Laura Lippman - Another Thing to Fall

The reception was breaking down now into its natural subsets – cast and crew in one cluster, Greer’s family in another, Ben off by himself, a can of soda clutched in his hand. Tess saw another gray, haggard-looking woman moving toward Greer’s mother and assumed it was one of the relatives, although she didn’t remember seeing this woman during the service. But when the woman spoke to Mrs. Sadowski, whatever she said caused Greer’s mother to reel back so quickly that Flip just missed having a plate of food smashed into his shirtfront.

“You have some nerve,” Mrs. Sadowski rasped at the woman. “Coming here, to ask me that.”

“You won’t talk to me on the phone, so what am I supposed to do? It was his property, plain and simple, should have been given back weeks ago. He owes on it. You want me to make payments on an engagement ring that your daughter wouldn’t give back, when everyone knows she should’ve? My son is dead, too.”

“He broke up with her,” Mrs. Sadowski shrilled. “You don’t have to give it back under those circumstances. Especially when he killed her.”

“He broke up with her because she was cheating on him. That’s different. And we’ll never know what really happened, will we?”

Even as Tess moved forward, anxious to help Flip keep order, her mind was stumbling over that fact. He broke up with her … but Greer had told everyone at work that it was the other way around. Saving face? Or had she lied to her mother? And, wait – cheating? Greer was cheating on her fiancé? With whom?

But she didn’t have the luxury of sorting out her thoughts just now, not with Mrs. Sadowski flinging a plate of food into the face of JJ Meyerhoff ’s mother, who let out a banshee wail and pushed back, so that Mrs. Sadowski was propelled into Flip, who landed backward on the buffet table, which went down in a heap under his weight, the ten-layer cake landing on his chest.

Ben had been looking for an opportunity to sneak out, and he couldn’t have asked for a sweeter moment than the mother melee. Man, it felt as if he had been waiting for this moment for weeks, although Greer had been dead barely four days. Well, he supposed he should be grateful it was a service, not an actual funeral or, worse, a viewing. He found those barbaric. But an open casket probably hadn’t been an option after what Greer’s ex had done to her.

And it was JJ, right? It had to be JJ. Because if it was someone else, then someone else knew.

Before the service began, Ben had made a point of introducing himself to Greer’s mother, clasping her shoulder. Put a housedress on Mrs. Sadowski, and she wouldn’t have been out of place in a Dorothea Lange portrait. Someone should show Selene this face, let her see what a lifetime of smoking could do to one’s complexion.

“Mrs. Sadowski,” he said, extending his hand. “Ben Marcus. I worked with Greer. We’re so sorry this happened.”

She gave him a look, but it was dull and glazed over. His name didn’t seem to mean anything to her. Greer hadn’t spoken of him to her mother. Good. For once, he had never been happier to be lost in Flip’s shadow, just the sidekick.

And now here he was, literally lost. He could never find his way in Baltimore, especially outside the Beltway. It took him almost an hour to locate the apartment that Greer had shared with her boyfriend up until a month ago. Luck was with him, for once – it was a so-called garden apartment on a split-level, the windows on the front barely above the ground, but with a small patio on the rear. Once, while researching a cop show, he had read that sliding doors could be rocked open. The information had seemed dubious, but he tried, and the door gave way with surprising ease.

Only maybe it wasn’t so surprising. Someone had already been here. The place was a wreck. Had the boyfriend stopped here on his way out of town? Drawers and cabinets had been pulled open, sofa cushions tossed. In the narrow galley kitchen, all the items from beneath the sink had been left on the floor.

Flip’s office had been ransacked, too – stop, don’t think about that, it’s crazy.

He found his way to the bedroom, which was even worse – the mattress flipped, clothing scattered everywhere. Whoever had been here seemed to have begun in a fairly systematic way, then become increasingly antic. The mother had said something about a ring, but Greer had worn the ring even after the breakup. Besides, JJ almost certainly hadn’t returned here after Greer was dead. Police would have been watching the place. Someone else had been here, looking for something. The same something that Ben wanted? How could that be? There was no one alive who knew of its existence – right? Greer had sworn to him that it was their secret, that no one else knew, not even her fiancé.

There was no percentage in staying here. He went out the way he had come in, realizing that the patio door had opened for him so magically because someone else had jimmied it before. When? Days ago, hours ago, minutes ago? He tried to walk nonchalantly to his car, just a guy in a suit, passing through a suburban parking lot. Jesus, that woman was morbidly obese. How do people get like that? And if you had the misfortune to weigh three hundred pounds, why would you wear a huge flowery dress with a purple belt emphasizing your nonexistent waist? He waved at her, figuring that the more attention you drew to yourself, the less likely people were to remember you.

Tess had set her cell on silent for the service and then forgotten about it, what with helping to clean ten-layer cake off Flip and trying to get the dueling mothers to a point where the police wouldn’t have to be called. The plan had been to let the reception take the place of a late lunch, but with most of the food on the floor, they ended up at Chili’s, Lloyd’s favorite restaurant. Crow had made a lot of headway with Lloyd’s taste in films but virtually none with his taste in food. Tess didn’t mind. She shared Lloyd’s love of Chili’s nachos. She was helping herself to the wonderfully cheesy, gooey concoction when she felt something vibrating close to her thigh.

“Yes, Mrs. Blossom?”

“You were right!” The woman screamed with such glee that Tess had to hold the phone away from her ear. “He left the soundstage and went to the girl’s apartment. But he didn’t stay long, not even five minutes. And I peeked in the windows after he left, and the place is trashed. Trashed . He couldn’t have possibly done it, not so quick. So someone else was there, too.”

“Did he see you?”

“Yes, but not in a way that counts. He waved at me, going to his car, but he clearly thought I was just some dumb lady who lived there. Then he drove back to the Tremont.” She laughed, and Mrs. Blossom’s laugh, even on her cumbersome, clunky cell phone, was a thing of wonder, a sweet, high bubble of sound that had been held captive far too long. “This was fun . I hope you have more things like this for me to do. I don’t even care about the extra credit.”

“Remember, Mrs. Blossom, you’re the only student who has qualified for extra assignments, so keep this to yourself when we meet tomorrow. I wouldn’t want the other students to get jealous.” Actually, Tess was trying to work out the ethics of using Mrs. Blossom this way. The woman was a surveillance prodigy. Maybe Tess should put her on the payroll when the semester was over.

Lloyd, who had been apprised of the setup, looked up expectantly. “So he left the viewing and went to Greer’s apartment, just as you thought he would.”

“The weird thing is – someone else had already been there.” Tess was thinking of her own trip to Wilbur Grace’s home, how she had found the window open. Yes, the neighborhood kids had been using it as a makeout pad, but there was still that rectangle of dust in the armoire, the VCR or DVD player that had gone missing, and maybe not because it was so easy to pawn. Then there was the office, ransacked the night of Greer’s death, and the smoke bomb Friday. “What is everyone looking for?”