Butchers Hill (36 page)

The Nelsons had strung her along until Eldon
could kill her, but they had needed Tess to find Treasure. And when
Keisha Moore had started asking questions, Eldon killed her, too. In
his own way, Eldon was as much an over-achiever as Sal. He just focused
his energy differently.

Tyner finally arrived, Luther Beale in tow.
There were some charges pending against Tess—reckless
endangerment, destruction of property—although Tull was
reasonably sure the criminal charges would be dropped. Eventually.

"Pearson's insurance
company isn't going to let you off the hook so
easily," Tyler said gloomily. "Insurance companies
don't make exceptions, even when you're trying to
save someone's life."

"Hey, I did, didn't
I?" Tess, who had been contemplating her own role in all the
deaths on Butchers Hill, felt momentarily cheered. "I wish
that made up for Treasure. Or Keisha. I feel as if I led Eldon straight
to them."

"He would have found them one way
or another," Tull assured her. Another olive branch. Why not?
She had been right, after all.

Beale just stood there silently, holding his
Panama hat. He was wearing his brown suit, this time with a blue shirt
with a white collar. Tess couldn't help wondering if he had a
single shirt that matched his one suit.

"So I didn't do
it?" he asked. "I really didn't kill that
boy?"

Tull shrugged, not so anxious to mend fences
with Beale. "We'll never know, will we? You fired,
he fired, Donnie died. It could have been either one of you."

"But a jury wouldn't
have convicted Beale if they had known," Tyner pointed out.
"We'll get a governor's pardon out of
this, maybe even some money. I see a big lawsuit here."

Tull rolled his eyes. "You
can't sue the state for pursuing its mandated duties, Tyner.
But go for it. Maybe you'll shake a little settlement out of
them."

Two officers brought Sal out just then. He
was still just a boy, Tess reminded herself. Seventeen wasn't
as old as he thought it was. And he hadn't covered up his
crime because he feared taking responsibility for what he had done, but
because he wanted to keep his "family" together.
Perhaps, like everyone else in Baltimore at the time, he had assumed
Luther Beale would never serve time for his crime. How could a little
boy know the intricacies of handgun laws in the city limits?

"The skinny one," Luther
Beale said. "You're the skinny one."

Sal glanced up. He looked angry and guilty
at the same time, and not a little frightened.

"Yeah, I remember you,
too."

"Well, I have something to say to
you," Beale announced. "I have something I want
everyone here to hear."

Tull looked at Tess, as if to say: I told
you he was a son of a bitch. Even Tess couldn't quite believe
that Beale would insist on making a scene. It wasn't enough
for him to be proven right. He had to proclaim it.

"The way I see it, a lot of folks
failed you," Beale said, the Hermanator scribbling down his
words furiously. "Those people you lived with, the man who
put you in their home. They didn't teach you right from
wrong. But they were grownups and you were a little boy. You
couldn't help not knowing any better.

"I was a grownup, too. If I
hadn't come out in the street with my gun that night, you
wouldn't have fired your gun and Donnie Moore
wouldn't have died. Not that night at least. We failed you,
all the grownups in your life, we let you down. So all I can say
is—" He stopped, playing with the brim of his hat,
a gesture Tess remembered from their first meeting. "All I
can say is, I'm sorry."

August

T
he
unseasonably beautiful summer had finally yielded to something more
familiar—hot, humid days, with afternoon thunderstorms that
lasted just long enough to ruin picnics and barbecues, but
didn't deliver enough rain for the city's now
parched gardens and lawns. At Camden Yards, the ground crew was getting
more exercise than the Orioles: at least they got to put out the tarp
each evening and then roll it back, while the Orioles seldom circled
the bases. The Orioles being in something of a slump, their bats were
the only reliably cold place in all of Baltimore.

In other words, everything was back to
normal. The bill had come due for June and July. Nothing to do but pay
up, and move on. Already, fresher scandals were crowding out the
twisted saga of what had happened on Butchers Hill so many years ago.
"Butchers Hill?" Tess had heard a man say at the
lunch counter at Jimmy's just the other morning.
"Oh yeah, that place where that kid tried to kill that old
man that time."

"No," his companion had
insisted. "The old man tried to kill the kid, for breaking
his window."

In Kitty's bookstore, Tess pushed
aside a stack of the latest Louisa May Alcott
discovery—"How many manuscripts did that woman have
squirreled away?" she grumbled—to make room on the
old soda fountain for yet another tray of hors d'oeuvres. Her
mother had been cooking for days, it seemed, bringing by tray after
tray of delicacies until Kitty had finally run out of room in her
freezer.

"I thought Judith hated to
cook," Kitty said, trying to squeeze a plate of miniature
quiches between the pasta salad and artichoke dip.

"She used to," Tess
said. "I think she's entering some strange new
phase. Wait until you see all the outfits she's
bought."

"Not all matching?"

"Shockingly, no."

But this party had been Judith's
idea, after all. She was entitled to go hog-wild if she wanted.
"To celebrate…whatever," she had said.
"Well, not celebrate, but acknowledge. You
know—"

"I know," Tess had said,
feeling charitable enough toward her mother to want to bail her out. It
wasn't easy, being St. Judith. It wasn't easy being
Gramma. It wasn't easy
being
.

Kitty had just tapped the keg, a sweet
little microbrew from Sissons, the one that tasted like a blueberry
muffin in a beer glass, when the guests began to arrive. Most of the
Weinsteins were there, showing their support for Judith even if her
meshugah daughter had thrown a monkey wrench into everything. The
Monaghans had come, too, if only to gloat at the strange circumstances
bedeviling their snobbish in-laws. A black teenage mistress! A
discovered heir! Who did Samuel Weinstein think he was. Thomas
Jefferson? Still, the Monaghans had to admit the Weinsteins were
handling the situation with surprising grace. Even Gramma had behaved
reasonably well, which is to say that she had decided not to try and
block the sale of the property when she heard of Tess's plan
to cut Samantha King in for an equal share.

"All for one and one for
all—your exact words," Tess had reminded her
grandmother. "You said your grandchildren and children had to
learn to get along."

"
My
children and grandchildren," Gramma had countered. But she
had added, a sly smile on her face: "I hear she's a
smart girl, very athletic and pretty. I know whose genes those are.
Blood tells, doesn't it?"

Tess didn't bother to contradict
her. Sure, blood tells, but it didn't always tell you what
you wished to hear. More than Jackie herself, the long-limbed,
auburn-haired Samantha King was a reminder of the secrets that even
those closest to you can harbor. Tess wasn't really sorry
that Sam was away at lacrosse camp, unable to attend this party today.
Everyone was still working on the feelings that she stirred up in them.

Especially Jackie. After the confrontation
at the Beckers', she had decided to take up the
Edelmans' offer of a limited relationship with Sam. As she
had prophesied, it wasn't particularly easy for either of
them. While Sam could accept the decisions made by a determined
eighteen-year-old, she was perturbed to find out her biological father
had been in his sixties. And while she didn't want to leave
the only family she had known for Jackie's household, she was
more than a little jealous that Jackie had decided to start her own
family. She wanted it both ways. What teenager didn't?

Tull came through the door, carrying an
insulated freezer sack. "Coffee ice cream," he said.

"Well, I knew whatever you
brought, it would be caffeinated. How's life on the killing
streets?"

"I'm pleased to announce
Baltimore has gone forty-eight hours without a single stiff showing up.
Maybe I'll be out of a job soon. Where's the guest
of honor?"

"Running late. Jackie's
punctuality has taken a severe hit as of late. She's found
there are some things in life she can't make run on her own
timetable."

But there was Jackie now, coming through the
door, in a yellow-checked sundress, the guest of honor balanced on her
hip, also in a matching yellow outfit.

"How's my
girl?" Tess asked, reaching for Laylah. But Judith had gotten
there first.

"May I?" she asked
tentatively, bouncing the girl in her arms. "Oh Jackie, you
put her in the outfit I sent. She looks adorable."

"
One
of the outfits you sent," Jackie said. "Thank you
for having this party to celebrate the adoption. But you know, she
won't be officially mine for several months yet."

"A formality," Judith
said. "Laylah's your daughter now as far
I'm concerned."

Laylah, who had been staring, mesmerized,
into Judith's face, made a quick grab for one of her
earrings. Judith laughed, slipped them into her apron pocket, and began
touring the room with the baby, allowing everyone to make a fuss over
the guest of honor.

"I owe you one, Jackie,"
Tess said. "I think I'm off the hook for producing
grandchildren, at least for a few years."

"I helped," Tull said.
"Don't forget, I helped."

So he had, tracking Laylah down in the
foster care system, while Uncle Donald had called in every chit he had
to grease the works at DHR. The agency officials had balked at first.
It was highly irregular, he had been told, to allow a single woman to
take a child into her home before the adoption process was further
along.

"As irregular as losing a
woman's kid in the system and then trying to file a lien
against her for back support?" Donald had asked innocently.
From then on, everything had been simple.

If only everything could be so simple in the
future. For Jackie and Sam, for Jackie and Laylah. Would Laylah be
better off with Jackie than she had been with Keisha? It
wasn't a judgement Tess could make so easily any more.
Laylah's material life would be better, and she would be
loved. But one day, she would start asking questions and the answers
she received would be far more disturbing than the ones Samantha King
had confronted. Blood tells. It tells and tells and tells. Sometimes,
blood just wouldn't shut up.

Eldon had finally told, too. Stoic at first,
he had decided that his loyalty to the Nelsons did not extend to taking
the fall for the four murders. So the Nelsons were to stand trial in
two jurisdictions now. Double-dipping again, tying up the resources of
two criminal systems, two prosecutor's offices, and two
juries. Chase Pearson was expected to testify at their Baltimore trial,
although he was really a small player. It seemed almost pathetic, how
little he had reaped from the literal mom-and-pop operation that had
grown into a million-dollar fencing ring. He was a figure of ridicule
now, his name synonymous with ignorance and missed opportunities.
Recently, when the housing commissioner had done something particularly
bone-headed, a
Blight
columnist had referred to it as "pulling a
Pearson." It was possible to come back from being indicted in
Maryland politics; even convicted felons had enjoyed second chances
here. But stealing a cherry when you could have had the whole
pie—unforgivable.

Jackie appraised Tess. "You look
good, girl. Prosperous." She did. Her hair was up, she wore a
black linen sheath that Jackie had picked out for her at Ruth Shaw,
with black-eyed Susan earrings—onyx set in real gold. She had
balked at the black-and-yellow spectator pumps, however. Someone needed
to draw the line at all this matchy-matchy stuff. She wasn't
turning into her mother. Not just yet.

"Work is going well. I'm
turning down business these days. Everybody wants to hire the private
investigator who cleared Luther Beale. No offense, Martin."

"None taken, Tess."

Tess looked at her two friends. She had
started the summer feeling so lonely. What had Kitty said? She was a
Don Quixote, in search of a Sancho. But Jackie was no Sancho, nor was
Tull. They were all Don Quixotes in their own ways, each one dealing
with their lost illusions.

In last year's nests, there are no
birds this year. But there would be new nests, right? You could lose
one set of illusions, but gain another. At least, she hoped it worked
that way. She still didn't know what happened to the real Don
Quixote.

Sal Hawkings dashed through the door, a
small package in hand. He wore jeans and a T-shirt, both splattered
with paint. He was spending the end of the summer helping Beale
renovate houses along Fairmount. The community service wasn't
court-ordered; it had been decided that no criminal action should be
brought against Sal for the death of Donnie Moore. It had been an
accident, after all, and he had been only twelve. These days, it seemed
as if he was seventeen going on ten, trying to recapture the childhood
he had never had.

"Mr. Beale is out in the car, but
he wanted me to drop this by. Will you open it while I'm
here?"

"Sure," Jackie said. She
undid the ribbon and lifted a heart-shaped locket from a nest of
cotton, a locket that Tess remembered well. She was surprised that
Beale would part with it. But then, Beale never stopped surprising her.
He had refused to sue the state, settling for a pardon. If she tried to
speak to him now of what had happened that night, he said it
wasn't important, the past was the past, he was too busy
thinking about the future. Where should Sal go to college, for example?
He had heard Princeton was nice, but he worried he should be closer to
home. St. John's in Annapolis? Johns Hopkins?