In A Strange City

Chapter 20

Tess made Breezewood, the self-billed town of motels, by 10 a.m. Saturday. Halfway between Baltimore and Pittsburgh, this little intersection of gas stations and junk-food restaurants was an inevitable stopping point on any trip through western Pennsylvania. Inevitable because, legend had it, a congressman had used his clout to ensure no cloverleaf would ever be built here. To get from Interstate 70 to the Pennsylvania Turnpike and back again, one had to maneuver three congested blocks, crammed with places that would make your arteries as sluggish as Breezewood’s traffic. So Tess stopped, although her Toyota could easily make it to Bobby Hilliard’s hometown without gassing up. It was only another hour down the road.

Tess knew this stretch of Pennsylvania from her college days, when she and Whitney and the other Washington College rowers had competed in the Head of the Ohio. She had been curious, even then, about the small towns glimpsed along the way. A line from Auden came back to her, something about the raw places where executives would never tamper. She had always wondered if the topography influenced the culture here. The rolling hills of southwestern Pennsylvania suggested a protected, closed place, isolated from the rest of the world. Her radio faded quickly, so a punch of the “seek” button kept taking her back to the same country station. From this vantage point, it was possible to see Baltimore as part of something called “the East,” although Baltimore never felt particularly eastern when Tess was there.

The Hilliards’ farm was not easy to find, even with Vonnie Hilliard’s careful directions, which included precise mile markers and such landmarks as an old metal Koontz Dairy sign, which leaned against the barn that signaled the beginning of their property. Mrs. Hilliard had clearly been puzzled by Tess’s request to see them, but it did not occur to her to refuse. She was used to doing what people in authority asked. She did not realize Tess had no authority.

But the Hilliards knew enough not to confuse the visit with a social call. They sat at their kitchen table, hands folded in front of them, making no offer of drinks or food. They had the glum, hopeless look of people in hospital waiting rooms.

“The police have asked us all these questions,” Mr. Hilliard said tonelessly, at one point. “Why would anyone want to kill Bobby? Who were his friends? Did he seem to have more money than he used to have? But we don’t know. We didn’t know anything about his life down there.”

His grim expression suggested he would have preferred to keep it that way.

“I don’t think he’d hurt anybody,” his mother said. “I can’t believe what they said on the television.”

“You saw that cable show?” Tess tried to imagine the Hilliards watching Jim Yeager. How alien it must be to them, the notion of a man who made his living by yapping.

“We have a satellite dish,” Mr. Hilliard said, stung. “We get all the movie channels and then some.”

“But, no, we didn’t see it,” Mrs. Hilliard put in. “Detective Rainer called after, just in case, and said we shouldn’t worry, he didn’t think it happened the way the television man said. But he did ask us if Bobby had known some people. I don’t remember their names…”

Tess did. “ Arnold Pitts, Jerold Ensor, Shawn Hayes.”

“That sounds right.”

“And did he?”

The Hilliards sighed, almost in unison, two people so in sync after years together that they might as well be one.

“We don’t know,” Mrs. Hilliard said sadly. “We just don’t know.”

Tess decided to test their professed ignorance. “Do you know why he decided to give up his profession, the one he had trained for, to become a waiter?”

“More money,” his father said. “He paid for college himself, so I guess it was his business if he wanted to wait tables instead of working in a library.”

“No other reason?” she prodded.

They looked at her as if there could be no better reason, and Tess, glancing around the plain kitchen, felt ashamed. Of course his parents would have accepted this explanation.

“When was the last time you spoke to him?”

“Christmas Day,” Mrs. Hilliard said, happy for a question she could answer. “He was going to come home, but he had to work the night before and the day after, and it was just too much. He sent us some nice things, though. He was considerate that way.”

“Nice things. What?”

“Well, cologne for his father. And perfume for me. And a vase, that one there.” She indicated a blue-white vase on the kitchen counter. It held three silk roses. Tess wondered if it would hold fresh ones, once spring came. If Bobby Hilliard had lived, he might have instructed his mother, ever so gently, to fill it with nasturtiums or zinnias from her own garden.

“Could I see his room?”

“Why?” This was Mr. Hilliard, suspicious.

“I don’t know,” Tess confessed. “But I’ve come all this way, and I’d like to see where he grew up.”

The room where a young Bobby Hilliard had bided his time, plotting his escape from this small town, was an early version of his apartment, filled with yard-sale finds and furniture he had refinished. Only here there were books too, a high shelf filled with boys’ adventure stories: Treasure Island , Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine. No Poe, not that Tess could see, but there was a stack of Classic Comics, with The Gold Bug on top. This might have been a coincidence, as the others in the pile were illustrated versions of Hawthorne, Melville, Crane, and Dickens.

“They’re not that old,” Mrs. Hilliard said.

“Dated 1969,” Tess said of The Gold Bug.

“I mean, they’re not Bobby’s old things. He found them at a yard sale a few years back, when he was visiting. Bought the whole pile for five dollars, and you would have thought he found a diamond ring or something.”

Mrs. Hilliard hugged herself, as if she were cold, and averted her eyes. Tess sensed she didn’t like to see her son’s things touched, so she put the comic book back and continued to examine the room. Bobby had gone through a deco phase before he discovered the Victorian era, judging by the lamps and the framed Maxfield Parrish prints. The bed’s headboard was ornate, the bed itself piled with pillows in fresh white shams, as if the room’s owner were expected back sometime soon.

“It’s lovely,” Tess said, meaning only to be polite, but Mrs. Hilliard’s expression looked wounded.

“Yes,” she agreed reluctantly. Then: “Do you think he was ashamed of us?”

“What?”

“Bobby. Do you think he went off to Baltimore because he was embarrassed by this house? And by us, because we’re just farmers?”

“No,” Tess said firmly, forgetting she didn’t actually know Bobby Hilliard and had no insight into how he thought. “My guess is he moved away because he… because he wanted to pursue a kind of life he couldn’t have here.”

“Well, he could have gone to Pittsburgh, which is closer. It’s not like they don’t have gay men there too.”

Mrs. Hilliard smiled at the surprised look on Tess’s face. “We never spoke of it,” she said, “but I knew. And his father would have known too, if he wanted to. I’m not saying we understand it, and we were brought up in a church that says it’s a sin, but he was our son. We loved him. I was just waiting for a day when Bobby felt comfortable with who he was, because then I thought he might be comfortable with who we are and where he came from. That’s all.”

“I love your house.” Although Tess was being polite, she also was being truthful. “Old farmhouses are beautiful. So many of them have been ruined by ugly additions. I like the original shape: the peaked roof, the porch along the front. You haven’t painted over all the wood, as some people do, or put down carpeting over the wooden floors. You ought to see what allegedly well-intentioned people did to the place I bought.”

“Mmm,” Mrs. Hilliard said, not willing to be comforted or distracted. “I knew he stole. I didn’t want to say, in front of Webber.”

“From the library, you mean?”

“All his life. Here and there. Little things, things he couldn’t even use. He didn’t do it often, and when he did he was like a drunk falling off the wagon. He’d come in looking so tight and guilty, and then he’d ‘fess up, and I’d march him back to the store or the neighbor or the classmate he had stolen from. He always promised it wouldn’t happen again, and time would go by and I would begin to believe him. And then he’d do it again.”

“Did he tell you why he had to leave the Pratt?”

Mrs. Hilliard looked sad. “I guessed. I knew him. I knew his weaknesses. But I loved him.”

“So you believe he did what the police suspect. The burglaries, I mean.”

She sat in a Morris chair. “Uh-uh. Those men down in Baltimore, they say they lost television sets and stereos but nothing else. Bobby wouldn’t do that, see?

That’s what I told the police too-Detective Rainer and those two detectives who came up here, looking for things Bobby was said to have stolen. I let them go all over the place, and they saw for themselves there was nothing here. They wouldn’t listen.“

Tess detected nothing strange in this speech, but Mrs. Hilliard suddenly swallowed and stared at the floor, twisting the hem of her skirt in her knobby, hard-worked fingers. She swallowed a second time, her neck reddening.

“But there is something here, isn’t there?”

Mrs. Hilliard kept her eyes fixed on the floor.

“You can tell me, Mrs. Hilliard. I can keep secrets. I keep them for my clients all the time.”

“If we hired you, Webber and I, could you prove that television man told lies about Bobby? I know my son. He couldn’t hurt another person. I don’t know why someone killed him, but I know that much. He was a gentle boy.”

“I doubt I could help you with that,” Tess said. “It’s hard to prove a negative. To determine Bobby’s innocence, I’d have to figure out who’s guilty. Private detectives are expensive, Mrs. Hilliard, and the results aren’t guaranteed. You’re better off letting the police figure out what happened to Bobby.”

“But they don’t care about his reputation. It’s almost as if it’s better if he was a bad person, because then more people might have wanted to kill him. The detectives who came here, they said terrible things about Bobby, worse than what that television man said. They said he had stole lots and lots of things, but not all his victims had come forward. They told me if I knew anything about what he had done down in Baltimore, I’d better tell them. But I don’t. I really, really don’t.”

Again, she stared at the floor, and the red from her neck spread to her face, a fire out of control.

“Mrs. Hilliard, did you hold something back from the police? I might be able to help you make it right, work as a go-between. The longer you go, however, keeping things from them, the worse it will be.” Take it from an expert.

She got up and went to the closet. “There’s a piece of wood here that a plumber had to cut, to get to the pipe in the bathroom on the other side of the wall.” She spoke over her shoulder, her voice muffled by the clothes hanging on either side of her face. “Bobby always hid things here; he thought I didn’t know about it. But I knew. I looked there from time to time to make sure he didn’t have anything he shouldn’t have. When he sent me my Christmas gift, I put it here, first because I thought it was so valuable and then because… well, because if I didn’t show it to anyone, I didn’t have to face up to what it might be or how he came to have it.”

“I thought he sent you a vase and some perfume.”

“That was last Christmas.”

She emerged from the closet with a long jewelry box, still in its silver wrapping, a prefab ribbon stuck to the top. Inside was a bracelet, gold, with green stones. Could they really be emeralds? The piece was undeniably delicate and intricate, made with the kind of care and attention to detail that is rare now in all but the most expensive pieces.

“Bobby could have bought this with his own money,” Tess said, as if trying to convince herself. “It’s possible, if only because he might have been making money by stealing other things and fencing them.”

“He told me it belonged to a king’s wife. No, that’s not right. It belonged to someone’s sister-in-law. That’s right. Bobby said it would be a while before he could buy me something that had belonged to a real queen, but he promised he would someday.”

“Betsy Patterson Bonaparte,” Tess suggested, and saw the Pig Man sitting opposite her, swinging his feet, complaining languorously about the man who had cheated him. If he had been fooled by a fake bracelet, did it follow there was a real one? Had there been a germ of truth in all the lies Arnold Pitts had told?

“That’s right. I forgot the name, but I knew it as soon as you said it.”

Tess picked the bracelet up out of its cotton wrapping and held it to the light. She could not imagine killing for it. But then, she didn’t think any object was worth homicide. Would Arnold Pitts kill for something like this? No, he didn’t do his own dirty work. He tried to trick others into doing it for him.

“Do you have an account at the local bank?”

“Of course we do,” Mrs. Hilliard said, showing a flash of irritation. “Do you think we barter for goods with chickens and vegetables?”

“I want you to take this to the bank the minute it opens Monday morning and place it in a safe deposit box. Once you’ve done that, I’ll call the police. I’ll tell them I’m working for you and we just found it this weekend, when you thought to check Bobby’s old hiding place. That way you can’t get in trouble for holding it back when they visited you earlier this week.”

Although I’ll get in trouble, Tess thought mournfully to herself, for thrusting myself into this. Rainer will never believe I didn’t want to be a part of it all the time.

Mrs. Hilliard looked confused. “Are you working for us then?”

“No, just helping you out. It would be wrong for me to take your money when I don’t think I can achieve any real results.”

They went back to the kitchen, where Mrs. Hilliard offered to fix a cup of coffee. Tess accepted eagerly, then tried not to let her disappointment show when Mrs. Hilliard put water on to boil and pulled a jar of instant from the old-fashioned cabinets. Their sense of shared mission gone, they had nothing left to say to one another. Tess examined the swirled cherry top of the Formica-and-chrome table, drummed her fingers on the surface. She felt obligated to make some kind of chitchat, however desultory.

“I like this table,” she said. “I’ve seen ones not near as nice, for hundreds and hundreds of dollars.”

“You and that cop,” Mrs. Hilliard said, shaking her head. “I do think people from Baltimore are a little queer sometimes. The one police officer couldn’t stop talking about that table. He offered me a thousand dollars for it.”

“Really?”

“He said he had to have it for his kitchen. Said it was the one thing he needed, that it was a dead ringer for the one he had grown up with. He even told me how he had eaten peanut butter and fluffernutter sandwiches at the table, as if that would make me sell it.”

Tess asked yet another question, sure of the answer. “This police officer, what did he look like?”

“Oh, short and fat. And his partner so thin and tall, with a hangdog face. They made quite a pair. They looked like a number ten marching up the walk. And as much as the little one wanted my kitchen table, the tall one kept asking if he could have the Koontz sign. I thought that was really queer, but I wouldn’t sell it, not even for a hundred dollars, because it was something Bobby brought home one day and propped against the barn, so people wouldn’t miss the turnoff to our drive. Silly of me, I guess, but I’m sentimental about anything to do with Bobby. Besides, I didn’t think they were very professional, those police officers, poking at our things and asking where they came from and how much they cost. Not at all like the ones down in homicide. But I guess you don’t have to be as good to work burglary, or whatever they call it.”

“Burglary?” Tess said. Connections were sparking all around her. Two police officers had gone to Bobby’s apartment too. That had made sense, and she hadn’t bothered to ask the janitor for details. Now she was wondering if this walking number 10 had paid the call there as well. If they had, they had known Bobby Hilliard was dead before he had been identified in the press. They had known who he was all along.

“Yes, burglary. I remember because that’s what it said on the business card.” She pulled two cards from the old-fashioned humpbacked Norge refrigerator, where they had been affixed with a magnet from a local market, and handed them to Tess. The cards weren’t legit, not even close, but who in Pennsylvania would know that? They said Baltimore city police department and even had a Maryland flag, in color yet. Personal computers and state-of-the-art printers were making life too easy for the criminally inclined.

And the name on the first card was August Dupuis, a Poe allusion Tess had last heard in the corridors of the Baltimore Police Department. Oh, Arnold Pitts was such a wit. How he must crack himself up, creating these fake identities for himself. And how patronizing he was, choosing his Poe pseudonyms based on his assumptions about how well read his victims were. What name had he given Gretchen? Tess wondered. A. G. Pym? Rod Usher?

The second card identified his partner as Rufus Griswold. Tess had read enough about Poe’s life by now to know this was Poe’s perfidious literary executor, who had done so much to damage Poe’s reputation after his death.

“Change of plan, Mrs. Hilliard,” Tess announced.

“What?”

“Give me a dollar.”

The woman looked confused, but obediently fished four quarters out of a large crockery jar on the kitchen counter and handed them to Tess.

“You just hired a private detective.”