Baltimore Blues (11 page)

F
riday night. The Shabbat candles burned brightly on the mantel, creating a redundant halo effect for the cheap watercolor of Jesus hanging above them. Tess pushed her pot roast around on one of her mother’s “meat” plates, hoping to create the illusion of eating. At the end of the table, her father was eating a cold cut sub on a paper plate and drinking a Pabst from the can.

Her mother, a striking woman despite the deep frown lines cut deep along her mouth and forehead, ate daintily from her steaming plate, wiping sweat from her face between bites. She wore a toast-colored dress of polished cotton, flattering to her dark eyes and hair, her tanned face and arms. Although her legs were also deeply tanned, she had sheathed them with panty hose, one shade lighter than her dress. Her suede pumps were also toast colored. Bite, chew, wipe. The weather had turned warm again, but Judith Weinstein Monaghan did not believe in air-conditioning or cold suppers after Labor Day any more than she believed Jesus Christ was the son of God.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, not fooled by Tess’s childhood habit of pretending to eat. “It’s pot roast. You love pot roast.”

“Not when it’s ninety. I can’t believe you cooked on a day like today. Cold cuts for everyone would have been fine.”

Her father, whose bright red hair and clear skin made him look fifty instead of sixty, belched.

“Nice,” her mother said. Her voice was mean, but the look she gave her husband was sultry. “Very nice.”

“A man’s home,” her father said, belching again, “is his castle.”

They all fell to eating and not eating again, and silence filled the room. It had always been a quiet house, a house deprived of the children Patrick Monaghan, the oldest of seven, and Judy Weinstein, the youngest of five, had assumed were their due. Tess, born less than a year after their wedding day, had been an only child. “I wasn’t planned,” she liked to say, somewhat inaccurately, “but the others were, the ones who were never born.”

Her mother had insisted on putting Weinstein on her birth certificate, claiming: “They do it in Mexico.”

“Oh, Mother,” Tess had said when she was older. “The only thing you know about Mexico is that Uncle Jules got the trots in Cancún from having ice in his gin and tonic.”

As a child Theresa Esther Weinstein Monaghan had called herself Tesser. Her doting aunts and uncles called her that, too. They changed it to Testy when she showed her temper, which, contrary to stereotype, came down from the Weinstein side of the family.

As a teenager Tesser became Tess, who complained endlessly about her name.

“It’s a compromise,” her mother said.

“A compromise means picking an alternative course, not choosing everything. You and Dad just force your incompatible choices to live side by side, much as you do.”

Her parents were united on one subject: the shame of her vocational limbo.

“You found a job yet?” her father asked her now, after coming back from the kitchen with another can of Pabst. Her mother was drinking hot coffee, while Tess had a Coca-Cola in front of her. It had never occurred to her parents to offer her beer, wine, or a good stiff drink.

“Not exactly. I’m doing a little work for a lawyer—”

“As a paralegal?” Her mother’s voice was pathetically hopeful. “They make very good money.”

“Nothing permanent, nothing like that. A little freelance.”

“And how does a little freelance pay these days?” Her mother sawed through her meat, trying for a casual, uninterested tone she had never mastered. Tess could tell she was driving her crazy.

“A little pays a little.”

“There’s no need to take that tone with me, Theresa Esther.” Tess took a bite of her pot roast, hoping the several minutes necessary to chew the meat would give her, and her mother, a chance to cool down.

“Well, why not think about being a paralegal,” she wheedled. She had a way of making Tess feel like a ragged cuticle on her perfect hands. “It’s a perfectly good job, and it would pay the bills.”

“I’m paying my bills.”

“With what Kitty and Donald pay you.”

“It counts. It’s work; they give me money, not Green Stamps.”

“Sure, if you don’t mind Donald stripping his nest egg bare.”

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?”

Patrick Monaghan glared at his wife and belched again, perhaps to distract her, or Tess. But Patrick Monaghan had been given to gas all his life, and it had been a long time since a well-timed belch could distract either woman.

“Do you really think Donald has state money to pay an assistant? And if he did, he would be allowed to hire you? Donald pays you out of his own pocket because he feels sorry for you. He even has you fill out those time sheets so it looks legitimate. He never expected it would go on this long. No one did.”

Tess replied almost automatically: “Hey, if Uncle Donald wants to give me money, he can just write a check every month. I’m not proud.”

Strange, the words were true before she said them, but once out she could hear how false and hollow they were. It
was bad enough to be someone who would do anything for money. It was worse to be someone who would do nothing for money. But that was her arrangement with Uncle Donald and, in her heart, she had always suspected it.

“Gotta go,” she said, rising, the dutiful daughter, heading toward the kitchen sink with her plate and glass.

“Oh, Tesser,” her mother said. “Don’t go off in a huff.”

“I’m not, I’m not,” she assured her. “I just realized I have to be somewhere.”

No, it wasn’t a huff. More of a funk, as dark as the moonless night.

Her mood did not improve when she finally got to Fells Point, only to find no free parking spaces within eight blocks of Kitty’s place. It was almost nine, and Fells Point’s nightlife was coming to life. She circled the bookstore several times, then crawled up Broadway, looking for a spot. No luck. She ended up parking in the pay lot at the foot of Bond. She had only recently spent the better part of a day at city hall getting a permit so the two-hour restrictions throughout the neighborhood didn’t apply to her. The permit was a hollow badge of honor when there were no places to be had.

On this particular night the crowd at the bookstore ran heavily to embroidered dresses and fiesta skirts.
Oh shit
, Tess remembered. Frida Kahlo night. Kitty was offering a twenty dollar gift certificate to the couple who most resembled the Mexican artist and her husband, Diego Rivera. The more serious contestants had penciled in heavy mustaches and forced their dates to stuff their shirt fronts, the better to resemble Diego’s girth. But the winner had really stacked the deck: She not only had a rotund Diego, but another man dressed as Trotsky, who was believed to be Frida’s lover.

“
Todos vuelven
,” Ruben Blades sang seductively from the stereo system. Kitty had translated the song for her once. Everyone returns. But first you had to go somewhere.

The contest over, most of the couples were now drinking sangria and snatching up books. Kitty held court in one of those slit-skirt Mandarin dresses requiring a perfect body.
She didn’t let the dress down. Officer Friendly was at her side, wearing a poncho and looking vaguely lost without his gun and bicycle but absolutely devoted.

“These theme nights seem to be working out,” Kitty said to Tess. “What should I do next? A ‘George’ night, with Eliot and Sand? Rita Mae Brown? Or suppressed Catholic girls night, with McCarthy’s memoirs? We could put little girl mannequins in the windows, in Catholic girl uniforms and those shiny shoes.”

“Do people still read McCarthy?”

“Good point,” Kitty turned to her Zapata-ed beau. “Thaddeus, do you know who McCarthy is?”

Officer Friendly looked panicky, and Tess found herself rooting for him. This obviously had not been on the civil service exam.

“Normally I would say the witch hunt guy from the fifties,” he said. “But I guess you’re talking about some woman writer I never heard of.”

Good answer. Thaddeus was a tad brighter than he seemed, smart enough not to bullshit, a rare quality in a man. Kitty almost cooed with pleasure at her protégé.

“There’s nothing wrong in saying you don’t know something, Tad. We’ll read some McCarthy together later tonight.”

She gave him a large, wet kiss on his left ear. Tess looked at them and all the happy couples around her—boy-girl, boy-boy, and girl-girl alike—and had an overwhelming need to be alone. No one was stopping her. She went to Kitty’s kitchen, hijacked a bottle of Riesling, and climbed the stairs to her apartment.

The piles she had made of Abramowitz’s life just two nights earlier still sat on the floor. She had a sudden desire to kick them into the air, or shred them into confetti and toss them from the roof. Instead she sat down and reviewed what she had written so far. Lists and lists of names. Rock’s chronology of the night of Abramowitz’s murder, side by side with Joey Dumbarton’s account, and Mr. Miles’s. Something was missing.
Someone
was missing.

Ava. Rock had never mentioned if Ava was at his apartment when he returned. Where had she been when the police arrived and arrested him? If she had still been sleeping there, they would have taken her in, too, for questioning. But the police didn’t find Ava until later, which is why Jonathan had known so little about her when he came by two nights after the murder.

“I guess I do have a job to do,” Tess said aloud. Really two jobs—her official chores for Tyner and these unofficial chores she kept assigning herself. If she had not earned Rock’s money before, as Tyner had suggested, perhaps she could now.

A
va may have sinned, but she had not been forced out of Eden. Late Saturday afternoon, Tess stood across President Street from the luxurious apartment building, trying to think of how she could slip past the uniformed doorman who guarded the entrance to Eden’s Landing. At least she assumed it was a uniform and not his clothing of choice: Bermuda shorts, hiking shoes, a pith helmet. She walked around the corner to the underground garage entrance on Pratt Street. No sentry here. She slipped inside and checked to see if Ava’s silver Miata was there. It was, a guarantee Ava was home. Except for work, Tess hadn’t seen Ava walk anywhere. And Ava didn’t strike her as the kind of person who went to work on weekends unless she was trying to impress the boss. If the boss was dead, what was the point?

The parking garage had an elevator leading to the apartments, but one needed a key to summon it. Tess patted her pockets frantically, as if looking for a key ring, until she saw an older woman, loaded down with shopping bags and a bakery box, heading to the elevators. Tess ran toward her, pretending a fit of gracious concern.

“Let me help you,” she practically sang to the woman, taking the box by its red and white string. The woman looked a little nervous, as if Tess might be a mugger who prowled Baltimore parking garages for baked goods, but she didn’t protest. When they reached the elevator Tess again made a
show of trying to find her keys, but her hands were full of cake.

“Let me,” the woman said quickly. She keyed the elevator, got on, and pushed four. Tess pressed the top button, but insisted on walking the woman to her door. In their three minutes of acquaintance, she told the woman she was new in the building, living in a studio apartment, and studying at the Peabody Conservatory.

“What instrument do you play?” the woman asked politely in the bored tone of someone who couldn’t care less.

“I’m a vocalist,” Tess said. “Soprano, but I have an enormous range. I’ll be appearing with the Baltimore Opera this fall.”

Unfortunately this piqued the woman’s interest. “Really? What role? My husband and I are subscribers.”

Tess thought for a moment. She had never been to the opera and, although she knew a few titles, she couldn’t describe any plots or name any characters. But there was one opera the local company seemed to produce year after year. She tried to recall the ads she had heard on the radio.

“
La Bohème
?”

The woman did not notice she had answered in the form of a question. “Are you singing Mimi? Musetta? Or are you in the chorus?”

They had reached the woman’s door. As long as she was committed to lying, Tess decided, she might as well lie big. “Mimi. I’m playing Mimi. If I don’t go to New York first. The Met has a standing offer for me to sing Mimi there.”

The woman, now thrilled, put her packages on a small table inside the door, but she made no move to take the cake box from Tess. Instead she handed her a pen.

“I know it’s silly, but could I have your autograph?”

Tess signed the box with a flourish.
Teresita L. Mentiroso
. If she remembered her high school Spanish correctly, that translated to little Theresa, the liar.

Her opera career behind her, she ran up the stairs to Ava’s apartment on the sixth floor. Feeling smug and devious, she rang the doorbell. But when Ava opened the door, her face
quickly deflated Tess. She registered no surprise, no interest. For a moment it wasn’t clear if she even recognized Tess.
What did Rock see in this incurious, self-absorbed woman?

“Well, come in then,” Ava said at last, gesturing with a half-empty glass of white wine.

She led Tess through the apartment toward the terrace without even a perfunctory show of hospitality. Unlike Joey Dumbarton or Frank Miles, Ava did not mistake this visit for a social call.

Her apartment faced the harbor and downtown, which added at least $30,000 to the price, Tess estimated. Whatever the extra cost had been, it appeared to be a stretch Ava could ill afford, even on a lawyer’s salary. The one-bedroom apartment had a sparse, undernourished look, and it wasn’t because Ava liked minimalism. The apartment simply didn’t have enough furniture. And what was there looked shabby and worn. Ava was living paycheck to paycheck.

Once on the terrace, there was only one place to sit, a cheap director’s chair with a torn orange seat. Ava took the chair and let Tess have the concrete floor. There was a crystal wine cooler by the chair, a nice one, possibly from Tiffany. But when Ava pulled the bottle out to top off her glass, Tess recognized the label, a Romanian Chardonnay available for less than six dollars, even at package stores, which gouged you. Tess had tried it. Once.

“What do you want now?” Ava said. She sat with her back to the harbor, indifferent to the view. Or perhaps she considered the sunset, a brilliant red orange heightened by the smog, something of a rival. Its warm hues did little for her pale, cool beauty.

“I’m working for Rock’s—for Darryl’s—lawyer. It’s pretty routine stuff, just gathering as many facts as we can about the night of the murder.”

Unlike Joey the security guard, lawyer Ava did not remind her that murder was a legal term. She simply continued to stare at Tess, waiting. Some people, smart people, learn early the power of saying nothing. It forces the other person to
gush and stutter. Ava had mastered this. Tess had not. Her mouth, as always, rushed into the breach.

“You were asleep when he left that night, so you can’t help us much there. But do you remember what time you got over there and what time you feel asleep?”

“I got there about nine. I was pretty upset, thanks to you. He made me some tea, he held my hand, and I fell asleep. It could have been fifteen minutes later, or forty-five minutes, or an hour. I lost track of time.”

“Good.” Tess ignored the little barb directed at her. “Now, did you wake up when he came back? Did you notice what time it was? Or did you not wake up until the police came?”

“I can’t see why that matters.”

“It sets parameters. The earlier he gets home, the easier it is to prove there was time for someone else to kill Abramowitz.”

Ava smiled, showing dimples but no teeth. “You can’t possibly believe that, can you?”

“It’s my job to believe it. What do you believe?”

She leaned forward, as if taking Tess into her confidence. “Just between us—who else could have done it? Mind you, I don’t care. I think it’s terribly romantic and, with a good defense, he has an excellent chance of being acquitted. But what are the odds that someone happened to kill Michael the same night Darryl confronted him? It’s terribly unlikely, isn’t it?”

“Rock told me he’s innocent, and that’s all I need to know,” Tess said, uneasy to hear Ava ask the question she had asked just six days ago. “I would expect at least as much from his fiancée.”

“He hasn’t told me he’s innocent,” Ava said.

“He’s been instructed not to speak to you at all, for the time being. What about when the cops came and dragged him out of bed? Didn’t you talk then?”

Ava’s eyes slid away from hers, and she took a large gulp of wine. “Well, there wouldn’t have been time for confidences then. Right?”

Her tone gave her away. She was testing a theory, seeing if Tess would buy it. If she didn’t, presumably another would be offered.

“Not right, Ava. Not even close. You left before he came home, didn’t you? You faked falling asleep, then sneaked out as soon as he had gone to do your dirty work for you.”

Ava said nothing.

“Taking the fifth?”

She clenched her jaw muscles so hard they twitched, making a second set of dimples, but she still didn’t speak.

“Maybe
you
killed Abramowitz,” Tess suggested, not because she believed it, but because she wanted to goad Ava into saying something, anything. “You followed Rock to the office, worried Abramowitz’s version of your relationship might not agree with yours. You hid in your own little office, then came out and finished what Rock had started. Or maybe you did it in front of Rock, and he’s covering for you.”

“Right. I strangled and beat a man about twice my size.” Ava laughed, a high-pitched girl’s laugh learned in grade school and sharpened by years of ridiculing others. “But, please—go with that theory. I’m sure Darryl would love a defense based on implicating his fiancée.”

“Then tell me why you left his apartment. Were you worried what he might have done? Did you think he might come back and tell you all, making you an accessory? Or did he go down there because you asked him to, because the only way you can prove your sexual harassment story is if Abramowitz isn’t alive to give his side?”

Ava started to speak, then sipped her wine again, cooling herself down. “If I didn’t know better I would assume you were a failed novelist, not a failed journalist. You were a journalist, right? I mean, when you still had a job.”

“I may have left the newspaper business, but at least it wasn’t because I kept failing some test. You know, Abramowitz told Rock you were sleeping with him because you kept failing the bar. He also said he couldn’t do a damn thing for you, but he slept with you anyway. Now that he’s dead, are you going to start sleeping with another partner, hoping
for a reprieve from the firm’s ‘three-strikes-and-you’re-out’ rule?”

Ava’s jaw muscles flickered like neon and her eyes narrowed. If she had been a dog, her ears would have flattened back, too. Tess could tell she longed to bite her, or at least throw her wineglass. Instead she took a sip of wine, then another. When she spoke her voice was calm, but only through great effort.

“If Abramowitz said that, he’s lying. At any rate I can’t believe Rock wants a defense based on humiliating me in court, but I’ll mention it to him when he calls. He calls me all the time, you know. I just don’t pick up the phone. That’s why we haven’t talked, not because of any instructions he received. But I may pick up the next time he calls. And perhaps I’ll offer my services to his lawyer. I’m sure I could do better than an unlicensed amateur.”

“Well, you’re definitely not an amateur. The services you provided Abramowitz lifted you out of that category. I won’t pretend to compete with you there.”

She did throw her wineglass, then, but her aim was poor. The glass sailed past Tess’s shoulder, flying out to the sidewalk. There was a tiny crash, and a woman, probably a tourist, cried out: “Harry, did you see that?”

“Sorry you couldn’t help me with Rock’s alibi, Ava,” Tess said. “Maybe you better work on your own.”

She felt pleased with herself, a little cocky, but the mood quickly vanished when she left Ava’s apartment. For outside Eden’s Landing, she saw Rock on his bicycle, riding up and down President Street like the nerdiest kid in school cruising past the head cheerleader’s house, lovesick and forlorn.

“You’re not supposed to be doing this,” Tess admonished him. “Tyner told you to stay away and not to talk to her.”

“I don’t remember him telling you to talk to her, either,” Rock said. “How did she look? How’s she holding up?”

“OK, I guess.” Tess thought of Ava in her empty apartment. “Tell me something, Rock. Where does her money go?”

“Well, she has a big mortgage and loans from law school.
Maintenance is high, and she can’t even deduct it from her taxes. But she had to have it. She figured it wouldn’t be so bad once we got married and were splitting the monthly payments.”

“Were you going to live there together?”

“She thought so.” Rock looked embarrassed. “I let her think so. But it is so small and so expensive. I was going to wait until we got married, then try to talk her into a little house down in Anne Arundel County, on the Severn. A place with a dock.”

“That wouldn’t come cheap, either.”

“No, but I have some money put aside. And it would have been worth it to have a place on a river where I could practice. Now it looks like I’ll be using my savings for attorney’s fees.”

“Did Ava know you had a lot squirreled away?”

“Sure. She couldn’t understand why I lived the way I did—driving my car only when I had to, living in such a cheap apartment. So I booted up my computer one day and showed her my investments. She was pretty impressed.”

I bet—impressed enough to accept an engagement ring
.

“Look, Rock, I’m not going to tell you what to do, because you never listen to anyone. But try not to do anything really stupid, OK? Stay away from Ava. Trust Tyner and trust me. We have your best interests at heart.”

“Are you saying Ava doesn’t?”

“I’m sure she does, too—as long as they don’t conflict with hers.”

Rock stared wistfully up at Eden’s Landing one more time, then pedaled away, waving good-bye to Tess over his shoulder.

Although worried about Rock and effectively shut out by Ava, Tess still felt upbeat and lighthearted. She had made a start, and she had so many other leads to follow. That support group. Tracking down the mystery man with the Louisville Slugger. She had earned a reward, she decided. French fries, perhaps, or a hot dog from the Nice N Easy.

She walked over to the convenience store on Broadway and asked for a kosher dog.

“It’ll take a minute,” the sullen girl behind the counter told her.

“Luckily I’ve got a minute. Hand me that paper, will you?”

The
Beacon-Light
she shoved at Tess was not the Saturday paper, but the early Sunday edition, the bulldog. Filled with fake news and feature stories, the paper was of little use, except to those who wanted a jump on real estate ads or the Super Deals at the Giant. Tess, lacking the space to store toilet paper purchased in bulk and the funds to buy property, usually had little interest in the bulldog. Then she saw Jonathan Ross’s byline on page one, under a catchy headline:

T
HE LAWYER, THE ROWER, THE LADY
:
U
NLIKELY TRIANGLE LEADS TO TRAGEDY