In a Strange City Page 21

  The curator-owner had been lurking behind a glass display case, which was possible because she was quite small. Well, she was short. It was hard to ascertain her body's proportions, given the voluminous yards of silk in which she had wrapped herself. That, and the snowy white turban she wore, made her look like a fortuneteller or psychic. But the white puff on her head wasn't a turban, Tess realized on second look, just her hair, teased into a hard bubble. The Mu-sheum curator looked a little like a better-kept version of the distracted-looking women seen wandering the city's streets, muttering to themselves. The women who walk, as Tess thought of them, for they stalked through their empty days with a palpable sense of mission, speaking sternly to themselves.

  But this woman had something the crazy women didn't have, a sense of irony, a self-awareness of her eccentricity that made her approachable.

  "You're the young woman I spoke to on the phone," the curator said, moving toward Whitney. People always assumed Whitney was in charge. "I'm Mary Yerkes."

  "No, I'm the one who called, Tess Monaghan," Tess said. "Whitney Talbot and Crow Ransome came along because they're interested in Maryland history, while Daniel Clary works at the Pratt." She had used Whitney to provide plausible cover for this visit, and Crow was trying to stick close to her side these days, determined to go with her where Esskay and Miata could not. "But Whitney's family foundation often underwrites projects such as yours. You might want to chat with her about what you do, apply for a grant."

  "Oh, no," Mary Yerkes said, smiling, fiddling with one of her earrings. They were clip-ons, quite large, silver tabby cats with gleaming blue eyes. "I don't want anyone else's money, because I don't want anyone telling me what to do. This is a very personal project. I won't even apply for nonprofit status. Then again, there is no profit—I just put my collections together and let people come by and see them. I refuse donations."

  "But how do you support yourself?" Daniel asked.

  "With money," the curator replied, eyes narrowed, as if she found the question odd. "Oh, you mean, where does the money come from? I had a little inheritance from my father. You see, Father didn't believe in higher education for women. So he sent my brothers to college and invested the money he would have spent on my tuition, saying it would be my dowry. But I fooled him; I never married. By the time he died, that little stake of money was worth quite a bit. I think I got the best end of the deal. Because the only reason I wanted to go to college was to read history and literature, and it turns out you can do that on your own. So my brothers have degrees; I have my historical mission and one million dollars, thanks to the wonders of compound interest."

  "Do you consider yourself a historian?" Tess asked.

  "I believe everyone's a historian," Mary Yerkes said, and Daniel nodded, as if he had found a kindred spirit. "We are the historians of our own lives. Think of the way most people decorate their homes, how they keep scrapbooks and correspondence, as if awaiting history's anointment. I've simply widened the scope beyond myself."

  Tess saw her point. "But why a museum dedicated to women?"

  "Why not? Gracious, darling, they have a museum dedicated to the city's sewer systems. Don't you think women deserve one too?"

  "Wouldn't it be better," Whitney asked, "if women's history took its place alongside men's, if we saw history as an inclusive panorama, as opposed to being totally Balkanized so every special interest group has to have its own slot?"

  Mary Yerkes reached up and pinched Whitney's cheek as if she were an adorably precocious child—no small feat, given that Whitney was as tall as Tess and there was little flesh to spare on her sharp-boned face.

  "Darling, of course it would. You send me a telegram the day that happens, okay? Assuming I'm alive to see it."

  The four began to walk through the gallery, an open space created by knocking down most of the walls on what had been the grand first floor, although the sliding doors between the front parlor and dining room had been retained. It was hard to know if Mary Yerkes was a little daft or ironic like a fox. The Maryland in the movies section, for example, included Edith Massey who had starred so memorably in early John Waters films. But here, also, was Divine, Waters's best-known star. Mary Yerkes had to realize that Glenn Mil-stead, as he had been born and as he had died, did not qualify for membership here. But, as she said, she was liberal about those she wanted to include, strict when she wanted to keep someone out. It was her museum, after all.

  And she did have a photograph of Linda Hamilton, Tess noted, circa Terminator 2, with those wonderfully veiny arms. Tess had tried to develop her own arms to look like that but quickly realized she wasn't prepared to make the dietary concessions that the cut look demanded. Nothing was worth giving up bread and pasta.

  "Now, is there something in particular you wanted to know?" Yerkes asked as they wandered through the rooms, trying to take everything in.

  "A local jeweler sent me here," Tess said. "He thought you might know something about Betsy Patterson Bonaparte."

  "I was interested in her, when I was younger. The phase passed—it saddens me now to contemplate women who had to marry their way into history—but I did quite a bit of reading on her at one point."

  "Were you interested enough to read her correspondence or any primary documents from the era? I'm trying to find out if there are any mentions of gifts Jerome might have made to her—specifically a parure"— she stumbled over the French word, but Mary Yerkes nodded—"made from gold and emeralds."

  "It doesn't ring a bell, but I'm an old woman. There are many bells that don't ring in my belfry anymore. However, it's something I could research for you, if you'd like. I have my own library on the upper floors, with all sorts of texts and articles about the clothing and jewelry of the day."

  Whitney, who could race through even the most comprehensive museum exhibits as if they were time trials, had taken everything in and was growing impatient, while Daniel had gone back to the literary display near the front. But Crow, still young enough to be indiscriminate about the way he stuffed his brain with facts and trivia, was entranced by the Mu-sheum. He had stopped in front of a case labeled poe's women.

  "Maria Clemm, with whom he lived. His mother, of course," he said. "Virginia Lee, his cousin and bride. Elmira Shelton, the woman he was believed to be engaged to at the time of his death. I know all these. But who was Fannie Hurst?"

  "A New York writer with whom he's believed to have had a love affair," Mary Yerkes said. "She was quite clever and talented in her own way. One story has it that when she went out one day and forgot her purse, she wrote a poem and sold it on the spot, in order to have cash."

  "Wouldn't it have been easier," Whitney asked, "to just go home and get her purse?"

  Mary Yerkes ignored the question. "I wish I had something more than photographs for that display. But Poe objects are so hard to come by, and so expensive when one does find them. The books—well, I couldn't touch those, and I don't much care for collecting books anyway. But there are people who own locks of his hair, cut from his head as he lay in state. A professor I know has a piece of fabric from Virginia Lee's trousseau. And the Nineteenth Century Shop, down in Southwest Baltimore, has a piece of his coffin. I can't compete in those circles. Then again, few in Baltimore can compete when cash is the only consideration."

  "What do you mean?" Tess asked.

  Mary Yerkes hesitated. Her protective veneer of irony was gone, and she looked more like the frail older woman she was. She was at least seventy-five, Tess realized, but her shrewd good humor gave her an ageless quality.

  "There is a black market for all things," she said, choosing her words with even more precision than usual. "People have approached me… or they used to, until they realized I had ethics. Still, I would hear rumors about things, every now and then. Rare things, things that belonged in museums, which had no innate value but could be priceless to serious collectors. Once, I admit, I was tempted, and I called the dealer a few days after our initial discussion to tell him
I had changed my mind. He laughed and said I had been outbid, that the competition for his wares had grown quite intense."

  "The competition?"

  "He did not choose to elaborate, but it was my sense this particular thief—after all, that's what he was, although he called himself an antiques dealer—had found someone who was willing to pay almost anything for what he called "Baltimorebilia." It was one of Toots Barger's trophies."

  "Toots Barger?" Not even Crow knew this name.

  "My dear, she was simply one of the greatest athletes Maryland has ever produced. She was a duckpin bowling champion. At any rate, he offered it to me, I said no, and later, in a weak moment, I had a change of heart. But when I called back he had gotten five times the price he originally named. I never heard from him again."

  "Would you tell me his name?"

  "I would if I could remember it, but it wouldn't help you much. He died at least five years ago. I do remember reading his obituary in the paper and feeling almost relieved, in a morbid way. He knew my secret, you see. He knew I had been tempted to do something wrong. Once he died, my secret was safe."

  "But you've just told us," Crow pointed out. Tess could tell he was falling in love, in his own peculiar way. Crow's flirtations were seldom sexualized; while other women watched their boyfriends tracking sweet young things, Crow was inclined to swoon for the eccentrics of both sexes. He was a slut for mankind. "Now it's out again."

  "Ah, but you won't exploit my weakness by trying to tempt me. At least, I hope you won't. This parure: Does it exist, or is it merely a rumor?"

  "A bracelet exists. We know that much." Tess could not hide her disappointment. She had nursed the hope the antiques dealer who had tempted Mary Yerkes might be Arnold Pitts. Or perhaps Bobby Hilliard, peddling things he had stolen from the library, had called her. It was one possible explanation for why the things he stole were not in his possession. But if he had gotten money for them, where had the money gone? Not into his apartment of thrift-shop luxuries, or to his parents.

  "The dealer who tried to sell you the trophy—did you ever get a sense of who his buyer was?"

  "No, only that he must be extremely rich."

  Rich was a relative term. Tess had a feeling that she and someone with a million-dollar endowment might use the word differently. "Millionaire rich? Billionaire rich?"

  "Let's put it this way: This was a person who was willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a trophy whose parts are worth no more than a couple of dollars. Now, it's theoretically possible he lives off saltines and canned tuna to afford such indulgences, but somehow I doubt it. To collect, one needs to be able to protect as well: climate-controlled rooms, security, the proper storage for whatever it is, whether books or old fabrics. I know people who give up much for their objects, but collecting requires upkeep. It is not a static activity for casual people with limited funds. You have to be fierce."

  "Would you kill for your things?" Crow asked.

  "Crow!" Whitney scolded, giving an uncanny and unconscious imitation of her very proper mother. Daniel, who had turned back to listen to their conversation, also looked appalled. But Mary Yerkes cocked her head, intrigued by the question.

  "Kill?" she said at last. "No, I couldn't kill to protect my things. But I might put myself in harm's way. If I arrived here one afternoon and saw smoke coming from the windows, I could be prone to do something… ill advised. Rush in and try to grab things before firefighters arrived, save whatever is most precious to me."

  "What would you take?" Crow pressed her. "What are your favorites?"

  Mary Yerkes held a finger to her lips and cast a conspiratorial glance around the room. "Please," she whispered. "They can hear you."

  Chapter 24

  ''When in doubt," Crow said, "go duckpin bowling."

  Left with only a sliver of an afternoon—not enough for Tess or Whitney to go back to work but too early to eat dinner or go to a bar—they had retreated to the Southway Lanes, inspired by Mary Yerkes's talk of Toots Barger. The much-anticipated snow had finally started, a soft languid snowfall that didn't seem in a rush to get out of town, and they had the place to themselves.

  Tess had forgotten that duckpin bowling is to regular bowling what Baltimore is to New York—smaller, perversely provincial, and more complicated than it first appears. You got three turns in a frame of duck-pins, but the hand-sized holeless balls required a different kind of skill. Brute force did not yield results in duckpins. You could hit the tenpin in the sweet spot and leave five standing.

  Unless you were Whitney, who had bowled 130 in the first game and had two strikes and a spare going into the sixth frame of the second. She swore it was only her third time at duckpins, but Tess was beginning to suspect the Talbot homestead contained a secret alley or two, where Whitney had honed her skills for years with an eye toward this opportunity to humiliate her. Between turns, Whitney drank beer, flattish Budweiser, and amused herself by studying the team names of the various local leagues.

  "The 'Who Cares,'" she called out. "'I Don't Give a Shit.' 'Sparrows Pointless.' It's as if Sartre and Camus were reincarnated in South Baltimore and decided to bowl instead of write."

  Daniel laughed appreciatively, but Tess had already abandoned her matchmaking plan. Whitney and Daniel hadn't sparked at all. Crow and Daniel, however—they were a perfect pair, with their love of arcane trivia and that same earnest, sincere quality.

  Deciding her problem was the ball, Tess put down the reddish one that reminded her of the planet Mars in favor of a mottled brown one, an egg from some ungainly bird. She lined up her aim slightly to the right, trying to compensate for her tendency to go left, and hurled it down the alley. It was perfect—leaving the 1 and the 5 pins standing.

  "No lofting," scolded the owner, an older woman in a faded pink sweater who was watching them anxiously from behind the bar. The weather was making her nervous; she wanted to close up and go home. "We just fixed them floors."

  Tess shrugged apologetically—she hadn't meant to loft; the ball had kind of slipped—and sent her second ball down the left gutter, her third down the right.

  "I knew a therapist once who recommended bowling as a way to confront untapped rage," she said, sliding into the molded plastic chair next to Whitney. "It doesn't work as well with duckpins. Maybe this is for people for whom you hold small grudges."

  A petty beef, as Arnold Pitts might say. Those were the words he had used when he first visited her. But how petty could a beef be if someone ended up dead? Tess heard the voice on the phone again—they're worth killing for—and suppressed a shudder.

  "Who would you be picturing right now if you were playing for catharsis?" Whitney asked. "Although, given your score tonight, I think you'd leave here even sicker."

  "Bitch," Tess said sunnily.

  She did love Whitney and would rather spend a lifetime exchanging insults with her than have one of those gooey, faux-sisterhood friendships that were all backstabbing, boyfriend-stealing, Nair-on-the mascara-wanding.

  "The problem is, I don't know who I'm angry at. Someone has stolen my life—forced me out of my house and put me in the position of looking over my shoulder every three seconds—and I don't know who it is. That's my head pin. Rainer, Arnold Pitts, Jerold Ensor—they're in there too, but hitting them won't give me as much satisfaction."

  "Has Rainer questioned them?"

  "Yeah, this morning. But they showed up with lawyers and deflected virtually every question. The fact is, he doesn't have a thing on them, other than impersonating police officers. Which is pretty serious, but it's not a murder charge."

  Crow finished his turn, then Daniel put together an eight the hard way. He tapped Whitney on the shoulder. She got up and threw a strike, as if her only concern was to return to the conversation as quickly as possible.

  "What did they say they were doing when they searched Bobby's apartment and the Hilliards' farm?"

  "Looking for their stuff, which is a pretty good excuse." Tess
went to the rack and hefted several balls, judging them the way a housewife might rate a head of cabbage. Maybe back to the red ball, Tess thought, then remembered it was slang for a high-profile homicide. She chose a pea-green one instead. Four pins. The ragged, broken line of white looked like a South Baltimore mouth.

  "But Rainer asked Pitts about the bracelet, right?"

  "Yep, and he was ready for him. Pitts said Bobby used to talk about this bracelet all the time, so he appropriated it as a cover story. It was never his, and he didn't care about it. He offered to open up his files and show he had never purchased such an item or sold one."

  Dividing her concentration between talking and bowling seemed to work. She picked up the spare against the odds and took Crow's seat, stealing a glance at their scores. Whitney was out of reach, but she, Crow, and Daniel were almost dead even. The guys didn't care, but Tess did, secretly. Whatever she did, Tess liked to win. Whereas Whitney assumed she would be victorious at every undertaking, a significant distinction. Daniel didn't seem to have a competitive bone in his body, while bowling took a backseat to Crow's unfettered delight in the Southway itself. He was enamored with the details. Such as the score sheet, which featured advertisements for neighborhood businesses that liked to brag they had "nationally advertised" brands, and a photograph of Jerry Lewis, circa 1972, demanding help in the battle against muscular dystrophy.

  Those delights all paled, however, next to the coupon for a pizza parlor that claimed to satisfy "the happy hungries." He ripped this from the scorecard and put it in his wallet.

  "It would make a nice title," he said to Tess, "if I were still writing songs."

  "Why don't you write songs anymore?" she asked, curious, remembering the funny-silly songs he had composed on the spot when they first met.

  "I'm in love, I have a job, and my dog isn't dead," he said. "What do I have to sing about?"