Laura Lippman Read Online Free PDF Page B

a kiln. She hadn’t really paid close attention when he spoke of his parents, but she remembered something about his mother’s ceramics, his father’s economics classes, which had sounded vaguely Marxist to her. A pair of gentle, retrograde hippies, raising their son simply to be.
    She flipped open her datebook. It still surprised her to see how busy her life had become. The fall was full of meetings and appointments. It wasn’t just work and workouts, either, but dinners with old and new friends, even “dates” with her mom. It had been nice, being sought-after, but suddenly all those names and numbers and addresses just made her weary.
    Under R, she found the information Crow had inked in long ago, when these pages were emptier. There was his number, in the little Bolton Hill studio apartment he had all but vacated while they were together. His birthday, 8-23 (“Two Virgos!” he had written in his ecstatic, spiky handwriting, and she liked him for not making a crude joke at their expense). His clothing sizes, his Social Security number, the number of his favorite Chinese takeout place, and just in case she ever needed him during his infrequent trips home, a number and address for his parents in Charlottesville.
    “Much too late to call strangers,” she told Esskay. “After eleven, all phone calls are bad news.”
    Esskay, still disgruntled at her undignified treatment at Laylah’s baby hands, gave Tess a skeptical look, snorted, and rolled over, turning her bony spine toward her. Tess dialed the phone, rehearsing her opening lines. You don’t know me but…We’ve never met but…Did your son ever mention we were sleeping together until I broke his heart, then came crawling back and he broke my heart, so now we’re really even-steven, and I don’t owe him a thing, right ?
    “Hello?” A woman’s voice, low and husky. Not a Southern accent, for the Ransomes were New England transplants. But the clipped Bostonian edges seemed to have been smoothed down by the years in Virginia.
    “Is this the Ransome residence?”
    “Yes. Who’s calling?” There was something tentative in the voice, something fearful. Tess realized that bad news must often begin this way: Is this so-and-so’s residence?
    “We’ve never met but I’m Tess Monaghan—”
    “Oh, Tess!” Mrs. Ransome’s relief was so intense it seemed to flow through the phone. “I feel as if I know you. How’s your aunt, Kitty? And the greyhound, I want to say its name is Jimmy Dean, but that’s not quite right, is it?”
    “Right section of your supermarket. It’s Esskay, as in the Schluderberg-Kurdle Company of Baltimore, finest pork products ever made.”
    “Of course, Esskay.” She laughed, but shakily. “Tess Monaghan. I feel as if I conjured you up in a way. Because I’ve been sitting here, thinking I should call you.”
    Some organ—heart, stomach, intestines—lurched inside Tess. “Has something happened—I mean, do you have news of Crow? I tried to call him tonight—”
    “But his phone is disconnected. I know, I know. It was turned off six weeks ago. A week later, our last check came back from Texas, marked return to sender. I was hoping you might have heard from him, or know something more.”
    “Not really.” The clipping didn’t count, for it only deepened the mystery. Besides, it surely would cause this kind woman more concern, and that couldn’t have been Crow’s intent. “So you haven’t heard anything for more than a month?”
    “Three weeks ago he called and left a message on our machine, at a time when he knew we’d be out. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, and we’ve been out of minds with worry ever since. Are you sure he hasn’t tried to get in touch with you?”
    Tess studied the clipping. Less than a week in her possession and it already had a worn look, as if it had been handled many, many times. “I had something in the mail recently, a photo of him, nothing more…He’s cut his hair.” An idiotic