I try to think of something to do beside nod, but am unable to come up with anything.
“You going to her funeral tomorrow?” she asks.
“I am.”
“My parents and I would love to be there, but we can’t,” she says. “Can you imagine? Nowhere her grandparents would rather be than at her funeral and they can’t go. Best case scenario would be if his thugs just kept us from going in, but there’s every chance my aging parents, truly decent people, would be assaulted or worse.”
“Would you like for me to talk to Trace or the Atlanta authorities?” I say. “See if I can work it out so y’all can go?”
Tears fill her eyes again. “That’s . . . very gracious of you. It means a lot that you would even try. But there’s no way he’d go for anything like that. He hated us before we started Myra House, but afterward . . . he wants us dead. I took every dime of life insurance Myra had and started this home in her honor to stop other women from becoming victims like her. Not only did he want the money for himself, he certainly didn’t want a place like this named after the woman he beat and shot up and killed. And we’ve been open about Myra’s story, so everyone who comes through these doors or reads about us in the press or online knows what he did to her, who he really is.”
“This is such an incredible thing to do for her, for her legacy,” I say. “You said how decent your parents are . . . clearly you are too.”
She shakes her head. “I’m . . . just a sad person with no life. Since I didn’t plan on living anymore anyway, why not try to let Myra’s life and death give life and hope to others.”
“It’s truly inspiring.”
“Be inspired by the survivors who come here,” she says. “Who leave here and never go back to an abusive relationship or a needle or pipe. They’re inspiring. I’m just the half-dead-inside, too-early-old little mouse who pays the bills around here. The only little bit of light I’ve had in my life for the last few years is the tiny little bit of Mariah I got—a text or email or Snapchat. They were rare—she had to sneak to do even those, but . . . I lived for them, for some small part of Myra to show through her daughter’s eyes or in her smile . . . and now I don’t even have that.”
I feel so sorry for this smart, self-aware, too-early-old, grief-stricken young woman before me, but know there’s nothing I can say or do that would be of much comfort or use to her.
“I’m so very sorry,” I say—because there is nothing else to say.
“She . . . was such a ray of sunshine,” she continues, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Such a free spirit, so loving and . . . man did she know how to have fun. Like I say, I saw her very, very little, but the few times I did was like being around a radiant light that made you radiate with it long afterwards.”
“How would you see her?” I ask. “Where?”
“She’d text me and say she was with a friend at the mall or the movies, and I’d meet her there for a few minutes—usually in the bathroom or somewhere like that. We’re only talking a handful of times over the past couple of years. I was able to take my folks twice. Made their life.”
“I’m so glad y’all got that,” I say.
“That reminds me . . .Mom gave her a pair of earrings—Trace wouldn’t let her get her ears pierced yet, so Mom bought her a pair of clip-ons and gave them to her the last time we saw her. And I gave her a frame I had made of pictures of me and her mom when we were girls and then the two of us with her when she was born. If there’s any way to get them back . . . I know she had to hide them from Trace . . . so I have no idea where they might be—though one time she did tell me she carried them everywhere she went. Anyway, I’d really like to get them back if at all possible. The thought of him having them or destroying them . . .”
I nod. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you.”
“Who do you think killed Mariah?” I ask.
She frowns. “I don’t think. I know. It was Trace. No question.”
“You don’t think it was Ashley or anyone else in the house that night?”
She shakes her head. “I’d bet my life it was Trace and that it was about control,” she says. “They’re saying that there was a note saying she was going to run away. If so, if she’d had enough and was going to get out from underneath his oppressive control . . . all that would have had to happen was him finding out about it and him losing his temper as he imposed his will on her. I wouldn’t call that an accident, but her death could have been unintentional. But death is death. Murder is murder. He did it. It’s on him. He’s to blame. You said you were getting fingerprints and handwriting samples from everyone. Well, my mom and dad and I would be happy to provide them because the quicker you can eliminate everyone else, the better. So you can focus on him. He did it. No doubt in my mind. Like I said, I’d bet my life on it.”
237
“I’m a bottom,” Ashley Howard says. “Trace is a top. It’s why we fit so well together. Are you familiar with those terms?”
Like Trace, Ashely continues to talk openly and freely with me, seemingly without second guessing or editing herself.
I nod. “Yes, but I’d appreciate hearing how you describe them.”
We are in a large formal living room inside Trace’s enormous and exquisite mansion, sitting in high back leather chairs with a view of Trace’s stable of exotic sports cars—most of which I had never even heard of.
The house and everything in it and the cars make me think Trace is extremely overextended. There’s no way he has built up the kind of wealth required for this kind of lifestyle over his relatively short career, and it reminds me of how the ransom note referred to him.
Trace is at the funeral home. Merrill is with him. I hope to still be here when they get back.
Above the large fireplace a huge painted portrait of Mariah hangs in a frame that might actually be made of gold. In it, her genuine smile makes her eyes sparkle and adds an effervescent quality to her flawless face.
I notice there are no pictures of Ashley or Brett in the room.
“Sure. They’re like the roles we play. A bottom is the submissive, the one who is tied up, dominated, told what to do. The top is the one who does the tying, the one who dominates, who gives the order, who’s in control. Trace is a top. I’m a bottom.”
“Do you ever switch roles?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Not in the bedroom, no. I think that may have been the problem with his first wife. She wanted to be a top and a bottom. You can’t really be both. I know some people say they switch, but I don’t see how you can. Trace is an excellent top. In command. In control. No one has ever given me the pleasure he has. Not in my entire life. I couldn’t do that. Not what he does. I give him pleasure by submitting to him, by doing exactly what he tells me to. No more and no less. I love being tied up. It’s freeing for me. I’m sure he would find it . . . it would feel like shackles to him.”
“Do you always travel with your ropes and kit?” I ask.
She nods emphatically. “Always. We’re insatiable. That’s another thing that makes us work so well together. We both love sex. Both love our roles in our sex. I do what he tells me when he tells me. He can say drop to your knees and go down on me anywhere at any time and I do. One of the games we play is having sex is as many different places as possible, places where we might get caught, place where other people are—like in the backseat of a cab or under the table at a restaurant, that sort of thing. But mostly we just have a lot of sex. And love it. I don’t understand people who don’t love sex and get as much of it as they can. But to each his own, right? Why do you think we have a nanny? I need help with the kids so I can be a good bottom. So I can be at his beck and call.”
From what I’ve been told, we’ve so far been able to keep the details about the ropes used on Mariah out of the press, but since Trace had to have seen them when he pulled Mariah’s body from beneath her bed, I would have thought he would have told Ashley about them. Of course, if he or she or they us
ed them on Mariah, they’d know about them anyway. Whatever the case, I’d expect her to mention the significance of the ropes in the light of the case, but she’s not. So far, she’s answering my questions as if they’re the casual inquiries of someone either interested in trying bondage or curious about her sex life. It’s an odd disconnect that I find jarring.
“Are y’all monogamous?” I ask.
“Sort of.”
“How can you be sort of monogamous?”
“Half and half,” she says. “I am. He’s not. I can’t keep up with him. He’s . . .” She shakes her head “He’s a force. Unstoppable, unmatchable.”
“You okay with him not being monogamous?”
“He’s the top. I’m the bottom. He tells me I can’t be, but he can. That’s what goes. He owns me. I am his body and soul. And by giving him what he wants . . . by letting him be free . . . he always comes back to me. Nobody out there will give him what I do, will be for him what I am.”
I can’t help but notice she never really did answer my question.
“All this because you found our ropes and toys in our luggage?” she says.
Is she pretending not to know the actual significance of my questions in relationship to the ropes and Mariah’s murder or does she really not know?
“Just being thorough,” I say.
“Well, you’re not asking about the other things in our luggage,” she says.
“Different investigators are focusing on different aspects of the case.”
“And you got my sex life,” she says.
“I got ropes.”
“Okay,” she says. “Just seems a little . . . I don’t know . . . off subject. How’s this going to help you find who did this to Mariah?”
“That’s the thing about an investigation,” I say. “You never know what is and isn’t on or off subject. We have to gather mountains of information, sift through it, and see what, if any, patterns or connections emerge.”
“Well, Trace says you know what you’re doing—at least according to Merrill, but . . . it seems . . . I don’t know. Just want Mariah’s killer found. Not that it will bring her back or anything, but . . .”
I nod.
“Seems like more and more cases don’t get solved,” she says. “Is that true?”
“It is.”
“I hope Mariah’s won’t be one of them. Bad enough to lose a child, but to not know who took them from you or why . . . I’m not sure Trace is going to survive this. Not sure we are.”
Before I can respond, Brett drifts into the room, his head down, his attention focused on the handheld gaming device he’s gripping.
“Hey baby boy,” Ashley says to Brett, then to me, “I don’t see how he doesn’t walk into things trying to walk and play that thing at the same time, but he never does.”
As if on cue, he bumps into the coffee table.
“You just made Mommy a liar,” she says.
“Sorry.”
He joins her on the couch, sitting right up against and leaning on her, never looking up from his game.
“You missing Mariah?” she says.
He shrugs.
“Bored without someone to play with?”
“Glad . . . I don’t have . . . to share anymore.”
Every word comes between the pressing and tapping of buttons.
“But you loved Mariah,” she says. “Loved playing with her.”
He doesn’t respond.
“Brett,” she says, “don’t you miss Mariah? Aren’t you sorry she’s gone?”
He shrugs. “I . . . get more now.”
Ashley looks at me, her eyes searching mine for judgement.
“More what?” she asks him.
“I don’t know . . . Everything. She got all the . . . candy and . . . presents . . . and . . . attention.”
“Yeah, but you’re going to miss her, aren’t you?”
He doesn’t respond.
“Brett,” she says, her voice growing stern. “Answer Mommy. You’re going to miss Mariah, aren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says without conviction or sincerity.
“He will,” she says, looking back at me. “Just hasn’t sunk in yet. You know how kids are. Almost as self-centered as Trace is.”
238
“I was the closest thing to a mother that child ever had,” Nadine says. “I loved her like a daughter. Still can’t believe she’s really gone.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” I say.
“World’s a colder, lonelier place now,” she says. “Least for me. Raised her like she was my own.”
Nadine Wade is old enough to be Mariah’s grandmother, but looks like she could be her mother. Her dark skin shows no wrinkles or aging marks, her narrow frame and lean body looking like that of a thirty-something instead of the fifty-something she is. She has no discernible makeup on and is actually wearing what looks to be a gray maid’s uniform. Her closely cropped hair looks like a style invented for someone who cares far more about convenience than appearance.
I am sitting with her in a sunroom on the side of the house that leads out to the pool. It’s far warmer in the room than is comfortable for me, but Nadine seems to like it.
“Nobody understands,” she says. “Nobody lettin’ me grieve like a mother. Nobody tryin’ to help or comfort me or . . . nothin’. Trace should know better. But I know he’s too torn up inside to be thinkin’ of anyone but himself right now. And that damn dumb white trash nympho . . . actin’ like she cared for the child at all. Makes me so mad, I want to crush her skull.”
I think about all those unsung, unofficial sufferers in the world—secret lovers, caregivers, nannies, hidden friends—who are forced to mourn alone, unacknowledged, uncomforted, unknown to official family members. I think this used to be particularly true in gay relationships, though I hope that is changing.
“That little angel was all I had in this world. All.”
I nod, but don’t say anything.
Like the rest of the house, the sunroom looks to have been professionally decorated by someone with a big budget told that when they think they’ve gone too gaudy and ostentatious, go a little more. Much of what’s in here clashes and though it looks like it cost a lot of money, it looks like that was the only goal.
Nadine notices me looking around the room.
“All this,” she says, stretching her hand out like a gameshow assistant. “Can’t protect you when a thief comes knocking. Grim Reaper don’t care what your address is or how big or small your house is, does he?”
“He does not,” I say.
“I’ve turned in my notice,” she says. “Can’t work here anymore. Not just to keep . . . her kid. Don’t need a nanny for him no way, just a video game.”
“How did he and Mariah get along?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Didn’t interact much. She’d try to get him to play or watch her perform or something, do some typical kid stuff, but all he wanted to do was play that blasted video game. Wasn’t studying nothing but clicking buttons. When he would decide to play with her, they had to do what he wanted to do. She was a pretty good sport.”
Tears begin streaming from her eyes and she wipes them with small, crumpled tissues.
“I just can’t believe . . .”
“Who could’ve done something like this?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Can’t fathom it. No earthly idea how any human being could do that to a precious child. Nobody I know. Nobody human.”
“Nobody you know?” I ask. “Nobody who was on vacation with y’all?”
“No way. Them folks got their issues like anybody else—more than most maybe, but . . . do something like that . . . no way.”
“So you think somehow somebody got in the house and . . .”
“A sure enough monster of a man got in that house,” she says. “No other explanation.”
“How about an accident?” I say. “Then a cover-up?”
She shakes her head emphatic
ally. “Accident, sure” she says. “Accident can happen, but not all that other stuff. Ransom note and tying the poor thing up and shoving her under her bed like that. None of them could’ve done all that. Accident happens, we call an ambulance. Simple as that.”
I nod.
We are quiet a beat.
“Did Mariah take her iPod with her on this trip?”
She lets out a little laugh. “She didn’t go to the next room without it. Was like the thing was surgically attached to her hand. Always tap-tap-tappin’ on it. Her daddy wouldn’t let her have a phone, but might as well have. She talked to everybody. Tap, tap, tap.”
“Did something happen to it while y’all were there?” I ask. “It wasn’t with her things?”
She shakes her head. “She had it when I put her to bed . . . that . . .night.”
“Can you think of what might have happened to it?”
“Well . . . Brett wanted one. Was always after his mama to get him one, but she said that game device was enough. Said if she ever got him a second device he’d never ever look up. He was always askin’ her to borrow it. What they fought over mostly. He could’ve . . . If he didn’t take it . . . suppose her killer could have, but . . . why would he steal her iPod? Did he take anything else?”
“Not that we know of.”
“Hmm,” she says, and narrows her eyes and twists her lips in thought.
“Anything happen out of the ordinary during the vacation?” I ask.
“Not especially, no.”
“Anybody at the party act suspicious or—”
“Not that I saw, but I wasn’t around much. Took the kids upstairs pretty early and let them play.”
“Caden Stevens was there too, right?”
She nods. “He and Mariah were sweet on each other,” she says. “He hadn’t seen her video. Didn’t know or care who her daddy was. Just liked her for her. She liked him too. Made Master Brett jeal-ous. Decided he wanted to play with her then, but it was too late.”
“Did he do anything, act out in any way?”
She shakes her head. “Nah. And I kept a pretty close eye on all them. Caught Caden and Mariah kissin’. Wanted to make sure they didn’t do anything else. Kept going in her room, made ’em keep the door open. Every time I checked on them, Brett wasn’t even in there with them. He was in his room playin’ that damn computer game thing.”
True Crime Fiction Page 94