But Jonathan had gotten pious in death. He lectured her, he hectored her. Not that she remembered much of what he said in these dreams. Jonathan's appearances were like hangovers, dull aches that left her feeling she really must behave better next time, even if she didn't quite remember what she had done.
You mustn't be afraid of the truth.
She came to another bridge, but instead of pushing her way through, she held onto the pilings, listening to the humming tires of the cars above her bowed head. Truth. If she had been interested in truth, she would never have gone into journalism, must less the detective business. She was a fact-gatherer, not a truth-teller.
Here was a truth: she loved the little lies she told as a detective, the license it gave her to nudge people along with harmless falsehoods, a practice presumably forbidden in journalism. Assuming there was such a thing as a harmless falsehood. Little white lies. Could you say that now? Or was that non-PC as well, implying as it did that white was better than black.
Little white lies. Big white lies. Poppa Weinstein, kind as Jackie insisted he was, had sent her on her way with cash for an abortion, soothing his own conscience. Now Tess wanted to do the same thing more or less-send Jackie on her way, the balance of her retainer refunded to her. All for her own good, of course. There had to be better detectives, people with more experience who knew how to do these kinds of things.
But Jackie wanted her. She was-did Tess dare say it, say it out loud, whisper it here on the water-family. There would be time enough to deal with how this fact made her feel. For now, the important thing was finding Jackie's daughter. Poppa's daughter. A thirteen-year-old timebomb sitting out there somewhere, ready to detonate with a blast that could destroy her family. Tess had to find her, if only to protect everyone else from the fallout.
Maybe that's what Jonathan Ross was trying to tell her. Maybe he simply wanted her to go ahead and become a real grownup, seeing as he wasn't going to get the chance.
A medium-sized media clot was outside Tess's office when she arrived that morning. Fucking Jackie. She had sold her out, gone public with her daughter's paternity, decided to destroy the whole family.
"Have you spoken to your client today, Miss Monaghan?" asked a breathless young brunette.
"My dealings with clients are confidential," she snapped, unlocking the door and jerking on Esskay's chain. Although the greyhound had already received more than her share of media attention, she was always eager for additional exposure. She faced the cameras delightedly and opened her mouth as if ready to issue a statement.
"But Luther Beale is your client, isn't he?" a man's voice called after her. The pack stayed on the sidewalk, savvy enough not to trespass.
"Luther Beale?"
"The Butcher of Butchers Hill, now a suspect in the deaths of two twins."
"Two twins? As opposed to three triplets or four quadruplets?" Tess was smiling, and not just because of the reporter's redundancy. Luther Beale. Thank God. She had forgotten most of the tele-weenies were so new to Baltimore that few of them knew there had ever been a Weinstein's drugstore chain. The only way her grandfather could make news today was if he fathered Madonna's baby.
"Again, that information is confidential," Tess called back. "I'm sure you can appreciate that. After all, you wouldn't want me to tell you if the spouse of one of your general managers had hired a private investigator to find out why he's spending so much time cruising prostitutes. Word is, he's been tooling along Patterson Park every night. And it's not even sweeps month."
"Are you saying-?"
Tess walked back to the door, mindful that she might be able to get some free publicity out of this. "I'm saying Keyes Investigations is a discreet firm, where all clients are assured of absolute confidentiality. As I'm just an associate here, it's impolitic for me to speak for the firm in any event. I do know Tyner Gray is representing Mr. Beale. As for any questions about the agency, you should probably call the owner, Edward Keyes."
"How do we get in touch with either of them?"
"Well, as seasoned investigative reporters, you probably have your own methods. Me, I'd try the phone book." Tess smiled and waved at the cameras, while Esskay poked her nose around the door, wagging her tail in best "Hi, Ma!" fashion. They probably wouldn't make the news-it would have been a much better shot if Tess had ducked her head and run past them. But if they did use the sound bite, viewers would know that Keyes Investigations was scrupulously tight-lipped, pathologically smart-assed, and equipped with a remarkably friendly watchdog.
Tess tried Jackie's pager number and got the voice mail. "I'm in," she told the empty air. "I don't know how I'm going to help you, but I am going to try. But it's a new deal, a new contract, according to my specifications." She then dialed her Uncle Donald's number. Another machine. Underemployed as he was, Uncle Donald made it a point to never answer his phone and to carry a clipboard with him as he roamed the halls, from coffee pot to men's room and back again. It was more important to look busy than be busy, as he had once explained to his niece.
"Favor time," she told the machine. "A big one." Uncle Donald would understand she was going to ask him to do something that was, technically, illegal. He just wouldn't know it involved his own father. That was her new deal. Instead of charging Jackie a fee for her services, all Tess wanted was the guarantee of her silence. Once the girl was found, Jackie had to get out of her life forever.
Esskay's ears, more sensitive than hers, suddenly stood straight up. Tess heard it, too, a creaking sound from the bathroom. Nothing unusual there. The old building often sighed and moaned as it settled. But this sound was unlike any she had heard before. Quietly, she slid her gun out of her knapsack. Perhaps her burglar had come back. Just as quietly, she started to slide her gun back into her knapsack. What if the burglar were bigger than she, or better-armed? The gun might provoke him to shoot when he had no intention of doing so. People burgled because they disliked confrontation. Otherwise, they'd be robbers.
She took a dog biscuit out of the cookie jar on her desk and threw it down the hall, just past the bathroom door. Esskay took off, sounding suitably ferocious. She heard a muffled, involuntary cry, the sound of something falling in water, the whine of a window opening too quickly.
A brown topsider was floating in the toilet and a pair of khaki-clad legs was about to disappear through the window when Tess caught her intruder by his sodden ankles. He twisted and fought in her grip, but succeeded only in bumping his head, first on the window sash and then on the old-fashioned bathtub. The second hit gave Tess the opportunity she needed to grab his backpack, which she used to flip him over and straddle him.
"Am I bleeding?" Sal Hawkings asked.
Chapter 20
There was, in fact, quite a bit of blood on Sal Hawkings, which made Tess nervous. What if she had knocked out a tooth or two in the mouth of Maryland's best extemporaneous speaker? But the blood came from a gash on his forehead and although there was a lot of it, the wound was superficial. She gave him a wad of paper towels to stem the flow, but it was too late to save his white shirt and navy blazer.
"Shouldn't you wash it?" he asked worriedly. "That bathroom floor was pretty dirty. I could get an infection."
"What do I look like, the school nurse?"
"No, she's fat, wears bright red lipstick, and spends most of her time smoking on the loading dock behind the dining hall."