Another Thing to Fall (28 page)

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.”

“So when will JJ Meyerhoff ’s things be released? Will his mother get his truck? How does that work?” She wasn’t sure if killers got to keep their property, or if their possessions passed to the state.

“Eventually.”

“Did you go over the truck pretty carefully?”

“Of course we did.”

“And you didn’t find the ring, much less the murder weapon. Right?”

“How do you know the ring was missing? We held that back.”

“The two mothers had… words at the funeral. So, no ring? Are you sure?”

“Look, Tess, this is the least of my problems right now.” A pause. “I mean, it’s not that I have problems, it’s just I don’t have time for this kind of trivia.”

Tull was an interesting case. Face-to-face, he could lie to anyone, about anything. It was the nature of his job after all. But on the phone, without his handsome stone face to carry his game, his words sometimes betrayed him.

“What’s going wrong? I thought the case was a dunker.”

“It is.”

She didn’t say anything, waiting him out. Then, when he didn’t crack, she added: “You owe me. The last time I tried to tell you something important, you blew me off, and someone I loved almost got killed.”

That was a sore point and it seemed to anger Tull — because it was true. “I don’t owe you shit. It doesn’t work that way. You come in here, solve a couple of my open ones, and maybe then I’ll be in your debt. But I’m not accountable to you, or your Hollywood bosses. I know they want this to be all wrapped up. I do, too. But there’s… a complication.”

“About the ring?”

“Not about the fucking ring!” A pause. “Okay, I’m sorry, it’s just you call me in the middle of the shit storm of shit storms, and you have to promise me that this goes no further. I know you got friends at the newspaper—”

“Not too many at this point.”

“Yeah, well if I read this in the paper tomorrow, you’ll never be able to get back in my good graces. The deputy, who brought Meyerhoff down? He’s got a bad habit of shooting too fast. Third time he’s shot someone in two years, although he’s never killed anyone before. I still like Meyerhoff for the Sadowski death, but now we have to wait for Garrett County to investigate his shooting before I can close this out. That’s all.”

“That’s a lot,” Tess said. “Look — pull his clothes. Go through all the pockets again. It’s not like it was the Hope diamond. It could have gotten stuck in a pocket, snagged on a thread.”

“It would make my life… more interesting if we could find it,” Tull admitted.

Good, they were on the same page. The presence of the ring in JJ Meyerhoff ’s effects was the one thing that could persuade police that he
didn’t
kill Greer, just had a very ill-timed confrontation with her the night she died.
No blood on his clothes
, his mother had said, although she could be lying. And breaking up with the love of your life was reason enough to disappear for a few days — assuming one was very young.

Ben stared at his screen, pretending to write. “So you’ve deigned to join us today,” Lottie had said when he arrived at eleven. “I’ve already completed a third of the script,” he had lied, smoothly and automatically. “Besides, I thought you would be grateful for the company.” Lottie blushed, and he almost felt bad, reminding her of the scare she had experienced Friday night, stupid prank though it appeared to be.

Now, after eight grinding long hours, he was just trying to wait everyone out, get a few moments alone. As the evening wore on, he realized Lottie was waiting for
him,
hoping to walk out together. Even when he logged long hours on a script, he seldom burned the midnight oil in the office, preferring to work in his hotel room. But that was back when there was a chance that Selene might visit. No, there was no reason to be there — and every reason to be here.

“Lloyd,” he said, trying to sound casual, “why don’t you walk Ms. MacKenzie to her car, then head home yourself. There’s no reason for you to be staying this late.”

“But the script supervisor asked for my help.” Lloyd said this as if it were on a par with being asked to storm SS headquarters and rescue a POW general. “We have to get ready for the minipub for one-oh-eight, and Flip is way behind.”

“Well, take a break at least. Walk Ms. MacKenzie to her car—”

“I don’t
need
an escort,” Lottie said.

“ — and then go to Nasu Blanca and get me some takeout.” How much time would that give him? Hell, he should have thought of some place farther afield, sent Lloyd on a true scavenger hunt for dinner, but now he was stuck. “I want the edamame, the spicy tuna tempura roll, and the Kobe beef hamburger. But what I really want is one of those teas you brought the other day. What did you call it, half and half?”

“I got that over in East Baltimore, near where we was on location for the cemetery. I don’t know no place around here that serves it. You find those at Chinese joints, mostly.”