In a Strange City Read online

  "But there were no items stolen from Hayes's house, remember? The guy at the museum said so."

  "The Poe docent told us there's no gold bug and no locket," Tess agreed. "But I think something was taken from Shawn Hayes's house. Pitts's lies always have chunks of honesty running through them, if only because he's too lazy to make up anything out of whole cloth. He said as much."

  "Tess—" Gretchen stopped, suddenly shy about giving advice.

  "What?"

  "If you move back home, keep looking over your shoulder. I didn't want to say anything in there, but a car at the airport doesn't prove anything except that there's a car at the airport."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You leave your car at the curb, you buy a ticket. People assume you went somewhere. Maybe you did, maybe you didn't. It's a whaddaya-call-it—an optical illusion of sorts. See, maybe he didn't get on a plane. Or he got off when it made the connection in Dallas or wherever. Or he went to Mexico and turned around, came back by car or bus. That border's pretty easy to cross, especially if you're white. Besides, we don't have any idea where Pitts is, and he's a mean little man. So I'm saying be careful, because… because…" She seemed to be fumbling for another word.

  "Because?"

  She sighed. Her cheek was no longer swollen, but Ensor's hand had left a mark of rich royal purple, shot through with red and gold highlights, a misshapen family crest.

  "Because you're not that good. I'm sorry, but it's true. You're good on the thinking end, but you're not street-smart. You can't pick up a tail to save your fuckin‘ life, and you hold your gun like it's a hairbrush."

  And with that Gretchen was gone, their partnership apparently dissolved.

  The memory of Gretchen's words descended on Tess like a cold front when she crossed her threshold later that day siphoning much of the pleasure from her homecoming. A joyful Esskay made a beeline for the sofa, while Miata all but sighed and turned her woeful brown eyes on Tess as if to say, When do I get to go to my home? Crow went immediately to check on the kitchen cabinets, picking up a piece of steel wool and turning on his boom box. It was Mardi Gras on East Lane again.

  Tess was left in the center of the living room, taking inventory of her possessions. Everything was here: the dog-flecked velvet sofa, her "Human Hair" sign, the Four Corners tortilla-chip platter she had picked up while trailing Pitts; the oyster tin that Fuzzy Iglehart had used to stave off her demands for payment. There was a restful oil painting of trees, unearthed at a local consignment shop, distinguished by nothing other than her fondness for it. She also had a painted screen, by one of Baltimore's best known screen painters, Dee Herget. The half circle showed the prototypical view of swans gliding through a placid pond.

  All told, you couldn't get a thousand bucks for the room's contents. But Tess liked her stuff too much to put a price on it. In part, she defined herself through the furniture she chose and the things she hung on her wall. She made judgments about other people based on the same criteria. Funny, she knew—and disliked— women who rated men according to the cars they drove. And Whitney had once broken off a promising relationship because the man was, as she put it, "so clueless that he got the Caesar salad from Eddie's already mixed."

  But Tess was no less silly for her preoccupations. Would it have been fatal, after all, to live in a house with avocado-green kitchen appliances? It had seemed so once, but no longer.

  "Knock-knock," a man's deep voice called from the other side of the door. She jumped, startled. But when she peeked through the fish-eye, it was only Daniel, his arms full of pizza boxes, a six-pack of Yuengling, and a slender black book balanced on top.

  "What are you doing here?"

  "I called Crow today, to see if he wanted to go hear this blues band at the Eight by Ten." Tess's matchmaking scheme for Whitney may have failed, but Crow and Daniel's relationship was flourishing. "He told me he didn't think you should be left alone tonight. So I thought I'd repay your kindnesses to me by bringing dinner and a re-housewarming present. Who's this?"

  He set his armload down on the dining room table to pay attention to the always-demanding Esskay, who believed that all who entered her domain must acknowledge her beauty. The fair-minded Daniel attempted to pet Miata as well, but Esskay kept sticking her snout into his armpit and directing his hands back to her sleek head. Apathetic Miata took no notice.

  "She's one mystery we haven't solved," Tess said, nodding at the Doberman.

  "What do you mean?"

  "The Hound of the Baskervilles. Why didn't she bark when Shawn Hayes was attacked?"

  "Maybe she wasn't there," Daniel said.

  "Huh?"

  "I've been thinking about this. I'm a Poe buff, after all. You've assumed all of this has been one-on-one. But what if the two men you followed were working together? What if one took the dog out for a walk while the other was burglarizing Shawn Hayes's home? Hayes walks in, things get out of hand—"

  "And what if a gorilla came down the chimney, à la The Murders in the Rue Morgue?" Tess asked. Her voice was gentle, with some effort. She was tired of people treating her work as if it were some double-crostic, a game for everyone to play. "Daniel, you forget. I saw Ensor try to kill Pitts."

  "Because Pitts had double-crossed him. Or maybe they did it for your benefit. Maybe it was all staged." Esskay drunk on attention, staggered back to her sofa, and Daniel tried to show Miata some affection, scratching beneath her collar. But the Doberman would have none of it. She shrugged off his fingers and walked away, dropping to the floor and assuming as close an approximation of the fetal position as a dog could achieve.

  Another knock, a real one this time. Tess opened the door and found Cecilia and Charlotte standing there, holding hands. Cecilia lagged a bit behind Charlotte, a little girl being led to her first day of school or to the doctor's office for the required immunizations. There were hollows beneath her dark eyes, and her transparent skin had an ashy look.

  "I saw on the news that the police think they have a suspect in Bobby Hilliard's death, that they issued a warrant for someone," she said, rushing through her words. "You were right, and I was wrong. I'd say I was sorry, but I'm not, not really. If I had to do it all over again, I'd do it much the same way." Cecilia paused to consider what she had said. "Except go on Yeager's show."

  "Well—" Tess knew it was wrong to smile, but she couldn't help herself. Cecilia's apology was grudging, yet sincere. "That's something, I guess."

  "I don't mean because he made a fool of me," Cecilia said, crossing the threshold. She noticed Daniel, gave him a puzzled look because he wasn't Crow, and wasted no more time. "But if I hadn't gone on the show, Yeager wouldn't have asked me to meet him that night. Then I wouldn't have seen what happened. I really wish I hadn't seen… that. I'm still having bad dreams."

  "You'll have them for a while."

  Maybe forever, maybe not. Tess didn't know how long the nightmares lasted. It had been two years since she had seen a man run down by a cab, and while the nighttime replays were less frequent, they still came, often when she least expected them, after happy carefree days. But she had cared about the man she saw killed. Cecilia didn't have that burden.

  "Wait a minute. Did you say Yeager asked you to meet him? For some reason, I always thought you were just lurking there, hoping to confront him for what he did to you."

  "No, he summoned me, the neo-con prick." She put her hand to her mouth, embarrassed. Even Cecilia realized ad hominem attacks should be suspended after a man had been murdered. "He left a note at the office the Alliance uses in the Medical Arts building, demanding to see me. Apparently Jim Yeager doesn't traffic in anything so crude as technology—phone calls, faxes, E-mails—unless he has no other choice."

  Tess remembered the cell phone that Yeager wouldn't turn off while drinking coffee at the Daily Grind. He had seemed perfectly comfortable with technology to her.

  "Why would you go see him after the way he treated you?"

  "He said he wanted to a
pologize because he knew something that changed everything. I didn't care about the apology, but I sure wanted to hear what he had learned. I guess it was what you found out, that this was all about someone's stuff. I waited on that corner for almost twenty minutes. I was about to leave when I saw him approach—"

  Her voice faltered, and Tess knew she was seeing the scene in her mind. Charlotte must have realized this too, for she grabbed her hand and steadied her.

  "Cecilia—this note," Tess asked gently. "What did it look like?"

  "Oh, it was so typical of him. Computer generated, but with some fancy old-fashioned font, like he was using a quill pen. Jesus, he was such a George Will wannabe. But too bombastic."

  Some fancy old-fashioned font. Shit, shit, shit. Tess didn't have her Visitor's notes any more, not even the copies. She caught Daniel's eye, and he nodded. He had picked up on this detail, too.

  "How did it arrive?" She was trying not to lead Cecilia, not to plant anything in her mind.

  "By carrier pigeon," Cecilia said impatiently. "Jesus, Tess, what do you mean, how did it arrive? He slipped it under the door. We had a meeting Sunday afternoon, the way we always do. It was there when I arrived to open the office at four."

  And Yeager was a man of regular habits, Tess was remembering, not unlike herself. He ate at the same Inner Harbor restaurant every night—McCormick and Schmick's, because God forbid he should go to one of the local places when a high-end chain was available— walking back to the hotel as if this would balance out his indulgences.

  "I was curious about the stationery, whether it came in a certain kind of envelope."

  "I don't recall, but I think it was just a plain piece of paper folded in quarters. The door is pretty low to the ground, and there's a carpet. Something thicker wouldn't have fit."

  "Did Rainer know about the note? Did you show it to him?"

  "I talked to the other detective, Tull, more than I talked to Rainer. Remember, the one working on the Yeager case? I guess I told Tull, but Rainer was pretty cursory with me. He might have assumed it was a phone call, I don't know. What's the big deal?"

  Rainer assumed, the ass. How in character. He didn't even read Tull's notes, because he didn't care if anyone else's homicide was cleared.

  "The big deal, Cecilia, is I don't think Yeager wrote the note. If you hadn't been avoiding me, you'd know I was getting notes, in an old-fashioned computer font, like clues in some mysterious scavenger hunt. I think Yeager's killer wanted you there. He wanted a witness."

  "But why?" Daniel asked. "Why would someone invite an eyewitness to a murder?"

  Tess was thinking about Gretchen's remark, that En-sor might have faked his getaway, how inferences can be sparked by simple facts we choose to interpret.

  "The killer wanted Cecilia to see a tall man in a cloak, a man with roses and cognac, because it fits the pattern of what happened at Poe's grave. But what if Cecilia didn't see what she thought she saw? You know, I think you ought to go to a hypnotist, see if someone could shake out more details of what you might remember but have suppressed out of shock or fear."

  "A hypnotist? Oh, Tess, please. You're getting weird on me."

  "Maybe I am." But she was only growing more convinced of her own theory. Perhaps she could draw Cecilia's memories out of her, under the guise of concern and friendship. "You want to stay for pizza? Daniel here brought enough for ten people."

  "I have a big appetite," he said, blushing. "I guess I overestimate how much others need."

  Charlotte and Cecilia shook their heads at the offer, almost in unison.

  "I've done what I came to do, Tess," Cecilia said, her voice shaking with some unidentified emotion. "I said I couldn't say I was sorry, but I am sorry for one thing. I wish I had realized I didn't have to fight you so hard."

  She broke down and began to cry. Tess would have embraced Cecilia then, but Charlotte had already taken her into her arms, so she settled for patting her arm awkwardly.

  "Cecilia, it's not that bad. You didn't kill anyone."

  "I thought… I thought I did," she said, in the broken voice that comes on the heels of a hard cry. "That's why I've been avoiding you. All this time, I believed Yeager's death was my fault, because I must have stirred someone up somehow. Maybe that is what happened. Maybe someone summoned me to that corner to see the consequences of my rhetoric. Good Lord, maybe someone thought it was what I wanted. If it turns out Yeager was killed by one of us…" She broke down again.

  "You didn't stir anyone up, Cecilia," Tess told her, in her most soothing voice. "Yeager did. That datebook he wagged on the air? It was a prop. If anything got him killed, it was his own stupidity. Jerold Ensor probably thought his name was in that book. Or Arnold Pitts. If they set you up to witness the killing, it was only to implicate the Visitor. Who's a better murder suspect than the man no one knows by name? Maybe they thought turning the Visitor into a homicide suspect would force police to do everything they could to identify him, which would lead them to whatever it was Bobby Hilliard gave him that night."

  Cecilia's shoulders continued to shake as she suppressed another wave of sobs. Daniel, embarrassed by all this emotion, escaped to the kitchen with a beer, in search of Crow.

  And Tess realized that her words, intended to do no more than comfort, may have stumbled into the vicinity of the truth.

  Yeager's killer wanted the Visitor, any way he could get him. Enough to pretend to be him, in order to get the police to flush out the real one. Yeager's killer believed Bobby had passed to the Visitor that still-mysterious "they," the things worth killing for. The plan had failed, which could mean the Poe Toaster's life was in danger. But how can you protect someone, or even warn him, if you don't know who he is?

  Chapter 31

  "Are you sure?" the mystified classified clerk at the City Paper had asked. She had already read the ad back three times and hadn't gotten it right once. "I mean, it's a lot of words, and it's not like most of the things we run in our "Misconnected‘ section. Usually, they're a little more direct, you know?"

  Tess had felt perversely flattered that the clerk even cared. This youngish-sounding woman had been a bored automaton when their conversation had started. Now the mask of boredom had slipped, and she was no longer in such a rush to take Tess's ad and money and get her off the phone.

  "More direct? You mean something like: "You: Black cloak, roses, cognac. Me: Braid, vintage tweed coat, Smith & Wesson. Glimpsed at Westminster Hall on Jan. 19 and then—nevermore.""

  "That's a little better," the clerk had conceded. "But you could get the word count down. You don't really need the "nevermore‘ part because, like, he knows, right? After all, if you'd seen the guy since then, you wouldn't be placing an ad. Also, my advice? Lose the poetry."

  Tess had looked at the lines she had penned on a legal pad at her kitchen table. It read:

  From the same source I have not taken My sorrow I could not awaken, My heart to joy at the same tone, And all I loved, I loved alone.

  These were the four lines dropped from the poem "Alone," the last written missive from her Visitor, whoever he was.

  After much pencil-chewing, literal and figurative, Tess had added her own quatrain:

  Just because a man's a stranger Doesn't mean he can avoid all danger Meet me tomorrow at 6, the usual place, I know your secret—you know my face.

  "I'll stick to my version," she told the clerk firmly.

  "It's way too vague, I'm telling you. You need to be specific to get results."

  "Well, there's always next week, isn't there, and another chance to get it right."

  She hung up, but Tess wasn't done. She had index cards printed with the same doggerel and she set out with Esskay and Miata, posting them in her usual haunts. If someone had been following her all those weeks, he had been to these places, too. She walked down to the Daily Grind, where Travis agreed to tape the card to the cash register, sharing a conspiratorial wink with her. She crossed the street to Video Americain, where another
card joined the jumble of ads for music lessons and apartment shares and yard sales. By the end of the day, her exercise in verse had gone up in the two supermarkets she frequented, Kitty's bookstore, the boxing gym where she lifted weights, and the "Andy Hardy" liquor store, a neighborhood joint that had earned that nickname because the owners were peppy enthusiastic kids who didn't look old enough to be drinking wine, much less selling it.

  The index cards specified the date they were to meet. The City Paper came out on Wednesday, so "tomorrow" should be clearly understood. Not that Tess was optimistic about getting a response. It seemed just as probable that he would use the time to go to her office or her home. So Crow would be in the house on East Lane, listening for approaching footsteps while he worked in the kitchen. And Daniel had volunteered to park across the street from her office in Butchers Hill, watching for the man to show up there.

  Finally, Whitney was to shadow her to Westminster, her only backup now that Gretchen had blown her off. Not that Tess feared this man, whoever he was. Clearly, he was the frightened one.

  It was out of consideration for him that she had chosen 6 p.m., when the early nightfall provided cover yet the downtown streets were not yet deserted. The traffic, street and foot, would still be heavy—civil servants rushing home to the suburbs, university types heading to their apartments. She hoped he understood this. She cared only for his safety. His safety and his anonymity. But if he held the secret to a murder, he had to come forward.

  Now it was Thursday night, and she was alone in the graveyard. The sign said the grounds closed at dusk, but the unlocked gates invited one to ignore this rule. Tess watched the minute hand of the Bromo-Seltzer clock slowly reaching toward 12. She had debated whether she should wait by the memorial, which had so vexed Gretchen with its wrong date, or the original burial place, which is where the Visitor had laid his gifts. She chose the latter, but there was no bench in its immediate vicinity. Feeling it would be sacrilegious to perch on one of the old family crypts nearby, she began to pace. Then she decided she would look threatening if she kept moving back and forth in this way, so she willed herself to stand still, which made it harder to keep warm. The night was unexpectedly bitter, February strutting its stuff, reminding Baltimoreans that it was short but strong.