by Mary Bowers
“I haven’t known Kendra long,” Victor was saying. “But she’s sharp. God, I hope she’s not in trouble. We talked about her doing some independent contractor work for me, when I got enough business together. She’s good at web design. I specialize in Internet security; I can do web design if I have to, but it’s not what I like. I asked her if she’d ever worked as an illustrator, but apparently she doesn’t do that. Her buddy Rusty does. He’s into graphic novels.” He looked at us and smiled a little. “Comic books. But he’s been kind of frosty to me. Wasn’t interested in a side job.”
He seemed to be maundering, just to get over the shock. For some reason, he didn’t seem suspicious of Kendra. He was more worried about her than anything else.
“Rusty was Eden’s boyfriend, wasn’t he?” I asked.
“Oh . . . I think so. They’d known one another since they’d been kids. Maybe they clicked when she came back to town. I’m not sure how serious they were. He’s not really in our world, like Kendra. He’s a gamer. Everybody who has a knack for tech stuff is, when they’re young. Some never outgrow it.” He shrugged. “Rusty works a day job. Something about fixing things. Refrigerators, I think.”
We came to an uncomfortable silence, and Rita and I exchanged glances. Victor seemed genuinely upset, and I was sorry I had sprung it on him the way I had.
“Well,” he said, gathering himself up, “thanks for calling me, Rita. If you ever need anything else, give me another call.”
He left a business card on the counter and handed another one to me.
“And thanks for the coffee and sweet roll,” he added.
“Well, maybe not so much for the sweet roll,” Rita said ruefully. “Justine should be getting it right soon. She’s had enough practice.”
“Oh, I never bad-mouth a client,” Victor said. “The sweet roll was just fine. I like ‘em a little crispy.”
We all laughed, and he made a courtly exit, leaving Rita and me to look at one another and gently sigh.
Chapter 7
I had to walk back to Locust to get to my car, but first, on impulse, I ducked into Perks the back way. I decided to treat myself to a cappuccino, but only if Ronnie was at the espresso machine. Otherwise, I’d just get a plain old coffee. It must be related to that old kitchen mystery – the fact that you can give the same recipe to ten different cooks and have it come out ten different ways. Anyway, nobody seemed to be capable of making a cappuccino like Ronnie, even though she personally trained her employees. Theirs were adequate, but for $5.50, I wanted better than adequate.
Ronnie was there, and I went up and placed my order. Looking around, I said, “How’s Chrissie? Have you talked to her today?” I heard a stir in the shop behind me, but didn’t look around just yet.
“About like you’d expect, I guess,” Ronnie said. “She’s the reason I’m here on a Monday morning. I’m taking her shift. I called about an hour ago and got her Voicemail. I left her a message; you know: ‘Let me know if there’s anything I can do.’ Only there’s never anything you can really do. If only there was.”
“I know. I left one of those messages myself.”
I handed over the cash for the cappuccino and threw some extra change in the tip jar. When I turned around I saw a group of young people sitting at the front corner table. They were all looking at me. Otherwise, the place was pretty empty, so I walked toward them and one of them, the only man at the table, said, “You’re a friend of Chrissie’s?”
“Yes. You too?”
Without getting up, he reached out and pulled a chair over from the next table. I thanked him and sat down.
“Eden was my friend, but yeah, I know Chrissie. I’m Rusty. This is Kady, and this is Chrissie’s daughter, Asia.”
The last time I’d seen Asia, she’d been a skinny little thing who wouldn’t come out from behind her mother. She had grown up and filled out beautifully, but she still seemed timid. I looked around and nodded, faintly honored that a group of young folks would invite a sixty-five year old to sit with them. They must need to talk, I figured. Or maybe they hoped I knew something that they didn’t.
“I’m Taylor Verone,” I said. I started to explain who I was, but they recognized the name.
“So you were the one running the show last Saturday night,” Rusty said.
“Yep, that was me.”
They looked at me expectantly, but I just took a sip of my cappuccino and looked back at them. They wanted me to go all over everything, and I didn’t even know where to start.
I recognized Kady as one of the people who’d been in Perks when I’d come in on Sunday to talk to Chrissie. You couldn’t miss the Goth thing; maybe that was the whole point of it. I’ve seen young people with everything but nuts and bolts attached to their heads, working check-out counters and waiting tables all over town, and underneath all that tempered steel, they’re just kids. Nice ones, as far as I can tell. This generation is just saying it with hardware, I guess.
Her hair was black. Like, black-black. She was wearing about a quarter-inch of eyeliner (over and under) and deep purple lipstick, and she had powdered her face to a dead white. Her mother had probably hated the last phase she had gone through, whatever that was, but I figured she was hating this one even more. And hoping she’d get over it before she sat down at the Thanksgiving dinner table with all the relatives in about a month.
Rusty was small for a man, not much bigger than the girls. Maybe that’s why he was wearing the macho chains. He was bare-chested under his leather vest, but so far he didn’t look like his day job was in the bowels of a dungeon. His hair was a dull reddish color. I figured he got his moniker from his red hair, but I was surprised to find out later that his actual first name was Russell, so it made sense both ways. He wasn’t what you’d call handsome, but he had a certain starving-artist appeal that girls might like. He was very skinny and he had light green eyes that needed more color. A pair of those colored contact lenses would make his face more interesting, I thought idly.
“You’re the one that wanted my aunt to be the fortune teller for the event?” Asia asked. She had a very little voice, and didn’t look much like Chrissie, apart from her pretty blue eyes. She was almost white-blond, what I always think of as an “ice cream blond,” with delicate bone structure and beautiful skin.
“Actually, your aunt was the one who suggested a fortune teller. She was really excited about it, and I thought it was a good idea. We’ve never done that kind of thing before.”
Rusty asked, “Have they found out who it was that did her gig on Saturday? Because they’re positive it wasn’t Eden. She was already, you know, gone by then.” He consciously avoided looking at Asia.
I looked back to Rusty and realized that he was a bit older than the two girls. They were both college-age, and Rusty was closer to thirty.
I thought about his question briefly. He probably already suspected who it was, and just wanted confirmation. After all, it had to be this bunch that had told the police who the girl with the hand tattoo must have been. If the cops wanted to have a gotcha moment, they had their chance.
“They’re pretty sure it was a girl named Kendra Constantine. She works at the bank.”
While the girls stirred with surprise, I thought I heard Rusty mutter, “I was afraid of that.” I turned to him and said, “Did you know it was Kendra?”
“No, but I was afraid it was. The cops were asking about anybody with a tattoo or birthmark on her left hand. That’d be Kendra. And she’s not answering her phone. She’s one of us. Since this thing happened with Eden, we’re all keeping in touch. All except for Kendra. She went off the grid this weekend and hasn’t been heard from since. No texts, no posts, nothing. I was afraid she was in trouble.”
“She didn’t show up at work today, either,” I told them. Then, remembering, I said, “What color eyes does she have?” I’d forgotten to ask Florence.
Rusty immediately said, “Blue. Why?”
“The fortune teller had blue eyes
. Listen, do you guys have any idea why she would have done the fortune teller gig instead of Eden?”
They looked at one another, and Kady shrugged. “Doing a friend a favor,” she said. She took a sip from her coffee cup, drinking from the spot on the rim that was thick with purple lipstick. “I got my fortune told, and I never knew the difference. I even called her Eden, tried to get her to talk, but she wouldn’t. She was all into the Madame Anastasia thing, like she always does. Did,” she added on a downbeat.
“Madame Anastasia?” I said. “She was Madame Domani last night.”
Asia spoke up in her little-girl voice. “She’s always been Madame Anastasia, since back before she left for Atlanta. When I was a kid, I used to love to have her tell my fortune, but first, I’d tell her what fortune I wanted. She’d listen to me, all serious, and then she’d tell me whatever I wanted to hear. She’d get all dressed up in her costume for me and everything. Sometimes, she’d let me wear the headpiece. The jewels would be just dripping all over my face, over my eyes and everything, but I loved it. It made me feel exotic. She loved the name Anastasia. I don’t know where she came up with that other name. It isn’t as pretty.”
“Domani.” I told her. “She wanted to be Felice Domani. That means ‘happy tomorrow’ In Italian.”
That made Asia look even sadder.
But the other two reacted differently, as if they understood the hidden code. Kady grunted, and Rusty looked disgusted. I waited, and finally, Kady spoke up.
“It’s that new guy in town. She followed him down from Atlanta, and she’s been making an ass of herself over him ever since. Boring everybody stiff with her fantasies about how they were going away together to live in Italy. She was even taking Italian lessons on her computer. Have you ever known anybody who was taking a foreign language? They’re always babbling at you, telling you how to say, ‘I had eggs for breakfast,’ and you’re supposed to be impressed. Freakin’ bore.”
“They were running away to Italy together?” I said, my head spinning. I’d just met the man. He didn’t look like he was getting ready to run anywhere with anybody. He looked happy to be in Tropical Breeze. And though we’d talked briefly about Eden, he hadn’t seemed all that interested in her, at least not in that way. In fact, he’d left her in Atlanta. She had followed him.
“Only in Eden’s mind,” Kady said. “And he could care less. He’s way too old for her anyway. Forty at least.”
Ancient. Like, nearly dead, bro, I thought. Well, he looked fresh enough to me. Positively juicy. “So Victor doesn’t have a lady?” I asked.
Kady lit up with a grin. “You’ve met him?”
“Oh, yeah.”
The girls laughed, but Rusty still didn’t find the subject amusing. I marked that down for further review, when I had a chance to think things over. Love triangles were so prone to being messy.
“Well, I haven’t,” Asia said. “I’m kinda looking forward to it now.”
Rusty went from a pout to a glower. “He’s twice your age,” he said. “If you want to start a romance, introduce him to your mother.”
“I’m not going to marry him,” she said. “I just want to meet him. You don’t have to think of everybody you meet as a potential . . . you know.”
“I do,” Kady said, “at least guys that good-looking. Besides, he’s cool. He’s like the rock star of cyberspace; everybody knows who he is. He almost went to jail once,” she added, like that was a good thing.
“What happened?”
“The Feds caught him jacking Wi-fi and planting a sniffer code in some big corporation’s system.”
“That sounds really nasty,” I said.
“Nah. It wasn’t malware or anything. It was just for kicks. You know, because he could.”
“I see.”
“So we were all really excited to meet him. And he – is – hot. But a perfect gentleman, damn it. Even kind of noble.”
Rusty groaned.
“What?” Kady said, challenging him.
“That phony . . . .” Words failed him. “He acts like he’s this guardian of the Internet, presiding over it like King Arthur and keeping it clean for all mankind. Gag. The guy’s a narcissist.”
“It isn’t narcissism if you really are that good,” Kady said wickedly. “And he’s a true knight, if you ask me. Even a gentleman. He keeps his hands to himself. I know. I tried to give him a test drive, and he acted like I was just a kid and he was my old-fart uncle. I think I actually embarrassed him. Anyway, the answer is no, Victor doesn’t have a lady. Maybe he’s looking for a momma with money.”
“Well, that lets us out,” Asia said, grinning.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Kady said, looking back at her. “Flagler College isn’t cheap. That’s why I’m at the community college.”
“It’s called ‘student loans,’” Asia said. “And a mom who’ll do anything to help me get an education. She won’t let anything interfere with that. She even took my car last week and let me drive hers at school while she got it fixed for me. By the way, thanks, Rusty.”
“I aims to please, ma’am,” he said.
When I looked askance, Asia said, “Rusty’s a mechanic, and he does pretty good body work. He fixed some damage to the back-end of my Jeep last week. It was just a ding, but you wouldn’t believe what the St. Augustine car guy wanted to fix it. Somebody at school must have hit it while they were trying to parallel park, then just taken off.”
So Rusty was a talented mechanic. I wondered why Victor had made his remark about Rusty’s job having something to do with refrigerators. It seemed petty, and I wondered if Victor was jealous.
“That’s life in the big city,” Rusty said. “Y’all ought to come on back home, where folks have some manners.”
He was exaggerating his Southern accent, and flirting a little.
“I might just do that,” Asia flirted back. “Except my mom would kill me. She’s mortgaged everything she has to put me through college. She’s been both father and mother to me, and my best friend, too. My father died when I was so young, I don’t even remember him. But my mom has made up for it. You should’ve seen the look on her face when I walked in the door yesterday. She wants me at school, concentrating on my studies, but I just had to be there for her. She was on my aunt’s computer, looking for clues about where she could be, but she didn’t have the password, so that was a dead end. Maybe the cops can crack it. They took it away with them yesterday. By the way, I’m really glad you called me, Kady. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been here for my mom when they . . . you know . . . told her Eden had already been found.”
Kady shrugged. “I assumed you already knew she was missing. When your mom started calling all of us to see if we knew where she was, I got myself worked up, for some reason. I don’t know why. Knowing Eden, she could’ve been anywhere, doing anything, with anybody. But something about how your mom sounded set off alarm bells. I figured if she wasn’t anywhere in town here, she must be goofing around in St. Augustine with you, and I just wanted to be sure. I don’t know your mom that well, so I didn’t want to bother her, but all of a sudden, I just had to know. I didn’t mean to upset you, but as things turned out . . . .”
Asia nodded mournfully. “When we found out she’d been killed, I would’ve had to come home anyway, so it’s just as well I was already here. But my mom would’ve waited until she absolutely knew something was wrong before she called me. Even with a family emergency, she wants me at school, concentrating on my studies. She was supposed to drive my Jeep to St. Augustine sometime this week so we could switch cars anyway, so I decided to come home and see what was going on. She’s like that. A mother hen. And Aunt Eden, too. She was so good to me, just like a second mom.”
Rusty and Kady looked at one another uneasily, unsure what to say to someone who’s just had a death in the family. I felt at a loss for what to say myself. Eden had been a party girl, irresponsible and a burden to her sister. Still, you don’t speak ill of the dead, and I
said something about Eden having loved Asia very much.
“I know,” she said. Then she looked at me with watery eyes and said, “I know what you’re all thinking. Eden liked to party. But she loved life, and maybe she knew she needed to live for today, because tomorrow would never come.”
I held my breath, hoping she wouldn’t remember Eden’s new name as a fortune teller.
“And she was good to you, I’m sure,” I said quickly.
“Always. My birthday was right after she came to stay with us, and she gave me a $300 debit card! And I know she couldn’t afford it. That’s just how she was. She told me, ‘Now don’t go spending this on boring stuff, like textbooks. Get yourself something awesome, like a Coach bag.’ It was so much fun having her around. But mostly I was happy when she came back so my mom wouldn’t be all alone any more, and now . . . .”
Kady and Rusty were staring intently into their coffee cups, immobilized by a display of grief they didn’t know how to deal with.
After a few quiet moments, I said, “It’s so sad, and such a waste. I know you were all close to Eden. Weren’t you her boyfriend at one time, Rusty?”
He shrugged. “We hung out. Before she went to Atlanta, we dated. That was high school. After she came back, she was all about this Victor guy. When he was around, she’d sort of hang on me, like she was showing him he wasn’t everything, but it was all an act. She was over me. And now . . . I’m really worried about Kendra. She never told me a thing about the fortune telling gig, and she tells me everything.”
“Oh,” I said, suddenly catching on. “It’s Kendra now? She’s your girlfriend?”