Charm City (17 page)

The file was thick with papers, but in the
end it shed little light on the marriage or its dissolution. Linda had
petitioned for the divorce on grounds of irreconcilable differences and
mental cruelty, but made no mention of Wink's physical
cruelty. Well, alimony was more common at the time; maybe Linda
didn't need to drag Wink through the dirt to get the
financial settlement she wanted. Although the two had no children, she
was to receive $500 a month, as long as she lived. That
wasn't so much. What had Lea been complaining about?

Tess paged through the file. There was a
revised order from five years ago, upping the alimony order to $20,000
a month. And the revised order included a rider that stipulated that in
the event of Wink's death, his estate would continue to
support Linda through an irrevocable trust, an annuity independent of
any life insurance policy. So the first Mrs. Wink was better off than
the second, since Wink had killed himself.

She looked at the date again. Right around
the time Wink had remarried. Was Wink afraid his first wife would
scuttle his marriage to Lea if he didn't give her what she
wanted? Had the first Mrs. Wink used his abuse to blackmail him into
higher payments? And once the abuse became public knowledge, did Wink
no longer have a reason to honor this commitment?

Tess checked Wink's name in the
criminal system. He had no record for assault, but that
wasn't a surprise. Prosecutors had only recently started
pursuing cases where wives wouldn't testify against abusive
husbands. The city police department hadn't even kept
separate statistics on domestic violence until 1994. During
Wink's first marriage, it was likely that the cops
who'd answered calls to the house hadn't considered
domestic violence a crime. They had probably taken Mrs.
Wink's statement, then taken a beer from Wink, laughing with
him.
Dames, Broads. Bet she was on her period
.

What had really happened between Wink and
his first wife? Kitty, who had been married for exactly six weeks in
her twenties and seldom spoke of it unless she had too much to drink,
liked to say there were only two people who knew the truth about any
marriage.

In Wink's case, there was now only
one.

T
here
were only two Wynkowskis listed in the Baltimore phone book and Tess
had already made the acquaintance of the first. The second, Linda
Stolley Wynkowski, lived in Cross Keys, one of the city's
first gated communities. An understated cluster of townhouses and
high-rise condos on the city's north side, Cross Keys over
the years had attracted such disparate individuals as John Dos Passos,
onetime NAACP director Ben Chavis, and—most impressive to
Tess—the original
Romper Room
teacher, Miss Nancy. Tess still had a soft spot for
Romper
Room
, despite the fact that the Magic Mirror
never saw a Tess, or even a Theresa, in all the years she watched.

She had not called ahead. It was so much
harder to say no to a face than it was to a voice, especially someone
who looked as harmless as Tess. Her mother might have despaired of her
hair and clothes, but mild dishevelment worked for Tess. She looked
like a jock, or jockette, and people equated jocks with stupidity, or
at least a certain rah-rah thickness. It wasn't flattering
for people to assume you were dumb, but it was often an advantage.

Sure enough, the building's front
desk clerk—Karl the concierge, according to his name
tag—was positively chummy when Tess asked him to ring Mrs.
Wynkowski's apartment.

"I should have made an
appointment, but I happened to be in the area and it is terribly
urgent," she said, then lowered her voice.
"It's about her ex-husband's
will."

As she had hoped, the concierge was the type
of young man who loved being taken into one's confidence.

"You just missed her,"
he said in an affected, campy voice, his eyebrows twitching in a way
that suggested his every utterance arrived with an overcoat of irony.
"Wednesday is Octavia day."

"Excuse me?"

"At least, I think it's
Octavia day. Or is it Ruth Shaw day? I do have trouble keeping them
straight."

"She alternates Octavia and Ruth
Shaw," said the doorman, who was leaning against the front
desk, seeking refuge from the day's sleety rains.
"Octavia or Ruth Shaw on Wednesday, Jones & Jones
Thursday, the shoe store on Friday, Betty Cooke jewelry from the Store,
Ltd., on Saturday. I know because she always has the packages dropped
off later, and I have to carry 'em up to her
apartment."

"And on the seventh day, she
rests," Karl said. "But only because the stores in
Cross Keys are closed on Sunday."

"The malls are open,"
Tess said. "If she's such a shopaholic, she could
go find plenty of other places to go."

"True, in theory," Karl
the concierge said. "But in practice, Miz Rhymes-with-Witch
never leaves Cross Keys. Hasn't been off the reservation in
years, to my knowledge. Says everything one needs can be found right
here—shops, restaurants, the tennis barn. Doesn't
need a gas station because she never takes her car out of the garage.
And she may be the only person in America who doesn't own a
VCR, because you can't rent videotapes in Cross Keys. Thank
God for cable and pay-per-view, or she wouldn't even know who
Brad Pitt is, and that would be truly tragic."

Tess glanced at a framed Christmas
photograph of Karl, a heavy-set woman, and five children who favored
him, with their lean builds and mean little mouths.

"I'm getting the
impression you don't like Mrs. Wynkowski very
much," she said.

"
Moi
?
Dislike anyone? Why, I adore the woman, especially at Christmastime,
when she gives me
ten whole dollars
for all the little extra services she expects through the year. You
trot over to Octavia and I'm sure you'll see just
how charming Miz Rhymes-With-Hunt Cup can be."

The shopping center at the heart of Cross
Keys was small and set on an open plaza, an arrangement that seemed
quaint and dated in this age of malls. Tess did not see how its dozen
or so shops could keep one busy for a single day, much less fill six
days a week.

There were no customers in Octavia and the
sales clerks were too dispirited by the gloomy day to force themselves
on Tess. She held a plain black dress in front of her, glancing at its
price tag. Too rich for her blood, but then, she wasn't
guaranteed $20,000 a month for life. As she returned the dress to the
rack, a frosted, frosty blonde stalked out of the dressing room in a
bright turquoise suit and stocking feet.

"Marianna," the blonde
whined. "Marianna, this doesn't hang right. The
jacket should be more fitted through the waist, don't you
think?"

"Would you like to have it
altered, Mrs. Wynkowski? You know we're always glad to have
alterations done for you."

"I don't know.
I'm not sure the color is right, either. And it feels awfully
heavy for a summer-weight wool." Glumly, she walked over to a
rack of suits and began shoving the clothes back and forth as if she
wanted to punish them for not being exactly what she wanted.

Studying her, Tess again was struck with the
sense that Wink had gotten his wives in the wrong order. Here was what
one expected in a second wife—a bottle blonde, pampered and
reconfigured. If something could be painted, tugged upward, or filled
with plastic, Linda Wynkowski had tended to it. And unlike Lea, her
eyes were not red and underscored by black circles. She
hadn't been losing sleep lately.

"None of these is
right," the first Mrs. Wink muttered to herself. "I
hate all these Easter egg colors they're showing this
year."

"What about this?" Tess
held out the black dress, whose only real distinction was its price.
"This would look great on you."

The first Mrs. Wink snatched the dress from
Tess's hands. "Not bad," she agreed.
"But I probably have fifteen black dresses. I'm not
sure I need another one."

Fifteen black dresses,
yet she never left Cross Keys? Why did she need even one
?

"You're Linda Wynkowski,
right?" Tess asked. "Actually, I came here looking
for you. We need to speak."

Linda frowned slightly, then willed her face
back into blankness, as if conscious of the wrinkles caused by too much
animation.

"About what?"

"The annuity, which guarantees
your alimony, now that Wink is dead."

"Are you from the insurance
company? You should be talking to my lawyer, not me. He'll
explain how it works. No matter what else Wink owes, I still get my
money. That was the point."

Tess allowed the misunderstanding to stand.
"His wife says—"

"The little breeder?
She's nuts. You'd think I'd stolen her
husband instead of the other way around, that girl is so jealous of
me." Without a trace of self-consciousness, Linda began
disrobing in the store, unbuttoning the turquoise jacket and exposing a
royal blue slip with lace inserts. "Look, if you wanna keep
talking about this, you better come into the dressing room with
me."

Tess followed Linda to a curtained cubicle
with a chintz-covered chair and at least a dozen outfits, most of them
wadded up and left on the floor.

"What's your problem
with Lea?" Tess asked, as Linda quickly stripped down to her
camisole and pantyhose. Although thin and surgically improved, her body
had the soft, oily sheen and consistency of Brie at room temperature.
"Your marriage to Wink was long over before she showed
up."

"I don't have a problem
with her. She has a problem with me." Linda looked Tess up
and down. "Are you one of her lawyers, trying to figure out
how to break the annuity? Don't waste your time.
It's air-tight. Besides, it's not my fault Wink
offed himself and she won't get anything from the life
insurance. Maybe she should have made him happier, you know what I
mean, and then he wouldn't have been so quick to take a
one-way trip in his Mustang."

Tess decided trying to fake an identity
would be too complicated. "I'm not a lawyer, and
I'm not from an insurance company. I work for the
Beacon-Light
,
where I was …double-checking some of the files on your
husband today. I saw your alimony had been increased several years
after the original divorce decree. That's a pretty unusual
arrangement, and I thought there might be some explanation."

Linda slipped a cashmere turtleneck over her
head, then stepped into a knee-length plaid skirt, apparently her own.
"Let's just say Wink finally did the right thing by
me. About five years ago, I was diagnosed as an agoraphobic and
couldn't work anymore. He came through for me. I asked him to
set up the trust because I always had a hunch Wink would die before I
did. I didn't expect it to happen this soon."

"Lea told me she and Wink were
really strapped. She thought you might have coerced him into signing
that agreement."

"Lea shouldn't try and
think," Linda said. "She'll get dents in
her adorable young forehead."

"Did Wink threaten to cut you off
after the story came out and the secrets of your marriage were exposed?
Did he tell you all bets were off?"

Linda Wynkowski smiled strangely.
"If anything, the stakes were higher than ever after the
story came out."

"Did you talk to the
Beacon-Light
?
Were you the source?"

Linda's eyes remained fixed on her
image in the mirror. "Wink and I had an agreement to never
discuss our marriage with anyone. I kept
my
part of it. I told that other girl from the
Beacon-Light
that I wouldn't comment at all."

"The article said you
didn't deny the charges."

"Well, it was half right. I told
her I wouldn't confirm or deny anything she asked me about my
time with Wink. Funny, how much it changes the meaning, losing a word
here and there. I called Miss Ruiz to complain and she told me the
error had been edited into the story and she would ask for a
correction. I'm not holding my breath. I've lived
in Baltimore all my life, I know how arrogant the
Beacon-Light
is."

One of the sales clerks opened the curtains
and gave an involuntary cry when she saw Linda and Tess ankle-deep in
hundreds of dollars of clothes. "Oh, Mrs. Wynkowski,
couldn't you at least put the dresses over the chair? You
know I'm glad to hang them for you when you're
done, but we can't have them on the floor."

To Tess's amazement, Linda shoved
roughly past the young woman, knocking her into the wall, then stepping
down hard on her foot.

"The customer is always
right," she called over her shoulder, as tears came to the
clerk's eyes. "Didn't anyone ever tell
you that?"

On the way back to the
Blight
,
Tess puzzled over what Linda Wynkowski had told her. Despite her
antipathy toward Rosita, she knew editors did insert errors into
stories. And people often complained of being misquoted when what they
really had was a bad case of interviewee's remorse. Possibly
Rosita had confused Linda with a jumble of reporting jargon:
on
background, off the record, not for attribution
.
Given that most reporters couldn't agree on the meaning of
those terms, it was impossible for a civilian to understand. But Linda
had seemed quite definite that she had told Rosita she would neither
confirm nor deny. She was right: dropping one word made a lot of
difference in that quote. She had offered a no comment; Rosita had
twisted it into serving her needs.

As Tess got off the elevator on the third
floor, Feeney got on, barely glancing at her. She darted back in at the
last second, the elevator doors bouncing off her shoulders.

"It's funny, Feeney.
You're one of two people I know in this whole building and
you're the one person I never see or hear from. Whitney at
least sends me electronic greetings and drops in."

Feeney studied his shoes. Penniless penny
loafers, as usual. Worn with no socks, as usual. "This
basketball story has taken over my life. It's like a greased
boa constrictor. It twists, it turns, and just when I think
I've got it pinned down, it turns out the snake's
about to swallow
me
."

"Does Baltimore still have a
chance to get a team?"

"Maybe. The deal has lost a lot of
momentum since Wink's death, although there's
actually more real money connected to it, now that the Tucci family has
decided to put its full weight behind it. With Paul as the majority
partner, the family is willing to put up a lot more than before. But
money isn't everything. Wink may not have brought that much
money to the table, but he did have cunning and charisma, something
Paul Tucci can't fake. Tucci's not exactly the
brightest light on the Christmas tree. Why do you think he's
still not a full partner in his father's business?"

The elevator had reached the first floor.
Tess walked outside with Feeney, determined to prolong their
conversation. She wanted to bring him around to his phony alibi, the
lie that had her wrestling with her own greased boa constrictor, but
she knew better than to be too direct or confrontational.

"What a difference a week makes.
Last time we talked, you were delivering the eulogy for your own
career. Remember?"
The night you lied
about your whereabouts, and dragged me into this whole mess
.

Feeney made a strangled noise, half-grunt,
half-laugh.

"Then comes what your publisher
likes to call the ‘unscheduled publication'
and—
bam
—everything
starts falling into place. The first story leads to the tip from the
guy in Georgia and you suddenly have the story of your
career."

"And Wink is dead."

"How did you get there so fast the
night Wink died, then get the story in the paper? It must have happened
right on deadline."