Laura Lippman - In A Strange City

And Tess finally felt what she had failed to feel in so many other places, a sense of communion with this writer who had meant so little to her before Arnold Pitts walked into her office. Poe had been a musty relic, someone she was forced to read in high school, nothing more than “nevermore.” She understood now what Crow had felt, sitting in the Owl Bar and dreaming of Fitzgerald, why Mary Yerkes yearned for Toots Barger’s bowling trophy. It didn’t matter that the furniture here was not Poe’s, that the view had been corrupted, that she could hear a radio from the street, loud and raucous. After all, the nineteenth century had not been a decorous time, it had been loud and unruly in its own right, stinking of horse manure and coal fires and open privies. But this feeling-this was the reason people fought to save buildings and why things, mere things, sometimes mattered. It was not because of the old Santayana cliché, the one about being condemned to repeat the past if you failed to remember it. Remembering one’s mistakes was no talisman; Tess had repeated her own over and over again in full knowledge. The past was worth remembering and knowing in its own right. It was not behind us, never truly behind us, but under us, holding us up, a foundation for all that was to come and everything that had ever been.

“Hey, come see this,” Gretchen called out, and Tess had to shake herself, as if coming out of a dream.

“This” was the only known photograph of the Poe Toaster, taken by Life magazine in the early 1990s. The magazine had shot him from a distance, intent on protecting his identity. And so they had. He was just a blurry shape.

“It could be anyone,” Tess said.

“Yeah,” Gretchen agreed.

They returned to the second floor, where chairs had been set up in front of a television with a looped video. Gretchen pressed the button to start, and what followed was, Tess hated to admit, vintage Baltimore schlock-a pastiche of video feed from news programs, local and national; a five-year-old travelogue for some cable channel; and, yes, a series of public service announcements about the life of Poe that had run during Channel 54’s Vincent Price Weekend.

But the climax, for want of a better word, was a locally produced video in which Poe appeared before a boy touring the museum with his school chums. The actor playing Poe was fine, but his young co-star was not what is called a natural. He stood rooted to the spot, hurling his lines across an imaginary home plate as if some coach were clocking the speed with a radar gun.

“People-say-you-were-crazy-were-you?”

Poe gave the boy a kindly smile and assured him he was not.

The information conveyed was actually quite solid, a more nuanced view of Poe than most short treatments allowed. In the end, as Poe began to disappear, courtesy of some pretty cheesy special effects, the now forlorn little boy called out to his new friend, “Where can I find you?”

“In the books, Michael. In the books.”

Gretchen was giggling so hard she was on the verge of a coughing fit, and even Tess had to allow, “Well, it’s not Hamlet, nor was it meant to be. It’s pretty accurate, though.”

But neither it nor anything else in the museum made any mention of a gold bug or a memento mori of the beloved Virginia.

They trooped downstairs, where they found the Poe docent on a cell phone, a Daily Racing Form open in front of him on one of the glass display cases. “And in the fifth tomorrow-” His normal speaking voice was considerably higher than his Poe voice, and a little nasal. “Wait, I’ll have to call you back.” He straightened up, tucked the cell phone in his breast pocket, and was Poe again.

“Did you find everything to your satisfaction, ladies?”

“Yeah, sure,” Tess said. “Look, I specifically had asked my uncle to ask Jeff Jerome if there was any research that suggested Poe owned a locket which included a strand of Virginia Clemm’s hair. He said he was going to check with someone else, who was better on the Poe artifacts than he was.”

“Yes, Jeff Savoye. I talked to him on my way over here, and he said he’s never heard of anything like it. He was quite dubious. He keeps a master list of Poe artifacts on the museum’s Web site, noting where they can be found. And in some cases, noting where they were last housed, before they ”disappeared.“”

“And the idea of a gold bug, a small stickpin of a bug with jeweled eyes, given to Poe to commemorate his story by the same name-”

“He was even more dubious. If Poe had been given such a precious bauble, he surely would have been forced to sell it at some point. He lived hand-to-mouth.”

“Even if it were of sentimental value?”

“Poe was a writer. He couldn’t afford sentiment.”

“But if such things were found, if they could be authenticated-”

“They would be of great interest to us, or the museum in Richmond, or the one in Philadelphia -”

“Jesus,” Gretchen asked. “How many museums does one poet need, anyway?”

The docent eyed her warily. “In the case of Edgar Allan Poe, I think three is barely adequate.”

Gretchen rolled her eyes, and Tess pinched her.

“How could such things be authenticated? Assuming they existed.”

The docent ran his finger around his collar as if it itched. “That’s not really my field, but I suppose you’d need some sort of document-correspondence from Poe or someone close to him-alluding to the items. Even then, you could never really know. Proving historical facts in dispute is tricky. Take Poe’s death, for example. It is possible to eliminate certain theories or to poke holes in them. But the actual cause will never be established.”

“Why don’t they dig him up and use modern science to examine his remains?” Tess asked.

“And get the monument right while they’re at it,” Gretchen muttered, still bearing a grudge against some long-dead carver.

“To what end? It’s not like there’s blood and tissue samples left after all these years. Some things are meant to remain mysteries.”

But Tess could not agree with this last bit, not in this case.

She and Gretchen walked out into the bitter-cold night, looking around carefully before getting back into their rental car. Tess thought she caught a wisp of a smile on Gretchen’s lopsided face.

“What?” she asked. “What?”

“People-say-you-were-crazy-were-you?” Gretchen shouted, in perfect imitation of “Michael.”

“Yes,” Tess said. “Yes, I clearly am. So look for me in the books, Michael. In the booooooooooooooks!”

They began laughing, almost hysterically, the kind of joy jag that was dangerously close to tears. Because Tess knew, and suspected Gretchen knew as well, that Arnold Pitts would not be waiting for them back at the hospital. Doped up on Percoset, his left leg in a cast, he had still managed to send them on a wild-goose chase while he hobbled off into the night, enjoying one last laugh at their expense.

I could yank your licenses for this.“ Tess and Gretchen bowed their heads, two fake-repentant schoolgirls in the principal’s office. Gretchen’s profile was stony, almost angry, as she endured this harangue in a place where she had already seen more than her share of humiliation. Tess was too tired to feel anything except numb. The threat was so predictable, so cliché.

The only surprise was that it came from Tyner, while Detective Rainer watched, his face calm, his mouth curved in a mysterious but clearly unironic smile.

“We did uncover the motive at least,” Tess said, surprised at how squeaky her voice sounded. Only Tyner could put her so thoroughly on the defensive.

“What motive?” Tyner countered. Rainer jumped, as if Tyner had been yelling at him, and stole a covert look at the case file spread out in front of him. Tess realized he relied on notes more than any other homicide detective she knew. Trained as a traffic cop, he was better at the physics of a car accident than he was at remembering a simple chronology.