Laura Lippman: In Big Trouble

The voice provided ten digits and she punched them in from memory, only to hear another mechanical voice: "I'm sorry the number you have called is not in service…"

She stared at the phone, puzzled. The phone must have been cut off pretty recently if he was still listed. Oh well, Crow wouldn't be the first musician to miss too many phone bills. Although his doting parents, the ones who had been so tolerant of his six-year plan at the Maryland Institute, College of Art, had always been good-natured about subsidizing him.

And if he were really in trouble, he'd go to them. Why hadn't she thought of this before? An only child like her, Crow had been brought up in a much more stereotypically worshipful home. In fact, his ego was so intact, his self-esteem so genuine, that it was as if it had been baked in his mother's kiln and coated with layers of shiny glaze. At least, she thought his mother had a kiln. She hadn't really paid close attention when he spoke of his parents, but she remembered something about his mother's ceramics, his father's economics classes, which had sounded vaguely Marxist to her. A pair of gentle, retrograde hippies, raising their son simply to be.

She flipped open her datebook. It still surprised her to see how busy her life had become. The fall was full of meetings and appointments. It wasn't just work and workouts, either, but dinners with old and new friends, even "dates" with her mom. It had been nice, being sought-after, but suddenly all those names and numbers and addresses just made her weary.

Under R, she found the information Crow had inked in long ago, when these pages were emptier. There was his number, in the little Bolton Hill studio apartment he had all but vacated while they were together. His birthday, 8-23 ("Two Virgos!" he had written in his ecstatic, spiky handwriting, and she liked him for not making a crude joke at their expense). His clothing sizes, his Social Security number, the number of his favorite Chinese takeout place, and just in case she ever needed him during his infrequent trips home, a number and address for his parents in Charlottesville.

"Much too late to call strangers," she told Esskay. "After eleven, all phone calls are bad news."

Esskay, still disgruntled at her undignified treatment at Laylah's baby hands, gave Tess a skeptical look, snorted, and rolled over, turning her bony spine toward her. Tess dialed the phone, rehearsing her opening lines. You don't know me but…We've never met but…Did your son ever mention we were sleeping together until I broke his heart, then came crawling back and he broke my heart, so now we're really even-steven, and I don't owe him a thing, right ?

"Hello?" A woman's voice, low and husky. Not a Southern accent, for the Ransomes were New England transplants. But the clipped Bostonian edges seemed to have been smoothed down by the years in Virginia.

"Is this the Ransome residence?"

"Yes. Who's calling?" There was something tentative in the voice, something fearful. Tess realized that bad news must often begin this way: Is this so-and-so's residence?

"We've never met but I'm Tess Monaghan-"

"Oh, Tess!" Mrs. Ransome's relief was so intense it seemed to flow through the phone. "I feel as if I know you. How's your aunt, Kitty? And the greyhound, I want to say its name is Jimmy Dean, but that's not quite right, is it?"

"Right section of your supermarket. It's Esskay, as in the Schluderberg-Kurdle Company of Baltimore, finest pork products ever made."

"Of course, Esskay." She laughed, but shakily. "Tess Monaghan. I feel as if I conjured you up in a way. Because I've been sitting here, thinking I should call you."

Some organ-heart, stomach, intestines-lurched inside Tess. "Has something happened-I mean, do you have news of Crow? I tried to call him tonight-"

"But his phone is disconnected. I know, I know. It was turned off six weeks ago. A week later, our last check came back from Texas, marked return to sender. I was hoping you might have heard from him, or know something more."

"Not really." The clipping didn't count, for it only deepened the mystery. Besides, it surely would cause this kind woman more concern, and that couldn't have been Crow's intent. "So you haven't heard anything for more than a month?"

"Three weeks ago he called and left a message on our machine, at a time when he knew we'd be out. ‘Don't worry,' he said, and we've been out of minds with worry ever since. Are you sure he hasn't tried to get in touch with you?"

Tess studied the clipping. Less than a week in her possession and it already had a worn look, as if it had been handled many, many times. "I had something in the mail recently, a photo of him, nothing more…He's cut his hair." An idiotic segue, but it was all she could think of.

"I knew he would reach out to you. You were such a good influence."

"I was?" As Tess recalled, Crow had committed at least one felony under her tutelage. Then again, that was before they started dating, and it had not been her idea.

"He finished school at last. Even the breakup had its positive aspects. He went to Texas, decided to get serious about his music."

The conversation seemed increasingly surreal, and Tess found herself conscious of the wine she had been drinking all evening. But perhaps Mrs. Ransome had been sitting by her phone, dialing the same number that no longer rang in Texas, sipping her own drink?

"Well, it was nice to talk to you at last," she offered lamely. Mrs. Ransome seemed to know so much about her, while Tess couldn't remember anything more about Crow's parents other than a few scraps of details. Had she not been paying attention? Sometimes she had tuned out Crow's happy prattling. It hadn't seemed to require close attention.

"I'm sure you'll hear from him soon," she said. "Crow's always been responsible."

"That's my point," Mrs. Ransome said. "He's too responsible to do this to us, unless something is horribly wrong. We were thinking of hiring someone-"

"I'd be glad to help you," Tess interrupted. "Make some inquiries, hook you up with someone in Texas."

"-but your call seems providential, I realize now. Not to sound too Celestine Prophecy-ish, because I'm not that kind of person. Usually. But things do happen for a reason, don't you think? I need a private investigator and here's one calling me, one I know to be a fine, trustworthy person."

"I'm really not-" Tess stopped. It wasn't that she didn't consider herself fine and trustworthy, it was just that Mrs. Ransome's exalted opinion sounded suspiciously like one shoe dropping.

Mrs. Ransome wasn't listening. It was possible that she had never really listened. From the moment she heard Tess's voice on the line, she had been working toward just this, focusing on a single goal in her own gracious way, intent on throwing down this second shoe.

"Tess Monaghan, would you find my son?"

Thirty-six hours later, Tess was en route to Charlottesville. She owed Crow's parents the courtesy of a face-to-face rejection, or so she had rationalized, only then could she make them see the sense of finding an investigator who knew the territory. There were worse ways to spend a crisp Sunday in October than driving along the edge of the Shenandoahs.

Strangely, Tyner had wanted to come along, claiming she was too nice, that she was just a girl who couldn't say no. But it seemed to Tess that he was desperate for a distraction. He was restless lately, bored with his job and his routines, which surprised her. She had thought such feelings belonged exclusively to the young.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to take the work," she had assured him. "I just want to make sure they hire someone reputable, someone who won't run up a huge bill and never do anything more than place a classified ad."