The Girl in the Green Raincoat_ A Novel - Laura Lippman [28]
“Are you going to be competitive about parenting, too?” Whitney asked.
“I’m not.” But Tess didn’t have the energy to deny something that was so clearly true. “I’m just feeling inadequate. Crow bustles around, happy and confident, without a single care in the world, whereas I’m stuck in chronic worry mode.”
“Well, I have another gift that might cheer you up.”
“Is it alcohol? Her brain must be more or less developed by now. Besides, IQ is highly overrated. Look at you. Near genius IQ, but your taste is crap.”
“This is better than alcohol.” Whitney, who had continued to pace the room, modeling the diaper bag, stopped and posed dramatically, arms akimbo. “Ethel Zimmerman!”
Tess waited, thinking there must be more, but Whitney just stood there, pleased to the point of smugness.
“I’m afraid I already know Ethel Merman’s real name, but thanks for the trivia. Did you know that Jacqueline Susann was the one who told her what to say, when people asked why she changed it? Something about how people would pass out from the heat if ‘Zimmerman’ were up in lights.”
“And she was married to Ernest Borgnine for thirty-two days, a fact immortalized by a chapter in her autobiography—a single blank page,” Whitney said.
Sheesh, Tess thought, who’s the competitive one here?
“However, this is a different Ethel Zimmerman. Lives in Severna Park, a longtime neighbor of the Massingers. She was Carole’s in-case-of-emergency person at Nordstrom. What do you want to bet she’s also the person Carole called the weekend she couldn’t raise her sister on the phone?”
“Hence, my diaper bag?” Tess was torn between admiration and envy. It was galling, being trapped here, while Whitney was free to follow up hunches, roam the world, make things happen.
“You can’t imagine the half of it,” Whitney said. “Do you know anyone who wants a Marc Jacobs wallet?”
“Have you visited Ethel yet? Chatted her up?”
Whitney shook her head. “I thought about it. But I really think she needs to come see you, have you explain what you think happened, and why. Even if you only saw Carole through your window, you have a connection to her that I can’t quite match. She’s real to you. To me, she’s just a puzzle.”
“How are we going to get some woman from Severna Park to come up here and talk to me?”
“Well, there’s light rail, if she doesn’t drive—”
“No, I mean, what can I say that would persuade her that this can’t be done over the phone, that I need to meet her face-to-face?”
Whitney was nonplussed. In that most unusual silence, the sounds of Dempsey’s chewing filled the room. He had progressed from trying to eat his own leg to gnawing on the bars on his crate. The dog’s behavior had improved, but only with Tess. He was still generally hateful to everyone else, and had to be crated when anyone but Crow was in the house. And Lloyd refused to walk him with the other dogs, as it always ended in a melee.
So, during the day, when Dempsey needed to take bathroom breaks, Tess used an antique cane—another bizarre gift from her aunt, who seemed to confuse her pregnancy with some sort of Victorian-era malady—to lift the crate’s lock and swing the door open. He trotted outside, did his business, went mano a mano with the invisible fencing for a few rounds, then returned docilely to his crate. He wouldn’t go out in the dark, however; released in the middle of the night, he still used her chamber pot. He was scared of the dark. It was the only sign of weakness in the dog, who seemed to be girding himself for some epic battle. Now, as his teeth grated against the metal, Tess couldn’t help wondering if he was sharpening them in preparation for his next meeting with Don Epstein, or whatever hired gun had taken away the dog’s beloved mistress.
“Dempsey!” she said. “We can ask Mrs. Zimmerman if she’ll come up here to see Dempsey, consider taking him in as a favor to Carole.”
“She won