‘But you’re still working, aren’t you?’
‘Sure, but you know, Fryer, half the poor souls that come here ain’t got a pot to piss in. They all as hard up as we are.’
Fryer wasn’t hard up, he’d got money, just hated to part with it, but he dug into his old torn jeans. ‘Edith, go get some nice fresh flowers for Juda and maybe a new dress for yourself.’ He tossed a thick wad of money down the stairs, which landed in the hall, and Edith switched off the hoover.
‘You’re a good man, Fryer.’
He continued up the stairs. ‘No, I’m not, Edith, I never was and I never will be, but I ain’t no sucker either.’
Ruby was half-heartedly clearing junk off the dressing table, taking the opportunity to stare at her own reflection. She glared when Fryer walked in, closing the door behind him and slipping the bolt across.
‘Don’t go sitting on the bed, I just made it,’ she said sullenly. Fryer sat squarely in the centre, and never took his eyes off her pretty, angry face.
‘You had a visit this morning, Ruby. Woman said she was a reporter, is that true?’
‘Uh huh, gonna put me in the papers.’
‘Well, you might get into the papers, Ruby, but not the way you think you’re gonna be in them. Be a big picture of you being arrested, maybe in handcuffs.’
Ruby was about to snap back at him, but she didn’t. She wasn’t afraid of Fryer Jones like her brothers were; he was nothing but a dirty old lecher who had pawed her since she was a little tot.
‘So, Ruby, you want to tell me how much you were paid for that doll you made?’
Ruby’s mouth fell open. ‘I never made nothing.’
Fryer smiled, resting back on his elbows on the clean white pillow. ‘Yes, you did, child, but you had better tell me who you made it for, not that I don’t already know.’
‘If you know, why you askin’?’
He sat up and now his face was angry. ‘Because you played with fire, honey child, and you might have to pay for it. You tell me, and from the beginning, just what you been up to, Ruby Corbello, or do you want me to beat it out of you?’
‘You lay one finger on me and I’ll make you regret it.’
He couldn’t help but laugh. She was so beautiful when she was angry, she turned him on just looking at her. She reminded him of Juda, that same fire in her loins, those same wondrous snake-coloured eyes. He turned away from her, and sighed, but he got up fast when she tried to get out of the room. He dragged her back to the bed by her hair, throwing her down hard, and he leaned over her.
You got death on your hands, Ruby.’
She looked up into his face, unafraid. She began to unbutton her cheap white cotton blouse, licking her sweet full lips.
‘Want to play with me, Fryer?’
He placed his hand over her throat and pressed hard, making her gasp. ‘No, Ruby, I don’t want to play, I’m here to save your soul, so you tell Fryer what you’ve been up to! And if you lie, then I’ll squeeze the breath out of you.’
Ruby rolled away on to her side, and he waited. She didn’t seem to care or worry about his threats, twisting a strand of her thick hair into curls round and round her long slim fingers.
‘That Tilda Brown accused me of prying into her private things when I done nothing but work like a slave for her and her family. She had no respect for me and I cheeked her back, told her she was being high and mighty to the wrong person. She said in that high-pitched voice of hers, “Oh, am I? Well, you just got yourself fired, Miss Ruby Corbello.”’
Fryer sat with his head slightly bowed, listening to her soft voice rise and fall like music. He felt her body roll over and move closer to him, her fingers no longer twisting her curls but gently stroking his back. She told him, almost playfully, that when Tilda Brown’s parents had taken their daughter’s side and asked her to leave she got angry and went up into Tilda’s bedroom. She hadn’t planned to steal anything, she had intended to piss over her nice frilly white clothes. She giggled at the thought. But then she had found Tilda’s diary.
Fryer listened in astonishment as Ruby told him how she had read the diary and knew she had something worth money, so she had contacted Errol at the Caleys’ hotel and asked to have a meeting with Robert Caley in private. She sighed, saying she now realized she could have asked for so much more money, but at the time she had thought two hundred dollars was a good price.
‘I should have asked for thousands. I was dumb. He paid me there and then, told me never to say a word of this to anyone, never to admit to anyone I’d had a meeting with him, and he wouldn’t ever mention it to nobody.’
Fryer still felt her fingers smoothing his back, making him stretch upwards, and she giggled.
‘Go on, Ruby.’
She explained that she had gone to the dressmaker’s and asked for gold stitching on the dress but the dressmaker had said that with just two hundred dollars they could only do the front of her bodice. ‘I wanted gold all over, Fryer. I wanted to shine like I was the sun.’
She rolled away from him and he turned to face her. ‘Anyways, Errol had given me this cute little posy for Valentine’s Day, so I went back to the hotel to thank him and we were standing in the courtyard when Anna Louise Caley called down to me. She wanted me to see her in her room, said it was urgent.’
She’d had a moment of worry in case she saw Robert Caley, having just given him Tilda’s diary. So Errol had sneaked her in through the staff entrance and she had gone to Anna Louise’s bedroom.
‘I made a mistake, Fryer. You see, I thought maybe she had seen the diary somehow and I started saying that I had nothing to do with it, just like I promised Mr Caley. But she got all crazy, Fryer, you ain’t never seen anyone go so white-raged in your whole life. She was spittin’ anger and asked over and over what had been written, and so I told her.’
He gently touched her cheek with the back of his gnarled hand. ‘Go on, honey, then what did you do?’
She sucked on one of his fingers and smiled. ‘She wanted me to make a voodoo doll, she gave me a photograph and a little envelope with some of Tilda’s hair, skin and blood. But I don’t know, they was just funny little black bits and pieces.’
Fryer could feel his heart thudding as her sing-song voice described how she had come back home and sat stitching and making up the doll. She giggled like a child when she told him she had crapped and pissed all over it before wrapping it up in newspaper and tying it with string.
‘She give me another three hundred dollars, Fryer, an’ I saved it all up. That’s what I been usin’ for my gown, now I got gold all over the skirt.’
‘How did you get the doll to her?’
Ruby smiled, describing how Anna Louise had lowered some string and she had tied the doll to it and then Anna Louise had pulled the string over her balcony at the hotel. Ruby had then gone home and never thought any more about it.
Fryer’s head ached, and he moved away from the bed. When he saw her reflection in the dressing-table mirror, she was leaning up on one elbow, her mini skirt eased up round her crotch, her blouse half open and her legs spread wide.
‘You must never tell this to another soul, Ruby. You hearing me?’
She cocked her head to one side. ‘I never told anyone but you, Fryer, I’m not stupid. But you know something kind of strange?’
‘What?’
Ruby swung her legs from the bed and bowed her head. ‘Well, Anna Louise was full of hatred, she was all deep down angry. She said she wanted Tilda Brown to hurt bad, to cause her pain. When I was making up the doll, I got one of the pins from my dressmaker and I looked at this doll, and I closed my eyes and I let my fingers feel the little head and then I stuck that pin in hard. As it went in, I said, “This’ll hurt her bad.” I wanted to hurt her too for being so mean to me. Getting me fired like she did. So I did an extra twist just for me.’
Fryer watched as the young girl lifted her head. As her hair parted from her face her eyes glittered, and he got the feeling he was l
ooking into the eyes of a dangerous snake.
She whispered, smiling, ‘And then she hanged herself. Now ain’t that funny?’
Fryer walked into the kitchen where the boys were now scrubbing the floor and Edith was frying up a pan of chicken. It all looked so ordinary, so domestic, so innocent.
‘I’m going back to my bar now, Edith. You give Juda my regards.’
‘I surely will, Fryer, and Sugar May’s out buying a nice bunch of fresh, sweet-smelling flowers for her room.’
‘That’s good.’
Edith wiped her hands on her apron. ‘You gonna come to the ball with us, Fryer? It’s gonna be something special and Ruby is gonna look like a dream when they crown her.’
He nodded, knowing she would, and knowing just how much that dream had cost made him uneasy. He had always felt uneasy round the sisters when they were younger. All their potions and their visions, all the trail of people coming to them for guidance, weeping and wailing, treating them like they were royalty, and in a way they had been. Now Ruby was grown, and contrary to what Edith and Juda believed, that their powers stopped with them, he knew they hadn’t. The Marie Laveau legacy would live on. Upstairs in that tiny bedroom was proof, and it unsettled him, just as it always had done.
‘You watch over Ruby, Edith. Maybe you and Juda sit down and talk to her, make sure she don’t abuse what God given her. You make sure of that now.’
Edith frowned, not fully understanding his concern. ‘She’s just a pretty girl, Fryer . . . Fryer, why you actin’ this way?’
‘I’m not actin’ any way, Edith honey, just watch over that child. Maybe it’s time she learned to have some of your big heart.’
He had gone before she could ask him any more questions, and she went back to stirring the pan of fried chicken, the beads of perspiration rolling off her big, round face. Someone rapped on the back door and she banged down the slatted spoon and crossed to the door.
The woman had a small child in her arms. She looked up at Edith, her face strained. ‘Please, Mrs Corbello, my youngest is so sick, it’s some kind of fever.’
Edith ushered the frightened woman into her altar room. She was about to close the door, when she hesitated and called up the stairs, ‘Ruby honey, will you come on down to me now?’
Ruby peered over the bannisters. ‘I’m busy fixin’ mah hair, Mama.’
‘Well, you do that later. I want you down here with me.’
Ruby blinked; her mama had never asked her to come into the back parlour before.
‘You want me in there with you?’ Ruby said hesitantly.
‘Uh huh, come on, we got a sick child in here.’ Edith’s tone of voice was not going to take no for an answer.
Ruby came down the stairs, buttoning up her blouse and straightening her skirt, a little frightened.
Edith was sitting behind her table, the woman was weeping, rocking the sick baby in her arms.
‘How long has he not been feeding from your breast?’
‘Days, Mrs Corbello. He just gone all listless on me and vomitin’ up all night. Now he just lies still. I got him a bottle to try and feed him, but he won’t take it.’
Ruby watched as Edith took the child and unwrapped his blanket and eased off his clothes, while the mother wept, rocking backwards and forwards in her chair. Edith beckoned Ruby to her side.
‘Hold him up real gentle, Ruby, lay him flat on his blanket.’
Edith walked out of the room and hurried into the kitchen. She put a pan of milk on the stove and examined the bottle, sniffing at it, then she boiled up a big pan of hot water to sterilize the bottle and the teat. She turned as Ruby walked in, holding the child in her arms, just the blanket around him.
‘Mama, this little one’s been bruised bad, all down his belly and his back.’
‘I know, we got to talk to her easy, see what she says. We’ll use some herbs and oils on his hurt body and keep him cool. I’ll need an iced cloth and fresh water.’
‘He should go to a doctor, Mama.’
Edith busied herself at the stove, testing the milk.
‘She got no money for a doctor and she scared what she’s done to the child. She’d be arrested if a doctor saw that, that’s why she’s come to me. So do as I tell you, Ruby.’
Edith talked quietly to the weeping woman as Ruby tended the baby. He was still listless, but the soothing creams lowered his temperature. The mother eventually admitted she had hit the child after days of sleepless nights when she could no longer cope with his crying. Edith examined her breasts and then told her that as she was dry of milk her child was crying for sustenance, and they must begin to encourage the baby to suckle from the bottle. She never admonished the woman, but was gentle and understanding throughout.
Ruby held the bottle to the baby’s lips as the woman held on to Edith’s hand and watched as her mama said she would ease her mind so she would be able to cope with her child. Her big hands massaged the woman’s head and shoulders until her eyes drooped, and then she worked on her neck and back, a rough, hard massage. She then sipped from a cup of liquor, and Ruby’s mouth dropped open as Edith hissed out the water in a spray, covering the woman’s face and head. She drank and hissed the liquid three times before leading the woman to the cot bed in the corner of the room and helping her to lie down. She was in a deep sleep almost as soon as her head rested against the pillow.
Ruby looked down at the child. She said nothing, but Edith saw her gaze deep into the child’s eyes, no trace now of the sneering teenager in her manner, but a quiet intensity. The child’s eyes opened and he looked back at Ruby, not listless now, drinking in her eyes. Then suddenly his lips puckered and he began to suck from the bottle in Ruby’s hand.
Ruby looked up at her mother as she felt the child’s pulse, and it was as if this was the first time in many years she had really seen her – not overweight and irritating, but almost regal, someone to be admired, and it made Ruby feel humble and ashamed. She couldn’t stop the tears filling her eyes. Edith kissed the top of her daughter’s head and caught the tear that trickled down her cheek on her finger. For a second it was a shining clear crystal.
‘They don’t come for tears, Ruby, just your love and a little of your strength. Mine’s fading now, but . . .’
‘I’m strong, Mama, I’m strong.’ Even Ruby’s voice had changed; it seemed quieter, more melodious.
Edith nodded. ‘I know you are, Ruby. You purify your heart, because maybe you are stronger than you know.’
Lorraine was silent on the drive to Elizabeth Caley’s home. François had tried to make conversation, but receiving no reply fell silent, watching her through his driving mirror. She clutched a bottle inside a brown paper bag. He’d seen her go to open it on two occasions, and then stop. She acted like a woman who had just got bad news. She had, and it took all her self-control not to want to go and face Robert Caley out there and then, but even more not to take a drink. She had to find further proof of Robert Caley’s guilt. Yet again, he was their number one suspect, and this time she would not allow herself to be side-stepped by her emotions. She wanted to nail him.
Lorraine stood in the hall at Elizabeth Caley’s mansion. Juda Salina came slowly down the sweeping staircase. She was as tired out as her sister had been.
‘Well, she almost did it for real this time. They been an’ pumped it all out of her, and now she’s sleeping like a baby.’
Lorraine waited until Juda reached the bottom step. ‘It’d be a pity if your golden goose died, wouldn’t it?’ she said sarcastically.
Juda gave her a scathing look. ‘I earn every cent I ever made from her, Mrs Page, believe me, I earned it.’
Missy brought them some tea in the double parlour and then left them. Juda sipped her tea; she seemed truly exhausted and her thick make-up had run on her big, round face.
‘I never thought I’d be seeing you again.’
‘Why?’ Lorraine asked.
‘No reason,’ Juda said, and then smiled to herself. �
��Powers dimming, get confused and too tired now days. Anyone close to you with the initial U ‘
‘No.’
‘That’s good. I had a bad premonition about someone, I thought maybe it was you.’
Lorraine shrugged. ‘Well, as you can see, Mrs Salina, I am fine. Where is Robert Caley?’
‘I dunno, maybe at his hotel, maybe not. I left messages but he never came here, so I guess he really don’t care any more.’
‘About Elizabeth?’
‘Uh huh, she thought maybe he’d come, you know, if I said she was in a real bad way, but I guess she done it once too often.’ Juda clasped the arms of her chair. ‘You know, Mrs Page, it may be hard to believe, but Mrs Caley is one sweet woman. Just, she got demons inside her. I’ve tried to help her for twenty years but they get so strong that she just goes crazy and sometimes she frightens even me. Maybe she should let out who she really is, but she won’t, she keeps it hidden away, so she has to use anything that’ll ease the pain, anything that’ll stop the demons.’
Lorraine stared. ‘You keep them alive, Juda, don’t you? I know about her, I know she is too scared to admit she’s got black blood, but I can’t believe that is all there is toit!’
Juda smiled. ‘Oh, you been talking to Fryer, he’s the only one that knows. I’m right, huh? You been to see Fryer Jones?’
Lorraine nodded. ‘He told me that he knew, but I don’t know if he was aware that Anna Louise was not Robert Caley’s child.’
‘Oh, he knows. But, Mrs Page, maybe half of what he said was just him piecing things together. Old Fryer likes to be in on things, always hated not knowing.’
‘Were you, or are you, blackmailing Mrs Caley about her past?’
Juda laughed softly, closing her eyes. ‘No, Mrs Page, I wasn’t doing nothing like that, I wouldn’t stoop so low.’
Lorraine half-raised an eyebrow; if Ruby could contemplate getting money out of Robert Caley, she was damned sure that Juda or Edith had shown her the ropes.
‘You don’t believe me?’
‘No, Mrs Salina, I don’t. What I have seen is your apartment and limo – are you telling me that fancy address on Doheny Drive is paid for from your business?’
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