Laura Lippman - In A Strange City

Yet patterns inevitably emerge, Tess thought, just as the kaleidoscope yields a new design with each twist of its base. It was simply a matter of getting the right perspective, of standing back far enough. Tess was beginning to see how things fit together-and to see what didn’t fit.

“The warehouse on Bayard-it’s full of things that Hayes and Ensor would have wanted, but Ensor had never seen them before. Were you sitting on them, like a speculative stock, waiting for the value to go up so you could charge them more? Or could you just not bear to let them go?”

“A little of both,” Pitts conceded, his tone proud, as if a double cross were some rare form of accomplishment. “I was hoarding them for… leverage. You see, we were supposed to be a team, Shawn, Jerry, and I. Certain items were to be shared, to move from home to home, the way a museum show travels. But Shawn refused to share the two most valuable things. He said he was the only one who had proper security in his home. After Jerry and I were burglarized, he said it only proved his point. Later-before he was attacked-I even wondered if he set us up, had our homes hit so he could make that excuse. But, of course, it was Bobby.”

“Bobby? Why?”

Pitts shrugged as best he could, propped on the hospital pillows. “Only he knows. I think it amused him, doing to us what we had done to others. We didn’t figure it out right away. You see, unlike our burglaries, which were surgical strikes, the break-ins at my house and Jerry’s looked like typical Baltimore affairs. Messy. Focused on things that could be hocked.” He looked petulant. “Although he did take the wonderful Hamilton Beach mixer I had, the soda-fountain kind used for milkshakes. That should have tipped me off.”

“And the bracelet?” Tess prodded. “You came to the warehouse tonight because my note promised it would be returned to you. But I should tell you, the police have it. The Hilliards turned it over to them last week.”

“That’s mine,” he said fiercely. “They’ll have to give it back to me.”

“Probably,” Tess said, feeling a pang for Vonnie Hilliard. She never would have worn it, but how she would have loved to look at it, every now and then, and remember the son who had given it to her. “But I heard Ensor say it’s not particularly valuable.”

“It’s valuable to me. It was my mother’s,” Pitts said stiffly, as if speaking of a lover who had betrayed him. “Bobby knew it had no intrinsic value but infinite sentimental worth. He took it to hurt me, to show he had the upper hand. But I didn’t know it was missing until after the attack on Shawn. Like Jerold, I never dreamed anything of real value was missing from my house. It was an interesting twist, I have to admit, very clever of Bobby. We reported the break-ins, because we didn’t realize who had victimized us or what else had been taken. That put us in the police’s sights. And, it should go without saying, we preferred not to attract the police’s attention under any circumstances.”

Tess smiled behind her hand. Bobby Hilliard had a certain wit. Paid to help Pitts steal from thieves, he had decided to rip off the men who employed him. But to what purpose? And why had it turned so ugly? There was a certain It Takes a Thief romanticism about Bobby’s early escapades that couldn’t be squared with the attack on Shawn Hayes.

“I’m confused about the timing. Ensor is burglarized in the summer, you in the fall. But when did you know the bracelet was missing?”

“After Shawn-” Pitts could not finish the sentence. “I called the family and told them I was familiar with Shawn’s holdings. After all, I had been his antiques scout. It made sense for me to make an inventory. Everything was there-except for the two most precious items. That’s when I called Jerold and told him to see if anything was missing from his collection. Sure enough, someone had taken a piece of Poe’s casket, which Jerry kept in a drawer in his study”

“And Bobby knew this?”

“I’m afraid I told him,” Pitts said. “He began to show so much interest in our… collecting, and he seemed so nonjudgmental. He even began to suggest other victims, identifying them from scraps of conversation he overheard at work. But when I saw what was missing at Shawn’s-just those two items, which Shawn kept in a locked drawer in an old planter’s desk-I knew he had betrayed us. They were the only things missing. Well, those and the weapon we think was used in the assault.”

“The weapon,” Tess said. “Yes. You and Jerold Ensor spoke of a ”pike‘ when you quarreled tonight. What was that?“

“Do you know much about Maryland ’s Civil War history?”

Honesty compelled Tess to shake her head in the negative. “I know the first Union casualties fell because of mob violence here. And that Francis Scott Key’s descendant ended up jailed in Fort McHenry for much of the war. But that’s about it.”

“It’s enough. Ross Winans, who made his fortune in the railroads, wanted to help Baltimoreans defend themselves. He ordered the manufacture of the Winans pike, a crude but effective weapon, a six-foot staff with a metal point. But the Union troops seized the shipment and destroyed almost all of them, simply by breaking them in two. Somehow, a few remained intact. The one in Shawn Hayes’s parlor was one of the first items I found for him.”

“Did Bobby steal that for you too?”

Pitts made a face. “We didn’t have to steal everything. Sometimes we just had to pay money, lots and lots of money.”

“Like Toots Barger’s bowling trophy?” Tess was remembering Mary Yerkes’s story, how the now-deceased dealer told her she could never compete for such treasures.

“Yes, that’s in Jerry’s basement, which is refinished in knotty pine. He keeps it on the mantel. At least, he thought he had the real thing, but I kept it for myself and fobbed a fake off on him. You see, I was always the middleman, so Shawn and Jerry didn’t have to risk sullying their reputations. I took all the risks; they reaped all the rewards. And if we had been caught, I would have borne the charges.”

Tess imagined Bobby might have felt the same way.

“The pike is missing, so you assume that’s what Hayes was beaten with?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m afraid it is,” Pitts said, and it wasn’t clear if his grief was for his associate, still comatose, or the loss of a valuable object.

“But you spoke of two other items.” Tess was remembering her anonymous caller, who had told her they were worth killing for. “The two items taken from Shawn Hayes’s home. What were they?”

“Only the jewels of our collection,” Pitts said. “Only the two greatest items I ever found, discoveries that overshadow everything else. I bought them from an old lady, a thief in her own right, but a stupid thief who didn’t understand their significance. If only she knew what she really had-”

“What?” Tess was past all patience.

“The very things that Edgar Allan Poe may have been killed for, in his final days in Baltimore.”

Fifteen minutes later TeSS yanked open the curtain that surrounded Pitts’s bed in the emergency room-and almost ran smack into Dr. R. Massinger, who was hovering around the periphery. Tess hoped she hadn’t been eavesdropping. If she had, what would she make of Pitts’s sobbing confession, the strange little tale that had just tumbled out of the man?

“I have to take Gretchen to… get her prescription filled,” she told the young doctor, who appeared to be board certified in soulful, empathetic looks. “Please don’t let my uncle leave, whatever happens.”

“If he wants to sign himself out, it’s hospital policy-”