Murder in the Hearse Degree Read Free Page A

investigation that has started up. And Mike’s the focus. I overheard him on a call with his uncle last week. He didn’t know I was listening. It was scary. He was talking about possible disbarment. That would kill him, Hitch. He’d be crushed. I don’t even want to imagine. Maybe you remember Mike has a little bit of an ego.”
    Nine parts ego and one part water, if I remember correctly. But I didn’t say anything. The kettle began to whimper. Libby turned off the flame and poured water into my cup, then hers. I unwrapped my berry tea bag and commenced to dunking.
    “So then why are you in Baltimore, Libby?” I asked. “Does it have to do with this trouble your husband’s in?”
    “No. It’s not that.” Libby was going with Earl Grey. She removed him from his packet and lowered him slowly into the boiling water. Not a sound.
    “I’m here because the bastard hit me.”
    Libby and I went back into the front room. The room looked like the prelude to the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. All of Lily’s stuffed animals had been lined up facing the wall. Only Lily wasn’t paying attention to the dolls. She was paying attention to a chubby little boy who was sitting in the middle of the floor. The boy was dressed in red pants and a blue shirt, like the baby Superman when he came down from Krypton. Lily was covering the boy with kisses. A fiftyish woman was seated on the couch, poking through her purse. She had thick ankles and a jowly face. Libby made the introductions.
    “Hitch, this is Valerie. I’m borrowing Valerie from a neighbor of Shelly’s. She’s helping me look after the children. Valerie’s a godsend.”
    The godsend looked up from her purse and smiled. She had large teeth and a mole to the left of her right eye. The eye was also a little lazy, but then some days, so am I.
    “And this is Toby.”
    The force of a hundred kisses was finally too much for the baby Superman. He fell sideways and seemed content to stay there. I tilted my head to look at him.
    “He’s chubby.”
    “You’re supposed to say he’s cute.”
    “He’s cute,” I said. “And he’s chubby. Is he yours, too?”
    “Yes.” She added, “And he has my nose.”
    Valerie was taking the kids out to a nearby park. She loaded Toby into a double stroller. Lily stepped over to the wall of stuffed animals and marched back and forth a few times like a junior field marshal. She finally picked up a tiger by the tail and climbed into the stroller. Valerie leaned into the stroller like Sisyphus into his rock and got it moving. Libby walked with them to the door and I stepped over to one of the large windows. Bolton Hill is one of Baltimore’s handsome old neighborhoods. I believe the Cone sisters lived here for a while. And F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wacky Zelda. Gertrude Gertrude Stein Stein might have set a spell here, too, at least so I’ve been told.
    A man across the street wearing several sweaters and shouldering two bulging garbage bags was peeing on a fire hydrant. Nothing handsome about that. Luckily, Valerie and the kids were headed the opposite direction. I turned around as Libby came back into the room.
    “There’s a man out there peeing on a fire hydrant,” I said.
    “Good for him,” Libby grumbled.
    I came away from the window and went over to the couch and sat down. Libby had moved to the fireplace, where she picked up a porcelain figurine from the mantelpiece and was fussing absently with it. The figurine was of a maid milking a cow. Libby ran her thumb absently over the cow’s nose. Her mood had darkened. Libby set the figurine back on the mantelpiece and glanced in the mirror. Whether she was looking at herself or at me or at the tail end of Alice, I couldn’t say. Finally she turned around.
    “Ask,” she said. “I know you want to.”
    “Why don’t you just tell me?”
    She held her gaze on me. “Okay. The answer is no. It is not the first time Mike has hit me. It has happened before. He has a