"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."
"Cross-Tree Creek!" Mr. O'Neal interrupted with a snorting laugh. "Only the Trees ever called it that. It's Little Wyman Falls on any city map I've ever seen. The city renamed it thirty years ago, after William sold off that parcel. Of course, now it's worth a hundred times what he sold it for."
Tess was used to such sniping in her own family, but it made her uncomfortable here. Unsure of what she should say, if anything, she stared at Mr. O'Neal's teeth through her eyelashes. They were long and ocher colored, very refined in her opinion. Perhaps they were dentures, made to look so unappealing no one would guess they were fake.
Husband and wife took their seats in matching wing chairs as Mrs. O'Neal launched into a droning litany of hospitality. Coffee, tea, wine, beer, whiskey, a cocktail, water, Coke, ginger ale, juice? Tea, Tyner and Tess agreed, although Tess secretly longed for one of those mellow amber whiskeys she saw in crystal decanters on a butler's bar. But even tea, it appeared, was not a simple choice. "Hot or iced?" Mrs. O'Neal asked. Hot, they agreed. Herbal? Sure. Lemon. Of course. Or cream? No, lemon. One lump or two? Two, they guessed. By the time she finished quizzing them, the maid had arrived pushing a rolling cart with a teapot in its cozy and plates of petit fours, cheese straws, and crustless sandwiches. The cozy was dingy looking, covered with an unskilled cross-stitch. Probably the handiwork of a Tree ancestor and already promised to whatever museum had agreed to put up the requisite plaque: Donated by Seamon P. and Luisa J. O'Neal, on behalf of the William Tree Foundation.
Tess was so overwhelmed by the tea's production values that she almost forgot she and Tyner had been summoned here.
After a few observations about the weather and the Orioles, O'Neal segued neatly from a humorous anecdote about his latest case to the matter at hand. "Now, you're representing that Paxton boy, is that right, Tyner?"
Tyner nodded.
"Yes. Tragic situation. And a very…public one. We wonder-at the firm, the partners-if it might be the sort of thing best suited to a plea bargain. We might even be able to help the young man if that was the case, call on some of our contacts in the state's attorney's office. Although I've never done any criminal defense work, I do have some ties there."
"Plea bargains work best for guilty people," Tyner said.
"Of course. Yes." Mr. O'Neal added another two lumps of sugar to his tea and stirred it energetically. "My understanding is your client might fit that, uh, profile. The evidence is, I understand, quite damning."
"Circumstantial."
"Yes. Well." O'Neal whipped his tea madly again, then put it aside. Tess sensed he had put his manners aside, too, that the conversation had shifted suddenly. "We think it would be better for everyone if it didn't go to trial. Perhaps Abramowitz was a pig, but what's the use of going over that in a courtroom? A lot of people's lives could be upset, and the conclusion probably will be the same, albeit with more jail time for your client. A trial would just be an exercise in vanity-your vanity, Tyner. I have it on good authority the prosecutors will settle for manslaughter and a sentence of ten years. He could be out in five. That's nothing."
Tess tried to imagine Rock in prison for five years. He would never last. Oh, he could protect himself against the most vicious inmates, but weight lifting and basketball could never replace his rowing routine. And nothing would compensate for the crush of people. He would hate that most of all.
Tyner regarded O'Neal quizzically. "When you represented Nance Chemical, did you advise the CEO of that company to pay the fine and be done with it? Did you ever tell the folks at Sims-Kever to forget about a trial, just go ahead and pay those pesky asbestos victims?"
"That was different."
"Exactly. Your clients were guilty. Mine isn't."
The two men stared at each other across the expanse of a kilim rug that Tess estimated to be worth her take-home pay for the year. O'Neal's face had flushed a deeper shade of red, but he seemed calm, almost jovial. She had seen that face before, she decided. The photo in the newspaper file? No, in that one, he had been looking down, so all one saw was the part in his hair. She had seen him laughing and smiling, enjoying himself immensely. Pleasant and harmless, the way he had seemed when their tea party began. A benign grandfather, showing a favorite grandson his back swing. Not, not back swing-a backhand. And not a grandson. A girl. A woman.