by Angela Henry
When I got to the lounge across from the intensive care unit, Alex was there consoling an older woman who looked to be in her mid- fifties. Clara Mills was Joy’s aunt, her mother’s older sister. She must have dressed hurriedly because her denim skirt and white blouse were wrinkled and her thick graying hair was mussed. She looked not only emotionally drained but physically exhausted and had dark circles under her eyes. Alex introduced us but I may as well not have been there. She vaguely nodded at me and stared straight ahead.
“Her two daughters are on their way. Joy’s in surgery now. She has some internal bleeding and a head injury.” He shook his head, indicating silently that things weren’t looking good. He gestured me over to the drinking fountain. Joy’s aunt continued to stare into space as a single tear slipped down her cheek.
“I just can’t believe it. How could this have happened? Gwen said Joy was out on Commerce Road. Is that true?” My dislike for Joy wasn’t as strong as Gwen’s but we both agreed on one point: she didn’t deserve what happened to her, and I didn’t want her to die.
“No one knows what she was doing out there. Some old man with a paper route found her about five this morning. I don’t know how long she lay out there. It could have been all night,” Alex said. His voice was thick with emotion.
“I can stay here with Mrs. Mills until her daughters get here if you want to go get some coffee or fresh air.” I knew that Alex hated for people to see him without his emotions in check.
“Thanks,” he said and headed down the hall.
I walked back into the lounge. I noticed for the first time that it smelled like stale cigarette smoke. Some of the furniture had cigarette burns in it. I would have thought that being across the hall from a place as serious as the intensive care unit, the lounge would have been a more cheerful place with brighter colors, instead of this drab tweed-and-plastic decor.
“Can I get you anything, Mrs. Mills?” I asked. She shook her head no and looked down at her hands in her lap.
I picked up an old copy of People magazine and half-heartedly started flipping through it.
“How do you know my niece?” she asked suddenly in a surprisingly deep voice for a woman.
“We both hostess at my uncle Alex’s restaurant.”
“Are you a friend of hers?”
“No, ma’am, I’m not.”
The older woman sighed heavily.
“Joy’s never been good at making friends. She runs everyone away. I can’t blame her for that though. It’s all her mother’s fault. I loved my little sister but she was an unfit mother. Rita never wanted Joy. She was too busy running around with some man to be any kind of a mother. She was always putting her boyfriends before Joy. The only time she paid any attention to that child was when she wanted to impress somebody and didn’t want them thinking she was a bad mother. And if it wasn’t some man, it was her business. Men and that damn coffee shop of hers. Everything came before Joy.”
“I understand Joy’s mother is dead.”
“Committed suicide when Joy was barely fifteen. It was an overdose of sleeping pills. All over some man. The woman never did have a bit of sense. When things got bad she always took the easy way out, leaving everyone else to clean up the mess.”
I got the impression that everyone else meant her and her alone.
“So, you took Joy in?”
“She moved here from Cincinnati. She hates it here. I did the best I could. Of course, the damage was already done. Joy was a sullen, moody, and argumentative girl. She loved to pick fights and start trouble. It was like she wanted everyone to be as miserable as she was. It got to the point where she’d become a problem in my home. I thought seriously about putting her in foster care. Then her art teacher at school recognized her talent for painting and really encouraged her. After that, things changed. She was never sweetness and light but she was a lot better. Now it may be all over,” she said with a sob.
I started to go to her and put my arm around her when two young women hurried into the lounge. I could immediately see the resemblance. They quickly came to the older woman and embraced her. Mrs. Mills introduced me to her daughters, and I left them to hope and pray in private.
I met Lynette for lunch at Wendy’s across the street from Willow Federal Bank where she worked. I gave her the rundown on everything that had been happening.
“Have you heard from Carl?” she asked.
“No, but it’s only Monday. It’s too soon to start considering myself blown off. Mama thinks I should stay away from him anyway until Jordan’s murder is solved,” I said, spooning some Frosty into my mouth.
“Do you know how many murders go unsolved? Then what are you supposed to do? Kendra, call that man. He and Vanessa are getting a divorce. Why would he want to kill Jordan?”
I didn’t mention anything about Vanessa being pregnant.
“I just wish I knew more about Jordan’s past. There has to be a key to this somewhere.”
“Why don’t you ask Bernie?”
“Bernie hasn’t been very forthcoming on the subject of Jordan. Besides, I don’t think she knows much more herself.”
“What about possessions? Where are all his private papers and things?”
“I really don’t think the man had much by way of possessions. Nothing except clothes, shoes, and that car of his. The police probably have everything that he owned...” It suddenly dawned on me that Jordan’s car had been in the shop at the time of his death. Could it still be there? Was there any valuable evidence in it? I knew that Jordan had used Frank Z’s Auto Body once when he had a fender bender several months ago. I’d run into him when I was picking up my car. Someone had rear-ended me in the parking lot at work. It wouldn’t hurt to go to Frank Z’s and check it out.
Frank Z’s was on Fairmont Street. The garage itself is next to the house where Frank Zucker and his family live. It’s a small business run by Frank, his son, and his brother-in-law. They’re the best auto body repair shop in town but they’re expensive. The person who hit me had great insurance, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to afford Frank Z’s.
I parked in front of the house and walked around back to the garage. I looked to see if I could see Jordan’s car anywhere. It was a navy blue Jaguar that had been his pride and joy. Bernie told me he wouldn’t let anyone drive it, including her. It was an older model, a classic. I spotted Frank Zucker emerging from the garage in dirty white overalls. He was a short, squat, white man in his late sixties with a bushy mustache and thick snow-white hair. He smiled when he spotted me.
“How can I help you, miss?” He didn’t seem to remember me. Good.
“A friend of mine is selling his car. He said he already had about a dozen people interested in it and would be letting people look at it after it was out of the shop. I wanted to be first in line with an offer, so I decided to come see it while it was here.” I should have come up with a better excuse before I came. It sounded stupid even to my ears.
“Your friend should have called first to let me know. I don’t usually let people wander around my garage. This is an auto body repair shop not a showroom.”
“Oh, I understand that. I guess I also wanted to know what was wrong with it. He’s going to add the repair cost to the price of the car.”
“Whose car is it?”
“Jordan Wallace. He has a navy blue Jag.”
“Oh, that car,” he looked at me quizzically. “Miss, were you aware that the owner of that car was killed a week or so ago? The police impounded that car last week.”
I feigned shock. “Are you serious! I’ve been out of town for a couple of weeks. Just got home this morning. I had no idea.”
“Yep, got himself murdered. Had a beautiful car though. It was a pleasure working on it.” I heard a phone ring back in the garage. “Excuse me, I have to get that.” I watched him sprint off to get the phone. He could move fast for an old guy.
I should have known the car was gone. I walked back to my car. There was a boy crouched
down next to my car on the driver’s side. At first I just saw the top of his head. As I approached, he looked up at me. His face was ablaze with acne. He was dressed in dirty jeans and a black T-shirt. He looked about sixteen. I stopped dead in my tracks, uncertain about what to do and what this kid wanted. For a minute I thought he was slashing my tires.
“Ma’am,” he whispered, “could I talk to you a second, please?” He gestured for me to crouch next to him. I looked at him like he was crazy.
“Just pretend like you’re tying your shoe,” he said, looking around cautiously.
Against my better judgment I crouched next to him.
“Are you a friend of that guy who got killed?”
“Yes. What’s this about and why are we crouching like this?” I asked, feeling like a complete idiot.
He pulled a black leather case from behind him and set it next to me.
“This belongs to him. The dead guy. I ain’t no thief. It’s just that my car got broken into a while back and they got my CD player and all my CDs. I just borrowed that guy’s CD’s to listen to while I was working. He had some pretty cool tunes. Next thing I know, he’s dead and the cops came and got the car. I never got a chance to put the case back. Please don’t tell my grandfather, he’d kill me.” The kid was almost in tears.
“What’s your name?”
“Josh Zucker.”
“All right, Josh, your secret’s safe with me.” I picked up the case and stood.
“Thanks, lady,” he said, standing and looking around. He started to walk away when I stopped him.
“Hey, do you know what kind of work he was having done on his car?”
“Yeah, somebody took something, probably keys, and scratched the word murderer on the hood. Kinda spooky, huh, since he got killed? It was pretty deep too. We had to strip the entire car and repaint it so the paint would match. They don’t make the original paint anymore. I don’t understand why anyone would mess up a sweet car like that.”
I went back to the hospital to see about Joy. She was out of surgery and was still listed in serious condition but was hanging on. Alex had gone back to the restaurant. Joy’s aunt went home to rest. Her daughters were still at the hospital. Candace Mills and her sister, Rachel, looked just like their mother. But, where Clara Mills looked tired and frumpy, her daughters were stunning. Candace, the youngest, was the more talkative of the two. She’d come straight from work and was dressed in a lemon-yellow suit and wore her hair even shorter than mine. Rachel, the oldest, was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, her long hair in a braid down her back. She was as friendly as her sister but in that condescending way that some attractive people have of relating to their less-than-fortunate peers. Both women had beautiful skin the color of a new penny.
We made small talk for a while and I found out that Candace was twenty-three and a sales rep for a medical-supply company and Rachel was twenty-five and in law school.
“Thanks for sitting with Mom earlier. She’s really torn up over this. If Joy doesn’t make it, it will just kill her,” Candace said. Rachel nodded in agreement. I couldn’t help but notice that neither one of them looked too distraught over the thought of losing Joy. It must have been hard for them to have a sullen, hostile Joy come to live with them. It must have also been hard for Joy to live with these two beautiful girls. It would have been enough to give anyone a complex.
“Are you very close to your cousin?”
Both young women shifted uncomfortably.
“Not really,” Rachel said. “Joy’s not an easy person to be close to. Even when you think you’re getting close to her, she’ll do something to push you away. It’s all Aunt Rita’s fault. If she hadn’t been running around with all those men, Joy wouldn’t be the way she is.”
“Which way is that?” I asked, suddenly annoyed. Rachel was twirling her braid around her finger and looking down her nose at me. Her sister gave her a slight and not-very-subtle nudge under the table.
“What she means is,” Candace said, glaring at her sister, “Joy had it rough growing up. She had a wall built around her. We tried to do the close-family thing. You know, treat her like another sister. But Joy was never interested, and after a while we sort of gave up. Besides, Joy was always so obsessed.”
“With what, her painting?”
“No, with the man who murdered her mother.”
“I thought her mother committed suicide.”
“She did, but the man she was engaged to at the time left her at the altar. He also ran off with most of her money. After that, Aunt Rita got real depressed. She lost her coffee shop. About three months later, she took an overdose of sleeping pills. As far as Joy’s concerned, it was murder all the same.”
“Was he ever seen again?”
“No,” they both said simultaneously.
Rachel got up from the table, suddenly bored with the topic of Joy, and asked us if we wanted anything from the vending area. We said no and she left the lounge.
“You’ll have to excuse my sister. She and Joy have never even been remotely close. Joy and I always got along better but that’s only because we stay out of each other’s way.”
“So, no one ever saw the fiancé again?”
“To be perfectly honest, Joy thought she saw him all the time. She’d get so worked up over it that it scared me. All she talked about was making him pay for what he did to her mother.”
“Do you think she really saw him?”
“Who knows? They were living in Cincinnati when all this happened. I can’t imagine what he’d be doing here in Willow.”
“Did you ever meet him?”
“No. We went to Cincinnati for the wedding. That was going to be the first time we were going to meet him. He never showed up.”
Clara Mills arrived looking a little rested. We told her there was no change in Joy’s condition. I started to leave when I overheard Mrs. Mills ask her daughter Rachel if she would go to Joy’s apartment to feed her fish.
“Ma, you know what a horrible neighborhood she lives in. I’m afraid to go over there,” Rachel said in a whiny voice that set my teeth on edge.
“Don’t look at me, either,” said Candace Mills. “Last time I was over there my rims got stolen.”
“I’d be happy to do it, Mrs. Mills,” I said, and couldn’t help but notice the relief on the faces of all three Mills women. Clara Mills thanked me and gave me the key.
Joy’s apartment was in a rundown complex ambitiously called Green Meadow Estates located about four blocks from Kingford College in an area that can best be described as the armpit of Willow. It was a brick four-story building with six small units on each floor. Joy lived on the second floor. Rap music was blaring out of one unit. There was a couple practically having sex in the stairway who looked very annoyed at being interrupted as I excused myself and sidestepped them. Joy’s unit was B6.1 let myself in and was surprised at how neat it was. One whole end of the tiny apartment had been turned into a studio, which explained the slight odor of paint and turpentine. The other end had a living room area with a couch that turned into a rollaway bed. Off the living room was a kitchenette.
Joy’s strange and colorful artwork adorned every wall. There were paintings of headless men, strange birds with women’s heads, and lots of paintings of mouths, some screaming, some bound with tape or gags, none of them smiling. Joy was one weird, angry chick.
I quickly found the small aquarium and shook some fish food into it. I watched Joy’s tropical fish greedily flock to the top of the tank. The water in the tank looked murky, and I wondered if I should clean it while I was there. The apartment needed some fresh air. I walked over to the biggest window in the place, which was at the end with Joy’s studio. She must have taken advantage of the light from that window. I noticed that there was a painting on the easel covered by a sheet, as well as a pile of paintings on the floor by the window. I resisted the urge to look under the sheet and opened the window a few inches to let some fresh air in. Then I went into the bathr
oom off the kitchen.
The bathroom was tiny with a sink, a mirrored cabinet over it, a toilet, and a shower stall. The Mickey Mouse shower curtain was pulled shut. There were snapshots taped all over the walls. There were pictures of a young smiling Joy with a woman. Judging from the woman’s resemblance, I figured it was Joy’s mother. One picture in particular caught my eye and I froze. It was taped to the bathroom mirror. In it was a teenaged Joy, no longer smiling; her mother, who was beaming; and a man who was also smiling his familiar shark’s tooth grin. It was Jordan Wallace.
I took a closer look at the picture. It looked as if someone had taken an ink pen and drawn an X across Jordan’s face. I wondered if Joy or her mother had done it. I didn’t have time to wonder for very long.
I saw in the mirror that the shower curtain behind me shook slightly. I whirled around just as a man jumped out of the shower. He was an older man, possibly in his mid-fifties. He looked wild. His graying hair was in thick, long dreds hanging almost to his shoulders. He was thin, wiry, and dressed in black sweats and raggedy tennis shoes. He reeked of liquor. For one tense moment we stared at each other. Then suddenly he grabbed me, shoving me hard through the bathroom door. I landed on my back on the kitchen floor. The impact of my landing knocked the breath out of me before I could scream. The intruder sprinted toward the door for his getaway and in his haste stepped on my fingers. I cried out, clutching my hand to my chest. I rolled over on my stomach and saw the intruder collide with a young woman as he ran out the door. She dropped the book bag she was carrying and fell sideways against the doorjamb. I stood nursing my injured fingers. The girl was holding her arm. We stared at each other a moment before she asked me who the hell I was and what was I doing in her apartment. She thought the intruder was with me. I explained otherwise.