If Ensor had been warned to watch out for her, the second burglary victim, Arnold Pitts of Field Street, would be prepared as well. So what? At least Rainer would know she was thorough. Besides, B-and-E-victim number two couldn’t be anywhere near as creepy as Ensor. Stopped at a traffic light on Mount Royal, she checked the map and called her house, only to find Crow completely absorbed in his cabinet-stripping.

“I’ve got one more stop on my way home tonight,” she said. “I’m still trying to figure out why the cops think these things are connected.”

“Hmmm,” was all Crow said, although it was a very supportive “hmmm.” She wondered if the fumes were getting to him.

“What do you want to do for dinner?” She was being her worst passive-aggressive self, hoping Crow would volunteer that he had taken care of dinner, made a winter-suitable meal of, say, beef stroganoff and hot bread.

“I’m not really hungry,” he said, “so it’s up to you.”

Damn, wrong answer. “Okay, I’ll figure something out. It will probably involve cardboard containers.”

“Fine with me.” His voice, which had been absent-minded and dreamy, found a momentary focus. “Any more gifts from your secret admirer?”

“No. I guess we’ve broken up. He doesn’t call, he doesn’t write…”

“I’m not sure how I feel, knowing another man is giving my girl flowers.”

“How do you know,” Tess countered, “it’s a man?”

Crow had fallen back into his fume-induced reverie. “Do you think we should get funky with the kitchen cabinet handles, put on those brass starfish they have at Nouveau, or keep the original handles? They have a kind of retro charm.”

“I’m not having this conversation, I’m not having this conversation,” Tess chanted. “My parents talk like this. In fact, I am coming home tonight with the kind of food suitable for slathering bodies and we are going to have cheap, nasty sex and the only thing that will be off-limits is any discussion of home decor. You wanna talk drapery cords, it better be in the context of bondage. Okay?”

“You mean if I say your skin reminds me of that wonderful new synthetic material that you can’t distinguish from real marble, you’ll object?”

Laughing, she hung up on him, happy to be going home to flesh-and-blood Crow and sorry for any woman who had to tolerate the attentions of Jerold En-sor, the walking corpse.

The map book placed Field in the heart of lower Hampden, which mystified Tess. She was no snob, but this was an area where burglars were more likely to live than to plunder. She happened to know a high-placed lieutenant in a local crime ring had once lived along this stretch of Keswick, until his conscience had gotten the better of him and he turned his best friend in for murder. He had been able to leave his door unlocked, Tess remembered, and no one had ever dared to bother him.

She found the sign for Field Street, but it was a stretch of pavement shorter than most driveways, dead-ending into a vacant lot. After a quick look back at the map, Tess backtracked on Keswick, turning onto Bay Street, which appeared to go through.

Making a right-hand turn had never so transformed the world before. One minute, Tess was in the narrow dark ravine of Keswick, banked with row houses. But here the landscape was open, and the houses were small stone duplexes set back on large lots. Field Street was literally a field, she realized; that’s why it didn’t run through. She knew little about architecture, but she could tell such housing had to be a hundred, a hundred and fifty years old. The neighborhood had a rustic Brigadoon-like charm. It was the kind of place she would have wanted to live in if she had not found her cottage in the trees.

She parked outside Arnold Pitts’s house, dark and seemingly empty. Trouble beckoned, but she was determined to resist it. There was no gain, she told herself, in trying to get into that house. Then she would be Gretchen O’Brien, breaking and entering, and Rainer would finally have a reason to come down on her like a ton of bricks.

The strange thing was, she could almost see Rainer’s point of view as she sat here in the early dark, mulling her options. Why was she here? She had no client, no leads, only her own curiosity. She had begun her investigation for what seemed to be a logical, almost honorable reason: Find the mystery client and learn what he really wanted. The roses and the cognac had seemed to signal she was on the right track.

But maybe these tokens were really just handmade signs from Wile E. Coyote, advising the road runner to take the washed-out road up ahead. Sighing, she started her car’s engine and headed back down the block.

Idling at the corner, waiting to make the turn, she glanced back at the dark house in her rearview mirror. To her amazement, someone emerged from the rear, stopped to put a plastic bag in an old-fashioned metal garbage can, and then lugged the container to the curb. He made a comic silhouette, for he was not much taller than the can, and his arms were short pudgy things, barely long enough to reach past his own formidable stomach and hook onto the handles. He moved with tiny mincing steps, the way a woman in high heels walks on ice, although the sidewalks were clear and smooth, the weekend’s snow having melted within hours of falling.

I know that walk, Tess thought. I know that silhouette. She slammed her car into reverse, sliding into someone’s parking pad, and rolled down her window, calling out, “Arnold Pitts?”

At the sound of her voice-or perhaps it was his real name that startled him so-Arnold Pitts, the Pig Man, aka the Porcine One, aka John Pendleton Kennedy, dealer in fine porcelain, made the most fitting little squeal, threw his trash can in the street, and began trotting away as fast as his little legs would carry him.

Chapter 15

for a moment, TeSS was so amazed by Pitts the Pig Man’s flight that she couldn’t do anything except watch him trot down the street, his garbage can rolling behind him. Then she wondered if she should even bother to give chase. He’d have to come home eventually, right? And it seemed almost unsporting to run after a man whose legs needed five steps to do what hers could accomplish in two.

This uncharacteristic pang of fairness passed and she took off, catching up with him as he puffed and panted his way up Keswick, where the 7-Eleven and its bank of pay phones appeared to be his goal. When he saw she was behind him, he was almost gracious in defeat, stopping abruptly in the small park across from the convenience store and throwing open his arms, as if he expected Tess to run into them. “How did you find me?” he demanded petulantly.

It was her turn to mislead him. “It wasn’t hard. It wasn’t hard at all.”

This seemed to scare him. Good.

“We need to talk,” he said.

“No kidding.”

“But not at my house. How about-” He pointed to a bar across Keswick, Ben’s, a place that Tess knew only for the pit-beef stand it ran in the summer and early fall. “How about we go over there?”

“I’d prefer your house. After all, you came to mine.”

“I came to your office,” he said, drawing himself up to his full height, which might have qualified him for the scarier rides at local amusement parks.

“Your house,” Tess repeated.

“I don’t like to have people in my home. They touch things.”

Tess began to laugh, only to see Pitts was serious, and aware of no irony in his self-righteousness. “I promise I won’t.”

“They all promise,” he said resignedly. “Then they all break their promises. You will, too, you’ll see. But, what the heck, let’s go.”

Tess drove him back.

“Interesting neighborhood.”

“These were mill houses,” Pitts said, unlocking his back door. “This area is known as Stone Hill.”

“I’ve lived in Baltimore my entire life. I live less than two miles from here”-she immediately wished she had not volunteered that particular piece of information-“and yet I’ve never heard of it.”