Baltimore, Wrapped In Mystery

And then there's that whole "hon" thing. "It's complicated," she says. "It's very much a relic of white, working-class Baltimore. Nostalgia can be very charming, but there's a lot of stuff it covers over. There's history there and it's complicated and I never want to lose sight of that. You never want it to become too campy."

The working-class neighborhood of Hampden is the epicenter of camp, and that's on Lippman's list, too. But first we hit Fells Point, one of the oldest parts of the city, home to shops, restaurants, bars -- and, for a while, to Tess. Our goal: the Antique Man, a shop on Fleet Street, where the Giant Ball of String now resides. Owner Bob Gerber is in the process of moving his shop to a new location just down the block, but he agrees to let us take a peek at his new digs.

"Oh yeah," he says, "I'm gonna put the ball of string in the window." He says he paid $8,700 for it when Haussner's closed, because he couldn't bear the thought of the precious artifact leaving Baltimore. "It's a neat tribute to hard work." Lippman nods approvingly.

Gerber's shop is crammed with freak-show finds -- Kap-Dwa the giant mummy, shrunken heads, dirt from Edgar Allan Poe's grave, a stuffed raven, a four-legged chicken, a Siamese duck, a glove from a Freddy Krueger movie. An entire display case is devoted to Johnny Eck, the famous Half-Boy -- costumes, photographs, window-screen art.

"This is neat," Gerber says, pointing out a child-size coffin made of cast iron. "These are extremely rare." The intended occupant, he says, wound up living, so the coffin was never used.

As we leave the Antique Man, Lippman is happy. "I'm pretty sure not a lot of guidebooks will tell you about the ball of string and Johnny Eck."

We head up Broadway, into Johns Hopkins territory, stopping briefly at the Enoch Pratt Free Library on Cathedral, a beautiful space and a particular favorite of Lippman's. We check out the gilded birds on the facade of the Continental Trust Building at Baltimore and Calvert streets, where a young Dashiell Hammett worked as a Pinkerton detective. Some think the place inspired "The Maltese Falcon."

Then there's that other little-known Baltimore resident, Al Capone. Seems the notorious Chicago crime king lived here for a while as a young man, working as an accountant. He was treated for syphilis at Union Memorial Hospital and, in gratitude, donated a row of cherry trees, which still bloom today. True story. She swears.

On the way to Dickeyville, we hit a few more spots -- the Edgar Allan Poe House on Amity Street, H.L. Mencken's house in Pigtown, Loudon Park Cemetery and its touching memorial to a group of newsboys from the Baltimore Evening Sun, who drowned in a steamboat fire while on a newspaper outing in 1924.

And then we emerge from the suburbs into the old-fashioned mill village, which looks as if it were lifted intact out of a New England landscape circa 1800 and plunked down in western Baltimore. The community of 134 houses, about half an hour from downtown, once included three mills, stone and frame houses for mill workers and officials, schools, stone warehouses and churches. Now it's a much-sought-after neighborhood and national historic site. Lippman grew up here on Wetheredsville Road -- five doors down from the Monaghans, "the quintessential Baltimore family" that would be grist for the Tess books.

Driving on to the leafy neighborhood of Roland Park, we gaze admiringly at a sweet two-room bungalow nestled in the woods on a tiny street off Cold Spring Lane. "I wanted this house. I lusted after it." But she couldn't have it, so Tess got to move there when she left Fells Point. "Which means that Tess has a nicer address in Baltimore than I ever did."

The sun is low in the sky now, but there's one more treat in store, one last piece of hidden Baltimore. In the middle of Hampden, we turn onto a side street and suddenly we're in Stone Hill, one of those proverbial places out of time. The tiny enclave of weathered stone houses was built for the workers of the neighborhood's textile mills more than 150 years ago. You'd never find this place if you didn't know it was here. One of the little streets has never been paved.

"It's so rich," Lippman says as we head back downtown. "People expect that of a place like New York. But Baltimore?"

WHERE TO STAY: Laura Lippman likes the Admiral Fell Inn (888 S. Broad- way, Fells Point, 410-522-7377, http://www.admiralfell.com/), with rooms starting at $119 a night double. Another good option, she says, is the Quality Inn at the Carlyle (500 W. University Pkwy., 877- 424-6423, http://www.qualityinn.com/) on the city's north side; rooms start at $89.

The city's high-end hotel, the five-star Harbor Court (550 Light St., 800-824-0076, http://www.harborcourt.com/), sometimes has good specials, especially in winter months; a current deal starts at $159 a night double.

WHERE TO EAT: In addition to Matthew's Pizzaria (3131 Eastern Ave., Highlandtown; lunch for two about $15), Lippman likes the Helmand (806 N. Charles St.), for Afghan cuisine; Pazza Luna in Locust Point (1401 E. Clement St.) for Italian; and in Fells Point, the Black Olive (814 S. Bond St.), a Greek taverna next to the alleged site of Tess's first residence, with "amazing fresh fish."

SECRET PLACES: The national historic site of Dickeyville is on the western edge of the city, bounded on the north by Purnell Road; on the south by Windsor Mill Road; on the east by Forest Park Avenue, Pickwick Road, Sekots Road, Tucker Lane and Wetheredsville Road; and on the west by the Baltimore county line. Stone Hill, the little mill village, is four or five blocks south of downtown Hampden, bordered on the east by the 2900 and 3000 blocks of Keswick Road.

INFORMATION: Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association, 800-343-3468, http://www.baltimore.org/.

-- K.C. Summers