The Sugar House

about you.”

Up close, Adam Moss’s dark eyes were heavy-lidded and secretive, while his cherry-red mouth made Tess finally understand what it meant to have Cupid bow lips. He was poised, too. He didn’t play the usual game of pretending horror at the idea that others had been talking about him. In fact, he didn’t even bother to reply. His face was impassive, as if it were a given of his existence that people talked about him. They probably did, Tess thought, when you looked like that. What had Kierkegaard written about actresses? They knew they were on everyone’s lips, even when they wiped their mouths with their handkerchiefs. She bet Adam Moss was coming up on a lot of local handerkerchiefs.

Dahlgren shook hands all around, making eye contact, pretending fervent interest in the person at the other end of the arm, at least for the three seconds that the hand clasp lasted.

“Nice to finally meet your family, Pat,” the senator said. “Family’s very important.”

“Thank you, Senator.” Tess disliked seeing her father so puppy eager for the good opinion of a backbencher like Dahlgren. Oh well, anyone who had a job had to brownnose now and then. She did it, too, and hated herself in the morning-until she made her bank deposit. “Any chance you’re going to be making an official announcement soon about your status? I hear you’ve been raising money hand over fist since Meyer Hammersmith signed on as finance chairman.”

“Well, Meyer’s not on board officially,” Dahlgren said, his fixed smile never wavering. “As for my future plans-I like to say discretion is the better part of valor.”

“Shakespeare,” Crow said. “Henry the Fourth, Part One.”

“Really?” Dahlgren said. “I mean-of course.”

“It’s not like you don’t have plenty of things to keep you busy in Baltimore and Annapolis. Like, these houses that keep gettin’ tore down because they screw up the demolition permits.” Spike’s low grumble seemed to startle the senator, as if a family pet had begun speaking. “Or maybe this could be the year the senate scholarship program finally gets defunded. I guess you’ll support that change, you being Mr. Ethics and all.”

Dahlgren’s smile was beginning to look a little strained. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not hearing a lot of complaints about senators helping kids go to college.”

“I think it’s the fact that the aid package seems tied to the parents’ political patronage that has people upset,” Spike said, his tone as pleasant, and insincere, as Dahlgren’s.

Adam Moss leaned forward and whispered something into his boss’s ear, his voice so low that even an expert eavesdropper such as Tess was at a loss to catch a word. Dahlgren listened intently, his head cocked in the manner of the RCA dog. Nipper and his master’s voice, but which was which in this relationship?

“Adam reminds me the ethics committee is meeting in Annapolis in less than thirty minutes and I am the chair, after all,” Dahlgren said. “Even by legislative standards, I’m running late.”

“You gonna bounce him?” Spike asked.

“Bounce him?”

“Senator Hertel. You know-the poor dumb sap who didn’t get his hand out of the cookie jar fast enough when you all decided to clamp the lid down. That’s his crime, innit? Not being a crook, ’cause you’re all crooks, just being dumb enough to get caught. Kinda like musical chairs. The cheese stands alone.”

“Farmer in the Dell,” Crow said under his breath.

“My committee meets privately, but I can assure you we are taking the accusations against our colleague very seriously,” Dahlgren said. The answer didn’t quite match up to Spike’s question. It was probably the rehearsed sound bite the senator used for television interviews, where there was little risk of follow-up. “We need to work swiftly, so we can settle this matter before the General Assembly convenes in January. But we are not acting hastily.”

“If there’s anything worse than a lynch mob, it’s a lynch mob that takes its time,” Spike observed.

Adam Moss was already leading Dahlgren away from them, his arm a rudder in the small of the senator’s back. Angrily, Patrick pointed his fork, half a dumpling on the end, at Spike.

“I can’t believe you needled him about senate scholarships,” he said. “Who do you think you are, that shit- for-brains who writes editorials for the Blight?”

“I got no problems with senate scholarships,” Spike said. “It’s nice, old-fashioned, out-in-the-open patronage. Tess even got a little one, didn’t she? But I do like yanking Dahlgren’s chain. First Ditter, now Hertel.”

Crow said: “Did anyone else notice how good-looking he was?”

“The senator?” her father asked.

“No, the guy with him. Didn’t you think he was good-looking?”

Spike looked confused by the question, while Patrick appeared horrified. Tess squeezed Crow’s knee beneath the table, and he squeezed back. It was nice to be in synch. She felt she had to defend him, get back at her father for the way he had treated him today.

“About Frigo’s tonight-” she began.

“You can’t back out,” her father said. “I promised.”

“No, I’ll be there. But you won’t. My business dealings are confidential. You may have acted as matchmaker, but that doesn’t entitle you to sit in on the wedding night.”

Her choice of metaphor was exact. She wanted him to wince this time, and wince he did. “I already know what she’s going to tell you. So how can it be confidential?”

“My business, my rules. You want to shop around for another private detective to help your old friend, feel free.”

“She’s not an old friend, exactly,” Pat said. “But, okay-your business, your rules.”

He returned to his food, leaving Tess to wonder just what Ruthie was to her father, if she wasn’t an old friend, exactly.

chapter 2

“THANK GOD FOR BARS.” RUTHIE DEMBROW LEANED back in a booth at Frigo’s and, after a quick, guilty glance around the old neighborhood tavern, lit a cigarette. “Smoking is beginning to feel like a criminal act, you know? And when I come here, I always feel like I should be working, even though it’s been years.”

“Come the day, you might not even be able to smoke in bars,” Tess said. “I hear Montgomery County wants to ban it everywhere.”

“Well, that’s D.C.,” Ruthie said, in a tone that suggested a place thousands of miles away, instead of forty-five minutes down the Interstate.

“Smoking isn’t my vice of choice, but I can’t imagine bars without cigarettes.” Tess liked going home with smoke in her hair and clothes, waking up to the smell the next morning. It reminded her that she had had a good time the night before.

“Henry used to give me such a hard time about my Kools.” Ruthie’s lips twitched. “Said it was going to kill me one day. I guess the joke’s on him.”

“Henry?”

“My brother.” Her lower lip continued to tremble, until she finally sucked it beneath her top teeth and bit down hard. She had plump, cushiony lips beneath the coat of coral lipstick she had more or less chewed off. On a richer woman, Tess might have suspected silicon injections. But Baltimore hons started lower when they resorted to plastic surgery.

“My brother was named Henry Dembrow,” Ruthie clarified, in case Tess couldn’t put that together. Her dad must have done quite a sales job on her abilities.

The conversation stalled, as it had stalled several times in the ten mintues they had been sitting in the bar. Ruthie Dembrow didn’t seem to have a clue how to begin her tale of woe, which made her unusual in Tess’s experience. Sure, she had known would-be clients who hemmed and hawed at first, primarily because they disliked telling a stranger about intimate problems. She also was used to people who couldn’t tell a story for anything, who thought the beginning went about as far back as Genesis, and that every tangential thought, every narrative cul de sac, must be explored en route.

But even the worst of the lot-the stammerers, the blushers, the liars, especially the