Charm City

"I'll probably end up giving Kitty my notice. I was pla

"That's okay. She's used to people coming and going."

"And you? Are you used to it, Tess?"

She had no answer for that.

"I loved you." Not a question, not an attempt to change her mind, just a statement of the facts. Again, Tess had no reply, other than "I know"-and that would be too cruel.

"You're a good person," she said at last. "You're one of the nicest people I've ever known."

"There are steamed vegetables for Esskay's di

It was dark now, and getting cold on the terrace, just as Tess had prophesied. She dragged the heavy planters of pansies into the apartment, found Esskay's length of chain-Crow still hadn't gotten around to buying her a proper leash, there, that was something he had screwed up-and took her out, largely for something to do. They walked to the pier at the foot of Broadway, so Tess could watch the water and Esskay could lunge at pigeons and seagulls.

She thought she would feel exhilarated-break-ups were usually enormously liberating if one initiated them. And if the other person broke things off, well, that was usually good for taking off a quick ten pounds. Tonight, she still had her appetite, but was she happy, was she free? As Feeney's friend Auden had said, the question was absurd. She was depressed, hungry, and strangely sad.

Esskay rested her head on Tess's knee, gazing into her eyes in the soulful way that meant "Pet me," unless there was food handy, in which case it translated to "Feed me." Tess scratched beneath her chin and along her nose, picking a few flecks of mulch from the dog's long snout. The slightly acrid, tangy smell made her think longingly of the daffodils and tulips that would soon appear throughout the city. And her mother's flower beds, with their red, white, and blue flowers in perfect rectangles along the house. She smiled at the image of Uncle Spike, showing up with her mother's winter mulch, ten whole bags of it, just as spring was begi

What had she been thinking? No, the problem was, she hadn't been thinking at all. Neither had her mother, nor her father. The reason for Spike's beating had been with them all along.

Chapter 24

Tess was too anxious to take the time necessary to wrestle Esskay up three flights of stairs and settle her down with water, supper, and a post-walk treat. Friday was grocery shopping night in the Monaghan household, a time-consuming ritual in which Judith and Patrick worked the aisles at the Giant side by side, picking fights over virtually every item. Creamed corn, pro or con? Was there really a difference between name brand toilet paper and the generic store brand? But now it was almost eight, which meant Tess had less than an hour until they returned. It would be better to find whatever Spike had hidden, take it, and leave, allowing her parents to remain in blissful ignorance.

She parked on the street and walked up the driveway, Esskay trotting happily alongside her, just pleased to be in on this adventure. The garage was padlocked, but the side entrance, where her mother kept her potting bench and gardening tools, was always open.

Inside, the naked sixty-watt bulb wasn't a match for anything past dusk, and the corners of the shed were lost in gray shadows that made every shape sinister and suspect. Ten plastic garbage bags sat in the back like huge toad-stools, fat and poisonous. She opened one, sniffing. The fragrance was sharper than whatever Crow had been using, but this was definitely mulch. Now what?

She plunged her arm into the elbow, then to the shoulder, fingers wiggling in search of anything that was not mulch. It might be hard or soft, as big as a gold brick, as small as a diamond ring. Again and again, eight times in all, she repeated the exercise, coming up with nothing more than a sleeve loamy with traces of tree bark. But on the ninth bag, the mulch was only a soft, shallow cover for something harder. A handful of little triangles, dried and stiff, like misshapen tortilla chips.

Curious, she pulled a few out. Esskay sniffed experimentally, then backed away, whimpering strangely. Tess held the triangles closer to the light. No, they weren't chips, and they weren't edible, not unless a dog was a ca

The ears. The ears. That's what Spike had seen, not the years.

Tess dropped them on the floor, recoiling at the light clattering sound on the concrete floor. Her first instinct was to run, as if by fleeing she could put some distance between herself and a world where someone methodically sliced the ears from greyhound corpses, ensuring they could never be traced, then beaten her uncle so he couldn't tell what he had seen, or share what he had found.

But she couldn't just run away. She had to gather up the evidence, gruesome as it was, and take it to someone. The police? The Humane Society? She'd figure it out later. Grabbing her mother's rake, she pushed the scattered ears into a pile, then dropped to her knees to put them back in their bed of mulch. Esskay's whimpering escalated into a high-pitched wail, a dirge for her fallen comrades. Ru-ru-ru-ru.

Perhaps it was this plaintive sound that masked the footsteps in the driveway. At any rate, it was only when the door creaked behind her that Tess stood and turned, but before she could make a sound, her face was smothered in a man's leather jacket-the leather jacket of someone broad-shouldered and at least 6' 6".

"Finally," a familiar gravelly voice said from somewhere behind the man, who held the back of her neck just hard enough to let her know he could crack her spine if he wanted to.

"Is it just the one bag?" her captor asked.

"Looks that way, but we better take 'em all, just in case. Maybe we'll get lucky and find the other thing, too."

"We could look around. It could be somewhere else in here."

"No time. But we'll take her, see if she has any ideas."

Leather Jacket released the pressure on Tess's neck slightly and shoved a handkerchief into her mouth. His callused hand smelled of onions and motor oil. She thought of biting the hand that gagged her, but it seemed futile and most unsanitary. From behind her, another hand fished through her pockets for her car keys.

"Let's go," Gravel Voice said. The two men linked arms on either side of her, as if she were Dorothy, ready to gambol down the Yellow Brick Road with Tin Man and Scare-crow. When she tried to go limp, forcing them to drag her away, one poked a hard object in her ribs-presumably a gun; she didn't have the heart to find out for sure by struggling. Where was the Ten Hills neighborhood watch when you really needed them? Why wasn't one of her mother's nosy friends peeking out her window now, taking in this scene? Esskay jogged beside them, determined not to be left out.

"Like the new car?" Gravel Voice asked, as they pushed her into the backseat of a black Oldsmobile, a far more discreet car than either of their previous vehicles. Esskay hopped in beside her. There, yet another man in a leather jacket forced her head down below the seats, using his armpit like a vise, a leathery, sweaty vise. "We realized the other one was a little too recognizable, so we traded up."

Tess's muffled voice almost managed to sound confident. "My parents are going to come home soon and when they see my car at the curb, they'll have the cops out looking for me immediately."

"Why do you think we took your keys?" Gravel Voice asked from the front seat. "Our friend's going to follow us in it. There's not going to be any car at the curb when your parents come home, or any bags, or any dog. They'll never know you were here, and I don't think the cops are going to put out an all-points-bulletin for a bunch of dirt."