The Accidental Detective and other stories: Short Story Collection. Laura Lippman

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      “I thought I got an adjustable-rate mortgage. ARMs have conversion rates, don’t they? And caps? What does any of this have to do with PMI?”

      “ARMs do. But you got a balloon and balloons come due. All at once, in a big lump. Hence the name. You had a three-year grace period, in which you had an artificially low rate of 3.25 percent, with Peter’s three thousand in rehabilitative alimony giving you a big cushion. Now it’s over. In today’s market, I recommend a thirty-year fixed, but even that’s not the deal it was two years ago. According to today’s rates the best you can do is …”

      Frankennystein used an old-fashioned adding machine, the kind with a paper roll, an affectation Sally had once found charming. He punched the keys and the paper churned out, delivering its noisy verdict.

      “A million financed at thirty-year fixed rates—you’re looking at $7,000 a month, before taxes.”

      It was an increase of almost $4,000 a month over what she had been paying for the last three years and that didn’t take into account the alimony she was about to lose.

      “I can’t cover that, not with what I get in child support. Not and pay my share of the private school tuition, which we split fifty-fifty.”

      “You could sell. But after closing costs and paying the real estate agent’s fee, you’d walk away with a lot less cash than you might think. Maybe eight hundred thousand. ”

      Eight hundred thousand dollars. She couldn’t buy a decent three-bedroom for that amount, not in the neighborhood, not even in the suburbs. There, the schools would be free at least, but the Dutton School probably mattered more to Sally than it did to the children. It had become the center of her social life since Peter had left, a place where she was made to feel essential. Essential and adored, one of the parents who helped out without becoming a fearsome buttin-sky or know-it-all.

      “How long do I have to figure this out?” she asked Kenny.

      “The balloon comes due in four months. But the way things are going, you’ll be better off locking in sooner rather than later. Green-span looked funny the last time the Fed met.”

      “Funny?”

      “Constipated, like. As if his sphincter was the only thing keeping the rates down.”

      “Kenny,” she said with mock reproach, her instinctive reaction to a man’s crude joke, no matter how dull and silly. Already, her mind was miles away, flying through the streets of her neighborhood, trying to think who might help her. There was a father who came to Sam’s baseball games, often straight from work, only to end up on his cell, rattling off percentages. He must be in real estate.

      “I OWN A TITLE COMPANY,” Alan Moore said. “Which, I have to say, is like owning a mint these days. The money just keeps coming. Even with the housing supply tight as it is, people always want to refinance.”

      “If only I had thought to talk to you three years ago,” Sally said, twisting the stalk of a gone-to-seed dandelion in her hand. They were standing along the first-base line, the better to see both their sons—Sam, adorable if inept in right field, and Alan’s Duncan, a wiry first baseman who pounded his glove with great authority, although he had yet to catch a single throw to the bag.

      “The thing is—” Alan stopped as the batter made contact with the ball, driving it toward the second baseman, who tossed it to Duncan for the out. There was a moment of suspense as Duncan bobbled it a bit, but he held on.

      “Good play, son!” Alan said, and clapped, then looked around. “I didn’t violate the vocalization rule, did I?”

      “You were perfect,” Sally assured him. The league in which their sons played did, in fact, have strict rules about parents’ behavior, including guidelines on how to cheer properly—with enthusiasm, but without aggression. It was a fine line.

      “Where was I? Oh, your dilemma. The thing is, I can hook you up with someone who can help you find the best deal, but you might want to consider taking action against your lawyer. He could be disbarred for what he did, or at least reprimanded. Clearly a conflict of interest.”

      “True, but that won’t help me in the long run.” She sighed, then exhaled on the dandelion head, blowing away the fluff.

      “Did you make a wish?” Alan asked. He wasn’t handsome, not even close. He looked like Ichabod Crane, tall and thin, with a pointy nose and no chin.

      “I did,” Sally said with mock solemnity.

      “For what?”

      “Ah, if you tell, they don’t come true.” She met his eyes, just for a moment, let Alan Moore think that he was her heart’s desire. Later that night, her children asleep, a glass of white wine at her side, she plugged figures into various mortgage calculators on the Internet, as if a different site might come up with a different answer. She charted her budget on Quicken—if she traded the Porsche for a Prius, if she stopped buying organic produce at Whole Foods, if she persuaded Molly to drop ballet. But there were not enough sacrifices in the world to cover the looming shortfall in their monthly bills. They would have to give up everything to keep the house—eating, driving, heat and electricity.

      And even if she did find the money, found a way to make it work, her world was still shrinking around her. When Peter first left, it had been almost a relief to be free of him, grouchy and cruel as he had become in midlife. She had been glad for an excuse to avoid parties as well. Now that she was divorced, the husbands behaved as if a suddenly single woman was the most unstable molecule of all in their social set. But Alan Moore’s gaze, beady as it was, had reminded her how nice it was to be admired, how she had enjoyed being everyone’s favorite confidante once upon a time, how she had liked the hands pressed to her bare spine, the friendly pinch on her ass.

      She should marry again. It was simple as that. She left the Internet’s mortgage calculators for its even more numerous matchmakers, but the world she glimpsed was terrifying, worse than the porn she had once found cached on Peter’s laptop. She was old by the standards enumerated in these online wish lists. Worse, she had children, and ad after ad specified that that would just not do. She looked at the balding, pudgy men, read their demands—no kids, no fatties, no over-forties—and realized they held the power to dictate the terms. No, she would not subject herself to such humiliation. Besides, Internet matches required writing, not listening. In a forum where she could not nod and laugh and gaze sympathetically, Sally was at a disadvantage. Typing “LOL” in a chat room simply didn’t have the same impact.

      Now a man with his own children, that would be ideal. A widower or a divorcee who happened to have custody, rare as that was. She mentally ran through the Dutton School directory, then pulled it from the shelf and skimmed it. No, no, no—all the families she knew were disgustingly intact, the divorced and reblended ones even tighter than those who had stayed with their original mates. Didn’t anyone die anymore? Couldn’t the killers and drug dealers who kept the rest of Washington in the upper tier of homicide rates come up to Northwest every now and then, take out a housewife or two?

      Why not?

      IN A SCHOOL RENOWNED for dowdy mothers, Lynette Moore was one of the dowdiest, gone to seed in the way only a truly preppy woman can. She had leathery skin and a Prince Valiant haircut, which she smoothed back from her face with a grosgrain ribbon headband. Her laugh was a loud, annoying bray, and if someone failed to join in her merriment, she clapped the person on the back as if trying to dislodge a lump of food. On this particular СКАЧАТЬ