in a place where people tell a dozen lies before breakfast, just to stay in practice. Myself included.” He almost seemed to be boasting.

“Don’t lie to the cops when you talk to them,” Tess said. “Although, admittedly, almost everybody does.”

“Why would I lie to them?”

“Where were you last night?”

“In my hotel room. Alone. Oh, by the way, fuck you. I didn’t kill Greer. Why would I?”

He was staring straight out at the water. Tess was watching the suede Nike balanced on his left knee. He had been jiggling his foot from the first mention of Selene, although he had been the one who brought her name into the conversation. Or had the jiggling begun with Greer? It was tricky sometimes, not taking notes, but it made people so nervous that it wasn’t worth it.

“I don’t know. Why does anyone kill anyone? And yet they do, almost every day in this city.”

“I hate this place.”

Normally, Tess took such statements about her hometown about the same way she responded to imprecations against her mother. But she decided to play along.

“It’s not an easy town to be an outsider. A lot of Baltimoreans – they’ve never been anywhere, so they don’t know what it’s like to be new to a place, and they don’t reach out to newcomers. But won’t you have to live here if Mann of Steel gets picked up?”

“Probably. Makes it hard to know whether to root for a success.” He must have caught something in Tess’s face because he quickly added: “Kidding. I’m kidding . I don’t want to shut the production down. Frankly, Flip and I need a hit. We’ve been critical darlings and wunderkinds long enough. We’re older now, the rules have changed. We need to be straight-up wunders, and being beloved by the critics isn’t enough anymore. It’s time to make serious money for somebody.”

“But it does appear that someone wants to hamper the production. And now Greer is dead.”

“That stuff that’s been happening… it could just be bad luck. And if Greer’s fiancé killed her, that has bupkes to do with the production. I’m not big on conspiracy theories. Real life is simple.”

“Yes,” Tess said agreeably. “In real life, for example, sometimes people are just hanging out in their hotel rooms, alone, on nights when it would be nice to have an alibi.”

“You know, you’re the first woman I’ve ever wanted to call an asshole.”

It was the second time in two days a man had used this word to describe her. Tess decided it was a compliment of sorts. She’d rather be an asshole than a bitch.

“What about Lottie?”

“What about her?”

“My sense is that you’re not too fond of each other.”

“Look, Miss Marple-”

“She was an amateur. I’m paid to do what I do.”

“Did you know there has never been a successful television show about a female private investigator?” Ben asked abruptly. “Spies, yes. Amateurs, yes. Straight-up cops, sure. But no female private investigators. I know, it’s what killed Ottoman’s Empire. What does that tell you about your chosen profession?”

“It tells me,” Tess said, “that you’ll go a long way out of your way to change the subject, rather than talk about last night, or Greer. Or Selene.”

“I don’t care what time it is,” he said, rising to his feet. “I need coffee. And vodka. Right now, what I really want is coffee with vodka in it. You think I can find that in this godforsaken peninsula?”

He walked away but didn’t stop at the Daily Grind, just kept going toward Fort Avenue. It was almost as if he planned to turn right and start walking westward, all the way home to California. And that was fine with Tess.

Lottie MacKenzie held up one finger – one tiny, rigid index finger – and Tess froze on the threshold of her office like a well-trained dog at the edge of an invisible fence. I could learn things from this woman, she thought. Tess had yet to hear Lottie raise her voice or threaten anyone, yet she somehow managed the trick of being formidable. The fact that she didn’t try to fight her size only served to make her more intimidating, even in her overalls and voguish Skechers. No heels for Lottie, which was shrewd. If she had attempted a more grown-up outfit, a suit and heels, she would have looked like a doll, or a child playing dress up. Instead, she appeared to be a precocious sixth-grader who happened to be in charge of a $25 million production.

Her office furnishings did make one concession to her height – a footstool next to her Herman Miller chair, but she wasn’t using that just now. She sat with her legs crossed, in the style that the un-PC still called “Indian fashion,” and her body sang with such palpable energy that Tess wouldn’t be surprised if she could levitate from that position. She reminded Tess of a hummingbird, a very industrious one, hovering in the air with so much to do, so much to accomplish.