The day had started innocently enough. She had awakened to find two pairs of mournful brown eyes staring at her over the edge of the bed, and to feel twin puffs of warm doggie breath on her face, stereo smellivision. But while Esskay began romping excitedly the moment Tess blinked, Miata didn’t budge. Tess wondered if the dog was worrying about the comedown in her circumstances. Until recently, she had lived in one of the grandest town houses in Mount Vernon. Now, after a stint in doggie jail, she was in this modest little cottage. No wonder her depression wouldn’t lift.
Eye level with Miata, Tess took note of the dog’s elaborate collar for the first time-leather, with metal studs. Perhaps it was meant to make her look fierce, but the effect was of a society lady trying to punk out at some charity masquerade ball. The collar was too thick and it bunched up in the back, as if it couldn’t quite rest in the thick muscular folds there. Could it be-? Tess unfastened it, turned it over, and found… nothing. Clearly, recent events were making her as giddy and paranoid as any Hardy Boy or Happy Hollister. Looking for clues on dog collars, she thought scornfully. Hiding notes in oyster tins. Really, wasn’t it about time for Crow to sit up in bed and announce breathlessly that he thought he had seen smugglers wading through Stony Run Creek?
With a rueful laugh at her own expense, she got up, threw on her sweats, and leashed both dogs. Esskay was only slightly perturbed to discover they had to share the morning walk with this mournful newcomer. And when Esskay saw how the other dogs in the park fell back at the sight of her muscular companion, she practically pranced in delight. Oh, a bodyguard. Why didn’t you say so in the first place?
Miata’s gloom didn’t dissipate, however, although Tess thought she caught a wisp of a smile on the Doberman’s face when a small ratlike dog made a feint at the duo and Esskay lunged, teeth bared. A ferocious greyhound and a subdued Doberman. They made quite a pair.
“There’s a leash law, you know,” she told the woman who ran forward to grab the ugly little dog-rat, screaming as if Tess were to blame for its aggression.
“Only for those like you, who can’t control their dogs,” the woman said huffily. It was a familiar battle, if a new combatant, and Tess decided to move on. She wasn’t sure if men had Napoleon complexes, but dogs definitely did.
In winter, with the trees bare, the narrow paths through the park were open and one could see at a great distance. Tess found this comforting-no one, woman or beast or both, could sneak up on her here- and she walked farther than she had planned, all the way to the lacrosse museum on the edge of the Hopkins campus.
Cold and hungry by the time she made it back to her neighborhood, she stopped at the Daily Grind for a cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin, sharing the latter with both dogs while perched on the curb. Well, she shared it with Esskay. Miata appeared to be like one of those well-reared cloistered children who know nothing of sweet treats, who have been conditioned to clamor for carrots and regard chocolate with suspicion. She sniffed the muffin and turned her head. Esskay valiantly ate Miata’s piece as well.
So she estimated that thirty minutes-no more than forty-five-had passed by the time she arrived home, to find a piece of white paper under one of her Toyota’s windshield wipers. It couldn’t be a flyer, given its almost origamilike folds. Besides, her car was the only one along East Lane that had been so leafleted. Tess plucked the note from its resting space with her gloved hands, wondering why she no longer rated the fancy stationery. Could she have more than one helpful stalker? But rose petals drifted from the letter’s folds when she opened it, and the old-fashioned computer-generated font was the same as on the previous note.
From childhood’s hour I have not been As others were; I have not seen As others saw; I could not bring My passions from a common spring. And all I loved, I loved alone. Then-in my childhood, in the dawn Of a most stormy life-was drawn From every depth of good and ill The mystery which binds me stilclass="underline" From the torrent of the fountain, From the red cliff of the mountain, From the sun that round me rolled In its autumn tint of gold, From the lightning in the sky As it passed me flying by, From the thunder and the storm, And the cloud that took the form (When the rest of Heaven was blue) Of a demon in my view.
“I didn’t hear a thing,” Crow said apologetically, when she spread the note in front of him on the dining room table.
“Well, you didn’t get in until late last night, because you were at the Point.”
Crow booked the occasional music acts that played at her father’s restaurant-bar, and last night’s entertainment had featured some minor legend of a blues-man whose name Tess kept blanking on. Tess liked music, but she never quite got what it was with boys and guitars. Just as little boys would reach for a toy truck if offered an array of things to play with, big boys’ hands automatically grabbed guitars. Crow had at least three; Tess had even caught him in bed with his favorite, a 1963 Strat, one memorable night. Not playing it, just spooning it.
“Yeah, but”-he yawned, wrapping himself around her and enveloping her in the warm, yeasty smells of recent sleep-“I do feel as if I’m supposed to fill at least some of the stereotypical masculine roles around here.”
“I’ll settle for you telling me what this means.”
“I’m afraid it means your visitor is getting wordier yet more mysterious. The last note gave you a nice, explicit instruction. This one… I don’t know. He’s telling us he’s not like other boys, but I think we could have figured that out on our own.”
“”The mystery which binds me still,“” Tess murmured. “ ”A demon in my view.“ Tell me I should turn this over to Rainer. Tell me I shouldn’t worry about the Pig Man’s threats-funny, even now I know his name I can’t help thinking of him as the Pig Man. Tell me what to do, if you want to be the stereotypical alpha male in my life.”
“Tess, I don’t want to be the alpha male, and I gave up a long time ago trying to tell you anything. You’ll do what you want, when you want. You’ve got good instincts, when you don’t think so much. What’s your gut say?”
She gave his question careful and literal consideration. “That a blueberry muffin is not enough to keep me going until lunch. And that I’m lucky to have a friendly librarian in my corner.”
“Kitty?”
“No, I was thinking of my newfound connection in the Poe room.”
Daniel Clary agreed to meet with Tess, but not at the library.
“I’m flattered to be your consultant, but I don’t think I can rationalize doing this on the city’s time,” he told her over the phone later that morning. “It will have to be in the evening.”
“Should I come to your home, then?” Tess asked. When he hesitated, she realized how thick she was being-Daniel, scrimping on a librarian’s salary, was probably counting on another free meal, maybe even a few Morettis. “I’ll bring takeout. Pizza or Thai food or Chinese, or even Afghan: whatever you like. What do you like?”
“Pizza, I guess. Anything fancy would be wasted on me.”
“I’ll bring some beer, too.”
“That would be nice,” he said, in the artless tone of a child who’s trying not to reveal how much he wants a certain treat, and Tess resolved to procure something truly special, perhaps the winter lager from the Baltimore Brewing Company or a six-pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.
Daniel lived in lower Charles Village, in a carriage house behind one of the few detached homes in that genteel-shabby neighborhood near the Johns Hopkins campus. The owner landlord, who lived in the Victorian-gingerbread main house, had lavished much attention on his domain, using a cunning combination of unexpected colors-peach and beige and pale yellow, with touches of violet and green-to great effect. The carriage house was meant to be a duplicate, not unlike a custom-made doll’s house, repeating the color scheme of its parent. But the work here had been hastier, the colors layered with less subtlety. The result was a small sheepish place, a little boy tugging at the collar of his Sunday best and yearning for his blue jeans.