And Now She's Gone

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  A smile spread across Sean’s face.

  Gray let go of the knife.

  He leaned against the car and wrapped his hand around the hilt of the knife.

  She kneeled before him. With a twisted grin, she reached for that knife, ready to pull it out, sink it into his throat, and twist it.

  “Don’t!” Lottie shouted from behind her. “Let the cops handle him.” The waitress pulled Gray away from the fallen man and back into the diner.

  The cook guided Gray to a booth and handed her a dish towel to clean off.

  Gray swiped and dabbed, and the towel was soon bright with blood. Gray’s. Sean’s.

  Lottie squeaked back behind the counter and returned with a bag of ice for Gray’s head and a slice of sweet potato pie for Gray’s belly.

  It’s over. I’m free. If that meant jail, Gray was down for that. She’d explain her case to the jury and maybe, maybe, they’d understand.

  It didn’t take long for two sheriff’s deputies to reach the diner off the highway. Gray told them all that had happened, and the waitress and the fry cook corroborated everything she said.

  “Where is this guy?” Deputy Burke had soft brown eyes and resembled Eddie Murphy.

  “By the white Chevrolet out in the parking lot,” Gray said.

  Deputy Burke and blond Deputy Parsons looked out the plate glass window and then at each other. The two left the diner and headed over to the car.

  Gray gazed out the window.

  There was the parking lot.

  There was the white Chevrolet.

  But where was Sean Dixon?

  56

  Even as the cops drove her to the airport, Gray kept scanning the roadsides and highways.

  Where had Sean Dixon gone?

  As deputies Burke and Parsons escorted her to the Delta ticket desk, her eyes darted around the small terminal.

  Was Sean still following her?

  She needed to leave Alabama. She needed to leave this case. Finding Isabel or Elyse or whoever she was? Didn’t matter anymore. Because what was at stake here? A cardiologist never seeing his dog again? Was Kenny G. worth dying for?

  How about Elyse Miller? The real Elyse Miller?

  What about justice for Ruth and Walter against a con who’d used their dead baby to …

  Gray muttered, “Shit.”

  Ian O’Donnell—dirty in all of this—could kick rocks, but the couple she’d met, the couple whose lives had been blessed by a baby girl, only for a riptide to take her away …

  Isabel Lincoln needed to see the inside of a jail cell.

  Gray booked the trip to Oakland, with a layover in Dallas.

  Before the security checkpoint, Deputy Burke handed her a business card. “I’ll keep you updated. But you stay safe. Keep your eyes open. Maybe hang out close to security booths until it’s time to board.”

  Gray agreed, and after she’d grabbed a bottled water from the souvenir shop, she found a seat close to airport security. Then she found the Percocet she’d planned to take back at the diner. She needed it now more than ever—pain burst from her head to her ankles.

  A few times, she thought about Sean. Where did he go?

  More than once, she thought about contacting Yvonne Reeves, who was listed as a second cousin in her All of Me report. Gray even opened that report and tapped Send a Message. Soon, her fingers danced over the laptop’s keyboard.

  Hi Yvonne. I was born Natalie Kittridge in Oakland on April 25, 1980 but was given up for adoption

  Shaking her head, she closed the email window.

  On the plane to Dallas, Gray texted Nick. On board.

  You should come home.

  I will after meeting this woman’s family.

  She could hear his sigh from across the country and she let herself smile.

  You got people in Oakland bigger than Sean?

  Yeah. I got Mike. He’ll meet you at car rentals

  Gray napped during that flight to Dallas, then woke up in a rush. She made her connection to Oakland seven minutes before the boarding gate closed. Huffing, she plopped into her first-class seat—the only available. Once she caught her breath, she closed her eyes and thought of completing that email to her second cousin. First cousin to my biological mother.

  Was her birth mother still alive?

  What was her name?

  Why did she leave me?

  There were chocolate chip cookies and champagne—just like those flights she’d taken with Sean “I Only Fly First Class” Dixon—and thanks to time travel, she landed in Oakland a little after nine o’clock. Plenty of time left to work.

  Mobile County Sheriff’s Deputy Burke had left her a voice mail: “Wanted to see how you were and update you on the case.” Gray knew, though, that Burke hadn’t found Sean. And that’s what the deputy said when she called him back.

  At Avis rentals, Gray selected a white Impala. She scanned the faces of other customers in line. No one seemed interested in her.

  Nick sent a picture. The bodyguard, Mike, had sandy brown skin, sandy brown hair, a “Semper Fi” tat on his left forearm, and bushy eyebrows. She waited near the desk until a giant man who moved like water stood before her.

  He said, “You Victor’s daughter?”

  Gray paused. Victor’s daughter. She hadn’t been called that in ages. “And you’re…?”

  “Mike. I’ll be driving a blue Charger. You’ll see me as soon as you pull out of the lot.”

  She did see him, and he followed her, and for a moment Gray focused on her mission.

  Find the evil Mary Ann.

  57

  Alicia Kelly didn’t answer at the phone number that Jennifer had pulled from Rader Consulting’s database. In her driver’s license picture, Alicia’s cheekbones cut her face just like Isabel’s did. Alicia’s eyes were smaller, close-set, and freckles sprinkled the bridge of her nose. Now, Alicia parked her Ford Focus in the narrow driveway of a pink bungalow. She wore jeans and pink Nike Huaraches.

  Gray opened the door of the white Impala.

  The noise of Oakland banged into the car’s cabin—squeaking trucks, raggedy mufflers, bad rap blasting from subwoofers, cans and bottles clanging as squeaky shopping carts rattled.

  Mike, parked in the space behind her, stayed put in the blue Charger.

  Gray called out, “Excuse me … Alicia?”

  Alicia barely looked back over her shoulder. “Not interested, thanks.”

  “I’m not selling anything.” Gray hustled over to the walkway before the woman retreated behind the bungalow’s black-iron security door. “I desperately need your help. I saw your profile on All of Me.”

  “Oh, so you’re a long-lost cousin, too?”

  “No. I—”

  Alicia turned to face Gray. “You have ten seconds, then you need to kindly get the fuck off my property.”

  Gray plucked from her purse the creased photo she’d shown to a million people. She now offered it to Alicia Kelly. “Do you know this woman?”

  Alicia had formed her mouth to say no, but instead she gasped and plucked the picture from Gray’s fingers. “Oh my…” Her eyes bugged and her hands shook.

  On the outside, Alicia’s house was a dreary pink and boasted a scraggly front yard. Inside, though, Alicia had found her inner Martha Stewart. The open floor plan and hardwood floors made the tiny bungalow feel as spacious as Hearst Castle.

  Alicia dropped her purse onto the couch. “Who are you? What the hell is this about?”

  “Grayson Sykes. I’m a private investigator and I’m looking for your cousin.” And then Gray told a story about Isabel, Ian, Kenny G., and a check that sat in a safe waiting to be cashed.

  Alicia said, “Isabel.”

  “But that’s not her birth name, is it?”

  The woman shook her head. “So, she’s alive?”

  “Depends on what you consider ‘alive.’”

  Alicia rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Want a drink? Lemonade, soda, water? I’m thinking something wit
h rum is required.”

  Gray liked Alicia. And as Alicia whipped up a pitcher of hurricanes, Gray wandered the small living room, taking in the prints from Kara Walker’s The Emancipation Approximation, with those silhouettes of black women being attacked by white swans.

  In the kitchen, Alicia talked to someone on the phone. “Auntie, you won’t believe this … A woman found me on the internet.… Yeah, I know, but hey … Guess who’s alive?”

  * * *

  Isabel Lincoln had been born in Oakland as Deanna Kelly, on November 1, 1972. She was now forty-six years old.

  “We were really close,” Alicia recalled. “Up until middle school, we were like sisters.” She pulled a photo album from a credenza. The pages smelled of old glue and wood smoke.

  There was Deanna and Alicia splashing in a wading pool, wearing matching kiddie bikinis, sun reflecting off their squinting faces.

  There was Deanna and Alicia in matching majorette uniforms, white boots with green-and-black pom-poms bouncing on the laces.

  There was Deanna and Alicia wearing stonewashed jeans, posing on the Golden Gate Bridge. Fake Gucci bags. Blow Pops. Frosted hair. Bamboo earrings.

  “And then,” Alicia said, “she lost her mind. Like something in her just—” She snapped her fingers. “She started running with these badass kids in the eighth grade. Called themselves the Five-Point-Oh Crew cuz they loved that five-liter Mustang? They used to rob us, jump us on the way home from school … Bunch of thugs.

  “The leader—his name was Xavier Vargas—he was gorgeous. Green eyes. Wavy hair. Everybody thought he was gonna make it to the NBA, but then he raped some girl over in Richmond. He got away with it, though, cuz he played ball.

  “Anyway, him and the rest of Five-Point-Oh became Dee’s new friends. She started dealing drugs and carrying guns, calling herself the female Scarface and shit like that. Of course, she got nabbed a few times, giving my aunt Carol a fit. So she was in and out of California Youth Authority. And then Dee left and never came back.”

  Alicia squinted as she sipped her cocktail. “Honestly? The family was kind of glad, cuz we could start breathing and living without her crazy bullshit. I hate to say it, but I wanted her to stay gone.” Alicia stared into her glass. “Guess she’s still trying to be the female Scarface?”

  Before Gray could respond, the doorbell rang.

  The woman standing on Alicia’s porch was slender and had long silver hair. Her flushed skin was butter yellow and her bloodshot eyes were the color of wheat. As she and Gray exchanged names, Gray heard the lilt in Carol Kelly’s voice. She’d heard that same lilt down in Alabama. Those cheekbones, that broad forehead … the distressed older woman had the same face as the younger one Gray had hoped to find since July 11.

  Alicia brought Carol a glass of 7-Up, along with a plate of pound cake for the room.

  “I had no clue where my daughter went.” Carol had finally stopped crying and now dried her eyes with a napkin. “I reported her missing the December after she’d graduated from high school. The police told us that, since she was eighteen, I couldn’t force her to come home.”

  “We still searched for her,” Alicia added, “even after we realized she wasn’t gonna come back. No one’s seen her or has heard from her since.”

  “Tell me,” Carol said, squinting at Gray, “who did she become?”

  “First, Elyse Miller,” Gray said, “and then Isabel Lincoln. She was working at UCLA before she disappeared.”

  Carol canted her head. “You said Isabel Lincoln? We knew an Isabel…” She turned to Alicia. “Youth Ministries … The pen pal…”

  Alicia squinted. “Oh … Yeah. I remember her.”

  Gray sat up. “What? Who is she?”

  “There was a moment,” Carol said, “that Dee was in and out of juvenile detention, and as part of rehabilitation, there was this pen pal program with a church. Dee’s pen pal lived down in Los Angeles. She was only ten or eleven back then … Oh, what was the church’s name?”

  “Mount Gethsemane?” Gray asked, thinking of the church near Dulan’s, the soul food joint.

  Carol made a face and shrugged. “Anyway, Dee would receive these letters, and eventually she got out of CYA and the letters would come to the house. Dee eventually disappeared, but the letters kept coming. I opened a few, hoping that there was some clue to where she’d gone. But no, nothing. The pen pal, her name was Isabel and she lived—”

  “In Inglewood,” Gray said, face numb.

  “And she wanted to go to UCLA, and in one of the letters she was upset cuz her auntie was going blind and she had to take care of her.”

  “And then,” Carol said, “the letters stopped.”

  “Isabel disappeared almost twenty-five years ago,” Gray said. “She was fifteen.”

  Alicia cut a look at Carol. “How did she die?”

  “Don’t know,” Gray said. “But after coming back from this trip to Alabama, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Deanna used the identity of a missing fifteen-year-old.”

  Alicia groaned and sank into the couch cushions.

  “So, back to Deanna disappearing,” Gray said. “She ran off with Xavier?”

  “That’s what we thought,” Carol said.

  “You ever meet him?”

  “Nope,” Alicia said. “He wasn’t big on meeting his girls’ families.”

  “And we didn’t want to meet him, either,” Carol added.

  “Dee thought she was the shit,” Alicia said. “Nose in the air, like she was better than everybody. Xavier was about twenty-two when they started dating. Dee was only fifteen.”

  “Already a snake,” Carol added. “She drove this souped-up Mustang, had all this jewelry and all this cash. That’s what she wanted. Money.”

  “And Xavier knew that, too,” Alicia said. “They were like Bonnie and Clyde. Antony and Cleopatra. Taking over the world, one base-head at a time. But then he went out and got some other young girl pregnant. He dumped Dee, cuz all she wanted was money. I saw him break up with her out there.” She pointed toward the scraggly front yard. “She told him that if he didn’t change his mind, she’d kill herself. He didn’t change his mind, but maybe he should’ve.”

  “Xavier was murdered,” Carol said, shaking her head. “Shot to death. Police didn’t care because he was a drug dealer and a rapist and a thief. Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

  “My boyfriend at the time knew Xavier,” Alicia said. “They were on the same junior high school basketball team. Paul told him to be careful, to watch out for Dee. Told him that she wasn’t right in the head. Dee and Xavier had been together for too long for her to just … go away. And as soon as he dumped her? It was just a matter of time before she got him back.”

  “When was he killed?” Gray asked.

  “Oh…” Carol thought for a moment. “I remember it was right before Thanksgiving, 1990. Right before she ran away.”

  “She seemed … off,” Alicia remembered. “More than usual.”

  “And the last time you spoke to Deanna was…?”

  “A week or so before Xavier was shot,” Alicia said.

  “And who shot him?”

  Carol shrugged.

  Alicia drained her glass. “His mom found him at his house in Richmond. His blood was everywhere—soaked in the carpet, dried on the door handle, on the light switch…”

  His mother had followed the blood trail to the bathroom, where Xavier lay dead in the bloody tub. The place had been ransacked.

  “He’d hid cash in two safes,” Alicia said. “About one hundred seventy-five thousand dollars of drug money. And all of it was gone.”

  Gray blanched. “Did the cops…”

  “Suspect Dee?” Carol asked. “No. By then, her juvenile record had been expunged and she hadn’t been caught for anything else. They questioned her and that was it. She left Oakland and never came back.”

  “And no arrests since then?”

  Both women shook their heads. “Still unsolved to this
day,” Alicia said.

  She’d been in hiding for two years when she started living as Elyse Miller.

  Alicia shook her head. “Can you even image the effort to do all of this?”

  “She used to be on the honor roll,” Carol said. “She played flute and liked Winnie-the-Pooh and … Her father lived in the home. I worked, but I took her to practices and … Her big brother came out just fine.”

  Alicia tapped Carol’s knee. “It’s not your fault. Some people are just born that way.”

  Carol said, “Yeah,” but shook her head. “I smoked when I was pregnant—”

  “Aunt Carol,” Alicia said, words hard. “Stop. Don’t.” She tossed Gray a look of helplessness. “She does this sometimes.”

  “If she had used all those smarts for school,” Carol continued, “all that energy hustling people and stealing from people, she’d be the president of the United States. But she didn’t, and she used a dead baby’s name and this other poor girl’s name and…” Carol looked at Gray with tear-filled eyes. “I don’t know who this woman is.”

  No one did.

  THREE YEARS AGO

  DEAD AND ALIVE

  The space left by Sean Dixon had been too big to deal with at times, and she found herself crying without even knowing that she was. She’d stand on the deck at Dominick Rader’s beachside house and he’d ask, “You okay?” She’d scrunch her eyebrows and say, “Huh?” He’d point at her cheeks and she’d swipe her fingers across her face to find them wet.

  Sometimes she and Dominick took walks along the shore. That’s when her salty tears would mix with ocean mist.

  Hiding in his guest room, she contracted with Rader Consulting to do research on a few cases, and that phenomenon—crying unknowingly—would find her as she determined the birth gender of the prostitute caught with the client’s husband.

  “I’m going mad,” she once told Dominick after dinner. “My mind is decomposing.”

  Slumped in the Adirondack chair, he had glanced over at her and had then drained his glass of whiskey.

  She threw her gaze back out to the ocean. “Not that I want to go back…” Her eyes filled with tears. She groaned. She was so tired of crying.