Hush Hush

by Lippman, Laura

  He had laughed. “Tess, you had a Bob Ewell encounter. You’re Boo Radley, coming out of nowhere to save your family. The Tiger Mothers have nothing on you.”

  It was nice to laugh together. But it didn’t mean the events of today would be readily banished. That note, the one in the grocery bag. How Tess had hated feeling judged as a parent. But she would continue to be judged. She knew that. She would judge others. Emmett Verlaine had felt judged, too. He was a horrible person. Yet horrible people can feel real pain.

  Tess found Carla Scout’s copy of In the Night Kitchen in the front hallway and carried it to the girl’s room. But, no, her copy was already there. This must be the one she had taken from Melisandre’s house, with blue crayon scribbles all over it and, toward the end, even some practice letters: A A A.

  Only Carla Scout hadn’t started making letters, not recognizable ones.

  Maybe it’s not your daughter’s fault. Tess had thought Alanna was cautioning her to assume that was so in all cases. But, no, she meant it literally. This has been Alanna’s book, as a child. She recognized these crayon marks. She knew the book was hers. She knew—Oh, man.

  Okay, there was no way Tess could sleep now. She glanced at the clock: 4:00 A.M. How early could she call Detective Tull? Did the fact that he was a friend mean she had to be kinder or crueler to him on a Sunday morning?

  She waited until 7:15, about ten minutes past sunrise, and he affirmed her hunch. But the call to Tull was the easy one to make. The call to Tyner was going to be much harder.

  9:45 A.M.

  Sandy was fifteen minutes early for the meeting with Tyner and Tess. That was intentional. He had the box of electronics seized the day after the murder, provided by Tyner’s very obliging receptionist. He also had a thermos of his own coffee, which he knew was borderline rude, but he preferred his coffee to anyone else’s.

  “Thanks for agreeing to meet here,” Tyner said. “I didn’t want to leave Kitty alone, after the events of yesterday. She’s still sleeping in, a sure sign of how upset she was. She’ll stay in bed past nine on a weekend, but she never sleeps that late. Besides, I’m sure Tess is wrong about this. It won’t be the first time she’s gone off half-cocked.”

  “She is emotional,” Sandy said agreeably, wanting to sound agreeable. He and Tyner had never been alone, without the buffer of Tess. On paper, they should get along. But it was hard to know. And any rapport they had was probably going to disappear once Sandy said what was on his mind.

  “Have you—” Tyner asked.

  “Not yet. I thought we should all do it together. You, me, and Tess. Her brainstorm, her show.”

  “She’s running late,” Tyner said. “She’s not always punctual. It makes me crazy.”

  “No, I’m early. On purpose. I needed to talk to you. Man to man.”

  “Is it about Tess? I concede, she’s impossible at times, but—”

  “No, this is about you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He had started, he might as well plunge in. “Don’t fuck up what you’ve got, okay?”

  “Excuse me?” Sandy glimpsed the fearsome Tyner that he had thought was largely a figment of Tess’s imagination. Maybe if you had known this guy since you were a young woman, maybe if he had been your rowing coach, he was fearsome. Sandy, unencumbered by this history, just saw a prickly guy who used anger as a bully might.

  “I’ve seen the transcript. From your interview with Melisandre. Tess showed me.”

  “How—why—This is unconscionable. Harmony Burns had no right to share that.”

  “No one wanted to meddle, okay? Just so you know. You were, like, collateral damage. The transcript exists because—It’s not important. The transcript exists. I read it. And I’m here to tell you, as a guy, that you are fucking things up. And I know why.”

  A man in a wheelchair can’t storm away in a huff. But he can make little circles, backing and filling as if trying to get into a tough parking spot. “You’ve been in Tess’s employ for only a year and you’re picking up her worst habits. Nosy. Intrusive. Know-it-all.”

  “Which doesn’t mean I’m not right. Look, I had the greatest wife in the world. My wife was strong, stronger than me, although she weighed maybe a buck and change. She was tiny. On our first date—That’s not important. I’m trying to tell you, I know what it’s like to be married to a woman who doesn’t seem to need you, you know? And maybe I know what it’s like to want a woman who leans on you, makes it seem like you’re the only person who can help her. Maybe I had a time or two when I thought that’s what I wanted. That’s neither here nor there. What I’m trying to tell you is that these women, who seem so together, who act as if they don’t even care if you show up every day? They need you, too. Don’t lose sight of that.”

  Tyner crossed his arms over his chest like a sulky child. “I never did.”

  Sandy could stop there. But he wouldn’t. “She could have used you last night. And where were you? With Melisandre.”

  “That’s a rotten thing to say.”

  “I know. But you know what? I want you to figure out now, before we do what we’re going to do, that you’re not responsible for Melisandre. You couldn’t save her then and you’re not responsible for what’s happening now.”

  “I wish I could believe that were true.”

  “It’s nothing but ego to think otherwise. Yeah, she came back for you. Her daughters, but also you. Still not your fault.”

  A long, brooding silence. Sandy sat on the other thing he wanted to say, about how Tyner shouldn’t worry about his inability to protect Kitty physically. That would be too much. Besides, it wasn’t about having the use of one’s legs. That was the point.

  “We okay?” he asked Tyner.

  “I suppose so. It’s not like we’re buddies.”

  “Easier to hear things sometimes from people not so close to you. One more thing? Don’t tell your wife. About that interview. It’s never going to see the light of day.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Well, then, that’s all good. Want some coffee?”

  “I suppose I can brew it,” Tyner said. “Kitty uses a French press—”

  “However you make it, it won’t be as good as mine.” Sandy rummaged through the cupboards for some cups, came up with two mugs featuring an impressionistic drawing of a woman being chased by a devil. There was a look on the woman’s face that made Sandy think the devil would be sorry if he ever caught her.

  “We are the weaker sex, you know,” he said, pouring the coffee.

  “Let’s keep that between us,” Tyner said.

  Noon

  Tess surveyed the spread she had arrayed on the table in Tyner’s conference room. It wasn’t as lavish as what he had offered the first time Tess had met Melisandre here, not even two weeks ago. But the coffee was fresh, provided by Sandy before he headed out on his assignment, and the bagels were from New York. She had sliced a half dozen and bled on only one of them.

  Melisandre declined everything but coffee.

  “How’s Alanna?” she asked. “Is she still staying at Gloria Bustamante’s? It’s sad that she doesn’t want to see her sister, but I suppose that’s to be expected. Is she still going to her father’s funeral?”

  “These are really good bagels,” Tess said, a conscious nonresponse. “From New York. A day old, though, and I’ve learned that even good bagels don’t age that well. I guess I’m kind of a bagel rookie in my way, despite being Jewish on my mother’s side. I never had a New York bagel before. This is like a whole different species from what they serve at Suburban House.”

  Melisandre didn’t even look at the food. She burrowed deeper in the chair, pulling her wrap closer as if the room were cold.

  “I got the bagels when I went to see Harmony. I’m sorry that I couldn’t report to you in full yesterday, but something came up.” No reason to share her family drama with Melisandre. Although perhaps it would make for a nice bonding moment. “I had a stalker of sorts. Started sending
me notes. Harmless at first, then it escalated. Pretty hairy stuff.”

  True to form, Melisandre asked no questions about what had happened to Tess, said only “My situation didn’t escalate.”

  “Really?” Tess said. “What about the sugar? Don’t you assume that was the second prong of Alanna’s attack against you?”

  She watched, interested to see how nimble Melisandre could be.

  “She never meant to harm me. I’m sure of that.”

  “What about when she went to the house Friday night—do you think she intended to kill her father? Or was she looking for you?”

  “No.” A shocked, offended no. Good. Melisandre seemed to sense her reaction was over the top, and modulated accordingly. “First of all, I don’t think what Alanna did was premeditated. She and her father quarreled. Perhaps Stephen raised a hand to her and she reacted. Who knows?”

  “So you do believe Alanna killed your ex-husband. I thought you told Tyner that you wanted her to go to trial because you expect her to be acquitted?”

  “No, no—I mean, if she is responsible, that’s the only explanation. That she went there to confront him and something went horribly wrong.”

  “Felicia told her you would be there, meeting with him. Perhaps Alanna meant to confront both of you. By last Friday night, she was furious with both of you, according to her father’s old friend, Ethan Hinerman.”

  “Her father had lied to her. About the circumstances of our custody arrangement. He told her he essentially bought her and Ruby from me, a cruel distortion of the facts. I wish she had asked me about it. Because I would have told her what really happened.”

  “It must be so hard to know both your daughters hate you.”

  “Both?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I just assumed that Alanna told Ruby everything she knew. They’re close, right? Or were. Before Ruby decided that she had to go to the police and tell them about Alanna. About the notes, the car seat, which convinced her that Alanna had been out with Joey Friday night.”

  “I—Well, I don’t know.”

  “Right. How could you know? It’s not like you’ve seen either of them for ten years.”

  Tess busied herself with her backpack, bringing out the flavored cream cheeses she had picked up at Sam’s Bagels that morning. “I have some good cream cheese. No lox, though. I didn’t figure you for the lox type. Then again—turns out you’re not the bagel type. There’s orange juice, fresh. They have this totally cool machine at one of the local grocery stores that makes it for you while you watch. And Sandy made the coffee. It’s from our earlier meeting, before he headed out for an errand.”

  “An errand?”

  “More of a job, I guess, but it’s for Alanna. You’re paying for Alanna, so it’s not a conflict for me to do stuff for Gloria. I checked that with Tyner and Gloria this morning. It’s unorthodox, but there’s no legal reason I can’t do legwork for her as long as I remember to keep everything discrete.”

  “Where did you send Sandy?”

  “That’s a trick question, right? You’re testing me, making sure that I respect the boundaries. As I said, I have to keep everything discrete. Keeping things separate—it has to be done sometimes. But you know the value of that, right? Divide and conquer.”

  “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”

  Tess pulled the copy of In the Night Kitchen from her backpack. “So, straight-up confession. My daughter took this from your apartment last week when I went to get the personal electronics. Your phone, the iPad, the laptop, the camera you used when you interviewed Stephen. Harmony wants the camera back, by the way. It’s expensive. I admit, I wasn’t paying close attention, didn’t realize my daughter had taken this book. I’m sorry. I want you to have it back.”

  Melisandre did not reach for the book.

  “I hope,” Tess said, sliding the book closer to her across the table, “that you weren’t too worried when you couldn’t find it.”

  “Why would I have been looking for it?”

  “Because you gathered up all the books, the sources for the notes, and gave them to Ruby, right? Except, one was missing. I checked with Detective Tull this morning. Ruby brought four books—The Lonely Doll, Curious George, The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, and Love You Forever—to headquarters on Thursday. But she couldn’t bring In the Night Kitchen, the source for one of the notes, because you couldn’t find it, I’m guessing. Because my daughter had taken it. Alanna recognized it when she got into my car.”

  “Recognized the book, you mean. Wouldn’t anyone?”

  “No, this copy. A book defaced in blue crayon by a child who’s learning to write. A very precocious child. And guess what letters she practices over and over, on the endpapers?” Tess flipped to the end of the story. “They’re not very good, but you can make them out. A L A N N A.”

  Melisandre pulled on her gold chains, and Tess flashed back to their first meeting, the moment she had identified her tell.

  “I had gathered up a lot of the girls’ things from storage to make their rooms feel more homey. This book must have been among their possessions. But I didn’t have the others. Ruby will tell you as much. They’re hers, she brought them from the house. They have her name in them.”

  Tess sat on the edge of the table. She almost sat in the cream cheese but caught herself in time.

  “She’ll stick to that story. For a while. That errand, the one I sent Sandy on? It was to see Ruby. He’s talking to her right now. And he’ll be gentle as possible. But the detectives won’t. When I tell them that they had the right person all along—and that you set Ruby up to lie to them—they’ll be relentless. They don’t like to be fucked with. They’re funny that way.”

  Melisandre smoothed her hair. It was almost like watching someone play the theremin, the way her hair responded to her hands, settling, curling, coiling.

  “I didn’t ask Ruby to go to the police, much less tell her what to say to them. Quite the opposite. We never spoke of the notes at all. She did tell me that Alanna had quarreled with her father, gone into town—probably to see him, although Ruby couldn’t be sure. I said I would support her in whatever she chose to do, but that I could not give the police any information about Alanna.”

  Tess willed herself to slow down.

  “How did Ruby find you?”

  “On Facebook.” Melisandre smiled. “I’m there under the name Missy Harris. I was proud that she figured that out. But we aren’t ‘friends.’ She used it to write me privately.”

  “And when did she first write you?”

  “The day after filming was canceled. She was disappointed. She wanted to see me. And of course I was eager to see her. So we figured out a way to meet in places where people wouldn’t notice us.”

  “Your apartment?”

  “On the grounds of Fort McHenry.” Then, quickly, with a hint of slyness. “Ruby’s never even been in my apartment.”

  That wouldn’t prevent you from getting the books to her, if she asked for them. But Melisandre was right. The notes didn’t matter. Oh, she was so right about that.

  “Ruby’s never been in your apartment,” Tess repeated. “But you’ve seen her—how many times? You said the first meeting was the day after filming was canceled. Was there another time?”

  “This week. She needed me. You can imagine how upset she was. We saw each other Monday, spoke on Wednesday.” Again, there was that look, the realization that she had a nugget of truth that accrued to her side. “That was before the notes were published. And she called me.”

  “At your suggestion?”

  “What?”

  “Facebook chats are archived,” Tess said, having no idea if this were true, or if she could get access to them. But she had heard somewhere that the British Library was archiving everything on the Internet, so maybe it was true. “If she called you because you told her to, because you wanted to keep the conversation offline, we’ll know that eventually.”

  “I prefer to speak by tele
phone,” Melisandre said. “I’m sorry if you find it suspect that I asked my emotionally overwrought daughter to talk to me instead of typing into a little box.”

  “And that was Wednesday? The day you spoke?”

  “I think so. Yes, I’m sure of it. We spoke Wednesday afternoon and I told her only that she must do what she thought was right, that I would support whatever decision she made. I think seeing the little boy’s car seat in Alanna’s car disturbed her more than anything. The realization that Alanna either took him inside—or left him in the car, outside.”

  “The little boy? You mean their brother.”

  “I don’t think of him that way. Especially now that Stephen’s gone. It’s like a setup to a fairy tale. His widow will never do right by the girls.”

  Tess decided to create a long, luxurious silence by eating a bagel. They really didn’t taste as good on the second day, but she wasn’t eating it for flavor or even sustenance. She wanted to create an unbearably empty space that Melisandre might rush to fill. But Melisandre knew better. She sipped her coffee, glanced at her watch.

  Tess swallowed her last bite and just went for it, hoping the result would be more Hail Mary pass than Pickett’s Charge.

  “And when did you decide to frame Alanna?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Good mock outrage,” Tess said. “Not too over the top.”

  “You are ridiculous. Does Tyner—” Melisandre stood as if to leave.

  “Know everything? Yes, he does, Missy. Yes, he does. Everything. He even knows what it sounds like when a man is dying from massive blood loss.”

  Melisandre sat back down.

  “Here’s the sequence as I see it,” Tess said, checking her fingers for any leftover cream cheese before she used them to tick off the events. “On Friday night, you killed your ex-husband. You did a flurry of busywork to make the case that you couldn’t possibly have just come from the scene of a homicide—typing up your notes, sending the video to Harmony via e-mail attachment. That’s why the video wasn’t in the Dropbox file, by the way. You never got Harmony’s protocols exactly right. The same was true when you filmed Tyner. Both times, you failed to upload the video to Dropbox. You didn’t send the Tyner one at all, but that was probably calculated. You sent the short one with Stephen as an e-mail attachment. So it wasn’t Harmony’s fault that they weren’t there, and she didn’t do anything untoward with them. Except maybe make it possible for me to find the transcripts of both.”