Free Baltimore Blues by Laura Lippman

at not being caught.
    She picked up the paper again. There was nothing newbeyond that third paragraph, only boilerplate on Abramowitz and his career. Certainly, nothing was new to Tess. Even the style and the reporting were as familiar to Tess as a lover’s kiss. In a sense, it was her lover’s kiss. The article was the handiwork of Jonathan Ross, her sometime bedmate and a consistent star in the Blight ’s galaxy. In her shock at the headline, she had skipped over the byline. All his trademarks were there—unnamed sources, a memorable description of the death at hand, over-the-top prose, a damning detail. “The staid law firm.” Was there another kind? Still, she felt genuine admiration at the guard’s log; she bet no one else in town had that.
    “But I know more,” she said out loud. What Jonathan wouldn’t give to know what she knew—the woman at the center of this triangle, the trysts at the Renaissance Harborplace, Rock’s suspicions. She was the one person who could put it all together. With that thought she threw the paper down and called for Kitty, her voice thin and shrill.
    “Tesser?” Kitty came on a run, dressed in an Edwardian frock of white lawn, a white ribbon in her curls and white canvas Jack Purcells on her size five feet. The effect was a little bit flapper, a little 1920s Wimbledon, a little 1970s Baltimore, when anyone who wore shoes other than Jacks was ridiculed for appearing in “fish heads.”
    Tess thrust the paper at her: “Remember my detective job? It was quite a success. I caught Rock’s fiancée with her boss. Now the boss is dead and Rock’s in jail.”
    Kitty skimmed the article.
    “Did you tell Rock what you found out?”
    “No, I goaded Ava into telling him last night. She says it was sexual harassment. She had to sleep with Abramowitz to keep her job. The last time I saw her, she was on her car phone, telling Rock her story.”
    Kitty was a quick study. “You need to disappear for a while,” she announced decisively. “Take a little trip and don’t tell me where. Given my relationship with Thaddeus, I’d prefer not to know too much so I won’t have to lie if anyone comes looking for you.”
    “I’ll have to talk to them eventually.”
    “Yes, you will,” Kitty agreed. “But it wouldn’t hurt to be unavailable for a few days while you figure out how you want to handle this. Take any money you need out of the cash register and leave me a check. I won’t cash it unless I have to. Find a cheap motel or a friend’s house, then call me collect from pay phones. In a few days we’ll know where this is headed, and you can come home.”
    Tess took the stairs to her apartment two at a time and began throwing clothes into a battered leather knapsack. Her friend Whitney’s family had a house on the shore near Oxford, with a small guest house on the property’s edge. She and Whitney had used it during college when they had wanted to get away. Rich friends had their charms. She would have to assume she was still welcome there, as calling Whitney would only further complicate things. Whitney worked for the Beacon-Light , too, and although she would be under no legal requirement to talk, Tess didn’t want to find out what would happen if Whitney had to choose between her friend and some tantalizing details in what promised to be a big story. Asking Whitney not to act out of self-interest was akin to asking a cat not to chase a bird. Better not to test her.
    The telephone rang as Tess was gathering her toothbrush and shampoo from the bathroom. She let the machine pick it up. A hoarse, familiar voice filled her small apartment with such force that the glass doors in her kitchen cabinets rattled: Tyner Gray, a rowing coach whose years of working with young novices had turned his voice into a perpetual shout.
    “Tess, it’s Tyner; call me at my law office as soon as you get a chance.
    “It’s not about rowing,” he added, as if he knew she was standing there and could