Baltimore Blues

heart, that Rock was innocent. For only Rock's innocence could establish her own.

They worked in silence until Alison hurried in again, full of her own importance as she announced a phone call from Seamon P. O'Neal.

'Of O'Neal, O'Connor and O'Neill,' she added as Tyner picked up the phone. Tess tried to eavesdrop, but Alison wanted to chat.

'I didn't make the connection at first,' she said, wrinkling her perfect, perky nose. 'He pronounces his name ‘Shaymun.' Isn't that funny? I thought it was Seamen.'

'It's Irish. And Shaymun is preferable to Seamen, don't you think? Consider the homophones.' Alison blushed and practically ran from the room. Tess couldn't be sure if it was the oblique reference to semen, or the word 'homophone,' that Alison thought obscene. She turned her attention back to Tyner, but the call was already over.

'He wants to see us-to see me,' Tyner said, hanging up the phone. 'He says it's about Rock's case.'

'Are you meeting him at his office?'

'No, at his house. ‘Sixish, for cocktails,' he said. But I have a feeling he expects us at six sharp and drinks will be an afterthought. Successful lawyers usually do not arrive home by six, ready for cocktails. Not even founding partners with wealthy wives.'

'Expects us. You said, ‘Expects us.''

Tyner sighed. 'It will probably be a boring little fencing session in which Seamon tries to figure out what we know and the implications for the firm. That's all he cares about, his law firm's reputation.'

'And I'm the one who knows where and when the star associate spent her lunch hours with the newest partner.'

Tyner threw up his hands. 'You want to go, you can go, as long as you drive and stay quiet. I'd like to think you have something better to do with your evenings.'

They left the office at 5:30, usually more than enough time for the three-mile trip to Guilford, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods within the city limits. But the O'Neals lived on Cross Place, a hidden cul de sac unknown to Tess and Tyner, both Baltimore natives. After several wrong turns they finally found their way to the street, a leafy enclave set off by a stone archway thick with ivy. A small sign advised them it was a private block, which may have explained why it was missing from the city map they had studied futilely. NO TRESPASSING, it warned in black, curving letters.

' Cross Place. Of course,' Tyner said. 'William Tree, Seamon's father-in-law, married Amelia Cross and bought this property for her. It was a huge estate at one point, almost two hundred acres. But Tree, always a developer at heart, couldn't resist subdividing his own land over time.'

'I thought the philosophy was to hold on to land, because they're not making it anymore.'

'That's fine if you don't need any cash flow. Tree had expensive tastes. The center house was his, and the houses on either side were for his two children, William Jr. and Luisa Julia-Ellie Jay. William Jr. died young in an influenza epidemic. The O'Neals took over the center house when her parents died. The O'Neals have a son and a daughter, too, but they apparently gave up on living here in harmony. The other houses were sold a few years back, almost as soon as William Tree, Sr., was in his grave.'

Rambling, redbrick mansions, the houses were identical in almost every aspect. But the middle house had a subtle grandeur its mates could not match. Its lot was a little larger, its lawn crosshatched like the field at Camden Yards. Ancient crepe myrtles wrapped around the house, their blooms just past. A few tiny blossoms, in hues ranging from pale pink to almost purple, littered the grounds, faded confetti after a parade.

As soon as Tess pulled into the driveway, a maid came running to meet them, a pale blue and white banner in her hand. She tied it to the antenna of Tyner's van.

'The neighborhood watch group gives these out,' she explained matter-of-factly. 'It means you're invited. When people see strange cars these days, they get jumpy.'

This nervousness was new, Tess realized. Once, Guilford had been a safe neighborhood, its grand homes untouched by crime and larceny as if by some secret arrangement. This summer, people in the poor sections to the south and east had started making forays into Guilford. An armed robbery here, a break-in there, at least one rape-the sort of things the rest of Baltimore had lived with for years. But Guilford 's residents were outraged. A covenant had been broken. The homeowners, many of whom were paying as much as $15,000 a year in property taxes alone, lobbied city hall for the right to hire their own security force. Grudgingly the city had allowed them to pay for the services it could not provide.

The concern for security did not stop at the curb. Waiting in the O'Neal foyer, Tess peeked into the closet and saw the green and red lights of a complicated alarm system. It even had a 'lock down' designation, a term Tess had heard only in connection with prisons.

'Why do we have to wait?' Tess whispered. 'They told us to be here at six and it's past that.'

'We wait for the same reason one always waits in these situations. Shay O'Neal has to remind us he's more important than we are and his time more precious.'

Exactly nine minutes later the maid took them into the sun room at the rear of the house. This was the O'Neals' version of a den or family room, although Tess knew the furniture cost more than the living room set her mother kept encased in plastic slipcovers. But she was less interested in the room's plush furnishings than she was in the view, something one never suspected from the house's staid, formal front.

'Look, Tyner,' she said, walking to the bank of louvered windows. 'They did save part of the estate after all. It's like the rest of Baltimore doesn't even exist back here.'

It was no backyard, but a wooded hill where leafy paths wove in and out. The trees were just beginning to turn, so glints of red and gold shone among the green. One could barely see the houses on the hill's far side, their windows winking through the trees.

'It's a woodland garden,' a woman's voice began before it was quickly overwhelmed, then smothered by a man's booming voice.

'We both enjoy our garden. We've certainly paid enough to get it to look as random as it does.'

Tess turned and faced two of Baltimore 's most famous citizens, expecting to know them instantly-and realized she had never seen them before. Their faces were at once familiar and strange. Just as she had thought Abramowitz was an old friend because he had been on television, she had imagined she knew the O'Neals because their names were everywhere. On museum wings and soup kitchens, on fat checks to charities. On programs at the symphony and every year's list of big United Way contributors. Seamon P. O'Neal and Luisa J. O'Neal, on behalf of the William Tree Foundation. It was always worded this way, presumably because Shay did not wish his dead father-in-law to reap all the credit for the fortune he had made and Shay had enlarged.

Still, they looked as Tess might have predicted. Shay was a dead ringer for the generic man featured in the background of catalogs from Talbot's and J. Crew, always slightly out of focus. A white-haired man with rosy skin and bright blue eyes, he looked as if he feasted on rare roast beef, washed down with robust burgundies or cabernets, followed by a good dose of port. He looked the way Tess had always thought a vampire should look after a good meal-not pale, but suffused with blood, red and vivid.

In contrast the woman at his side could have been a vampire's victim. Pale Luisa J. O'Neal had a bruised look around her eyes and she was thin, almost too thin. Tess knew instantly she was one of those loathsome people who can never keep weight on, who regularly misplace five pounds as if they were car keys. Luisa O'Neal looked as if she lived on weak tea and water biscuits, with an occasional cup of beef broth to liven things up. No wonder her childhood nickname, Ellie Jay, was still in use: She had a birdlike, fragile air. She wore an ankle-length flowery skirt with Fortuny pleats, pearls, and a Chanel-style jacket of deep green, a perfect match for the skirt's background. Not Chanel-style, Tess corrected herself. This would have to be the real thing.

Still, she was far less intimidating than her husband, and Tess found it easier to answer her. 'If this were my house, I guess I'd be looking out the window all the time.'

'I do spend most of my time here,' she answered in the accentless voice common to Baltimore 's best families. 'The view changes constantly. And because it faces west, there are lovely sunsets over the hill. I also like it because the stream at the bottom-you can barely see it this time of year, the trees are still so thick-is named for my father and my mother. Cross-Tree Creek.'