Laura Lippman - The Sugar House

Tess’s phone rang, and she pulled it out.

“What’s up?” Whitney sounded breathless, excited.

“Have you worked your way up to opening the mail yet?”

“Have I? I’m covered with paper cuts. So I started using my Swiss army knife, which seems to make the other volunteers ever so nervous.”

Tess had a mental image of Whitney, slicing carelessly through the day’s mail.

“Do you see the checks when they come in? Do you have access to the files where campaign contributions are listed?”

“Sure, but can’t you get them up at the Election Board?”

“Not the current ones. Besides, I’m looking for certain names, certain addresses. I’m especially curious to see if anyone’s bundling-you know, trying to avoid contribution limits by parceling out donations to relatives, or neighbors. I want you to look for donations from Southwest Baltimore, which isn’t in the first, or even in the forty-ninth. And I want you to look for anyone who has the last name DeSanti.”

“I don’t dare take notes,” Whitney said, bless her quick, steeltrap mind. She understood instantly what Tess wanted. “At the very least, they’ll think I’m another candidate’s spy, and they’ll can me.”

“Just remember as much as you can for now. If I’m right, we’ll find a way to come back and get the files.”

“He has a big fund-raiser at Martin’s West in a few days,” Whitney said. “Five hundred dollars a head, and the checks are pouring in. Maybe, if I’m very, very good, I can get them to send me to the bank with the daily deposits. Then I can stop en route and copy down all the names on the checks. Although a lot of it is cash.”

“Whatever you’re comfortable with,” Tess said. “Hey, how well do you know Meyer Hammersmith, anyway?”

“My folks know him. He always seemed like a sweet old man to me, essentially harmless-assuming any real estate billionaire can be essentially harmless. When he comes out to the house, he almost drools, thinking about what he could do with my parent’s property. But they’re not really friends so much as they’re allies, sitting on all these arts boards. My mother was shocked when he signed on with Dahlgren, he’s such a philistine. Look, I better get back. I told them I had to go to the drugstore. And when they asked why, I just lifted an eyebrow in that don’t-ask-female-trouble kind of way, and the guy let me go. But how long can it take to buy tampons, you know?”

“Whitney-” Tess thought of Hilde, dead simply because she happened to stand between Devon Whittaker and her would-be killer, about Gwen Schiller, about the frightened no-name woman in the no-name gallery. “Be careful.”

“Don’t worry about me,” she assured her airily. “The Swiss army knife isn’t the only thing I’m packing, I can tell you that much.”

IT TOOK A MERE TWO DAYS FOR WHITNEY TO SECURE THE privilege of making the Dahlgren campaign’s daily deposits.

“They’re talking about making me a paid staffer before too long,” she told Tess over the phone on Thursday, almost preening. Only Whitney could go undercover and turn it into a career opportunity.

“I’m not sure it’s such a good idea for you to draw a paycheck from these people,” Tess said worriedly.

“Oh, I know. I told them I was doing this for love, not money.” Her voice lowered, as if she were trying not to be overheard, although she was calling from her snug little cottage. “And there is so much money, Tess. The guy has a real war chest. I know congressional races cost a lot these days, but do you think he might be keeping his options open? Maybe he’s really going to run for governor, or U.S. Senate.”

“Only if it’s an open race. He’d never take on an incumbent. Look, as Deep Throat said to Woodward-”

“Assuming Deep Throat ever existed. I have my doubts.”

“Whatever. Follow the money, Whitney. Find patterns, any patterns-in names, in addresses, in fund-raisers. I’m here in my office with Jackie right now, going over Dahlgren’s past finance reports, but it’s pretty Mickey Mouse stuff. Running for state senate, he was lucky to get $200 from his own father-in-law. It sounds as if he’s now raising more in a week than he did for all his other campaigns combined.”

She hung up her phone. It was late, almost ten, and she was exhausted. Not so much from working-Whitney was doing more than she was-but from all the lying and deception. If her father was to believe that she had dropped her inquiry into Henry Dembrow’s death, then everyone else had to believe it as well.

Even Ruthie Dembrow, who had hot, furious words when Tess told her she was suspending the investigation through the end of the holidays. But it was precisely because of Ruthie’s quick temper that Tess had lied to her. She was counting on her to complain to Pat yet again about his unreliable daughter, how she had started the investigation only to drop it for a second time. So Tess was not only working secretly, but for free.

She had enlarged her conspiracy slightly, however, taking in Crow and Jackie. Crow was her sounding board, she needed him at night, when she chanted the litany of what she had failed to accomplish. Besides, he often had good ideas.

Meanwhile Jackie, who had left political fund-raising for more legitimate work years ago, brought an expert eye to Dahlgren’s financial documents. She also had been willing to go to the ethics office in Towson and make photocopies. Still paranoid about being followed, Tess didn’t want to run the risk of being seen anywhere, doing anything.

The problem was, they weren’t getting anywhere. Try as she might, she could not find the final connection that would link Dahlgren to Domenick’s or Nicola DeSanti. She sat at her desk with a sketchbook in front of her, trying to make the formula work. Meyer Hammersmith was Kenneth Dahlgren’s finance chairman. Adam Moss was Kenneth Dahlgren’s aide. Hammersmith owned a building that housed a gallery, a gallery Adam Moss had visited. Adam Moss had requested the phone list. But she could not find a link to the bar, or even to Gene Fulton, who had been a liquor board inspector long before Dahlgren came on the scene.

“I can’t link anyone to Hilde’s murder except Adam Moss,” she said now to Jackie, “and that makes no sense.”

“Why not? From what you’ve said, he sounds cold enough to do whatever his boss asked.”

Tess picked at the cartons of Thai food spread before them, looking for something to drag through the leftover peanut sauce. They had been working for almost three hours. It felt like six.

“Political aides don’t kill people, except in the movies. Even Gordon Liddy only went as far as burglary and conspiracy, and the bar for political scandal is so much higher now, in the P.L. era.”

“P.L.?”

“Post-Lewinsky. The first rule is still deny, deny, deny. But contrition goes a long way now, if you get caught.”

Jackie rubbed her eyes and sighed.

“Well, I just don’t see anything unusual, Tess,” she said. “Neither here, nor in the photocopies from his ethics file. This guy is so clean he reports the lunches that lobbyists buy him.”

“I thought that was the law now.”

“Doesn’t mean everyone does it.”

Tess walked around the desk and bent over Jackie’s shoulder. “Does the name Arnie Vasso pop up?”

“Sure, yeah. Lunch here, lunch there. But no more than any other lobbyist. Tell me again, what are we looking for?”

“I don’t know,” Tess said, falling back on her sofa with an exaggerated sigh. Esskay, unused to sharing her space, gave her a dirty look and stretched out, trying to push Tess away with her rear legs. “Anything, everything. It’s like I’ve got one piece of a jigsaw puzzle, and it’s a piece of blue sky, only maybe it’s really ocean, or the hem of some girl’s dress. But I only have one piece. If I had a few more, I’d find a way to make it fit, I’d pound it in with my fist. One piece doesn’t do anything.”