Wilma’s cool blue eyes were thoughtful. Shrewd, actually. Tess remembered, perhaps a beat too late, that Wilma Youssef was a lawyer, too, already back in the office less than three months after her baby’s birth-and less than four months after her husband’s death. A tough cookie and an analytical one, accustomed to parsing every word.
“So the source is someone young,” Wilma said. “Relatively. A juvenile?”
Tess waved a hand as if impatient, although her only frustration was with her own big mouth. She had been so strong, so taciturn in the police interview, only to natter away with Youssef’s widow.
“I’m speaking in generalities.”
“Sure. Of course.” Wilma sipped from her water glass, her gaze downcast. Tess had a sickening feeling that she was being played.
“Is there really a safe-deposit box?”
“What? Oh. Yes, of course.”
“And is that the reason you came to see me? Because you think what I know can somehow render that fact inconsequential? That whatever your husband may have hidden becomes irrelevant as long as his murder is solved before you gain access to it?”
“What could my husband possibly have to hide?”
“You tell me.”
Wilma Youssef took some bills from her purse. “I really shouldn’t impose on my mother-in-law. She adores Gregory Jr.-I sometimes think his birth is the only thing that kept her grief from tearing her apart-but I don’t like to leave her alone too long. And it’s such a trek down to Sherwood.”
“What about your father-in-law?” Tess meant only to be kind. “How’s he holding up?”
Wilma allowed herself another tight, mirthless smile. “Hasan has been dead for almost a decade. He was shot to death in Detroit. A robbery in the neighborhood deli that he owned, where he had done nothing but perform a thousand kindnesses to the very people who ended up killing him. So you see, my husband knew something about being born outside the ballpark, too. Perhaps you’d like to come home with me, explain to my mother-in-law your theories about the underclass and why they deserve your sympathy and protection more than her son.”
It wasn’t often that Tess allowed someone the last word, but Wilma Youssef had earned it. She bent over her drink, her face hot in a way that no cocktail could ever cure, no matter how light and springlike the recipe.
When she looked up again, Wilma Youssef was gone.
19
Tess never pretended to greater street smarts than she had. There was strength to be gained by admitting one’s weaknesses, if only because one could then compensate for them.
But even her most naïve neighbor-that would be Mrs. Gilligan, a blithe eighty-five-year-old who still slathered pinecones with peanut butter in order to bring chickadees to the evergreens outside her kitchen window-would have made the car parked outside Tess’s house as a government vehicle. Boxy and nondescript, it could serve no other purpose than the transport of Very Official People on Very Official Business.
I could just keep going, Tess thought. Head to Mr. Parrish’s drinking spot of choice, the Swallow at the Hollow, down a few beers, eat some fried mozzarella sticks. Wilma Youssef had put Tess over her daily limit for unplanned encounters.
Problem was, she was going so slowly that she had already been made by her men-in-waiting. There was nothing to do but suck it up and find out what they wanted.
The three men who emerged from the car struck Tess as a mismatched set, although she couldn’t have said why. One of these guys is not like the other, as they might have sung on Sesame Street . It wasn’t that two were white and one was black, or that two were young and one was on the far side of middle age. If anything, she would have picked the young white guy as the odd guy out. He was so filled with nervous energy that his dark, bristly hair practically danced with static. The other two seemed calm and stoic, more self-contained.
“Miss Monaghan,” the manic one began, giving it a hard g.
“Let me guess, you’re here from the government and you want to help me.”
At least the older one smiled at the old joke, or pretended to.
“We want you to help us, actually,” he said, stepping neatly into the role of good guy. So what was the third one’s function? “If we could go inside…”
“IDs,” she demanded. “Not business cards, but whatever official-issue stuff you’ve got.”
She studied the two badges and plastic ID that were handed to her as if she could spot fake ones: Barry Jenkins, FBI; Mike Collins, DEA; Gabriel Dalesio, U.S. attorney.
“Quite the task force,” she said. “No ATF? Customs? Postal inspectors?”
“All in good time,” the old one, Jenkins, said, and although he was just playing along, Tess felt the goose-prickly chill that her mother described as someone walking over her grave.
“I don’t talk without my lawyer present.”
“Oh, it’s not that official,” Jenkins said, the epitome of avuncular. “In fact, Gabe and I watched your interview with Howard County, so in a sense we’ve already done the lawyer thing. This is more of a friendly conversation. A social call.”
“Then I can ask you to come back when I feel more like having visitors?”
“Well, no.” He smiled, ever so apologetic.
“Would you please wait here while I go inside and call my lawyer?” She unlocked the door, peeling a “We missed you” sticker from FedEx off the glass. Must be something Crow had ordered. She scrawled her name on the back, reattached it, and closed the door pointedly behind her.
They ignored her, of course, filing in behind her as if she hadn’t asked them to stay outside. Tess would have done the same thing if she had their authority. The dogs inspected the men with interest. Esskay, the attention slut, showed her usual lack of discrimination. Miata, however, reared back when Collins reached out to scratch her behind the ears. Great, her dog was acting like a racist.
“Back up, guys-I mean the dogs. Although, well…” She hustled the dogs into the kitchen, where she dialed Tyner from behind the closed door. No answer at home or office, and he didn’t pick up his cell. Damn his unending honeymoon bliss with Kitty. He was probably feeding her raw oysters at Charleston, or sharing the gingerbread with lemon chiffon sauce at Bicycle. She left messages at all the numbers-his office, his cell, Kitty’s business, Kitty’s cell, their home above the bookstore-but if Tyner and Kitty were having a romantic evening out, voice mail wouldn’t be his first priority upon arriving home.
Desperate, she dialed one last number. “Get here now,” she hissed, allowing no greeting, offering no explanation. She then returned to the living room, where the three men were inspecting her home décor in such a way that the most innocuous items now seemed sinister, redolent of meaning-the Mission-style furniture, the small legal bookcase filled with Crow’s most precious books, not rare titles per se, but ones he prized highly nonetheless: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Confessions of a Mask, Don Quixote, Tally’s Corner. Determined not to betray her own persona, she turned on a neon sign that Crow had given her for Christmas a few years back, the one that proclaimed HUMAN HAIR in bright red letters.
“Can I get you anything?” she asked, as if she were vapid enough to confuse this with a social call. “Water, beer, wine, crackers, cheese, raisins, nuts-”
Jenkins raised his hand, uninterested in the contents of Tess’s pantry. “That won’t be necessary. We just need to talk to you, unofficial-like.”
“I really don’t want to talk without a lawyer here.”
“We could take you downtown, wait for your lawyer to meet us there. If it’s going to be like that, we might as well go all the way, right?”
His tone was friendly as ever, his manner casual, but Tess didn’t miss the implicit threat in his words. She took a seat at the head of her dining room table, and the men followed her lead. Perhaps she could bluff her way through this, speaking without saying anything.