Laura Lippman - In A Strange City

“John P. Kennedy,” she repeated. “Boy, the name sounds familiar, although I couldn’t tell you why. But I don’t remember meeting anyone who looks like the man you’re describing. I’m not much in the market for bracelets once owned by Bonapartes. I can barely afford the jewelry we sell.”

Tess’s eyes drifted upward, to a piece of felt where small brooches and earrings had been pinned. These were decoupage images of Holmes, black cats, and, of course, Poe himself, such an unhappy-looking man. But that might be projection. People hadn’t been so grinny in the nineteenth century; that was not the way they wished to be immortalized. For all she knew, he was the life of the party. It occurred to her that most of what she knew of Poe had been gleaned from the morning paper, and she didn’t trust the Beacon-Light to get even yesterday’s events right.

“Do you have any of his books?”

“I thought you said he was an antiques dealer.”

“Not my mystery man, Poe. I’d like a good biography perhaps, or an omnibus of his work. I don’t think I own anything, although I must have read him in college or high school.”

The store was small and cramped. But some sort of order was at work, for Paige had a way of finding things customers could not. Dumping the cat from her lap, she made her way to the rear of the store, where a small office overflowed with papers and catalogs and the increasingly strange freebies that publishers bestow on booksellers-caps, jackets, posters, even a life-size cutout of a handsome man in a Hawaiian shirt. Paige patted him affectionately on his blue-jeaned hip as she squeezed past.

Five minutes later, Tess staggered out of the store with not only two Poe biographies and an anthology of his poems and stories but several new hardcovers. The publishers were right to woo Paige; she was nothing if not a formidable hand-seller.

Tess would have to shed this load somewhere, if she wanted to continue working, and she knew exactly where to go. She may have been evicted, but the welcome mat was always out for her at the corner of Shakespeare and Bond streets. It was hard to hold a grudge against a former landlord who happened to be your favorite aunt.

Tess’s aunt was the most beautiful woman in Baltimore. This was not filial loyalty but a matter of public record, as evidenced by the framed certificate awarded by the City Paper last year. In point of fact, it said Baltimore ’s “most beautiful bookstore owner,” but Kitty was the rare Baltimore commodity that could live up to local hyperbole.

“Tesser!” she cried, using the childhood nickname that Tess had bestowed on herself, because she could not say Theresa Esther. What little girl could, or would want to?

“I literally was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by,” Tess said. “I miss seeing you.”

“And Tyner?” her aunt prodded. “You miss Tyner too, right?”

“If you insist.” It was only then that Tess saw the lawyer, Tyner Gray, low in his wheelchair, scowling at her from behind the horseshoe-shaped soda fountain that Kitty had kept when she converted Weinstein Drugs into Women and Children First. If Tess had known he was there all along, she would have said something far ruder.

“As the old country song goes,” Tyner said, in his perpetually hoarse, perpetually loud voice, “how can I miss you if you won’t go away?”

“I could vanish from your life, if you like, but then I’d take the easiest chunk of income you make, those no-brainer referrals that go back and forth between our offices. Speaking of which, did you send a guy named John P. Kennedy to me? A short man, with a face like a glazed ham? He paid too much for some old bracelet. Ring any bells?”

“No, I haven’t sent anyone to you in weeks, come to think of it, nor you to me. How’s business, anyway? I hope you’re not allowing yourself to be distracted by your newfound domesticity. Kitty tells me you walk around with paint samples, asking strangers’ opinions about which shade of pale blue is right for your bedroom. And that you asked for a subscription to Martha Stewart’s Living for Christmas, as well as a gift certificate from the Restoration Company. I hear you’ve been spotted spending hours mooning over the furniture at Nouveau on Charles Street.”

“Lies, vile lies,” Tess said evenly. The part about the subscription was, at least. She did have a yen for one of Nouveau’s Art Deco bedroom sets, but there was no way Tyner could know this. “You and Kitty are the domestic ones, here in your cozy nest. Have you forgotten it was your presence here-your decision to ”shack up,“ as disapproving radio scolds call it-that forced me out into the cold streets to fend for myself?”

Their banter was good-natured, and so familiar in its rhythms and references that even Esskay grew bored and wandered toward the rear of the store. Esskay’s memory was hit-and-miss, but she recalled that the kitchen was in the back and that good things formerly happened there: Sunday-morning brunches with bacon, slices of cheese for the asking, and, oh, that one glorious day the roast beef was left unattended.

“Anyway, business is fine,” Tess said, conveniently omitting the fact that she had spent an entire day on a case for which she had no client and therefore no income. “How are things here?”

“Pretty good, for January,” Kitty said. “Did you notice the alcove?”

“Alcove?”

“I finally went ahead and opened the dead white men section I’ve been talking about all these years, just by rearranging shelves and creating the illusion of a new space. Gives me an excuse to stock some of the classics.”

“And how do you justify the living male authors you’ve been selling all along, in defiance of your own name and mission?”

“Oh, I created a section for them too.” Kitty’s chin lifted toward a poster of a Chippendale-type dancer, gyrating happily in a G-string, his oiled bicep decorated with a Magic Marker Don DeLillo rules tattoo. The narrow cul-de-sac of shelves reminded Tess of the way local video stores stocked their pornographic wares, safe from children’s prying eyes. “See? That’s live boys live. I’ve pretty much got all the bases covered.”

“Speaking of dead white men”-Tyner rolled out from behind the counter-“what do you think of this murder at Poe’s grave? Interesting stuff, no?”

“I haven’t really been following it,” Tess said, attempting nonchalance, grateful that her purchases from Mystery Loves Company were hidden within the folds of a plain grocery sack from the Giant. Tyner fancied himself a second father of sorts, a role he had taken on long before he moved in with Kitty. He would not approve of Tess’s decision to withhold information from the police. He also would not be persuaded by her rationalization that she was trying to protect a maybe-innocent man from an inept cop and a media onslaught.

“It’s a fascinating case,” Tyner continued, as if he could read her mind.

“If you say so.” Casual indifference was the best way to draw Tyner out on a subject, any subject.

“I talked to someone I know in the state’s attorney’s office this morning, and he said the police have an ID but they haven’t released it. The man who was killed was a waiter who had worked in a lot of the city’s best restaurants. They’re all but positive he’s not the regular Visitor, because he’s only lived in the area for the past five years. Letters left at the grave site over the past few years indicate that the individual who carries on the tradition is connected to the man who started it. No one can think of a reason anyone would want to kill him.”

Oh, at least one person could, Tess thought. The killer. But she decided to play along, to allow Tyner to think he knew more about the case than she did.