“Have you been in touch with her since she left—” Whitney stole a look at the woman’s name tag. “—Denise?”
“She came in once.” Denise held up a Gucci bag, covered with the signature design of interlocking G’s. Whitney shook her head. If a designer wanted to advertise on her body, he could pay for the privilege. “After she got married. She looked at a lot of bags, but she didn’t buy anything. I think she was enjoying being on the other side of the counter.”
“Did she ever talk about her fiancé before they got married, when you were still working together?”
“Yeah.” Denise surrendered, stopped pulling out things to show Whitney. “She said—wait, it was funny what she said, I remember that much. She said . . . ‘I’ve had my sights on him for a long time.’ ”
“What did she mean by that?”
Denise shrugged. “I thought she meant he was rich, her ticket out.”
“She didn’t mention that she had known him a long time, or that he had once dated her sister?”
“No, I would have remembered that. Or at least the sister part. When she came back in here that one time, she was kinda depressed. Really well dressed, in this amazing coat—”
“A green raincoat?” Whitney had heard Tess describe Carole Esptein often enough to imagine the woman herself, although she had never seen her, except in that one odd photo captured from the Internet. She thought it must be the only photo of Carole, for it was the one all the television shows used when they interviewed Epstein.
“Yes, exactly. She was trying to match a purse to it, in fact. A big purse, which surprised me, because this was last spring—remember how cool and rainy it was—and the trend was going toward small. Carole was usually on top of that kind of stuff, you know? But she didn’t buy anything, anyway. She seemed really down. And when I asked her how married life was, she said it wasn’t what she expected.”
“How so?”
“I don’t remember specifics. I just thought it was the usual letdown. All my girlfriends go through it.”
It was a good explanation, as good as any for a young bride’s down mood on a rainy spring day, and Denise did seem to have a feel for people. Or women. Unlike Freud, she wasn’t puzzled about what women wanted. They wanted handbags, and maybe shoes to match. If Whitney were a real shopper, Denise probably could have found the right bag for her. She had been getting closer, stylewise, with each guess.
Whitney put the timeline together in her head. Carole Massinger had known Don Epstein for at least fifteen years, and stayed close enough to him to attend his second wedding. But their romantic relationship had been relatively brief—assuming it hadn’t begun as an affair. Who had set their sights on whom? Could it be that Carole Massinger was the first person to glimpse the Bluebeard in Don Epstein, that she had always suspected him in her sister’s death and resolved to avenge it somehow? Could she have married him just to get the goods on him? A wife can’t be forced to testify against her husband, but she can volunteer to do so. Had Carole Massinger rummaged through the rooms of Don Epstein’s house, literally and figuratively, defied his orders and found the equivalent of a locked room, in which all his secrets were revealed? Had her foray into Stony Run Park that day been the modern-day equivalent of a call to Sister Ann, summoning help?
“Thank you for your time today,” she told Denise.
“You’re not going to buy anything, are you?” She sighed. “Frankly, if I had a Hermès like that one, I don’t think I’d buy anything, either. If I had a Hermès like that, I think I’d just walk around naked in my house with it, take it to bed with me.”
Whitney wondered if purse fetishism was yet another new sexual perversion gaining ground through the power of the Internet.
“I do have a friend who’s going to need a diaper bag,” she said. “Problem is, she’s not the diaper bag sort. In fact, she needs kind of a combination diaper bag/briefcase, with pockets for two cell phones, her gun, and maybe a set of lock picks.”
“I have just the thing,” Denise said, not the least bit fazed by the mention of a gun. She truly was a pro.
Chapter 9
A pink diaper bag?” Tess asked in bewilderment, lifting the item from the silver Nordstrom box.
“Pink and brown.” Whitney took the bag from Tess and began showing her the various pockets. Her over-the-top gestures were uncannily like those used by The Price Is Right models, only Whitney got to do all the talking on her game show. “Your cell can go here, and in a pinch I think you could wrap your Beretta in the portable changing pad. Check out the antique brass tone stroller clips. And it converts to a knapsack.”
She demonstrated, marching up and down, pretending to push a stroller and walk a dog.
“Okay, I like the last feature, but it’s still pink and”—Tess looked at the label—“made by someone called Petunia Pickle Bottom. Also, did I mention? It’s pink.” She couldn’t bear to go into the harangue about the evil eye, and how she didn’t want any baby gifts until there was, in fact, a baby. The concept of a baby was still strangely abstract to Tess. She was eight weeks away from the delivery date, and despite the constant signs of life within her—Fifi La Pew was a big kicker, go figure—seemed to have zero maternal instincts. She wasn’t even sure she believed there was a child in her. She would not be surprised to discover that the object in her belly was an enormous . . . radish. That was, in fact, a recent dream. She’d given birth to a radish, and everyone said it looked just like her.
“I wasn’t being a sexist,” Whitney said. “It just has the best configuration of pockets. I also like that combination of pink and brown. Makes me think of Baskin-Robbins. Besides, it’s not for you, it’s for the baby.”
“I don’t know much about motherhood,” Tess admitted. “But I’m pretty sure the diaper bag is, in fact, for me. For me and Crow, who will probably like changing diapers. Who will probably be such a good parent that I will be largely irrelevant.”
“Are you going to be competitive about parenting, too?” Whitney asked.
“I’m not.” But Tess didn’t have the energy to deny something that was so clearly true. “I’m just feeling inadequate. Crow bustles around, happy and confident, without a single care in the world, whereas I’m stuck in chronic worry mode.”
“Well, I have another gift that might cheer you up.”
“Is it alcohol? Her brain must be more or less developed by now. Besides, IQ is highly overrated. Look at you. Near genius IQ, but your taste is crap.”
“This is better than alcohol.” Whitney, who had continued to pace the room, modeling the diaper bag, stopped and posed dramatically, arms akimbo. “Ethel Zimmerman!”
Tess waited, thinking there must be more, but Whitney just stood there, pleased to the point of smugness.
“I’m afraid I already know Ethel Merman’s real name, but thanks for the trivia. Did you know that Jacqueline Susann was the one who told her what to say, when people asked why she changed it? Something about how people would pass out from the heat if ‘Zimmerman’ were up in lights.”
“And she was married to Ernest Borgnine for thirty-two days, a fact immortalized by a chapter in her autobiography—a single blank page,” Whitney said.
Sheesh, Tess thought, who’s the competitive one here?
“However, this is a different Ethel Zimmerman. Lives in Severna Park, a longtime neighbor of the Massingers. She was Carole’s in-case-of-emergency person at Nordstrom. What do you want to bet she’s also the person Carole called the weekend she couldn’t raise her sister on the phone?”
“Hence, my diaper bag?” Tess was torn between admiration and envy. It was galling, being trapped here, while Whitney was free to follow up hunches, roam the world, make things happen.
“You can’t imagine the half of it,” Whitney said. “Do you know anyone who wants a Marc Jacobs wallet?”
“Have you visited Ethel yet? Chatted her up?”
Whitney shook her head. “I thought about it. But I really think she
needs to come see you, have you explain what you think happened, and why. Even if you only saw Carole through your window, you have a connection to her that I can’t quite match. She’s real to you. To me, she’s just a puzzle.”
“How are we going to get some woman from Severna Park to come up here and talk to me?”
“Well, there’s light rail, if she doesn’t drive—”
“No, I mean, what can I say that would persuade her that this can’t be done over the phone, that I need to meet her face-to-face?”
Whitney was nonplussed. In that most unusual silence, the sounds of Dempsey’s chewing filled the room. He had progressed from trying to eat his own leg to gnawing on the bars on his crate. The dog’s behavior had improved, but only with Tess. He was still generally hateful to everyone else, and had to be crated when anyone but Crow was in the house. And Lloyd refused to walk him with the other dogs, as it always ended in a melee.
So, during the day, when Dempsey needed to take bathroom breaks, Tess used an antique cane—another bizarre gift from her aunt, who seemed to confuse her pregnancy with some sort of Victorian-era malady—to lift the crate’s lock and swing the door open. He trotted outside, did his business, went mano a mano with the invisible fencing for a few rounds, then returned docilely to his crate. He wouldn’t go out in the dark, however; released in the middle of the night, he still used her chamber pot. He was scared of the dark. It was the only sign of weakness in the dog, who seemed to be girding himself for some epic battle. Now, as his teeth grated against the metal, Tess couldn’t help wondering if he was sharpening them in preparation for his next meeting with Don Epstein, or whatever hired gun had taken away the dog’s beloved mistress.
“Dempsey!” she said. “We can ask Mrs. Zimmerman if she’ll come up here to see Dempsey, consider taking him in as a favor to Carole.”
“She won’t,” Whitney said. “Unless she’s crazy.”
“And I wouldn’t wish him on her. But that would be enough to get her here, and let me lay out my ideas about what really happened to Carole. We’ll call her, say that Carole left something in our care and that we have instructions to turn it over to her. But what do you think we’ll gain by talking to Ethel face-to-face?”
“You are really getting slow. Are you sure your brain function is okay? She’s Carole’s in-case-of-emergency person. Here’s our emergency.”
“I think that applies more to workplace accidents,” Tess said. “But, okay, I get it. She can turn up the heat, put forward a sympathetic version of Carole in opposition to the bitch-stole-my-money portrait that Epstein has painted. You are pretty smart. Taste in diaper bags aside.”
“Trust me, I picked the best one.”
* * *
Ethel Zimmerman sounded extremely frail on the phone, an elderly woman with a hoarse, wispy voice that Tess could barely hear. Still, she didn’t hesitate when asked if she would come to Baltimore to talk about Carole; Tess didn’t even need to dangle the bait of Dempsey. Mrs. Zimmerman did ask if their meeting could wait until the next afternoon—she confessed that she found traffic terrifying after four o’clock—and Tess, her heart full of sympathy for the older woman, said that it could.
The next day, Crow cleaned up the house before leaving for work, then made sure the door was unlocked so Tess wouldn’t make an unnecessary trip to the door. At noon—a full hour before Mrs. Zimmerman was expected—a sharp knock sounded, and Tess yelled, “Come in, I’m in the back.”
But could this be Mrs. Zimmerman? Tess’s guest—guests—were two forty-something woman with hard athletic builds and almost identical chin-length bobs. At first glance they appeared to be sisters. At second, Tess realized they simply had remarkably similar taste.
“Mrs. Zimmerman?”
The two women exchanged a look. “No, we’re—I’m Beth Angleton—”
“And I’m Liz Matthias.”
They looked at Tess expectantly, as if their names should explain everything.
“Um—”
“We’re May’s parents? Lloyd’s girlfriend?” Their level gazes, while not exactly judgmental, managed to convey that they would know instantly who Tess Monaghan was, if she had shown up, unannounced, at their home. I have preeclampsia, Tess wanted to say. I’m in the middle of a possible murder investigation, I’m a little distracted.
“Of course. Did Lloyd say you would be coming by? We’ve been—well, life—as you can see—” She indicated her bed, the dog, the room, her mound of a belly in hopes that these things would sum up the insanity that was her life. Thank God, Crow had cleaned the house and the chamber pot was empty.
“No, we didn’t tell Lloyd we were coming to meet with you,” said Beth. Or was it Liz? Were they both actually Elizabeth? Had they been forced to differentiate their nicknames to avoid confusion? “This is awkward, but—we’re really not happy with Lloyd as a companion for May.”
On her best day, Tess could come up with a dozen reasons why Lloyd wasn’t a fit companion for anyone. But that was her prerogative. How dare these oh-so-perfect, put-together mommies—they also wore complementary silver earrings and stunning designer glasses—imply that Lloyd wasn’t the right boyfriend for their precious May? She decided to put them on the defensive.
“Are we talking about race?”
“Of course not!” Beth and Liz chorused. Then Beth—or was it Liz?—added: “You can’t possibly think we’re bigoted.”
“Why not?” Tess challenged.
“We adopted a girl from China. Our own lives, our choices, have exposed us to—I won’t say as much prejudice as someone like Lloyd might have known, but it’s certainly made us sensitive to judging people according to external standards. We love Lloyd. He’s bright, curious. In the beginning, we thought he was a good influence on May.”
“So what’s your problem?” Tess asked. She didn’t mean it to sound quite so peevish and hostile, but—she was pregnant and stuck in this room. People had to grant her a little latitude, and not just on mood. She had to take sponge baths, for example. The highlight of her week was the shower she was allowed to have while sitting on a plastic stool. She got pretty stinky by day six, and this was day five. She dared anyone to be cheerful under such circumstances.
“Surely you know?” asked Beth, who appeared to be the spokeswoman. It wasn’t so hard to tell them apart, after all. Beth’s eyes were blue, while Liz’s tended toward green. “We just assumed—I mean, he said he had gotten it from your, um, partner, so we thought he had been consulted.”
Tess liked the fact that one of May’s two mommies had to grope for the proper term to describe Crow. She fought down the urge to scream out, Cloris Leachmanlike, “He vuz my boyfriend!” But even if they got the Young Frankenstein reference, these terribly earnest women probably wouldn’t be amused by it.
“What did he get from Crow? Some inappropriate film?” In a flash, Tess knew what had happened. “Did he screen In the Realm of the Senses for May? Or something by Peter Greenaway? You have to understand, to Lloyd, film is film, it’s all about technique, not content. I’ve tried to explain that other people have different sensibilities, but—”
“This isn’t about a movie,” Beth said.
“Would that it were,” Liz muttered.
“Well, what then?” Tess snapped. “I don’t mean to be impatient, but I am expecting someone this afternoon, and if you could just get down to cases—”
“This past weekend was May’s birthday,” Beth said. “Lloyd gave her a ring and asked her to marry him.”
Tess reached Crow at work, but he was innocent of Lloyd’s intentions, as it turned out. He had shown Lloyd the ring, an heirloom from his mother’s family, and told him that it would be his one day, when he found the woman he wanted to marry. Crow just hadn’t expected “one day” to come so soon.
“You can’t even call it stealing,” Crow said. “I told him that he could have it when he decided to get married. I’m not glad he took it without asking, but he took it for its rightful purpo
se, didn’t hock it. It’s not that long ago that Lloyd might have done just that. That’s progress.”
“Why would he want to get married?”
“He’s in love,” Crow said.
“Eighteen-year-old boys fall in love every day. They also fall out. However, they don’t go out and propose every day. Sort of the opposite.”
“We did screen Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, alongside Baz Luhrmann’s version. I saw it as an opportunity to see how a classic text was interpreted in two different eras, but Lloyd—well, I guess Lloyd was focusing on something else.”
“You don’t seem as upset about this as you might,” Tess said.
“It’s not tragic,” Crow said. “I mean, I don’t think it’s the best idea he’s ever had, but it’s hard for me to get upset because a teenage boy, deeply in love with a teenage girl, decided he wanted to marry her.”
“Actually, it could turn out to be absolutely tragic,” Tess argued. “They could ruin their lives. What if they have a baby? Oh my God, is that it? Is she pregnant?”
Crow laughed. “Truthfully, I’m not even sure they’ve had sex yet. I let Lloyd have as much privacy as possible on that score. But you’ve met May, Tess, and heard her ten-year plan for her life—Teach for America, followed by graduate school. She’s not going to get knocked up. Look, we’ll deal with this, but your anger is really all out of proportion.”
A rap on the door, followed by a quavering “Hello?” alerted Tess to the arrival of the guest she had been expecting, Mrs. Zimmerman. She said a hasty goodbye. Why was she so upset? A family heirloom, an engagement ring—didn’t Crow have any use for it? Were they not to be married then, at some point? Crow was the one who used to press for marriage; she had told him it made no sense unless they had children, thinking all the while—we will never have children. But now they were having a child, and she couldn’t remember the last time Crow had mentioned marriage. Was he really going to be there for her? Could she rely on him?
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