Butchers Hill (4 page)

Butchers Hill
.
The name had made a conveniently macabre and alliterative nickname for
Luther Beale, but its origins couldn't be more stupefyingly
literal. At the turn of the century, the city's prosperous
butchers had lived in the precincts west of Patterson Park, building
fine houses on the proceeds from their tenderloin empires. And it was
on a hill, providing a view of the harbor below. Butchers. Hill. End of
story, with one ironic postscript. Beale's house technically
wasn't even in the neighborhood. But the Butcher of Fairmount
Avenue just didn't have the same ring to it.

However you drew the boundaries, the
butchers had fled the area long ago. Now the neighborhood was an uneasy
mix of old-timers, poor folks, and gentrifiers. Nearby Johns Hopkins
Hospital had proved to be a sturdy Lorelei, luring fresh supplies of
urban homesteaders to dash themselves on the bricked-in fireplaces and
leaded windows. Tess could tell the neighborhood was sizing her up,
trying to figure out where she fit in. White+young+whimsically named
dog usually equaled yuppie around here. But then, how to explain the
twelve-year-old Toyota, with the muffler held on with duct tape?

She checked her Swiss army watch, a parting
gift from Tyner. "Parting gift," she had mused.
"Isn't that what you get on a game show when
you've lost?" "Good up to 330
feet," he had replied, as if she ever planned to be even
ankle-deep in the Patapsco again, much less the ocean. Almost
ten-fifteen. She tugged on Esskay's leash. The dog had
literally stopped to smell the roses, relics of some forgotten garden
that continued to thrive in this corner of Patterson Park.

"We have to move if
we're going to have time to grab some coffee and be on time
for our next appointment. If you behave, there might even be a Berger
cookie in it for you. Did you hear me? If you want a
treat
,
get moving."

Esskay, spoiled by having Tess to herself
for so much of this spring, paid no attention. The hot sun elicited
new, exciting smells from the earth every day, while the harbor-borne
breezes made the grass move intriguingly, as if field mice and rabbits
were running there. And although the dog had no idea what a Berger
cookie was, she knew what "treat" meant, and she
knew she always got one after a walk, no matter what. Happy, happy,
joy, joy.

The ten-thirty appointment was waiting
outside the office, a bright yellow flame among the faded bricks. Tess
could tell the woman was impatient and put out from the moment she
rounded the corner, coffee and an open package of Berger cookies in
hand, a half-eaten one clenched in her teeth.

"I don't like to be kept
waiting," Mary Browne said as Tess fumbled with her keys.

A blushing Tess choked down her mouthful of
chocolate-iced cookie, unlocked the door, and ushered the woman into
her office. "I'm normally very punctual, but I went
out to walk my dog and—"

"Fine. You're here now,
may we begin?" She took the seat opposite Tess's
desk, crossing her legs at the knee, then tugging her skirt down as if
Tess might be inclined to look up it.

Tess threw the greyhound the promised piece
of cookie, stealing a longing look at the others, nestled in their open
box. The one she had gulped on her way back to the office had only
whetted her appetite. Perhaps she should put them on a plate, offer
them to this unsmiling Mary Browne in the guise of courtesy. Then she
could have a few more herself.

"Would you like a cookie, perhaps
a glass of water?" Esskay chose this moment to wander into
the bathroom at the rear of the office and begin lapping noisily from
the toilet bowl. A very classy operation, this Keyes Investigations.
"I also have some orange juice in the refrigerator. And a
six-pack of Cokes—"

"I prefer to discuss
business," she said, pulling a small brown envelope out of
her purse.

Unlike Luther Beale, who had been oblivious,
Mary Browne took in her surroundings with one quick, impassive glance.
The fresh eggshell paint seemed to peel beneath her eyes, revealing
every decade of the building's inglorious history: the recent
incarnation as a cheap studio apartment, when a makeshift kitchen had
been shoehorned into the back; its brief fling as a bar; the years as a
dry cleaner, which had left a vague chemical smell scored into the
walls.

As her prospective client studied the room,
Tess studied her. Mary Browne could be Exhibit A for any Afrocentric
curriculum that wanted to claim ancient Egypt as its own. Her features
were as fine as Nefertiti's, her skin a velvety dark brown,
which looked even darker against the yellow suit and matching straw
hat. Her hair appeared to be cut very close to the scalp, but not so
close that it still didn't curl. With her long neck rising
like a stem from the deep V of the suit, and her dark, smooth face
framed by the broad brim of a hat with a yellow band, she resembled
nothing so much as the black-eyed Susans that would bloom in late
summer.

"Miss Monaghan?" Mary
Browne's tone was as cold and treacherous as thin ice.

"Please, call me Tess.
I'm probably younger than you, after all."

"I'm only
thirty-two—"

"I'm
twenty-nine." It occurred to Tess that telling a prospective
client that she looked older than she was might not be one of Dale
Carnegie's tips. "But it's not that you
look over thirty, it's that you look so much
more…polished. More sophisticated, I guess I'm
trying to say."

"I didn't come here to
talk about my age or my clothes." Mary Browne's
speech was almost comically precise, her diction clipped and hard.
"I wish to find my sister, who has been estranged from the
family since she was a teenager."

"Estranged? Did she run away? Or
was she kidnapped by a noncustodial parent?"

The question seemed to throw Mary Browne.
"She left of her own free will when she was eighteen. It was
quite legal, given her age, but not exactly intentional. I
mean…"

"I've found it
helps," Tess said, "if people just tell the truth
from the get-go. I'm not here to judge you, and what you tell
me is confidential."

"Fine. My sister became pregnant
when she was eighteen and my mother threw her out when she announced
she was going to put the baby up for adoption. That's not
done among our people. Is that enough ‘truth' for
you?"

"Your people?" She was
only parroting Mary Browne's words, yet the words sounded a
little ugly in her mouth.

"Black families take care of their
own, even if they need a welfare check to do it. In the neighborhood
where I grew up, it was unheard of for a girl to give her baby away. To
give it to her mother or grandmother—that was acceptable. My
mother wanted to raise her grandchild, but Susan had different plans.
So my mother threw her out and I watched, knowing Susan was doing the
right thing, but too intimidated by my mother to object. She was a
formidable woman, my mother. Our mother. One didn't cross
her, unless one was willing to lose. Susan was. I
wasn't."

"And you've had no
contact with Susan—in how many years exactly?" Tess
found a steno pad in her desk drawer and took some notes. Mary
Browne's officious manner made her want to seem more
businesslike.

"Thirteen. Thirteen years ago this
month."

"No contact at all? What about
your mother?"

"My mother died last year. I
suppose that's why I want to find her. She's all
the family I have now."

"Okay, let's get
formal." Tess turned on her Macintosh, which sat on a
computer table next to her desk. "I explained rates and
expenses when you called. You've already been to see Tyner,
so all I need to do is put you in my files. I have a form here with
your name, address, and phone number, but there are a few other things
I need to get started. May I ask what you do for a living?"

"I'm self-employed. I
raise money for nonprofits on a contract basis."

Self-employed
.
That set off a mental alarm. Tess might want to check Mary
Browne's credit rating, make sure she had the money to hire
her.

"How did you hear about this
office, Ms. Browne?" Aunt Kitty, always the entrepreneur, had
recommended she ask this in order to identify her marketing needs.

"I wanted to hire an independent
businesswoman like myself, and I remembered seeing the item in the
Daily
Record
, announcing you were joining Mr.
Keyes's firm as an associate. Your name rang a bell. You were
in the news this winter, weren't you? I can't
recall all the details—someone tried to kill you, or you
almost killed someone when you were attacked in Leakin Park?"

"Something like that,"
Tess said unhappily and her ribs, although fully healed, winced a
little at the memory of what a well-placed foot could do.
"Sister's full name?"

"Susan Evelyn King."

"King?"

"Different fathers,"
Mary Browne said shortly, her eyes daring Tess to make something of it.

"Have a Social Security
number?"

"Why—no, I'm
afraid not. Is that necessary?"

"Nope, just makes it a little
easier. How about a birth-date?"

"She was thirty-two on January
seventeenth."

Tess turned back to face Mary Browne.
"I thought you said
you
were thirty-two. How can your sister be the same age?"

Given the rich, deep color of her skin, it
was impossible to say Mary Browne actually blushed, but something in
her manner suggested she was embarrassed.

"I meant I'll be
thirty-two, in December," Mary Browne said stiffly.
"We were born in the same year, almost exactly eleven months
apart."

Vanity, thy name is
woman
. But what was it to Tess if Mary Browne
wanted to shave a few years off her age? She was probably thirty-four
or thirty-five and already lying about her age. Once Tess was on the
other side of thirty, she might feel the same way.

"I've got two sets of
first cousins like that on my father's side," she
said, typing in Susan King's date of birth. "He
calls them Irish twins. When my Aunt Vivian had her second boy in the
same calendar year, the doctors at Mercy threw in the second
circumcision for free."

Mary Browne allowed herself a small,
lips-together smile, then handed Tess the brown envelope she had taken
out of her leather briefcase at the beginning of the interview. Inside
was a photograph and a check for the retainer.

"Is this her?" Tess
asked. The girl in the photo was big-boned and plump. Her oversize
glasses had caught the camera's flash, so her face was little
more than a dark smudge beneath two exploding stars. She wore an apron
and held something by its handle, a broom or a mop. It could be Jimmy
Hoffa, for all Tess knew, or Madalyn Murray O'Hair, another
missing Baltimorean. Totally useless, this photo, but the
check—well, it was bad form to stare too hungrily at the
check.

"That's her at
seventeen."

"Not much of a resemblance, is
there? But you did say you're only half-sisters."

"She was actually a pretty girl,
just not particularly photogenic."

"Sure," Tess said
dubiously.

"It's all I
have." Mary Browne managed to sound apologetic and defensive
at the same time. "But I guess it is about as helpful as
someone trying to find you with that photo on the wall."

Great, Mary Browne's miss-nothing
eyes had landed on the flying rabbit photo. Tess definitely had to find
something else to hang over the safe.

"That was taken outside the old
Weinstein's Drugs on Edmondson Avenue. Remember, it was in
the same shopping center as the old Hess shoe store with the barber
shop and the squirrel monkeys in the window?"

"We didn't buy our shoes
at Hess, but, yes, I know the place of which you speak."
The
place of which you speak
—close your
eyes, and it could be the latest BBC production of Jane Austen.
"My mother would take me to see the monkeys."

"Just you?" Tess assumed
Mary Browne hadn't told her everything. People seldom did.
Maybe there was more to the story of why Susan King had bolted, the
ugly, unfavored duckling growing up in the shadow of this swan.

"Susan, too, of course."

"Well, that photo marks the day I
learned a tough life lesson. My grandfather owned
Weinstein's, so I thought I was entitled to endless rides on
the flying rabbit. But when my quarter was done, it was done, same as
anyone else's. Poppa was a soft touch, he would have let me
ride forever, but Gramma had rules about such things.
‘You'll pay like the other kids!' No free
rides and no free treats at the soda fountain, although Poppa sometimes
slipped me something chocolate."

"This may sound strange, but you
look like that little girl who was on television years ago, the one who
jumped on the sofa with the plastic slipcovers."

"You
mean"—Tess slipped into the Baltimore accent her
mother had made sure she would never
acquire—"‘Hey you kids, stop jumping on
that furniture! You'll
rune
it!'"

"Yes, that one. I remember wanting
my mother to buy those covers, because I thought it meant you could
then jump on the sofa with impunity."

With impunity, yet. Jane Austen, meet Joe
Friday.

"Actually, that was my cousin
Deborah on the commercial, Deborah Weinstein. Funny you'd
pick up on the resemblance. We don't look anything alike now.
She's still fair, while I got dark."

"You think you're
dark?"

It was Tess's turn to blush and
stammer. "Well, I mean my hair got darker."

"I'm just giving you a
hard time. Actually you haven't changed as much as you
think."

"Really?" Tess believed
she had changed extraordinarily, that it was almost impossible to find
the more-or-less hard-bodied, more-or-less grown-up Theresa Esther
Monaghan in those plump limbs and that face round with baby fat.