by Jen Blood
He shook his head and nodded toward the house. “Go on, then. Johnny’s on the deck.”
“Is Lisette here?” I asked.
“She had a headache—she doesn’t like this scene anyway, usually stays away. She’s at the house in Portland tonight.”
“Oh,” I said. Damn.
“Maybe we could go there after,” Solomon said.
“Maybe,” Wolf said. It didn’t sound like maybe so much as, ‘not in this lifetime.’
We started to go. Wolf grabbed my arm at the last second and pulled me back. “You want to think long and hard about stepping into this world—especially with your friend.”
“We’re not stepping into any world,” I said. “I’m just here for the booze and conversation.”
He shook his head at me again and waved us on.
◊◊◊◊◊
Just as Wolf promised, we found Johnny on a wraparound deck surrounded by a knot of partygoers—most of them women. Few, if any, were older than Solomon. A couple of them wore dresses, but most had stripped to bikinis.
“I thought you said this was what people would be wearing,” Solomon whispered to me as we stepped onto the deck. “I’m feeling very overdressed all of a sudden.”
“Just keep it that way and we’ll be fine.”
There was a hot tub on one end of the deck, overflowing with people. Solomon glanced over and quickly looked back at me. “Holy shit,” she whispered. “You know they’re having sex in there?”
I swallowed a smile. “I thought you’ve been to lots of parties like this at Wellesley.”
“I don’t think I knew what kind of party this was.”
“You don’t say.”
She looked back at the hot tub. She’d stopped walking. I caught her by the elbow and kept her moving. “Don’t stare.”
“I’m not.” She kept staring.
I shifted so I was blocking her view. “You remember that time we went to New York, and I told you not to look around too much because people would peg you for a rube and you’d become a target?”
“Same thing goes here?”
“Definitely.”
“Sorry. I’m cool. Mental note to stay out of the hot tub, though. That shit’s nasty.”
Johnny caught sight of us and motioned us over. He didn’t seem to be missing Lisette. In her place were four busty white girls in bikinis, two on either side of Johnny. Classy.
“I wasn’t sure you’d make it,” he said. He stood. He was a lot friendlier than he’d been the night before, grinning widely at me. He was also a lot higher, based on the size of his pupils and the way he all but vibrated in front of us.
“I just wanted to see for myself after you described this place,” Solomon said. “It’s pretty amazing.”
Johnny kissed her cheeks, European style. “You look gorgeous,” he whispered, conveniently loudly enough for me to hear. He wore a tailored linen suit, the cut expensive. His grip was too firm when he shook my hand. “Good to see you, Diggs. Have you had a chance to look around? There’s a card game up top—high rollers, but I’ll spot you if you want to buy in.”
“That’s all right, thanks. I’ll stick here if it’s all the same to you.”
Solomon raised her eyebrows at me. “I thought you wanted to check out that record collection Johnny was telling me about last night.”
“Maybe later.”
“Or you could do it now,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Wolf,” Johnny said, nodding his brother over. I hadn’t even realized Wolf had followed us. “Why don’t you take Diggs down to the music room? You can open the vault for him—I’ve got some beauties in there,” he said to me. “The withdrawn Freewheelin’ Dylan is there, mint. The UK export of The White Album, and a couple of Robert Johnson 78s you might appreciate.”
I would have been more impressed with something a little less mainstream, but somehow I doubted Johnny was the kind of man to have a stash of Black Patti 78s or Jimmie Rodgers 45s hidden away somewhere.
“Go,” Solomon said. “I’ll be fine.”
“She’s in good hands,” Johnny said. He refocused on Solomon. “Since you’re interested in the business, I thought I’d introduce you to some other players. Strictly off the record, of course.”
She smiled sweetly. “Of course.”
“If you need me—” I started.
“I know how to find you.” She leaned up and kissed me on the mouth, fast. I pulled her in before she could get away, and drew the kiss out until I felt her relax into it. Johnny looked away. When she pulled back, she wobbled on her heels again. I steadied her.
“Be careful,” I said quietly.
“I know,” she said. She glared at me, the color high in her cheeks. She would have slugged me if Johnny hadn’t been looking on, I had no doubt.
Instead, Johnny led her through the sliding glass doors and back into the house, a throng of others traveling with them. I turned to Wolf.
“I don’t need an escort, she does,” I said. “You know that. Keep an eye on her, not me.”
“That’s not my job, man. My job is to keep you out of trouble. I warned you about this.”
“You want me to find out what happened to Charlene, and how Lisette’s tied up in it? I need to be able to ask questions freely—I can’t do that with you on my ass.”
He hesitated a split second before he nodded. “Do what you need to do, but do it fast. I’ll do what I can for your girlfriend.”
I slipped back inside as soon as he was gone, intent on getting whatever I could as quickly as possible, and getting the hell out of there.
Chapter 9
The first floor of Johnny’s place had a mostly open floor plan, with high ceilings and a catwalk on the second floor that looked down on us. The walls were off-white, and they were covered with signed, framed music and movie posters. I paused at a giant French poster of John Waters’ Female Trouble, signed by the director himself. Johnny Cole was a man with strangely diverse tastes.
It took some wandering before I found the woman we’d seen on the way in, but eventually I saw her go through a swinging door that led deeper into the house. I followed.
In the kitchen, I found her loading an industrial dishwasher with glasses and serving dishes. She started when I said her name. Now that I was closer, I saw something I’d missed the first couple of times I’d seen her: her right hand was missing, a poorly crafted prosthetic in its place.
“The kitchen is staff only, sir. You will have to go.”
She had the same accent Charlene had had. She held my gaze when she spoke, with pride and a measure of defiance I hadn’t expected. If there was grief there, she held it too close for the casual observer to see.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m actually looking for you. You’re Mary, aren’t you? Mary Dsengani?”
The fact that I knew her name did nothing to set her at ease. She took a step back. “Get out, please. I will call Mr. Cole if you refuse to leave.”
“Please—just one minute,” I continued. “I was in Portland the other night... I was the one on the pier. The man who found your sister’s body.”
Something broke in her eyes at the words, though she kept her head held high. “You are a reporter—I heard about you. Go, please. I have no information for you.”
I thought of the video of Charlene in life—her steady dark eyes, the assurance in her gaze. Mary was shorter, thinner, but there was something in her face that suggested the same depth of experience. The difference was that those experiences had opened Charlene up... I got the sense it had done the opposite for her sister.
“I’m not trying to do anything to tarnish your sister’s memory,” I said. “I know she was an amazing woman. I’d just like to talk to you about some of this. There was a man on the pier with her—he had a knife, and he told me that your sister’s blood was only the first to be shed.”
I waited for her to digest the information, since the cops clearly hadn’t conveyed that message. Sh
e set down a brandy snifter with surprisingly steady hands.
“He said this to you?” she said.
“He did.” I took the sketch from my back pocket and showed it to her. “Do you know this man?”
She shook her head, holding my eye. I had a feeling she was lying, but she was too good at it for me to say for sure.
“So...Jacob Deng,” I tried. “That name means nothing to you?”
“I don’t know that name,” she said. That was definitely a lie—there was no mistaking the way her eyes shifted from mine.
“What about Lisette? You knew her before she started dating Johnny, didn’t you? Can you tell me about that—about how you know her?”
“Ms. Mandalay? I work for her—that is all. I do not know her.”
“Please,” I said. “’You want someone to pay for what happened to your sister, right? You want to stop this person from killing again. So talk to me. People should know who Charlene was—what she went through. I can help you tell her story.”
“The people who matter knew who Charlene was,” she said. Her eyes hardened. “You want to know what Charlene went through? You want to talk about our country, the difficulties we faced? The past is past. We were born in Africa. We lived good years there, the best years of my life, and then we lived the kind of life you could not imagine.” A moment passed, just a beat, while she let me take that in.
“And then, we came to America. We came to Maine, and we were met with warmth and opportunity after we spent years believing we had no future. There were no bad feelings. There was no one who wanted my sister dead. Now, I am here, and my sister is gone. Dwelling on who did this does no good. That is what matters.”
“Okay then, let’s talk about that,” I persisted. “Just take some time to answer a few questions. Please.”
She remained steadfast. I took my card from my pocket and pressed it into her hand. “If you change your mind, it could help you and Charlene’s daughter. The man on the pier told me no one with a certain mark was safe... I believe Lisette has that mark—and I think chances are pretty good that you have it, too. So if you aren’t going to talk to me, at least consider going to the police. Get some help.”
Conflict warred in her dark eyes for an instant before she shook her head wearily, but she did slip my card into the pocket of her apron. Before I could say anything further, a chubby white woman came charging through the kitchen door. She took one look at me and scowled at Mary.
“Sorry—thanks for the directions,” I said to Mary, before Brunhilde had a stroke. “Guess I got turned around. Thanks for your help.”
I stumbled back out the door like I was three sheets to the wind, and decided I’d left Solomon alone long enough.
My progress was halted at sight of cornrows and Bugs Bunny pajamas as a girl darted past me, clearly having been hiding while I was talking with Mary. Maisie, I assumed. She paused at the stairs and looked back at me; definitely the girl from the photos I’d seen in Laura Edgecomb’s office. Her skin was much paler than her mother’s, a sort of creamy mocha, her eyes wide and dark. She tipped her head toward the stairs—an invitation for me to follow. Then, she turned and raced up them without looking back. I hesitated only a second before I followed.
She disappeared behind a heavy oak door on the second floor, leaving the door ajar behind her. Feeling a little like Alice trailing the White Rabbit, I pushed the door open.
I found myself in a heavily windowed room filled with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and plants that stood as tall as me. The feeling that I’d slipped through the looking glass remained.
Maisie Dsengani sat in a leather chair beside a huge brick fireplace, no fire in the hearth. Her long legs were curled beneath her, her hands folded in her lap. I guessed her age at eleven, maybe twelve, and the brown eyes that stared at me from her dark face were bright with intelligence. She looked at me expectantly, as though we’d planned this meeting all along.
“You want to know about my mom?” she said.
I hesitated. I’d done low things for a story before, but interrogating a grieving child was a first—and not one I was eager to add to my resume now.
“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” I asked instead of answering her.
“You try sleeping in this place. I went down to get a snack from Mary, and I heard you talking.”
“And you’re Maisie Dsengani?”
“In the flesh.” Her voice sounded older than I suspected she actually was. There was only the faintest trace of an accent. “I heard you say you’re a reporter. You were there—on the pier. You were the one who found her.” For the first time, her eyes slid from mine.
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Twelve,” she said. “Just turned, in April. Too old for a pony, too young for a Porsche. That’s what Wolf says.”
“He’s a smart man.”
“In the ways that matter, yeah. How old are you?”
No softball questions with this one. I told her, and she considered my response but made no comment before she moved on.
“You want to help find the people who killed my mom—that’s what you said, right?”
“That’s the hope.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. If she was twelve, she would have left Africa at six, I calculated—old enough to have seen things, survived things, beyond my worst nightmares.
“Why?” she asked. “Why do you care? What’s in it for you?”
I spared her all the horseshit about truth, justice, and the American way. “Because my career’s not going too well right now. If I break a story like this, it could mean...everything,” I said.
“Because your career’s everything?”
“Right now... Kind of, yeah. Work makes sense.”
She nodded sagely. “Yeah. I could see that about you. Did you know my mom?”
“No.” I sat down in a matching wingback chair opposite her. “But I know about her. I actually admire her a lot—the things she’d done since she got to America. Everything she survived in Africa. I’m sorry.”
“You still have your mom?” she asked without acknowledging my words.
“No. She died of cancer a couple of years back.”
More time passed while she considered this. A shadow crossed her face, but she gave nothing else away. “She was tough,” she said finally. “Not as tough as Mary—nobody’s as tough as Mary. But you still didn’t want to cross her.”
“And she did the landscaping for Johnny before she went to work at Abbott Farms?”
She looked around the room. “Still did it after, too. All these plants in here... That’s because of her. Lizzie says plants don’t dare die when my mom is taking care of them. She’ll chase them into the dark and bring them back till they stop trying to let go.”
“So your mom and Lisette were friends?”
Maisie studied me again, weighing her answer. “They were best friends,” she said finally. “Not in public, though—not in front of Johnny. Not in front of Wolf. Nobody saw but us.”
The answer puzzled me. I forgot about the deadline, and settled into the reason I started reporting in the first place: I simply wanted the story. “What about your aunt? Is Mary Lisette’s friend?”
“Mary doesn’t have friends,” she said. “She doesn’t need them. She doesn’t need anybody. Wolf says she got broken too bad to need anybody now... That sometimes a person reaches a point where all you can do is turn your insides to steel—not ice. Ice melts. Steel. And nobody can break that, ever again.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. I let the silence sit for a few seconds, considering what the Dsengani sisters had gone through. When I pulled myself back, Maisie had that expectant look on her face again, waiting for me to continue. I searched for some sign of grief, and remembered the days, the weeks, the months after my brother died. I’d been twelve, hardened from years of protecting my mother and myself from my father’s iron wrath, but I still hadn’t survived anything close to what Maisie had. I wondered what
it would take, how long it would be, before she broke.
“Is it okay if I just ask another couple of questions?” I asked. I thought of Solomon out there on her own, and hoped to god that Wolf was keeping an eye on her like he’d promised.
“Go ahead,” she said. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”
“Do you know where Lisette and your mother and aunt first met?” I asked.
The shadow returned to her eyes. This time, it came with a hardened edge. “They met here. When Johnny started dating Lizzie.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Of course I’m sure,” she said. Her voice dripped with scorn when she continued. “Haven’t you read all the articles? Lizzie was a big fashion model from Cape Town. How else would they know her?”
“I was hoping maybe you could tell me that.”
She shrugged. “Nope. That’s the story I got all this time, too.”
“But you don’t believe it.”
She stood. Instead of answering, she walked away from me and went to the bookshelves. I watched her for a second, noting that she never quite turned her back on me.
“That man in the police sketch,” she said. She was across the room, pulling out a slim volume from a shelf of hardbacks. “The one they’re saying was there when you found my mom. Have they figured out who he is yet?”
“Not yet.”
She returned and stood in front of me, a photo in her hand. “Do you think he killed her?” she asked. “That he was the one who murdered her?” For the first time, I saw vulnerability in her gaze.
It was the second time I’d been asked that question today. Each time I answered, I got a little more certain I was right. “I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think so. Do you know who he is?”
“Of course,” she said simply, as though the question were absurd. She dropped the photo in my lap. “He’s my father.”
“Maisie!” Someone shouted from downstairs—Wolf, if my ears didn’t deceive me.
“Shit,” Maisie said. She darted to the door and peered out, then back at me. “Stay here—if Wolf knows we were talking he’ll kill you, straight up.” Before she left, she looked back at me one more time. “There’s one more thing you should know about that man,” she said, nodding at the picture.