Yesterday's Stardust

by Becky Melby

  The crying quieted. Dani visualized her sitting in a corner, hugging her knees and rocking, mascara streaming down her face.

  “My friend’s little brother got his hand smashed. When he got the cast off, I taught him how to draw.” She took a convulsive breath. “His family said I was like one of his therapists. They gave me a necklace. A heart necklace.”

  “That must have made you feel good. Can you see yourself—”

  “Somebody’s gotta clean this place. The wall is—” A gasp, followed by a low keening wail cut through Dani, sending chills down her back.

  “Tell me where you are. I’ll stay with you when you talk to the police. You shouldn’t be alone.”

  “Why did you tell me to leave him? He’d still be here…”

  “Let me come and get you, and we’ll talk about it.”

  “The cops just drove up. I didn’t want to be here.”

  “It’s good that you stayed. They’ll have to ask you some questions.”

  “I’ll tell them the truth,” she rasped. “I’ll tell them Danielle Gallagher killed him.”

  Dani didn’t protest when Evan pried the phone from her hand. He held his iPhone in front of her face. “Three blocks from the Marina. Squads got there about two minutes ago. Sound like your call?”

  She stared down at the address on the map and nodded.

  “Who is she? How do you know her?” Mitch picked up her canvas bag, set it on her desk, and stood.

  Evan bent over her. “Talk to me, Dan. You’re not looking so good.”

  “Remember China?”

  “The girl who only let me take silhouettes?”

  She nodded and looked up at Mitch. “Vito Savona—he works here in maintenance—jumped my car one night when I was doing research for my series, and he told me about this guy in his neighborhood who’s heavy into a gaming community. China is the guy’s sister. I interviewed her, and she opened up about other things. Her boyfriend was threatening her. I told her to leave him. She did. And now he”—her voice cracked—“he shot himself.”

  “Find her.” Mitch pulled her keys out of the dish on her desk. “This is it. Your story. This is your ‘What’s next.’”

  Evan grabbed her elbow as she stood. “Look at her. She’s white as a sheet. She can’t—”

  “I can. I have to.”

  “Why?” Evan’s grip on her elbow tightened. “Stop and think. Is this really about a story? Or is it about rescuing that girl? That’s not your job. It’s—”

  “Yes. It’s about all that. And throw redeeming myself into the mix.” As she picked up her bag, her hair spilled across her face, shielding her from the concern that threatened her self-control.

  Mitch squeezed her shoulder. “Can you go with her, Carr?”

  “No. I have to be at the courthouse in fifteen.”

  “She’ll do okay. It’s never easy when you’ve got a personal connection, but this will be good. Just remember, you gotta draw a line between reporting and social work.” Mitch raised the salute again. “Stay safe, kiddo.”

  “I’m the kickboxing diva, remember?” Her voice quaked.

  “That’s right.” With a laugh, Mitch strode back to his glass-walled office.

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  She lowered her chin then raised it. “If I’d kept my big mouth shut, that kid would still be alive. I should—”

  “Whoa.” Evan grabbed her by the shoulders. “I heard you say it wasn’t your fault, and it’s not. Somebody had to tell her to get out of there. Maybe you lost your objectivity. Maybe you forgot you were a reporter for a few minutes. But you acted out of compassion; you listened to your gut.” He lifted her chin. “We work for God first, Dan.”

  Dani answered with a sarcastic laugh as she swiped at her wet cheek and threw the strap of her bag over her shoulder. “Go take some pictures, Evan.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Nicky Fiorini kicked his sweat-soaked sheet to the floor and sucked a deep breath. Hot, stagnant air did nothing to ease the panic roused by the dream. Sitting up, he stared at the clock with one eye then glared at the spikes of afternoon sun stabbing through holes in the shade. If not for the dream, he’d still have another hour of escape.

  The nightmare hadn’t haunted him for months. He’d hoped he’d finally banished it, but the gunshot sound his subconscious conjured to shatter his sleep reverberated through his mind as intensely as the real one had.

  A day’s worth of stubble scratched his palms as he rubbed his face. He stood and pulled back the shade. Nothing stirred on the street below but a mother tugging a resistant child by the arm.

  What had he hoped to see? Would the aftermath of a real fight be somehow comforting? Someone else’s crisis instead of the one that stole his peace? Keys jangled. One scraped his thigh as he stepped into the flour-dusted jeans he’d discarded after tossing his apron and climbing the stairs at four-thirty this morning. He rolled his shoulders and grabbed a shirt from the drawer. When was the last time he’d fully relaxed? Four years, at least—back in his midtwenties when his biggest stresses were date nights ruined by his cheating father forgetting to show up for work.

  Life was simple back then. Before the nightmares.

  He picked up the sheet and shook it out, spreading it over the bed so the woman who’d filled the gap his mother left wouldn’t have to.

  A siren wailed in the distance. Someone else’s crisis.

  “Nicky!” Footsteps pounded the stairs. “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” He took two strides to the hallway, his pulse quickening at the tone in his sister’s voice.

  “A shot. I was in the kitchen. Alonzo”—she reached the top of the stairs and folded her arms across her belly—“said it came from across the street. He called the cops.”

  “Did he see anything?”

  Dark hair streaked across pale skin as she shook her head. “He thought he heard a scream. A woman.” Eyes wide, she leaned against the wall. “Shouldn’t we do something?”

  “No.” Nicky pressed his hand against the rigid cords at the back of his neck. The sound was real, and just yards away someone lived out his nightmare. “The police will handle it.”

  His sister closed her eyes. “It’s just like…” Tears brimming, she turned and ran down the stairs.

  She’d disappeared into the kitchen by the time Nicky nodded. His fingers curled. His thumb wrapped over them, but the splotch of patched plaster at shoulder height on the wall stopped him from using his fist. This time.

  Voice low and gravelly, he whispered, “I know.”

  From where he stood, the red and white ambulance concealed the driveway across the street. Nicky turned away from the knot of gapers on the corner. Speculations ricocheted like errant rifle shots. Gang related…revenge…murder…suicide… Some said they’d met the young couple who’d lived there several months. Others said the upstairs apartment was a drug house.

  Only one person appeared disturbed by the shooting. His sister.

  If he thought she’d welcome it, he’d have wrapped his arms around her, but he wasn’t going to play the fool in front of that crowd. As he walked away, his bare foot slid on a wad of soft gum. Without acknowledging it, he kept walking.

  Turning into the parking lot, he let out an explosive sigh. Twenty yards ahead, fresh graffiti covered the bottom half of the vacant building next to the restaurant his family had owned for generations.

  A basketball-sized red circle overlapped a four-foot-high white 7 on a green background. Not an ad for soda pop—the red dot stood for things that birthed nightmares.

  He walked over to the two-story building and swiped his finger across a granite block. Rust-red grit—a combination of dirt and spray paint, coated his fingertip. Arching his neck, he gazed up at the fortress. No windows, no openings other than two garage doors in front. By today’s standards, it was an ugly structure, violating every current building code.

  Yet it still spun dreams in his head.

&nb
sp; Pulling out his keys, he turned his back on the green and red wall and strode back to the building he’d lived in for twenty-eight years. A building with no room, or reason, to grow.

  He opened the outside door of the storeroom. What was it with builders in the 1920s? Or was it just on this block that windows weren’t fashionable? He closed the door behind him, fastened the chain lock, then wedged the door open as far as the gold links would allow. A muggy draft, cool in comparison to the stagnant air inside, seeped through the two-inch space.

  Ceiling lights in rose-covered porcelain bases lit the three-hundred-plus square feet. Pink roses climbed trellises on the scuffed and yellowed wallpaper, and floor-to-ceiling cherry wood shelves lined three walls. In the center of the room, a wrought iron table, legs fashioned of trailing, winding vines, sat bolted to the hardwood floor. Decades ago, someone, most likely his great-grandmother, had gone through a lot of trouble decorating a room built for storage.

  His great-grandmother’s touches remained in other ways. Her crucifix hung by the back door. For much of his childhood he’d prayed to it. He knew the exact moment he’d stopped praying to the figure on the cross and started talking to the living God. He also knew the exact moment he’d stopped.

  Nicky hoisted a thousand-count box of white paper bags onto the table then walked over to his computer desk in the corner and sat on a three-legged chair. One more thing in need of fixing.

  In spite of an array of amputated table legs, stained tablecloths, and bent silverware demanding his attention, he’d always done his best thinking here. It was where he’d hid when he was eleven, the day his mother left, the day he promised to become a better man than his father.

  It was where he came in the middle of the night for a break from reality. Here, he gave rein to hopeless fantasies where candlelight flickered on starched white tablecloths, music swirled around jeweled women and men in dark Italian suits, and whispered compliments floated on the cool air over a backdrop of clinking crystal. Here, the illustrious Mr. Fiorini bowed to his guests in his Luciano Carreli tux.

  Here, visions spawned. And died just as quickly.

  He was born a century too late for his dreams.

  The air was thick and hot and hard to breathe as Dani ran down the concrete steps from the Times building. She unlocked the door of her 1990 Geo Metro. Chips of blue paint crumbled onto her open-toed sandals. The car, a gift from her grandmother and named in her memory, bragged of 58,000 miles on its odometer. It was dying of sheer age and boredom.

  A blast of heat wafted up at her as she opened the door. She slid in gingerly, keeping the backs of her bare arms off the gray vinyl.

  She stuck the key in the ignition, holding her breath as she turned it. “Come on, Agatha.” The car responded with a familiar click.

  “Behave yourself. We’ve got a job to do.” She jiggled the steering wheel and wiggled the key, but none of the usual tricks succeeded.

  A thundering rap on the hood jerked her head.

  “Agatha testardo again?”

  Dani wiped the dampness from her top lip and nodded at the burly little man whose hairy, ape-like fist curled on the hood of her car.

  Vito Savona could have retired from maintenance five years earlier but claimed the peace and quiet would kill him. “You going home, or you on a story?” A stubby cigar dusted Agatha’s nose with ashes.

  Dani leaned her head out of the window. She wouldn’t tell him she was headed to his neighborhood. If he knew she was going alone, he’d refuse to jump her car or he’d jump in with her. “I’ve got a story.” Or the fallout from one. “Not that Agatha cares.”

  Vito smiled and patted the hood. “You leave her to me. I got a way with old ladies.” He unhooked a ring with two keys from the chain on his belt. “You take mine. I’ll get to Agatha after work.”

  “Oh, Vito, not again. You’ll be late for supper.”

  “If I come home on time, Lavinia thinks I’m sick. You don’t let me work on Agatha, I’ll have to go to bed with a bowl of milk toast. Take my car.”

  “You’re my angel, Vito.” She got out and planted a kiss on his cheek.

  Out of habit, questions sifted into logical order as she drove. But how did the who-what-when-where fit into a bigger story? She had no intention of making this about Miguel—of exploiting the despair of one young man or exposing the raw grief of a single family…or the girl who would spend the rest of her life second-guessing her decision to walk away from abuse.

  There were universal truths in every human interest story. To make her readers care, she had to cull them out. What was Miguel’s deepest need? To be loved? To belong? To feel a sense of purpose and know that his life mattered?

  Or was she projecting her own heart’s desire onto a boy she’d never met?

  The air conditioner in Vito’s car didn’t work. The heat intensified the suffocating smell of stale cigar smoke. By the time she reached the neighborhood everyone referred to as the Swamp, her blouse was wet and sticking to the seat. She pulled a hair band out of her bag and tied her hair up, steering with her knee as she pulled the wet strands off her neck and away from her face. Yet in spite of the heat, her fingers were still cold and clammy.

  She didn’t need a GPS to tell her she’d found the house. Two cruisers and an ambulance, their rotating lights muted by the blaring sun, sat in front of a house sided with gray shingles. On the porch above dilapidated steps, a child’s swing angled on rusty chains. She drove slowly, taking mental notes on the area.

  A small redbrick grocery store, two of its four front windows boarded and plastered with beer signs, occupied one corner of the block. Next to a Laundromat stood two mirror-image houses, one white and well kept with pink petunias spilling out of flower boxes. Its twin sported a garish green with peeling salmon-colored trim. Across the street from the ambulance, a neon sign jutted out over the sidewalk proclaiming BRACCIANO ITALIAN AND AMERICAN CUISINE.

  Breathing a prayer, Dani let reason take hold. She shouldn’t be here. As she lifted her foot off the brake, a shadow reached out from the north side of the house then morphed into two paramedics wheeling a draped form on a stretcher. Behind them China leaned on the arm of a police officer, her hands clenched over her mouth, her face streaked with black.

  Dani pulled away. Barely conscious of where she was heading, she drove toward the lake and parked at the marina. Numb legs carried her to a park bench facing the water.

  Heat shimmered on the sidewalk. Two boys flew past on skateboards. The cloudless blue dome of sky dissolved into gray-blue where Lake Michigan met the horizon. Her gaze followed the boys until they were out of sight then turned back to the water, where white triangle sails bobbed like plastic toys in a bathtub. A seagull swooped, grabbed its dinner, and took off. It soared and then hovered, gliding effortlessly on the wind.

  It was all too tranquil, too incongruous with China’s tears and Miguel’s shrouded body.

  “It’s all your fault. Why did you tell me to leave him? He’d still be here…”

  Dani turned her back to the lake and the laughter. Lord, what can I do?

  No answer came. She walked to the car and drove back. The ambulance was gone. A single police car remained. Investigating a possible crime scene.

  She went home and sat on the outside steps, staring at manicured lawns and expensive cars. And her watch. An hour passed in a haze of trying not to think. On shaky legs she stood, walked to her car, and drove back to the house where Miguel had died.

  The police car was gone. Onlookers had moved on with their day. From the street, all looked peaceful. As if life continued, uninterrupted, in the neglected gray house.

  She parked on the side street and walked along the south side of the house to a white door marked 5351 1/2 in orange crayon. Through smudged windows, she eyed narrow steps leading upstairs. The door opened without a sound. The temperature and the cloying smell of old grease increased with each step.

  A thin curtain of faded green dotted swiss hung across the
window in the upstairs door, offering no privacy. A pink refrigerator stood in one corner. A chrome-legged table covered with dirty dishes, wrappers, and overflowing ashtrays sat against the outside wall. Large blue plastic bins, all apparently empty, lined the floor in front of the cupboards.

  Dani knocked. From somewhere next door or the apartment downstairs the Beatles sang “Eleanor Rigby.” She knocked louder, waited, then tried the door handle.

  It didn’t budge. She pulled a pen and notebook out of her bag. China. I need to talk to you. Call me as soon as you can. Danielle. She wrote her cell phone number, tore out the paper, and slid it under the door.

  Two steps down the memory of China’s words stopped her. “A real Romeo and Juliet story.”

  Would the police have taken her in to fill out forms or answer questions, or would they have done that here? Was she still inside, huddled in a corner somewhere or trying to clean up the mess?

  Shutting her eyes against the scene playing in her head, Dani grabbed the handle again and pushed against the door. The handle stayed rigid, but the latch gave way. She fell into the room.

  “China? China, are you here?” She walked through the kitchen, stopping at a doorway. Every nerve fiber told her to leave. What if the police came back to finish their investigation? What if China— or someone else—came in behind her? She shivered, took a deep breath, and entered the room.

  Her eyes locked on a stain on the wall behind a mattress on the floor. For the space of several seconds, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Her gaze lowered to a pillow and she gasped.

  Her knees suddenly felt like rubber. Her hand shook as she swiped at the perspiration on her upper lip. She took a deep breath and forced her eyes to scan the room. Unframed pencil sketches, held in place by masking tape, decorated all four walls. Drawings of doors, parking meters, manhole covers. She walked around a stack of empty cardboard boxes, past the mattress, to the only other doorway.

  A bathroom, tiled in black and white, and surprisingly clean. The bottom edge of the closed shower curtain hung inside the tub. The curtain bulged in one spot. Dani shook her head as her vision blurred, took another breath and held it, then opened the curtain.