Another Thing to Fall by Laura Lippman Page A

There’s always some place where they could use an extra body.”
    It took her a moment to get it, but then — it had been a long day. Tess had risen before the sun, more than seventeen hours ago.
    “You’re suggesting I make it a twofer?
I’ll do whatever you want, if you find a spot for my young friend?
That would be double the stress, Crow. I’d be doing a job I didn’t want to do, while worrying about what havoc Lloyd was wreaking.”
    “Lloyd would be so thrilled to work on a set that he would be on his best behavior.”
    “Lloyd’s best behavior isn’t exactly the gold standard.” Tess fell back on the rug. She was having her second psychic episode of the day, seeing the next hour in vivid detail. She could argue with Crow, eventually giving in, and he would rub her back as a reward. Or she could give in now and cut straight to the back rub.
    “I’ll call tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll have to inflate my usual price, to make it worth farming out some of the other gigs I have lined up, but if they agree to my price and a place for Lloyd, I’ll do it.”
    “I owe you,” Crow said, leaving the sofa to lie next to her, working his fingers into her hair.
    “I lost track of who owed whom in our relationship long ago,” Tess said.
    Actually, she hadn’t. But it
sounded
healthy.
     
Chapter 6
     
    Greer put the phone back in its cradle and looked at the clock on her computer, which she knew to be accurate to the second. That was one of her jobs, making sure that every time device in the office — the wall clocks, the phones, the computers — was synced. Ten-thirty. Flip had told her to continue trying to reach Tess Monaghan every half hour until the news came on.
Until the news came on
— those had been his very words. She had puzzled over those instructions. If the news came on at eleven and she was to call exactly on the half hour, did that mean she wasn’t to call at eleven? Did Flip know that Baltimore had a ten o’clock newscast? Didn’t most cities have ten o’clock newscasts? And then, in those cities on midwestern time, or whatever it was called, Greer believed they had nine o’clock newscasts. Not that the Midwest was relevant to this situation, but it was interesting to think about, how even seemingly precise instructions can end up being pretty vague. Yet Greer’s attention to detail was almost irrelevant, given how scattered Flip could be.
    When Lottie had talked to Greer about her desire to move into the job as Flip’s assistant — interrogated her, really, in that skeptical, suspicious way she had — she had told Greer that the biggest challenge would be knowing what Flip wanted. “Even when he doesn’t. And that’s often.” Greer had chalked the warning up to jealousy. Lottie, who had “discovered” Greer, couldn’t get over the fact that Greer wanted to stay in the writers’ office instead of training to be an assistant director. Lottie, like most would-be mentors, needed her protégée to mirror her exactly.
    But Greer had no intention of leaving the writers’ office, despite Lottie’s assertion that a job as Flip’s assistant was more of a cul-de-sac than a promotion. Writers were the bosses in television. And here she was in only her second industry job, working for one of the best, Flip Tumulty, the kind of person that others deferred to, sucked up to. People all over Hollywood, people whose names left Greer a little breathless, were constantly checking in with him, sending him gifts, currying favor.
    “Aw, the old Tumulty charisma,” Ben had said, when she tried to feel him out on this topic, discover why people yearned for Flip’s approval. She didn’t think that was the whole story, not quite. You could argue that Ben had more charm, while there was a hint of the — what was the word Ben had used in a different context? A hint of the nebbish about Flip, that was it, and it served him well. Disorganized as he was when it came to his life, he never lost sight