Hush Hush

by Lippman, Laura

  As Tess understood the plan, Gloria would reach out to the state’s attorney over the weekend and arrange for Alanna to sit down for an interview after her father’s funeral. Depending on what kind of agreement was reached, they might be able to put her in juvie, but they’d never be able to keep it confidential. A seventeen-year-old charged with a felony no longer had automatic anonymity. And even if the judge granted her juvenile status, which Tess doubted, the genie of confidentiality could never be wrestled back into the bottle.

  Yet, with all this going on, Melisandre suddenly had a bee in her butt about her “proprietary materials.” She told Tyner—in front of Tess, although she made a point of never speaking to her directly—that she realized Harmony was still accessing the video even after she had tendered her resignation. Melisandre had changed the password to the Dropbox account, but two videos, the ones she had shot, were missing. She found that odd and wanted to make sure that Harmony was not going to release the one with Stephen.

  “She could sell it, for big bucks. Stephen’s last night alive and all. Some sleazy website would buy it,” Melisandre said.

  “I heard it was pretty dull,” Tess offered. She might as well have been a mouse squeaking in the corner. “What’s on the other video?”

  “It’s not important,” Melisandre said. “The thing is, we have to make sure that Harmony knows she can’t use these materials and we have to get anything she might have in her possession.”

  “But if you changed the passwords—”

  “She could have downloaded the material before I did that. Perhaps before she quit.”

  “She quit? You didn’t fire her?”

  “Of course she quit.”

  “Because, you know, you’re quick to fire people.” It was all Tess could do not to point to her own face and say, “Ahem.”

  “Harmony and I parted on good terms. The project was dead. That wasn’t my fault. Nor was it hers. And I agreed to pay her salary for the next two months. That said, she has a strict nondisclosure in her contract with me, and I will not have that violated.”

  “Did you learn that from your ex? The value of a nondisclosure policy?”

  Melisandre could do a pretty good Medusa glare. “Perhaps I did. If only I had learned to lie as well as he did. The things he apparently told Alanna—claiming I colluded with him on the mistrial, that I signed away my rights for money. What horrible lies. He showed no empathy for Alanna, who’s clearly more fragile than he realized.”

  Yet the fragile girl had refused to be in the same room as her mother. She was in Tyner’s office with Gloria Bustamante, while Tyner, Melisandre, and Tess waited in the conference room. The brief moment of reunion had been something to behold—Melisandre reaching a hand out to her daughter’s hair, the girl stepping back out of range and turning her face away, muttering: “I can’t do anything if she’s in the room.” Melisandre had clearly been jolted by this.

  Then again, if he had paid Melisandre for her children—No, Melisandre was especially convincing on that point. Why would she need Stephen’s money? She had plenty of her own, even when it was controlled by a trust before her mother’s death. They had halved various accounts because it was expedient, Melisandre explained. She had surrendered her rights because Stephen convinced her it was in the children’s best interest. He had said they were scared of her, that she had become monstrous in their eyes. He had lied to her.

  His best friend, his mistress—the guy did have a track record for misleading people, Tess had to admit.

  “I did what I thought was right at the time,” Melisandre said, looking Tess directly in the eyes. Person to person, mother to mother. “But what is right can change over a span of time. We see that every day, in arguments over language. What was right ten years ago isn’t what’s right today. My daughters need me. Now that I’m no longer going to be a suspect in Stephen’s death, I should be their guardian.”

  Was it wrong for Tess to think: And paying for Alanna’s legal representation is a great way to show a court that your petition to have your rights reinstated is worth review.

  Their mother-to-mother moment didn’t last long. When Tess balked at going to New York City on a Saturday, Melisandre didn’t care that Tess needed to make child-care arrangements, much less that they had to be unorthodox ones, given that someone was keeping close tabs on Tess and her family.

  So Tess and Crow started the day with Carla Scout in Tess’s car, heading to Johnny’s, a restaurant with a parking lot whose configurations made it a difficult place to lurk or follow a car as it left. Crow and Carla Scout promptly went out the delivery door and back to Crow’s car, while Tess lingered over a cup of coffee and kept watch through the window. The plan was for Crow to take Carla Scout to Kitty’s, where Tess would pick her up when her train returned.

  At 125th Street, the subway emerged from the ground, something Tess had not expected, and she was treated to a view of Harlem. She knew nothing of the neighborhood she would be visiting, but she inferred that it hadn’t been hipsterized, not yet. It looked—honest—not unlike some of Baltimore’s working-class neighborhoods.

  She called Harmony from right outside her apartment. Risky, taking a train—almost three hundred dollars, Tess marveled again, and that was one-way—without knowing for sure if the person was going to be there, but Melisandre had been firm. Harmony must have no advance warning of the visit. The young woman had no job, no boyfriend, Melisandre said. Where would she be on a Saturday afternoon in March?

  Yes, Tess thought now. What could one possibly find to do in New York City on a Saturday? And—fuck me—no answer. But then her phone rang and it was Harmony, calling back.

  “I’m walking home with some bagels,” she said. “Can I call you when I get there?”

  “Actually, I’m standing outside your apartment.”

  “Why?” Harmony’s voice sounded cautious.

  “Oh, you know Melisandre. Everything is urgent, urgent, urgent. She’s got her panties in a bunch about some missing videos.”

  Harmony laughed. “Well, they’re probably very nice, expensive panties, but—I’ll see you in less than a minute.” True to her word she rounded the corner forty-five seconds later.

  The young woman who walked up to Tess seemed more relaxed, happier than the person she had met in Baltimore not even two weeks ago. Harmony offered Tess a bagel. Full from her train breakfast, Tess wanted to say no, but it seemed like a bad idea to say no to a New York bagel. Up in Harmony’s small but charming apartment, Tess chose a sesame and slathered it with chive cream cheese.

  “My neighborhood’s not chic,” Harmony said. It wasn’t offered as an apology, just fact. “But it has a good bagel place. I missed good bagels in Baltimore. No offense.”

  “None taken,” Tess said. It was by far the best bagel of her life. This would be worth an extra sixty dollars on Amtrak. If it was served with a mimosa.

  “So what’s up? What’s missing?”

  “Melisandre is freaked out because she can’t find the two videos she shot, including the one with Stephen.”

  Harmony laughed. “You know why she can’t find them? She never uploaded them.”

  “What?”

  “She did send me a copy of the Stephen interview, but as an e-mail attachment. I would have uploaded it myself, but by the time I realized what she did—well, the password had been changed. Which is fine, it is her material. I have no use for it. But I can’t upload stuff if I don’t have access to the Dropbox, right?”

  “So you have copies of what she did because she sent it to you and she inferred some conspiracy? Sheesh. She thought you were going to sell Stephen’s video to, I don’t know, some sob sister on CNN.”

  “I wouldn’t violate my contract with her.”

  “I don’t think that was the issue.”

  “Sure it was,” Harmony said. “But let me just tell you, there is nothing worthwhile in the interview with Stephen. Nothing. Then again, I don’t think that’s what Melisandre is
worried about. She’s probably worried that I saw the other one. I didn’t watch it, but I read the transcript when it was forwarded to me.”

  “What was the other one?”

  Harmony busied herself with her coffee mug, as if it were the most fascinating thing she had ever seen.

  “Harmony—”

  “She interviewed Tyner, made him go over what happened the day Isadora died. She went to see him. Did you know that? She went to see him. That day. Isadora was apparently left in the car there, too. She had retained Tyner a month before she killed Isadora, but wouldn’t tell him why she needed a lawyer. I didn’t know any of this.”

  “What did they talk about?”

  “How she was still in love with him.”

  Goddamn Missy. She had engineered this mission so Tess would be out of the office all day Saturday. What was she up to?

  “Then,” Tess said firmly, using the tone Carla Scout adopted when she thought certainty was all she needed to achieve a desired result. “How she was still in love with him then.”

  Harmony gave her a half smile. “And now. But she didn’t hear what she wanted to hear, at least not while the camera was on. When I read the transcript, that’s when I knew the film was never the point. And that’s why I quit.”

  “Wait, you said Melisandre was a fuckup, that you didn’t see the Tyner video.”

  “Melisandre is an inconsistent fuckup. She didn’t send me the video of Tyner or upload it, but she remembered to use our transcription app, which kicked an e-mail back to me five days later. That’s how it was set up. If you use the transcription app, it’s automatic. The tape goes to the service, the transcript comes back five business days later.”

  “Five days seems like a long time.”

  “It is, but it costs less. What’s the old adage? You can have cheap, fast, good—choose two. I chose good and cheap. The app we used discounts sharply for every day you’re willing to wait. I transcribe all the videos myself, so it’s not urgent. I just like to have lots of backup. There was some, um, controversy about how my last film was edited. I wanted to have records of exactly what the raw footage contained. Not only video but these third-party transcriptions.”

  “She probably didn’t send the Tyner video on purpose, because it was embarrassing to her.” Please tell me it was embarrassing to her. “And forgot that the transcription app would kick in.”

  “Probably. Because when she went to see Stephen, she remembered to send me the video, but she forgot to use the app. She was pretty sheepish about it, not that it mattered. She was not the ideal partner in some ways. But it was my decision to end the project, not hers. I think she did want to make a film, but it was secondary to—other things. She came back to Baltimore for her children. And for Tyner. I see that now. She wanted to create a new family for herself, a second chance. I can’t be angry at her. Not for this.”

  “I can—Wait, is there something else? Something that does make you angry?”

  “When you called and said you were here, I thought you had figured it out. But I can’t tell you anything. The contract, remember?”

  “Can we play Charades? Twenty Questions?”

  Harmony thought for a moment, then motioned to Tess to remain seated at her old-fashioned art deco table, then came back with an accordion file. “I kept all the receipts on the project. Melisandre’s bills were charged to the film. She submitted her receipts to me, so I could keep track of the overall budget. She was on a per diem, too, a very high one. Still, she submitted all her bills to me because I kept the budget.”

  “So?”

  “Have a look. Oh—and would you like some sugar with your tea?”

  “I’m not having—Wait—are you saying—?”

  Harmony pretended to lock her lips with a key.

  Tess began digging through the receipts. There were several grocery bills, all from the Whole Foods near the Four Seasons. They were remarkably the same—and quite admirable. If you could judge a woman’s character by her grocery bills, then Melisandre was a saint. She went—well, probably sent someone—about once a week, buying largely fresh produce, nuts, almond milk, maybe a little cheese.

  There were four bills overall, one for each week Melisandre had been in Baltimore. The first one showed a purchase of brown and white sugar cubes. Tyner bought those for the tea he prepared. He said Melisandre was used to doing things in a certain style. But it turned out she didn’t even use sugar anymore.

  Nothing on the second receipt, or the third. But the most recent receipt, the one from ten days ago—Melisandre also had bought organic sugar in bulk, eight ounces. There had been a sugar bowl. The sugar had been vacuumed up. But you didn’t vacuum cubes, and if you had cubes, as Melisandre did, and you didn’t bake and you no longer cared for sweets, then why—

  “She roofied her own trainer?”

  Harmony gazed at the ceiling. “I can’t say anything. If anyone asks me, I went to the bathroom and you dug through these receipts while I was out of the room. Look, I can’t prove anything. But Melisandre was worried about the lack of incident in the film. When she didn’t get access to the girls—I don’t know, I guess she decided to create some drama. But she’ll never admit it.”

  “She might if I bluff hard enough.” The sugar bowl. No wonder Alanna had drawn a blank. She didn’t have a clue about what Tess was referring to. Everyone had assumed that the note sender was also the person who had tried to dope Melisandre’s sugar. And Melisandre probably never expected a healthy young man to have such a dramatic reaction. “Harmony, may I—Could I see the transcript of the video with Tyner?”

  “Technically, no. But I think I’ll go back to the bathroom. Notice that I’ll be walking past a wooden filing cabinet, where all the materials relevant to my last project are filed under M.”

  “For Melisandre?”

  “For Medea. She wanted to call it The Medea Project, thinking it witty. She said that’s who people thought she was, so why not embrace it? I was hoping to talk her out of that eventually.”

  “Medea killed her children out of vengeance.”

  “Melisandre doesn’t see it that way. She says she killed them to save them, to spare them lives as slaves when their father remarried.”

  4:00 P.M.

  “Funny, isn’t it?” Gloria Bustamante took a sip of coffee, made a face. It was very old coffee, on the burner in Tyner’s office since morning. “Meeting like this after all those years ago at Howard, Howard & Barr. Of course, it was just Howard & Howard then.”

  Melisandre nodded noncommittally. She had no memory of Gloria. Why would she have noticed this plain woman? Her hunch was that Gloria had left Howard & Howard before she was hired there, then grafted her memories onto Melisandre’s life after she became known, for want of a better word. It happened. Lots of people thought they knew Melisandre.

  But she also sensed something gleeful in the woman’s demeanor. Gloria had been closeted with Alanna for hours today. And she had done good work. The state’s attorney’s office had not only agreed to wait to speak to her until Monday but had also given Alanna permission to attend her father’s funeral, with assurances that she would not be picked up by the cops.

  “Is Alanna going to confess?” Melisandre asked Gloria now.

  “I can’t speak to you about that,” Gloria said. “Privilege.”

  “I’m paying.”

  “You know that’s not relevant.”

  “Is she okay? I’m worried. She seems so fragile.”

  “She has some, ah, interesting ideas. I almost wish she were a little more fragile. Well, more malleable. She has definite opinions about what she wants to do. I wish I could tell you more, but, I’m sorry, I can’t.”

  “I’m her mother.”

  “Not on paper.”

  Oh, that was cruel. Melisandre felt the rush of blood to her face, then remembered Gloria as she had been twenty years ago. The sly, ugly girl, hanging out with that gorgeous African-American lawyer, as if he would ever look twic
e at a woman like Gloria. There had been a third one, too. Gay, southern, given to seersucker. A tight little unit, smug and superior to the other associates for no reason Melisandre could discern.

  “That seems to be a topic of particular interest to Alanna. Guardianship, I mean. She wants to petition to be emancipated. It is her hope that if she were granted status as an adult, she would come into her share of her father’s estate and be able to pay me on her own. I said that the absence of a will would slow the process down. She says she’ll pay you back.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I won’t take her money.”

  A shrug. “That’s between the two of you, of course. The thing is—and this isn’t related to her trial—she wants a say in where Ruby will end up. She thinks she should stay with Felicia.”

  “Only she doesn’t have a say, does she?”

  “No, she doesn’t. I told her that. The court will probably defer to Ruby, given her age.”

  “Does this affect what Alanna will do on Monday? I think you should push for a trial, no matter what.”

  Gloria took another sip of scorched coffee, sighed as if it had suddenly become nectar. “I can’t tell you that. She specifically told me not to tell you that. She just wants to know what it’s going to take for you to stand aside and let Felicia have Ruby.”