Scratch a Woman
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About this ebook
A trade paperback collection of 16 short stories, some new, some published before, all together for the first time, featuring Tess Monaghan, New York Times Bestselling author Laura Lippman’s acclaimed private eye
For the first time together in one collection is a mix of brand new Tess Monaghan short mysteries as well as previously published, award-winning short stories.
Split into three parts—Girls Gone Wild (seven stories about girls behaving badly); Other Cities, Not My Own (four stories about places outside of Baltimore); My Baby Walks the Streets of Baltimore (four stories and a profile)—the inimitable Tess Monaghan, along with some old friends and new faces, is back solving crime.
Laura Lippman
Laura Lippman is a New York Times bestselling novelist. She has been awarded the Edgar, the Anthony, the Agatha, the Shamus, the Nero Wolfe, Gumshoe and Barry awards. For more information about Laura visit www.lauralippman.com
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Scratch a Woman - Laura Lippman
Scratch a Woman
From the Short Story Collection
Hardly Knew Her
Laura Lippman
Contents
Begin Reading Scratch a Woman
About the Author
Books by Laura Lippman
Copyright
About the Publisher
SCRATCH A WOMAN
ONE
The third woman in the pickup line at Hamilton Point Elementary School looks, more or less, like every other woman in the line, although a truly discerning eye might notice that she spends just that much more money and time on her appearance. She has chin-length hair, expertly cut and colored. She wears dainty silver-and-sapphire earrings, a crisp blue shirt, and lightweight wool trousers in the latest style—flat front, tapered at the ankles, fitted through the thighs, which means one had better be doing the latest style of exercise, Pilates or yoga or whatever fitness trend has finally drifted down from New York in the past few months. If Pilates, preferably the kind with machines. If yoga, it should be kundalini or Vikram, true Vikram, licensed Vikram. You can do ashtanga, I suppose,
Connie Katz told Heloise the other day, at the Saturday soccer game, but, as my kundalini teacher likes to say, ashtanga will work up a sweat, but it won’t fix your spine.
My spine’s fine,
Heloise said with a smile, but Connie was already moving away from her, ostensibly to follow her son’s progress down the field. Other women always seem to be moving away from Heloise, putting distance between them, disturbed by her aloofness, her lack of giddy complaints about the lives they lead, their mutual misery. As one of only two single moms with kids in Mrs. Brennan’s fourth-grade class, shouldn’t Heloise complain more, not less, than the rest of them? But Heloise doesn’t have a husband, and husbands are the fodder for the majority of the stories, the endless anecdotes about how much these women put up with, the heroic tales that tend to end: And it was in his closet
—or the refrigerator, or the garage, or the front-hall powder room, or even the man’s own pockets—the entire time!
Heloise could live somewhere else. Self-employed, she can live anywhere she chooses. But Turner’s Grove is convenient for work, equidistant to Washington and Baltimore and Annapolis, and the schools are excellent, consistently in the state’s ninety-ninth percentile on testing. In fact, she has switched Scott from private school to the public one just this year, deciding that a larger student body was safer for them. It’s in small groups that curiosity gets excited, that idiosyncrasies are more readily noticed. No, a change of address wouldn’t change anything except the name of the street, the school, the soccer team. The same vigilance would have to be maintained, the same careful balancing act of not drawing attention to herself, and especially not drawing attention to the fact that she doesn’t want to draw attention. Heloise is constantly adjusting her life to that end. She used to have a full-time babysitter, for example, but that stirred up too much envy, too much speculation, so she calls the new girl, Audrey, her au pair and keeps her out of the public eye as much as possible. Her au pair is from Wilkes-Barre, but as it happens Audrey has a hearing loss that causes her to speak in a slightly stilted way, so neighbors assume she’s from some Eastern European country they should know, but don’t. Here in Turner’s Grove, Scott has a good life, Heloise has an easy one, and that’s all she can ever hope for.
And your family’s here,
neighbors observe, and Heloise nods, smiling a tight-lipped Mona Lisa smile. Easy and good natured, she has managed the trick of seeming totally accessible, all the while sharing almost nothing about herself. She wouldn’t dream of confiding in anyone, even loyal Audrey, that discovering her half sister lived one development over was far from ideal. Hard to say who was more horrified when they realized they were in the same school district, Heloise or Meghan. Estranged for years and now virtually neighbors.
Checking her makeup in the rearview mirror—is that a bruise? No, her eyeliner just got smeary at her last meeting—she spots her sister several cars back in the line. If she could see her sister’s face, it would not be much different than glancing in this mirror. Only smaller, a little sharper and foxier. And frowning, begrudging Heloise her better spot in line, as Meghan begrudges Heloise everything. They are not even six months apart, beyond Irish twins. If they had been boys, the doctor might have thrown in the second circumcision for free. Then again, they probably only do that when Irish twins have the same mother. Heloise and Meghan share a father, a not particularly nice one, who left Meghan’s mother for Heloise’s, then spent the rest of his life making both women miserable.
But while Heloise has their father’s long-legged frame, Meghan favors her little sparrow of a mother, growing smaller and tighter with the years, her bones feeding off her skin. She doesn’t have an ounce of fat left on her body, and there are unhealthy hollows beneath her eyes. Heloise wonders if her sister still gets her period. Knowing Meghan, she probably willed it to go away after having four children in five years. Her husband refused to get a vasectomy on