by Nancy Rue
“Are you going to get off?” I said. “Or were you planning to spend the night out here?”
“You gonna find out anyway,” he said. “So I’ma just tell you.”
I hung my helmet on the handlebar. “Can we get off first?”
“I don’t know everything ’cause she sent me in the bathroom when she seen that lady comin’.”
“What lady? Desmond, get off—now.”
He took his time swinging his leg over, and he stood, still in his helmet, while I set the bike on its stand. His shoulders took on a curve I hadn’t seen in weeks.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m not going to yell at you, and I’m not going to take your helmet away. So just take it off and tell me what happened.”
He pulled it off in slo-mo and hugged it against his side. Now I could see the war going on in his eyes. Desmond Sanborn never did battle with himself.
“What lady?” I said.
“I seen her before. You did too.”
“Can you describe her?”
He let one hand leave the helmet and fished in his pocket. I thought he’d drawn a picture of her, but he pulled out a business card and handed it to me.
“I got it out the trash can when she left and they let me come out the bathroom.”
I turned the card over. There was no time to stop my chin from dropping. Vivienne Harkness, Real Estate, it said.
“She that rich … woman came to the house that one day in her espensive car,” Desmond said.
The day the women moved in.
“She bad news, that woman. She come up on the porch like she already own the place.”
“‘Already’ owned it?” I said. “Never mind—just tell me what she said. Did you hear any of it?”
The sly smile slipped halfway onto his face. “’Course I did. Them walls is thin as paper.”
“What did she say?”
“I didn’t get what she talkin’ about at first. Something about you was gon’ let go your leash on the house so she could buy it from the landlord. I do know ’bout landlords. They throw you out in the street so you don’t got no home.”
“You’re sure she said I was giving up the ‘leash.’”
“This exactly what she said.” His voice went soprano. “‘Allison Chamberling is gon’ give up the leash on this house. She didn’t tell you all?’ And Mercedes and all them are goin’, ‘No, ma’am, she never said nothin’ like that,’ and that stuck-up lady, she’s all goin’ on ’bout buyin’ it from the landlord and how she just come by to get a better look—see if she gon’ fix it up or tear it down.”
“She said that to them?”
Desmond nodded enthusiastically. He was enjoying the telling at this point. “I didn’t see it, ’course, but Mercedes, she musta got all up in her face ’cause Jasmine’s goin’, ‘No, Mercedes,’ and Geneveve’s sayin’ ‘That ain’t no good.’ Lady left after that—no, first she said …” He went into his female voice again. “‘That was a wise choice. I’ll leave my card in case Ms. Chamberling have any questions.’”
I had no doubt he was telling the truth. No way could he know Vivienne Harkness was after the house unless he’d heard exactly what he’d just told me. Fury charged up my spine but I prayed it down. I had to keep my cool at least until I got out of Desmond’s hearing range. He was already watching me carefully.
“Okay,” I said, “first of all, she was lying through her little bleached teeth.”
“I know that,” Desmond said, voice going even higher. “That’s why when I heard Jasmine say to just throw that card away, I got it out the garbage first chance I got.”
“You did good. Now, next thing. Do your mom and the others know you heard?”
“I don’t know ’bout that Sherry woman—you can’t trust her no way—but she was in her room the whole time. Everybody else whispered a while, and I didn’t hear none of that, now.”
He looked at me apologetically.
“That’s okay,” I said.
“And then when I come out, they tol’ me whatever I heard, I better keep it to myself till they figured out what they was gonna do.”
My heart sank. Everyone’s past was wreaking havoc on their trust issues tonight.
“You were right to tell me,” I said.
He loosened his grip on the helmet slightly.
“And just so you know, nobody’s going anywhere.”
“I know that. They don’t.”
“I’ll fix that.” I hoped. “I need to make some phone calls. Is your homework done?”
“You think I’ma get it done stuck in the bathroom all night?”
I nodded at the locker. “Put your stuff away and we’ll go get you started.”
“Tomorrow’s Saturday.”
“Then you won’t have to worry about it Sunday night.”
“You gon’ feed me too?”
“The cookies weren’t as good as they smelled?”
“I never even got one. You weren’t gone this long”—he snapped his fingers—“’fore that woman be knockin’ at the door.”
I pushed down the thought that Vivienne Harkness had been sitting around the corner in her white Lexus waiting for me to leave. “You can make yourself a sandwich. And you can have four Oreos.”
“Man,” he said happily, “that’s cold.”
I waited until he was well into his math sheet, cheeks stuffed with cookies and telling me he’d have that thing knocked out in five minutes because he flat tore math up now. Then I went upstairs, closed my bedroom door, and dialed the number on the card. I didn’t care where Vivienne Harkness was or who she was bullying at the moment. She was getting an earful from me. I groaned when after three rings I realized I was about to get a voice message.
“You’ve reached Chamberlain Enterprises. Our business hours are eight thirty a.m. to—”
I couldn’t stab the end-call button fast enough. I threw the phone on the bed and watched it bounce savagely onto the floor.
“Troy Irwin, you jackal,” I said—out loud—to the room that was closing in. “You lying, thieving, blood-sucking jackal.”
I had other words for myself—naïve, gullible, and stupid among them—as I crawled for the phone, ready to call Troy. But I sagged the minute I picked it up. I didn’t have his personal contact information, and if I called CE, I’d get the same message. I was going to go crazy if I didn’t talk to somebody about this, though. Hank? Chief?
Definitely not Chief.
Bonner. Duh. He’d told me not to “mess” with Troy Irwin—but I couldn’t care about that. Fingers shaking, I punched his number.
And got a recording.
I tried to yank my bun tighter and the whole thing fell out, half of it in my face. Okay, I had to get a handle on this or I was going to have a Mercedes-style explosion.
“Oh for Pete’s sake,” I said. “Desmond! Get your jacket—we’re going back over there.”
I felt the reassuring Nudge all the way to Sacrament House, despite Desmond’s protests every time we paused at a stop sign. But as I ushered him up the walkway at the house, I realized this time it wasn’t a pushing forward while I kicked and screamed. It was a pulling back because I might. Before I knocked, I stood with my hands on the door and closed my eyes. PleaseGodpleaseGodpleaseGod—don’t let me mess this up.
When I opened my eyes, Desmond said, “Amen.”
I was still staring at him, emotions ready to cave in, when the door opened a crack and Geneveve’s eye appeared.
“I need to talk to you,” I said.
The eye disappeared, but the door didn’t close. I had to let myself and Desmond in. He started for the kitchen, but I caught him by the back of his jacket.
“We all need to sit down together,” I said.
Jas
mine and Mercedes were on the couch, both wearing sweaters and shoes. I saw their purses waiting on the end tables.
“You told her didn’t you, boy?” Mercedes gave Geneveve a look that would have withered a cactus.
Geneveve leaned against the wall, arms folded. “I wasn’t the one told him to lie.”
“We didn’t tell him to lie. We told him to keep his mouth shut.”
“It’s the same thing—”
“Why didn’t one of you tell me?” I said.
No one answered. I pushed Desmond into Geneveve’s chair and sat on the arm. “Gen—sit down, please.”
She blinked hard. “I’ma stand, thank you.”
“All right. We’re not going into why you didn’t trust me. I think I get that.”
“No you do not,” Mercedes said.
“Why don’t you just shut up for once and listen to somebody?” Jasmine’s voice was so clogged I was surprised I understood her at all. Mercedes obviously did because she pressed her lips and fell sullenly silent.
“Vivienne Harkness—the woman who came here tonight—is not a real estate agent. She works for Chamberlain Enterprises, which is trying to buy up the entire West King neighborhood to turn it into—I don’t know what—but it’s going to make them a lot of money, and they’ll do just about anything to make that happen.”
“And you are ‘Ms. Chamberlain,’” Mercedes said. So much for shutting up.
“That’s my last name. But I don’t have anything to do with them anymore. It would make me sick, actually. And what that woman told you was a complete lie.”
No eyes softened. Nobody nodded. Only Mercedes was looking at me, hostility burning from every pore.
“I’m not going to sell the lease. Bonner Bailey has already assured me I don’t have to. He’s also told me the owner won’t sell it.”
“Little ol’ Bonner Bailey with the sunglasses holders?” Jasmine said. “He a wuss.”
“Not when it comes to real estate,” I said.
Mercedes was shaking her head. “You just said them people do anything to get what they want.”
“Which is why we have Chief,” I said. It was another one of those I-didn’t-know-it-until-I-said-it thoughts, but it was the first thing to lighten the tension since I walked in.
“Now he ain’t a wuss,” Jasmine said.
“No,” I said—quickly, because Mercedes was rising to that one. “He’s a good lawyer, and we’ll take it to court if we have to. But I’m telling you, ladies, the house isn’t going anywhere, and you can stay until you feel like you can make it on your own.” I glanced toward the hall. “I know it’s going to take longer for Sherry, but—”
“Sherry gone.”
Those were Geneveve’s first words since we sat down. Her voice quavered.
“Gone gone?” I said. “Or just out?”
Jasmine glowered at Mercedes. “Somebody told her what was goin’ down, and she freaked out and left.”
“What happened?” I said to Geneveve.
Her eyes filled. “She said we was stupid to ever trust ‘do-gooders,’ and she just left. She ain’t gonna make it.”
Vivienne Harkness was so lucky I didn’t have her number.
“She always run before she gets throwed out,” Jasmine said.
“And you all understand that nobody’s getting thrown out,” I said. “Yes?”
Jasmine looked at Mercedes and sank back into the couch. Mercedes grunted. Geneveve was a statue at the wall. Only Desmond, mute until now, reached up to slap my hand.
“All right,” I said. “The Lord be with you.”
Heads turned to me.
“Look, if you won’t believe me, you can at least believe God. I think we should ask him. Now, the Lord be with you.”
“And also with you,” Geneveve whispered.
No one offered to join hands, but they bowed their heads, and that had to be enough. It was for me. I was Nudged into words I didn’t form—words of trust and safety and shelter from harm. Before I said amen, I half believed that Hank might be right about me.
When I lifted my head, Jasmine was crying, head on Mercedes’s shoulder.
“We ain’t got no choice,” Mercedes said. “We got to believe you.”
“I do believe you,” Jasmine said.
Desmond gave me a thumbs-up. What would I do without that kid?
I turned abruptly to his mother. “What about you, Gen?”
She hugged her arms around herself. “I don’t know why I ever stopped,” she said. “I don’t even know why I lied—and not tellin’ you was a lie.”
“A lie I understand.”
“I don’t!” She pulled her gaze down to me. “Sherry—she said ain’t none of us changed all the way. She said Mercedes still have her temper and Jasmine still cryin’ over everything.” Geneveve jabbed her thumb at her chest. “I still hold things back when I should tell the truth.”
“And yet here you are,” I said. “You didn’t run off with Sherry.”
Mercedes gave her signature grunt. “We was about to.”
“You got the opposite problem,” Jasmine said to her. “Geneveve hold back too much, and you don’t hold back nothin’.”
“If anybody would let me finish.” Mercedes homed in on me. “Me and Jasmine was ready to go. Geneveve—she the one sittin’ here talkin’ us out of it when you come.” She looked at Geneveve. “You coulda run, but you didn’t. You told us this was our home and we need to stay and fight for it.”
I didn’t need a Nudge to tell me she was speaking the truth.
I was on the phone to Chief the next morning before Desmond was out of bed. The grog in Chief’s voice indicated he hadn’t been out of his for long. He came awake by the time I finished telling him about Vivienne Harkness’s visit to Sacrament House.
“Let me make sure I’m hearing you,” he said. “She deliberately led them to believe she was an independent realtor.”
“Right. There must be a law against impersonating a real estate agent.”
“If that were the case, half the ones with licenses would be in jail.” He paused. “I’m not putting down your boy Bonner.”
“He’s not—okay, forget that. Is there anything we can do about this?”
“We might be looking at fraud. She did gain entry into their home under false pretenses. You still have the card, right?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s evidence, although the chain’s a little dubious.”
“Chain?”
“Her to one of the women to the trash can to Desmond to you.”
“I’m not seeing Desmond on a witness stand.”
“That would take the judicial system back about a hundred years. We’ll cross that bridge if we get to it. I hope it won’t come to that, but it might if we prove the Chamberlain connection. You ready to play hardball?”
“Whatever it takes.”
“I just wish we had more to go on to implicate Chamberlain. I’d love to put it to Troy Irwin.”
I chewed at my fingernail.
“What aren’t you saying?” Chief said.
Could I not get away from Troy Irwin to save my soul?
“Come on, Classic, if you’ve got something I can work with …”
“Liz Doyle told me Troy’s planning to buy up the whole neighborhood for development. You could check with her.”
“Good. And?”
“And … he admitted it to me. He asked me to let him buy me out of the lease so he could recreate West King. He basically offered me a job relocating everybody he’s going to turn out on the street.”
“When?”
“I don’t know—and I told him I wasn’t interested—”
“No, when did he tell you this?”<
br />
Aw, man. “Last night,” I said.
“Last night.”
“Yeah. While Vivienne Harkness was freaking out the women of Sacrament House, he was trying to wine and dine me—”
“Did he try anything?” Chief’s voice hardened. “If he did anything even remotely sexual, we can get him on—”
“No! It wasn’t like that.”
“I’m not getting this.”
“Okay—I’ve known him since we were kids. I haven’t seen him in years, but I thought since I knew him, I could go to him—”
“You invited him to dinner.”
“No. This was earlier in the week. When I went to his office.”
His pause was so long I checked to see if he’d hung up. When he did speak, his tone was leaden.
“Do you want me to represent you?”
“Yes—”
“Then you’re going to have to tell me you’ll never do something like that without consulting me first, or we can’t work together.”
“I consulted Bonner,” I said. “I thought it was just a real-estate thing until last night.”
“And when you found out it wasn’t, did you call me right away?”
“No.” I squeezed my eyes shut. Was I blowing this, or was I blowing it?
“I thought we had a trust thing,” he said.
“We do.”
“Do we? Because a friend who trusted me would’ve called me when she was in trouble.”
Yeah. I was blowing it.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Me, too. All right—” His voice shifted. “I’ll come by and get that card.”
Thank you, God.
“And I’ll probably have some more questions.”
“I’ll think about anything I left out—not on purpose—”
“That’d be good,” he said.
When we hung up, I banged the phone against my forehead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR