Free Laura Lippman by Tess Monaghan 05 - The Sugar House (v5) Page A

less sinister. He just didn’t want to go back to the dark house in Ten Hills and eat whatever Judith had left him in her color-coordinated Rubbermaid containers.
    “You want to grab a bite?”
    “Just us?” he asked, and she realized it was never just them, there was always Uncle Donald or Uncle Spike or Judith.
    “Why not?”
    They sat in silence, mulling their own answers to that question. Finding none, they ended up at the Austin Grill, part of the renovated American Can Company complex, one of the many unlikely success stories in the once-working-class neighborhood of Canton.
    Tess wanted to go Salvadoran—her taste buds had been somewhat transformed by her recent trip to Texas.But the Austin Grill was about as far as her father could go, culinarily.
    He studied the menu as if it were in Sanskrit. “It all looks very…exotic.”
    “Have the fajitas,” she said. “It’s just meat in some bread, think of it that way. I’m going to have migas. Oh, and two Shiner Bocks on draft, please.”
    Her father frowned. “You’re driving.”
    “You’re driving farther. It’s one beer, Dad. Get a grip.”
    He looked around the restaurant, surveying it with a practiced eye. Like an architect who couldn’t help seeing the details that went into a building, Pat was never truly off-duty when he was in a bar. His gaze was drawn not to the sponge-painted red walls and industrial pipes running through the ceiling, but to the patrons in the high booths, the bartender behind the counter.
    “Ten years ago—heck, five years ago—I would have taken odds they’d never get this old place developed. Wish I’d bought me some real estate in Canton. Never did have an instinct for making money. If you had told me people would want to live in these little old rowhouses, just because they can see water—” he shook his head. “But what do I know? Other than the fact that if I was on duty, I’d be writing this guy up for serving underage drinkers.”
    Tess looked at the crowd, which was chic, by Baltimore standards. Almost everyone was wearing black, although there were a few patches of bright, preppy colors bursting through, the usual pinks and greens.
    “They don’t look like college kids to me,” she said.
    “That’s because they’ve put a lot of effort into not looking like college kids. Too much effort. The drinks give them away. The boys go cheap and the girls go sweet. See that table over there. The guys all have Budweisers, the girls have—what is that, anyway? Strawberry margaritas.”
    “Swirlies, as the menu would have it.”
    “Yeah, well I bet a lot of them will be going swirlie before the night is over. But it’s not my problem, not my territory.” He took a chip from the basket, held it tentatively toward the salsa, then decided to eat it plain. “Oh, like an Utz corn chip,” he said. “Where’s the boyfriend tonight?”
    The boyfriend. As if saying the name was too painful.
    “I’m not sure. We have a new policy. If we want to see each other, we have to ask at least twelve hours in advance, make a real date. No—” she stopped, blushing, realizing she had almost used the term “booty call” in front of her father. Dear Mom. I’m sorry I gave Dad that fatal heart attack at the Austin Grill. Apparently, he didn’t know his thirty-year-old daughter was having sex .
    Her father was blushing an even deeper red. It must be awful, in some ways, for a man to have daughters. Fathers knew how men think.
    Several silent swallows of Shiner Bock later, her father thought of something to say.
    “So now you know how a liquor board inspector looks at a bar. What does the private detective see?”
    Tess looked around. “The couple in the corner? One of them, maybe both of them, is stepping out on someone. My guess is he’s married—he has a ring, and he’s older than she, by a good bit. He’s eating, but she’s not. In fact, she looks as if she’s been living on fumes for a while. Her eyes are fixed