“Please, could we cut to the chase, Mr. Kennedy?”

“John. Or Johnny, if you will.” The same high-pitched giggle came geysering out of him.

Tess pointed to the Time for a Haircut clock. “I hate to be strict, but in five minutes, if you haven’t explained why you’re here, my hourly fee is going to kick in. And I don’t charge in increments. In other words, you’re soon going to be paying me the equivalent of several place settings of Fiestaware.”

He looked thoughtful. “What color?”

“Mr. Kennedy.”

He held up his hands, as if to ward off a blow, although she had not spoken in a particularly loud or forceful voice. The greyhound hadn’t budged during the exchange.

“You may think it’s a petty beef. A man did me wrong in a business deal.”

Did me wrong. It struck her as an odd phrasing, better suited to a blues song than fenced goods.

“You underpriced something and someone took advantage of your ignorance?”

He shook his head, which made his chins wobble. He looked so soft he might have been sculpted from butter. She imagined him melting, à la the Witch in The Wizard of Oz. Then she imagined cleaning up the greasy little puddle he would leave behind.

“No, he sold me an item that was not what he said it was. The authenticity papers were forged.”

“And the item was-?”

“That’s not important.” He saw this was not going to satisfy her. “A bracelet. It had belonged to a young woman from a prominent family, or so he said. That was the part that proved to be a lie.”

“So? Caveat emptor applies to you, does it not?”

“He cheated me.” Mr. Kennedy squeezed his little hands into an approximation of fists, but his fingers were so short he could barely hold on to his own thumbs. Tess, five foot nine since age twelve, found small men amusing.

“Then sue him.”

“Litigation would bring no remedy and might do much harm.” He paused, waiting to see if she was following him. She wasn’t, but then, she wasn’t trying very hard. She could use a job, but she didn’t need this job.

“Any financial recovery I might make would be overshadowed by the damage to my reputation. It was a sophisticated forgery, quite cunning, and the best appraisers are caught from time to time, but still… my business depends on word of mouth. Besides, there was not a lot of money involved. I paid only one thousand dollars for the bracelet.”

Tess caught a little flash of daylight. “And how much did you think you could sell it for?”

The question irritated Mr. Kennedy, who huffed and puffed indignantly. “Obviously, one has to make a profit… If one wants full value for an item, let one take it to the marketplace himself and absorb all the costs, all the risks. I am not a currency exchange, I am not-”

“How much did you think it was worth, Mr. Kennedy?”

He sighed. “If the letter had been real, I would have taken it to auction in New York. Handled right, it would have brought in a nice sum-although not so much as if Princess Diana had worn it. Strange times we live in.”

“Who owned it? I mean, presumably who owned it?”

“Betsy Patterson.”

The name meant nothing to Tess, but she surmised it should.

“You might know her better as Betsy Bonaparte.”

She did, but not by much. “The Baltimore girl who married…”

“Jerome, Napoleon’s brother. The emperor later forced him to come home and marry someone more suitable. Still, if it had been true-” He made a fish mouth, as if to kiss good-bye his dream of an easy score. Something told Tess it was the only kind of kissing he got a chance to do.

“He cheated you.”

“Yes.”

“But if the letter had been authentic, you would have cheated him. Do you believe in karma, Mr. Kennedy?”

“I’m an Episcopalian,” he squealed.

Tess pinched the bridge of her nose. She was on the verge of a headache, something she usually experienced only via a hangover. “Please tell me what you think a private detective can do for you.”

“I believe the man who cheated me has a secret-a secret he would go to great lengths to protect. If I knew his secret, he would have to pay me the money he owed me. But it involves following him, and he would recognize me if I attempted that. I need a private detective to prove what I think is true.”

“Mr. Kennedy, you’re talking about blackmail, and I can’t be a party to it.”

He looked indignant. “How is it any different from tracking insurance cheats and adulterous husbands around town, snapping their pictures and turning them over to lawyers? Isn’t that a form of blackmail?”

She wondered how he had come to be so perceptive about the work that filled most of her hours. For every flashy headline-making case that had put Tess in the public eye for a few days, there were twenty basic no-brainer jobs that fit Mr. Kennedy’s thumbnail description. “Perhaps, but it’s legal.”

“Well, let’s say you verify my hunch and forget I told you why I wanted to know.”

“I can’t fake amnesia, Mr. Kennedy.” She was becoming interested in spite of herself. “But if you know this person’s secret, or think you do, why not bluff him?”

“I need proof, and I can only get the proof on one day of the year. Which happens to be the day after tomorrow at Greene and Fayette Streets, sometime between midnight and six a.m. January nineteenth.”

“You know the time, you know the place. Why not wait for him there?”

“As I told you, I’m not very good at being inconspicuous.”

She could see that. In the fedora and camel’s-hair coat he had worn to this interview, he resembled a beige bowling ball. And his prancing walk was unforgettable.

He looked at her slyly. “The date doesn’t mean anything to you, does it?”

“January nineteenth? Not offhand.”

“It’s the birthday of Edgar Allan Poe. And the night that the Visitor, the so-called Poe Toaster, comes.”

Tess knew this story. Everyone in Baltimore did. For more than fifty years now, someone had visited the old graveyard where Poe was buried, leaving behind three roses and half a bottle of cognac. No one knew the man’s identity. It had been suggested that the baton had passed, that a new Visitor came now, perhaps even a third one. Life magazine had photographed him one year, but from a respectful distance. It was one mystery no one wanted to solve. Unless-

“You think the man who cheated you is the Visitor?”

“As I said, I have no proof. But if I did…” He held his palms up in the air, but the gesture was not as charming as he had intended.

“But that’s sick. Why don’t you just drive around to area malls and tell kids waiting in line there’s no Santa Claus? What if you unmask the Visitor and he decides to stop? You’ll have ruined a beautiful tradition the entire city loves.” Even if few had ever seen it, including Tess. It was awfully cold on a January midnight. But she had read the dutiful accounts in the Beacon-Light every year. The visit was, in some ways, Baltimore ’s groundhog, a dead-of-winter ritual that held a promise of spring.

“I wouldn’t take the knowledge public. I’d simply use it to ensure he paid me what I’m owed. If I’m right,” he added. “I could be wrong, I suppose.”

“Which would only make it worse. The Visitor might be scared away for no reason.”

“It’s a childish custom, if you think about it.” Mr. Kennedy sniffed. “And it will end one day, for whatever reason. Everything ends. Does that woman still go to Valentino’s grave? Does Joe DiMaggio still send flowers to Marilyn Monroe, now that he’s dead? Everything peters out. A dramatic ending would be better. It would give people-what’s that hideous word?-closure. Might generate a few headlines for you as well, and you’ve never been averse to publicity.”

The last was untrue, unfair even. Tess loathed the media in the way only a former reporter could. The Beacon-Light had never written about her without getting at least one salient fact wrong, and it had given her four different middle initials over the years. As for free advertising, she had noticed that the bump of interest she received after any press attention, large or small, yielded little in actual work. The sort of people who picked a private investigator because her name had shown up in the morning paper were not people who thought things through with much care.