"He was her boss, which makes it sexual harrassment. And adultery. Which isn't legal in the state of Maryland, no matter how old you are."
"Does Jackie think she was sexually harrassed, or is that your take on it?"
Shrewd Tyner. He always did have a way of knowing what truly bothered her. She was the angry one, not Jackie. The man Jackie remembered-a man she called Samuel, in an affectionate voice that made Tess's skin crawl-had been kind to her. If it hadn't been love between them, it had been a genuine fondness, two lonely, unhappy people finding solace in one another's company. He had given her gifts, encouraged her to think about life beyond the grill at Weinstein's Drugs. When she told him she was pregnant, he had given her money for an abortion, which she had pocketed, knowing she was too far gone for the procedure. He had even offered to help her with college, but his business troubles had kept him from honoring that pledge. Still, Jackie had nothing unkind to say about him. He had never promised to leave his wife for her, she had told Tess. He had never promised anything, except to provide her a corner of warmth and regard in a world that had given her so little of either.
"She's crazy," Tess muttered.
"That's a possibility. Or she could be lying. Remember, she lied the first time you met her."
Tess had not thought of this and it was a tempting out. Would Jackie tell such an outlandish story to keep Tess working for her? True, she had known much about Weinstein Drugs, but it was possible she had worked there without being bedded there. Perhaps she had hated her employer and waited all these years to punish his descendants. Tess allowed herself the fleeting pleasure of embracing this theory, then just as quickly discarded it. Not even Gramma Weinstein could have provoked someone into seeking such a convoluted revenge. Besides, there was definitely a daughter out there somewhere, Jackie had convinced her of that much. It suddenly occurred to her that the strange detail Willa Mott had remembered about the father of Jackie's baby was not his race, but his advanced age.
"I'd give anything if I could prove this was all some sick lie, but I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because in my heart of hearts, I know it's true." Tess opened the Royal Oak.
"So what are you going to do?" Tyner asked.
"I don't know. Even if the whole thing didn't make me nauseated, I still maintain she'd be better off with a more experienced investigator. Being related to her daughter doesn't make me any more qualified to find her. Besides, I wasn't bullshitting her. Luther Beale has to be priority one, right?"
She looked at Tyner hopefully, but he had no intention of letting her off the hook.
"Nothing's going to happen with Beale, unless a witness comes forward, or some physical evidence links him to one of those bodies. It was kind of sad about Destiny, actually. One of the reasons they didn't make the ID was because her body looked so used up. They were carrying her as a Jane Doe, twenty-five to thirty-five, and she was only seventeen."
"Well, as long as she looked twenty-five, right?"
"Jesus, Tess. When you turn on someone, you really turn, don't you?"
"I looked like a grown woman when I was fourteen. Do you know what that's like? I couldn't make it the six blocks from the bus stop to home without fielding at least three offers to climb into someone's car. Some of them left me alone when I told them my age. Some of them, especially the geezers, just got a lot more interested. Gee, I wonder why Poppa didn't invite me into the back room?"
"Just because a man would want to be with a young woman doesn't mean he would go after his own granddaughter. Give your grandfather that much credit."
"Sorry, Poppa's account is closed. Gramma's, on the other hand, suddenly shows a huge balance. Maybe that's why she's such a sour old woman, because her husband was diddling the help all those years. I bet Jackie wasn't the only one. Who knows how many undiscovered aunts I have throughout Baltimore?"
Tyner reached for the Molson. "You know, I'm probably as old as your grandfather was when you were a teenager, right?"
"Thereabouts."
"What would you say if I told you my date tonight was twenty-five?"
"You said she was a lawyer."
"There are twenty-five-year-old lawyers."
"Well…that's different."
"Why?"
"Because she's older and because-well, it's not like you're having sex with her."
"No, but only because it was our first date. I'm too much of a gentleman to make my move so early. Or did you think we didn't have sex because I'm in a wheelchair?"
"Of course not." Tess's voice was vehement, for that's exactly what she had thought. Sure, older men had sex and men in wheelchairs had sex, but surely the combination disqualified Tyner. She couldn't be more grossed out if her parents had started talking about their sex lives in detail.
"Tess, tell the truth."
"Okay, that is what I meant. But I'm drunk. Book me for TWI-talking while intoxicated." She held up her wrists as if to be handcuffed, and noticed her hands were shaking.
"Meanwhile, there's Kitty," Tyner said, ignoring her outstretched hands. "How old is her current boyfriend? Or how young, I guess I should say. Certainly, she's been with men young enough to be her sons."
"It's not the same. He was in his sixties, she was a girl who worked for him. I don't care if she's not angry with him. I'm angry. I'm furious. There was a person I loved, and now he's not who I thought he was, and I can't love him anymore. I wish Jackie Weir-Susan King-Mary Browne had never walked through my door."
Her words exploded in the night, as loud and sudden as a car backfire. Someone shouted from a nearby house. "Keep it down out there. This isn't Hampden, you know."
"And this isn't Roland Park, although I bet you tell people it is," Tess called back. She was suddenly sick of Baltimore's little hierarchies, as reflected in the rigid neighborhood system. Roland Park looked down on Tuxedo Park, which felt itself superior to Evergreen, where people fretted they would be mistaken for Hampden-ites, whose feelings were hurt by the suggestion they lived in Remington, where people sneered at Pigtown. On and on, down and down the social ladder. Say you lived near the water tower on Roland Avenue and old-timers asked: Which side? How silly people were, how stupid.
"Well, you're right about at least one thing," Tyner said, when the night was quiet again.
"Yeah? I must have missed it."
"You've had too much to drink. You better bed down in the spare room here, lest you add a DWI to your TWI. At least the latter isn't a felony."
"Why not? It can be just as dangerous."
The Patapsco looked deceptively inviting the next morning, with only a few oily spots along the surface. Although Tyner had told Tess to stay close in during her workout, she had ignored him and headed down a narrow tributary, where she knew she would be alone. Few other rowers wanted the hassle of passing beneath the low bridges here, which forced you to bring in your oars, duck your head and use the pilings as hand-holds to get to the other side.
She had not slept well. The beers, the strange night, the strange bed, which made her realize how seldom she slept anywhere except her own lumpy mattress. There had been times in her life when Tess slept around, but she had never slept around. She was a homebody.
Yet Jonathan Ross had found her anyway.
Your nightmares always know where to find you, and Tess had been traveling with this particular dream for almost a year now. At first, it was just Jonathan in flight. Lately, though, he had begun to get up, brush himself off and talk to her. He seemed nicer, now that he was dead, and she didn't think it was because she romanticized his memory. She remembered all too clearly what Jonathan had been like alive-arrogant, self-centered, impeccable in his work, duplicitious in his life. Emotional quicksilver. Not that she had absolved herself from responsibility for the unhealthy bond between them. If he were alive, she'd probably still be beating on that sick little triangle of theirs, Jonathan running back and forth between her and his fiancee, trying to stave off being a real grownup for a few more years. Tess, wary of her own adulthood, had been a willing accomplice.