Charm City

Only two people know the truth of a marriage, Kitty's voice chided her again. No one really knew what had happened in Violetville. Wink was dead and Linda wasn't talking. But Bertie had seen the ambulance, even if she had seen it only once. It was wrong of Rosita to pay for that information, and the money had probably encouraged Bertie to exaggerate, but Tess didn't doubt it was basically true. Hit your wife once, you're a wife beater. And almost no man ever hit just once. If he got help, perhaps, saw a therapist-but it was impossible to imagine Wink seeking help to control his violent temper, the same temper that had made him beat the old shopkeeper so badly. Montrose had only taught him how to hide his temper, how to pick better victims. Wink was too busy building an empire-from A to Z, as Feeney had said-to worry about his karma. Rosita might have gotten the facts wrong, but she had nailed down the truth.

No, if Tess was going to retrace Rosita's reporting, she probably should concentrate on the gambling angle. Alas, her best source for that line of inquiry was right here, but he wasn't going to be able to help her anytime soon. If he ever did regain consciousness, she had more pressing questions. Why would someone try to kill you for a greyhound, even one with altered tattoos? She studied his dear, pointy head, wishing she could climb inside and wander through his memory. As that was impossible, she left.

An ambulance almost wiped her out as she crossed the driveway. That would make an interesting lawsuit. Her own memory came to life, like a pinball machine with all the lights flashing. It wasn't Wink's empire that ran the gamut from A to Z. It was the lawsuits, the bills he never paid, from ambulances to zippers. "Amb'lances," as Bertie would say. Word of the day. Call it whatever you like, but if you called an ambulance and didn't pay for its services, there would be paperwork, which might detail what had happened to whom. And if someone's had that paperwork, they could hold it over someone's head, unsavory proof of what a less-than-nice guy he was. Why hadn't Feeney thought of that? Why hadn't Rosita, flinging fifties along the length of MacTavish Avenue, taken time to track down proof far stronger than some geezerette's faulty memory?

Tess glanced at her watch and tried to remember the shopping itinerary chanted by the doorman at Linda Stolley Wynkowski's apartment building. If memory served, Thursday was Jones amp; Jones day. Or was it Ruth Shaw?

Chapter 22

Linda Wynkowski stood in front of a full-length mirror, arrayed in a royal blue dress with an organza skirt, its hem so haphazard and ragged it couldn't cost less than $500. Seen from a distance, through the windows of Jones amp; Jones, she was lovely, the blue dress setting off her white body and blue eyes, while playing down the fact the former was too soft, the latter too hard. Tess would have liked to remain at a distance, but this was not an option.

"You again," Linda sighed.

"I just came from MacTavish Avenue."

"Lovely, isn't it?"

Tess wasn't sure if she meant MacTavish or the dress. "It's not so bad," she said, feeling the answer was appropriate to both.

"No, unless you expected more. Unless you'd been led to expect more. Wink talked so big, I thought we were going to be living in a nice new house out in Owings Mills. You know, like the one he and his second wife have. But that kind of money didn't come in until after we had separated. We fought about money all the time back then. If I spent fifteen dollars on a dress at Hoschild's, he'd go crazy."

"Is that how the arguments began? Over money?"

Linda rose on her tiptoes and did a full turn in her gown, looking at her own reflection. "I told you, Wink and I had an agreement not to talk about our marriage. Whatever happened between us is private."

"Wink dead. Unless you promised to take his secrets to your grave, you don't owe him anything."

"Do you have any earrings to go with this, Tara?" Linda called over her shoulder to the salesgirl, a pretty young coed who had cultivated a chic European look not many Baltimoreans could pull off. Tara rushed forward with crystal balls strung on sterling silver strings of varying lengths, chunky flies caught in a spider's fine web.

"Those aren't right at all," Linda said, throwing them back at the girl. "This dress needs something bigger-you know, more dramatic." Tara scurried away.

"I talked to your neighbor on MacTavish," Tess said. "Bertie Athol."

"Bertie the busybody."

Tess lowered her voice, aware Tara was probably eavesdropping keenly from her post behind the display case, where she and an older saleswoman had fallen conspicuously silent. "Bertie told me she heard the fights, and that she saw an ambulance in the night. She's the only one who really knows, isn't she, even if she doesn't know anything? Bertie, the doctors. And you."

Linda Wynkowski gathered her blond hair in her hands and piled it on top of her head. It did look better up, but what was the point of fiddling with hairstyles and accessories for a dress she would never wear, for a dress that would never go anywhere but her walk-in closet? She was ruined, and $20,000 a month suddenly didn't seem a lot to pay for turning someone into a doll, scared to leave her dollhouse village.

"You know, he always cried." Her tone was matter-of-fact, as if describing her former husband's preference for string beans. "After, I mean. He cried and said he still loved me. When we separated, he was the one who never wanted to make it official, because he loved me so much he didn't want to get a divorce. At least, he loved me until he met her, and then he didn't care about me anymore."

"But you had something on him, something concrete," Tess prompted. "Ambulance bills he didn't pay, or insurance papers detailing exactly what had happened. You kept them, and when he decided he wanted to remarry, you used them to get the support order increased."

"Yes. Yes I did." Linda almost seemed to be in a trance before the mirror, eyes locked on her own reflection.

"May I see them? Could I see what you used to"-she didn't want to use the term blackmail-"to convince Wink?"

"So Bertie knew all along, huh? She tell anybody else?"

"With Wink dead, I don't think anyone will be coming around to ask her."

Linda gathered up the long, shaggy skirt of her ballgown and swept out of Jones amp; Jones in her stocking feet. Tara the salesgirl, wiser than Maria

"If she doesn't come back in twenty minutes," the older saleswoman said, "we'll wrap up what she left and send it to the apartment, along with a bill for the dress. It won't be the first time."

Tess followed Linda out of the store, assuming she was headed for her apartment, just straight ahead, not even 100 yards away. Instead, she turned right and led Tess to the branch bank in the shopping center.

"I keep all my important papers in a safe deposit box at the bank here in Cross Keys." Linda was strangely manic, as if she had wanted to tell someone this story long ago but had never dared-first because she was scared, then because she was paid. "That's the wonderful thing about Cross Keys, everything is right here. It's so convenient."

Linda pushed through the bank's double set of glass doors. No one raised an eyebrow at her ballgown and stocking feet; the bank employees must know her as well as the salesgirls. Soon, she was unlocking her safe deposit box on the counter just beyond the security gate, Tess at her side.

"You know, for a long time, it didn't even occur to me I had anything to tell," she said, as Tess's hands closed greedily on the photocopies, folded into careful fourths so long ago that the creases had turned gray. "Then, when that stupid story came out, I hated everyone thinking-but $20,000 a month. Well, it makes up for a lot."