The Last Place

CHAPTER 4

“What do you think about this?” Whitney opened a grocery bag and pulled out a lamp with a crude wooden base and a yellowed parchment shade that showed mallards in flight.

“It looks like someone’s shop project,” Tess said, grateful for the Corner Stable’s reliable gloom. “And not even a high school shop project, but middle school shop, or from the arts and craft class at a camp for children with no motor skills.”

“I know it’s kitschy, but I thought it was good kitsch, not bad kitsch.” Whitney never sounded more WASPish than when she attempted a word like kitsch, which wasn’t Yiddish but should be. Still, her mere proximity to the item did give it a certain cachet. With her sharp-featured face and chin-length bob of butter-yellow hair, Whitney had an aristocratic air that was virtually contagious. The Corner Stable looked better because she was sitting in it, and the lamp was almost tolerable as long as she was holding it. Almost.

The problem was, Whitney couldn’t hold it all the time. Not unless she wanted to become the Statue of Liberty of Greenspring Valley, raising her mallard ducks to the skies, a beacon welcoming the waves of nouveau riche that continued to wash up on her shores.

“Trust me, it’s bad kitsch. If I look at it much longer, I’ll have nightmares. Which would at least give me something to talk about to Herr Doktor next week.”

“That’s right, your shrink. Are you cured yet? Or does he think you’re a hopeless case?”

“Actually, he seems pretty optimistic. But then, he hasn’t known me that long.”

Their meat arrived-a chopped barbecue sandwich for Tess, a well-done hamburger for Whitney. They had both been feeling particularly carnivorous today, and the Corner Stable was a good place to indulge such urges. Besides, Tess had thought it would be easier to drive north and away from the hospital than to fight the traffic toward downtown. She hadn’t realized that the suburbs were now more congested than the city, their modest streets carrying far more traffic than any planner had ever imagined. It had taken them almost forty minutes to creep five miles to this junky strip of fast food places and liquor stores near the state fairgrounds.

“You know, I would have taken you to McCafferty’s,” Whitney said, slicing off a bit of her burger to make sure no pink showed inside. Her taste buds had been destroyed by her mother’s indifferent cooking, and the various meat scares of recent years had made her only more determined to eat her beef shoe-leather brown. “My treat. Not that I don’t like a burger as much as the next girl, but I wanted to buy you a filet mignon.”

“I can’t stand to see what you do to a twenty-eight-dollar steak,” Tess said. “Besides, I keep telling you-you don’t owe me anything. Leaving you out of this mess was the best thing I ever did. Good Lord, if they had known there were two of us, that judge probably would have insisted we go to trial. And given Mickey Pechter’s avarice, your family’s deep pockets would have been enticing.”

“Still, maybe you should have gone through with a trial,” Whitney said. “It would have been a great opportunity to really humiliate that guy.”

“Yeah, it sounds good in theory. But when you’re faced with two choices-pleading to a misdemeanor that will disappear in six months or risking the vagaries of a jury trial-you realize just how dicey principle is. And how expensive. Tyner wasn’t working for free. I owe him a lot of work now.”

“Work. Yes, work. That’s really why I wanted to take you to lunch today.” When Whitney was full of herself, which was often, the blue-ness of the veins at her temple, throat, and jaw seemed to become more pronounced.

“What’s up?”

“I’ve got a job for you. A great job.”

“Whitney-no pity stuff, okay? Let me repeat: You don’t owe me.”

“This has nothing to do with our little escapade. In fact, it wasn’t even my idea to hire you. Someone else on the board asked me to tap you for this job.”

“Someone on the board? What board? Your family’s foundation thingie?” After several restless years in which she had effortlessly succeeded at anything she tried, Whitney had decided there was no shame in running her family’s charity. She liked giving away money. Moreover, she liked it when the city’s best and brightest came to her and begged for money.

“I guess it’s more a coalition or a consortium than a board. Nothing formal. But several local nonprofits that are interested in women’s issues have been brainstorming about ways to reduce the number of domestic-violence homicides in the state.”

“I know how,” Tess said. “Nothing could be simpler.”

“Really?”

“Every time a man is so brokenhearted that he decides to go out and kill his girlfriend and then kill himself?”

“Yes?” Whitney leaned forward, her food forgotten.

“Just convince him to do the suicide part first.”

“Honestly, Tess, this is serious. We want to show a significant decrease in the number of domestic homicides statewide.”

“I can’t imagine it’s a very big number to begin with,” Tess said. “Not as a percentage of the whole.”

“Exactly,” Whitney said. “Which is why there’s no political will to attack the problem. Yet it’s perhaps the most preventable category of homicide, if you think about it.”

“Maybe. So take it to the legislature.”

“We were oh-for-four there during the General Assembly session that just ended. We couldn’t get one bill out of committee. The chairman of Judiciary put them all in a drawer and wouldn’t even take a vote on them. It didn’t help our cause that the creep who killed all those people and took his girlfriend’s family hostage had been treated right by the system. The lawmakers basically threw up their hands and said they couldn’t come up with preventive measures for crazy people.”

“Please,” Tess said. “Those of us with mental health problems prefer to be known as reality-challenged.”

“Very funny. Anyway, next year we have to go back with better information, more persuasive arguments.”

“Where do I fit in?”

“One of our members believes the rural police departments and the state police, which don’t handle a lot of homicides, may have bungled some domestic cases. We have files on five open murder cases from all around the state. We need someone to reexamine them, review the police work-”

“Review police work? On old cases? Jesus, Whitney, that’s impossible.”

“They’re not that old, six years at the most. The most recent was last December. We’re not asking you to solve these cases, Tess. We just want to know what the police did and if the victims’ significant others ever went on to hurt anyone else. If we can find even one case where sloppy, inexperienced police work left some creep at large, we can lobby for funding and training for small-town cops. C’mon, Tess. How often do you collect your hourly fee and do some good at the same time?”

Tess smiled ruefully. Whitney should know she wanted nothing more. The private detective’s life was a sleazy one at times. Even a PI like herself, who turned down divorce work, seldom felt altruistic. The thing is, she distrusted those who cloaked themselves in their own goodness. There was nothing more dangerous than people convinced of their own good intentions.

“We’ll pay your top rate and kick in a per diem when you’re out of town. The board won’t breathe down your back-a monthly report, maybe a face-to-face briefing after you’ve done some preliminary scouting.”

“And no press,” Tess said.

“What?”

“No media. I don’t want any of these eager do-gooder organizations sending out a press release, announcing their crusade. The local cops are going to be hostile enough when an investigator shows up and starts asking questions. We need to be discreet. How many people are on the board?”

Whitney ticked them off on her fingers. “Someone from Safehouse, of course. My family’s foundation. Baltimore’s Kids and New Solutions. The William Tree Foundation-”

Tess stopped her. “The William Tree Foundation? The one run by Luisa J. O’Neal?”

“Nominally. She’s not active anymore. Her health deteriorated after her husband left her.”

“Good,” Tess said, biting into her chopped beef sandwich so hard that it sent a little shot of pain through an upper molar. Her dentist said she ground her teeth at night, but she couldn’t bring herself to be fitted for a mouth guard.

“I know you hate her,” Whitney said, her eyes steady on Tess’s face, “but you’ve never told me why.”

“Hate her? How could I hate Luisa O’Neal, Baltimore’s benefactor, planter of trees, creator of parks, builder of grand public spaces. Like everyone else in town, I owe her everything-including my career.”

“I’d forgotten. Your first case, as it were. That lawyer who got killed worked for Seamon O’Neal. But the O’Neals didn’t have anything to do with his death.”

“No, they didn’t.” Another death, yes, but not his. “Whatever happened to Seamon? I haven’t seen the O’Neals in the society pages for a while.”

And she looked for them, Tess realized. Every Sunday.

“He ran off to North Carolina with a paralegal. Died of a heart attack six weeks later.”

“On top of her?”

“No, that would have been tacky. On the golf course. It was probably the nicest thing he ever did for Luisa. Stopped all the messy wrangling about money, which was only fair, as the money was hers anyway. Still, it took something out of her. She had a stroke, ended up in Roland Park Place. My mom went to see her recently-they used to play in the same tennis foursome.”

“I remember.” That relationship had kept Tess from telling Whitney about the things Luisa had done. “She’s not active, you said. So she won’t be there when I meet with the board?”

“No, she’s not involved at all. Just her money. I doubt if she even knows what the Tree Foundation does. From what my mother said, she’s lying in bed, waiting to die and refusing to talk to anyone. She wants to be with Seamon.”

“She wants to be with the man who routinely humiliated her throughout their marriage, spending her family’s money on a never-ending parade of paralegal tarts?”

“He dated a few associates, don’t forget. Anyway, she loved him. Why do you think she put up with him?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps your consortium should put some money toward solving that age-old problem. Why do people stay with people who treat them that way?”

“Why do women stay with men, you mean.”

“Men stay with women, too, when they shouldn’t. As Judge Halsey would be the first to remind you, the violence between men and women is a current flowing in both directions.”

Lunch finished, they stepped out in the bright day, eyes blinking after the dimness of the Corner Stable. In the instant it took for her eyes to adjust, an image came to Tess, an image she thought she had buried long ago.

She saw a man in flight, his body hurled through the sky, the malevolent shape of an old Marathon cab disappearing into the thick morning fog. It was her nightmare, the bad dream that disrupted her sleep every now and then. Was it her hour with Dr. Armistead that had dredged it up or the talk of Luisa O’Neal?

“Whitney-about my fee. How much does each group kick in? Do you divide it evenly among yourselves or is it prorated according to how much capital each group has?”

“Prorated,” Whitney said. “My family’s foundation will pay a third. It’s not based on means but on each organization’s commitment to domestic violence. Baltimore’s Kids is kicking in only a tiny amount, for example, because it’s not really what they’re about.”

“The William Tree Foundation, in particular. What percentage of my fee will they pay?”

“No more than ten percent. They’re more about building stuff than doing stuff. If they can’t put a plaque on it, proclaiming their philanthropy, they’re not much interested. I’m surprised they want to be part of this at all.”

Ten percent. Tess figured she could live with that. She would tithe that amount to some good cause, a belated apology to the man in the sky, whose death was still officially an unsolved hit-and-run. She needed to mark his memory in some way, to remind people that he had existed. She couldn’t afford to erect a plaque, but she could do something. She could do this.

After all, with Seamon O’Neal dead, and Luisa O’Neal on her way, a day would soon come when only Tess knew how her old boyfriend Jonathan Ross had come to be murdered while she watched.

He has another job, this one all the way down toward Virginia Beach. Most people would take 95, but, as much as he drives, he is never comfortable on the interstates. He crosses the Bay Bridge, takes 13 South. It’s about as close to home as he ever gets these days.

When people ask what he does, he says different things, depending on his mood. “Biomedical waste disposal,” for example. Or “Sales. Marine accessories.” His answers are designed and delivered to assure no follow-up. Still, he’s sometimes disappointed by his success. People are so incurious. They don’t really look, don’t really hear. People on the mainland think of everything as infinite-food, water, fuel. Other people.

The island had fewer than two hundred residents, which made it the smallest of all the inhabited islands in the bay: smaller than Smith, smaller than Tangier. His parents had gone to grade school there, but by the time he came along, the one-room schoolhouse only went to sixth grade. The older kids had been ferried back and forth to school by boat. By high school, most of his friends went to stay with relatives on the mainland, but he didn’t have any people off the island. The students on the mainland were nice enough, but they couldn’t be friends, not really. Not when you had to catch that boat every afternoon. No friends, no after-school activities. He had wanted to go out for a team. “Are we all supposed to wait for you, then?” the skipper had asked. He thought the others might be able to go to the library, read, and do their homework. But the little ones needed supervision and the big ones didn’t want to wait.

This is my whole world, he would say to himself, sitting on the boat as it made its way across the bay. I will never know anyone else. If I marry, she is on this boat right now. It scared him, to think he had such a small group of people from which to find his true love. The island had five surnames, give or take. It would be like marrying family, he supposed, but that’s what royalty did. He thought of the poem he was always having to memorize, each and every teacher thinking it was so clever, having the island boy learn the poem in which island was a metaphor. If a clod be washed away by the sea/Europe is the less. His first year in the mainland school, someone had laughed when he had recited those lines. He couldn’t know for sure, but it was a mean laugh, cutting. They were laughing because he was a clod, because they wouldn’t miss him if he were washed away, not one bit.

Then, in junior high, a new girl showed up. He knew, the minute he saw her, he knew. It was as every song, every poem, every story had prophesied: She was the one. Better yet, she knew. She liked him until she loved him. She loved him until-no, she loved him still. She had never stopped loving him, even if she had left him. He believed that with all his heart. From seventh grade on, there was no one in his world but her. He was never unhappy or impatient if she was there. Separated from her-she took French while he took Spanish, went to the mainland for singing lessons on the weekends-he was miserable.

It didn’t escape his notice that her family, such as it was, was shunned on the island. Not in an obvious way, for the Coopers and the Winslips, the Pettys and the Seeleys, even the Goodwins, were not obvious people. Living at once so close and far apart, on top of each other and yet isolated from the rest of the world, they had developed a great economy of expression. A word, a look, told you all you needed to know.

But she and her father were newcomers. They did not realize, not at first, how unwelcome they were. Unwelcome generally, because everything new was suspect. And unwelcome specifically, because the father was said to be up to something. He was studying them, that’s what people said. He meant to write about them some day. Not like that fella who had written about Smith Island but in a different way-made up yet not made up. The names would be different but not much else was. It was going to be Days of Our Lives, but on the island.

One of the Winslips, Aggie, cleaned his house every other week, and she had seen some of the papers in the trash. They weren’t nice, the things he wrote. He treated them like animals in a zoo. He talked about who went to church and who tippled and who poached, and although he didn’t use the right names, it was easy for anyone from the island to know who was who. But mostly it was the tone, as reported by Aggie Winslip. “Sneery,” she said. “Not nice.” He used a lot of curse words, too.

Still, this revelation didn’t affect him and Becca. The island was generous enough to allow her to be more than her father’s daughter. “She’s like that duck who thought he was a cat,” his mother said once, harking back to a bit of island lore about the store cat who was found in the yard one day with four new kittens and a baby duck pressed against her. It was only later that he realized his mother thought Becca silly for not knowing she was a duck.

The island left them alone, as much as they could leave anyone alone. For the first time in his life he envied mainland kids, with their absent parents and abundance of roads to cruise. You could do things in a car you couldn’t do in a boat. He and Becca had nowhere to go, and hardly any time to go there. And they had both wanted to go, she as much as he, maybe more. She was urgent for it, and he realized she had done it before, but that just made her longing for him sweeter. She wasn’t settling. She knew what was what, and she still wanted him. “Again,” she would say, when they finally found a place. “Again.” It was as if she was saving it up, so she would have enough to hold her until the next time. “Again.”

One afternoon, they took his boat out to a small piece of land, too small to appear on any map. Certainly, no one had ever lived there-no person, no bird, maybe not even mosquitoes. They did it again and again and again, until he was sore and they were out of protection. Still, she wanted more, and he never said no to her.

He has reached the outskirts of Virginia Beach. He checks his directions beneath the dome light, realizes he missed his turn a few miles up. The job is in a bad neighborhood. His jobs were almost always in bad neighborhoods, or at least ended up there. If people knew-but they didn’t, not unless something went wrong. That’s why he got as much work as he did. So no one would discover the secrets hidden in plain sight. He made things disappear. He could make anything, anyone, disappear.