• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 220 0

knew that Carole Epstein had yet to put in an appearance at the house on Blythe-wood Lane. She herself had called the home number several times, using a cell phone whose number was shielded from caller ID. She either got the machine, with a young woman’s voice—light and silvery as Gatsby’s Daisy—promising to get back to her, or the real-life Don Epstein who said Carole was out of town and, no, he didn’t know when she would be back, and just who was calling, anyway? So far, Tess had called as a member of Carole Epstein’s book club, curious to find out if she had read The Kite Runner yet. (No, she didn’t know if Carole Epstein was even in a book club, but she wagered that Don Epstein didn’t, either.) She had called as a saleswoman, eager to tell Carole about new arrivals at a local boutique; a woman who bought matching raincoats for herself and her Italian greyhound clearly cared about the latest shipment of Marc Jacobs. And she had called as the breeder, checking up on little—well, what did you name the dog, Mr. Epstein?

“She calls it Dempsey,” he had said.

“After the boxer?” she’d asked him.

“After the actor, the one on that doctor show, that all the women think is so cute.”

“And is Dempsey settling in—”

“It’s my wife’s dog. You’ll have to talk to her.”

“Certainly. When will she be in?”

“She’s away on business. I expect her next week.”

He was unwavering on this fact: Carole was away on business. He expected her next week. The thing was, he had been saying this for two weeks now.

Now, Tess asked Dorie: “Did you find out anything else about the first Mrs. Epstein?”

Her smile was triumphant. “Oh, indeed. You would have, too, if the Beacon-Light online archives went back just a little further. You see, Annette wasn’t the first Mrs. Epstein, she was the second. You’re actually looking for the third Mrs. Epstein. And the first Mrs. Epstein was a straight-up homicide victim.”

Now that was quite a rabbit to pull from one’s hat. No wonder Dorie had been preening so.

The photocopied newspaper clippings that Dorie produced reminded Tess just how many times the Beacon-Light had redesigned itself over the past fifteen years, paying more attention to its fonts and columns than it ever did to its local reporting. These clips were evidence of its more sober, serious past, when the front page held up to eight stories. In 1994, the date on the photocopied clip, most of the articles were national and international, as befit a newspaper that took itself oh-so-seriously.

But there was always room on the front page for the deadly carjacking of a couple from Greenspring Valley—code for “rich, white”—when they took an ill-advised shortcut coming home from the theater and found themselves on Greenmount Avenue—again, locals would recognize this as shorthand for “poor, black”—and someone attempted to steal their Mercedes just outside the gates of the cemetery that held John Wilkes Booth. The inclusion of that stray detail baffled Tess, but the reporter seemed to think it was relevant because the couple had attended a performance of Assassins at the Morris Mechanic Theater. Tess was surprised the writer hadn’t tried to make some rhetorical hay out of the Greenmount/Greenspring dichotomy.

Mrs. Epstein had been shot in the head, while Mr. Epstein had been shot in the leg. The assailant was described as a “young man in baggy pants.”

“Sound familiar now?” Dorie asked.

“I would have been in college,” Tess said. “And I hate to admit it, but when I was in college on the Eastern Shore, I wouldn’t have paid attention to a murder back in Baltimore. In fact, I would have considered these people old.” Don and Mary Epstein were thirty-nine at the time.

“No, not this particular case. The scenario. Because it sure sounded familiar to Baltimore cops back then. It was six years after Charles Stuart, up in Boston. Wife killed, guy injured, but so severely that no one could believe he did it to himself. Epstein almost bled to death because the bullet hit the femoral artery. But Epstein runs a chain of check-cashing stores, stores he inherited from his