Laura Lippman (27 page)

“I thought you had just uttered the greatest exit line of all time. ‘My car windows!’”

“Why would you think that?” she asked, squeezing water from her sodden braid.

“Because that’s your style, Tess. Cut and run, with a few banalities about the weather, or your inability to make a commitment.”

“I was trying to be fair to you. I had met someone else—”

“Tess, there’s
always
going to be someone else. Your sexual desires don’t go away because you’re with someone. How are you going to stay in a relationship for the rest of your life if you can’t grasp that?”

Tess was shivering in her wet clothes. “I’m not sure I’m ever going to find someone I want to be with forever and ever.”

“Then you probably won’t.” His voice wasn’t unkind. “Look, I don’t want you to drive while it’s raining so hard. You don’t know this area. The low-water crossings will be five feet deep, you could be washed away if you make a wrong turn. Stay the night.”

She pulled her T-shirt away from her skin, and it made a rude smacking sound. “You don’t want me to leave because you need a ride into town tomorrow.”

“Maybe.” But he was smiling now, pouring on the charm.

“If I take you in, you have to let me come along.”

Crow hesitated, but only for a moment. He had no leverage, he had to see that. It was a package deal, Tess and the Toyota. “Okay. Emmie knows you, so she won’t freak out. She likes you, in her own way. In fact, she used to study this photo I had, the newspaper photo of you and Esskay.”

“The one you showed Mrs. Nguyen, so you could search my room at La Casita.”

He wasn’t listening to her. He was studying her face, with his detached painter’s eye, as if planning to sketch her yet again.

“Your hair is going to get all snarly if you let it dry like that,” he said. “You better comb it out.”

“I don’t think I have a comb in my knapsack. I wasn’t planning on a slumber party.”

“I do. I have a toothbrush, too, if you want it.” He left the room and came back with both, obviously proud of himself.

“You were ready to evacuate all along, weren’t you?” Tess asked.

“No, but I had the presence of mind to grab a few things before I jumped. I had my choice of toiletries, I just didn’t have any money or food. I had to sleep in Brackenridge Park the first night, then catch a ride up here with a crew of day workers heading for a nearby ranch.”

“Didn’t it occur to you this place might be under surveillance?”

“Of course. But that was the one good thing about you finding that second body in San Antonio—it shifted all the attention down there.” He was all but preening. “I keep the lights off to be safe, but as far as I can tell, the sheriff’s deputies haven’t come near this place. I have to admit I’m kind of proud of myself. It’s not every man who gets away from Tess Monaghan
twice
.”

“Let me have the comb, before my hair dries from all this hot air.”

He shook his head. “No, you won’t do it right. I’ve seen you comb your hair. You just try to beat the tangles into submission. Turn around, little girl, and no whining. Or we’ll just cut off all this hair and leave you with something more manageable.”

It was what her mother used to say when she was younger. She didn’t even remember telling him this fact, but he remembered. Crow remembered everything.

She sat on the edge of the bedroll, her back to him. He unplaited her hair, running his fingers through it to loosen it. Only then did he use the comb, and he was as gentle as he had promised. He took his time, curling the ends around his finger, lifting the heavy mass so he could comb the wispy ringlets at the nape. The rain was even heavier now, and it was hard to imagine the room could get much darker.

“You ought to wear your hair up,” Crow said, twisting it into a pile on top of her head.

“My friend Jackie showed me how to put it up so I don’t look like a spinster in a bun. But I don’t do it so well.”

“Jackie?”

“A new friend. She has a little girl, Laylah, whom you’d love.”

“I love you,” he said very casually. “I stopped for a while, but then I started again.”

Her back was to him, which made it easier to tell the truth, but it didn’t make it easier to know what the truth was. She couldn’t say she had stopped and started again, because she wasn’t sure she had really loved him the first time around. She couldn’t say she would love him forever and ever—she had just admitted she didn’t know if she’d ever get that right. But Crow wasn’t asking for assurances about the past or the future, she realized. He would settle for now.

“I love you, too.”

He put down the comb, burying his face in her hair and her neck, his arms reaching around her waist. He held her tight, like an exhausted swimmer coming to a branch or a boulder after a long, long time in turbulent waters. Yet he was in no hurry, this was distinctly different from the other night, just a week ago. He had still been angry with her then, she realized, his passion had been a mask for his fury. Crow held her, and she allowed herself to be held, her senses expanding. She was aware of the rain, of the darkness, of the grain in the floorboards beneath them, of the watery shadows on the walls. Finally she broke his hold on her, but only so she could peel the wet T-shirt away from her body and turn to face him.

She was home.

When morning came, it was as Mrs. Nguyen and Channel 5’s Chris Marrou had prophesied—cooler, crisper, the kind of fall day that Tess would have taken for granted back in Baltimore. But she was beyond taking anything for granted now.

Blinking heavy eyes, she glanced around the house. A shower was running somewhere, and the dryer was thumping softly. Thoughtful Crow must have washed her clothes. His nurturing, once mildly oppressive, now seemed sexy. She wondered if they had time for him to nurture her a little more before they drove to town. She glanced at her Swiss Army watch, the only thing she had managed to keep on through the long night. Nine
A.M.
The parade started at one but they needed to leave soon if they were going to intercept Emmie.

Strange—the only thing in the dryer was a small load of dishtowels. Maybe he had hung her clothes up outside, under the now-brilliant skies. But she couldn’t see anything from the windows. She knocked on the bathroom door, then pushed it open without waiting for a reply. Steam rolled out, as if the shower had been running for a very long time.

It had, and if Crow had ever been in it, he wasn’t now.

She looked for her shoes, but they were missing, too. Naked and barefoot, she ran from the house, down the flagstone path to where her car had been. Gone as well, not that this surprised her. The shower and the dryer—those had probably been turned on in hopes of muffling the noise of an engine starting.

Back in the house, she saw what she hadn’t seen before—her datebook open on the kitchen table, a message scrawled on today’s date, November 2.

“I started this on my own, and I need to finish it on my own. Love, C. (Nothing here to eat but canned pork and beans, I’m afraid.)”

Damn chivalry. It wasn’t enough for Crow to rescue Emmie, he had to spare Tess as well, leaving her with nothing but canned pork and beans and a blanket. But what could she do, naked, shoeless, and at least twenty miles out of San Antonio? If it was so important to him to play Sir Galahad alone, then so be it. She wandered back into the main room and, for want of anything better to do, leafed through Emmie’s scrapbook.

Funny how one’s perceptions change. Now that she knew the story, she saw the photos differently. Clay was trying to hide his emotions, while Emmie didn’t care if the world knew what she felt. Neither one of them had changed.

But how to explain Gus, with his sad eyes and haunted expression? What was he seeing? What was it that kept his eyes riveted on Emmie? Tess studied the Polaroid, the only image she had seen of Lollie alive. It was taken less than two weeks before the murders, according to the date stamped on the bottom. The five smiled, innocent of their destiny. Lollie sat in the center, the two couples on either side of her. Lollie, Gus and Ida, Frank and Marianna. Two were going to die, two were going to divorce, one was going to be widowed. The three women looked in the camera. The two men looked at Lollie.

The two men looked at Lollie
.

Tess thought of the three bodies in Espejo Verde. Two had been killed hastily, quickly. One had been tortured, his death drawn out, his suffering the point of the exercise.
Everyone does everything for money and sex
, Rick had said, mocking the old robbery detective, Marty Diamond. But Diamond might have been closer to the truth than they realized. Sex and money, money and sex. And love. Some people killed for love, or thought they did.

The three women looked in the camera. The two men looked at Lollie
. And a little girl had grown up, studying this photo, memorizing it, decoding it, until she finally recognized in her cousin’s eyes a kinship only they could share. You had to be crazy to die for love. You had to be crazy to kill for love.

Emmie Sterne was crazy enough to do both.

T
hank God for make-up sex—Rick and Kristina were still at Rick’s house when Tess called from her cell phone, their voices as soft and rumpled as the sheets beneath them. But once Rick understood why she was calling, he asked almost no questions, just took down the directions and promised to get up there as soon as possible. He didn’t even press for an explanation when Tess told him she needed a change of clothes for the ride into town.

They were there within an hour, both of them, and Tess couldn’t help wondering if Kristina had decided Rick shouldn’t make a solo house call to a naked Tess. She had brought Tess clothes, however—a pair of jeans that couldn’t fasten over Tess’s hips, and a baggy T-shirt.
Fashion Puta, She’ll Do Anything for Clothes
, the legend read. No, Kristina wasn’t taking anything for granted.

“This time, I’m calling the cops,” Rick said, once they were back on the highway, heading toward San Antonio at a steady seventy miles per hour, a speed that would get them into town within thirty minutes, but wouldn’t cause the Texas cops to look at them twice. “If you know where Crow is, and you tell me, I’ve got to call them, or face the consequences.”

“But I
don’t
know. All I’m sure of is that he’s gone to find Emmie somewhere along the parade route.”

“You’re making a big leap, Tess, from suicide to murder. Remember, less than forty-eight hours ago, you were just as sure that Gus Sterne had killed Darden and Weeks. Now you think it’s Emmie.”

“It has to be Emmie.”

“I gotta call the cops,” Rick repeated.

“If I end up in an interrogation room for the rest of the day, nobody wins. Even the cops, with all their manpower, aren’t guaranteed to find Emmie in time. But Crow knows where she is, and there’s only one way to make sure she doesn’t hurt him.”

“How’s that?” Kristina asked, looking back over the front seat at Tess, her eyes bright with excitement.

“We have to stop the parade.”

Between the parade and the usual Saturday traffic, it took them twenty minutes to inch through Brackenridge Park once they left the freeway. Finally they reached La Casita, where Tess grabbed her running shoes and some jeans that fit, then checked on her all-but-abandoned child. Mrs. Nguyen and Esskay were watching the preparade coverage on one of the local stations and sharing a can of Pringles.

“Mrs. Nguyen—please, no more junk food. It’s really not good for her.”

“Oh, I only gave her one. Maybe two. We have a pizza coming.” Esskay smirked at Tess.

She glanced out the windows. Broadway was bumper to bumper, and there was no place to park. “Can my friend leave his car in your lot—we probably can’t get much closer to the parade route than we are here, and I don’t need my space today.”

“Sure thing, sure thing,” she said, waving a vague hand, eyes still fixed on the empty street in front of the Alamo. “Chris Marrou said there are ten thousand people already downtown.”

It was more than a mile up Broadway to the parade staging area and the sidewalks and streets were clogged with people, making it impossible to move quickly. By the time they found the staging ground and a parade worker showed them to the shaded underpass where Gus Sterne’s silver Lincoln idled, it was twelve-thirty. Half an hour until the first marching band started down the street. Tess motioned to Kris and Rick to hang back—she didn’t want Gus Sterne to know she had confided her suspicions in anyone—and walked over to the car.

Clay was in the backseat, reading a book. His father was nearby, in a knot of men who all looked like him, with their gray hair, florid faces, and navy blazers.

“What’d you do, pay God off?” one asked. “The weather couldn’t be better, you son of a bitch.”

“You son of a bitch,” the others echoed, slapping hands and passing around a silver flask. Gus Sterne declined it with a shake of his head. He looked distracted and uneasy to Tess. It probably would make a man nervous, knowing two of his accomplices had been murdered in the past month.

Tess placed her hand over the pages of Clay’s open book, to get his attention. “You have to stop this.”

He looked up. “I couldn’t stop this parade with Sam Houston at my side. Besides, what’s the big deal? I know it’s just one big ego trip for my dad, but no one ever died from a little self-aggrandizement.”

“Emmie is out there somewhere along the route. When the car goes by, she’s going to kill your father, then kill herself. Can you live with that?”

He stared at her as if she had spoken in another language, and he hadn’t caught every word. “Emmie? But where—”

“We don’t know. That’s why our only hope is to stop the parade.”

They had spoken in low tones, but Gus Sterne suddenly moved toward the car and grabbed Tess by the elbow. “What is this nonsense? Stop the parade, because Emmie has made another one of her silly threats? I won’t have it. That girl has exacted her last measure of insanity on this family.”

“It’s
not
a silly threat, and you know it. Otherwise, why would you step up security at Sterne Foods, and meet with police about the route? Darden and Weeks have already died for their part in the Espejo Verde murders. Now it’s your turn.”

Tess didn’t know what emotion filled Gus Sterne’s face then, she only knew she had never seen anything like it. It was ugly, it was evil, and yet it was also weak and pathetic, the look of a man who was almost relieved to hear his terrible secret spoken aloud.

His voice, however, betrayed nothing. “Get away from me, and get away from my son, or I’ll have you arrested,” he said softly, so no one else could overhear. “You are interfering with a legal parade, for which there is a permit, and you are making demonstrably false, slanderous statements. Those who wish to protest this event have been given a small space at the corner of Broadway and Grayson. Join them if you like, but you’re no longer welcome here. Javier—”

Javier, the gabby security guard who was to pilot the silver Lincoln through the parade, seized her by the arm.

“She’ll kill herself, right in front of you,” Tess called over her shoulder to Clay as Javier led her away. “But first she’ll kill your father. It’s awful to watch someone die. I know, I’ve seen it. To watch someone die and to know it’s your fault, that you might have prevented it—I can’t imagine living with that.”

Javier was frankly dragging her now, up to the curb where Rick and Kristina waited.

“Crazy Yankee,” he muttered, as if expecting Rick to commiserate with him, but he and Kristina were bent over the parade route from that morning’s paper, marking the high buildings along the way. Their map was festooned with little red X’s, far too many to canvass in the minutes they had left. Besides, once the parade started, police would keep the route clear and the sidewalks would be crowded with reviewing stands.

“There are four- and five-story buildings most of the way,” Rick said. “All private businesses. You’d have to know someone to get in. Watching from those vantage points is considered a perk.”

“Then again, the Sternes know everyone,” Kris put in. “She might have found an old family friend who let her into a private party for old time’s sake.”

Tess looked at the map, but it meant nothing to her. If it had been Baltimore, she would have known every building and its history, she could have figured out some association between Emmie and the place she planned to die. Here, she was lost.

“Is there anything near the Alamo?” It was Clay, still holding his book. He was trying to act very nonchalant, as if they should have expected him all along. But his cheeks were bright red, his voice shaky with the momentousness of what he had done.

“If I’m not in the car, she’s got no reason to jump, right?” he asked as they stared at him. “And if she’s not going to jump, then maybe she won’t try to hurt Dad, either.”

“It’s a long shot, but I’ll take it,” Tess said. “You’ve given us more of a chance than we had five minutes ago. If only we could figure out where she is. You know her better than anyone, Clay. Where would she be?”

He looked at the route. “The television cameras are set up across from the Alamo.”

“But there’s nothing
there
,” Tess said. “She can’t jump from the Alamo, it’s not even two stories. And the hotels in that area are too far back, right? I don’t know how good a shot she is—”

“Pretty good,” Clay said. “Better than I am, as Dad will be the first to tell you.”

“Still, she has to be as close as possible.”

Tess bent over the map again. The parade went straight up Broadway, past the Morgue, then wound its way through downtown. The Morgue, where Emmie sang. The Morgue, which stood at the intersection of Broadway and McCullough, two streets that started their lives parallel and ended up perpendicular. A fat lady with her legs crossed at the ankles, Tess had said, and Emmie had agreed.
You could even say it ain’t over until the fat lady crosses her ankles
.

She had confided in Tess as surely as she had confided in Crow.

“She’s here,” she said definitely, circling the Morgue. She glanced at her watch—twelve forty-five. “But even if I’m right, we barely have enough time to get there before the parade starts. I wonder if we can delay it, at least.”

“You’d still need Dad’s say-so,” Clay said.

“I wasn’t thinking of a
legal
delay,” Tess said.

Rick threw up his hands. “I told you, I’m not risking disbarment for anyone. We know where she is, let’s go to the cops.”

“No!” Tess didn’t want to think what might happen to Crow if the cops stormed the place. Emmie was too unstable, too unpredictable. “We can’t be sure. Once the cops get involved, we lose all control. I might be wrong, I don’t want this to be my only shot.”

“Let me help,” Kristina said eagerly. “After all, I can’t be disbarred.”

“Kris, I absolutely forbid you.”

Kristina turned on him, wagged a finger in his face. “Get one thing straight—you’re never going to tell me what to do, even when we’re married, you sleazy shyster.”

“Sleazy shyster! Sleazy shyster!” Rick stopped, his outrage momentarily forgotten. “I’m not going to marry a woman who speaks to me so disrespectfully, I can tell you that much.”

“Shut up, both of you,” Tess said. “You can fight later. Now, Kristina, see that motley group of picketing vegans over there? I bet all it would take is a little rhetoric to get them out of the official protest area and into the street.”

“Kris—” Rick yelled in vain, for she was already running full-speed toward the vegans, screaming “Meat stinks!” She didn’t even wait for their reaction, just grabbed a hotdog stand and began running with it down Broadway, the confused and outraged vendor in pursuit. Kris stopped long enough to douse him with his own ketchup and mustard bottles, then resumed running with the cart.

Now the vegans had caught on, and they were attacking other meat vendors—hurling turkey legs to the ground, overturning steaming vats of ground beef at the picadillo stand, throwing buns at the hapless hamburger server. Spectators who couldn’t care less about the politics of the food chain began scooping up the fallen treats. As the cops converged on Kristina and a sighing Rick ran to her aid, Tess and Clay slipped across Broadway, to the relatively deserted street that ran parallel to the parade route.

“Do you really think she’ll do it?” he asked.

“You know her better than I do, Clay. What do you think?”

He didn’t answer. They were running almost full out, but it still took ten minutes to reach McCullough. This side street was full of vendors and overflow from the parade, and no one seemed to notice the woman with the braid and the man with the book slipping into the parking lot behind the Morgue, where the door to the loading dock, tightly bolted yesterday, was now ajar, and a white Toyota with Maryland plates was parked illegally. Great, her car would probably be towed before this was all over.

Clay started to follow her inside, but Tess stopped him. “If you’re there, she can still do it, right? She wants to die in front of you. She doesn’t need a parade to do that. Wait here, and if I don’t come out in fifteen minutes, I want you to get a cop and come find me. Okay?”

“Okay,” he said reluctantly. “But if I’m there, if I can talk to her—”

“We can’t risk it, Clay. Now help me with Emmie—think—roof, or the top floor?”

He didn’t need more than a second. “Top floor. On the roof, the news and traffic helicopters could spot her. She’s smart enough to have thought that through.”

Tess took the stairs to the fourth floor, treading as softly as possible. The Morgue’s various music venues went only as high as the third floor, and this area appeared to be a storage room, virtually unrenovated. She walked through old boxes and piles of newspapers, moving toward what her ears told her was the Broadway side of the building. The crowd was loud and restless, possibly because the parade was now officially behind schedule. The noise would be deafening once things truly got under way. She wondered how much time Kristina had bought them.

She tried a series of doors along the corridor. The Lady or the Crow. No. No. No. What if she was wrong, after all? She had bet all the time they had on this one hunch. She might have bet Crow’s life on it as well.

The last door she tried was in the northwest corner and when she entered, there was Emmie, kneeling over Crow, pressing her hand against his stomach. When she saw Tess in the doorway, she held her hands up as if to ward off a blow. She wore white gloves. Once-white gloves now covered with blood.

“I’m so sorry.” Emmie was almost babbling. “I wouldn’t have hurt him, not for anything, you have to know that. I tried to tell you he was in trouble, but you were so slow to come. Why couldn’t you come sooner?”

Tess pushed Emmie so hard that she hit the far wall, next to the room’s only window. She knelt next to Crow and lifted his shirt. The wound was narrow, but deep, and he was losing blood at a sickeningly rapid rate. She took off his shirt and used it as a compress.