The Last Place

No one had second-guessed Tess’s expenses since her newspaper days, when the accounting department flagged any tip above 15 percent. “I could have avoided a hotel altogether, driving back and forth over two days. But that would have doubled my time on the road- which is billed hourly-and resulted in extra mileage of almost seventy-five dollars. So I think, given that information, I was entitled to stay where I wished and eat what I wanted.”

But his attack had emboldened the others.

“What about this line item, forty dollars for Troy Plunkett?” asked the one Tess thought of as Strawberry Yogurt, because she not only had pale pink yogurt in front of her, she had on a pale pink blouse and a gingham plaid headband with the same shade of pink in it. “Did you get a receipt?”

“I paid Plunkett to speak to me. It’s not uncommon in my business.”

Now Banana Yogurt, who had not color-coordinated her outfit to her lunch but did have hair just a shade darker than her Da

“Not in my business, no. It’s a consideration of their time. I pay people what I think their time-and information-is worth.”

“And did you get forty dollars’ worth out of Mr. Plunkett?” This was Ames, who seemed awfully pleased with himself for having opened up this line of inquiry.

“Yes, I did. But I got the biggest bang for my buck just by driving out to northwest Baltimore County, near Prettyboy Reservoir, where I met one of our ”victims’ face-to-face. Julie Carter is alive, ladies and gentleman. A fact that, coupled with the dead ends on the other two cases, makes me wonder if this board has its collective head up its collective ass. How did you come up with these names, anyway, throw darts at a dartboard? Just plug HOMICIDE and MARYLAND into a search engine and see what kicked out?“

Whitney raised an eyebrow at Tess, and Whitney was capable of encapsulating a world of meaning in that small gesture. The problem was, Tess couldn’t decode this facial semaphore. Was she overstepping, forgetting whom she worked for in this situation? She had intended to play nice but had lost her resolve when they began poring over her expenses. The Yogurt Twins looked shocked, while Neal Ames was tapping his pen on the table’s edge as if he wished he could bounce something off her skull.

But Miriam Greenhouse, the ostensible leader, looked amused.

“Our selection was random, I admit. We thought that was purer, if you will. We picked open homicides outside Maryland’s incorporated cities and the bigger counties. Neal, you compiled the list, right?”

“Actually, it was a volunteer for the Tree Foundation.” Ah, Tess had forgotten he was Luisa O’Neal’s representative on the board. Well, she had disliked him from the start, so she came by her revulsion honestly. “An unpaid volunteer,” he added.

“As opposed to the paid variety?” But Tess’s nitpick sailed over the lawyer’s head as he deflected blame to his poor anonymous volunteer-and then cloaked himself in righteous virtue over the fact that anyone would try to blame a poor anonymous volunteer.

“Well, at least two of them have been in the ballpark so far. The Tiffani Gunts case is ripe to reopen, right? The new sheriff says the old one was incompetent.”

“Yes, but the ex-boyfriend is not a suspect, so it’s not a domestic. Look, I met the guy. Whatever he is, he’s not some criminal mastermind who staged a robbery to kill his girlfriend because they were fighting over child support. He has more ingenious ways of avoiding his obligations.”

“How’s that?” Miriam asked, eyes narrowed. Financial support was an important component of the shelter’s work. If Safehouse’s staff couldn’t get estranged husbands to pay battered women child sup-port-or have the man evicted from the house-the women’s odds of escaping were greatly reduced.

“He told me he takes cash jobs, off the books. You can’t get blood from a turnip, and you can’t get money from a man who doesn’t seem to have any. Can’t attach his income tax refund when he has no reportable income. Can’t take his car or his house when he doesn’t have either one of those.”

“We can get his license suspended,” Banana Yogurt said.

“A guy like Troy Plunkett will drive without one. Look, you can’t even threaten to reduce his visitation, because he doesn’t want any. The guy’s snake-mean. Tiffani’s family just gave up after a while.”

“Still”-Miriam looked thoughtful-“the case fits our purposes. He beat her when they were together. She ended up dead.”

“She was shot,” Tess said, “in a robbery. How are you going to obscure that piece of information?”

“Let us worry about how we present our case. Just bring back reports on the next two homicides. If those prove as futile as the first three, we’ll find more for you to examine. We’re pursuing a worthwhile goal. The facts will fit. We’ll make them fit.”

Something in Miriam’s argument didn’t sit right with Tess. Lord knows, she was against domestic violence. Who wasn’t? But she believed in other things, too. Being truthful, for example, and not bending the truth toward any ideological end or purpose.

“You know, I did a little reading after I signed on with this board,” she began. Everyone looked surprised. The private detective can read. Whitney’s eyebrow was jumping so violently it looked like a facial tic. “And I found an interesting article, based on Justice Department statistics. The number of homicides that are classified as domestic violence haven’t gone down, not significantly, in twenty years.”

“So?” Miriam said. “Doesn’t that prove our point? This is a preventable crime, yet the numbers are not going down.”

“It would prove your point if nothing had been done in the last twenty years. But a lot has been done. Shelters have been built, laws changed. Yet for all this effort, the number of women killed by their partners has held remarkably steady. Why?”

Miriam’s good-humored tolerance of Tess had vanished. “Because we need more laws, more funding. I am tired of reading newspaper stories about men who kill women because they love them too much. That’s not love.”

She actually pounded the table as she spoke, and her husky voice grew shrill. Tess had a quick insight into the consortium’s political problems. If Miriam spoke this way to legislators, she’d never get what she wanted.

“Agreed,” Tess said. “I’ve always said when a brokenhearted man contemplates murder-suicide, he should do the suicide part first. We really are on the same side here. So let me ask you again: How did you get these names?”

Everyone stared at her blankly. That is, the women stared blankly, while Neal Ames gave the impression of someone trying to fake blankness.

“Did the people on this list seek help from you, or from any of your sister organizations, before they died? Is that how you got their names?”

A long silence, broken by Miriam Greenhouse. “Such things are confidential.”

“But you would know,” Tess pointed out. “You would have access.”

“The names were chosen at random,” Neal Ames said, “from online resources-newspaper databases, things like that.”

“So you said before. By an unpaid volunteer. But how does a volunteer end up including Julie Carter on the list? Right name, right age, right address, just no fatal bullet wound to the head. How does that mistake get made?”

“Some people are fallible, Miss Monaghan,” Ames said, his voice nasal with sarcasm. “You, for example, miscalculated your mileage. The going IRS rate is thirty-two and a half cents per mile.”

“Where did you get these names?” Tess repeated. “I can always ask the volunteer directly if you don’t know.”

“No, you may not,” Ames snapped. “You’d only harangue and harass her, and no one deserves that for the simple sin of trying to be helpful. May I remind you there are two more cases on your list? Why don’t you concentrate on those-do the work you’re actually paid for doing? You may yet find out something useful. I’m just sorry there’s no luxury hotel for you to visit up in Cecil County.”