In A Strange City

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 amp;M’s?” Whitney asked hopefully. “Marilyn Monroe?”

“ Maryland Mu-she-um, I guess.” 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.”

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.”