Birthdays of a Princess

by Helga Zeiner

  Gracie yells back at me, but there is no way she can make me do what they want. Jeez, I’m proud of myself now, just watching what escapes from this balloon. She slips the dress back over my head, muffling my I don’t want to and takes me by her hand and drags me out of the studio.

  On the way home, I’m still defiant, and confused. Gracie keeps her eyes on the road for a long while, not saying anything, just staring ahead, but eventually she starts sniffling and I see that she cries.

  “I don’t understand why you have to be such a bad girl,” she sobs, “after all I do for you. Now something bad will happen, I just know it! The angels in heaven will weep and the dear Lord will punish all of us. And that’ll be all your fault. Little girls should do what the grown-ups want, or terrible, terrible things might happen. We’re all in danger now because of you.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

  A quick look at me, then back to the road. “Maybe we can still avoid the wrath of the angels in heaven. Do you want to avoid the danger you put me and your mom and everybody else in this town into?”

  Yes. Yes. Yes. Of course I do.

  “First thing, you say nothing, to nobody, you understand?”

  I never had, but then again, I had never rebelled before.

  “Not a word, that’s very important. You tell your mom nothing, nothing whatsoever, got it? If you’re a good girl again and do as I tell you, then maybe, just maybe, the angels will forgive you.”

  Yes. Yes. I will.

  “And then, next time, you do as you are told.”

  The air is nearly out, the deflated rubber balloon hangs limp over my hand. There is a little bit left. I put my other hand over it and press very gently.

  Of course, I remember now.

  My seventh birthday didn’t happen, because there was a hurricane rolling in from the Atlantic. We had planned to go to a seaside restaurant, for cakes and ice cream, but all the restaurants were boarded up already, Hurricane Katrina was coming.

  When Gracie and I came home, Mom was frantic. The forecast was for dangerous weather, and she’d been trying to reach us, not knowing where we were.

  I remember thinking, good, she doesn’t know. She must never know, then the angels won’t be angry and nothing bad will happen to me and Gracie and all the others.

  A few days later, soon after my seventh birthday, we were all huddled together in an underground shelter when Katrina finally hit. It was a majestic storm, one the world would acknowledge later on as the biggest, most devastating hurricane of all times. Galveston was not flooded as badly as New Orleans, but the storm did a lot of damage in my hometown too.

  Everybody in the shelter held on to each other, grown-ups and children alike, knowing our lives were in danger. I was terrified by the furious sounds Katrina made outside, and even more so by the infectious angst wafting through the shelter like poisonous gas. Gracie held me real tight when she saw me shivering with fear.

  She brought her mouth close to my ear and whispered into it: “See. See what you have brought upon us.”

  Chapter 29

  When Melissa arrived, Macintosh was already in the interview room. Harding walked in behind her, bent down to him and whispered into his ear.

  “A second mail just came in from Josh.”

  “It’ll have to wait!”

  Macintosh was too fired up. He could barely wait for Melissa to sit down.

  “You lied to me!” He slammed his fist down. It was meant to startle Melissa, but she didn’t flinch and looked at him with a blank face.

  “The address in Galveston you gave me, number 357 on Caroline Road, doesn’t exist!”

  “Oh, that. I realized later on I must have given you my old address, the one where we briefly lived when I moved to Texas. That whole block was destroyed by Katrina, so it wouldn’t surprise me if that house is gone.”

  “So where did you live?”

  Melissa actually scratched her head. “Hmm, let me think—”

  “You forgot?”

  “Yes.”

  “You told me all sorts of crap. Like you worked for a living down there.”

  “Well, I did, for a brief while. Since when is that a crime?”

  “With all the money Tiara’s father supposedly left you?”

  “Children are expensive.”

  “You told us your daughter worked for various modeling agencies. We checked. None had a Tiara Brown registered.”

  Melissa didn’t miss a beat. “She had an agent. He handled all the bookings and everything. I wouldn’t know which agencies he worked with.”

  “The agent’s name?”

  “Oh, I can’t remember that.”

  “How convenient! You seem to be very bad with addresses and names. You gave me a cock’n bull story about Tiara calling herself Princess Tia. Why didn’t you tell me that was her stage name?”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “And why didn’t you tell us that her father’s name was Rodriguez?”

  “She’s never met her father, he wasn’t important to her. And anyway, her name is Brown, not Rodriguez. That’s how it’s written in my passport, I can show you. If you accuse me of lying, you have to prove me wrong first.”

  “Lady, let me tell you something, I don’t have to prove anything to you. Your daughter is accused of a serious crime. Your attitude is not giving me the impression that you want to help her, which makes me wonder what else you’re trying to hide from us.”

  Melissa leaned back in her chair as much as her bulk would allow, crossed her arms and smiled at him. “I’m not hiding anything.”

  Macintosh smiled back. “Yeah? Nothing at all?” He pressed a button and his computer screen lit up. He pressed another button. “How about that? You know nothing about a Princess Tia?”

  He watched her reaction closely. She did frown and moved a bit closer to the screen, but that could have been because her eyesight wasn’t the best.

  “Of course I do. I told you she was a child model.”

  “You were responsible for dressing her up like that?”

  Melissa straightened up. Really proud.

  “Of course. I did all that, and I coached her for every contest. What a princess she was. So pretty. Everybody adored her. She was a natural beauty.”

  Harding joined the conversation. “I got to say, that doesn’t look very natural to me. But I’m only a guy.” Macintosh shot him a look but let him carry on. “I guess you’d know more about it.”

  Melissa rewarded him with a big smile. “A lot of children enter those contests and they’re all good looking. We needed to enhance Tiara’s beauty so she’d stand out from the other contestants. And look at her, she sure deserved this crown. I seem to remember it was the Miss Texas Princess, right?” She moved closer again, squinting. “Yes, I’m sure it was. I remember that dress. Adorable. She just blew them all away.”

  “And after that, did you enter her into other contests?”

  “Of course.” She listed a few of them, and Harding quickly wrote them down. “But I don’t see what that’s got to do with what happened the other day. In fact, I’m getting really annoyed with this questioning. If you don’t give me an explanation, a good reason for this, I’ll get myself a lawyer. Don’t think I wouldn’t because I can’t afford it. I’ve been told I’m entitled to advice from a court-appointed legal counsel.”

  Macintosh had a cat-ate-the-cream expression. “Oh, do threaten us, Melissa Brown. I’ll be delighted to discuss a few things with your counsel. Like how you withheld information from the police.”

  Unfortunately Melissa could not jump up, as much as she wanted to. She lifted herself out of her chair, supported by a heavy sigh.

  “I did no such thing. Stop accusing me.”

  Harding didn’t step aside when she tried to leave the room. “One more thing, Mrs. Brown.”

  She stopped right in front of him.

  “Dressing your daughter up like this, were you never worried that this
attracts child molesters?”

  “How dare you!” Melissa snorted in disgust and pushed him out of her way. “Now I certainly will get myself a lawyer!”

  She slammed the door close.

  As soon as she was gone, Macintosh burst out: “Holy crap, wasn’t that a bit heavy-handed?”

  “Open your mailbox.”

  Macintosh did. Another picture of Princess Tia popped up. She seemed to be a bit older than in the first picture, maybe six or seven, but she wore the same sparkling crown. She was lying on her stomach on a white faux fur blanket, propped up on her elbows, looking straight into the camera with innocent eyes, not smiling. Aside from the crown, she didn’t wear anything. Her naked little bottom stuck up in the air like a freshly baked bun. Somebody had taken great care to highlight it.

  “Josh ran the Princess Tia picture through the face recognition system,” Harding said. “That came up. It’s from one of the pedophile sites we closed down some time ago.”

  “Good grief,” Macintosh sighed. “How many more of those are out there?”

  “He found that one so far, but they are seriously looking into it. He thinks there will be more.”

  Macintosh slumped down, still staring at the picture. Finally, he closed the screen with a determined grunt.

  “I’m glad I didn’t see this earlier. It all starts to make sense. I mean, why we got nowhere so far. Why we couldn’t find any records of her living in Texas. Why she gave us a wrong address. Why her and her mother wanted to hide things from us. They sold images of the little girl to pedophiles, that’s why!” He got up and stood there like a God of vengeance.

  “I want every sordid little detail of the Browns’ lives in Texas dug up, examined, turned-over and recorded. I want to know everything! I’m thoroughly pissed off with this bitch of a mother, trying to be clever. Talk to Josh, ask him to send us all he can find out and assure him of our cooperation from this end. And then, when we know more about her involvement in this, only then, do we go back to her. Let her feel safe and secure. Let her talk to a lawyer. From now on, we do our job and find out everything there is to know.”

  “Even if it’s not a homicide?”

  “I’ll show this picture to the Sergeant and get his approval to involve the Sexual Offense Squad. Trust me, when he sees this, it’ll take less than a second to get the ball rolling officially.”

  Harding rushed off. Without the Sergeant’s explicit approval they would be walking on thin ice.

  There was a distinct advantage to being close to retirement, Macintosh thought. He wasn’t going after a promotion anymore, and nobody would demote him if he didn’t exactly stick to the book in this case. And what a nightmare of a case it was. What he had seen on that computer screen made his blood boil—and now he had no choice but to go and see Tiara at the Center again.

  Chapter 30

  Melissa sat on the narrow bench of the Boundary Road bus stop which was the one closest to the police station. She had to wait twenty minutes for her bus, enough time to calm down and collect herself. Why on earth had she threatened the detectives with getting legal counsel? She couldn’t afford a good lawyer, and a bad one would only mess things up even more. This thing began to spiral out of control.

  God, if Louise heard about that, she’d be livid. She would immediately try to solve this mess, her way. Which meant, she’d barge in and take over. How often had she been steamrolled by her mother and deeply regretted it later on.

  Just like three years ago, when she had been desperate enough to finally, finally call Louise.

  “Mother, it’s me.”

  Louise was never speechless, not even after twelve years. “Christ, Melissa, I can’t believe this! What on earth…”

  “I can’t talk long,” Melissa interrupted. “So you just have to listen. I have a daughter. Her name is Tiara. She’s twelve now. You’re a grandmother. We need your help.”

  “What kind of help? I mean, sure, whatever, just say so.”

  “We need to get away from here. She’s in trouble. It’s too dangerous for her here.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “You know, drugs and stuff. I need to get her away. There are some bad people here.”

  Louise had immediately taken control. “Give me three days,” she had said. “I’ll come and get you.”

  She had done whatever one needed to do to organize a rescue mission thousands of kilometers away, then driven all the way down to Houston, where they met at a pre-arranged spot in front of the NASA Space Center.

  Melissa had taken the bus from Galveston that morning. She had sat on the narrow bench that stretched over the back of the bus, next to two voluptuous Mexican women who chatted incessantly. The three of them filled the whole bench. She sat by the window and stared outside all the way from Galveston main station to the bus change at the NASA Bypass, not paying attention to the rather unattractive industrial landscape with its flat stretches of concrete box buildings and parking lots, criss-crossed by countless hydro-cables. She had arrived hours too early.

  Suddenly, she was anxious. Bringing her mother into this mess might be like calling the cavalry to a two-man bar fight. On the other hand, her mother owed her. Big time.

  When Louise finally arrived, at about 3 pm, Melissa was beyond worrying. It was an unbearably hot afternoon, and even in the shade of the ample oak trees on the Center’s eerily empty huge parking lot it must be over 30 degrees Celsius. Melissa was past sweating, she didn’t have a drop of fluid left in her, even with the gallon of Coke she had been drinking while waiting. It had evaporated right out of her, she hadn’t gone peeing once.

  A silver Honda Civic drove slowly toward the locked main entrance. Melissa stepped out of the shade and waved. The car changed direction and drove to the treed area. Melissa walked to the car, a step at a time. She had to suppress sudden hostility. Damn it, mother, where have you been the last twelve years?

  Louise stepped out of the car, then leaned back, eyes wide.

  “Melissa! I hardly recognize you.”

  “My weight is the least of my problems just now.”

  Mother made one of her tsk-tsk faces, tsk-tsk meaning, there is absolutely NO excuse for letting yourself go like this, but at least she didn’t say it. “Where’s my granddaughter?”

  “At home, in Galveston.”

  “But—”

  “She wouldn’t come. Tiara is a head-strong girl, and if she doesn’t want to go, there is nothing I can do to change her mind.”

  A fleeting smile lit Louise’s face. “Guess she got that from me. They do say many character traits jump one generation.”

  Melissa was jolted back into the present by the low screeching sound of powerful brakes.

  She looked up. A bus stopped next to her, still vibrating gently while the front door opened. The driver looked at her, the only passenger waiting at the bus stop.

  She waved at him to continue on. She had changed her mind. As soon as the bus moved forward again, she crossed the road and waited at the bus stop opposite for transport to her mother’s home. She needed help again.

  Chapter 31

  The inner conflict tore him apart. His partner, his work ethics, even his daughter, expected him to do his job right. But his heart locked like a rusty old motor every time he thought of Tiara Brown. He hated to admit it to himself, but he had a real problem connecting the image of the little girl on the white rug with the suspect. He wanted to keep his distance.

  But there was no way he could continue to classify and file her under juvenile loser—or worse, under dangerous criminal—once he had seen that picture. Every time he thought of her now, he wondered what kind of twisted path, what type of adult manipulation had led her to self-destruct in such spectacular fashion. Even knowing she must have suffered childhood abuse, he still fought himself with every argument he could come up with. It scared him to go all soft.

  His liver was already acting up. If he wasn’t careful, he’d get gallstones or pancreatitis or
God knows what other internal disorder. And yet, in the end, he had no choice. He had to do what was right, even if it killed him.

  After Melissa had left the station, he called it a day, got in his car and drove down south. Before he knew it, he was turning into the Center’s parking area. They made him wait for ten minutes.

  When Tiara was brought in, he didn’t have a clue what he would say to her. Should he ask her point blank about that disturbing image on his computer screen? How to explain something like that? Did he even have the right to confront a fifteen year old with the filth grown-ups had subjected her to? Why was he here, if he didn’t?

  She wasn’t as upbeat as last time; in fact, she seemed broody. Just what he had come for.

  “You look like shit,” she said.

  “Thanks, that’s exactly what I needed after a rough day.”

  “You want sympathy, go home to your wife.”

  “She’s dead.”

  “Shit. I mean, sorry.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Is that what hurt you so badly? Was she the one who got killed by someone like me?”

  Macintosh was taken aback. “Your social graces need some polishing.”

  “Not a lot of opportunity for that in here.”

  “Nobody ever taught you manners?”

  She hesitated.

  “I guess not. From what I remember, my childhood wasn’t exactly a high class affair.”

  He took out his notebook. “Do you mind telling me what you do remember?”

  “You mean about my childhood?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s easy. Next to nothing. All I know is that I don’t know how to behave. Proof given.”

  “And you still don’t remember what led to the attack at Starbucks?”

  “Honestly, I don’t.”

  She held eye-contact, didn’t flinch. What if the steel inside her had been hardened by the dictation of cruel circumstances? Circumstances? Kids didn’t end up naked on fur rugs by accident. People put them there.