Orchids and Stone

by Lisa Preston

  “If I get a phone call, I’m using it to call 911 to report a crime.” Daphne’s remark sounded insolent even to her, but she was past caring. A battered phone with a long, stretched cord hung on the wall. She wondered if she could use it, if she had to dial one to get an outside line. Was she allowed to just walk over there and use the phone?

  The tattooed woman leaned over to Daphne. “You know that’s the kind of attitude that will keep you in here. Without a whole lot of phone calls.” Then she burped, and Daphne’s stomach flipped at the reek of alcohol vapors.

  A woman in a gray uniform came and led Josephina past the phone to the nearest empty cell. Loud buzzing and clanging heralded the cell door’s open and close. Daphne could not resist turning on her bench to watch the tattooed drunk.

  Josephina waddled for the far end, pivoted and backed up, ducking behind a shoulder-high partition.

  “So you’re going to need bail and ID,” the female officer said to Daphne, looking at sheets of paperwork as she led Daphne toward Josephina’s cell. “Or are you just planning to be a guest of the Gray Bar Hotel until you see a judge?”

  “What?” Daphne stared at her.

  “I said, is there someone you can call to bring you positive identification and bail money?”

  A cough choked Daphne, strangled her as she spoke. “Vic. I want to call Vic. He’ll bring me identification and … and how much?”

  “Are you paying attention at all?” The woman glanced at a form. “Your bail’s five hundred.”

  “Can I call him now?”

  “Number?” The correctional officer lifted a telephone from its cradle, one finger poised over the keypad.

  Daphne gave Vic’s cell phone number.

  The woman dialed, listened, and passed the handset to Daphne. “Ringing.”

  Holding the filthy phone away from her mouth, Daphne threw a torrent of words into the phone, asking her boyfriend to bring her identification and money, ending with, “Um, thanks.”

  “Good?” The female correctional officer moved to hang up the phone.

  Daphne entreated, “Can I try another number? Since it was just his voice mail?”

  “’Course,” she said, but another policeman arrived with another prisoner and the correctional officer led Daphne to Josephina’s cell.

  A buzzer sounded and the cell door opened. Daphne stepped inside like a sheep. She winced when the buzzer blared again and the cell door clanged shut.

  CHAPTER 9

  That boy should be in jail.

  Pushing aside memories of her father’s bitter mantra left Daphne thinking of the birth of his rants, that interim between Suzanne being missing and known to be murdered.

  Daphne had climbed the stairs to her half-empty bedroom throughout that horrible Christmas break, hearing him pace and mutter below.

  Someone saw something. Someone will say something. Someone will do something about what they saw.

  He’d caught this unfounded hope from the primary detective on Suzanne’s case.

  Someone saw something.

  Her dad’s chant in the week they first knew Suzanne was missing became his lifeline.

  He would pray the three words as he paced in the basement, the yard. When sitting in his aluminum chaise lounge out back. While rubbing his chin as he brought the newspaper in every morning.

  In the passing days of Suzanne being missing, he added to his assessment.

  “She’s a smart girl,” he’d say. “Too smart maybe, but smart. She’ll do the right thing. She’ll get away; she’ll get back to us.”

  And one afternoon, a uniformed policeman came to their front door with a detective. The other man was a plainclothes detective, but not the Missing Persons investigator her father had talked to daily during The Wait.

  They’d had her body all day, confirming what they suspected as soon as some hikers’ dogs pawed at the shallow grave where her naked corpse rotted as fodder for the earth.

  And then, the funeral. Her father’s prayer—someone saw something—continued. His goal shifted from getting his daughter back to getting vengeance.

  The police brought the boy in for questioning. They interrogated him. They polygraphed him. And it was bad but not bad enough. They needed more.

  Someone saw something. Daphne’s father continued his mantra in a blind and desperate ache built on the foundation of the detective’s certain assessment that they had not located the murder scene, that Suzanne’s body had been moved. That wherever Suzanne met her killer, from the scene of the murder to the transportation and burial of her body, opportunities existed for passersby to notice something untoward. People, strangers, must have seen a girl meet a man. Maybe the girl was drunk, or where she shouldn’t have been. At a party, a rave, a bar. Maybe she looked scared at some point. Maybe drivers on a narrow, rainy highway saw a man pull something bulky from his trunk or backseat. Maybe he carried a shovel or spade. But at some point, someone must have seen—

  Someone saw something. That boy should be in jail.

  Beyond her cell door, behind a Plexiglas screen, a uniformed man clonked his coffee cup on the control counter and pushed a button. Somewhere, a buzzer blared and a door banged. Daphne thought of the policeman who’d brought her here in handcuffs, remembered the sergeant who’d come to the accident scene half an hour ago and told the officer to bring her in. She compared the mental image to the two police officers who’d stood on the threshold of her parents’ house two decades past with news her sister’s body had been found. And she thought of the police visit in between, ten years ago, when she and her mother were informed of her dad’s suicide.

  Turning from the jail cell door, Daphne brushed her hands against her pants. In a few strides, she stopped dead. Josephina stood behind the partition, her enormous breasts heaving in the tank top as she bent over, wiping her rear end. Daphne returned to the cell’s door so Josephina’s upper body was visible.

  Swirling to face her jailers, Daphne pled, “I need another phone call. Please. Okay?”

  Beyond the bars, the female correctional officer clicked one finger on the phone’s hook then hovered over the number pad with her eyes raised toward Daphne. Daphne gave her another number and accepted the telephone handset through the bars.

  Beginning a detailed message for Thea, Daphne looked at her cellmate and winced before asking Thea to get into the house using Grazie’s dog door. “Then go upstairs, find my passport—I got one four years ago when Vic and I were going to—” She cut herself off. “And five hundred dollars in cash or cashier’s check or a money ord—” Daphne shook with tears and wailed, “Just bring cash and my ID, Thee. Thea. Please. Right away.”

  And if this didn’t work, she’d try Vic again, and then who? Her mother? Her mother would keel over if Daphne called her from jail. Still, she had to find someone who could get her out of here. And she wished she could call Suzanne, who would have been first and fastest to save her baby sister. She wished she could call her dad.

  Instead, Josephina swaggered toward her, would be in Daphne’s space in ten feet.

  Clutching the metal bars, Daphne whispered to the female correctional officer, “Please, can I use the bathroom?”

  “By all means,” she said, gesturing to the partition at the far end of the cell. “Avail yourself of the facilities.” Her last comment was made over her shoulder as she faced another police officer entering with a combative person in a hooded sweatshirt. The officer tripped the soundless, faceless kicking person to the floor and two gray uniformed staffers pounced.

  “Tank,” said the female correctional officer.

  “No shit,” said one of the men holding the fighter on the floor.

  Josephina clutched the bars, swayed, and grinned at Daphne. Stepping to the partition, Daphne stared at the stainless steel, seatless toilet ensconced in the little area and took a breath. Oh, God, oh, God. What have I done? What in the world have I done? How did things get to this point? How? How in the world?

  All she w
anted was a chance to clear things up, right now, right away.

  “Please, how do I get out of here?” Daphne asked, returning to the cell’s closed door, desperate for the female correctional officer to not abandon her.

  “The usual. Bail. Proof of identity.”

  “But my license was stolen.”

  “Then you’ll have to get a replacement license at DMV.”

  “How can I do that when I’m in here?”

  She nodded. “It’s a stumper, isn’t it?” She walked away. A thick door opened, the officer went through, and it slammed shut.

  There was no one else in the cell but Daphne and Josephina. The wall had two old posters giving phone numbers she could call to report domestic violence or sexual assault. She read those posters over and over and over. She stared through the cell bars, stunned to be caged. She heard her father’s bitter voice in that first year after Suzanne’s funeral.

  He should be in jail. My baby’s dead. And he’s out walking around. Her father’s conviction that that boy had ended Suzanne’s life—the horror of a brutal ending, too—competed forever with the horrible truth that no one was ever held responsible. Ever. A wrong unrighted.

  Could a horrible wrong be righted? Daphne wiped her hands through her hair, pulled a bit of twig from a snarl and went quietly crazy.

  The image of her reflection in the police car window returned, and Daphne saw herself as her sister, saw her sister alive with feathers in her hair. Heard a young man’s voice come from an altar out of nowhere, to cry about children leaning out for love, forever.

  After an indiscernible passage of time—whether minutes or hours, Daphne didn’t know—with Josephina badgering her with all manner of questions and random blurts, a tall, clean-cut, gray-uniformed man approached the other side of their cell door and said, “Ms. Mayfield, you’re up.”

  “What?” she asked.

  He waved a clipboard at her, fluttering a paper that he smoothed down.

  “You’re going to sign, promising to appear in District Court, and you’re going to be on your merry way. You made bail, or rather, someone made it for you.” A buzz sounded and the cell opened. Daphne leapt like an obedient puppy, heeling at his side, ignoring the now quiet Josephina.

  “Who? Is Vic here?”

  He squinted at the form and raised his eyebrows. “A … Theadora … Roosevelt?”

  Ready to bawl, Daphne edged away from the cell and started to go back the way she’d been led into the jail.

  “No, ma’am, this way.” He waved again, and she followed him through the unknown door and down a number of corridors. He stopped beside a heavy door marked Lobby. Ah, the lobby, Daphne thought. Where the good people are. This is why she hadn’t been led out of the building the same way she’d come in.

  The officer pulled the top form from his clipboard. “You must promise to appear for any and all court dates. Sign here.”

  Daphne held the paper against the wall and signed, noticing how her hands shook.

  He tore one copy loose and handed it to her. She clutched the paper with both hands. Freedom? Now?

  Opening his clipboard’s catch, he pulled a carpenter’s pencil and the police officer’s forms from the maw. “Your personal effects. Please put these items in a pocket now.”

  She accepted her pencil, swinging a hand back to replace it in her thigh pocket, then winced. After folding the papers into another pocket and experimentally wiggling her shoulders, she winced again.

  “Sore from getting in a car wreck, I bet,” he said. “It happens.” And he handed her another form.

  “Do you know where my car is?”

  He squinted at the last form he’d handed her. “Says there it was impounded.”

  “Right, yes. They had a tow truck come take it.”

  “So it’s at the impound yard. Call the number on the bottom of that form.” He pointed to the paper in her hand, then opened the door and gestured for her to step into the public lobby on her own.

  When the door slammed shut, Daphne stood at the lobby’s edge.

  Loose lines of people crowded the front counter, their voices raised to staff behind solid Plexiglas. They held various forms and asked for pens and whether they had the right form and if they could write a check and whether they had to fill out paperwork. They were told they were standing in the wrong line and they were told they’d have to wait their turn. One woman’s voice rose higher and higher about how her daughter was being treated.

  The woman’s enormous gray sweat suit stretched so hard across her paunch the fabric paled and she gasped for breath from the effort of standing, of stemming her stress as her turn at the counter arrived.

  “I got the money. Why’s my girl here?”

  The answer came from a speaker in the Plexiglas, a woman with a computer and piles of paperwork. “Prostitution. Again.”

  “Everyone’s probably being mean, right?” Bitterness coiled in her voice like a damaged snake.

  The clerk didn’t look up and her voice stayed measured, even bored. “I’m sure they’re treating her just fine, ma’am.”

  “No. People aren’t nice to her. They aren’t nice to girls like my daughter. Big girls.”

  “Look, they’re being nice, okay? Just like with everyone.”

  The woman’s voice went higher. “But th-they won’t s-s-see that mm-my daughter is b-b-beautiful.”

  Daphne stared across the room and somehow knew she was looking at her tattooed cellmate’s mother.

  Someone leaned around Josephina’s mother and Daphne gasped a strangled whimper. “Thea.”

  Beautiful Thea stood looking over the top of her sunglasses like a movie star, a thousand questions in her eyes. Daphne sniffed in a huge breath but could not stop the tears from streaming down her face as she lunged to her best friend’s side and clutched her in an unbreakable hug.

  “You cannot believe the day I’ve had,” Thea said.

  CHAPTER 10

  An old yellow Mercedes, blocky and curvy at the same time, sat cockeyed in the end parking spot. Daphne ran for the passenger’s side, calling for Thea to hurry, saying they had to get to a toilet right away.

  “Didn’t they have bathrooms in there?”

  “No, they did not have bathrooms in there.”

  In a few blocks, Thea swerved to the curb in front of a Starbucks. Daphne bolted from the car.

  “Excuse me, where’s the bathroom?” she asked the barista.

  The girl plucked a key with a giant wooden fob from a hook. “It’s for customers only,” she said, pointing to the back of the store.

  “Thea, please buy a goddamn coffee,” Daphne said over her shoulder. As she grabbed the key and ran for the back, she heard Thea request one goddamn coffee in her sweetest voice.

  Back in the car, Thea paused, an opening in traffic wasted. She gestured a toast to Daphne then sipped the coffee, eyeing Daphne’s shaking hands. “I don’t think coffee’s what you need,” she said. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

  Daphne waved at the road. Thea pulled her Mercedes out and Daphne took an enormous breath. “The short explanation is I was trying to catch up to a car, it had the same couple from last night. That couple took the little old la—Minerva Watts. They took her again. And I got in an accident and the car got away and I got arrested for reckless driving.”

  Thea rolled her lips in, looking dubious.

  “Thea, that’s it. That’s what happened. And then nothing happened. The police didn’t catch the car, or if they did, they didn’t tell me about it. I mean, can’t they do something?”

  “What do you want them to do? Magically conjure up this car of yours and the people you saw in it? All they can do is broadcast a locate for the car, stop it if they find it, and send an officer for a welfare check at her house.”

  “Welfare? She’s on welfare?”

  “A welfare check is what they call it when they send an officer to knock on someone’s door. Someone who doesn’t show up for work, say,
and a coworker’s worried about—”

  “If a coworker was worried, why wouldn’t the coworker go check on the person who didn’t show up for work? Why doesn’t anybody make a goddamn effort?”

  “Daphne, I’m just explaining to you the concept of a welfare check.”

  “Then isn’t a welfare check what I did when I went to her house?”

  “Yes, well, look how well that turned out.”

  “What am I going to do?” Daphne half-shrieked. “I mean, for God’s sake, what happens next?”

  “I think I take you home, you take a bath, we drink a bottle of wine, and we both go to work in the morning.”

  “I’m not working tomorrow,” Daphne said. “I’ve got it off.”

  “Okay,” Thea said, “reasonable enough. If I ever get my ass arrested, I’m taking the next day off, too.”

  “I already had Friday scheduled off.”

  “So take Monday.”

  “Could you just take me home now, please? God, how am I going to explain all this to Vic?”

  Thea smiled and drove on in silence, but opened a bag on the seat between them. One by one, she offered Daphne treats. Fair trade chocolates, Bing cherries, French cookies.

  “Is this your standard bail-someone-out care package?” Daphne asked.

  Thea pulled more goodies from the sack and Daphne began her story with arriving at Minerva Watts’s house, at the address Thea had written down in Vic’s kitchen that morning.

  With candied almonds, Daphne described the encounter at Minerva’s threshold. With mozzarella balls wrapped in basil leaves, she told of shrugging out of her jacket, sprinting around houses and down the alley. Of hiding while she got dirty and her hair came loose and leaves stuck in her bangs. She was down to garlic-stuffed olives and the aftermath of the traffic accident by the time Thea pulled onto Westpark Avenue.

  “He’s still not home,” Daphne said, her voice dull as she eyed the empty driveway.

  “I brought something else,” Thea said, lifting the almost-empty sack as she got out of her car.

  “How long were you grocery shopping while I was sitting in jail?”