Laura Lippman - Baltimore Blues

"What is the truth?"

"You'll find out in court." Ava smiled, then repeated happily, "I wasn't sleeping with him."

"Oh, I know that. And I knew you couldn't testify to that in court. You weren't Abramowitz's type. Michael Abramowitz was gay. Or would have been, if he had any sex life at all."

Ava's face seemed to light up for a moment, then just as quickly shut down. Tess would bet anything she had agonized over Abramowitz's indifference, worried she was losing her charm. But whatever personal vindication she found in Tess's information, she wasn't ready to change her story.

"How could you know that? I never heard-I mean, people in law offices gossip. It's true, he never had girlfriends, but he wasn't very attractive." She laughed at herself. "That's a euphemism. He was ugly. He may not have had girlfriends, but he didn't have boyfriends, either."

"As I said, I don't make the same mistakes twice. This time I really do have proof, a long letter Abramowitz wrote at his computer when he was supposed to be working. A letter I'm prepared to give to a reporter I know, along with my own theory about what really happened between the two of you."

"So? I told the police and the press that Darryl fantasized this whole thing. Revealing Abramowitz was gay is only going to make my story more credible. My statement," she amended quickly. "It will make my statement more credible."

"True. But what if there are other things in Abramowitz's diary? He wrote more than a thousand pages, plenty of room to include your problems with the bar and his embarrassment at your attempted seduction." Tess had leapt from Officer Friendly's world of facts to her own list of suppositions, but Ava couldn't know this. "If you didn't sleep with Abramowitz, it wasn't for lack of trying. The Renaissance Harborplace Hotel was a nice touch. Your idea, I assume?"

"It's probably not admissible in court, that journal of his. Mr. O'Neal will keep it out of court."

"Good, very good, Miss Hill. You get an A in criminal law this semester. But it is admissible in a newspaper."

Ava busied herself with the skirt of her dress, smoothing it under her, then adjusting the hem. Tess waited. She was learning how to be silent.

"Look, what do you want?" Ava asked at last. "You can make my life miserable, but it won't help Darryl. I didn't kill Abramowitz. His death actually jeopardized my job at the firm. They assigned me to him after I flunked the bar the second time, because they didn't expect me to last out the year. When he died they could have fired me."

"But they didn't, and I need to know why. I also want you to fill in some blanks for me. You were as close to Abramowitz as anyone was before he died. You may actually know something without realizing what you know. You help me, and I won't release his diary. Deal?"

Ava nodded warily.

"OK, here's what I know. A year ago you joined the Triple O with a lot of debt hanging over you. You took the bar in February. You flunked. You took it again in July, flunked again. Now you've got even more debts, because you can't stop buying clothes-and because your skills as a shoplifter are limited to the lighter stuff, underwear and jewelry."

"I don't know why you keep talking about shoplifting, I have never -"

"Save it, Ava. Let's stay on point. You were desperate. You decided your best chance of staying on the payroll was seducing Abramowitz. I don't know what interim approaches you tried, but eventually you convinced him to meet you regularly at a local hotel. I guess you thought he'd have to succumb to your charms in such a setting. How'd you do that, by the way?"

Sulky now, almost pouting. "He was helping me study for the bar. I told him it was one place we were assured of not being interrupted. He actually bought it."

"Impressive. So you figure it's just a matter of time before this guy is all over you. But he never touches you. In fact he really tries to help you with the bar, which isn't exactly what you want. He even makes you cancel your vacation with Rock so you can study harder. He says he can whip you into shape."

"I can't pass the bar. I have this anxiety about it. It's, like, a syndrome. It's not my fault. I went to see a doctor and-"

"Of course it's not your fault. You're a victim. Everybody's a victim. But Abramowitz, who didn't have anything else to do, didn't buy it. He loved the law and he wanted you to love it, too. In fact I bet he was driving you nuts, making you work too hard. So you started working on a contingency plan-Seamon P. O'Neal. If you're sleeping with the big boss, who needs the little one? And, who knows? You might pass the bar after all. You were studying with one of the best lawyers in the state.

"But you're so busy with Plan A and Plan B, you start neglecting Plan C-your fiancé, a nice guy who happens to have a nice big nest egg. A big enough nest egg to pay off all your student loans and most of your credit card debt, if it comes to that."

Ava looked toward the lights of downtown and the harbor. "Darryl wasn't a plan," she said in a soft, almost regretful voice. "He was strong. I liked that. I thought he could protect me. He couldn't help me with this, though. I needed my job if we were going to have any life at all together. He makes less than $50,000 a year. How can two people live on that?"

It wasn't a bad speech, possibly even a sincere one. But Tess was unmoved.

"You might have to cut back on a few leather sofas, but it's possible."

"It wasn't just money. Darryl didn't want me to work at all. We fought about that a lot. I was so tired of arguing, I didn't even mind when Abramowitz told me I should use my vacation week to study. I was glad for an excuse to get away from him."

She and Rock had fought? Funny, he had forgotten to mention that small detail. But she had to concentrate. This was the tricky part, the part where she had to admit how clever Ava was, how stupid she was.

"So, one day, some not-too-bright woman pops up." She mocked her own voice, trilling in a falsetto. "'Hi, I'm a private detective and I know you're having an affair.' Of course it's not true. But you're fast on your feet. You see instantly the circumstantial evidence that convinced me-the hotel, the covert meetings-are enough to convince other people, too. Especially the increasingly sympathetic O'Neal. In fact this could solve all your problems. Maybe you'll get a nice fat settlement. Maybe Abramowitz will get fired and you'll get another chance. It was a good plan. With Abramowitz dead, it was an even better plan."

"How do you figure that?" Ava's voice was sharp again, stripped of the velvety tone she had used when talking about Rock.

"If Abramowitz is dead no one can contradict you, right? And I assume a firm that hates publicity would prefer to pay you off, as long as you agree to tell the press a more genteel version of events."

Tess gestured at the new furnishings around them.

Ava sighed. "You're right, more or less, but what's the point? None of this changes the case against Darryl. He thought Abramowitz had forced me to go to bed with him. He went down there and he killed him. Don't get me wrong, I hope he gets acquitted, or manslaughter, but I still think he did it. Frankly it's a little frightening to think I came so close to marrying a man with that strong a violent streak."

For the first time she seemed absolutely without guile. There was no indication that Ava remembered her own pivotal role in this, that her lies had sent Rock to Abramowitz's office, that none of this would have happened if she hadn't been such a schemer. They had both been so clever. But Tess couldn't afford to think about this now.

"There are still some missing pieces. Why didn't Abramowitz have any work to do? Did people in the firm know he wasn't doing anything? Did he have something on O'Neal?"