Chapter 26
Tess's driving proved to be the least of Judith's concerns, even as Tess ran every amber and not a few reds on the way to Roland Park.
"So this woman, this client of yours, she's…connected to Poppa?" Judith asked tentatively. "And Mama knew, she knew all this time, and never told any of us?"
The sign at the intersection said no right on red, but Tess thought it surely couldn't apply to her. After a quick glance to make sure no cops were around, she tore around the corner.
"She didn't know Jackie put the baby up for adoption, because Poppa didn't know the baby was ever born. Jackie told him she was going to get an abortion, and kept the money. She told me when she asked for his help with college, he said the business was too shaky for him to help her. But I guess he couldn't squeeze that much cash out without going to Gramma, and she put her foot down."
"So I have a half-sibling."
"Yeah, a sister."
"I always wanted a sister," Judith said, then smiled. "Well, that was inane."
"We saw her today. I knew it had upset Jackie, but I guess I didn't know just how freaked out she was."
Tess was on Northern Parkway now. If she had been in her office, or her apartment, she could have made Roland Park in fifteen minutes. But her parents' house couldn't have been much farther away. If you thought of the Baltimore Beltway as a clock, it was akin to driving from seven o'clock to midnight.
"Edgevale is on the west side of Roland Park," her mother said. "It runs off Falls Road. But how will we find it without the number?"
"I know Jackie's car."
It was dark now, and fireflies flickered on and off as they drove down Edgevale. Whatever Jackie was doing, she couldn't make much noise, for sound would carry easily across these lush, hushed lawns. Unlike Keisha Moore's embattled neighbors, Roland Park residents would never let a gunshot go unreported, assuming they realized it was a gunshot, instead of a car backfiring. Then again, the houses were set just far enough apart to suggest a certain reticence on the part of the owners, a surface neighborliness that didn't go too far beyond mimed "hellos" at the curb. Such places often had an unspoken agreement not to be too nosy. A woman could be beaten here, or a child, and the crime, if discovered, would only prompt the usual banalites. "He was a quiet man." Yet just let a young black man try walking in the neighborhood and the police would be summoned at once.
Jackie, however, had the right accessories to slip under that radar. Her white Lexus was parked in the driveway of a stucco mansion at the end of the street. It blocked a late-model Toyota Camry with an ACLU bumpersticker, but another car had pulled in behind the Lexus, a black Mercedes with "Save the Bay" plates. Tess pulled in behind the Mercedes. An old car like hers might also excite comment in Roland Park if left on the street.
"Stay in the car, Mom."
"Not on your life."
"There's a woman in that house with a gun, my gun. A hysterical, unpredictable woman who doesn't know you, and might not hestitate to harm you."
"My point, exactly. So why don't you call the police, and let them handle it?"
"Because there's a slender hope I can undo what Jackie has done without getting the police involved. If she hasn't hurt anyone yet. I'm counting on Jackie not being as tough as she thinks she is." But she would hurt herself, Tess thought. She might be so hysterical over seeing Samantha that she would kill herself in front of the people who had treated her daughter so cavalierly.
The front door was unlocked. Tess stopped in the front hallway, listened intently. Judith came in right behind her. No time to argue about it now. She motioned her mother to be quiet, her mother gestured back that she knew what she was doing. God, she was exasperating.
Now both the women concentrated on the sounds of the house. It was so big, so quiet. It was hard to imagine any child here, running up the stairs so shiny they looked wet, leaving handprints along the expensive-looking wallpaper. There was a murmuring sound from the rear, perhaps a television left on, or even the leaves of the trees rustling together. Tess and her mother moved toward the sound, through the formal living room, into the dining room and through swinging doors into the kitchen, a bright, cold place, all granite and stainless steel.
"Who are you?" a woman asked, and her voice was too loud, too shaky, even for someone seeing two strangers in her kitchen. Short and fleshy, with the kind of silver-blond curls never found in nature, she was sitting on a severe little metal love seat at one end of the remodeled kitchen, where a family room had been created in what once was an alcove or breakfast nook. A small man in glasses was next to her, frowning.
Jackie was sitting directly across from them in a matching chair, her briefcase open on her lap. Was the gun in there? Would she use it before Tess could cross the room?
"Hey," Jackie said languidly, as cool and composed as the day Tess had first gone to her apartment. "I didn't expect to see you here tonight. That your mom? I see the resemblance. You're lucky, girl, if you got that bone structure. You're going to look good twenty, thirty years from now, you ever learn how to dress."
Judith, who had been staring at Jackie, perhaps still trying to grasp their connection, blushed. "Thank you. I always did think Tesser favored me, although there's some of her father there, too."
"Tesser? You have been holding out on me."
The whole scene felt surreal to Tess. Here they were, in this $100,000 kitchen with the couple who had turned away Samantha because her mother was black, chatting as if they had run into each other in the dairy section of the SuperFresh. The couple on the love seat looked nervous and edgy. Was Jackie holding the gun behind her briefcase? Had she warned them not to speak? But she had to know Tess wouldn't leave without her, that Tess would never let her destroy her life this way.
The man, Dr. Becker, spoke as if he were impatient with Tess. "We are having a, uh, confidential discussion. Could you and Miss Weir transact your business later, when we're finished."
Jackie leaned forward and patted the doctor's hands. They were small hands, knitted tightly together on the table top. Something-his hands, his knees, his wife's legs-were shaking hard enough to make the teacups before them vibrate ever so slightly. Teacups, Tess thought. What kind of murder-suicide is this?
"It's okay, Dr. Becker. Tess and I don't really have any secrets at this point. Although Mrs. Monaghan-" She looked back at Judith, who nodded shyly. "Well, it looks like she's cool, too. What do you know?" To Tess: "You told her?"
"I had to, when Willa Mott crashed the crab feast."
Did Tess just imagine it, or did the Beckers shift uncomfortably at the mention of Willa Mott?
"So that's how you found me. Well, we're almost done here, aren't we? There's just the little matter of the check. Not so little, really. I mean, a quarter of a million dollars is a lot of money, but it's all for a good cause, isn't it? Seed money for foster care group homes. You know, the places where kids go when no one wants them. Can you imagine such a thing? Not wanting a child?"
"I told you what happened," the doctor said. "I requested the child's medical records. The hospital goofed and sent them to me directly, instead of to the agency, and I saw the girl was biracial. We had been told we were receiving a white child. We decided if the agency would lie about something so fundamental, it couldn't be trusted to tell the truth about anything. The adoption hadn't been finalized yet, so we were within our legal rights to void it."
"It's not as if we're prejudiced," Mrs. Becker broke in. "We give money to all sorts of black causes."
Jackie nodded, smiling, as if pleased by this recitation. "Yes, I understand. You sent an eleven-month-old baby back like she was some sweater from J. Crew that happened to be the wrong color. ‘Uh-huh, I didn't order me no taupe sweater, I wanted something in a peachy white.'"