The Most Dangerous Thing - Laura Lippman [114]
“No one has to explain child care crises to me. Most of my employees are working moms. She’s so tiny, but—” Gwen stops, not wanting to comment on a stranger’s appearance, but this woman looks pretty fit for having had a baby recently.
“She was really early. She’s technically almost five months old, but if she had been on time, she’d be barely three months.” Again, it is somehow clear there are to be no follow-up questions. “So, Gordon Halloran. Just to be sure we are on the same page—I am speaking to you off-the-record and this is not for anything you might write, ever, on any subject.”
“Right.”
“And by off-the-record, we both agree that means nothing I say is to appear in print, attached to my name or to an unnamed source?”
“I’m not here as a journalist.”
“Would you be willing to sign something to that effect?”
“Sure,” Gwen says. “After it was reviewed by my attorney.”
Tess smiles. “Fair enough. I just have to be super careful.”
“Were you burned by a journalist?”
“Worse. I was one. Your magazine did once put me in your hot singles issue, when I was neither single nor really all that hot. Although now when I see photos of myself from back then—only a few years ago—I think I look magnificent.”
“I’m pretty sure that was before my time,” Gwen says, then blushes. She was trying to reference the magazine, not the issue of Tess Monaghan’s looks, which merit the not-quite-compliment of handsome. Strong features, hair pulled back in a ponytail, a fresh-scrubbed face. “We still do the singles issue—it sells very well, and we make a bucketload on the advertising—but I’ve tried to add some serious journalism to the mix.”
“I’ve noticed. That’s why I don’t want to talk to you about Gordon Halloran in any kind of professional capacity. Besides, there’s not much I can tell you. I’ve spoken to my client. My client prefers to remain anonymous.”
Shit. That doesn’t assuage Gwen’s conscience in the least.
“Could I have any nonidentifying information about your client?”
“Such as?”
“Age, gender, place of residence. Race.” If the client isn’t African American, there’s little chance that one of Chicken George’s relatives has hired Tess Monaghan.
“I can ask. But my client is pretty paranoid. And unnerved by Gordon Halloran’s death. As am I, since you told me it might be a suicide. The news reports last month didn’t say that. At my discretion, I haven’t passed that information along to my client yet, but I will. It—” She pauses. “It complicates things for us, and I’m afraid it will make my client, who is a very nice person, feel quite bad. Are you sure?”
“It’s unclear,” Gwen says truthfully, not wanting to admit that she guilted the PI into this meeting. “It will probably always be unclear. He had been drinking after several months of sobriety. He drove into the concrete barrier at the foot of I-70, where it dead-ends into the park-and-ride. He was speeding, but he was always a reckless, fearless person. He could have been playing some silly game, misjudged the end of the highway.”
Tess Monaghan shifted the baby on her shoulder. Annabelle had been tiny, too, for her age. Still was. But Gwen had forgotten how alien young babies look, with their comically smushed faces and toothless smiles.
The detective says: “But he was a regular at AA.”
“Was. He didn’t go to the meeting that night.”
“Right.”
“Right—wait, how do you know that? I said only that he was sober.”
“One of my employees was attending those meetings.”
“That’s horrible.” Heedless of the lie she had told to gain this audience, Gwen is genuinely appalled. “The whole point of twelve-step programs is to provide people with a safe place to unburden their hearts. It’s a—desecration to send a spy there.”
Tess surprises her by nodding. “I wasn’t wild about it. I’m not wild about a lot of the things I do. But my client—well, my client is an honorable person who has a right to set the record straight on a matter that goes to the heart of my client’s very being. There was a possibility that Gordon Halloran was someone who could help do that. I sent someone into the