Life Sentences - Laura Lippman

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mind, when it raced toward a stray memory, was like a horse heading for a fence. She either slammed into the limits of her own mind or sailed over, finding what she needed. But she knew this; it had come up in her first book. The Astors, another quartet of Temptations wannabes. She had watched them on some dance show—American Bandstand or Baltimore’s own Kirby Scott?—and her father couldn’t shut up about the name. ‘The Astors! The Astors! I wonder how much of the family fortune they inherited.’

      But there was a part where the singers simulated bees buzzing around the sweet girl’s head, and Candy Barr had turned that into a comic bit, slapping at the horde in mock terror. He also had a funny, hop-hop pelvis move, extremely precocious, a little nasty. Whenever he started doing that, Tisha chased him from the room. Gee-whiz …something, something.

      So Tisha’s brother had worked on Callie’s defense. It was the kind of small-world touch that Baltimore was known for, all the more likely in the tight-knit black community of the Northwest Side. Plus, that was pure Tisha, looking out for an old classmate, trying to save Callie once again. Cassandra knew exactly how to play it: She would let Reg lead her to Tisha, then allow Tisha to take her to—everyone. Because she was, after all, writing about them all, even if Callie was her focal point. She wouldn’t be too up-front about her interest in Callie, not at first, although she would keep trying to find that police detective. Gee-whiz, as the Astors sang. Have you seen our girl?

      Where the hell is Banrock Station?

      Teena Murphy put the box of chardonnay on the conveyor belt at Beltway Fine Wines, something she did—damn—every six days, on average, and it might have been a little more frequently, but she allowed herself vodka on the weekends. Yet this icy February day was the first time she had been moved to consider the name of her weeknight wine of choice. Box wine had many advantages—the price, the relative lightness of the carton, a key consideration for her—but Teena preferred it because she didn’t have to confront how quickly the level was dropping.

      ‘You having a party?’ a voice behind her asked, a playful tenor. ‘How come I wasn’t invited?’

      She turned, surprised that anyone at Beltway Fine Wines would joke with her that way. Teena had been a knockout in her prime, but her prime was a long time ago. She had also let her hair go gray, which made her look older still, as did her small, fragile-seeming frame. People didn’t joke with slightly hunched, gray-haired ladies in the after-work rush at Beltway Fine Wines.

      Unless they knew you once upon a time.

      ‘Lenhardt,’ she said. ‘What are you doing in my home away from home?’ If she made the joke, it couldn’t be true. Right?

      Her former colleague laughed. He had aged, too, but then—it had been fifteen years, easy, since they had seen each other last. Teena still got invited to the Christmas parties, the retirement parties, even the homicide squad reunions, but she never attended. Her invitations may have arrived on the same paper, in the same envelopes as everyone else’s, but there was a whiff of pity about them. Pity and contempt.

      ‘You look good, Teenie,’ he lied. Even in his wilder days, between his two marriages, Lenhardt had been able to compliment a woman without making it sound like a pass.

      ‘You, too,’ she said, and it wasn’t as much of a reach. He looked as good as he ever had. Lenhardt—now in his fifties—had always been a little stocky, and there was only a touch of gray in his sandy hair.

      ‘Where you living these days?’

      ‘On Chumleigh, off York Road.’ Quickly, defensively, always aware of the gossip that she had cashed in on her misfortune. ‘West of York Road. And it wasn’t so expensive when I bought in.’

      ‘Chumleigh!’ He laughed at her blank look. ‘You don’t remember the cartoon Tennessee Tuxedo? His walrus friend, Chumley? And Don Adams was the voice of the penguin? No? Ah well, as a Baltimore Countian, you’re one of the citizens I’m charged with protecting and serving, not necessarily in that order. You working?’

      ‘At Nordstrom.’

      ‘Explains the fancy duds. But then—you always liked clothes, Teenie. I remember—’

      ‘Yeah,’ she said, not wanting him to finish the sentence: How excited you were when you got to join CID, wear your own clothes. She had dressed beautifully once she got out of uniform. It had been the eighties, not fashion’s finest hour in hindsight, and she had gone into credit-card debt for that outlandish wardrobe. It had been the age of fluffy excess—oversize shirts, big jewelry, riotous prints. She remembered one skirt with enormous cabbage roses. Oh, and those big Adrienne Vittadini sweaters, which someone of Teena’s height could practically wear as dresses.

      Her colleagues had teased her, saying she looked like a punk, not getting that the look was, in fact, a romantic take on the downtown look. She had even been called in, told to tone it down, but her union rep had stepped in and said her clothes were within the guidelines for dress. The department was used to fashion plates, but the male version, peacocks strutting in expensive suits and ties. The other women in homicide, all two of them, went for that boring dress-for-success thing, suits and little bows. Teena would have rather gone back to wearing a uniform.

      Now she wore dark, somber knits purchased at her employee discount. To sell other women expensive clothes, she had found it helped to have a neutral look, one that couldn’t be pinned down in terms of label or cost. Because, of course, that was the paradox of waiting on wealthy women, the unspoken accusation hurled out when someone discovered she couldn’t wear something new and trendy: What do you know? You can’t afford these things. But Teena knew the clothes better than anyone. She lived among them, day in and day out. She thought of her life at Nordstrom as akin to a position in some strange animal orphanage, full of exotic beasts that needed new homes. She was careful about matching her charges to their future owners, determined that the rarest specimens go to customers who were worthy of them.

      ‘It’s funny, running into you,’ Lenhardt said. His cart was filled with what Teena thought of as reputable purchases—three bottles of wine, a bottle of Scotch, a case of Foster’s. She wondered how long those would last him, how often he shopped here, if he drank one beer with dinner, or two, or three. ‘It was only a day or so ago that I got a call from someone looking for you. But that’s how it goes. You go years without seeing an old friend, then, boom, the name’s suddenly in the air. Ever notice that?’

      The clerk loaded her box back into the shopping cart. Beltway Fine Wines had a distinctive smell that Teena could never quite pin down, a combination of wood, damp cardboard, and something spicy. She wondered if the various spirits under its roof slipped into the air. She always felt a little…altered when she was here, but then, she came here after work, when she was in the middle of the transition from work Teena to home Teena. No one called her Teenie anymore, but she still couldn’t carry her full name, Sistina.

      ‘Someone called you, looking for me?’

      ‘She was shut down by the public information officer in Baltimore City, I think, so she dug around, found some of your old compadres, those of us who jumped ship back in the early nineties. I guess she assumed we were disgruntled types, more likely to break rank. She was half-right.’

      Lenhardt had left when a new chief tried to force a rotation system on the homicide squad. Teena might have joined the exodus, but she had her accident a few months later.

       ‘She?’

      ‘Some writer. Kinda famous, I think—I remember my wife reading one of her books for book club. She’s working on a new book.’ He swiped his credit card, took his bagged purchases from the clerk. Teena realized she was blocking other shoppers trying to make their way to the exit. She began rolling slowly forward, but Lenhardt caught up easily and fell into step

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