Butchers Hill

Chapter 19

As many times as she had been there, Tess always needed the marker of the wheelchair ramp to find Tyner's house in Tuxedo Park. It was so dark in his neighborhood on a summer night-darkness being the perogative of truly safe places as well as the really dangerous ones-and the shingled houses were virtually indistinguishable. Hard enough to find the street, St. John's, much less the house itself. Once she did, she waited on his front porch, drinking from the international six-pack she had assembled at Alonso's Tavern, where they allowed you to mix-and-match the beers. A Red Stripe, a Bohemia, a Royal Oak, a Tsing-Tao, a Molson, and an Anchor Steam. Around the World in eighty beers.

It was past eleven. The velvety voices of television anchors drifted from open windows, filling the night with authoritative sounds. So emphatic, so sure. You didn't even have to hear the words to know how a story was supposed to make you feel. The pitch told you everything you needed to know. Bad thing had happened. Important thing had happened. Funny thing had happened. Weather had happened.

Shit happened. Where was Tyner, anyway? Tess drained the Red Stripe. She was halfway through Mexico by the time his van pulled up out front. She called to him as he came up the ramp, so he wouldn't be startled to find her on his shadowy front porch. But nothing ever really surprised Tyner. Lucky him.

'Not a very good training regimen,' he observed, looking at the glass bottles at her feet.

'Depends on what you're training for. Where have you been, burning the midnight oil on Luther Beale's case?' She couldn't help sounding a little petulant, as if Tyner should know she would be waiting on his front porch.

'Luther Beale is safe at home, where I expect him to stay unless the police come up with something significantly more substantial than the circumstantial bullshit they threw at us all day. I had a date.'

'A date?' She had known women found Tyner attractive, but she hadn't known he actually did anything about it. 'Who is she?'

'Another lawyer. No one you know.'

'How old is she? Or should I ask, how young is she? Young enough to be your daughter? Young enough to be your granddaughter?'

'What an odd thing to say.'

'Not so very odd.'

And she told him everything. She began with her conversation with Jackie, veering off into wild digressions about Willa Mott and Adoption Rights and the leather seats in Jackie's Lexus. Somewhere in the middle of her rambling story, Tyner reached for the Anchor Steam and the bottle opener, but he never spoke. By the time Tess's voice wore down, the street was silent, the televisions long turned off, all the windows dark.

'So I'm looking for my aunt, I figured out,' she said. 'What's that stupid West Virginia joke, the one about the song. ‘I'm My Own Grandpa?' I'm looking for my thirteen-year-old aunt.'

'Lots of people have aunts and uncles younger than they are. Given the imperatives of biology, it's not that unusual.'

'Jesus, Tyner, there was a fifty-year age difference.'

'So?'

'So that's sick.'

'It was legal, though. She was of age to give consent.'

'He was her boss, which makes it sexual harrassment. And adultery. Which isn't legal in the state of Maryland, no matter how old you are.'

'Does Jackie think she was sexually harrassed, or is that your take on it?'

Shrewd Tyner. He always did have a way of knowing what truly bothered her. She was the angry one, not Jackie. The man Jackie remembered-a man she called Samuel, in an affectionate voice that made Tess's skin crawl-had been kind to her. If it hadn't been love between them, it had been a genuine fondness, two lonely, unhappy people finding solace in one another's company. He had given her gifts, encouraged her to think about life beyond the grill at Weinstein's Drugs. When she told him she was pregnant, he had given her money for an abortion, which she had pocketed, knowing she was too far gone for the procedure. He had even offered to help her with college, but his business troubles had kept him from honoring that pledge. Still, Jackie had nothing unkind to say about him. He had never promised to leave his wife for her, she had told Tess. He had never promised anything, except to provide her a corner of warmth and regard in a world that had given her so little of either.

'She's crazy,' Tess muttered.

'That's a possibility. Or she could be lying. Remember, she lied the first time you met her.'

Tess had not thought of this and it was a tempting out. Would Jackie tell such an outlandish story to keep Tess working for her? True, she had known much about Weinstein Drugs, but it was possible she had worked there without being bedded there. Perhaps she had hated her employer and waited all these years to punish his descendants. Tess allowed herself the fleeting pleasure of embracing this theory, then just as quickly discarded it. Not even Gramma Weinstein could have provoked someone into seeking such a convoluted revenge. Besides, there was definitely a daughter out there somewhere, Jackie had convinced her of that much. It suddenly occurred to her that the strange detail Willa Mott had remembered about the father of Jackie's baby was not his race, but his advanced age.

'I'd give anything if I could prove this was all some sick lie, but I can't.'

'Why not?'

'Because in my heart of hearts, I know it's true.' Tess opened the Royal Oak.

'So what are you going to do?' Tyner asked.

'I don't know. Even if the whole thing didn't make me nauseated, I still maintain she'd be better off with a more experienced investigator. Being related to her daughter doesn't make me any more qualified to find her. Besides, I wasn't bullshitting her. Luther Beale has to be priority one, right?'

She looked at Tyner hopefully, but he had no intention of letting her off the hook.

'Nothing's going to happen with Beale, unless a witness comes forward, or some physical evidence links him to one of those bodies. It was kind of sad about Destiny, actually. One of the reasons they didn't make the ID was because her body looked so used up. They were carrying her as a Jane Doe, twenty-five to thirty-five, and she was only seventeen.'

'Well, as long as she looked twenty-five, right?'

'Jesus, Tess. When you turn on someone, you really turn, don't you?'

'I looked like a grown woman when I was fourteen. Do you know what that's like? I couldn't make it the six blocks from the bus stop to home without fielding at least three offers to climb into someone's car. Some of them left me alone when I told them my age. Some of them, especially the geezers, just got a lot more interested. Gee, I wonder why Poppa didn't invite me into the back room?'

'Just because a man would want to be with a young woman doesn't mean he would go after his own granddaughter. Give your grandfather that much credit.'

'Sorry, Poppa's account is closed. Gramma's, on the other hand, suddenly shows a huge balance. Maybe that's why she's such a sour old woman, because her husband was diddling the help all those years. I bet Jackie wasn't the only one. Who knows how many undiscovered aunts I have throughout Baltimore?'

Tyner reached for the Molson. 'You know, I'm probably as old as your grandfather was when you were a teenager, right?'

'Thereabouts.'

'What would you say if I told you my date tonight was twenty-five?'

'You said she was a lawyer.'

'There are twenty-five-year-old lawyers.'

'Well…that's different.'

'Why?'

'Because she's older and because-well, it's not like you're having sex with her.'

'No, but only because it was our first date. I'm too much of a gentleman to make my move so early. Or did you think we didn't have sex because I'm in a wheelchair?'