white wine at The Point tasted like vinegar, bad vinegar at that.
But Ava had an innate sense for the right thing, even in the wrong place. She ordered-never had the word seemed quite so apt to Tess-a Black Label draft, helped herself to one of the mozzarella sticks on Tess's plate, then sat back and raised an eyebrow.
'I have information you're having an affair with Michael Abramowitz.'
Ava looked puzzled, but only for a second. Then she gave Tess one of her full-force smiles. 'Information? Possibly. But do you have proof?'
'Of course.'
'Really? I'd love to see it, or hear it. I hope I came out nicely in the photographs.' She took a dainty sip of beer.
'My proof is for my client. I am interested, however, in any explanation you might want to offer.'
Ava ate another mozzarella stick, very slowly. She appeared to be considering something, and she didn't speak again until she had swallowed the last bite of fried cheese, then patted her lips dry with a paper napkin.
'You know, I thought I knew who you were working for when you called, but the person I was thinking of would have hired someone good, someone who knew how to do things-assuming there was anything to do. So who are you working for?'
'Whom. Whom am I working for.'
'Whatever.
'Why don't you tell me who you thought my client was, and I'll tell you if you're right.'
'I'm not convinced you work for anyone. You're probably just a grubby little blackmailer, out for yourself.'
'I work for Darryl Paxton. Your fiance, I believe. Or thinks he is.'
'Well, I like that,' Ava said. 'I thought engaged people were supposed to trust each other.' She seemed offended but also a little relieved. Who was her original suspect? Tess wondered. Abramowitz, famous for his monastic devotion to his career, had been single all his life. He had no wife to check on him.
'Does a woman deserve her fiance's trust if she's having an affair?'
'Do I deserve to endure this conversation when you don't have any proof?'
'I said I did. I've been following you. I saw you in the Renaissance Harborplace with him. I saw you at the Gallery. Do you steal the underwear to wear for your boss? Or is that an unrelated hobby?'
This was more unnerving, Tess could tell. Cheating on your fiance was one thing, but it didn't keep one from being admitted to the bar. When Ava looked up, her eyes were filled with tears and her lips trembled.
'Are you going to tell Darryl?' Her voice actually quavered.
'That's my job. He hired me to find out why you were acting so weird. I think I have an answer.'
'But Michael has nothing to-' she started, then stopped abruptly, her face shifting back into its normal, haughty expression. The tone of her voice also changed, suddenly amused and airy.
'Of course you have to tell him,' she agreed. 'But I need to talk to him first.' Tess smiled, a playwright watching happily as the curtain line approached. But she had never anticipated the actress might ad-lib.
'Yes, I'll call him and tell him how my boss has been making me sleep with him so I can keep my job. I'll tell him it's Anita Hill all over again and it freaked me out, which is why I started to shoplift. Darryl will believe me and Darryl will forgive me. It won't matter what you tell him.'
'You're a lawyer. I assume if you were a victim of sexual harassment, you'd know how to handle it a little better than that.'
'Did you hear about that case in Philadelphia? A woman lawyer sued this big-shot partner, and the jury found in her favor, then gave her nothing in damages. What good is that? A victim deserves compensation, don't you think?'
'Are you a victim?'
'At this point it's a matter of opinion, and I think I am,' Ava said. She stood up, pulling her purse close to her body, making no move to put money down for her beer. 'A court may not agree with me, but I'm sure Darryl will. That's the only jury I need to persuade.'
Tess was flustered, incapable of a response. She had assumed Ava would rush to tell Rock her version, burying herself by revealing too much. She had counted on Ava being more concerned about her affair than her tendency to steal underwear. But in her version the sex, unwanted, was making her shoplift. What if Rock believed her? What if she was telling the truth?
George fell off his bar stool again as Ava walked by, knocking her down with him. The tangle of arms gave Tess some pleasure, but Ava, even trapped beneath the 300-pound frame of a sometimes incontinent alcoholic, kept her Princess Grace cool. As she stood up, brushing off her now not-so-white unitard, she looked smug, untouchable.
'On your mark, get set, go,' she called back. By the time Tess figured out what she meant, and ran to the door of the tavern, Ava was already in her silver Miata, dialing her car phone as she made an illegal left turn out of the parking lot.
Chapter 7
Tess dawdled the next morning, reluctant to show up at the boat house. When she finally arrived Rock apparently was already on the water, as she had hoped. She rowed her usual route.
It was a glorious morning, a day to savor. Brilliant blue sky, light wind, crisp air. Indian autumn, Tess called it-a fake fall to be replaced by another wave of muggy weather any day now. Tess felt she could row the length of the Chesapeake, find her way to the Atlantic, and make England by lunchtime. She settled for a power piece back to the dock. Bursting with endorphins, she waited in the practice room, pretending to stretch until 8 A.M., when she finally gave up on Rock. He was off licking his wounds somewhere. He'd come around eventually.
She skipped Jimmy's and ate breakfast at her aunt's kitchen table, feasting on leftover cornbread that Officer Friendly had prepared the night before, and reading the papers her aunt had left behind in a tidy pile. Tess worked from back to front, a childhood habit reinforced by her days as a reporter. When she had worked at a paper, she already knew the local news, so she saved it for last, reading features and sports, then the
Michael Abramowitz, a lawyer whose amateurish but unforgettable advertisements made him an unlikely local celebrity, was strangled last night in his Inner Harbor office at the staid law firm of O'Neal, O'Connor and O'Neill, according to police.
A suspect was arrested within an hour of the slaying, which police described as unusually brutal. Darryl Paxton, a thirty-three-year-old researcher at Johns Hopkins medical school, was to be held overnight in the central district lockup, then taken before a commissioner for bail review this morning.
According to sources close to the investigation, Mr. Abramowitz was beaten and squeezed in a pythonlike grip, then beaten viciously. He also had bruises on his face, presumably from a fight with Mr. Paxton, who visited him at the office just after 10 P.M., according to a security guard's log. The body was discovered by a custodian…
Shirley Temple. Tess felt her stomach clutch and saw the child movie star's dimpled face swimming before her, a ghostly apparition in pale blue. When she was a child-well, fourteen-she had broken her mother's Shirley Temple cereal bowl and blamed it on a neighbor's child. No one had ever discovered her lie. Twenty years later, guilt always evoked the same reaction-Shirley's face, followed by nausea and fear. She had never been good, but
