Butchers Hill

Chapter 2

By the time Beale left, Tyner's card clutched in hand, Tess had thirty minutes before her next appointment. She decided to take Esskay for a quick walk, find a snack to tide her over to lunch, explore a little more of her new neighborhood. She grabbed the leash from its peg by the front door and Esskay was instantly alert, rolling off the sofa in one fluid movement and tapping her toenails on the linoleum, happier than Gene Kelly on a rainy day.

But this was a perfect day. Spring had started out cool and wet in Baltimore this year, then settled into a pattern of eerily exquisite days. Sunny, dry, not too hot, the tiniest city gardens riotous with azaleas and then lilies that never seemed to wilt or lose their blossoms. To top it off, the Orioles were playing.600 ball. Naturally, all this Edenic perfection made the natives nervous. The local wisdom was that good things always had a hidden price, like those rent-to-own deals where you ended up paying a thousand dollars for a three-hundred-dollar television set. Sooner or later, the bill would come due.

Esskay stopped abruptly and Tess banged her knee against the dog's pointy tailbone, hard enough to bruise it. "What the-" She should have known. The dog had stopped here every day for the past week, since the unparalleled thrill of seeing a cat sunning itself on the windowsill of this particular rowhouse. Esskay had already forgotten what she had seen, but she hadn't forgotten the sensation. Happy, happy, joy, joy, her quivering muscles seemed to sing. Tess allowed the dog the moment, then flicked the leash.

"Walking means moving forward from time to time, Esskay. Let's keep going."

They crossed the street into Patterson Park, entering through ornate stone portals. "The city's emerald jewel," an overwrought Beacon-Light editorial writer had once christened the park. Sure, a gem that had fallen out of its setting and now rattled around in someone's drawer, too expensive to insure or wear. Baltimore was full of such inconvenient treasures. The city's standard solution was to auction them off, or let them go to ruin, but there was always a Save-the-Something group that interceded at the last minute, like the mountie in an old-fashioned melodrama. Talk about hollow victories. What was the point of citizens rallying to save, for example, the beautiful old pagoda that rose here in Patterson Park 's northwest corner when the city crews wouldn't even cut the grass on a regular basis. Just a week ago, a jogger had found a woman's body in the overgrown weeds at the pagoda's feet, her throat slashed, her face literally beaten off. The Blight had given it a paragraph on page three. City woman killed. Tess knew how to translate this particular bit of newspaperspeak, how to decode the clues offered up by the story's very placement and brevity. Drugs, prostitution claim another deserving victim. The piece had caused an uproar in the neighborhood, but only because the paper had placed her body in Butchers Hill instead of Patterson Park proper. So bad for property values, those carelessly strewn corpses.

Butchers Hill. The name had made a conveniently macabre and alliterative nickname for Luther Beale, but its origins couldn't be more stupefyingly literal. At the turn of the century, the city's prosperous butchers had lived in the precincts west of Patterson Park, building fine houses on the proceeds from their tenderloin empires. And it was on a hill, providing a view of the harbor below. Butchers. Hill. End of story, with one ironic postscript. Beale's house technically wasn't even in the neighborhood. But the Butcher of Fairmount Avenue just didn't have the same ring to it.

However you drew the boundaries, the butchers had fled the area long ago. Now the neighborhood was an uneasy mix of old-timers, poor folks, and gentrifiers. Nearby Johns Hopkins Hospital had proved to be a sturdy Lorelei, luring fresh supplies of urban homesteaders to dash themselves on the bricked-in fireplaces and leaded windows. Tess could tell the neighborhood was sizing her up, trying to figure out where she fit in. White+young+whimsically named dog usually equaled yuppie around here. But then, how to explain the twelve-year-old Toyota, with the muffler held on with duct tape?

She checked her Swiss army watch, a parting gift from Tyner. "Parting gift," she had mused. "Isn't that what you get on a game show when you've lost?" "Good up to 330 feet," he had replied, as if she ever planned to be even ankle-deep in the Patapsco again, much less the ocean. Almost ten-fifteen. She tugged on Esskay's leash. The dog had literally stopped to smell the roses, relics of some forgotten garden that continued to thrive in this corner of Patterson Park.

"We have to move if we're going to have time to grab some coffee and be on time for our next appointment. If you behave, there might even be a Berger cookie in it for you. Did you hear me? If you want a treat, get moving."

Esskay, spoiled by having Tess to herself for so much of this spring, paid no attention. The hot sun elicited new, exciting smells from the earth every day, while the harbor-borne breezes made the grass move intriguingly, as if field mice and rabbits were running there. And although the dog had no idea what a Berger cookie was, she knew what "treat" meant, and she knew she always got one after a walk, no matter what. Happy, happy, joy, joy.

The ten-thirty appointment was waiting outside the office, a bright yellow flame among the faded bricks. Tess could tell the woman was impatient and put out from the moment she rounded the corner, coffee and an open package of Berger cookies in hand, a half-eaten one clenched in her teeth.

"I don't like to be kept waiting," Mary Browne said as Tess fumbled with her keys.

A blushing Tess choked down her mouthful of chocolate-iced cookie, unlocked the door, and ushered the woman into her office. "I'm normally very punctual, but I went out to walk my dog and-"

"Fine. You're here now, may we begin?" She took the seat opposite Tess's desk, crossing her legs at the knee, then tugging her skirt down as if Tess might be inclined to look up it.

Tess threw the greyhound the promised piece of cookie, stealing a longing look at the others, nestled in their open box. The one she had gulped on her way back to the office had only whetted her appetite. Perhaps she should put them on a plate, offer them to this unsmiling Mary Browne in the guise of courtesy. Then she could have a few more herself.

"Would you like a cookie, perhaps a glass of water?" Esskay chose this moment to wander into the bathroom at the rear of the office and begin lapping noisily from the toilet bowl. A very classy operation, this Keyes Investigations. "I also have some orange juice in the refrigerator. And a six-pack of Cokes-"

"I prefer to discuss business," she said, pulling a small brown envelope out of her purse.

Unlike Luther Beale, who had been oblivious, Mary Browne took in her surroundings with one quick, impassive glance. The fresh eggshell paint seemed to peel beneath her eyes, revealing every decade of the building's inglorious history: the recent incarnation as a cheap studio apartment, when a makeshift kitchen had been shoehorned into the back; its brief fling as a bar; the years as a dry cleaner, which had left a vague chemical smell scored into the walls.

As her prospective client studied the room, Tess studied her. Mary Browne could be Exhibit A for any Afrocentric curriculum that wanted to claim ancient Egypt as its own. Her features were as fine as Nefertiti's, her skin a velvety dark brown, which looked even darker against the yellow suit and matching straw hat. Her hair appeared to be cut very close to the scalp, but not so close that it still didn't curl. With her long neck rising like a stem from the deep V of the suit, and her dark, smooth face framed by the broad brim of a hat with a yellow band, she resembled nothing so much as the black-eyed Susans that would bloom in late summer.

"Miss Monaghan?" Mary Browne's tone was as cold and treacherous as thin ice.

"Please, call me Tess. I'm probably younger than you, after all."

"I'm only thirty-two-"

"I'm twenty-nine." It occurred to Tess that telling a prospective client that she looked older than she was might not be one of Dale Carnegie's tips. "But it's not that you look over thirty, it's that you look so much more…polished. More sophisticated, I guess I'm trying to say."

"I didn't come here to talk about my age or my clothes." Mary Browne's speech was almost comically precise, her diction clipped and hard. "I wish to find my sister, who has been estranged from the family since she was a teenager."

"Estranged? Did she run away? Or was she kidnapped by a noncustodial parent?"

The question seemed to throw Mary Browne. "She left of her own free will when she was eighteen. It was quite legal, given her age, but not exactly intentional. I mean…"

"I've found it helps," Tess said, "if people just tell the truth from the get-go. I'm not here to judge you, and what you tell me is confidential."

"Fine. My sister became pregnant when she was eighteen and my mother threw her out when she announced she was going to put the baby up for adoption. That's not done among our people. Is that enough ‘truth' for you?"

"Your people?" She was only parroting Mary Browne's words, yet the words sounded a little ugly in her mouth.

"Black families take care of their own, even if they need a welfare check to do it. In the neighborhood where I grew up, it was unheard of for a girl to give her baby away. To give it to her mother or grandmother-that was acceptable. My mother wanted to raise her grandchild, but Susan had different plans. So my mother threw her out and I watched, knowing Susan was doing the right thing, but too intimidated by my mother to object. She was a formidable woman, my mother. Our mother. One didn't cross her, unless one was willing to lose. Susan was. I wasn't."

"And you've had no contact with Susan-in how many years exactly?" Tess found a steno pad in her desk drawer and took some notes. Mary Browne's officious manner made her want to seem more businesslike.

"Thirteen. Thirteen years ago this month."

"No contact at all? What about your mother?"

"My mother died last year. I suppose that's why I want to find her. She's all the family I have now."

"Okay, let's get formal." Tess turned on her Macintosh, which sat on a computer table next to her desk. "I explained rates and expenses when you called. You've already been to see Tyner, so all I need to do is put you in my files. I have a form here with your name, address, and phone number, but there are a few other things I need to get started. May I ask what you do for a living?"

"I'm self-employed. I raise money for nonprofits on a contract basis."

Self-employed. That set off a mental alarm. Tess might want to check Mary Browne's credit rating, make sure she had the money to hire her.

"How did you hear about this office, Ms. Browne?" Aunt Kitty, always the entrepreneur, had recommended she ask this in order to identify her marketing needs.

"I wanted to hire an independent businesswoman like myself, and I remembered seeing the item in the Daily Record, announcing you were joining Mr. Keyes's firm as an associate. Your name rang a bell. You were in the news this winter, weren't you? I can't recall all the details-someone tried to kill you, or you almost killed someone when you were attacked in Leakin Park?"

"Something like that," Tess said unhappily and her ribs, although fully healed, winced a little at the memory of what a well-placed foot could do. "Sister's full name?"

"Susan Evelyn King."

"King?"

"Different fathers," Mary Browne said shortly, her eyes daring Tess to make something of it.

"Have a Social Security number?"

"Why-no, I'm afraid not. Is that necessary?"

"Nope, just makes it a little easier. How about a birth-date?"

"She was thirty-two on January seventeenth."

Tess turned back to face Mary Browne. "I thought you said you were thirty-two. How can your sister be the same age?"

Given the rich, deep color of her skin, it was impossible to say Mary Browne actually blushed, but something in her manner suggested she was embarrassed.

"I meant I'll be thirty-two, in December," Mary Browne said stiffly. "We were born in the same year, almost exactly eleven months apart."

Vanity, thy name is woman. But what was it to Tess if Mary Browne wanted to shave a few years off her age? She was probably thirty-four or thirty-five and already lying about her age. Once Tess was on the other side of thirty, she might feel the same way.

"I've got two sets of first cousins like that on my father's side," she said, typing in Susan King's date of birth. "He calls them Irish twins. When my Aunt Vivian had her second boy in the same calendar year, the doctors at Mercy threw in the second circumcision for free."

Mary Browne allowed herself a small, lips-together smile, then handed Tess the brown envelope she had taken out of her leather briefcase at the beginning of the interview. Inside was a photograph and a check for the retainer.

"Is this her?" Tess asked. The girl in the photo was big-boned and plump. Her oversize glasses had caught the camera's flash, so her face was little more than a dark smudge beneath two exploding stars. She wore an apron and held something by its handle, a broom or a mop. It could be Jimmy Hoffa, for all Tess knew, or Madalyn Murray O'Hair, another missing Baltimorean. Totally useless, this photo, but the check-well, it was bad form to stare too hungrily at the check.

"That's her at seventeen."

"Not much of a resemblance, is there? But you did say you're only half-sisters."

"She was actually a pretty girl, just not particularly photogenic."

"Sure," Tess said dubiously.

"It's all I have." Mary Browne managed to sound apologetic and defensive at the same time. "But I guess it is about as helpful as someone trying to find you with that photo on the wall."

Great, Mary Browne's miss-nothing eyes had landed on the flying rabbit photo. Tess definitely had to find something else to hang over the safe.

"That was taken outside the old Weinstein's Drugs on Edmondson Avenue. Remember, it was in the same shopping center as the old Hess shoe store with the barber shop and the squirrel monkeys in the window?"

"We didn't buy our shoes at Hess, but, yes, I know the place of which you speak." The place of which you speak-close your eyes, and it could be the latest BBC production of Jane Austen. "My mother would take me to see the monkeys."

"Just you?" Tess assumed Mary Browne hadn't told her everything. People seldom did. Maybe there was more to the story of why Susan King had bolted, the ugly, unfavored duckling growing up in the shadow of this swan.

"Susan, too, of course."

"Well, that photo marks the day I learned a tough life lesson. My grandfather owned Weinstein's, so I thought I was entitled to endless rides on the flying rabbit. But when my quarter was done, it was done, same as anyone else's. Poppa was a soft touch, he would have let me ride forever, but Gramma had rules about such things. ‘You'll pay like the other kids!' No free rides and no free treats at the soda fountain, although Poppa sometimes slipped me something chocolate."

"This may sound strange, but you look like that little girl who was on television years ago, the one who jumped on the sofa with the plastic slipcovers."

"You mean"-Tess slipped into the Baltimore accent her mother had made sure she would never acquire-"‘Hey you kids, stop jumping on that furniture! You'll rune it!'"

"Yes, that one. I remember wanting my mother to buy those covers, because I thought it meant you could then jump on the sofa with impunity."

With impunity, yet. Jane Austen, meet Joe Friday.

"Actually, that was my cousin Deborah on the commercial, Deborah Weinstein. Funny you'd pick up on the resemblance. We don't look anything alike now. She's still fair, while I got dark."

"You think you're dark?"

It was Tess's turn to blush and stammer. "Well, I mean my hair got darker."

"I'm just giving you a hard time. Actually you haven't changed as much as you think."

"Really?" Tess believed she had changed extraordinarily, that it was almost impossible to find the more-or-less hard-bodied, more-or-less grown-up Theresa Esther Monaghan in those plump limbs and that face round with baby fat.

"Yes. You still wear your hair in a braid and you still have a smudge of chocolate on your face." Mary Browne didn't say good-bye, just allowed herself another no-teeth-showing smile and left even as Tess dabbed at the errant bit of frosting from her Berger's cookie. She must have had that dimple of chocolate on her face for the entire interview.

"Wait a minute!" she called after Mary Browne, her computerized form not even close to complete. But when she reached the door, Mary Browne was pulling away in a baby-blue, late-model Taurus with Virginia tags. Virginia tags often meant a rental car in these parts, but Tess took down the license plate, just in case. Homicide detective Martin Tull had recommended such mnemonic tricks to sharpen her powers of observation.

Back at her desk, she allowed herself the venal pleasure of staring at the two checks she had collected that morning, filling out a deposit slip with great ceremony. Mary Browne might be a little mysterious, but finding Susan King was going to be a slam-dunk. This was the kind of case she needed-easy, lots of cash up front. The check was even a money order, so she didn't have to worry about it bouncing.

A money order? Why would someone pay with a money order? Did Mary Browne have a husband at home who might ask questions about a checkbook entry to Tess Monaghan, private investigator? Or, appearances aside, was she scraping so low she didn't even have a checking account? Tess looked at the application form still open on her computer. A P.O. box for an address. That hadn't seemed so strange when she had called, but now Tess's heart jumped up and out, beating against her ribcage as if it wanted to escape.

Her fingers clumsy with nervousness, she punched in the phone number Mary had left, only to hear the precise, silky voice that had so recently filled her office: "You have reached the pager-voice mail for Mary Browne. Please leave a message at the beep, or punch in your number and I will return your call as quickly as possible."

Tess smothered her relieved laugh. "I just wanted to tell you to plan on seeing your sister by the fourth of July, Mary Browne," she told the pager. "I almost guarantee I can find her by then."

Actually, Tess couldn't find anyone who wasn't in the phone book. But she knew someone who could, and she wasn't too proud to delegate.