No Good Deeds

by Laura Lippman

  "I can be there in five minutes," she said. "It's not a bar that stands on formality, but it does prefer that the patrons wear something below the waist."

  It wasn't clear if Wilma Youssef understood that this was a joke or if she simply didn't see the humor in anything. She gave Tess a chilly smile and nodded her assent.

  "Club soda," Wilma Youssef told the bartender.

  "Nursing?" asked Tess.

  "Yes, but I never drank. Neither did Greg. We met through a Christian fellowship group at Cornell."

  The information seemed at once pointed and defensive to Tess, but all she said was "Oh." And then to the bartender, "I'll try that weird gin drink you make, the one with peach schnapps. Maybe it will make me feel as if spring is on the way."

  "We're not what people mean when they speak of the religious right," Wilma said, picking up on Tess's unvoiced skepticism. "But we were conservative by most people's standards. Didn't drink or use drugs. We also happen to believe that homosexuality is a sin. So I always knew that Greg's death was not as it appeared. Nothing could make me believe that."

  Funny, the Christian fellowship stuff was the one piece of information to date that made the scenario more plausible to Tess. She wondered if Youssef's killer had known this and factored it in.

  "When the story with the new information ran in the Beacon-Light, I was so hopeful. At first. I thought it meant that Greg's killer had been found and the truth would finally come out. But now police tell me that you're determined to shield the killer."

  "Not the killer. Just a—" Ever vigilant, Tess stopped herself short of using Lloyd's gender. "Just an individual who was holding a piece of the puzzle, unawares."

  "Some lowlife."

  "Is that part of your doctrine, too? Assigning people their value on earth?"

  Nothing seemed to shake Wilma Youssef's eerie poise.

  "I'm a widow with a three-month-old child. A boy who will never know his father. It's important to me that Greg's name be cleared."

  "It seems to me that it has been. We still may not know who killed him, but it seems more likely now that it had something to do with his work, right?"

  She chewed a piece of ice. Tess wouldn't be surprised to learn that the Widow Youssef subsisted solely on ice.

  "I received something…unexpected," she said, once the ice cube had been crunched into oblivion beneath her small, perfect teeth.

  "What?"

  "I prefer not to say."

  "I won't tell anyone." The woman clearly wanted to confide in someone. Perhaps she had been drawn to Tess in part because she thought Tess owed her that much. "If you know anything about me, it's that I keep my promises, that I'm willing to go to extraordinary lengths to do just that."

  "I can't say."

  "Which is it? Don't want to or can't?"

  "Both. I don't know what this thing means. I don't want to know, because then I can say I didn't know, if someone else finds out. Greg had…" In Wilma's pause, Tess supplied a thousand possibilities, an array of wonderful and intriguing nouns. It was a bit of an anticlimax when Wilma Youssef finally said, "A safe-deposit box."

  "So? Lots of people do."

  "This one was secret, kept in a bank down in Laurel, quite a distance from where we live. I wouldn't even have known it existed if the renewal paper hadn't arrived in the mail last month. Apparently the bank doesn't even know he's dead."

  "That's awful," Tess said, meaning it.

  Wilma sighed. "You get used to it. Almost. The telemarketers that call and ask for Mr. Youssef—they don't even lose their place in the script when I say, ‘He's dead.' They just plunge ahead, telling me about the new ‘products' available on my charge cards."

  Wilma Youssef was making it awfully hard to out-and-out loathe her. Her values may not have been Tess's, but her situation engendered sympathy. All the more so because she didn't seem to expect it.

  "Well, if you need help getting access to it, that can be accomplished pretty quickly through probate. I know some lawyers—Well, you know some lawyers, obviously. I'm sure there are ways to expedite."

  "I don't have a key."

  "Still, there has to be a way—"

  "I didn't come to you for legal counsel. I'm not worried about straightening out Greg's estate."

  "What are you worried about?"

  She gave a tiny, embarrassed shrug.

  "Have you told the police about the safe-deposit box?"

  "No. It's not required, not by law."

  "But it could be relevant to his murder."

  "I don't see how."

  "Neither do I. But that's because we don't know what's in it. And maybe it will be something silly or inconsequential. But the fact of its existence is not going to go away."

  "You promised not to tell." Said swiftly, almost accusingly.

  "That I did."

  "We told each other everything, Greg and I. Everything. We didn't have secrets from each other."

  "With all due respect, you clearly had at least one."

  To Tess's horror the woman burst into tears—gusty, loud sobs that seemed all the more enormous coming from this doll-like woman. Tess and Wilma were the only customers in this part of the bar, but it was still mortifying. Luckily, her sobs ended as quickly as they came, like a summer cloudburst.

  "Sorry," she said with a sniffle. "Hormones."

  "Ms. Youssef—"

  "You may call me Wilma."

  "Wilma. That's a hell of a name to settle on a kid."

  "Yes, a life of Flintstones jokes. When I found out I was having a boy, I immediately insisted that he would be called Gregory Jr."

  "Anyway, Wilma"—it was hard not to give it the Fred Flintstone inflection, now that the fact had been acknowledged, but Tess resisted. "What exactly is it you want from me? To break the promise I made to someone else while keeping yours? To assure you that what I know can't have anything do with a safe-deposit box in Laurel? Or do you want my permission to keep your secrets as I'm keeping mine?"

  The woman sat quietly, her hands folded in her lap. "I want the truth, but I'm frightened."

  What could Tess say? It was in the end what everyone wanted—painless truth. Problem was, she wasn't sure such a thing existed.

  Wilma Youssef, however, had the damnedest ability to squander whatever sympathy she managed to arouse. She continued, "My husband and I were good people. We worked hard. We didn't deserve this."

  "The implication being that some people do deserve what happens to them."

  "Well…yes. Yes. I'm sorry, but people who take drugs, who sell them, who live without benefit of marriage, who have children as if they're throwing litters of puppies—they bring their problems on themselves. Greg was trying to do good in the world."

  "That's one way of looking at it."

  "The only way of looking at it."

  "No. No, not even close. Imagine being born into that world. Remember how it was said that Bush, the first one, was a guy who was born on third base and thought he'd hit a triple? Well, these kids aren't even in the ballpark and they don't have any equipment—no bats, no balls, no field. It's like they're in some weird reality show where they have to play the same game with rotted tree limbs, spoiled grapefruits, and hundred-fifty-pound sacks of rocks tied to their backs."

  Wilma's cool blue eyes were thoughtful. Shrewd, actually. Tess remembered, perhaps a beat too late, that Wilma Youssef was a lawyer, too, already back in the office less than three months after her baby's birth—and less than four months after her husband's death. A tough cookie and an analytical one, accustomed to parsing every word.

  "So the source is someone young," Wilma said. "Relatively. A juvenile?"

  Tess waved a hand as if impatient, although her only frustration was with her own big mouth. She had been so strong, so taciturn in the police interview, only to natter away with Youssef's widow.

  "I'm speaking in generalities."

  "Sure. Of course." Wilma sipped from her water glass, her gaze downcast. Tess had a
sickening feeling that she was being played.

  "Is there really a safe-deposit box?"

  "What? Oh. Yes, of course."

  "And is that the reason you came to see me? Because you think what I know can somehow render that fact inconsequential? That whatever your husband may have hidden becomes irrelevant as long as his murder is solved before you gain access to it?"

  "What could my husband possibly have to hide?"

  "You tell me."

  Wilma Youssef took some bills from her purse. "I really shouldn't impose on my mother-in-law. She adores Gregory Jr.—I sometimes think his birth is the only thing that kept her grief from tearing her apart—but I don't like to leave her alone too long. And it's such a trek down to Sherwood."

  "What about your father-in-law?" Tess meant only to be kind. "How's he holding up?"

  Wilma allowed herself another tight, mirthless smile. "Hasan has been dead for almost a decade. He was shot to death in Detroit. A robbery in the neighborhood deli that he owned, where he had done nothing but perform a thousand kindnesses to the very people who ended up killing him. So you see, my husband knew something about being born outside the ballpark, too. Perhaps you'd like to come home with me, explain to my mother-in-law your theories about the underclass and why they deserve your sympathy and protection more than her son."

  It wasn't often that Tess allowed someone the last word, but Wilma Youssef had earned it. She bent over her drink, her face hot in a way that no cocktail could ever cure, no matter how light and springlike the recipe.

  When she looked up again, Wilma Youssef was gone.

  19

  Tess never pretended to greater street smarts than she had. There was strength to be gained by admitting one's weaknesses, if only because one could then compensate for them.

  But even her most naïve neighbor—that would be Mrs. Gilligan, a blithe eighty-five-year-old who still slathered pinecones with peanut butter in order to bring chickadees to the evergreens outside her kitchen window—would have made the car parked outside Tess's house as a government vehicle. Boxy and nondescript, it could serve no other purpose than the transport of Very Official People on Very Official Business.

  I could just keep going, Tess thought. Head to Mr. Parrish's drinking spot of choice, the Swallow at the Hollow, down a few beers, eat some fried mozzarella sticks. Wilma Youssef had put Tess over her daily limit for unplanned encounters.

  Problem was, she was going so slowly that she had already been made by her men-in-waiting. There was nothing to do but suck it up and find out what they wanted.

  The three men who emerged from the car struck Tess as a mismatched set, although she couldn't have said why. One of these guys is not like the other, as they might have sung on Sesame Street. It wasn't that two were white and one was black, or that two were young and one was on the far side of middle age. If anything, she would have picked the young white guy as the odd guy out. He was so filled with nervous energy that his dark, bristly hair practically danced with static. The other two seemed calm and stoic, more self-contained.

  "Miss Monaghan," the manic one began, giving it a hard g.

  "Let me guess, you're here from the government and you want to help me."

  At least the older one smiled at the old joke, or pretended to.

  "We want you to help us, actually," he said, stepping neatly into the role of good guy. So what was the third one's function? "If we could go inside…"

  "IDs," she demanded. "Not business cards, but whatever official-issue stuff you've got."

  She studied the two badges and plastic ID that were handed to her as if she could spot fake ones: Barry Jenkins, FBI; Mike Collins, DEA; Gabriel Dalesio, U.S. attorney.

  "Quite the task force," she said. "No ATF? Customs? Postal inspectors?"

  "All in good time," the old one, Jenkins, said, and although he was just playing along, Tess felt the goose-prickly chill that her mother described as someone walking over her grave.

  "I don't talk without my lawyer present."

  "Oh, it's not that official," Jenkins said, the epitome of avuncular. "In fact, Gabe and I watched your interview with Howard County, so in a sense we've already done the lawyer thing. This is more of a friendly conversation. A social call."

  "Then I can ask you to come back when I feel more like having visitors?"

  "Well, no." He smiled, ever so apologetic.

  "Would you please wait here while I go inside and call my lawyer?" She unlocked the door, peeling a "We missed you" sticker from FedEx off the glass. Must be something Crow had ordered. She scrawled her name on the back, reattached it, and closed the door pointedly behind her.

  They ignored her, of course, filing in behind her as if she hadn't asked them to stay outside. Tess would have done the same thing if she had their authority. The dogs inspected the men with interest. Esskay, the attention slut, showed her usual lack of discrimination. Miata, however, reared back when Collins reached out to scratch her behind the ears. Great, her dog was acting like a racist.

  "Back up, guys—I mean the dogs. Although, well…" She hustled the dogs into the kitchen, where she dialed Tyner from behind the closed door. No answer at home or office, and he didn't pick up his cell. Damn his unending honeymoon bliss with Kitty. He was probably feeding her raw oysters at Charleston, or sharing the gingerbread with lemon chiffon sauce at Bicycle. She left messages at all the numbers—his office, his cell, Kitty's business, Kitty's cell, their home above the bookstore—but if Tyner and Kitty were having a romantic evening out, voice mail wouldn't be his first priority upon arriving home.

  Desperate, she dialed one last number. "Get here now," she hissed, allowing no greeting, offering no explanation. She then returned to the living room, where the three men were inspecting her home décor in such a way that the most innocuous items now seemed sinister, redolent of meaning—the Mission-style furniture, the small legal bookcase filled with Crow's most precious books, not rare titles per se, but ones he prized highly nonetheless: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Confessions of a Mask, Don Quixote, Tally's Corner. Determined not to betray her own persona, she turned on a neon sign that Crow had given her for Christmas a few years back, the one that proclaimed HUMAN HAIR in bright red letters.

  "Can I get you anything?" she asked, as if she were vapid enough to confuse this with a social call. "Water, beer, wine, crackers, cheese, raisins, nuts—"

  Jenkins raised his hand, uninterested in the contents of Tess's pantry. "That won't be necessary. We just need to talk to you, unofficial-like."

  "I really don't want to talk without a lawyer here."

  "We could take you downtown, wait for your lawyer to meet us there. If it's going to be like that, we might as well go all the way, right?"

  His tone was friendly as ever, his manner casual, but Tess didn't miss the implicit threat in his words. She took a seat at the head of her dining room table, and the men followed her lead. Perhaps she could bluff her way through this, speaking without saying anything.

  "We just want to impress upon you how important it is that you tell us now, without further delay, who your source is."

  "And where he is," put in Collins, the DEA agent. Why DEA? That was still troubling her.

  "I can't answer those questions."

  "You mean you won't."

  "Okay, to be precise, I won't answer the first, but I can't answer the second."

  "You told Howard County police that he left town."

  "He or she. That's my understanding, yes. I haven't spoken to the source directly, however. In fact, I haven't had any contact with the source since I arranged the meeting with the Beacon-Light reporters a week ago."

  "Tell us this," said the prosecutor, Dalesio, the one who struck Tess as the odd man out. "Was your source a number-one male?"

  Tess actually understood the police jargon, although it seemed strange for a federal prosecutor to speak as if he were on police radio.

  "A black man," Jenkins supplied when she didn't ans
wer right away. "African-American."

  "I'm not going to answer that question."

  "Why not?"

  "I'm not going to provide any identifying information. And I want to point out that I still haven't assigned a gender to the source. You may use ‘he' and ‘him' if you like, but I'm not going to do that."

  Jenkins rested his hands on his belly in the manner of a beloved uncle settling in after a particularly satisfying Thanksgiving meal. "African-American, that's not exactly a big clue in a city that's sixty-six percent black—and where ninety percent of the homicide victims are black men."

  Tess raised an eyebrow. She was conscious of what she was doing—by refusing to give the expected answer, she was making them consider the possibility that the source was white, throwing them off the trail. The main thing was not to say anything untrue, no matter how trivial. That required a lot of self-control for Tess, who was used to lying in work situations.

  "So if the source isn't a black man," Jenkins continued, his voice a calm and easygoing drone, "then we can rule out that he's the young man who was staying at your home last week."

  Any sense of control she had vanished.

  "Collins here canvassed your neighborhood yesterday, asked some questions about you. Your neighbors find you a, uh, colorful personality. Your comings and goings attract more attention than you might realize."

  This was news to Tess, who thought she had successfully disappeared into this leafy, quiet neighborhood, taking on the camouflage of seminormalcy, just another working gal. Oh, sure, there were her dogs, especially Esskay, who was notorious for trying to eat the smaller dogs in Stony Run Park, mistaking them for squirrels and rabbits. And Crow, with his handsome face and exuberant personality, was much beloved by the not-so-desperate housewives who swapped recipes with him at the local coffeehouse. There was the time she had come home to find an intruder in the house and had ended up crawling across the yard on her belly, skirt up to her hips, gun in hand. But even this had seemed all so Anne Tyler idiosyncratic, the kind of gentle lunacy on which North Baltimoreans prided themselves. Certainly she was no more notable than Mr. Parrish, with his nightly drunken coasts.