Willa was looking at Jackie's hands, clenched almost as if she was praying, and the watch on her left wrist. Ornate, with diamond chips encircling the face, it was an unusual piece, but not, in Tess's opinion, so unusual as to distract from the topic at hand.
"This? Yes, I suppose it is."
"I like old things like that," Willa said. "There's an antique pin in a consignment shop, down in Sykesville. I've had my eye on it and as soon as I get a little bit ahead, I think I'm going to get it. I thought maybe with my tax refund check, but that always seems to be spent before it comes, doesn't it?"
Tess looked around the small split-level house. Life as a daycare center was hard on any home—juice stains along the baseboard, sticky handprints on the wall, grimy traffic patterns worn into the carpet were to be expected. But even without the toddlers' decorating touches, Willa Mott's house would have looked tired and run-down. Judging by the noise, there were five, maybe six kids in the next room. Willa Mott pulled down six hundred, maybe nine hundred dollars a week. Tess didn't know exactly what daycare cost, come to think of it. Not subsistence wages, but not a lot of money left over for antique pins.
"When I called yesterday, Ms. Mott, did I mention that it's customary to pay people for their time? I mean, I understand we're keeping you from your work and I wouldn't want you to think we didn't value that."
"Miss Mott," Willa corrected with a nervous laugh. "And goodness, I don't think I could take money, not when I can't be much help. Although—" she studied Jackie's face. "You're thinner than you were, aren't you? That's why I didn't recognize you at first. You're so much thinner."
"Of course I'm thinner," Jackie said. "I was pregnant when I came to the agency."
"No, it's not just that. Your face was fuller then, and you had big glasses, which you kind of hid behind. You looked a lot older than you were, didn't you? Yes, it's coming back to me now."
Tess remembered the photo that Jackie had brought her when she thought Jackie was Mary Browne and the photo was her missing sister, Susan King. Willa was right, or making an uncanny guess. Jackie had been heavier as a teenager, and the weight had made her look older than she was.
There was a loud thud in the next room, then a childish wail. "Miss Mott! Miss Mott—Brady says I look like Quasimodo."
"Chrissie looks like Quasimodo. Chrissie looks like Quasimodo." All the children were chanting it now.
"Excuse me," Willa said. "I think I'll go give them some juice packs I have in the big freezer, out in the garage. That might help to keep them quiet."
As soon as she was gone, Jackie poked Tess in the calf with the toe of her high heel.
"Give her some money."
"She said she didn't want anything."
"She's full of shit. Everyone needs money. You stopped at a cash machine on the way out here. It's all part of my tab, right? Give her some money."
Willa came back from the garage and passed through the room with her arms full of juice packs. Distributing them caused much whining and shouting, then another brief ruckus about who had the best flavor. She ran back to the garage for another grape one. Almost ten minutes had passed by the time she returned to the living room.
"Yes, now I'm remembering," Willa said, as if there had been no break in their conversation at all. "There was something about the father of your baby, too, something unusual there, but I can't remember quite what it was."
"The father of my baby's not important," Jackie said. "I know who the father was. I want to know who adopted my girl."
Willa furrowed her brow and pressed her lips together, making a great show of thinking hard. Tess half-expected her to hunch forward, chin in hand, as if sculpted by Rodin. Eventually, she did just that. Sighing, Tess pulled her billfold from her knapsack and dropped a twenty-dollar bill in Willa Mott's lap.
"Oh goodness. I don't want you to think I'm doing this for money." Tess dropped another twenty, then a ten in Willa's lap. She dropped her business card, while she was at it. Willa waited a beat, in case any more bills were going to fall, then folded the ones that were there and put them in the pocket of her cardigan, along with Tess's business card. Preferably not the pocket with the wadded-up tissues, Tess hoped, although she really didn't care if Willa Mott ended up blowing her nose on a twenty.
"Really, I don't know so very much. You had a baby girl, right? I think the adoptive father may have been an executive at one of those plants out in Hunt Valley. Could have been McCormick, Noxell, the quarry. One of those places. I remember he made real good money. You had to make good money to adopt a baby from us, it cost more'n ten thousand dollars. His wife was a schoolteacher, but she was going to stay home when they got a baby. The name was kinda common. Johnson or Johnston. They wanted a girl, and they were going to name her Caitlin."
Jackie looked skeptical. "How did you remember all that, all of a sudden?"
"Oh, I remember all the girls who came through, to tell you the truth. It just takes a little time to jog my memory is all, to hook up the face with the circumstances."
"If I took off this watch and handed it to you, would you remember anything more?"
Willa Mott looked truly affronted. "I'm grateful you compensated me for my time today, but the money didn't have anything to do with my remembering. It took me a minute there to connect you with the way you used to be, that's all. You know, when you were fat."
"I was not fat." Jackie's teeth were gritted.
A child's shriek. "Miss Mott! Miss Mott! Cal keeps poking me with his shoe."
"Am not," a boy's voice retorted.
"You are! You are!"
"I guess I better go check on my little ones," Willa Mott said. "Nice to meet you both. If I remember anything else, I promise I'll call you first thing. I've got your card right here."
With that, Willa Mott waded into the melee in the next room, picking up the offending Cal by the collar of his T-shirt the way a mother cat might grab her kitten by the scruff of the neck, then turning off the video with the toe of her navy blue Ked.
"No more Hunchback, until everyone in this room starts behaving," she proclaimed. "This means all of you—Cal, Brady, Bobby, Chrissie, and, yes you, Raffi."
Tess suppressed a laugh.
"What's so funny?" Jackie asked. She seemed angry that Tess could find anything to laugh at.
"Maybe it's a coincidence, but every kid in the Apple Orchard Daycare Center is named for someone in the Orioles' starting lineup from the year Cal broke Lou Gehrig's record. Cal Ripken, Chris Hoiles, Rafael Palmiero, Brady Anderson. It's got to be—that would have been just about the time they would have been conceived."
"White folks are crazy," Jackie said with a snort.
They were almost back in Butchers Hill before Jackie spoke again.
"You paid her too much."
"Excuse me?"
"That wasn't worth fifty dollars, what she told us. You paid her too much and she thinks we're suckers now. I bet she knows more than she's telling."
"First you tell me to pay her, then you say I paid her too much. But she did remember what you looked like. That seemed genuine enough. I saw the photo, remember. You were a…big girl. What was that stuff about the baby's father, anyway?"
"Nothing." Jackie was gripping the steering wheel so tight her knuckles looked like they might pop out of her hands.
"No secrets, Jackie, and no lies. That was our deal, remember?"
"Okay." Small sigh. "My baby's father was white." Then, before Tess could react in any way, "Don't look so surprised."
"I'm not looking anything. But you told me he was a boy from the neighborhood."
"There were white boys in my neighborhood."
"I know. I know Pigtown." Tess liked seeing Jackie squirm at the mention of her inelegantly named old neighborhood. "I wonder why Willa thought that particular detail was so memorable, though. The agency she worked for definitely did biracial adoptions. I know that much from listening to the taped testimony."
"What do you expect f
rom some Carroll County cracker? Forget about her. Where do we go from here?"
"Got me. Looking for someone named Caitlin Johnson-Johnston in metropolitan Baltimore is definitely needle-in-the-haystack time."
"Well, I have an idea. Can you work tonight?"
"Sure."
"Meet me at your office at seven tonight, and I'll show you how to do what I do for a living. I'll even bring dinner."
"What are we going to do?"
"I'll tell you when we get to your office. You have one phone line, right? We can use my cell phone, I guess. Not the cheapest way to go, but it will take too long without it."
When they pulled up in front of Tess's office, Martin Tull was waiting in his unmarked car.
"Gotta talk to you," he said without preamble, then looked at Jackie behind the wheel of her white Lexus. "Privately."
"Now?"
"Right now."
"That's okay," Jackie said, looking from Tull to Tess. "I'll see you here at seven. It won't take more than fifteen minutes to explain my idea to you."
Esskay jumped down from the sofa, stretching as if bowing toward Mecca, then began her ritualistic treat dance. Tull usually asked if he could give Esskay her bone, but today he barely seemed to notice her. Tess found a biscuit in the cookie jar, one of the homemade ones from a South Baltimore bakery, threw it to the dog, and put her gun back in the wall safe.
"I thought you didn't like to carry your weapon."
"Tyner felt I should, because of the break-in."
"That's right, you had a break-in over the weekend. Police report said nothing was taken, though."
Tess decided not to ask why a homicide detective knew about her little burglary. She hadn't filed a police report, but the landlord might have. She hoped Tull wasn't getting protective on her. That was all she needed, yet another person fretting over her safety and well-being. "You want a Coke? It's got caffeine at least."
"Lots of bad things happening on Butchers Hill these days. There was a fire in the neighborhood yesterday afternoon," he said, ignoring her offer. "Right around the corner from here."
"Uh-huh. The radio said it was a vacant rowhouse on Fayette." She got herself a Coke, wandered back to her desk, checked the counter on her answering machine. No calls. Keyes Investigations, always in demand.
"The radio was wrong on two counts. The fire backed up traffic on Fayette, but the house was on Chester. And it was vacant, but it wasn't unoccupied." Tull tossed an envelope on her desk. "They found a body in the basement. Guy looked like he was smoking a crack pipe and he dropped it."
Tull seemed to expect her to reach for the envelope. When she didn't, he took it back and opened it, extracting a pair of Polaroids.
"That happens, of course. I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often. These pipeheads take over abandoned buildings, use them to smoke or shoot up. Accidents will happen. But according to the medical examiner, this guy was dead before the fire started. Someone bashed his head in and set the place on fire. We might not have been able to identify the guy, except he had dental records from when he was in foster care. State makes all the kids in its custody get at least one medical checkup."
"Awfully decent of the state." Tess's stomach clenched. She capped the bottle of Coke, put it down next to her computer.
"Kid's name was Treasure Teeter." Tull flicked a Polaroid at her, like a playing card. Tess let it skim past her shoulder and fall to the floor, but she couldn't help seeing the charred human shape at the center as the image flew by.
"You heard of him, right? You were looking for him, as I hear it. Looking for his sister, too. Destiny? I'm guessing you never found her, though. Big break for you—I did."
He flipped the second photo on the desk. Tess saw the yellow crime scene tape at the edges, the body lying on the bright green grass, the gash in the throat, a ghoulish echo of the mouth above. Except it was impossible to see the mouth, impossible to make out any features in a face that had been battered to the bone.
"Meet Destiny Teeter," Tull said. "You may know her better as the prostitute at the pagoda."
Chapter 15
Luther Beale was scrubbing his marble steps, a cherished visual cliché in Baltimore. Even if he hadn't been out front of his house, Tess would have known instantly where he lived. In a block where the other brick rowhouses looked wilted and unloved, Beale's home was painted a soft yellow with white trim. A tub of yellow daisies sat next to the marble stoop. The paint job appeared fresh to Tess's eyes, which admittedly were not expert in matters of home improvement. At any rate, it did not look like Luther Beale had been planning to leave this house any time soon.
Plans change.
"Pretty flowers," said Tess. Sometimes, being furious made her absolutely banal.
"Those are my second ones this season," Beale said, never looking up from his task. "Someone stole the first tub. I expect someone will steal this one as well, although God knows why. I can't imagine you can get more than a dollar selling flowers." Beale dipped his brush back into the aluminum pail and attacked another spot, rubbing at it fiercely and methodically, determined to eradicate it.
"Can we go inside? I need to talk to you."
"Then talk to me while I work. I got started late today. I'm behind."
"This isn't a conversation we can have out on the street."
She wished he looked more surprised, that he would resist a little more, or pepper her with insistent questions. Instead, he dropped the brush back into the soapy water and stood, knees creaking.
"I'm on the third floor," he said, unlocking the outside door, then another inside the vestibule, a wooden one polished to a high sheen and smelling of lemon furniture oil. "I used to rent out the first two floors, but I don't anymore. I'd rather have my privacy than the money."
Beale's apartment looked like the kind of place where the occupant spent a lot of time sitting in the dark. Clean, which Tess had expected, but also quite bare. She thought old people always had a surplus of stuff, the way her grandmother did. Beale's apartment, with its empty white walls and clean taupe carpeting, felt like a gallery waiting for an exhibit to be installed. She followed him through the living room, which had only one chair, a computer, and a television set, into the kitchen. Here, at least, there were two chairs, vinyl padded ones that matched the yellow-topped formica table.
"You want a cold drink?" Beale asked. She had asked Tull the same question not even a half-hour ago. Perhaps it was instinctive, this offering of beverages to forestall unpleasantness.
"No, thank you," She paused, and still couldn't find a place to begin. "Your place is pretty spare. I like it, though."
"People broke in while I was in prison, stole what they could and broke the rest. Once I got the walls painted and the new carpet done, it seemed easier to keep it simple." He looked at her sternly. "You didn't come here to talk about my interior decorating. What do you want?"
"Why didn't Destiny matter?" It wasn't where she had meant to start, but it would have to do.
"Destiny?"
"Destiny Teeter, the girl twin. You said she didn't matter, that it was okay if I couldn't find her. Was it really because she was just a girl? Or was it because you knew she was dead? Knew she was dead because you had killed her."
"The girl's dead?" He sounded more confused than surprised. He rubbed his temples, as if his head suddenly hurt.
"She's the one whose body was found in the park a few weeks back, before you hired me. Her brother, Treasure, was killed in an arson fire yesterday. Someone hit him over the head, then set a fire, hoping to make it look like an accident. When the cops ID'ed him through the dental records, they had the inspiration of trying to match Destiny's records to the dead girl."
She had hoped her torrent of words might provoke a similar stream from Beale. He merely looked thoughtful. "Well, that's a shame. But the others are still alive, right? Didn't you go out to the skinny boy's school yesterday? How's he doing? Besides, the fat one still might show up. Those boys don't
stay away forever when they run. They always come home. They don't have the imagination to start over somewhere else."
His coldness, his obtuseness, infuriated her even as it gave her new hope. If he had killed the twins, wouldn't he be stammering excuses or alibis by now?
"Mr. Beale, I don't think you understand the significance of what I've just told you. Destiny and Treasure Teeter were murdered, and the police are going to be here with a warrant for you real soon."
"Me. They always blame me. Doesn't anyone else in this city ever do anything? It doesn't make much sense, paying money to find children just so I can kill them."
"The police believe you killed Destiny in a rage—that you didn't plan it, but when it happened, it felt good, cathartic. So you decided to kill the others, too, to punish them for testifying against you. But you didn't know how to find them, did you? That's where I came in. I would find them, thinking I was doing a good deed, and then you'd kill them."
If Tull was right, Beale's plan had been ingenious and multilayered. After his chance meeting with Destiny, he had sought Tess out to locate the others. He had insisted on not meeting the children face-to-face, so he could then have plausible deniability when the bodies started turning up. According to Tull's theory, Beale had broken into her office and stolen his own file, in order to find out what she had learned while still declaring his ignorance. But the file he would have printed out early Saturday morning had only the information about the Teeter twins. She hadn't had a chance yet to summarize Jackie's findings about Sal and his scholarship to the Penfield School. Lives often hinged on such coincidences. So Treasure Teeter was dead and Sal Hawkings was alive. He would have been harder to get to, anyway. Beale would have needed to think long and hard about finding a credible death for Sal.
"The police are going to arrest you today," Tess said. "They'll be here any minute with a warrant. But I wanted to talk to you first, see what you had to say for yourself."
Beale walked over to a wall calendar hanging by his kitchen door, the kind given out at hardware stores. This month's picture was a covered bridge, the reminder beneath it was to buy gardening supplies. Each day in June so far was X'ed, except for yesterday. He took a black pen and carefully crossed off that square as well.
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