by Joel Goldman
“Of what? I don’t know what your problem is. I told you, it’s over.”
“I stopped by your office this morning. You weren’t there.”
“So,” she said, arms crossed, one hip aimed at me, “you naturally assumed the world had ended.”
“You left the door unlocked. It looked like you’d left in a hurry.”
“I did. My mom fell when Grandma was giving her a bath this morning, and I had to come home and help get her up. Grandma can’t do it by herself. I guess I forgot to lock up.”
“Is she okay?”
“Yeah, the world is safe for another day. Okay?”
I ignored her sarcasm. “Where’s Brett?”
She backed up a step, her face coloring. “Why can’t you leave him alone?”
“His father was murdered last night.”
Her hand flew to her mouth, her other arm clenching her middle like she’d been gut-punched. “Oh, my God!”
“He was shot to death in his store sometime around midnight. A Mexican kid named Eberto Garza was also shot to death in the store early this morning, around dawn. Odds are whoever shot Nick stayed in the store and killed Eberto. So, like I told you before, this thing is a long way from over. Now where’s Brett?”
She staggered to a white wicker bench on the porch, falling onto it, bent over, covering her face with her hands, crying. I gave her a minute, then sat beside her.
“The police think he’s killed three people, and I think he may come after you next.”
She sat up, wiping away tears with the back of her hand, rocking back and forth. “He wouldn’t do that. He’d never do that. He’s not that kind of person.”
“A week ago you were probably right. But things he never thought would happen did happen. It spun out of control, and now he’s in way over his head.”
“What things?”
I told her about Crenshaw’s gun, about Cesar Mendez and about Brett trying to rob his father’s store. She stopped crying, her face hardening, defiant.
“You’re wrong. He couldn’t have done any of those things,” she said, not convincing me that Brett was innocent but confirming for the first time how much she really loved him.
“Where is he?”
I heard Kate’s car door slam before she could answer. I looked at her, her head cocked to one side, asking me a silent question-what should she do. She knew what I was going to tell Roni, had seen her reaction, and was waiting for me to signal whether to join us or give us room. I waved her toward us when Lilly Chase appeared on the porch. Terry Walker was right behind her.
Roni turned toward Lilly, crying again. Lilly hugged her without knowing why, giving me a look that said she blamed me for whatever had happened, shepherding Roni inside. Kate followed them.
“What happened?” Terry asked.
He’d neither lent a hand nor offered sympathy. He was flinty-eyed and calm in the way of men who’d seen enough sorrow not to be moved by it, knowing that others were better suited to the task of giving comfort. He was, like me, more interested in the how and why, more focused on cause and consequence than passion.
“Somebody killed Nick Staley, shot him to death inside his grocery store.”
“That’s it? That’s all you know?”
I had shared with Roni my answers to those questions but saw no reason to bring Terry into the loop until I knew more about him and whether his questions were born of natural curiosity or whether there was a more useful purpose to his inquiry. He’d said that he had come back to Kansas City to see who was left from the old days, that he’d seen Lilly on the porch and remembered her red hair. That was enough to get him into Lilly Chase’s house but not into my business.
“All I know for certain.”
“And you know better than to flap your lips to somebody you hardly know. Don’t blame you, but you can’t blame me for asking.”
“I don’t. Roni is in pretty bad shape, but I’ll let her tell you about it when she settles down.”
“She won’t know anything. If I’m going to find out what happened, I’ll have to get you to tell me.”
“Why do you think I know so much about it?”
He snorted. “Let’s cut the crap. Lilly told me about Roni shooting that fella at the barbeque joint and the rest of it, how somebody finished him off at the hospital. And Roni told me how you’ve taken such an almighty interest in her welfare, which she says was kind of sweet at first but is really chapping her ass right about now. So, I figure if anybody knows what’s what, it’s you.”
“Chapping her ass? She said that? Doesn’t sound like something she’d say.”
“My translation. She also says you’ve got something wrong with you that makes you shake. Is that so?”
The tics arrived on cue, a quick flurry ricocheting from my sternum to my chin and back again. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Maybe not when you and I are just passing the time, but I’ll wager it’s tough in a crunch. How’d Roni say you put it, that you shake when you should shoot? Now that’s a rough way to be when a bad man is coming after you. All of a sudden you’re jumpin’ and jukin’ and the next thing you know, you’re down and out. No wonder the FBI let you go. Can’t count on a man that can’t count on himself. Too bad, I say, but all we get is the chance to play the game, not make the rules.”
Chapter Sixty-one
He said it as if my fate were as certain as tomorrow’s sunrise. I didn’t want to tell him he was right, that I often woke up in the middle of the night, sweating and trembling, certain that one day his prediction and my nightmare will come true. I was used to shaking in front of other people, letting it pass as if it were nothing more than a sneeze or cough, but this time was different. When the next flurry struck, whipping my head up and back, Terry’s quick, satisfied smile and measured eyes made me feel exposed and weak.
One of the curious things about my disorder was that talking about it, especially with someone I didn’t know well, could trigger the symptoms. I changed subjects, hoping to regain control.
“Why are you so interested in the details?”
“I’m no different than anybody else. An airplane falls out of the sky or a pitcher throws a no-hitter, good or bad, we all want to know how in the world something like that happened.”
“That’s what newspapers and cable TV are for.”
“Man, you are a tough nut. I’m just an old man looking for a little excitement in my old neighborhood, and you’re acting like I need a top-secret clearance to find out how a man died.”
“You need a better reason than that.”
He pursed his lips, nodding, looking past me, down the street and back, taking a breath and letting it out with his slow confession.
“My family lived down the street in that house,” he said, pointing to another down-at-the-heel mansion two doors away. “It was a boardinghouse. The Staley family lived there too.”
“When did you leave?”
“Fifty years ago, the night of the Electric Park fire.”
“What’s Electric Park?”
“It was an amusement park at Forty-sixth and Troost, all kinds of rides, games, and pretty girls. I was there when it caught fire.”
He got a faraway look in his eyes, the memory coming back to him, nodding as the images came into focus.
“Man oh man, you should have seen it! That fire was a beast, chewing up the park. Hell, the whole place wasn’t more than a bunch of kindling glued together. You ever been in a blaze like that?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“Well, trust me brother, you don’t want to be. Even the air was on fire, and the noise it made, I swear it was the devil’s own voice hollering Look out ’cause I’m coming for you. And the people running wild trying to get away wasn’t nothing but a mob the cops couldn’t control any more than the firemen could the fire.”
“What did you do?”
He smiled again, this time softly, shaking his head. “That devil voice, it was callin
g me, telling me it was time to chase the darkness, and I couldn’t do nothing except answer. But, I’ll tell you what, it taught me one of life’s most important lessons. One man’s trouble is another man’s chance if you’ve got the steel to take it.”
“I’ve got a feeling you’re not talking about picking up quarters someone left lying on the ground.”
“No sir. I was just a dumb kid couldn’t see farther than the end of my dick. Hated my parents because my old man beat my brother and me, and my mother didn’t give a shit so long as he didn’t hit us with any of her whiskey bottles. They was so beat down all they could do was beat someone weaker and smaller. I swore to Christ I wouldn’t end up like them. I was seventeen, and there were only two things I ever thought about: getting laid and getting out.”
“And the fire gave you a chance to get out.”
“You’re damn right it did. The smoke was so thick, I couldn’t see where I was going, and it didn’t help that no one else could either. I stumbled into the park office. The clerks had taken off, and the day’s receipts were just sitting there waiting to be burnt to ash, three thousand six hundred seventy eight dollars, a lot of money in those days and more than I’d ever seen or thought I ever would see. There was a satchel on the floor, and I stuffed it full of cash and took off. Had my stake and never looked back.”
“Where’d you go?”
He laughed. “Not as far as I thought I’d go but as far as the money took me. Got to Matamoros, a little border town in Mexico, before I blew it on a gal with big brown eyes and bigger tits who swore she loved me long enough to get me drunk and in bed. Next morning, she and the money were gone, and I was hungover and broke. So I walked back across the border into Brownsville, Texas, lied about my age, and enlisted in the army. Got sent to Korea and bought a ticket home with a bullet in my leg.”
“You came back to Kansas City fifty years later to see Lilly Chase. You ever go back to Matamoros to see that pretty girl?”
He laughed. “A time or two. Never did catch up to her though.”
“That’s some story.”
“Best part is that it’s true, enough of it anyway.”
He slapped me on the back, went inside, leaving me alone on the porch, realizing I still didn’t know where to find Brett Staley.
Chapter Sixty-two
They were gathered in the morning room, Roni on the sofa, hands folded in her lap, quiet but composed. Lilly stood next to the fireplace, turning her attention from Roni to Martha Chase, who was in her wheelchair, parked in front of the windows, both absent and present, her view limited to the squirrels chasing one another in the backyard. Terry Walker stood near Lilly, arms at his side, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, looking for a place to land. Kate sat in a chair across from the sofa, watching and listening, dissecting and cataloguing. No one looked my way when I entered the room.
“See to your mother,” Lilly said to Roni. “She needs to lie down.”
Roni rose from the couch, her head bowed, biting her lip. I followed Roni as she wheeled her mother from the room, down a hallway and to an elevator. She pushed the call button, and the elevator door opened.
“Sorry,” she said, backing the wheelchair into the elevator. “No room.”
I took the stairs, meeting them when the elevator reached the second floor. Roni didn’t speak as she pushed her mother past me and into a bedroom, closing the door and leaving me in the hall.
“We have to talk,” I said when she came out. She tried to walk past me, but I blocked her path. “You can be as angry as you like, but you have to talk to me.”
“Why?”
“Because Brett is in a lot of trouble.”
“And you’re the only one who can help him, right?”
“No, but I’m the only one willing to help him. You can help him, but you won’t.”
“There’s nothing I can do,” she said, bulling past me.
“Yes, you can. Tell me about your gun, the one used to kill Frank Crenshaw. What happened to it?”
She took a deep breath. “I don’t know. I kept in my dresser drawer, with my underwear, like everyone else does. Grandma Lilly picked me up at the police station on Sunday after I shot Frank. When I came home, I took a shower, and when I opened my dresser drawer, it was gone.”
“Who knew that’s where you kept the gun?”
She folded her arms across her chest. “Just Grandma and Brett.”
“Then why are you protecting Brett, especially now?”
“Because he didn’t kill Frank or his father. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. And neither would my grandmother. I don’t know who took my gun or why, but it wasn’t Brett.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police?”
“You don’t believe me. Why would they? Now for the last time, leave me and my family alone.”
The hall where she’d left me ran the width of the house, intersecting at one end with another that extended from the front of the house to the rear. I took a quick walk through both corridors. What had once been a home to dozens of young women and girls had been remodeled into a series of suites, each with a sitting room, walk-in closets big enough for me to live in, and spacious bedrooms. Lilly’s was on the back of the house with a view of trees, their remaining leaves a collage of red, yellow, and orange. Roni’s was next to her mother’s, joined by connected bathrooms.
I made a quick search of her bedroom, finding nothing of significance. She was neat, but not obsessive. She had three books on her nightstand, one a mystery, one about running your own business, and one about understanding strokes. There were no guns, holsters, or ammunition and no love letters from Brett, though there was a framed picture of them, arm in arm, sporting smiles big enough to swallow one another.
Standing at the entrance to her bathroom, I had a clear view of Martha lying in bed on her back. It was a hospital-style bed with a mattress that adjusted up and down and side rails to keep her from falling out. Walking softly so as not to disturb her, I crossed both bathrooms and into her room, watching her chest rise and fall in a gentle rhythm, wondering what life was like for her.
My mother had Alzheimer’s, and once, while visiting her in the nursing home, I remarked to a nurse how awful it was for her. She rarely spoke, spending most of her waking hours staring into space, oblivious to everyone and everything around her. The nurse surprised me when she asked me how I knew it was awful for her, making me realize that I was viewing my mother’s illness through my eyes, not really knowing what she was experiencing. Perhaps, said the nurse, she was content the way she was because she didn’t remember the way she used to be. Since there was no way to know what my mother knew or didn’t know, what she felt or didn’t feel, why, the nurse asked, should I assume it was awful for her when that would only make it worse for me?
I thought about Roni’s mother, trying not to see her through my eyes. She turned her head, opening her eyes, staring at me or through me, I couldn’t tell which. I wanted to ask her what she saw, but she closed her eyes again before I had a chance.
When I returned to the morning room, Roni was standing at the windows, her arms crossed. Terry, his hands in his pockets, was making a slow circle around the room, studying the floor. Lilly stood in another corner, talking on her cell phone with someone about funeral arrangements. Kate was still in her chair, entering all of them into her mental database. I caught her attention and signaled to her that it was time to go. Terry Walker was the only one who noticed us leave, raising his head, his eyes creased, his face grim.
“What did you find upstairs?” Kate asked when we got outside.
“How’d you know I was searching?”
“Like I haven’t seen you work. You never pass up an opportunity to snoop. And, Roni was in a real snit when she came back downstairs.”
“I didn’t find anything. She knew I wouldn’t. That’s why she left me up there.”
“If she doesn’t have anything to hide, why doesn’t she just tell you that?” Kate ask
ed.
“She didn’t have anything to hide in her bedroom. As for anything else, I can’t get her to talk to me.”
“That’s because she doesn’t want to lie to you. Some people are so uncomfortable with deception they go out of their way to avoid lying. That doesn’t mean they don’t have something to hide. They may be willing to do the wrong thing even if they have a hard time covering it up. Instead of lying, they use hostility to discourage too many questions.”
“Knowing that doesn’t make me any smarter. She keeps a picture of Brett and her on her dresser. It’s one of those we’re so much in love we can’t stand it pictures.”
“I thought you said she couldn’t make up her mind about him.”
“Her mind was sure made up when that picture was taken. And, when I told her about Nick being killed and that Brett was at the top of the suspect list, she wouldn’t have any of it. She’s still defending him. Says he couldn’t have done it. What did you pick up from the people in that room?”
“When Lilly told Roni to take care of her mother, Roni bristled. Lilly runs the show, and Roni may have had all of that she can take. I watched her with her mother. She loves her and resents her, which is par for the course when the child becomes the parent.”
“And Lilly?”
“She’s a very strong woman who is short on patience and can’t stand weakness. You remember how Ellen Koch showed contempt for Peggy Martin? That’s the way Lilly looked at Roni.”
“What about Terry Walker? How did Lilly look at him?”
“That was a puzzle. She hasn’t seen him in fifty years, but one minute she’s mad as hell at him and the next she’s all gaga and dewy-eyed.”
“Any idea how he feels about her?”
“He’s pretty distant. I’m not sure he has much feeling about anybody.”
Chapter Sixty-three
“I hope Lucy is having a better day than we are,” Kate said.
“I don’t know. It will be hard for her to top two dead bodies and one fractured family.”