Another Thing To Fall

by Laura Lippman

  Tess took the offer, sitting with Alicia in a small den off the kitchen, an addition that appeared to have been made circa 1982, judging by the butternut squash–colored appliances, with a Formica breakfast bar separating the kitchen from the pine-paneled alcove. With only a few small tweaks, it could have passed for cheerfully funky, a retro gem. Instead, it seemed resigned to dowdiness.

  "My folks' place," Alicia said. "My father died ten years ago, my mother just two years ago. When I have the time to renovate, I don't have the funds. When I have the funds, I don't have the time. I don't know. I watch all those home improvement shows, but I think it's decadent, the way we fetishize our homes. Or maybe that's a convenient rationalization for my crap house."

  "It's cozy," Tess said, sucking up, but not completely insincere. "I'm guessing your parents died kind of young?"

  "Dad had that cancer no one can pronounce, the one that steelworkers get from asbestos. Mom went out the old-fashioned way, good old lung cancer." Alicia Farmer fired up a Lucky with a great deal of style and ceremony. "Me, I'm invincible. Or I don't give a shit. I haven't figured out which one it is yet."

  "Wasn't it weird working on Mann of Steel when your dad had worked at Beth Steel?" Tess may have been trying to ingratiate herself, but she also was genuinely interested. "I mean, you had to realize how bogus it was, a thriving steel plant in modern-day Baltimore. Plus, you probably know some of the steelworkers who have raised a stink about it."

  The question seemed to catch Alicia by surprise. She blew smoke at the ceiling while she thought about it. "It's a television show. A guy time-travels after he gets hit on the head. It wasn't exactly a documentary. I have to say, though, you're the first person who ever asked me that particular question about my job at Mann of Steel."

  "What do people usually ask?"

  "What's Johnny Tampa really like, do I ever get to ride in a limo. Shit like that."

  Tess smiled. "I've worked there less than a week, and I've been asked the Johnny Tampa question."

  "What do you say? I told people he had all the personality of particle board, and everyone thought I was kidding. Me, I thought it was kind of unfair to particle board."

  "How did you end up working for them?"

  "The usual Baltimore thing — I know a girl who knows a girl who does the hair of an old friend of John Waters. John's been working with the same people forever and didn't have anything for me. But when his casting director, Pat Moran, heard that Mann of Steel was coming to town, she made inquiries on my behalf. I got hired as Flip's assistant before the pilot was shot, and it was great… for a while."

  "What happened?"

  Alicia looked to the ceiling again, blew more smoke. "Oh, the usual girl-on-girl action. Greer got hired, she wanted my job. Somehow she made it happen."

  Time to go straight at it, Tess decided.

  "Lottie MacKenzie says you photocopied a script and gave it to someone outside the production, that you resigned when asked about it."

  "I resigned because I was so damn sick of Greer's manipulations by then. Who do you think ran to Lottie, blaming me? She was going to get me one way or another. If I had been smarter, I would have gotten out of her way the first time we clashed, asked Lottie for another job in a different department. But by this time, Greer had trashed me so thoroughly that I didn't have a chance. Besides, she had a protector. I never had a chance, once she got him on her side."

  "A protector? Flip?"

  "Ben Marcus."

  Strange. Tess had the impression that Ben didn't particularly like Greer. And then she wondered why she thought that. Perhaps it was just that Ben didn't seem to like anyone, starting with himself. Or perhaps it was because Ben wanted her to think he wasn't particularly fond of Greer, that he had taken every opportunity to run her down. Lottie had said that Greer seemed to be open to any kind of liaison that would give her career a boost.

  "Are you saying…?"

  "I can't say anything for sure. Still, she wheedled her way into the writers' office as an intern, when we really didn't need anyone. Then, all of a sudden — bam, she's got a paying gig, as the second assistant. She was very efficient, however. Meanwhile, phone messages were disappearing from my desk, I didn't get e-mails that I was supposed to get. Penny-ante shit like that."

  "And the script? The one that was found in the dead man's house?"

  Alicia stubbed her cigarette out in a bright yellow ashtray that could probably fetch an outrageous price in some hip little secondhand store. "Truthfully? I don't know shit about it. The guy's name was in the phone log, but I don't remember him, and I never said anything to him beyond ‘I'll pass that on to Flip.'"

  "Pass what on?"

  "Who knows? He was one of a dozen people who called or e-mailed every day, claiming an urgent need to talk to the executive producer. My job was to be politely unhelpful — take the message, send a ‘Thank you for your inquiry' e-mail, whatever. He was one name among many, Wilbur Grace. Hard to forget a name like that. But I sure as shit didn't give him anything. All he ever got from me was ‘Hello,' ‘I'll tell him,' ‘Yes, he's got your number.'"

  "Someone gave him the script and the bible. The man killed himself. And now Greer is dead."

  Alicia studied Tess. "But you just said they're looking for her boyfriend, right?"

  Actually, Tess hadn't said that. "He's officially a person of interest at this point."

  "But it makes sense, especially if she was sleeping with Ben Marcus."

  "Are you saying that you know this for a fact?"

  "I'm saying that I know Ben Marcus has sex so often, and with so little thought, that I wouldn't be surprised if he started humping a doughnut off the craft services cart one day."

  Flip had alluded to the same behavior on Ben's part but said an affair between Ben and Greer was unthinkable. And it was, Tess decided — not because of Ben but because Greer wouldn't settle for anyone less than the boss.

  Her beer finished, Tess decided to let her doppelgänger have the oblivious evening she so clearly desired. She stood. "One last thing—"

  "Home alone, sleeping. That's one thing I don't miss about the old job, those crazy hours." Alicia smiled. "That is what you were going to ask me, right? Where I was the night Greer died?"

  "Actually, I just wanted to use your bathroom."

  The powder room proved to be one of the few projects that Alicia had found the time and money to complete. It had a pretty pedestal sink, a striking light fixture, and one of those state-of-the-art toilets that used a minimum of water. Tess flushed it twice, giddy as a child.

  A few blocks away, Tess pulled over and found a little free wireless bleeding into the air, possibly from the McDonald's. She used it to look up Wilbur Grace on her laptop, see if he was still listed in Baltimore. There he was, Wilbur R. Grace on Elsrode Road, mere blocks from where she sat. How could she not at least drive by, given that it was all but on her way back to Selene's condo?

  And once she found the house, on a dead end that ran into Herring Run Park, how could she not get out, walk around. It was never her intention to break in, of course — or so she told herself as she fiddled with the kitchen window, which slid up so effortlessly that it seemed rude to resist its invitation.

  She flicked the kitchen light switch. No power — it must have been turned off by now — and it only would have drawn the neighbors' attention. But there was a streetlight outside, and once her eyes adjusted, she began to look around, feeling silly. What did she expect to find? A man had killed himself here, hung himself from the ceiling fan above the charming, old-fashioned table, a white metal top with an elaborate black design. It was sad, but it probably didn't have anything to do with Mann of Steel, despite what had been found among his effects.

  "Don't disdain the obvious, Monaghan," she said out loud, keen for company in the dark, achingly quiet house. She wandered into the living room. Like the kitchen in Alicia Farmer's house, it was a Baltimore time capsule, only this one was stuck in the early 1960s
. Why was the furniture still here? Maybe Wilbur Grace had died without a will and everything was being held up by probate. That was a mess, Tess knew from experience, but it would be sorted out eventually. Until then, the house would sit, and — she heard a creak back in the kitchen. Someone else was opening the kitchen window, which Tess had been careful to close behind her.

  Flight or fight? She chose neither, crouching behind the sofa instead. Her eyes had adjusted to the light; that was her one advantage. If someone else was entering through the kitchen window, he — or she — had no more right to be there than she did, so that was a push. She had left her gun in the car — distinct disadvantage. Burglars tended to be averse to violence, hence their choice of profession. But when confronted, they could be unpredictable.

  Voices. There were two of them, male and female, trying to whisper but not having much success. "Are you sure—?" "Yes, I've done it before." "But what if—?" "He's dead, no one's here, no one's ever here." "It's creepy, though, him dying here."

  By then, the duo was in the living room, heading toward the stairs, two teenagers, a six-pack of beer dangling from the boy's hand. Tess should have let them go. It was no business of hers if two kids wanted to take a shot at adding another stat to the city's out-of-wedlock pregnancy rate. She could have let them pass, then retreated silently out the window. She was trespassing, too.

  "You come here often?" Tess called out when they were about halfway up the stairs.

  The girl screamed, and the boy dropped the six-pack, which bounced down the steps and broke free of the plastic rings, rolling across the wooden floor. Surprised and overwhelmed, they couldn't begin to figure out what to do. The girl tried to run down the stairs as the boy ran up, only to block each other.

  "Don't choose a career in any kind of crisis or emergency work," Tess said, picking up a beer. She was tempted to open it for the sheer insouciance of it, but it would only spray everywhere, making a mess. Besides, she wasn't in the mood for a Natural Light. She was never in the mood for a Natural Light.

  "Who are you?" the boy asked. "What are you doing here?"

  "Let's just say I have a right to be here," she bluffed, "which is probably not your situation. Breaking and entering, drinking alcohol when you're under twenty-one, getting ready to have sex with a minor—"

  "I'm a minor," the boy protested, even as the girl said: "We were not!"

  "The law doesn't care about the boy's age," Tess said, having no idea if this were true. "But I'll tell you what. I'll forget about everything I saw and everything you've done, if you'll just tell me some things I need to know about the man who lived here. You did know him, right?"

  "Mr. Grace?" the boy said. "Yeah."

  "What was he like?"

  "Weird."

  That was more than she had hoped for, actually. She was counting on getting the usual "Nice man, quiet man" rap, the default of incurious neighbors everywhere. Translated: I never paid attention to him.

  "How so?"

  "He'd invite the neighborhood kids over to watch movies."

  Well, Crow did that with Lloyd.

  "And that was okay, he would give us sodas and stuff, screen us these old movies, then ask us what we thought."

  Again, not so different from what happened in her home.

  "And he even wanted to make movies with some of us."

  Shit.

  "Not like that," the young man added hastily. Perhaps he had told the story before and always gotten the same reaction. "Movies with stories, that he had written out. Short. They weren't exactly the Matrix, but they were kind of good. Only he stopped doing that, like, a year ago or so."

  "Did he keep the movies?"

  "Shit, I don't know. His equipment was old school, some big clunky camcorder, VHS tapes. Who still has that shit?"

  Tess glanced around the room. There was a large armoire in one corner of the living room. Using a pinpoint flashlight on her key ring, she opened it and found a television and a cable box, but no DVD player, and no VCR. Below the television was a shelf with films in both formats, mostly classics, but there were no homemade movies among them.

  "You steal this stuff?" she said.

  "What stuff?"

  "You said he watched movies, he had to have something to watch them on."

  "No," the boy said, adamant, even a little offended. "I wouldn't do nothing like that. I come over here to — you know, have fun. I'm not a thief."

  The girl spoke up, outraged. "This is the first time I've ever been here."

  The boy smiled sheepishly at Tess, as if expecting her to take his side, to understand that a super-suave Herring Run stud such as himself — hadn't he sprung for an entire six-pack of Natural Light — couldn't be expected to be tied down to just one girl.

  "But there was equipment," Tess insisted, examining the armoire. In the back, several small holes had been bored into the wood so cords could be passed through.

  "Like I said, I hadn't come over to see Mr. Grace for a couple of years. He liked the younger kids, mainly." Again, he seemed to know what Tess was thinking. "Not like that. When you're little, it's not embarrassing, doing that shit, running around and pretending to be other people. But you outgrow it, you know?"

  Tess studied the living room, best as she could see it in the dim light. Nothing else seemed missing, or off. The television was light enough and, although not a flat-screen, new enough to fetch a decent sum at a pawnshop. If there had been a burglary, why not take that as well?

  "What's upstairs?"

  "Bedrooms," said the playboy of Northeast Baltimore, leering, and Tess froze him with a look. "Not trashed or anything," he added. "I been coming and going from here since he died, and I ain't noticed anything missing. He didn't really have any friends. Just the little kids."

  "You left the window unlatched?"

  He shrugged, almost proudly. He wasn't altogether dim-witted. Tess stared him down.

  "The first time, I came through the cellar," he admitted. "He has them Wizard of Oz doors."

  It took her a second to get that reference, but it made her smile. Some old Baltimore houses did have storm cellar doors, although tornadoes were rare.

  "Once I pried them open, I bolted 'em shut from the inside. I just leave the one window unlocked, on the back porch."

  "Very considerate," Tess conceded. "How about I give you guys a ride home? It's getting late, and it's a school night."

  "Well, we don't live far…" he began, then realized it hadn't really been a question.

  "And I'll take the beer," Tess said. "For your own good."

  "Like you never drank when you was my age."

  "I'm not saying that. I'm just saying I didn't get caught." She regarded the beer with little affection. Crow could always use it for crab boil, she guessed. "By the way, drink what you want, but when it comes to birth control, don't do that on the cheap, okay? That'll cost you."

  Chapter 21

  Martin Tull was, as Tess had assured Flip, good police. Smart, methodical, with a kind of confidence that can't be faked and a work ethic that few could equal. While some detectives welcomed homicides because they started the overtime clock, Tull was inclined to work eighteen-hour days no matter the circumstances. Going on nine-thirty, it was a toss-up whether he would be free, but Tess decided to try to lure him out anyway.

  "A man has to eat," she said persuasively. "And drink."

  He agreed to meet her at Burke's, a reliable all-night refuge, the kind of place that made its living off cops, emergency room personnel, reporters, and insomniacs. Tess decided to have mozzarella sticks and a beer. Tull, as was his habit, ordered coffee, black. Tess wasn't sure she had ever seen him drink anything else. Come to think of it, in all the years she had known Tull, she wasn't sure she had ever seen him eat.

  "A shot of whiskey would be healthier," she said. "It reduces stress. And who knows how long that coffeepot has been sitting on the burner?"

  "I love the coffee here," he said. "It's boiled down to the essenc
e. It's like… caffeine syrup."

  "Are you trying to get a second wind, or just maintaining for the drive home?"

  "Home, I guess. We can't find the boyfriend. Which, of course, makes me happy in the long run — just convinces me that he's the one we want — but I wouldn't have minded finding him today."

  "So, a dunker?"

  "I think so, yeah. Based on how his family's acting. Alternating between ‘Oh, JJ just disappears sometimes, goes fishing up at Deep Creek Lake when the weather is like this,' then, in the next breath, mentioning what a bitch the dead girl is, how badly she behaved, and then ‘Not that we'd wish any harm on her.'"

  "Behaved badly how?"

  "JJ was convinced there was another guy — his mother let that slip, and tried to backpedal. From what I gather, the two were high school sweethearts, years ago, got back together in the past year, but the mother never thought the girl's heart was in it."

  "What did they say at his job?" Tess asked, knowing that Tull would have checked with the suspect's co-workers as well.

  "All they know is that his mom called in early Wednesday, said he was sick, too sick to even talk on the phone, expected to be out all week. Look, I've got a patrol on his house. He's going to try and come back, maybe as early as tonight. He's not bright. Even his own mother isn't putting him forward for genius status. He's probably scared and freaked out, trying to figure out if there's anywhere he can go on the lam. But he doesn't have the resources."

  Tess whisked a mozzarella stick through the marinara sauce. She had always liked this particular brand of bar food, but her fondness for it had soared when it was demonized by the Center for Nutrition and Public Policy as one of the worst possible foods to eat. She kept a mental list of such foods — pad thai, kung pao chicken, fettuccine Alfredo — and tried to eat them as frequently as possible.

  "I know the rule of thumb is that the obvious suspect is the obvious suspect," Tess said. "My only concern is if there's any connection between him and the problems that have been dogging this production. Could this guy be our arsonist, for example?"