Chapter 28
Tess wanted nothing more than to sleep. If she could have forced herself, she would have squeezed four or five hours of oblivion out of the night's remains, then gone to the boat house for a good, punishing workout. She would have gone to Jimmy's and eaten her bagels, glad again that the cook threw them on the griddle the minute she walked in the door. She would have done all her routine things, the things that made her feel strong and capable. She wanted her rut back.
Instead she stayed up all night, watching the clock, making lists and waiting, for the second time in two days, for state offices to open. At 8:30, a mug of strong coffee in hand, she set herself up in Kitty's office, working the fax, the phone, and old sources at the secretary of state's office and the attorney general. It took some coaxing, but by 10 A.M. she had the documents she wanted spread out in front of her. Then, her hand shaking slightly, she called the O'Neals.
The maid answered, as Tess had expected. She was prepared to play the bully. To her surprise Luisa O'Neal came on the line when she heard who was calling.
'Oh, dear,' she said, gracious as ever. 'I know Shay has a very full schedule today. And we're leaving for the beach after work. We're taking a long weekend at our little place in Bethany.'
A little place on the beach with six bedrooms, five decks, and two Jacuzzis. Tess had seen photos in the
'Actually, Mrs. O'Neal, I wanted to talk to you.'
'Oh, dear,' she said again, as though she had longed to visit with Tess. 'I have tennis this morning. But I could meet at one-thirty. The girls always like to have lunch after.'
'I'll see you then.'
At 1:15, sure of her destination this time, Tess headed north. There was a chill in the air, as if fall had decided it had to make a fainthearted stab at showing up just in time for the last day of September. This was Baltimore at its best-clear blue sky, a steady breeze, warm in the sun and cool in the shadows. As she did every year at this moment in time-and it sometimes seemed no more than a moment-Tess forgave the city its wretched summer and forgot winter would return. Constant clemency and a talent for amnesia. Both were key to life here.
She turned off Charles Street onto Cross Place. PRIVATE PROPERTY, a sign reminded her. TRESPASSING FORBIDDEN. Luckily the blue and white banner she had saved after the last visit flew from her antenna. In the weeks since Tyner and Tess had fled the street, autumn had taken hold here, too. The trees along the cul-de-sac were scarlet and gold. Blood and money, Tess thought.
No maid met her at the curbside, not today. And when Tess knocked it was Mrs. O'Neal who let her in and led her to the sun room.
'Tea?' she began, but Tess held up a hand.
'I don't really need any refreshments,' she said. 'This isn't exactly a social call.'
Without her husband in the room, Mrs. O'Neill did not seem so washed-out and fragile. Her face was still strikingly pale-she must wear a cap on the tennis court, Tess thought-but her limbs, left bare by an all-white tennis dress and the cardigan across her shoulders, were deeply tanned. The bones of her shins were long and sharp, her wrists knobby. Tess had not realized how tall Mrs. O'Neal was, almost six feet, or how muscular.
'Yes, I understand that. I am surprised, Miss Monaghan, you didn't want my husband here. We have no secrets, you know. We are partners in everything.'
'I should say we don't have secrets about important things.' She walked over to the window and looked out, sighing and hugging her arms. The leaves behind the house were already thinning out. Baltimore's cruel, brief autumn. It did improve the view, however. One could see all the way to the creek bed, to the meadow beyond. The houses on the far hill were almost visible, instead of just windows winking through the trees.
'You have such a nice view,' Tess said.
'We owned all of this once, you know. Up until ten years ago we still owned the houses on either side and all the land to the creek.'
'Did something happen ten years ago?' Tess's voice wavered a little, despite her best efforts.
'You tell me, Miss Monaghan.'
She walked back to her wing chair, crossing her legs at the ankle and folding her hands in her lap. Tess, feeling like Scheherazade, took a deep breath. After weeks of telling lies and bluffing, with uneven results, it felt odd to speak the truth, to say only what she knew and nothing more. It also felt dangerous. If she was right about Mrs. O'Neal, the woman would do anything to protect her family.
'Ten years ago Tucker Fauquier's killing spree ended. He had been raping and killing little boys off and on since the late 1970s, since he was eighteen. But when he was arrested they could charge him with only one murder, because only one was witnessed. It was a capital crime and he got the death penalty. But because Fauquier buried his victims in carefully concealed places, only confessions could resolve the other murders. Encouraged by his lawyer because he was already condemned to die, he eagerly told police all the details. Bodies were found all over the state-twelve in all. One of them was unearthed at the foot of your property, along Little Wyman Falls. An eleven-year-old named Damon Jackson. He lived near the old stadium, off Greenmount Avenue, and had disappeared early in Fauquier's career, as he prefers to call it.'
'Yes, I know all this. I was at home the day the police came. I watched from here as they unearthed the body. Actually we didn't sell the property until after that, so I guess it was less than ten years ago.'
'Did you have to wait to sell the property until the body was found?'
Mrs. O'Neal gave Tess an appraising look. Tess glanced down the long hallway to the front door, ready to bolt.
'What is it you think you know, Miss Monaghan? Why don't you just tell me that?'
'You and your husband paid Tucker Fauquier a lot of money-well, not a lot of money to you-to confess to that murder. The details were passed through Abramowitz. What the boy looked like, where he was buried. Fauquier was a little vague about where he found this particular boy, but it was a long time ago and Fauquier didn't know Baltimore that well. Yet he remembered he had buried the body near Cross-Tree Creek, according to his confession. As your husband once said, nobody calls it that. Except your family.'
Tess looked up nervously, as if Mrs. O'Neal were a stern professor, giving her an oral examination. But she merely nodded, a sign for Tess to continue.
'So if you paid Fauquier, where's the money?' At this point Tess almost forgot about Mrs. O'Neal. She was figuring this part out as she went. 'He said Abramowitz stole it, and Abramowitz did leave a sizable estate. But Abramowitz was a good lawyer; he might have earned much of that while in his own practice. Or maybe he got paid, too. After all, he was obstructing justice, suborning perjury-disbarment was the least of what he was facing if caught. Of course, he was too clever and you were too careful to write out personal checks. You had to pass it through something innocuous. Luckily for you, the William Tree Foundation, which your family controls, gives out more than five million dollars a year. What was another $50,000?'
Tess pulled out the faxes she had collected this morning, clutching the papers so hard that only the sweat on her palms kept them from tearing. 'Today I asked a friend at the attorney general's office to send me the William Tree Foundation's allocations list for the past three years. Year after year, only two grants, which happen to total $50,000, are made in perpetuity-to VOMA and the Maryland Coalition for Survivors, both chartered by Michael Abramowitz. They're also the only two crime-related groups on your list. Everything else goes to the arts, the poor, the mentally ill, or religious-based charities.'
'Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish,' Mrs. O'Neal said. 'My father set it up that way.'
Tess didn't even hear her. 'I'm guessing now. I'll admit that. The foundation made the allocations to the two groups Abramowitz had set up. But instead of passing the money on to Fauquier, he let the charities keep it. In the case of VOMA, which gets $30,000 a year, he was ripped off by a greedy accountant, but that's another story. He thought he was doing a good deed. As for the Maryland Coalition for Survivors, it receives only a $20,000 grant, so it has no tax disclosure forms. It does, however, have a mailing address in Friendsville, Maryland: Care of Delores
