“So Nicola DeSanti hires Henry Dembrow, an addled spray paint addict, to kill her? Pretty far-fetched.”

So it was. Tess was going on her gut, and what did her gut know about anything? Pete and Repete weren’t likely to take a shine to any stranger who showed up at Domenick’s. They hadn’t threatened her because she had asked about Gwen, but because she came back, asking questions.

She tied a ribbon on the last basket, a Decadence Deluxe: John Waters’s essays, Tender Is the Night, which Fitzgerald had worked on while Zelda had been in and out of the local mental hospitals, a box of Rheb’s chocolate, and a bottle of Boordy, a Maryland wine.

“Sometimes,” Tyner said, “things really are what they appear to be. A stupid kid knocks down a girl, she cracks open her head. He runs. She dies. End of story.”

“Sometimes,” Tess said, agreeing, yet not. She was staring at the bow on the package. Why had Henry marked Gwen’s body, as if to send a message to someone? “And sometimes you just have to go back to the beginning, and start all over again.”

“Back to Locust Point?”

“No.” Funny, she had been speaking just to be speaking more or less. But Tyner’s question made her focus, made her see where the beginning was. “Back to the liquor board. That’s where I found the discrepancy in the license, where I found Arnie Vasso’s name in the file.”

It also happened to be where her father worked. Her father, who knew all about favors.

She found him at his desk the next morning, doing whatever he did at his desk. Funny how little she knew about his work. Liquor board inspector had always sounded so self-evident. Had she ever asked her father a question about his job beyond, “How was your day?” She didn’t think so.

Nor had she registered how impersonal his office was, for a man who had been in the same job, the same cubicle, for thirty years. The only touches he had added were three photographs. One of him with Senator Ditter at the annual Crisfield Bull Roast; a startlingly sexy photograph of her mother, when she was still Judith Weinstein; and an old photo of Tess, circa junior high. Taken during her plumpest period, it showed a girl with a face as round and shiny as a full moon, hair in two thick plaits. All she needed was a horned helmet and she’d have been Ring Cycle-ready.

“I really wish you’d get rid of that,” she said, as she had said every time she visited the office since it had appeared on his desk.

“It’s cute,” her father protested, truly perplexed. “You look so healthy.”

Presexual, he meant. Climbing trees instead of boys.

But she was still his little girl, even at five-nine and God knows how many pounds. Mindful of this, she edited carefully as she told him about the parts of her investigation that had touched on Domenick’s.

He was worried, even after hearing the P.G. version.

“Nicola DeSanti,” he said, shaking his head. “Jesus, Tess, she’s bad news.”

“I picked up that much.”

“Why are you still poking around, anyway? You did what Ruthie asked. Don’t get caught up in her sickness about Henry. It’s normal for family to want to think the best of family, but you don’t have to fall in.” He shook his head again. “Ruthie. She always was a pit bull when it came to her little brother.”

“Daddy.” He was usually Dad to her, sometimes Pop. He hadn’t been “Daddy” for twenty-five years. “Did you ever work that territory?”

“No.” It took him a second to get the intent behind the question, then he was wounded. “No. Jesus, Tess. You think I’d be mixed up with something like that? Thanks a lot. In fact, the territory belongs to one of the new guys, straightest arrow in the office. One of Dahlgren’s handpicked boys. Eric Collins. He doesn’t even drink.”

“It’s not drinking we’re talking about.”

“Look, I saw him this morning when I came in. Let me see if he’s still out there; you can talk to him yourself about Domenick’s.”

Her father’s office was a place entirely without distractions, not even a view. There was a window, but her father left it covered by heavy, old-fashioned Venetian blinds. Tess tried separating the blinds so she could peek through, but the window was so dirty that it might as well have been opaque.

“Here’s Eric,” her father said. “What do you want to ask him?”

The man was young, and earnest looking, with freckles and a cowlick. He wore gray trousers, Tess noticed, but then, so did her father. So did a lot of men in Baltimore.

“Have you picked up on anything at Domenick’s?” she asked him. “Any complaints, any hints that they’re doing something other than serving beer?”

He shook his head. “It’s one of the few places over there no one ever complains about. They close on time, they don’t make noise, they don’t serve underage kids.”

“What about the girls?”

“What girls? I’ve seen a barmaid here and there, but it’s not like they’ve got B-girls at the counter, trying to hustle guys for dollar drafts, or dancing on the tables. You’ve been there, you’ve seen it. It’s a neighborhood joint. Yeah, Nicola DeSanti may be running her rackets through it, but that’s not my problem, you know? I can’t even catch her paying off on video poker. And she’s death on drugs, I can tell you that much. She’s old-fashioned that way.”

“What about the fact that a dead man is listed as the owner?”

The young inspector rolled his eyes. “So, I haul them in, and next thing you know it’ll be her daughter or her cousin. Everyone knows how that works.”

A straight arrow, and not stupid, but uninterested in converting the rest of the world.

“Sorry, Tess,” her father said. “You’re not going to find any answers here. You may have to accept there are no answers, not to the questions you’re asking.”

She left, feeling dejected. It had seemed so promising. Gene Fulton fell into step beside her as she walked down the stairs to the street.

“Looking good, Tess,” he said. “I saw you on the television the other night.”

She was surprised to find him so determinedly chummy. She thought the bit about her imminent engagement would have killed his fleeting interest. Maybe she could show him the photo of herself in her father’s office. That should dampen any man’s ardor.

“Well, you know what they say, Mr. Fulton.” She deliberately avoided using his first name. “The camera adds ten pounds. But it’s good for business.”

“Guess you don’t get to take much time off, being self-employed and all. You working through the end of the year, or you going to give yourself a little holiday, hit the party circuit?”

Oh please, not an invitation. She was not up to the tact required to deflect an unwanted date.

“I thought I was going to be working, but now I’m not so sure. My dad says I’ve got a dog by the tail, and he just might be right.”

“Well-” they were down at the street now, and Gene had his keys out, twirling them in his fingers. “Give yourself a break. Take it easy. You’re young, you should be having fun.”

She braced herself, but there was no followup. He simply waved and crossed South Street to his car, parked illegally in a loading zone. A ticket was on the windshield, but it didn’t seem to bother him. Why should it? It was probably a point of honor with him that he could get his tickets fixed. Lord knows no one in Tess’s family had ever paid a parking ticket. Fulton took the white sheet from the windshield, crumpled it and threw it in the trash. Tess watched the maroon Mercury pull away from the curb and head down South Street.

Maroon. She remembered a car just that color. Granted, she had only seen the bottom six inches of fender, but it had been maroon. She darted across the street and found Fulton’s ticket, crumpled, but at least on top of the trash heap.

She knew before she checked that the license plate would match the one she had glimpsed yesterday in the alley behind Domenick’s, that she wasn’t going to have to drive to the MVA in Glen Burnie after all.