In A Strange City

Chapter 28

Pitts got University Hospital. So did Gretchen, who was examined for signs of a concussion. The doctors thought it unlikely, but Tess was instructed to stay the night with her, just in case. The doctors continued to press Tess for more information about Gretchen’s injuries, until Tess finally realized they assumed Gretchen was the victim of a domestic assault and Tess was her assailant. Luckily, they had agreed on a story before the paramedics arrived, a story that would keep police at bay, at least for a little while: Gretchen had fallen when a beam swung loose, catching her across the face, and Pitts was rushing down the stairs to call for help when he fell.

“That’s a bad night,” a young female doctor said, her voice at once skeptical and compassionate, inviting confession.

“Tell me about it,” Tess said. “When can I see my uncle?”

“Yes, your uncle.” The doctor consulted a sheaf of papers inside a manila folder. Her ID badge, dangling on a chain around her neck, identified her as massinger, r. With her round face and large blue eyes, she looked serious and awed in the photo, as if overwhelmed by the enormity of her calling. She looked much the same in real life.

“Now, does he live with you and your partner? Is the Bayard address his residence or yours? You know, it can be very stressful, trying to combine relationships under one roof. Conflicts can increase exponentially in such multigenerational households, and people do lose their tempers. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, but it is something to get help for.”

The last bit sounded as if she had memorized it from a textbook or a pamphlet. In a different mood, Tess might have appreciated the irony of being held up by this heightened sensitivity toward domestic violence. Tonight, all she could think was that Baltimore ’s social service agencies seemed to work best when they were thwarting her.

“Gretchen is my business partner,” she said, striving for a patience she didn’t feel. “We don’t live together. The house on Bayard is one of my uncle’s business properties.” Every time she repeated the lie about her relationship to Pitts, she sent a mental apology to her real flesh-and-blood uncles, feeling as if she had slandered them. “May I see him now?”

The doctor continued to regard Tess with skepticism. But there was nothing she could do, as long as the stories matched. Even Pitts was singing this song, for Tess and Gretchen had told him he’d be taken from the hospital to city jail if he didn’t do as he was told.

“Yes, I guess you can,” Dr. R. Massinger said, resigned. “It’s not such a bad break, after all; he was really quite lucky. But I should warn you, he’s a little groggy from the painkillers.” All the better.

Propped up on a bed in one of the curtained-off examining rooms, his left leg in a lightweight Flexicast, Pitts was not so groggy that he couldn’t show fear and irritation in one look.

“This is all your fault,” he announced, folding his arms across his chest.

“Your accident? I think not. The meeting in the warehouse? Most definitely. But then, none of this would have happened if you hadn’t been-what did Ensor say?-so damn clever.”

“I am clever,” Pitts muttered. “Cleverer than some people want to give me credit for.”

“You know what? I agree. And now I need you to tell me what you’ve been using all this brainpower to achieve.”

Pitts turned his head to the side, as if this conversation was his to end. Tess simply walked around the bed and put her face close to his, as close as she could bear. He smelled of peppermints and bay rum aftershave and sweat and something else-that full-bodied hormone-rich smell the body releases after a brush with death.

“I haven’t called the police yet. If you’re nice to me, tell me what I want to know, I’ll give your lawyer a head start on the cops.”

“That’s no big favor. The police have to let me talk to my lawyer.”

“Yes, they do,” Tess agreed. “But if you lawyer-up, they’re more likely to throw a couple murder charges at you. Now, you’ve got a warehouse full of what I suspect is stolen property, but I don’t think you’re actually capable of killing anyone. So talk to me, then your lawyer, and you’ll improve your chances of not being named a conspirator or an accessory after the fact in the death of Bobby Hilliard.”

He looked frightened. “Could they do that? Because I didn’t-I really didn’t have anything to do with the killings or the attack on Shawn.”

“They could do that.”

There was a stool next to the bed, and Tess took this as a seat, so she and Pitts were no longer nose to nose. His face seemed to relax-the lines in his forehead disappeared and his cheeks no longer looked quite so puffy-and Tess realized he was relieved, in a way, to tell the truth for once. Lying is exhausting, and Pitts, in his haze of painkillers, was tired of making the effort.

“I’m an antiques scout, a good one,” Pitts began, with a sigh at once weary and defensive. “Shawn Hayes had used me for years to scour the state, and beyond, for legitimate finds. But he and Jerold Ensor began to yearn for things that could not be bought or sold on the open market. They approached me with talk of a partnership-I would get them what they wanted, by whatever means necessary, and we would share in the ownership.”

“Why didn’t you just charge them whatever the traffic would bear, and count your money? Why did you want to be a partner?”

Pitts’s expression could not have been more melancholy. “In my line of work, you can’t afford to keep the things you want. Even if you make that once-in-a-lifetime discovery-the Ming vase at a garage sale- you have to sell it. It’s business. Do you think a person wants to collect cookie jars and salt cellars? No, I specialized in those things because they weren’t intrinsically valuable when I started out. Today frankly even the cookie jars are getting to be out of sight. Everything costs so much now. Little old ladies who would sell you a signed Stickley ten years ago for twenty dollars now want thousands for Montgomery Ward crap. I call it the eBaying of America.”

Tess didn’t disagree-she too had noticed this odd new greed-but it wasn’t a tangent she wanted to pursue.

“Where does Bobby Hilliard fit in?”

“I knew where many of the state’s contraband treasures were. I called it Baltimore-bilia, although that’s a slight misnomer, but Marylandia doesn’t have the same ring, does it? I knew who was rumored to have a lock of Poe’s hair, for example, or the Duchess of Windsor’s opera gloves. So did Shawn Hayes, for that matter: Those who indulge in this passion find they need to gossip about it, drop hints, show off to people they think they can trust. Otherwise, it’s like having a nightingale but always keeping the cover on its cage. And Shawn was smart. He realized if you steal things that have been obtained illegally, it’s hard for the victims to squawk.”

Pitts’s voice trailed off, although it was unclear if it was the painkillers that were carrying him away or some reverie about Marylandia. No-Baltimore-bilia. He was right, the second term was much better.

“But Bobby-” Tess prodded him.

“Bobby? Oh, Bobby. Well, think about it. I needed to have a buffer, my own scout. I needed someone who could inventory the homes I identified, pocket smaller items, and tell me what else was on view. Someone who could leave a window unlocked, inform me what kind of security system was in place or when the owner was going out of town.”

“So what did you do, run a classified ad in the Beacon-Light: ”Wanted, one kleptomaniac, flexible hours, glamorous associates‘?“

“You’re so droll,” Pitts said, and the chance to mock her seemed to sharpen him, pull him back from dreamland. “Sometimes, all one needs is serendipity’s nudge. One day I was in a consignment shop in Hampden, the Turnover Shop, and I saw Bobby pocket a leather-bound card box-not valuable, but quite lovely. He had good taste. I followed him. He was so grateful when he found out I didn’t intend to turn him in but had sought him out because I admired his choice. It was only a matter of time before I turned his gratitude into servitude. When I found out he was a waiter, it was perfect. It was easy to get him a job with a catering firm, one that handles a lot of the better parties. And, of course, when Shawn Hayes began talking up this certain catering firm, it began to get even more gigs. Shawn’s opinion on such matters carried a lot of weight.”

“Did Bobby understand what you were doing?”

“More or less. It seemed to amuse him. ”None of you deserve to own any of this stuff,“ he said to me at one point. His attitude seemed to be that if so-and-so had purchased something, knowing it wasn’t a legal transaction, then what was it to him if we transferred ownership to Shawn and Jerold? That’s how he spoke of what we did. Transferring ownership.”

“Nice euphemism,” Tess said. She wondered if logorrhea was a common side effect of painkillers. “So how long did this happy little crime wave go on?”

“Oh, off and on for four years. We had to space things out. Our victims may not be able to call the police, but we still had to be careful. We didn’t want a pattern to emerge.”

Yet patterns inevitably emerge, Tess thought, just as the kaleidoscope yields a new design with each twist of its base. It was simply a matter of getting the right perspective, of standing back far enough. Tess was beginning to see how things fit together-and to see what didn’t fit.

“The warehouse on Bayard-it’s full of things that Hayes and Ensor would have wanted, but Ensor had never seen them before. Were you sitting on them, like a speculative stock, waiting for the value to go up so you could charge them more? Or could you just not bear to let them go?”

“A little of both,” Pitts conceded, his tone proud, as if a double cross were some rare form of accomplishment. “I was hoarding them for… leverage. You see, we were supposed to be a team, Shawn, Jerry, and I. Certain items were to be shared, to move from home to home, the way a museum show travels. But Shawn refused to share the two most valuable things. He said he was the only one who had proper security in his home. After Jerry and I were burglarized, he said it only proved his point. Later-before he was attacked-I even wondered if he set us up, had our homes hit so he could make that excuse. But, of course, it was Bobby.”

“Bobby? Why?”

Pitts shrugged as best he could, propped on the hospital pillows. “Only he knows. I think it amused him, doing to us what we had done to others. We didn’t figure it out right away. You see, unlike our burglaries, which were surgical strikes, the break-ins at my house and Jerry’s looked like typical Baltimore affairs. Messy. Focused on things that could be hocked.” He looked petulant. “Although he did take the wonderful Hamilton Beach mixer I had, the soda-fountain kind used for milkshakes. That should have tipped me off.”

“And the bracelet?” Tess prodded. “You came to the warehouse tonight because my note promised it would be returned to you. But I should tell you, the police have it. The Hilliards turned it over to them last week.”

“That’s mine,” he said fiercely. “They’ll have to give it back to me.”

“Probably,” Tess said, feeling a pang for Vonnie Hilliard. She never would have worn it, but how she would have loved to look at it, every now and then, and remember the son who had given it to her. “But I heard Ensor say it’s not particularly valuable.”

“It’s valuable to me. It was my mother’s,” Pitts said stiffly, as if speaking of a lover who had betrayed him. “Bobby knew it had no intrinsic value but infinite sentimental worth. He took it to hurt me, to show he had the upper hand. But I didn’t know it was missing until after the attack on Shawn. Like Jerold, I never dreamed anything of real value was missing from my house. It was an interesting twist, I have to admit, very clever of Bobby. We reported the break-ins, because we didn’t realize who had victimized us or what else had been taken. That put us in the police’s sights. And, it should go without saying, we preferred not to attract the police’s attention under any circumstances.”

Tess smiled behind her hand. Bobby Hilliard had a certain wit. Paid to help Pitts steal from thieves, he had decided to rip off the men who employed him. But to what purpose? And why had it turned so ugly? There was a certain It Takes a Thief romanticism about Bobby’s early escapades that couldn’t be squared with the attack on Shawn Hayes.

“I’m confused about the timing. Ensor is burglarized in the summer, you in the fall. But when did you know the bracelet was missing?”

“After Shawn-” Pitts could not finish the sentence. “I called the family and told them I was familiar with Shawn’s holdings. After all, I had been his antiques scout. It made sense for me to make an inventory. Everything was there-except for the two most precious items. That’s when I called Jerold and told him to see if anything was missing from his collection. Sure enough, someone had taken a piece of Poe’s casket, which Jerry kept in a drawer in his study”

“And Bobby knew this?”

“I’m afraid I told him,” Pitts said. “He began to show so much interest in our… collecting, and he seemed so nonjudgmental. He even began to suggest other victims, identifying them from scraps of conversation he overheard at work. But when I saw what was missing at Shawn’s-just those two items, which Shawn kept in a locked drawer in an old planter’s desk-I knew he had betrayed us. They were the only things missing. Well, those and the weapon we think was used in the assault.”

“The weapon,” Tess said. “Yes. You and Jerold Ensor spoke of a ”pike‘ when you quarreled tonight. What was that?“

“Do you know much about Maryland ’s Civil War history?”

Honesty compelled Tess to shake her head in the negative. “I know the first Union casualties fell because of mob violence here. And that Francis Scott Key’s descendant ended up jailed in Fort McHenry for much of the war. But that’s about it.”

“It’s enough. Ross Winans, who made his fortune in the railroads, wanted to help Baltimoreans defend themselves. He ordered the manufacture of the Winans pike, a crude but effective weapon, a six-foot staff with a metal point. But the Union troops seized the shipment and destroyed almost all of them, simply by breaking them in two. Somehow, a few remained intact. The one in Shawn Hayes’s parlor was one of the first items I found for him.”

“Did Bobby steal that for you too?”

Pitts made a face. “We didn’t have to steal everything. Sometimes we just had to pay money, lots and lots of money.”

“Like Toots Barger’s bowling trophy?” Tess was remembering Mary Yerkes’s story, how the now-deceased dealer told her she could never compete for such treasures.

“Yes, that’s in Jerry’s basement, which is refinished in knotty pine. He keeps it on the mantel. At least, he thought he had the real thing, but I kept it for myself and fobbed a fake off on him. You see, I was always the middleman, so Shawn and Jerry didn’t have to risk sullying their reputations. I took all the risks; they reaped all the rewards. And if we had been caught, I would have borne the charges.”

Tess imagined Bobby might have felt the same way.

“The pike is missing, so you assume that’s what Hayes was beaten with?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m afraid it is,” Pitts said, and it wasn’t clear if his grief was for his associate, still comatose, or the loss of a valuable object.

“But you spoke of two other items.” Tess was remembering her anonymous caller, who had told her they were worth killing for. “The two items taken from Shawn Hayes’s home. What were they?”

“Only the jewels of our collection,” Pitts said. “Only the two greatest items I ever found, discoveries that overshadow everything else. I bought them from an old lady, a thief in her own right, but a stupid thief who didn’t understand their significance. If only she knew what she really had-”

“What?” Tess was past all patience.

“The very things that Edgar Allan Poe may have been killed for, in his final days in Baltimore.”