There were no customers in Octavia and the sales clerks were too dispirited by the gloomy day to force themselves on Tess. She held a plain black dress in front of her, glancing at its price tag. Too rich for her blood, but then, she wasn't guaranteed $20,000 a month for life. As she returned the dress to the rack, a frosted, frosty blonde stalked out of the dressing room in a bright turquoise suit and stocking feet.

"Marianna," the blonde whined. "Marianna, this doesn't hang right. The jacket should be more fitted through the waist, don't you think?"

"Would you like to have it altered, Mrs. Wynkowski? You know we're always glad to have alterations done for you."

"I don't know. I'm not sure the color is right, either. And it feels awfully heavy for a summer-weight wool." Glumly, she walked over to a rack of suits and began shoving the clothes back and forth as if she wanted to punish them for not being exactly what she wanted.

Studying her, Tess again was struck with the sense that Wink had gotten his wives in the wrong order. Here was what one expected in a second wife-a bottle blonde, pampered and reconfigured. If something could be painted, tugged upward, or filled with plastic, Linda Wynkowski had tended to it. And unlike Lea, her eyes were not red and underscored by black circles. She hadn't been losing sleep lately.

"None of these is right," the first Mrs. Wink muttered to herself. "I hate all these Easter egg colors they're showing this year."

"What about this?" Tess held out the black dress, whose only real distinction was its price. "This would look great on you."

The first Mrs. Wink snatched the dress from Tess's hands. "Not bad," she agreed. "But I probably have fifteen black dresses. I'm not sure I need another one."

Fifteen black dresses, yet she never left Cross Keys? Why did she need even one?

"You're Linda Wynkowski, right?" Tess asked. "Actually, I came here looking for you. We need to speak."

Linda frowned slightly, then willed her face back into blankness, as if conscious of the wrinkles caused by too much animation.

"About what?"

"The annuity, which guarantees your alimony, now that Wink is dead."

"Are you from the insurance company? You should be talking to my lawyer, not me. He'll explain how it works. No matter what else Wink owes, I still get my money. That was the point."

Tess allowed the misunderstanding to stand. "His wife says-"

"The little breeder? She's nuts. You'd think I'd stolen her husband instead of the other way around, that girl is so jealous of me." Without a trace of self-consciousness, Linda began disrobing in the store, unbuttoning the turquoise jacket and exposing a royal blue slip with lace inserts. "Look, if you wanna keep talking about this, you better come into the dressing room with me."

Tess followed Linda to a curtained cubicle with a chintz-covered chair and at least a dozen outfits, most of them wadded up and left on the floor.

"What's your problem with Lea?" Tess asked, as Linda quickly stripped down to her camisole and pantyhose. Although thin and surgically improved, her body had the soft, oily sheen and consistency of Brie at room temperature. "Your marriage to Wink was long over before she showed up."

"I don't have a problem with her. She has a problem with me." Linda looked Tess up and down. "Are you one of her lawyers, trying to figure out how to break the annuity? Don't waste your time. It's air-tight. Besides, it's not my fault Wink offed himself and she won't get anything from the life insurance. Maybe she should have made him happier, you know what I mean, and then he wouldn't have been so quick to take a one-way trip in his Mustang."

Tess decided trying to fake an identity would be too complicated. "I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not from an insurance company. I work for the Beacon-Light, where I was…double-checking some of the files on your husband today. I saw your alimony had been increased several years after the original divorce decree. That's a pretty unusual arrangement, and I thought there might be some explanation."

Linda slipped a cashmere turtleneck over her head, then stepped into a knee-length plaid skirt, apparently her own. "Let's just say Wink finally did the right thing by me. About five years ago, I was diagnosed as an agoraphobic and couldn't work anymore. He came through for me. I asked him to set up the trust because I always had a hunch Wink would die before I did. I didn't expect it to happen this soon."

"Lea told me she and Wink were really strapped. She thought you might have coerced him into signing that agreement."

"Lea shouldn't try and think," Linda said. "She'll get dents in her adorable young forehead."

"Did Wink threaten to cut you off after the story came out and the secrets of your marriage were exposed? Did he tell you all bets were off?"

Linda Wynkowski smiled strangely. "If anything, the stakes were higher than ever after the story came out."

"Did you talk to the Beacon-Light? Were you the source?"

Linda's eyes remained fixed on her image in the mirror. "Wink and I had an agreement to never discuss our marriage with anyone. I kept my part of it. I told that other girl from the Beacon-Light that I wouldn't comment at all."

"The article said you didn't deny the charges."

"Well, it was half right. I told her I wouldn't confirm or deny anything she asked me about my time with Wink. Funny, how much it changes the meaning, losing a word here and there. I called Miss Ruiz to complain and she told me the error had been edited into the story and she would ask for a correction. I'm not holding my breath. I've lived in Baltimore all my life, I know how arrogant the Beacon-Light is."

One of the sales clerks opened the curtains and gave an involuntary cry when she saw Linda and Tess ankle-deep in hundreds of dollars of clothes. "Oh, Mrs. Wynkowski, couldn't you at least put the dresses over the chair? You know I'm glad to hang them for you when you're done, but we can't have them on the floor."

To Tess's amazement, Linda shoved roughly past the young woman, knocking her into the wall, then stepping down hard on her foot.

"The customer is always right," she called over her shoulder, as tears came to the clerk's eyes. "Didn't anyone ever tell you that?"

On the way back to the Blight, Tess puzzled over what Linda Wynkowski had told her. Despite her antipathy toward Rosita, she knew editors did insert errors into stories. And people often complained of being misquoted when what they really had was a bad case of interviewee's remorse. Possibly Rosita had confused Linda with a jumble of reporting jargon: on background, off the record, not for attribution. Given that most reporters couldn't agree on the meaning of those terms, it was impossible for a civilian to understand. But Linda had seemed quite definite that she had told Rosita she would neither confirm nor deny. She was right: dropping one word made a lot of difference in that quote. She had offered a no comment; Rosita had twisted it into serving her needs.

As Tess got off the elevator on the third floor, Feeney got on, barely glancing at her. She darted back in at the last second, the elevator doors bouncing off her shoulders.

"It's funny, Feeney. You're one of two people I know in this whole building and you're the one person I never see or hear from. Whitney at least sends me electronic greetings and drops in."

Feeney studied his shoes. Penniless penny loafers, as usual. Worn with no socks, as usual. "This basketball story has taken over my life. It's like a greased boa constrictor. It twists, it turns, and just when I think I've got it pinned down, it turns out the snake's about to swallow me."

"Does Baltimore still have a chance to get a team?"