Laura Lippman - The Last Place

“Want one?” She rattled the box at Tess.

“No, thanks.”

“No fat. I’m not saying they’re good for you, or even low in calories, but it’s pure sugar. You burn it off.”

Margo clearly did. Although she was of medium height and build, she had the jangly nerves of a toy poodle.

“I used to be a reporter,” Tess said. “Down in Baltimore.”

“At the Beacon-Light? Can you get me an interview?”

“I worked for the competition before it went under.” The frown on Margo Duncan’s face indicated she had forgotten Baltimore was once a two-newspaper town. “But you can use my name to get your foot in the door. The editors know me.”

They also hated her, but let Margo discover this on her own.

“Why are you interested in the Fancher case? Is there a story in it for me?”

A typical reporter’s question. “No, it’s pretty boring stuff. I’m just looking at open homicide cases, chosen at random. It’s an exercise in statistical analysis.”

That shut her interest down. In fact, Margo became positively sullen. She slumped in her seat, fishing the green Mike amp; Ikes from the box.

“I’m curious to know if there’s anything else that didn’t make the paper-besides the head thing, I mean.”

“Does that suck or what? They said it didn’t pass the breakfast test. Postmortem, I kept telling them, postmortem.”

“I imagine it’s hard to remove someone’s head before death,” Tess said.

“Which isn’t to say it hasn’t been done. Let me tell you, I’ve read all the books, all the life stories: Bundy, Dahmer, and lesser-known ones like Maryland’s own Metheney. People do some seriously sick shit.”

But books were the only place where Margo had encountered the seriously sick. She was no more than twenty-seven, and she was a young twenty-seven, with a face so clear and untroubled that Tess knew she had seen very little of the world. Margo Duncan was all talk.

“In your opinion,” she began, and Margo sat up a little straighter, delighted someone wanted her opinion, “in your opinion, how’d the local cops handle the case?”

“The local guys were cool. The state cop was a little jerky, but it turned out he had never caught a case like that either. Carl Dewitt was the king of no comment. Like he had anything to say anyway.”

It was the second time Tess had heard that name in as many hours. “Carl Dewitt was an investigator?”

“Carl Dewitt was the Toll Facilities cop who found the head and was, you’ll pardon the expression, like a dog with a bone. He couldn’t let go of the case. To his detriment. The state police finally wrestled it away from him, after he had to take a leave for knee surgery.” She stopped to think, using her index finger to work a piece of candy out of her teeth. “Or maybe it was back surgery. Something bad enough to get him disability, I remember that much.”

“Did they have suspects? Was it one of those cases where they just couldn’t make the case?”

Margo shook her head. “They didn’t have anything.”

“Did they look at the boyfriend?”

“Sure. Alan Palmer was down the shore in Saint Michaels, camping out before a big estate sale.”

“Camping out?”

“Palmer was sort of like a go-between for decorators and high-end antique dealers in Baltimore, Wilmington-even Philadelphia. I think they call them pickers, something like that.”

“Scouts,” Tess said.

“Really?” Margo wrinkled her nose. “Anyway, he shopped the auctions and antique sales with their wish lists. A huge estate sale, the whole contents of the house of some one-hit wonder of a writer, was scheduled for eight A.M. October thirtieth. Palmer went down October twenty-ninth. They were going to start handing out numbers at five A.M., and he wanted to be in the first batch of people let in. He planned to sleep in his truck.”

“So the cops go down to Saint Michaels and find him shopping an estate sale?”

Margo nodded.

“How did he take it?”

“Better than you think, actually. At least, he was okay for Part One. Maybe he was still in shock, I don’t know. But he got through identifying her head. It was when the body showed up that… I think someone came to town and took him away, kind of quiet-like. Later, the cops told me he was hospitalized, in a rehab facility somewhere out of state.”

“Drugs?”

“No, it’s physical rehab. He broke his neck in a car accident. Might be DWI, I dunno. Who could blame him?”

“Had Lucy been married before? Did she have an ex, or even family members that the police suspected?”

“There’s an ex-boyfriend, a super-scary guy. His arms are so tattooed he looks like he’s always wearing sleeves. But they never charged him. Best I can tell, the cops have given up.”

“The state police just gave up?”

“The case is still open. Homicides never-”

“Close, I know. Still, it doesn’t seem like the kind of case cops give up on.”

“They think it was a drifter, someone passing through. So it’s not as if it’s a public safety risk for the county. And it’s not as if it’s happened again. But my theory is the other investigators look at Dewitt and figure they don’t want to end up like that.” Margo looked thoughtful, which in her case meant she managed to still her twitching limbs and features for about five seconds. “The Fancher case is like one of those mummy’s tombs, you know? There’s a curse on everyone who had anything to do with it. Dewitt screws up his knee-or his back, whichever-the boyfriend cracks up his car. I wonder if I’m next.”

She hugged herself, delighted by her ghoulish theory. Margo was probably trying to calculate if there was a marketable first-person narrative in all this tragedy. After all, what was the use of proximity to a great case if it didn’t further your career?

“What was the ex-boyfriend’s name?”

“Bonner. Bonner Flood.”

“Sounds like someone out of a Faulkner novel.”

“He wishes. He’s a creep, but a petty one. As I said, the police never charged him. He works in one of the marinas, when he can hold a job.”

Tess got up to go, then remembered she had one more thing she wanted to ask. “Did you ever get to interview Alan Palmer?”

“No, but he was the best thing that ever happened to Lucy, apparently. She was working some minimum-wage job, didn’t even have her GED, when he came along. Hey, I have a question for you. What do you think of Margo A. Duncan?”

It was always a bad sign, someone speaking of herself in the third person.

“I think… you’ve been a great help,” Tess ventured.

“No, I mean the name. I think my byline might be holding me back. I want something more New York Timesian. My middle name is Alice, which doesn’t really work that well, but M.A. Duncan sounds like I’ve got a master’s in doughnuts. Or I could go with M. Alice Duncan.”

Tess didn’t have the heart to point out that this would simply turn Margo into Malice. “Sounds great,” she said, edging toward the door. “I’m sure it will make all the difference.”

The man with the tattooed arms ended his day with a cheeseburger and a beer, which he all but inhaled, so that a gob of the head stuck to his nose. It was a long pointy nose, like a hound’s. That nose would turn out to be the only sharp thing about Bonner Flood.

When he put down his glass and saw Tess, holding out her card, he sighed. “I don’t wanna,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Whatever it is you want, I don’t wanna talk about it. I’m off, okay? This is my time, my dinner.”

“I’ll buy you dinner.”

“I don’t wanna.”

“And give you some cash for your time.”