Caress

by Grayson Cole

  Scowling through the smoke, Nyron Seymour watched his daughter’s step falter.

  “Didn’t mean to surprise you,” he said, puffing out. “I called Elphonse to make sure he watched you get on the plane.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are not supposed to be chasing down apparitions in Norfolk. You’re supposed to be handling this Harrison Tribune fiasco.”

  “Where’s Ma?” Nya walked over and gave him a brief hug.

  “She’s still down home working. She’ll be back in Birmingham soon, or I’m going to go down there and get her myself,” he said, squeezing her back. Nya thought of how much her parents loved each other and how lucky she was to have them. Yet her smile faded as Nyron’s did. She sat down beside him, waiting. The storm was coming. “Nya, I thought you were managing this Harrison Tribune situation.”

  “I am, Daddy,” she replied apprehensively.

  “Then what is this?” For the first time, she noticed what lay on the table in front of him. It was a copy of that day’s paper. On the front page was a picture of Marshall Ellis at a benefit the year before. The headline read, “Ex-Hatsheput Exec Found Dead.” Nya let her breath rush past her lips as she pressed a hand to her forehead. “You had to know the media would find out he was dead. That’s not the sort of thing you can keep a secret. You can’t fault the Harrisons for—”

  “Read it,” Nyron commanded.

  Sometimes it surprised Nya how a sixty-five-year-old man could still be so grand and bearish, how he could still make her feel so small and fearful in his presence. She looked down, scanning the article, which detailed much of what Michael had already told her about Ellis’s death. As she read on, she saw in bold print the words, “In related news.” What followed was a brief piece discussing Nyron’s decision to retire. It concluded with a paragraph citing that “sources” were almost positive that Nya would be named president after Nyron stepped down. Nya held her breath and wondered if she could pay someone to whack Michael on the back of the head.

  Nyron sucked in deep on his cigar, then took it out of his mouth and set it on the table. He released the thick smoke into the air and studied his daughter.

  Though Nya had been reeling from the contents of the article, she was snapped into clarity by her father’s statement. “This is not my fault, Daddy. I asked Michael not to mention me in any articles or your plans to retire.”

  “You confirmed my plans to retire?”

  She gulped. “Everyone is aware that it’s an eventuality. But I promise you, I didn’t tell him I was going to follow you. ” She felt her temper starting to get the better of her. “And just so you know, I certainly didn’t kill Marshall Ellis, so I don’t see how you can blame that on me!”

  She jumped as he slammed a large, meaty fist into the table. “This was your responsibility. You were supposed to deal with the Tribune staff. You were supposed to deal with Ellis. He was out on bail when this happened. Did you know that? Out on bail for stealing money from this company? How do you think this makes us look? Unstable and untrustworthy.”

  “Mandolesi obviously got him out! And you told me to stay away from the investigation!”

  He glared at her and commanded, “But you didn’t. If you choose to defy me, at least be successful at it.”

  Nya’s mouth dropped open.

  Her father went on. “Now I want that feature in print as soon as possible. And I want this question of succession cleared up. I also want you to ensure that no further information about the case leaks and… Oh, never mind, I’ll handle it myself.”

  Nya shot up out of her seat. “Daddy, I’ll handle it. You said it was my responsibility so I’ll do what’s necessary to fix it.”

  Nyron stared at her, his eyes wide like her own, piercing her. When he responded, though, he was calm and puffing on his cigar again. “Since everyone knows now that I am retiring, I think it’s only fair that you know who I’m considering for the job.” Nya sat down in her chair again, waiting. “As I’m sure you know, I asked Dashiel if he wanted the position; he declined it. I asked Cameron, but he doesn’t want to leave Senegal. That leaves you, Elphonse, and Elliot.”

  Outside of her absolute outrage at her father offering the job to two people, knowing that both would decline, she was furious he had dared to group her and her skills with Elphonse and Elliot. Elliot Richards was the California affiliate, and although he had proven to be a good administrator and had an extensive and impressive history in the art acquisitions world, he was new to the company and didn’t know its idiosyncrasies well enough to run it. Elphonse had been with the company even longer than Nya had, but he couldn’t balance a checkbook. He was the single most wasteful executive in the company. For a moment her mind shifted to the Norfolk branch and its extravagant redecorating. Elphonse had just left that branch. She couldn’t believe he had been put in charge of the St. Thomas branch, certainly the most important. There was no way he could manage the company on a large scale. She wanted to scream so badly that she was afraid to speak. Instead, she stood and headed towards the door again.

  “Nya, where are you going?” her father called after her.

  “Sir?” she turned and asked after grabbing the keys to the car. The truth was, she didn’t know where she was going. She just needed to get away from him.

  “Go ahead. Have a temper tantrum if you like. I’ll go.” With a groan, her father rose. But he didn’t leave without a parting shot. “I will leave you here to behave like a child on your own. However, tomorrow morning, I’ll expect you to be handling Michael Harrison.”

  The most absurd and lewd image popped into her head at those words. God help her, but she giggled.

  Her father looked downright confounded.

  h

  Michael came home to ten messages flashing on his machine. He ran a hand over his face in exasperation. Ever since that Hatsheput article and going to that island, his life had been turned upside down. He pressed the blue button on his machine and tossed his bag onto the sofa. The first was from Claudia, and so were the second and third. He could almost hear amusement in her voice when she said that Nyron Seymour was up in arms about the article Michael had written on the death of Marshall Ellis. But that certainly didn’t faze Claudia, who was pleased with any article that was hot and, most importantly, accurate. A couple were from Tamitra, and, listening to the slow, sultry voice, Michael smiled. She was certainly a persistent female if he’d ever met one.

  Then he heard Nya’s voice. A thrill tripped through his system at the melodic sound. She started out deriding him for putting the nugget about her father’s retirement in the paper. Michael had taken the risk, thinking that the piece was short and not particularly revealing, but he knew how much being the next president meant to her. Maybe she wouldn’t be too mad.

  Her next words, though, sliced through those thoughts like a sharp blade. She was saying something about needing to talk to him about the investigation. Something about being assaulted in Norfolk. Michael turned slowly and focused on the machine, praying that what he had just heard wasn’t true, wishing to God that nothing had happened to her. He felt dread and terror mix in his stomach.

  He tried to remind himself that she had called him from her house, which meant she was fine. His hands flexed into fists as panic and anger took hold of him.

  He didn’t listen to any more. He was in his car racing down the Elton B. Stephens Expressway.

  Frantically, he picked up his cell phone to call her. She didn’t answer. He dialed her again.

  She answered just as he pulled onto her street. Michael immediately spotted the dark green luxury car that had taken him to the museum, and Lysette’s Jeep. He pulled up and screeched into the driveway, nearly running up the front sidewalk. He rang the doorbell, and then, when no one answered right away, he began to knock as hard and as fast as he could. Finally Lysette opened the door. An apron was tied around her waist. “Where is she?” The words rushed past his lips. “Is she okay?”

&nbs
p; “She’s fine, a bump on the head, but fine. Dude, are you all right? That’s the question.”

  Michael leaned in the doorway, trying to catch his breath before he answered. He could relax now. His heart could beat again, now that he was certain Nya was all right. God, he didn’t know what he would do if…he stared at Lysette and her eyes held his in insistent recognition. It was too late to pretend. Too late to say that he didn’t care. Too late to say that he had just come for the story. Too late to say that he wasn’t falling in love with her.

  “She’s fine,” Lysette repeated and moved out of the way, inviting him into the house. “Come on back,” Lysette said and headed towards the open door. “This is the den. Not much of a recreation area, though. She spends most of her time doing Hatsheput work in here. Right now, she’s lying down feeling sorry for herself. Nya, dear, you’ve got a guest,” Lysette announced as he moved through the door behind her.

  That was when he realized that the bundle of quilt on the sofa was actually Nya. Only her head stuck out at one end as she lifted her eyes to him. “You mean the guest that was just trying to knock my door down?” Nya inquired dryly. “How do you do, Mr. Harrison? What brings you to my humble abode?”

  Michael didn’t know how to answer. He had almost forgotten what it was like being in her presence, especially when she was deciding to put that smart tongue of hers to use. But he couldn’t get angry, not when he was so absolutely elated that she was okay. “I came because I got your message. I was—I wanted to know if you were okay.”

  “Well, I’m fine. I thought I said that on your voice mail,” she replied with an exasperated huff.

  “Well, dammit, I needed to see for myself,” he retorted.

  Nya merely shrugged and closed her eyes as she reclined on the sofa.

  Michael glared at them both. He started to say something, but when his eyes found the hangings on the walls, he was taken aback. There were at least four prints mounted that he himself had at home and two actual paintings for whose prints he had been searching for months. He looked back at Nya, whose eyes were closed.

  “This is amazing,” he said and beamed. “I have almost all of these. That is absolutely amazing.”

  “Not really, those are some of our more popular pieces. Like the one you’re looking at now,” Nya said. Michael looked over his shoulder and saw that her eyes were still closed. “That print is a big seller. I think it’s because you really get the feeling that you’re right there. It’s the perspective, so low to the ground like that, and the fact that it’s so vibrant it’s almost three-dimensional. And you can feel the movement. There’s nothing classical about that piece. It’s just emotional and mobile. It gets people on a visceral level.”

  Michael listened to her say many of the same things he had felt about the piece, a painting of a tiger moving silently, menacingly, through the jungle as if stalking prey. Her theory was so in tune with what he felt that he knew exactly why those sales had increased when she was a sales associate. He knew exactly why she was so good at what she did. And her eyes were still closed.

  He walked stealthily over to the coffee table stretching in front of her sofa and sat down on it. He watched her, taking in every soft, delicate line of her face. She was like a finely sculpted doll, and he couldn’t get enough of the sight of her.

  She was startled when she opened her eyes and saw him there, “What is it, Michael?”

  “What happened, Nya?” he asked, softly, still watching her.

  She sat up and made room for him to sit beside her. “I was doing some research late last night at the Norfolk office. A thief got in and knocked me out.”

  Michael felt anger begin to boil within him. What kind of man could have done something like that to a woman, to Nya? “I can’t believe someone would do that to you.”

  “I’m fine really. I guess I’m just—”

  “Feeling sorry for herself,” Lysette said, coming in and setting a tray of food down next to Michael. “As soon as Nyron found out what happened to her he sent her back here. She’s ticked because she thinks he doesn’t trust her to handle this and find out who did it.”

  “Lysette, I don’t think he’s interested in that.”

  “Well,” Michael interjected, “I’m going to side with your father on this one. You’ve already been hurt. I’m sure he wouldn’t want to risk that again.”

  “You sound just like him,” Nya groaned.

  “If you ask me they’re both right. This is serious,” Lysette said.

  “And besides,” Nya said, leveling a ferocious look at Michael, “my father sent me back after reading in a certain publication that Marshall Ellis was dead and that I was going to be the next president of Hatsheput Industries.”

  Michael ran a hand over his face. “You saw that, huh?”

  “We all saw it,” Lysette remarked. “Nyron was fit to be tied, according to his daughter here.”

  “I thought you had to go?” Nya gave her friend a pointed cue.

  “I do. I do. I’ve come to see about you and you are indeed fine. So, yes, I have to be off.” She grabbed her purse and turned to Michael. “The blow to the head has given her a really bad attitude.”

  “I heard that!” Nya said to her friend’s back as she left the house.

  “Tell me what happened,” Michael prodded gently.

  “Not much to tell. I told you what I was going to Norfolk to do. Some of the staff were uncooperative in giving me the documents I needed, so I went to the warehouse two nights ago to check into it myself. I got there and I found some pieces by our boys, Noah, Errol, and Lamonte. I also found a piece by Bernard French.”

  “The fourth young man?”

  “Yes.”

  “The one that was cut up and found on the shore?”

  Nya gave a little gasp, even though she had known what had happened. Just hearing it again was painful.

  “Just like Marshall Ellis,” Michael continued.

  She nodded. She tucked long locks behind her ear. “After I found the pieces, I felt something hit my head and I blacked out.”

  “Is that it?”

  Nya hesitated. She started to nod, but realized she couldn’t lie to him. So she said nothing.

  “Go ahead and eat. We’ll talk about it when you’re done.”

  “Okay.”

  After a moment of silence while Nya ate and Michael flipped through channels, he confessed, “I was so worried about you, Nya.”

  She gave an awkward chuckle. “I called you, Michael. So you knew I wasn’t on my deathbed.”

  He watched her with his lids lowered studying her face. “I’m so happy you’re okay.”

  Nya was not proof against the look in his eye. She pushed her food aside, then slid over close to him on the sofa. His arms came out to wrap around her waist and hers went up to circle his neck. The embraced for a long moment. Nya would stay in his arms as long as it took to reassure him that she was healthy and safe.

  When they pulled apart, Michael gave her a quick, dry kiss and said, “I need details.”

  “Okay. What would you like to know?” she asked, still nestled close to him.

  “Well, first of all, you said you were in a warehouse when this happened.”

  “Yes.”

  “What made you go into the warehouse?”

  “I told you, I was looking for invoices. I figured I’d find them in the warehouse.”

  “And when you got there?”

  “I got there, started looking around, and found a shipment that included pieces from the four young men. I went through them. I needed to see what they had done, what had drawn our attention in the first place. Michael, I can’t tell you how beautiful their work was. We’re going to have to honor their work and do it soon. But anyhow, I got to Bernard’s piece and at first, I didn’t get it. It was one of those collage photographs where smaller images are used to make larger ones. You know, there’s the famous one of Abraham Lincoln. I’ve seen one of the Mona Lisa. You can get one in pr
actically any gift shop. It was done well, but you know, at first I wasn’t impressed. Then I realized that it was an image of Mandolesi.”

  Michael’s eyes widened. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. When I looked closer, I realized that the smaller images were shots of horrible scenes where Mandolesi was present for violence and arms deals and drug deals.”

  “Nya, are you serious?” he repeated.

  “I’m telling you, yes.”

  “How many pictures?”

  “Hundreds. I didn’t see any images repeated.”

  “How is that even possible? Mandolesi does not allow himself to be photographed. No one has ever heard of him being photographed, especially in a situation where he could be undeniably implicated.”

  “I don’t know how this kid got them, Michael, but it makes me think that the different nature of his death had something to do with this.”

  “Of course it did! Nya, that is proof that the man is aware of the activities. Proof that he’s involved. He would be locked away for the rest of his life. Where is the photograph now?”

  “Gone.” She took a sip of water, then tested the raw part of her scalp beneath her hair with her fingers. “As soon as I realized what it was, I went down. When I came to, I was in bed and El was telling me that he chased off the thief.”

  “The guy stole the photograph?”

  “He must have.”

  “Did Deklerk see him take it?”

  “El said he didn’t see the picture at all.”

  “But he chased off the thief.”

  Her hackles rose. “Yes.”

  “The thief that you never got a good look at.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you file a police report?”

  “What?”

  “Nya, dammit, did you file a police report when you came to? Did you go to a hospital to be checked out—”

  “I’m fine—”

  “Did you have the warehouse swept as a crime scene for clues to who your attacker was?”