Baltimore Blues

Fact, he had written in bold, black letters. Ava could not pass the bar. Fact: Ava was in a hotel with Michael Abramowitz. Tess wrote down what she suspected. Kitty kept track of the theories linking the two lists. To Tess's surprise Thaddeus had shown a real flair for fitting a puzzle together. Disinterested, with no knowledge of the personalities at hand, he had no agenda. He was going to be a good detective one day. It was Officer Friendly who had found the place to start, who picked up on a discrepancy Tess should have noticed long ago.

'Remember the night I met you at The Point, when you didn't know who my client was at first?'

'Of course. That's the beginning, isn't it? Do you ever wonder how things might be different if you hadn't made those reckless accusations, forcing me to go to Rock before you could poison his mind against me? Do you ever think about that?' Ava sipped her wine, pleased with herself.

Every night, you bitch, every night. But she couldn't afford to play this little game of gotcha, what kids in Baltimore schools had called giving a tight face. 'You seemed relieved when you heard it was Rock. I realize now you thought someone else might have had you followed, someone you couldn't manipulate. Someone who could cause problems for you.'

Ava was still smiling over the rim of her glass, but only with the lower part of her face. Her eyes were narrow and there was a pinched look around her temples.

'You thought Luisa O'Neal had hired me.'

'Are you going to accuse me of sleeping with Mr. O'Neal now?' Ava's indignant reaction was convincing. If Tess hadn't seen her play the same part before, she might have been more easily persuaded. 'You have an awfully one-track mind. You're as preoccupied with sex as a spinster.' Tess was surprised she didn't pinch her cheek between thumb and forefinger, as they would have done in junior high after such an insult. Tiiiiight.

'I do have a one-track mind. But I don't make the same mistakes twice. You aren't sleeping with O'Neal-not yet. You will, if it means keeping your job. That had been the plan with Abramowitz, right? You had all these bills, and if you didn't pass the bar this winter, you were going to be out of a job with no way to pay them.'

'I thought you were going to cover some new ground today. This sounds suspiciously like what started all the trouble in the first place. I wasn't sleeping with Abramowitz. And he wasn't sexually harassing me. I lied to you because I didn't think you'd believe the truth, not when you had a sordid alternative.'

'What is the truth?'

'You'll find out in court.' Ava smiled, then repeated happily, 'I wasn't sleeping with him.'

'Oh, I know that. And I knew you couldn't testify to that in court. You weren't Abramowitz's type. Michael Abramowitz was gay. Or would have been, if he had any sex life at all.'

Ava's face seemed to light up for a moment, then just as quickly shut down. Tess would bet anything she had agonized over Abramowitz's indifference, worried she was losing her charm. But whatever personal vindication she found in Tess's information, she wasn't ready to change her story.

'How could you know that? I never heard-I mean, people in law offices gossip. It's true, he never had girlfriends, but he wasn't very attractive.' She laughed at herself. 'That's a euphemism. He was ugly. He may not have had girlfriends, but he didn't have boyfriends, either.'

'As I said, I don't make the same mistakes twice. This time I really do have proof, a long letter Abramowitz wrote at his computer when he was supposed to be working. A letter I'm prepared to give to a reporter I know, along with my own theory about what really happened between the two of you.'

'So? I told the police and the press that Darryl fantasized this whole thing. Revealing Abramowitz was gay is only going to make my story more credible. My statement,' she amended quickly. 'It will make my statement more credible.'

'True. But what if there are other things in Abramowitz's diary? He wrote more than a thousand pages, plenty of room to include your problems with the bar and his embarrassment at your attempted seduction.' Tess had leapt from Officer Friendly's world of facts to her own list of suppositions, but Ava couldn't know this. 'If you didn't sleep with Abramowitz, it wasn't for lack of trying. The Renaissance Harborplace Hotel was a nice touch. Your idea, I assume?'

'It's probably not admissible in court, that journal of his. Mr. O'Neal will keep it out of court.'

'Good, very good, Miss Hill. You get an A in criminal law this semester. But it is admissible in a newspaper.'

Ava busied herself with the skirt of her dress, smoothing it under her, then adjusting the hem. Tess waited. She was learning how to be silent.

'Look, what do you want?' Ava asked at last. 'You can make my life miserable, but it won't help Darryl. I didn't kill Abramowitz. His death actually jeopardized my job at the firm. They assigned me to him after I flunked the bar the second time, because they didn't expect me to last out the year. When he died they could have fired me.'

'But they didn't, and I need to know why. I also want you to fill in some blanks for me. You were as close to Abramowitz as anyone was before he died. You may actually know something without realizing what you know. You help me, and I won't release his diary. Deal?'

Ava nodded warily.

'OK, here's what I know. A year ago you joined the Triple O with a lot of debt hanging over you. You took the bar in February. You flunked. You took it again in July, flunked again. Now you've got even more debts, because you can't stop buying clothes-and because your skills as a shoplifter are limited to the lighter stuff, underwear and jewelry.'

'I don't know why you keep talking about shoplifting, I have never-'

'Save it, Ava. Let's stay on point. You were desperate. You decided your best chance of staying on the payroll was seducing Abramowitz. I don't know what interim approaches you tried, but eventually you convinced him to meet you regularly at a local hotel. I guess you thought he'd have to succumb to your charms in such a setting. How'd you do that, by the way?'

Sulky now, almost pouting. 'He was helping me study for the bar. I told him it was one place we were assured of not being interrupted. He actually bought it.'

'Impressive. So you figure it's just a matter of time before this guy is all over you. But he never touches you. In fact he really tries to help you with the bar, which isn't exactly what you want. He even makes you cancel your vacation with Rock so you can study harder. He says he can whip you into shape.'

'I can't pass the bar. I have this anxiety about it. It's, like, a syndrome. It's not my fault. I went to see a doctor and-'

'Of course it's not your fault. You're a victim. Everybody's a victim. But Abramowitz, who didn't have anything else to do, didn't buy it. He loved the law and he wanted you to love it, too. In fact I bet he was driving you nuts, making you work too hard. So you started working on a contingency plan-Seamon P. O'Neal. If you're sleeping with the big boss, who needs the little one? And, who knows? You might pass the bar after all. You were studying with one of the best lawyers in the state.

'But you're so busy with Plan A and Plan B, you start neglecting Plan C-your fiance, a nice guy who happens to have a nice big nest egg. A big enough nest egg to pay off all your student loans and most of your credit card debt, if it comes to that.'

Ava looked toward the lights of downtown and the harbor. 'Darryl wasn't a plan,' she said in a soft, almost regretful voice. 'He was strong. I liked that. I thought he could protect me. He couldn't help me with this, though. I needed my job if we were going to have any life at all together. He makes less than $50,000 a year. How can two people live on that?'

It wasn't a bad speech, possibly even a sincere one. But Tess was unmoved.

'You might have to cut back on a few leather sofas, but it's possible.'

'It wasn't just money. Darryl didn't want me to work at all. We fought about that a lot. I was so tired of arguing, I didn't even mind when Abramowitz told me I should use my vacation week to study. I was glad for an excuse to get away from him.'

She and Rock had fought? Funny, he had forgotten to mention that small detail. But she had to concentrate. This was the tricky part, the part where she had to admit how clever Ava was, how stupid she was.

'So, one day, some not-too-bright woman pops up.' She mocked her own voice, trilling in a falsetto. ''Hi, I'm a private detective and I know you're having an affair.' Of course it's not true. But you're fast on your feet. You see instantly the circumstantial evidence that convinced me-the hotel, the covert meetings-are enough to convince