Butchers Hill (33 page)

"You knew? You knew all this
time?"

"Of course I knew. Your
grandfather could never hide anything from me. Believe me, he
didn't stray again. As I reminded him, Maryland is a
community property state. First he was too rich to leave me, and then
he was too poor. What's half of nothing?"

"Knew what?" Judith
asked. "Who's Susan King? Will someone please tell
me what's going on?"

"I'd tell you, Mom, but
I have to go stop a woman from committing her second felony of the
day," Tess said. "Let Gramma explain it all to you.
Besides, she's known about it much longer than I
have."

"There's nothing to
explain," Gramma said, with a wave of her hand that suggested
the past was an inconvenience—a fly to be swatted, a smear on
a window pane that could be erased with a quick shot of Windex.

"There's a lifetime to
explain," Judith said. "A lifetime of secrets and
lies, and I'm sick of it. You're not going
anywhere, Theresa Esther Monaghan, until you tell me
everything."

Tess grabbed her mother's hand.
"I'll tell you what I know in the car, if you
insist. But I should warn you I'm going to be driving just a
little bit above the speed limit."

T
ess's
driving proved to be the least of Judith's concerns, even as
Tess ran every amber and not a few reds on the way to Roland Park.

"So this woman, this client of
yours, she's…connected to Poppa?" Judith
asked tentatively. "And Mama knew, she knew all this time,
and never told any of us?"

The sign at the intersection said no right
on red, but Tess thought it surely couldn't apply to her.
After a quick glance to make sure no cops were around, she tore around
the corner.

"She didn't know Jackie
put the baby up for adoption, because Poppa didn't know the
baby was ever born. Jackie told him she was going to get an abortion,
and kept the money. She told me when she asked for his help with
college, he said the business was too shaky for him to help her. But I
guess he couldn't squeeze that much cash out without going to
Gramma, and she put her foot down."

"So I have a
half-sibling."

"Yeah, a sister."

"I always wanted a
sister," Judith said, then smiled. "Well, that was
inane."

"We saw her today. I knew it had
upset Jackie, but I guess I didn't know just how freaked out
she was."

Tess was on Northern Parkway now. If she had
been in her office, or her apartment, she could have made Roland Park
in fifteen minutes. But her parents' house couldn't
have been much farther away. If you thought of the Baltimore Beltway as
a clock, it was akin to driving from seven o'clock to
midnight.

"Edgevale is on the west side of
Roland Park," her mother said. "It runs off Falls
Road. But how will we find it without the number?"

"I know Jackie's
car."

It was dark now, and fireflies flickered on
and off as they drove down Edgevale. Whatever Jackie was doing, she
couldn't make much noise, for sound would carry easily across
these lush, hushed lawns. Unlike Keisha Moore's embattled
neighbors, Roland Park residents would never let a gunshot go
unreported, assuming they realized it was a gunshot, instead of a car
backfiring. Then again, the houses were set just far enough apart to
suggest a certain reticence on the part of the owners, a surface
neighborliness that didn't go too far beyond mimed
"hellos" at the curb. Such places often had an
unspoken agreement not to be too nosy. A woman could be beaten here, or
a child, and the crime, if discovered, would only prompt the usual
banalites. "He was a quiet man." Yet just let a
young black man try walking in the neighborhood and the police would be
summoned at once.

Jackie, however, had the right accessories
to slip under that radar. Her white Lexus was parked in the driveway of
a stucco mansion at the end of the street. It blocked a late-model
Toyota Camry with an ACLU bumpersticker, but another car had pulled in
behind the Lexus, a black Mercedes with "Save the
Bay" plates. Tess pulled in behind the Mercedes. An old car
like hers might also excite comment in Roland Park if left on the
street.

"Stay in the car, Mom."

"Not on your life."

"There's a woman in that
house with a gun, my gun. A hysterical, unpredictable woman who
doesn't know you, and might not hestitate to harm
you."

"My point, exactly. So why
don't you call the police, and let them handle it?"

"Because there's a
slender hope I can undo what Jackie has done without getting the police
involved.
If
she
hasn't hurt anyone yet. I'm counting on Jackie not
being as tough as she thinks she is." But she would hurt
herself, Tess thought. She might be so hysterical over seeing Samantha
that she would kill herself in front of the people who had treated her
daughter so cavalierly.

The front door was unlocked. Tess stopped in
the front hallway, listened intently. Judith came in right behind her.
No time to argue about it now. She motioned her mother to be quiet, her
mother gestured back that she knew what she was doing. God, she was
exasperating.

Now both the women concentrated on the
sounds of the house. It was so big, so quiet. It was hard to imagine
any child here, running up the stairs so shiny they looked wet, leaving
handprints along the expensive-looking wallpaper. There was a murmuring
sound from the rear, perhaps a television left on, or even the leaves
of the trees rustling together. Tess and her mother moved toward the
sound, through the formal living room, into the dining room and through
swinging doors into the kitchen, a bright, cold place, all granite and
stainless steel.

"Who are you?" a woman
asked, and her voice was too loud, too shaky, even for someone seeing
two strangers in her kitchen. Short and fleshy, with the kind of
silver-blond curls never found in nature, she was sitting on a severe
little metal love seat at one end of the remodeled kitchen, where a
family room had been created in what once was an alcove or breakfast
nook. A small man in glasses was next to her, frowning.

Jackie was sitting directly across from them
in a matching chair, her briefcase open on her lap. Was the gun in
there? Would she use it before Tess could cross the room?

"Hey," Jackie said
languidly, as cool and composed as the day Tess had first gone to her
apartment. "I didn't expect to see you here
tonight. That your mom? I see the resemblance. You're lucky,
girl, if you got that bone structure. You're going to look
good
twenty, thirty years from now, you ever learn how to dress."

Judith, who had been staring at Jackie,
perhaps still trying to grasp their connection, blushed.
"Thank you. I always did think Tesser favored me, although
there's some of her father there, too."

"Tesser? You have been holding out
on me."

The whole scene felt surreal to Tess. Here
they were, in this $100,000 kitchen with the couple who had turned away
Samantha because her mother was black, chatting as if they had run into
each other in the dairy section of the SuperFresh. The couple on the
love seat looked nervous and edgy. Was Jackie holding the gun behind
her briefcase? Had she warned them not to speak? But she had to know
Tess wouldn't leave without her, that Tess would never let
her destroy her life this way.

The man, Dr. Becker, spoke as if he were
impatient with Tess. "We are having a, uh, confidential
discussion. Could you and Miss Weir transact your business later, when
we're finished."

Jackie leaned forward and patted the
doctor's hands. They were small hands, knitted tightly
together on the table top. Something—his hands, his knees,
his wife's legs—were shaking hard enough to make
the teacups before them vibrate ever so slightly.
Teacups
,
Tess thought. What kind of murder-suicide is this?

"It's okay, Dr. Becker.
Tess and I don't really have any secrets at this point.
Although Mrs. Monaghan—" She looked back at Judith,
who nodded shyly. "Well, it looks like she's cool,
too. What do you know?" To Tess: "You told
her?"

"I had to, when Willa Mott crashed
the crab feast."

Did Tess just imagine it, or did the Beckers
shift uncomfortably at the mention of Willa Mott?

"So that's how you found
me. Well, we're almost done here, aren't we?
There's just the little matter of the check. Not so little,
really. I mean, a quarter of a million dollars is a lot of money, but
it's all for a good cause, isn't it? Seed money for
foster care group homes. You know, the places where kids go when no one
wants them. Can you imagine such a thing? Not wanting a
child?"

"I told you what
happened," the doctor said. "I requested the
child's medical records. The hospital goofed and sent them to
me directly, instead of to the agency, and I saw the girl was biracial.
We had been told we were receiving a white child. We decided if the
agency would lie about something so fundamental, it couldn't
be trusted to tell the truth about anything. The adoption
hadn't been finalized yet, so we were within our legal rights
to void it."

"It's not as if
we're prejudiced," Mrs. Becker broke in.
"We give money to all sorts of black causes."

Jackie nodded, smiling, as if pleased by
this recitation. "Yes, I understand. You sent an
eleven-month-old baby back like she was some sweater from J. Crew that
happened to be the wrong color. ‘
Uh-huh,
I didn't order me no taupe sweater, I wanted something in a
peachy white
.'"

"We assumed they would find
another home for her," the doctor said.

"What if they didn't? Do
you know what happened to her? Do you know where my daughter is today,
what kind of life she has?"

The doctor and his wife said nothing.
Puzzled, Tess started to interrupt, to remind Jackie of the wonderful
life that Sam had with the Edelmans, but then she realized how
deliberate this was. The money wasn't enough for Jackie. She
wanted to plant dark images in the Beckers' minds, see if she
could give them a few sleepless nights as well.
Good
luck
, Tess thought. If the Beckers ever thought
about what they had done, it would be because of the check Dr. Becker
was now filling out with Jackie's Mont Blanc pen.

"They have a name for
this," he said, even as he handed the check to Jackie.
"Extortion. Blackmail. Don't think I
won't report this to the police."

"They have names for you,
too," Jackie said, examining the check carefully.
"Bigot. Racist. Peckerwood. Don't you see, money
has to change hands here. Because this whole thing is about
economics
.
If I had kept my baby, the government would have given me, say, about
$225 a month and some food stamps to raise her. You paid $10,000 for
her, but the agency got that, not me. I do hope you got a refund. And
when she went into foster care, that family got twice as much as I
would have for keeping her. The Edelmans, who aren't hurting
by a long shot, collect maybe $500 a month they don't need to
raise the baby I would have gotten $225 to raise. Now could someone
explain that to me?"

Mrs. Becker actually began to say something,
as if Jackie expected an answer, but she was silenced by one stern look
from her husband. Tess couldn't help thinking that the voided
adoption was one of the best things that ever happened to Samantha
King. Dr. Becker would have managed to snuff out that exuberant
girl's soul long ago, while his silly wife just looked on.

"You know, I know
people," the doctor said. "Important people. You
might find your job a lot harder to do in the future if you cash that
check."

For the first time, Jackie looked hesitant,
unsure. Her career was the kind built by word of mouth, Tess realized,
and it could be destroyed by it as well.

"You people think you run the city
now." Dr. Becker had found his advantage and was pressing
forward, cruel and heedless. "Well you don't.
It's the people with money who are in control, white or
black. That check may be the last anyone ever writes you. Think about
that."

As Jackie just sat, studying the check, Tess
reached out and grabbed the doctor's hand. "Where
are my manners? Tess Monaghan, I should have introduced myself when I
came in. I'm a private investigator, but I used to be a
reporter in town and I still have a lot of reporter friends. I think
they would love to hear about the prominent Doctor
Becker—ACLU member, friend of the Chesapeake
Bay—who reneged on an adoption because the child
wasn't white. Throw in the Willa Mott angle and
it's a national story, don't you think?"

"We told you, it was because the
agency lied," Becker said, almost sputtering in his rage.
"You keep making it sound as if we were racists."

"No, I think it was your use of
‘you people' that made you sound like a racist.
Anyway, that's how it will end up, unless you leave Jackie
alone. Trust me. The top editor of the
Beacon-Light
owes me a favor or two, and I'm willing to call the chit in
for this."

"And I work at the NSA,"
Judith put in suddenly. "You don't even want to
contemplate what I can do to you."

Tess doubted that her mother could do much
more than instruct the clerk-typists under her supervision to write a
really scary letter, but it was the National Security Agency. Who knew
what powers her mother really had?

The doctor nodded sullenly, but Tess
didn't trust him. There was nothing to keep him from calling
the police as soon as they left, or setting in motion his grapevine
scheme to undercut Jackie's business.

"Now we're going to
leave here and I'm going to make sure any paper work linking
you to Samantha King is destroyed, although Jackie will keep a copy.
That will keep you quiet?"