In a Strange City Page 20

  Tess paused, but only to make Rainer feel better. "To gain access to these homes. But did Pitts ever have a party? Did Shawn Hayes? And did everyone who had a party end up being burglarized?"

  "Pitts didn't use the catering service, as far as we can tell," Rainer admitted. "And while Hayes had a big holiday party, it was a week or two earlier, before Christmas. He had a pretty sophisticated alarm system. It's my guess that Bobby couldn't figure out how to get around it. We were working on the supposition that Bobby made a date with Shawn Hayes in order to get in his house."

  "Were working," Tess echoed, recognizing the importance of the verb tense.

  "Well, it led to a kind of dead end, didn't it? No pun intended. Even if we can clear a bunch of burglary cases and the assault, it doesn't really tell us why Bobby Hilliard was killed. Which is the way the case gets cleared, after all. His victims are fine upstanding types. The kind of people who holler for the police when any little thing goes wrong, not do-it-yourselfers. Unless—"

  "Unless?"

  "Unless the way Bobby got to them was the way he got to Shawn Hayes. I don't know from hate crimes, but if he went after guys who weren't up front about their… preferences, they could be reluctant to tell us about it, you know? There may be victims out there we don't even know about, because they'd rather live with the loss than tell anyone how it happened. Bobby Hilliard knew someone was angry at him. He bought a gun the first week of January, and he had it on him when he was killed."

  "I had no idea," Tess said. "You've kept that out of the papers. But I can't say I blame him for carrying. I'm doing the same."

  "Here?" Rainer asked.

  "No, I didn't want to hassle with bringing a weapon into the police department. It's locked in the glove compartment of Tyner's van. I'm keeping it on me at all other times, however. I have a license. It's legal."

  "It's legal," Rainer said, "but that doesn't make it prudent." He bit the last word into two harsh syllables, so Tess needed a second to catch what he said. In Rainer's mouth, Pru Dent sounded like a distant cousin of Carte Blanche. At any rate, she wasn't going to get drawn into a discussion of the second amendment with Rainer.

  "So I guess Arnold Pitts has to move to the top of your suspect list, right? He was intent on finding Bobby Hilliard, he was Bobby Hilliard's victim. And he clearly attached much value to this bracelet, for whatever reason. Have you been to his house? The guy fetishizes objects. I'd hate to see what would happen to anyone who broke one of his cookie jars."

  "Yeah, I been. Okay, so the guy wants to get this bracelet back. But where did he get something like this, anyway? It's not what he usually traffics in. And why hire a private detective if he's just going to follow the guy and cap him?" Rainer asked. "What's the point?"

  "To set up an alibi of sorts," Tyner offered, but even he didn't sound convinced. "By making a big show of sending someone to go to the grave site that night, he creates the suggestion that he has no intention of being there."

  "You've met Pitts," Rainer said to Tess. "You've seen him."

  "Twice now."

  "How tall would you say he is?"

  She held her palm to her collarbone and made a quick calculation. "Five-two?"

  "On a good day. And Jim Yeager?"

  "Two, maybe three inches taller than I am. I'd put him at six feet, although at least two inches of it was hair."

  "Well, we don't know who shot Bobby Hilliard for sure, but we know that the other guy in the cape was taller than he was, right? He's not off the hook, not by a long shot. Quite the opposite, since you showed me all the little gifts you've been receiving."

  "There's no evidence they're the same, Poe's Visitor and my creep."

  "Okay, but hold on. For Yeager, we got an eyewitness, a pretty good one, given that she was a block away. She says the guy who stabbed him was almost as tall, if not taller, and unless Pitts was tottering around on stilts, that eliminates him. So, yeah, I got a lot of questions for Arnold Pitts, but I'm afraid he's going to have some good answers. It's the other guy I want, Mr. Visitor, and I'm putting that word out. At the very least, he's an eyewitness to a crime. It's his civic duty to come forward, but if he doesn't I'm gonna find him. No more Mr. Nice Guy."

  "How are you going to find him if no one knows who he is?" Tyner asked, curious.

  "I'm a cop. It's what I do. No one can keep a secret, and there's someone in Baltimore who knows who this guy is, because he told him. Got drunk at a party or showed his wife the cape one night. Even Superman ended up telling Lois Lane who he was. So I'll find him."

  Tess took out a digital camera, her latest toy. It was helpful to know what the photo was going to look like before you took it, and then to be able to enter the photos into her computer files. Besides, maybe she'd get her own Web site, put up her favorite surveillance shots, charge for downloading the naked ones. Www.TessMonaghan.com.

  "You gonna immortalize me for your scrapbook?" Rainer asked.

  "No, I want to take several photographs of the bracelet, so I can show it to some people around town, see if they can tell me if it's real or not."

  "That's our job," Rainer objected. "Dammit, you gotta stop this. I thought that was the whole point of this meeting. You let us do our job, and you do yours."

  "This is my job. I'm working for the Hilliards. They're entitled to know the value of this item they've voluntarily surrendered to police and entitled to know if their son came by it legally. If he didn't steal it, they should get it back when this is all over. I'm taking a photograph so I can take it around to some local appraisers and history types, see if they've even heard of such an item."

  "Is that all you're doing?"

  "For now. The Hilliards would like me to prove Bobby isn't the person who attacked Shawn Hayes, Jim Yeager's nattering to the contrary."

  "What, they think they're going to cash in on some big lawsuit?"

  "Bobby's dead," Tyner said. "And therefore can't be libeled under the law. Yeager's death doesn't make him an ideal defendant, anyway, although I suppose one could pursue a claim against his estate. But, no, the Hilliards aren't trying to cash in on their son's death. They want to know the truth, even if it's ugly."

  "Speaking of ugly"—Rainer's smile was malicious, an effect heightened by the poppy seeds caught in his teeth—"you haven't asked me about our eyewitness, the one who saw Yeager killed."

  Tess centered the bracelet in the frame, checked the view on the back of the camera, clicked the shutter. "You said they had a date. I guess I assumed it was someone from the local escort service, the little wifey in Washington notwithstanding."

  "Oh, I don't think you'd get that kind of date with this gal. They say it's a small world, but what are the odds that the person who saw Yeager killed happened to be one of the last people he ever interviewed?"

  "You mean—"

  Rainer nodded, enjoying her consternation. "Cecilia Cesnik was waiting for Yeager on the corner. And don't think the cops assigned to the case won't be looking hard at that happy coincidence."

  "But I got a phone call—"

  "Yeah, you got a phone call. People get them every day. And for all we know, you were set up to get that phone call so we wouldn't look at all the possibilities. But not to worry. Your buddy Tull is the secondary on Yeager, so I'm sure you'll get all the scoop you need."

  "You don't think Cecilia—"

  "I don't gotta think. It's not my case, and I want it to stay that way. Jim Yeager was on the television, screaming about how Bobby Hilliard's killer was a hero, that we should pin a medal on him, so why would that guy want to kill him? The way I see it, there's no end of people who wanted to shut Yeager up. Start with the guest list from that night's show. Or maybe Jim Yeager was assassinated by the fairy patrol, the Gay-Antidefamation League. Hey, that spells GAL."

  He laughed at what he mistook as wit, while Tess and Tyner shared a covert glance of dismay. It wasn't just the horrible phrase Rainer had used, it was the way something brightened in his face, the joy he
found in the slur.

  "So," Tess said, putting away her camera, "take care of these things, okay? Especially the bracelet."

  "We always do."

  "Really? Then how did Yeager end up with Bobby Hilliard's datebook?"

  "He didn't. He asked me if he could see it, and I said no. He asked me what it looked like, so I told him. Plain black datebook, the kind you can get in any stationery store. He bought one to hold up on TV, but it was just a prop. We got the real thing, and believe me there's nothing in it but his shift schedule. No clues. He made that up."

  "Sleazy bastard," Tess said.

  "Yeah, but if you start executing journalists because they got no ethics, it's gonna be hard to put out the local paper."

  What could Tess say? She agreed.

  Chapter 23

  The silver-haired man who was behind the counter at Gummere Brothers, one of downtown Baltimore's few remaining jewelry stores, shook his head at the photos Tess showed him the next morning.

  "I couldn't possibly date an item from a photograph, much less speak to its historic authenticity," he said. "What kind of stones did you say?"

  "Emeralds to my untrained eye, but they could be pieces of a Rolling Rock bottle for all I know. Can't you tell me anything? Is it plausible, at least, that this could have belonged to a rich woman from the early nineteenth century?"

  "Well, I suppose it could be part of a parure," he said, squinting again at Tess's photograph. He had large pale-blue eyes, rounder than most, and it was easy to imagine they had gradually been reshaped over the years by the jeweler's loupe he wore on a velvet cord around his neck. "I mean, it would make sense that Betsy Patterson Bonaparte would have been presented with one. But I'm speaking strictly hypothetically"

  "What's a parure?"

  "It's a set of matching jewels, something only someone of the highest station would have had," he said. "Probably a tiara, choker, necklace, and usually two bracelets."

  "And such a thing would be valuable?"

  "Very, depending on condition, of course, and whether it could be authenticated. I never heard that Betsy Patterson Bonaparte had a parure, but then again, I never heard she didn't have one. Some descendant may have had financial reverses and sold it to make ends meet. It happens in the best of families."

  "It's funny, I don't think of Patterson as being one of the classier names in Baltimore, not like Carroll or Calvert," Tess said. "After all, Patterson Park is where chicken hawks prowl for young boys, and Patterson Park High School has always been one of the more troubled campuses in the city. Funny how things change. But I guess it's back to the Pratt and more reading."

  "There are worse ways to spend the last day of January," the Gummere brother observed.

  "Usually I'd agree with you, but I'm restless today. I feel the need to keep moving." Tess did not permit herself to dwell on how this need for motion might be related to the feeling that lingering anywhere, for any reason, made her vulnerable to an enemy she had yet to meet. "Besides, there's a snowstorm in the forecast and a lot of the city agencies are shutting down early and letting employees take liberal leave. The library's probably closed by now."

  "Well, if it's a shortcut you want, you could probably get a crash course on Patterson—or just about any other woman from Maryland's history—at the Mu-sheum."

  "Mu-what?"

  "It's a museum set up to honor Maryland women, open by appointment only. The lady who runs it is good on the domestic details of women's lives. Not just jewelry but how they set their tables and the kinds of wall coverings and window treatments used at various times."

  Tess remained skeptical. She was well schooled in Baltimore oddities; if one had eluded her this long, it couldn't possibly be of interest. "You're not sending me on a wild-goose chase, are you?"

  He pressed a buzzer beneath the counter, granting admittance to another customer, a prosperous-looking gentleman who seemed impatient, as prosperous-looking gentlemen so often do. Time is money, and this man had broadened the concept: He seemed to think Tess's time was his money as well. Tess had never actually seen someone in a monocle before.

  "I can't say whether it will be a wild-goose chase, because I don't know what you hope to find out," the jeweler said, as he turned his attentions to this more promising customer, who kept clearing and reclearing his throat, like a PA system dispensing static before an important announcement. "But I can promise it won't be an experience you'll soon forget."

  The personal obsession masquerading as a museum is something of a Maryland tradition. The University of Maryland had a dental museum that had proved to be one of the Beacon-Light's perennial slow-day feature stories, as had the private home devoted to the history of the lightbulb. The Dime Museum, a salute to the nineteenth century's oddities, was the most recent. There was even a museum dedicated to the history of feminine hygiene, down in Prince Georges County.

  But it saddened Tess that neither she nor Whitney could compile an even partial list of Maryland heroines as they walked from Whitney's office at the Talbot Foundation to the Mu-sheum's headquarters on Calvert Street. No, it was Crow and Daniel Clary, whom she had invited as a lark, who knew much more when it came to Maryland's hit parade of double-X chromosome cases than either of its native daughters.

  "Elizabeth Seton, of course. She's a saint," Crow began.

  "I've heard of Seton Hill," Tess said.

  "Barbara Mikulski," Daniel said. "Former social worker who became a U.S. senator. Rosa Ponselle, the opera singer."

  "Billie Holiday." That was Whitney's offering. Bareheaded, she seemed not to notice how cold it was, or that snow was expected to start falling at any moment. Her pale face did not redden, which made her green eyes darker and harder. Like emeralds, Tess thought, her mind back with the parure bracelet.

  "But she was actually born in Philadelphia," Daniel pointed out. "Remember when the Blight publicized that, how people just kind of ignored it because it wasn't what they wanted to hear?"

  "Well, if you want to believe what you read in the Beacon-Light," said Whitney, who had once worked at the paper and consequently had more disdain for it than anyone else Tess knew. "Besides, there's a statue of her over in West Baltimore. So she must be from here."

  "There's a bust of Simón Bolívar in a park in Guilford," Crow said. "Does that mean he's from here? Now, come on, can't you think of anyone else who might be in a museum devoted to famous Maryland women?"

  "Wallis Warfield Simpson," Whitney said. "The Cone sisters. Did I tell you I went to a fund-raiser at the museum once, and one of the local restaurants was serving garlic mashed potatoes scooped into little focaccia funnels, in honor of the Cone collection? I don't know. I can't imagine that's what the sisters had in mind when they donated all their Matisses and Picassos to the BMA, seeing their name turned into a potato snack."

  "Linda Hamilton."

  Tess was immediately embarrassed by her lowbrow pop-culture contribution, especially when Crow, Whitney, and Daniel chorused in unison: "Who?"

  "The actress from the Terminator movies. You know, the one with the arms. She's from the Eastern Shore."

  "Oh, well, movies," Whitney said scornfully. "If that counts as history, we're all in trouble."

  "If it doesn't, I'm afraid the Maryland Mu-sheum is in trouble."

  From the outside, the Mu-sheum was just another Calvert Street rowhouse, in the seedier upper reaches of Mount Vernon. The other rowhouses here had been subdivided into apartments or turned into offices for architects and lawyers. This one was better kept than its neighbors, however, with window boxes, empty in winter, and the sparkling-white marble steps that Baltimoreans so fetishize.

  Inside, the tiled vestibule was clearly on familiar terms with ammonia and strong cleansers. The brass fixtures gleamed and Tess felt almost guilty for leaving a fingerprint behind when she pressed the call button beneath a hand-lettered notecard, mm.

  "M&M's?" Whitney asked hopefully. "Marilyn Monroe?"

  "Maryland Mu-she-um, I g
uess." Tess could not quite get the name out without a giggle and a sigh.

  A throaty whisper answered Tess's ring, and the interior door's lock was released.

  Tess had expected a private home with a few framed photographs and glass cases of dusty artifacts, but the rooms they entered were as professional looking as any small gallery, with blond wood floors, white walls, and track lighting. A rectangular shadow box, featuring Maryland's writers, was hung on the wall to their immediate left.

  "Anne Tyler, of course!" Whitney said. "I see her at Eddie's."

  "Do you ever try to talk to her?" Daniel asked.

  "Of course not. If you know enough to recognize Anne Tyler, you know enough not to approach her."

  Don't be so imperious, Tess wanted to hiss at her friend. You'll scare him off.

  The other books and photos in the case included Leslie Ford, a mystery writer from the 1930s; Gertrude Stein, who had passed some time in Baltimore with Alice B. Toklas; a woman known for one book, Here at Susie Slagle's; and Sophie Kerr, who had used the money she made as a popular novelist to endow the country's richest literary prize, at Tess and Whitney's alma mater. Then there was Zelda Fitzgerald—who had come to Baltimore primarily for its mental hospitals, alas—and Louise Erdrich.

  "Louise Erdrich?" Crow asked. "But she's from out west somewhere, lived in New Hampshire, and then moved to Minnesota. How does she qualify?"

  "Got her MFA at Johns Hopkins." It was the whis-pery voice that had admitted them, but Tess couldn't see anyone. "I was going to put Grace Metalious in there too—her second marriage took place in Elk-ton—but I think I'll wait and devote a special exhibit to Peyton Place later. I'm very liberal in what constitutes a local, if it's someone I want to include. I can also be quite strict, if it's someone I want to exclude. You'll notice Maria Shriver is here but not Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. I can't help feeling she's something of a carpetbagger, even if she is lieutenant governor."