Laura Lippman - Butchers Hill

"The heart of WASP country. You can tell because Butler has exactly two businesses, a saddlery and a liquor store. All the WASP needs."

"What's a black boy doing in a place like that?"

Tess shrugged. "These private schools do care about diversity. Every one I know has at least a few inner-city kids on scholarship. And if Salamon really is a good public speaker, I bet several schools came after him."

"Or maybe they just needed a little black boy to stand at the end of the driveway and hold out a lamp, like one of those old lawn jockeys."

They were passing through Woodlawn, caught in the first waves of Social Security traffic. Tess wished she had noticed what route Jackie was taking; she would have steered her away from this daily snarl of traffic and onto the empty ghost road known as I-70, one of the few interstates in the country that came to a dead-end. People who didn't know Baltimore's shortcuts and back roads made her impatient.

"You still see those jockeys in some parts of Baltimore, I've noticed," Jackie continued. "They painted the faces white, as if that fools anyone."

"Yeah, and you still see ceramic kittens scampering up brick houses. There's one over there. Oh my God, call PETA."

"It's not the same thing," Jackie said stiffly.

"It is in the sense that it's not worth expending energy. Some people are idiots. At least the ones with those lawn jockeys announce themselves to the world. You know what kind of moron you're dealing with up front."

"According to that logic, you must support the special license plates for Sons of Confederate War Veterans. Or do you think that's a freedom of speech issue?"

"I think it's trivial. It's like getting upset over those truckers who have the mudflaps with those big-breasted women on them. What am I going to do, take them to court for hurting my feelings?"

"The state didn't issue the mudflaps."

"Maybe they should. They could make a lot more money than they did on the Confederate tags. Look, Jackie, you're my client, I'm your employee. I don't want to argue over stuff I don't even care about."

"I wish I had the luxury of not caring, but I don't. It's my life, it affects me."

Tess sat quietly for a minute. There were a lot of things she wanted to say, a lot of things she was scared to say. Jackie was a client, after all, even if they had acted as partners this afternoon. Besides, such conversations were dangerous under any circumstances. No one, not even best friends, had ever had a truly honest conversation about race. Tess decided to play possum, tilting back the passenger seat and closing her eyes. Reality overtook the pose, and the next thing she knew they were in the parking lot at Jackie's condo. It seemed as if weeks had passed since Tess had arrived here this morning, feeling so cocky about tracking down one Jackie Weir, née Susan King.

"The Adoption Rights group meets Monday night," Jackie reminded her, as Tess stretched, stiff from her nap. "You're going with me, right?"

"That was our deal. What kind of person would renege after all you've done for me today?"

"You'd be surprised at what kind of people don't honor their promises." Jackie sounded almost dire. If it were someone else, Tess would have thought the comment an odd joke, but Jackie had made it clear that humor was not her strong suit.

"Another tip for the small businesswoman?"

"A tip for life. One I've known for a long, long time." With that, Jackie was gone, still favoring her left foot in its white high heel. A white high heel that had managed to cover much of East Baltimore without picking up so much as a single smudge.

Even from across the street, it was obvious that something wasn't quite right when Tess and Esskay arrived at the office the next morning. The door seemed to sway a little in the summer breeze. Not open, but not quite shut either.

Upon closer inspection, it turned out the lock had been picked. Gouged, really-the deadbolt clawed and hacked from the wood with something sharp, then tossed aside.

"You should get a metal door," said Luther Beale, waiting in the chair opposite her desk.

"Did we have an appointment this morning?" Tess asked, examining the hole where her lock used to be, while Esskay stepped around her and headed for the sofa.

"No, but I thought I would stop by and see if you had made any progress. The door was like that when I got here."

Tess propped a phone book against the door, so she wouldn't end up air conditioning the street until a locksmith could arrive. She had been in good spirits, feeling virtuous about her impulse to stop by the office and do little tasks on a Saturday, before meeting Tyner for a workout and late lunch. But the broken lock had drained all the day's potential. She would be stuck here for hours.

"I didn't do it," Beale added, in the defensive way of a man used to blame.

"I never thought you did," Tess said, looking up her landlord's number in the Rolodex on her desk. She hoped he would have to pay for the new lock. Perhaps she should call the police and make a report first, then summon the landlord, who could file an insurance claim. A tiny, wizened man, he had known and apparently envied her grandfather. He had a way of bringing every conversation back to the fact that he had prospered over time, while her grandfather had failed after a more spectacular start. "Slow and steady, slow and steady," Hiriam Hersh liked to counsel her. "Your grandfather was a hare, I'm a tortoise. You could learn a lot from me." No, she definitely wasn't in the mood for Aesop according to Hiriam Hersh.

"No, ma'am, the door was like that when I got here," Beale said, more to himself than to her.

"I am surprised you just came in and sat here, waiting for me. How did you known I'd be in on a Saturday?" Tess dialed the Eastern precinct, rather than tie up the 911 line. The city had a nonurgent line now, too, 311, but she thought a break-in qualified for a police visit sometime in this millennium.

"I didn't. Just thought I'd drop by and when I saw the door, I decided I better come in and babysit your stuff. This computer wasn't going to last for long, not in this neighborhood."

The desk sergeant at the precinct picked up and put her on hold before she could even get a single syllable out. Tess did a quick visual scan of the room. Nothing obvious was missing-the computer, the scanner, the printer were all still here. The flying rabbit picture was in its place over the wall safe. Perhaps addicts had broken in, looking for metal to sell to one of the scrap yards. A few of the metal dealers weren't too particular about the origins of the copper downspouts, iron grilles, and old water heaters that came rolling up in shopping carts, day after day. But the old stove was still in place, as were the faucets.

Still on hold, she unsheathed her computer and turned it on. Her files were there, apparently untouched. On a hunch, she enlarged the window, checking the "last modified" dates-nothing. Then again, printing a file out didn't count as modifying it. She glanced at the printer. There was paper in the tray, and she only put paper in as she needed it, given that Esskay's hair tended to settle on anything left out. Besides, she was stingy with paper. It was one part of her overhead she could control.

"Do you know anything about computers?" she asked Beale skeptically.

"Huh. I know enough not to buy a Mac, like you did. I have an IBM clone, with 200 megahertz and a gigabyte of memory. Did you know you can read almost every newspaper in the country online? I bet I save fifty dollars a month that way."

"Someone might have made some copies of my files last night."

"Don't you have a password, for security?"

"No," Tess said. If Beale were really so computer-savvy, he should know that. Hadn't he seen her use the computer on his first visit here? "It never occurred to me I'd need one, not in a one-woman office."