The Girl in the Green Raincoat_ A Novel - Laura Lippman [38]
Then Tess realized she had confused the plot of Rear Window with her own life.
Chapter 12
Tess kept clicking back and forth, back and forth, looking at the ring on first Mary Epstein’s hand, then Annette’s. It had to be the same ring. Then again, maybe it was cheaper than it looked, and he had a whole drawer full of them, encased in plastic globes, gumball machine ready. She found the voluminous photocopy of all the back-and-forth filings in the wrongful death suit. Epstein had submitted a list of property taken: diamond studs, a tennis bracelet, and an engagement ring. The latter was described as an “antique Art Deco ring, a three-carat diamond set in platinum, with a border of diamonds and emeralds, with an estimated value of $20,000.” Perhaps he had inflated the cost? She e-mailed the description to her mother and asked if that sounded right to her. Her mother’s older brother was a jeweler, he should be able to help.
As she clicked back and forth, she noticed two more look-alikes. Mary Epstein had put on about thirty pounds during her marriage, but she looked eerily like Annette in the earlier photos—tall, thin, blond. Don Epstein had a type. A type that wasn’t a far cry from Whitney Talbot. Granted, Whitney’s eyes had a foxlike slyness, her jaw was sharper. Whitney’s jaw was sharper than most kitchen knives. Still, she was a good match.
Not as Whitney Talbot, though. Whitney Talbot was too confident, too rooted. Don Epstein preferred his women a little lost. Like a wolf, he cut the weak ones from the herd. The real Whitney would never appeal to him. But a good cover story could take care of that.
Whitney needed approximately forty seconds to be persuaded.
“I’m in!” she cried happily. “But there’s so much competition. How do I break through the crowd?”
“I’m not sure,” Tess said. “But I think the key is being a little needy. Needy and alone. No family, no friends to speak of.”
“So I walk up to him and announce, ‘I’m the woman of your dreams—no one will miss me when I’m gone.’ ”
“We need to stage another damsel-in-distress scenario, like the one you did with Jordan. He was ready to make babies with you after a cup of coffee, remember?”
“He also was a loser. Give Don Epstein credit. He’s managed to get away with three or four murders. Don’t underestimate him.”
“Don’t underestimate me,” Tess said.
Two-fer Tuesday, Whitney thought as she pulled up in front of the check-cashing store in Cherry Hill. She had never been in a check-cashing store. And she only knew the edges of this sad little South Baltimore neighborhood, and that was because it bordered the boathouse from which she and Tess rowed. She had a paper sack of motley dollar bills, which she had spent the last evening crinkling and soiling, so they would look pathetic. She, too, was trying to look pathetic, but fetchingly so. Neither part—pathetic, fetching—came naturally to her. She kept trying to remember to round her shoulders, hang her head.
Once in the store, which Tess had established was the location to which Epstein reported every day, Whitney shoved her bag of money at the cashier and muttered an incoherent string of words. She had wanted to do an accent, but Tess pointed out that she would have to sustain it for hours if she managed to get a date with Epstein. She had to play stupid instead, and playing stupid was even harder than an accent for Whitney. She tried to remember her newspaper days, how people sometimes managed to get past security and wander into various offices, telling complicated, detailed stories that never quite cohered. She babbled about her mother and her BG&E bill and her car and her cat, the last being completely fictitious. Whatever help was offered, she refused, saying she needed a certified cashier’s money order check.
“Which is it?” the cashier asked. “A money order or a cashier’s check?”
Whitney accused the woman of being unhelpful, demanded to see the manager. It took about twenty minutes, but the exasperated cashier finally summoned the manager. Another twenty minutes, more faked sobbing and incoherence,