Laura Lippman - Another Thing to Fall

“‘Whassup?’” Tess read. “Would it have been so hard to write it as two words? Who’s this from? Oh, it’s from Pete . Should I answer him?”

Selene was a scrapper. She leaped off Whitney and tried to charge Tess, but Whitney caught her by the arm and held her fast. U R BUSTED, Tess typed back, once she figured out how to make the iPhone’s keyboard appear. Then, to Selene: “So where is Johnny while he’s pretending to be kidnapped?”

“Shut up!” Selene yelled, putting her hands over her ears. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

“Selene, you know I went through your phone the other night. That’s how I found out about you and Ben. And that’s why Whitney has been checking your phone at every opportunity, to see who else calls you on a regular basis. And, thanks to the wonders of the iPhone, she’s also had easy access to your e-mail.”

“Ben?” Flip squeaked. “What about Selene and Ben?”

Tess didn’t have time for that side trip. “Whitney noticed that a large volume of your e-mail came from someone named Pete. I didn’t think about it twice, until I remembered that Whitney called Johnny ‘St. Pete’ at breakfast the other morning. Apparently, Johnny thinks that’s too funny, the joke about his real name being St. Petersburg but he shortened it to Tampa. He uses it every chance he gets. So this guy – the man who says he hates you, and you say you hate him – has been in constant contact with you. What’s that about?”

Selene burst into tears. Damn, she’s good, Tess thought.

“Oh, stop it, Selene. It’s clear that you and Johnny were in on this together, but once you got a security detail, more of the dirty work fell to Johnny. We know why you want out of Mann of Steel, but what’s Johnny’s angle? This is supposed to be his big comeback.”

Selene, realizing her tears were having no effect, not even on Flip – who still seemed stuck on the reference to Ben – slouched her way over to one of the overstuffed chairs. “Derek wanted Johnny for the other lead in that movie he’s developing, the one about the gay chaplains in World War I. They share a manager, and he asked Flip and Ben to work around Johnny’s schedule if he got a movie, and they said no, they had to have him in first position. It was unfair, if you think about it. They wanted it both ways – they were cutting Johnny’s part to build up mine, but they still insisted he was the lead. The linchpin.”

A part of Tess’s mind registered the correct use of linchpin . The Selene she knew – or thought she knew – would have said clothespin. Oh, what a fine actress she was. Actor .

“What about Greer’s murder? Do you know anything about that?”

“No,” Selene said. “It was just that Johnny couldn’t make waves. He’s been out of work too long to risk a reputation as difficult. Whereas for me – the crazier I am, the higher my quote goes, the more in demand I am. So we agreed that I would be the difficult one, make life hell for everybody.”

“What was in it for you?”

“Derek’s company has the rights to a biopic of Sigrid Undset, the Nobel Prize winner. That and the biopic of Debbie Harry of Blondie, but I heard she didn’t think I could play her. Which pisses me off, given how hard I’ve been practicing.”

Well, that cleared up one mystery – the presence of Kristin Lavransdatter beneath Selene’s bed. And, having heard Selene’s version of “Call Me,” Tess could understand Deborah Harry’s reluctance.

“So the little fires, the disgruntled steelworkers, the angry community activist – that was all you?”

“Only the first two,” Selene said. “The production managed to piss off the neighborhood lady on its own. That was pure lagniappe.”

This from a girl who had pretended not to know the difference between crawfish and mussels.

“But how did you-” Flip began.

“After you fired Alicia, Johnny went to her, asked for her help. She was happy to do it. She was pissed at being fired. She had an in with the local steelworkers, her dad being one and all. Plus, we paid her, and Alicia liked money.”

Alicia . Everyone had been focused on the suicide as the seminal incident, but Alicia had been fired subsequent to Wilbur Grace’s suicide. Tess had a sudden memory of the decking material stacked in Alicia’s backyard, the shelter magazines in the bathroom. When I have time, I don’t have money; when I have money, I don’t have time. Tess had assumed Alicia had run out of funds. But, no, she was just too busy with her two full-time jobs, video store clerk and set gremlin, to work on her house.

“Did she arrange the abduction of Johnny Tampa?”

“We set that up with some friends of Derek. After the smoke bomb Friday – not one that we planned, by the way, and Alicia said it wasn’t her – and the fight at the funeral, we thought it could tip the balance. Who could blame Johnny if he didn’t want to come back to Baltimore for season two? He’d be traumatized.”

“Selene,” Tess said, still using the slow, patient voice that she had always used with the girl, although she realized now it was far from necessary. “The things you’ve done – they’re not practical jokes. You’re in felony territory. Arson, making a false report.”

“I didn’t report anything,” she pointed out. “Johnny’s driver did, and he was utterly sincere. He saw two guys grab Johnny. It’s not our fault if he inferred something was going on.”

Tess sighed, even as part of her mind registered Selene’s correct usage of inferred . “Look, you’re a smart girl, smarter than any of us knew. Maybe I can make this go away, but only if everything ends now. Where’s Johnny?”

Selene gave Flip one last through-the-lashes look, one last trembling pout, but he wouldn’t even meet her gaze. “He’s up in Philadelphia, playing cards and hanging out,” she said. “The plan is for him to take the train home tonight and be found wandering in East Baltimore.”

“You were right,” Tess said to Flip, who looked absolutely stricken. “It was Selene and Johnny all along, with the help of one disgruntled employee.”

“Who cares?” Flip said. “It was one thing for Selene to be such a bitch-”

“Hey!” Selene objected. She probably wasn’t used to being called that, at least not to her face.

Flip didn’t care. “But Johnny fucking Tampa. No one wanted to hire him when we picked him up. He only has heat because of this project. That guy is a fuckin’ backstabber.” He looked as if he wanted to shake Selene. “Do you two morons realize this wasn’t just about you? That Ben and Lottie and I have careers, too? Not to mention the crew, which worked sixteen-, eighteen-hour days? Or the money – Jesus fuckin’ Christ, the money. We’re spending twenty-five million dollars, just to make eight episodes. Didn’t any of that matter?”

Selene shrugged, lifting her tiny shoulders ever so slightly, making her shoulder blades stand out like bony, immature wings – not that anyone in this room would mistake her for an angel.

“You know what?” Whitney said. “I liked you better when I thought you were stupid.”

It took much of the afternoon and pretty much all Tess’s accumulated credits with various local law enforcement agencies to clean up Selene and Johnny’s mess. The U.S. attorney’s office, mindful of the fact that one of its own had once ruthlessly hounded Tess not so long ago, decided to ignore the whole thing. After all, the FBI hadn’t been brought into it officially. The police and firefighters also calmed down, especially after Flip promised generous donations to their fraternal organizations. Tull got on the phone, too, largely to be assured that Selene and Johnny’s reign of terror hadn’t extended to Greer’s murder.