Butchers Hill

'I'm just giving you a hard time. Actually you haven't changed as much as you think.'

'Really?' Tess believed she had changed extraordinarily, that it was almost impossible to find the more-or-less hard-bodied, more-or-less grown-up Theresa Esther Monaghan in those plump limbs and that face round with baby fat.

'Yes. You still wear your hair in a braid and you still have a smudge of chocolate on your face.' Mary Browne didn't say good-bye, just allowed herself another no-teeth-showing smile and left even as Tess dabbed at the errant bit of frosting from her Berger's cookie. She must have had that dimple of chocolate on her face for the entire interview.

'Wait a minute!' she called after Mary Browne, her computerized form not even close to complete. But when she reached the door, Mary Browne was pulling away in a baby-blue, late-model Taurus with Virginia tags. Virginia tags often meant a rental car in these parts, but Tess took down the license plate, just in case. Homicide detective Martin Tull had recommended such mnemonic tricks to sharpen her powers of observation.

Back at her desk, she allowed herself the venal pleasure of staring at the two checks she had collected that morning, filling out a deposit slip with great ceremony. Mary Browne might be a little mysterious, but finding Susan King was going to be a slam-dunk. This was the kind of case she needed-easy, lots of cash up front. The check was even a money order, so she didn't have to worry about it bouncing.

A money order? Why would someone pay with a money order? Did Mary Browne have a husband at home who might ask questions about a checkbook entry to Tess Monaghan, private investigator? Or, appearances aside, was she scraping so low she didn't even have a checking account? Tess looked at the application form still open on her computer. A P.O. box for an address. That hadn't seemed so strange when she had called, but now Tess's heart jumped up and out, beating against her ribcage as if it wanted to escape.

Her fingers clumsy with nervousness, she punched in the phone number Mary had left, only to hear the precise, silky voice that had so recently filled her office: 'You have reached the pager-voice mail for Mary Browne. Please leave a message at the beep, or punch in your number and I will return your call as quickly as possible.'

Tess smothered her relieved laugh. 'I just wanted to tell you to plan on seeing your sister by the fourth of July, Mary Browne,' she told the pager. 'I almost guarantee I can find her by then.'

Actually, Tess couldn't find anyone who wasn't in the phone book. But she knew someone who could, and she wasn't too proud to delegate.

Chapter 3

The third-floor ladies room at the Enoch Pratt Free Library was empty. It usually was, which was why Tess had chosen it for a meeting place. She didn't know why the library's top floor, home to the humanities department and the Mencken Room, should be so relentlessly male, but it was, and always had been. There was probably a class-action suit in this, but it would have to find another plaintiff. Tess had long cherished this island of privacy in downtown Baltimore, with its view of the verdigris-domed Basilica of the Assumption.

'Hello, Wee Willie Keeler,' she said, waving to the blank windows across Cathedral Street. That was Kitty's pet name for the cardinal, Kitty being about as lapsed as anyone named Monaghan could be.

Tess had her own lapses. Once, as a college senior home for winter break, she had taken an over-the-counter pregnancy test in one of the stalls here. She didn't dare try it at home, and yet she couldn't stand the suspense of waiting until she returned to school. The test had been negative and she had celebrated by meeting Whitney Talbot at the bar at the top of the old Peabody Hotel. Wearing slinky little dresses, they had lied about their ages, names, and just about everything else to the men who insisted on buying them drinks. 'Auditioning new sperm donors,' Whitney had called it.

The Peabody was gone, demoted to a chain hotel with polyester bedspreads and no rooftop bar. And her best friend Whitney was gone-at least temporarily to Japan. Ah, the local litany of loss. Now that was the real Baltimore Catechism, the ecumenical prayer known to every native. Tess curled up in the window well, deep and low enough to be a proper window seat, and skimmed a copy of Mary McCarthy's first volume of memoirs while she waited. Soon enough, she heard the heavy tread of hiking boots on the tile floors. A plump woman, as soft and disarrayed as an unmade bed, entered the room.

'About time-' Tess began, but Dorie Starnes held a finger to her mouth, in imitation of the librarian stereotype.

'Did you check the stalls?'

'The doors are all open, Dorie. See?'

Unsatisfied, Dorie pushed each of the stall doors, then glanced up at the ceiling, in case someone might be clinging to one of the light fixtures.

'You can't be too careful, you know,' she said, closing and locking the heavy wooden door to the outside corridor.

'Actually, you can. There's a point where precaution has a diminishing return. For example, let's say you're so afraid to fly that you drive everywhere. That's not only more risky, statistically, it also costs you money through lost time.'

'I don't fly.'

'Right, because you're afraid.'

'Because I've never wanted to go anywhere that was more than three hours from Baltimore by car.'

'Oh.' Tess tried to think of a nonflying analogy about the benefits of risk-taking, but nothing came to mind. 'I take it back. Maybe you can't be too careful.'

'You better believe it. If my titular bosses ever find out I've opened my own shop while still working for them, that would be the end of little Dorie. This may seem like cloak-and-dagger bullshit to you, but it keeps my health insurance and 401-K safe for another day.'

'Nice use of titular. Still doing those vocabulary builders?'

'Yeah. It's a twelve-cassette program, for kids taking the SATs. I already know what most of the words mean, this way I get to hear how they should sound.' Dorie glared at Tess, in case she was mocking her. But Tess had learned early in their relationship never to aggravate the Beacon-Light's systems manager. From her cubicle at the newspaper, Dorie ran a vigorous trade in black-market information, tapping into the newspaper's on-line resources and, more valuable still, the business side's computers, something even the reporters couldn't do. Forget the hand that rocks the cradle. It's the fingers that can access your credit rating that truly rule the world.

'It's not only your vocabulary. Your voice sounds different, too. Fuller.'

'I've been listening to Derek Jacobi read the Iliad on tape. It's like, I don't know, twenty hours altogether, and if I keep my headphones on too long, I start sounding as if I'm from a whole different kind of Essex.'

'Indeed,' Tess said. Dorie had mispronounced the English actor's name, but she'd never hear about it from Tess. 'Well, duchess, let me tell you what I need.'

Dorie listened intently, taking it all in. Tess would have gladly given her copies of her files, but Dorie was paper-averse. She maintained that her 'organic hard disk' was the safest way to store information. No power surges, no system crashes, and not even the world's best hackers could get to it.

'Jeez, Tess,' she said after hearing the details of the two cases, shaking her head. 'I mean, normally, no problem, but it happens I've got a few people with rush jobs. People who pay me considerably more money than you do.'

'Hey, I qualified for my lifetime discount by suggesting you set up this little sideline, remember?'

'Sure, and I'll take you for a ride in my new Ford Explorer someday to show you how grateful I am. In the meantime, the Beacon-Light, my employer of record, has a few things they expect of me as well. Tyrannical despots. Can the Susan King search wait a couple days?'

'Sure.' In fact, it was probably better that way. A too-swift result might prompt the demanding Mary Browne to wonder if she had been charged too much. 'What about the Beale case? Can you help me on that at all?'