Another Thing To Fall

by Laura Lippman

  He had a point. True, every job needed to be dramatized in a film or a television show, but the real nature of work was something missing in much of what Tess watched, which had always puzzled her. She was fascinated by what other people did, how they spent their days. This may have been the consequence of an adult life spent as a professional observer — first as a reporter, now as an investigator.

  Now that Johnny had gotten going, he was hard to stop. "I needed to know what this guy did with his days. Mann is like Dorothy, in The Wizard of Oz. It's not logical for him to want to go back to modern-day Baltimore — his industry is dying, there's enormous pressure on his family, his job is drudgery. But it's home, it's what he knows, and not even Betsy Patterson, the beautiful belle of nineteenth-century Baltimore, is reason enough to stay." He finished off his orange juice. "It was better. When they said good-bye in episode eight. And I'm not saying that just because they're building up Selene's part. That's the show I signed up to make. Now that they're dicking with it—"

  Two women with strollers — hip moms, in stylish clothes and fresh makeup, their children tricked out like the accessories they were — had stopped on the sidewalk outside Bonaparte Bread and were peering inside the restaurant, their attention obviously focused on Johnny Tampa. They pointed at him, laughing and nodding, as if the plate glass that separated them was just another television screen, as if he couldn't see them. He appeared — not oblivious, exactly, but resigned to such gawking.

  "So Greer helped you, out of the goodness of her heart. And was there anything Greer wanted from you?"

  He wasn't dumb, not by a long shot. "She didn't come on to me. Trust me, I know all the ways that women hit on guys."

  "Yet her boyfriend thought she was cheating on him."

  "He probably just didn't buy the long hours she was working. Most civilians don't have a clue as to what we do. But all that girl did was work. She was driven."

  "So her boyfriend comes by the office, confronts her — maybe over the ring, maybe over his belief that she's two-timed him. But, if Greer was the eager little beaver everyone says she was, wouldn't his late-night visit have affirmed that? He found her working late. How does that escalate into him beating her to death?"

  Tampa rubbed his jaw, where there was a faint red mark and the beaded scab of a fresh scratch, left by a woman's fingernail. He had been quick to wade into the fight yesterday, heedless of what many would consider his most valuable asset. He had, in fact, lived up to Tess's teenage version of him, at least for that moment.

  "You know what? I don't know. It's beyond me, why people do what they do. Hey — that friend of yours, the scary chick — does she have a boyfriend?"

  And in that instant, any remnant of her crush was vanquished. Not out of jealousy over his interest in Whitney, but in his indifference to the story behind the death of someone he had known.

  "Call her," Tess said, sincere in her hope that he would. Because Whitney would swallow Johnny Tampa whole and spit out the bones, assuming there were any bones left in that doughy body.

  Speak of the preppy devil — here was Whitney, Selene in tow, almost literally. She was dragging Selene by the elbow, piloting her into the bakery, as insistent as a tugboat guiding an ocean liner.

  "You are going to eat something if I have to stand over you with a knife," she hissed at the girl. "Sugar-free gum is not a food group."

  Johnny brightened, presumably at the sight of Whitney, then frowned when he realized she was here in her professional capacity as bodyguard/nutrition counselor.

  "I eat," Selene protested feebly. "I eat a lot when I'm on set. I just have a very high metabolism. And it was my idea to come here, remember?"

  Whitney brought two croissants, almond and chocolate, over to the adjoining table, then went back to the counter to fetch a large glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice. Tess had assumed that Selene would poke the croissants and break them into ever-smaller flakes, but she dutifully forked up bite after bite, finishing the chocolate one and making it halfway through the almond under Whitney's approving gaze. Tess found herself hoping that Whitney might actually feed Selene, zooming pieces of croissant into her mouth. "Here comes the Escalade. Here comes the Bentley. Here comes the Prius." But such drastic measures were not needed, although Selene promptly excused herself to the restroom when she was finished.

  "I should probably follow her, but I'm exhausted," Whitney said. "She tried to sneak out twice last night."

  "She did? You should have called me at home."

  "I let you sleep, knowing you had this meeting with what's-his-name. St. Pete, Tampa, whatever."

  Johnny, nonplussed in Whitney's presence, simply nodded, smiling inanely.

  "Besides, I don't think she's bulimic. And she's probably telling the truth about her metabolism. Oh, if she let herself go, she might become a size four verging on six, but she doesn't have to worry about her weight."

  "Actually, she does," Johnny said. "A size six is way too big for a woman who wants to play romantic leads. Sorry, but that's how it is."

  "Hmmmmph," Whitney said, reaching into Selene's bag and extracting her iPhone. "Might as well search her incoming and outgoing calls while she's in there. Jesus, I can't believe how many people she has in her address book. Oh, wait — I can check her e-mails, too. God, I love Mac."

  "That's so… rude," Johnny said, genuinely offended on Selene's behalf. "Maybe illegal."

  "I don't read anything, or listen to voice mail. I just check the senders. You know what I found under her bed this morning, when I was looking for alcohol?"

  "Alcohol?" Tess asked, reaching for the iPhone and running her own check. Several calls from Ben — but nothing to him.

  "No, not a drop, not even a can of malt liquor. I found two books — Edith Hamilton's Greek mythology and a copy of Kristin Lavransdatter."

  "You might have sparked the interest in Hamilton," Tess said. "When you told her that her name was from the goddess of the moon, as opposed to a Mormon soap opera."

  "Yeah, but Kristin Lavransdatter? And it was the third volume, to boot, The Cross. Could she possibly have read volumes one and two?"

  "Maybe she thought Lavransdatter was Kirsten Dunst's name before she changed it," Tess offered.

  "Just because she's an actor doesn't mean she's stupid," Johnny said with surprising heat. "Okay, well — Selene isn't a raging intellectual. But you shouldn't mock her for reading. Maybe that's why the books were under the bed in the first place, because she thought you would make fun of her. For all Selene knows, this Lard-butter, or however you say it, is one of those books everyone has read, and she's embarrassed not to know it."

  Whitney nodded. "And maybe monkeys will fly out my—"

  Tess interrupted, hoping to placate Johnny. "At the very least, it could be for a film. The author was a Nobel Prize winner. Maybe someone's interested in adapting it."

  "It's already been adapted," Johnny said. "By Liv Ullmann, back in the 1990s. But, you're right, that wouldn't rule out a Hollywood version, although I haven't heard anything about that on the grapevine."

  Johnny was blushing furiously, his gaze downcast. His crush on Whitney must be really bad, Tess reasoned, if he couldn't even make eye contact. Selene came trip-trapping back to the table in her ridiculously high heels, and Johnny muttered: "Gotta go."

  "God, he's so jealous of me he can't stand it," Selene said cheerfully. "He's even jealous that I had a stalker and he didn't, that I was in most of the photographs and he wasn't."

  A shred of conversation, a piece of unfinished business, came back to Tess. "The photograph at the memorial — was that one of the stalker's?"

  "I told you that," Selene said, stroking her hair, oblivious to the fact that she was leaving little flakes of pastry behind. "I said it was the guy."

  "You said — oh, never mind. Was Greer in all the other photos as well? The ones taken by the dead man, Wilbur R. Grace?"

  "Don't be ridic. I mean, Greer was in some, but so was Ben. And F
lip and Lottie. But I was in most of them. At least — I was in all the ones I saw. I don't know, maybe there were others, but who's going to be silly enough to stalk Greer?"

  Chapter 29

  The not-the-Meyerhoffs Meyerhoffs lived in Baltimore Highlands, a county neighborhood that people found mostly by accident, taking a wrong turn en route to the Harbor Tunnel. The streets here were named for states, but the pattern was maddeningly indecipherable to Tess — Louisiana led to Tennessee, then Alabama, which was followed, of course, by Pennsylvania, then Michigan and Florida. The Meyerhoffs lived in a brick semidetached on the bottom rung, Delaware Avenue, just north of the thruway to the tunnel, where traffic was a dull, roaring constant.

  Before venturing here, Tess had run a quick computer check on Jeanette Meyerhoff. Or, more correctly, paid a premium to have her own ad hoc hacker search the court files and police records. Her suspicion was that a woman who felt comfortable starting a fight at a memorial service might be prone to other crimes of impulse. She was at once gratified and unnerved by how correct her hunch was. Jeanette had a pretty lengthy arrest record — public intoxication, resisting arrest, a string of assault charges. And three of her four sons had amassed similar records, with one currently serving real time down in Jessup, on a drug distro charge.

  Yet the only paper on John "JJ" Meyerhoff was a warrant issued three years ago for failure to appear in traffic court. Based on public records, JJ was the white sheep of his family.

  "He was the sweetest of my boys," Jeanette Meyerhoff said, pouring Tess a generic grape soda. She had been surprisingly affable, almost eager to talk, when Tess showed up at the door. Perhaps it was the sheer novelty of finding someone who wanted to hear JJ's side of the relationship with Greer.

  "I know — that's not saying much. We're scrappers. But JJ was my baby. And smart. Not book smart, although he did good enough in school, but handy. When Mr. Meyerhoff stepped out ten years ago, it was JJ who kept the roof over our heads. And by that, I mean he got up there and patched the damn thing. Patched the roof, caulked the windows. He put this kitchen in hisself."

  There was nothing extraordinary about the kitchen in which they sat, a clean and simple space, but Tess supposed that was an achievement of a kind.

  "He and Greer were high school sweethearts, right?"

  "Yeah, but she wasn't Greer then, but Gina. The Greer thing is some made-up name she gave herself, after she moved away. But even in high school her family thought she was too good for him."

  "Greer's — Gina's — father was a teamster, right?"

  "Who told you that? He drove a bread truck for H and S." But Greer had claimed to be the daughter of a teamster when she first inquired about a job with the production. The girl had been scheming from jump. "They were always full of themselves, the Sadowskis, living west of the boulevard, over toward Linthicum."

  Baltimore was full of such arbitrary geographic distinctions. East or west of the boulevard, above or below the avenue, north or south of the water tower.

  "How did they get back together, then?"

  "Well, Miss Hoity-Toity had gone out to Hollywood, but her father got sick. Emphysema. And her mother said she had to come home, help her through, because she had to take a second job to pay for everything, and her old man couldn't be left alone. JJ saw Greer at the Checkers on Belle Grove and it started all over again. He was crazy for her."

  She paused, as if regretting her choice of words. "I mean to say, he loved her no matter what she did. She could feed him a shit sandwich, and he would ask for a chaser of piss. He thought the sun and the moon rose in her. He proposed, she said yes. Then she got her promotion and had less and less time for him. I could see the writing on the wall, even if JJ couldn't."

  Mrs. Meyerhoff had put out a package of Hydrox cookies with the grape soda, and Tess had to concentrate fiercely not to wolf down the entire package. Hydrox had disappeared from the snack food chain at least a decade ago, but such items often lived on in the tiny groceries and delis of Baltimore. Those corner stores were like archaeological treasure troves of discontinued food items. Every now and then, she unearthed a dusty bottle of Wink from deep in the cooler of such places, and it felt as thrilling as if she had found evidence of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

  "You said she was cheating on him."

  Mrs. Meyerhoff examined the backs of her hands. They were sinewy, with knobby, ringless fingers. Had it hurt, watching her beloved youngest son purchase a ring for someone else, while her own hands went bare?

  "I didn't have stone-cold proof," she admitted. "But I kept telling JJ, add it up. There was a man who called their apartment at all hours, demanding to talk to Greer."

  "Did he hang up when JJ answered?"

  "No, but he wouldn't give his name. Sometimes Greer took the calls, sometimes she didn't, and she would say to him, ‘Don't call me here.' She started working longer and longer hours."

  "I think the long hours were legitimate," Tess said. "The one thing that everyone agrees on is that she was truly a hard worker."

  "What I think," Mrs. Meyerhoff said, sliding a Pall Mall out of its maroon pack, "is that she had set her cap for that boss of hers."

  "Flip? He's married. Happily, I hear." And seemingly oblivious to Greer, but it didn't seem polite to mention that. Tess didn't want to tell a grieving mother that the woman who had been such a prize to her son was nothing but a factotum to her boss.

  "Yes, but that girl had patience to burn. I'll give her that. When Greer wanted something, she found a way to get it."

  "Greer told people at work that she broke up with JJ. Her mother said it was the other way around, and you say it was all because he thought she was cheating. What happened?"

  "I don't really know. We can't know now, can we? A few weeks ago, they had a fight. You know how it goes — she was late, he complained that he had waited for her for over an hour, and next thing you know, he's saying, Well, if you feel that way, maybe you don't want to marry me, and she says, Okay I won't. He didn't think it was permanent. I guess that's why he went to see her that night. She wasn't taking his calls, she had changed the locks at their apartment. It was like — how do I put this? It was like she tricked him into breaking up with her, just so she could keep the ring. She was a greedy girl."

  Tess sipped her grape soda, ate another Hydrox. Mindful of the fact that Mrs. Meyerhoff had a short fuse, she searched carefully for the right words. "All these things — the breakup, Greer's refusal to speak to him, the disagreement over the ring — they tend to support the police's version of events. He went to see her, maybe with the best intentions of the world, but she angered him, and well…."

  Mrs. Meyerhoff nodded. "I know. And then he gets out of his car when the police pull him over, doesn't stop when they yell at him — I know what it looks like. But what if the reason he was crazy is that he had just heard Greer was dead? I know the police thought I was lying, but he really did go off fishing. It's what he did when he felt bad. He woke me up that night, asking me to call in sick for him the next morning, and he headed out. I saw him, Miss Monaghan. He didn't have no blood on his clothes or hands, and he didn't leave no bloody clothes behind. He was upset — she had told him there was no way she would get back with him and she wouldn't give the ring back either, because the breakup had been his idea, even if she agreed to it. He drove west, spent a couple of days in the woods, sorting out his thoughts, then headed home. He might not have done it."

  Her tone was that of a woman trying to persuade herself. Four sons, and this was the fate of the "good" one, the one who had tended to her in his father's absence. Tess was beginning to understand why Mrs. Meyerhoff had crashed the funeral service. One mother had lost a daughter, and it was a tragedy. Mrs. Meyerhoff had lost a son, but that was supposed to be justice. And maybe it was, but didn't that make it only harder to grieve? Tess could see how Mrs. Meyerhoff had become fixated on the ring, for which she was stuck with the payments. The ring was the closest thing she had to a legitimate
grievance.

  "Look, if you really want to pursue the thing about the ring — I think you might have some standing. You might not get it back, but if Greer's mother insists on keeping it, there may be some way to make her take over the payments. I have a lawyer friend who owes me a favor. He'd do it pro bono." It felt good, volunteering the services of her aunt's husband, who had never been shy about volunteering her for things.

  "It's all mute," Mrs. Meyerhoff said, and Tess needed a second to catch the Bawlmer malaprop. In some ways, the phrase was more elegant than the one Mrs. Meyerhoff actually wanted. All the parties to the dispute had been silenced. "There ain't no ring. It wasn't on Greer's body when they found her. Police say JJ took it. If that's so, where is it?"

  "He would have thrown it away," Tess said. "He couldn't hold on to it, much less try to return it or hock it. The ring would have been key to convicting him. And the murder weapon is missing, too, so that's consistent."

  "Yeah," Mrs. Meyerhoff said, sighing and exhaling at the same time. "It all fits. And if it were one of my other boys, I'd say, ‘I knew this day was coming.' Do you think my temper is something they inherited? Were my boys doomed to be the way they are because of how I am?"

  It was a big question, far too large to be answered in a kitchen on Delaware Avenue, over grape soda and Hydrox. Perhaps too large to be answered anywhere, under any circumstances.

  Leaving Mrs. Meyerhoff 's house, Tess decided to call Tull.

  "Have you closed Greer's murder officially yet?"

  "No," he said. "We have to be careful on these things, not rush, even when the outcome seems likely."