“They’re not that old,” Mrs. Hilliard said.
“Dated 1969,” Tess said of The Gold Bug.
“I mean, they’re not Bobby’s old things. He found them at a yard sale a few years back, when he was visiting. Bought the whole pile for five dollars, and you would have thought he found a diamond ring or something.”
Mrs. Hilliard hugged herself, as if she were cold, and averted her eyes. Tess sensed she didn’t like to see her son’s things touched, so she put the comic book back and continued to examine the room. Bobby had gone through a deco phase before he discovered the Victorian era, judging by the lamps and the framed Maxfield Parrish prints. The bed’s headboard was ornate, the bed itself piled with pillows in fresh white shams, as if the room’s owner were expected back sometime soon.
“It’s lovely,” Tess said, meaning only to be polite, but Mrs. Hilliard’s expression looked wounded.
“Yes,” she agreed reluctantly. Then: “Do you think he was ashamed of us?”
“What?”
“Bobby. Do you think he went off to Baltimore because he was embarrassed by this house? And by us, because we’re just farmers?”
“No,” Tess said firmly, forgetting she didn’t actually know Bobby Hilliard and had no insight into how he thought. “My guess is he moved away because he… because he wanted to pursue a kind of life he couldn’t have here.”
“Well, he could have gone to Pittsburgh, which is closer. It’s not like they don’t have gay men there too.”
Mrs. Hilliard smiled at the surprised look on Tess’s face. “We never spoke of it,” she said, “but I knew. And his father would have known too, if he wanted to. I’m not saying we understand it, and we were brought up in a church that says it’s a sin, but he was our son. We loved him. I was just waiting for a day when Bobby felt comfortable with who he was, because then I thought he might be comfortable with who we are and where he came from. That’s all.”
“I love your house.” Although Tess was being polite, she also was being truthful. “Old farmhouses are beautiful. So many of them have been ruined by ugly additions. I like the original shape: the peaked roof, the porch along the front. You haven’t painted over all the wood, as some people do, or put down carpeting over the wooden floors. You ought to see what allegedly well-intentioned people did to the place I bought.”
“Mmm,” Mrs. Hilliard said, not willing to be comforted or distracted. “I knew he stole. I didn’t want to say, in front of Webber.”
“From the library, you mean?”
“All his life. Here and there. Little things, things he couldn’t even use. He didn’t do it often, and when he did he was like a drunk falling off the wagon. He’d come in looking so tight and guilty, and then he’d ‘fess up, and I’d march him back to the store or the neighbor or the classmate he had stolen from. He always promised it wouldn’t happen again, and time would go by and I would begin to believe him. And then he’d do it again.”
“Did he tell you why he had to leave the Pratt?”
Mrs. Hilliard looked sad. “I guessed. I knew him. I knew his weaknesses. But I loved him.”
“So you believe he did what the police suspect. The burglaries, I mean.”
She sat in a Morris chair. “Uh-uh. Those men down in Baltimore, they say they lost television sets and stereos but nothing else. Bobby wouldn’t do that, see?
That’s what I told the police too-Detective Rainer and those two detectives who came up here, looking for things Bobby was said to have stolen. I let them go all over the place, and they saw for themselves there was nothing here. They wouldn’t listen.“
Tess detected nothing strange in this speech, but Mrs. Hilliard suddenly swallowed and stared at the floor, twisting the hem of her skirt in her knobby, hard-worked fingers. She swallowed a second time, her neck reddening.
“But there is something here, isn’t there?”
Mrs. Hilliard kept her eyes fixed on the floor.
“You can tell me, Mrs. Hilliard. I can keep secrets. I keep them for my clients all the time.”
“If we hired you, Webber and I, could you prove that television man told lies about Bobby? I know my son. He couldn’t hurt another person. I don’t know why someone killed him, but I know that much. He was a gentle boy.”
“I doubt I could help you with that,” Tess said. “It’s hard to prove a negative. To determine Bobby’s innocence, I’d have to figure out who’s guilty. Private detectives are expensive, Mrs. Hilliard, and the results aren’t guaranteed. You’re better off letting the police figure out what happened to Bobby.”
“But they don’t care about his reputation. It’s almost as if it’s better if he was a bad person, because then more people might have wanted to kill him. The detectives who came here, they said terrible things about Bobby, worse than what that television man said. They said he had stole lots and lots of things, but not all his victims had come forward. They told me if I knew anything about what he had done down in Baltimore, I’d better tell them. But I don’t. I really, really don’t.”
Again, she stared at the floor, and the red from her neck spread to her face, a fire out of control.
“Mrs. Hilliard, did you hold something back from the police? I might be able to help you make it right, work as a go-between. The longer you go, however, keeping things from them, the worse it will be.” Take it from an expert.
She got up and went to the closet. “There’s a piece of wood here that a plumber had to cut, to get to the pipe in the bathroom on the other side of the wall.” She spoke over her shoulder, her voice muffled by the clothes hanging on either side of her face. “Bobby always hid things here; he thought I didn’t know about it. But I knew. I looked there from time to time to make sure he didn’t have anything he shouldn’t have. When he sent me my Christmas gift, I put it here, first because I thought it was so valuable and then because… well, because if I didn’t show it to anyone, I didn’t have to face up to what it might be or how he came to have it.”
“I thought he sent you a vase and some perfume.”
“That was last Christmas.”
She emerged from the closet with a long jewelry box, still in its silver wrapping, a prefab ribbon stuck to the top. Inside was a bracelet, gold, with green stones. Could they really be emeralds? The piece was undeniably delicate and intricate, made with the kind of care and attention to detail that is rare now in all but the most expensive pieces.
“Bobby could have bought this with his own money,” Tess said, as if trying to convince herself. “It’s possible, if only because he might have been making money by stealing other things and fencing them.”
“He told me it belonged to a king’s wife. No, that’s not right. It belonged to someone’s sister-in-law. That’s right. Bobby said it would be a while before he could buy me something that had belonged to a real queen, but he promised he would someday.”
“Betsy Patterson Bonaparte,” Tess suggested, and saw the Pig Man sitting opposite her, swinging his feet, complaining languorously about the man who had cheated him. If he had been fooled by a fake bracelet, did it follow there was a real one? Had there been a germ of truth in all the lies Arnold Pitts had told?
“That’s right. I forgot the name, but I knew it as soon as you said it.”
Tess picked the bracelet up out of its cotton wrapping and held it to the light. She could not imagine killing for it. But then, she didn’t think any object was worth homicide. Would Arnold Pitts kill for something like this? No, he didn’t do his own dirty work. He tried to trick others into doing it for him.