Laura Lippman - In A Strange City

Tess had forgotten that duckpin bowling is to regular bowling what Baltimore is to New York -smaller, perversely provincial, and more complicated than it first appears. You got three turns in a frame of duck-pins, but the hand-sized holeless balls required a different kind of skill. Brute force did not yield results in duckpins. You could hit the tenpin in the sweet spot and leave five standing.

Unless you were Whitney, who had bowled 130 in the first game and had two strikes and a spare going into the sixth frame of the second. She swore it was only her third time at duckpins, but Tess was beginning to suspect the Talbot homestead contained a secret alley or two, where Whitney had honed her skills for years with an eye toward this opportunity to humiliate her. Between turns, Whitney drank beer, flattish Budweiser, and amused herself by studying the team names of the various local leagues.

“The ”Who Cares,“” she called out. “ ”I Don’t Give a Shit.“ ”Sparrows Pointless.“ It’s as if Sartre and Camus were reincarnated in South Baltimore and decided to bowl instead of write.”

Daniel laughed appreciatively, but Tess had already abandoned her matchmaking plan. Whitney and Daniel hadn’t sparked at all. Crow and Daniel, however-they were a perfect pair, with their love of arcane trivia and that same earnest, sincere quality.

Deciding her problem was the ball, Tess put down the reddish one that reminded her of the planet Mars in favor of a mottled brown one, an egg from some ungainly bird. She lined up her aim slightly to the right, trying to compensate for her tendency to go left, and hurled it down the alley. It was perfect-leaving the 1 and the 5 pins standing.

“No lofting,” scolded the owner, an older woman in a faded pink sweater who was watching them anxiously from behind the bar. The weather was making her nervous; she wanted to close up and go home. “We just fixed them floors.”

Tess shrugged apologetically-she hadn’t meant to loft; the ball had kind of slipped-and sent her second ball down the left gutter, her third down the right.

“I knew a therapist once who recommended bowling as a way to confront untapped rage,” she said, sliding into the molded plastic chair next to Whitney. “It doesn’t work as well with duckpins. Maybe this is for people for whom you hold small grudges.”

A petty beef, as Arnold Pitts might say. Those were the words he had used when he first visited her. But how petty could a beef be if someone ended up dead? Tess heard the voice on the phone again- they’re worth killing for -and suppressed a shudder.

“Who would you be picturing right now if you were playing for catharsis?” Whitney asked. “Although, given your score tonight, I think you’d leave here even sicker.”

“Bitch,” Tess said sunnily.

She did love Whitney and would rather spend a lifetime exchanging insults with her than have one of those gooey, faux-sisterhood friendships that were all backstabbing, boyfriend-stealing, Nair-on-the mascara-wanding.

“The problem is, I don’t know who I’m angry at. Someone has stolen my life-forced me out of my house and put me in the position of looking over my shoulder every three seconds-and I don’t know who it is. That’s my head pin. Rainer, Arnold Pitts, Jerold Ensor-they’re in there too, but hitting them won’t give me as much satisfaction.”

“Has Rainer questioned them?”

“Yeah, this morning. But they showed up with lawyers and deflected virtually every question. The fact is, he doesn’t have a thing on them, other than impersonating police officers. Which is pretty serious, but it’s not a murder charge.”

Crow finished his turn, then Daniel put together an eight the hard way. He tapped Whitney on the shoulder. She got up and threw a strike, as if her only concern was to return to the conversation as quickly as possible.

“What did they say they were doing when they searched Bobby’s apartment and the Hilliards’ farm?”

“Looking for their stuff, which is a pretty good excuse.” Tess went to the rack and hefted several balls, judging them the way a housewife might rate a head of cabbage. Maybe back to the red ball, Tess thought, then remembered it was slang for a high-profile homicide. She chose a pea-green one instead. Four pins. The ragged, broken line of white looked like a South Baltimore mouth.

“But Rainer asked Pitts about the bracelet, right?”

“Yep, and he was ready for him. Pitts said Bobby used to talk about this bracelet all the time, so he appropriated it as a cover story. It was never his, and he didn’t care about it. He offered to open up his files and show he had never purchased such an item or sold one.”

Dividing her concentration between talking and bowling seemed to work. She picked up the spare against the odds and took Crow’s seat, stealing a glance at their scores. Whitney was out of reach, but she, Crow, and Daniel were almost dead even. The guys didn’t care, but Tess did, secretly. Whatever she did, Tess liked to win. Whereas Whitney assumed she would be victorious at every undertaking, a significant distinction. Daniel didn’t seem to have a competitive bone in his body, while bowling took a backseat to Crow’s unfettered delight in the Southway itself. He was enamored with the details. Such as the score sheet, which featured advertisements for neighborhood businesses that liked to brag they had “nationally advertised” brands, and a photograph of Jerry Lewis, circa 1972, demanding help in the battle against muscular dystrophy.

Those delights all paled, however, next to the coupon for a pizza parlor that claimed to satisfy “the happy hungries.” He ripped this from the scorecard and put it in his wallet.

“It would make a nice title,” he said to Tess, “if I were still writing songs.”

“Why don’t you write songs anymore?” she asked, curious, remembering the funny-silly songs he had composed on the spot when they first met.

“I’m in love, I have a job, and my dog isn’t dead,” he said. “What do I have to sing about?”

Whitney wasn’t done. “What about Cecilia? Have you asked her why she went to see Yeager?”

“She hasn’t returned my calls,” Tess said sadly. “I guess I’ve become a ”them.“”

“A them?” Daniel asked, puzzled.

“Just one of the many in the vast conspiracy against her and her causes. She seems to have forgotten that I warned her not to go on Yeager’s show. But Charlotte talked to Crow, when she called to check on Miata. She said Cecilia’s pretty shaken up. Which is good. She should be. She saw someone killed.”

Daniel’s eyes were wide, as if he couldn’t believe the fast company he was keeping. Crow continued to stare at the old photograph of Jerry Lewis, absolutely mesmerized. Whitney had a momentary lapse and only managed nine pins on her next try.

“I think that ball is pitted,” she said.

Tess stood at the line, trying the therapist’s trick yet again. But there was no joy in letting go of the duckpin, no release when it smacked the head pin and sent all nine others reeling, her first strike of the evening. Until she knew who her enemies were, she could take no delight in knocking them down.

Baltimore was so pretty in the snow, perhaps because everyone went inside. And this storm, which had tricked the local weather forecasters, felt like an unexpected gift, because it was so much more harmless than predicted. The system had crept up the coast and then stayed over the city, as if it liked what it saw there. But the snowfall was languid, slow to accumulate.

They said good night to Whitney, who liked to drive her Suburban in the snow just to show she could, sometimes rescuing addled Baltimoreans who had driven off the road in panic. Daniel followed Tess and Crow to midtown, where they tucked their cars into the University of Baltimore parking garage, indifferent to the fact that they would be held hostage overnight. At least they wouldn’t have to dig them out in the morning, after the plows had gone through. They strolled around midtown, looking for an open restaurant, and finally found a few hardy souls at the Owl Bar in the Belvedere Hotel. The kitchen wasn’t exactly open, nor was it closed. They ordered a bottle of red wine and ate blue-cheese potato chips, followed by steak-and-mushroom sandwiches on whole wheat toast.