The note had specified 1 p.m., but it did not surprise her when ten, fifteen, twenty minutes passed. If he were clever-and whoever he was, he was clearly clever-he would make sure she had come alone, check the cemetery for exits and entrances. Green Mount, one of the city’s oldest graveyards, was an expansive ramble of a place, and it would be easy to elude someone here. The trick was staying alive in the depressed neighborhood that surrounded it.
Finally, a tall figure approached. Not in a cape this time, but in the most ordinary trench coat, a belted London Fog. His head was bare in the sun, his hair that shiny, stiff old-man white that made Tess think of dental floss. The silken scarf at his neck was whiter still. He must not have realized how warm it was.
Up close, his face was familiar, but perhaps that was a trick of its very ordinariness. Still-
“We’ve met, haven’t we?” she asked.
He inclined his head in a formal bow. “Several times.”
She studied him, took in the hollows in his cheeks, the bristling eyebrows, the thin lips. But hair could be dyed, especially when it was that snowy white. Voices could change.
“The Norwegian radio reporter.”
“Ja,” he said with a nod. “Would you tell me your hourly rate? May I see your gun?”
“And… the gentleman who came to the jewelry store that day, the self-important one with the monocle and the same silk scarf you’re wearing now.”
He harrumphed, as the man in Gummere Brothers had, all gruff and pompous, and adjusted the scarf at his neck.
“Anywhere else?”
“I sure do like a turkey sammich,” he said, his voice a credible alto, as opposed to the silly falsetto most men affect when trying to imitate a woman. Tess was in Cross Street Market, buying a sub for a homeless woman. A beat, and his voice was now that of a streetwise young man, hanging outside KFC on a winter’s evening, the one who had answered her desperate call. “I just gotta know, you know?”
Then, in what appeared to be his own voice: “I also was in the Paper Moon one morning, when you came in with your boyfriend and ended up quarreling with that other girl. But that was a coincidence, the kind peculiar to Baltimore. I eat there all the time. I like the sweet-potato cottage fries, and I-” He stopped, flustered.
“Yes,” Tess said, letting him off the hook, knowing he had been about to say that he lived near there, which was more than he intended to tell. “Tiny Town.”
An awkward silence fell, an awkwardness peculiar to the voyeur and the viewed. Tess could not help wondering what else he had seen and observed while tracking her. She also felt vaguely foolish. She had not only bought him a sandwich, she had bought the idea that he was a woman. She had given him an interview, watching him struggle comically with his tape recorder, and asking him to repeat his questions because his accent was almost indecipherable. In Gum-mere Brothers, they had looked past each other, intent on their own missions. If he had been self-important- well, so had she, and it hadn’t been an act with her.
“You’re a good actor,” she said.
“Not good enough, I’m afraid,” he said. “The stage was my ambition, but I ended up teaching indifferent students instead.”
“At a city high school?”
“I’d rather not say.”
Tess assumed this meant she was right.
“Why the notes? Why not come forward or just pick up a phone and tell the police what you knew? Why did you have to involve me in this?”
“I did come forward. I came forward that very first night. Well, the next morning. I showed up at the police station and told the homicide detective I had been watching from Fayette when I heard the shooting and that I tried to follow one of the fleeing men. I described my own flight to them, to make sure they knew I couldn’t have done it. But I really didn’t see anything, and I wasn’t ready to tell them about… the other.”
The other. She waited, knowing he would explain. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and unwrapped it. Inside were a simple white-gold chain and the gold bug stickpin. Seen in a store, they would appear interesting, nothing more. But Tess knew their story, knew whose pockets they had lined, as well as the price everyone had paid. How quickly Bobby’s joy at owning them must have turned into fear. After all, he knew what Daniel Clary was capable of, when he really wanted something. The bug’s sapphire eyes caught the pale March sun, seeming to glow off and on, like the amber eyes of the owls in the Owl Bar.
The less you spoke, the more you heard.
Tess picked up the chain and then motioned to Mi-ata to sit. She knelt before her, using a small pair of pliers to remove the locket, then fasten it to the chain where it belonged. The dog had guarded her treasure all this time, but she was ready to give it up. Tess just wasn’t sure if she herself was ready. “They” are worth killing for, he had told her on the phone, the night Yea-ger was found dead. She had held the locket back from the police, waiting for the plural to assert itself. Waiting to see if the Visitor would do the right thing, and reunite the locket with its chain.
So far, so good.
“How did you know to send me to the library? Did you know about Daniel? Or did you want me to find the plaque on Mulberry Street, the one about John Pendleton Kennedy?”
“Neither. I just wanted you to learn something about Poe-and Bobby Hilliard.”
“You knew each other?”
“We met only once, but I didn’t realize it until he was dead. As for Bobby Hilliard, I’m not sure he ever made the connection. But perhaps I inspired him to pass the objects on to my alter ego. I can only hope.”
He walked to a nearby bench and sat, inviting Tess to join him. She hesitated for a moment, then followed. Miata lay at their feet, propping her chin on Tess’s boot.
“Bobby and I met, in fact, at the Paper Moon last December. The lack of all-night eateries in Baltimore does narrow one’s options, doesn’t it? I was feeling melancholy and sorry for myself and had gone there in the middle of the night in a fit of insomnia. A young man was at the counter, and I could tell he was anxious and unhappy. As I said, I taught for many years; I’m attuned to the moods of the young. We were both sitting at the counter, a stool apart, bursting with our secrets. I found myself asking if he knew much about Poe, and he looked at me as if I had just thrown scalding water on him. But he said yes, a little hesitantly, he was interested in Poe, although he cared more about him as a historical figure than he did about his work. He told me he had worked in the Poe Room for a brief time. He asked me what I knew about him, and I’m afraid I launched into the most tiresome little speech. Before I knew it, I was reciting poetry.”
Tess could imagine the scene-the empty diner, an uninterested line cook, and the two men, sitting a stool apart, honoring the unwritten rules of personal space. Two lost souls who had stumbled into one of Baltimore ’s few all-night way stations.
“But he seemed so interested,” the man said, as if he felt the need to defend himself to someone. To her? To himself? “He asked me questions about Poe’s life. He asked me if I had heard the theory that Poe had objects of value on him when he died, that he might have been drugged and beaten as part of a robbery. I was listening, and yet I wasn’t listening. I rambled on, so sure I had finally found someone to whom I could pass the torch. I asked him… I asked him…”
His voice faltered, crippled by embarrassment. Tess waited.
“I asked him to come home with me that night. In my excitement at finding someone I believed to be a kindred spirit, I envisioned showing him my props, asking if he wanted to assume the mantle, if you will. He quite misinterpreted my invitation. He was kind; it was clear he had had some experience in saying no to such invitations, and perhaps saying yes to others. I tried not to be hurt that I warranted such an automatic refusal.”