But at almost noon, the Old Playas were either at work or sitting in a doctor’s waiting room. And now, only a handful of that tribe sat at the chess benches outside the coffee shop.
Macie Darson occupied an outside table, cigarette between her fingers, hunched forward as though her stomach hurt. A whisper of a white dress barely covered her thighs … and the rest of her. She was dressed more for midnight than high noon.
But then, I couldn’t judge—I never left the house without a bra and a gun.
“Macie,” I said, “how are you?”
She gave me a Mona Lisa smile. “Better now that you’re here. You’re gonna solve this. Any minute now. I know it.” She moved her Louis Vuitton bag from the chair and sat the purse at her feet.
A two-thousand-dollar bag on the ground. Kids.
“Thanks for coming, Detective Norton.”
“No problem.” My iPhone vibrated—a text from Lena. Where u at? To Macie, I said, “Hold on for a sec.” I texted Lena back, Ladera Sbucks w/a wit. She replied immediately: Nearby c u soon. I slipped the phone on the table and turned my full attention to the young woman in white. “Heard that you had a hard time at the morgue this morning.”
“I couldn’t go in there,” Macie whispered. “And I felt bad cuz I knew Mom needed me. But I don’t wanna remember Monie like that. I don’t want my last memories of her…” She bit her lower lip and closed her eyes. “I know: I need to be stronger.”
“Macie, don’t push yourself to feel something you don’t. The worst thing that could ever happen has happened. You’re supposed to be sad. You’re supposed to mourn.”
“Thank you. I needed to hear—”
A car horn blew.
Over in the parking lot, an old man behind the wheel of a gold Jaguar waved to Macie and shouted, “You gon’ be here tonight?”
Macie pulled on a cute smile, the one reserved for Old Playas, and shouted back, “Not tonight, Willie. Family stuff.”
The old man said, “Okay, then.” He honked again, threw another wave, and zoomed toward the grocery store.
Macie plucked that smile off her lips, Mr. Potato Head style, and dumped it back into the tub. She absently swiped at a purple scratch that ran from her chin down to her left armpit.
I winced and pointed to the injury. “How did you do that?”
She considered the burning end of the cigarette. “I have no idea. Since all this started, I’ve been having nightmares, and every time I wake up, I find new scratches or bruises. Look.” She showed me her calf, smooth and brown except for the greenish blotch the size of a sausage patty. “And I don’t even remember bumping into anything.” She took a quick puff, then tapped off the cigarette’s ashes. “Mom wants me to go to the doctor to get some Valium. Maybe I will—I’ve been chain-smoking these things to relax…” She held up the cig. “Whoever killed my sister needs to get caught before I end up falling off a cliff or getting lung cancer.”
“I’m working as fast as I can.”
“I know.” She cleared her throat, then opened her hand to reveal a tiny square of paper. She dropped it on the table before me, then slowly exhaled as though it had weighed a ton.
I picked it up—the paper was moist. I unfolded the square to discover a list written in thin, scratchy cursive:
1. Von Neeley
2. Derek Hester
3. Byron Delbridge
4. Malcolm Koll
5. Keith Skinner (maybe gay)
6. Todd Wisely
Each name had a phone number beside it.
“And who are they?” I asked.
“Boys Monie had been kickin’ it with since her junior year. I thought … You know, since our last conversation … I don’t wanna be scared no more.”
“And I don’t want you to be,” I said. “Thank you for making this list.” The names had been a gift and a burden, a combo pack of rejuvenation and exhaustion—so many boys to talk to, but then … so many boys to talk to.
Macie’s smile widened and her eyes begged for more encouragement.
So I said, “This is very helpful. We need as many leads as possible, and maybe one of these guys will be the one.” I considered the names again, then asked, “Are most of these guys … older?”
Her eyebrows scrunched. “Huh?”
“Seems that your sister preferred dating older guys. Like Von and Derek: they’re both a few years older than—”
Flickers of anger flashed in Macie’s eyes. “Are you sayin’ that Monie asked for it cuz she likes older—?”
“No,” I said, holding up a hand, then shaking my head. “No, no, no. I’m only trying to form a profile of possible suspects. Your sister did nothing to deserve this. Okay?”
With that explanation, Macie’s eyes cleared and her shoulders relaxed.
“So where are you off to, looking so fancy?” I asked, slipping the paper into Monique’s expanding file, hoping to lighten the moment.
She tossed the cigarette to the pavement, then grabbed a crumpled pack of Newports from the handbag. “Shopping for a nice dress for Monie’s service.”
“Your mom going with you?”
“No.” Her iPhone chirped from the table. She peeked at the display and a new smile, a more genuine smile, found its way out of that Mr. Potato Head bucket and onto her lips. “My boyfriend Max is taking me. I saw a dress at Neiman Marcus a month ago. Hope they still have it.”
“A dress for you or for Monique?”
She flinched. “For…” She flushed and covered her mouth. “For my sister. We were together when I saw it and she said she really liked it and I couldn’t buy it for her right then, but Max, he told me to get it and that he would pay for it.”
“What’s Max’s last name?”
“Yates.” She squinted at me, wondering why I needed that information.
“And did he and Monique get along?”
Macie plucked a cigarette from the pack, lit it, and took a long drag. “They got along fine, I guess. They didn’t hang out.”
The smoke writhed toward me and mingled with the scent of fresh-brewed coffee. Reminded me of mornings with my father. And with Tori.
My facial expression must have changed because Macie asked, “You okay?”
“Yeah. Just … thought of something.”
“Something about my sister?”
“No. Something about mine. Kind of.”
“She live in LA?”
I blinked at her, then heard myself say, “Don’t know.”
Macie tilted her head. “Y’all not close?”
With each breath I took, my stomach ripped into confetti-sized pieces. “She was kidnapped a long time ago. We never found her.”
Macie covered her mouth with her hands. “So you do know how I feel. Except … I know where my sister is.”
I tried to smile. “Yeah.”
“Are you still looking for her?” she asked. “Are you still looking for the person who took her?”
I nodded. “But…”
“No ‘but.’ You have to learn the truth, Detective Norton. Please. I’ll never stop until I know, until whoever did this … I guess that’s why I made that list.” Her eyes dropped to the table, then found mine. “Don’t ever let them tell you ‘enough.’”
I inhaled, then said, “You’re right. Thank you.” Then I shook my head to clear it. “So: where did you meet Max?”
“He helped me get a good deal for my Maserati, and he hooked up Monie with the Lexus.”
“He works at a lot?”
“Uh-huh. NC Posh Auto on La Cienega.”
“That’s Napoleon Crase’s dealership,” I said, thrilled with having one more spoke in the wheel.
Macie rubbed the bruise on her calf. “They have nice cars.”
“Yeah,” I said, finally scribbling into my notepad. “We’ve been trying to figure out who got Monique the Lexus. So where was Max on Tuesday night?”
Macie killed the cigarette on the sole of her shoe. “With me in Temecula.” She stare
d at the dead cigarette, then said, “Even when we got back to LA on Wednesday morning, I told him to drive me around. Mom and Monie had been arguing all weekend and I didn’t feel like going home and being pulled into it. Monie was already sending me a million text messages.”
“What were they arguing about?”
Macie laughed bitterly. “Everything. School. Laundry. The dog. Money … Monique is a sweet girl, but she’s a brat, too. And when she got the Lexus, she thought her shit didn’t stink for real.” She stared into the distance and a shadow darkened her face. “All of a sudden, Von wasn’t good enough for her. Neither was Derek—no shit, right? He was never good enough. She wanted to be like them girls on that Basketball Wives TV show. And Todd Wisely? Dude on the list? He plays for UCLA.” Macie reached for the pack of cigarettes again. “Todd’s been in trouble before—he’s always roughing up his girlfriends. But he’s the star point guard for the Bruins, so trouble? What trouble?”
Got me a big baller.
“Does Todd live in Los Angeles?” I asked, my heart pounding.
“I think so.”
“When was the last time Monique talked with him?”
“Not sure. He’s gonna be a senior this year, and he didn’t want anybody knowing that he was kickin’ it with a high school girl.” Macie offered a wicked smile. “Especially his girlfriend. She’s a”—she hooked her fingers—“model. If you hadn’t told me that a man killed my sister, I woulda said that this chick, Gabriella Simone, did it.”
“Gabriella Simone,” I said, writing in my pad. “What a name.”
“Uh-huh. And she’s a bat-shit-crazy, wannabe-Tyra-Banks bitch who officially dates Todd. I know for a fact she was pissed cuz he was creepin’ on her with a fuckin’ High School Musical cheerleader.”
I pulled out Macie’s list and found the phone number by Todd Wisely’s name—it didn’t match the green highlighted number on Monique’s phone records. None of the numbers on Macie’s list matched that mysterious number.
“Monie thought she was bad,” Macie said, rolling a new cigarette between her fingers. “But I always told her: watch your back. There’s always somebody out there who’s worse than you.”
36
On day six, my sister still hadn’t come home. Detective Peet called and asked Mom to bring me to the police station. I don’t remember much—fear keeps it hidden—but I was led to a small, dark room where six men stood against a wall. Even though they couldn’t see me, their eyes somehow found mine in the glass. My knees weakened and I suddenly needed to pee.
“Do any of them look familiar?” Mom had asked me.
Eyes squeezed shut, mouth clamped into a hard line, I shook my head.
“You sure?” Detective Peet asked.
I nodded.
“Elouise,” Mom said, “this is very important. Are you sure?”
Both adults asked me this more than once. You sure? You sure?
I was sure. None of these men in the lineup had been at the liquor store that day. And other than Napoleon Crase, I didn’t know who else could’ve taken my sister.
Back at home, Mom stormed around the kitchen, throwing pots and plates in the sink. Her yellow sweat suit hung off her thinning frame—she hadn’t eaten with Tori away, and now shadows darkened the hollows of her cheeks and beneath her eyes.
I sat on the couch in the darkening living room, knees drawn to my chest. I cried without making a sound as guilt ate away at my spirit. I shouldn’t have left her. I shouldn’t have left her …
Mom rounded the corner to see me huddled on the couch. She sat beside me and slung her arm around my shoulders. “It’s gonna be okay,” she whispered. “Don’t cry, Lulu.”
Her words only made me cry harder.
Our hopes of the police finding Tori diminished as days passed, and we rarely heard from Detective Peet. The man Mom had been seeing, her Valentine’s Day date, stopped calling after she stopped answering the phone and going to church. Unable to focus on prepositions and noun-verb agreement, Mom took a leave of absence from school, never returning to the classroom afterward, and took to sitting on the living room couch. She didn’t cry or watch television. She didn’t flip through Ebony or through one of her thick paperback novels. She just sat, barely blinking, staring at her knees.
On Day 23 without Tori, I crept into the living room, now being haunted by my catatonic mother. I perched beside her on the couch, and touched her wrist—warm skin. The scoop in the center of her clavicle dipped—alive. The whites of her eyes had darkened to eraser-pink and tissue lint clung to her peeling nose. Her hair had been braided into two plaits, but both had started to unravel.
“Want some Kool-Aid?” I asked her. “Or a sandwich?”
No answer.
“I wrote in my journal today.” I was now seeing a shrink who specialized in siblings of the missing and dead. Dr. Christina Sherrod spoke in whispers and platitudes. Something good will come of this. Everything will be okay. We need to do what we can do. For homework, I had to write about my feelings that prior week. My last entry had delved into a recurring nightmare: waking up in the apartment alone, the door locked from the outside, and me, trapped, screaming for help.
My mother still didn’t respond, and for an hour, we stayed like that: Mom and I on the couch. Once the living room darkened, she stood and trudged toward the hallway without a word.
Later that evening, I fixed her a ham sandwich, a pile of potato chips, and a glass of punch. I put it all on a tray and carried it to her bedroom. I nudged the door open with my foot. Drawn curtains made the lightless room even darker. Mom lay somewhere in her bed, a boulder beneath the comforter.
“Mommy?” I whispered into the darkness, “I made you some dinner.”
I stepped into the hot, musty room and turned on the bedside lamp.
Mom’s head poked out from the covers. She blinked from the sudden light. Bottles of Tylenol, Bufferin, and NyQuil—our entire medicine cabinet—crowded the nightstand.
“You sick?” I asked. “Need me to call the ambulance?”
Mom grunted. “No.”
I frowned. “I’m gonna put these up.” I sat the tray on the carpet, then grabbed the bottles from the nightstand. I left the bedroom to restock the bathroom’s medicine cabinet. When I returned, Mom was lying on her back, staring at the ceiling. She held a fist to her chest as tears rolled back into her hair.
“I made dinner.” I watched her cry until I found the courage to whisper, “Momma, what do you want me to do?”
Mom opened her mouth, and her jaw squeaked. “Be good,” she whispered. “Just … be good.”
I nodded, even though that request confused me. Wasn’t I already good? “You have to eat something,” I said, then stroked her clammy forehead.
She winced from my touch.
I snatched away my hand, not wanting to hurt her anymore than I had.
The telephone rang, and we both startled from its angry shrill. We stared at it with wide eyes, neither of us moving to pick it up. Finally, she grabbed the receiver from the cradle.
“Hello?” She sat up and unclenched her fist. She held in that hand too many pills to count. She looked at them, then threw the pills across the room.
My heart pounded as the tiny white disks scattered on the carpet. I was moments away from screaming, moments away from totally losing my shit. What was she gonna do with those pills?
“Okay,” she was saying to the person on the phone. “Okay … Okay … Okay … Bye.” She hung up.
I closed my eyes and waited to hear.
“That girl they found?” she said. “It ain’t Tori.”
I nodded, then tried hard to swallow.
The vein in the middle of Mom’s forehead bulged. Still calm, she said, “Go watch television.”
“I’ll fix it, Mom,” I whispered. “I promise. I’ll fix it.”
“Go watch television, Elouise.”
I hesitated before leaving a bedroom with carpet rich with drugs. I left, though, an
d as soon as the door closed, Mom screamed. Not a wail heard at funerals, a wail filled with hopelessness and sorrow. No. She made a warrior’s cry full of rage and frustration. Certain that she would drop to her knees for those discarded pills, I ran back down the hallway and threw open the bedroom door.
Mom stood in the middle of the room. Her pink nylon gown hung off her body like molting skin. Her breasts stood high, firm, and full. She held the telephone, but she had ripped the phone jack from the wall, and now it sat dumbfounded in the doorway. She screamed again, then hurled the telephone—base and receiver—at the large mirror connected to the dresser. The mirror didn’t break, but it fell forward and pushed perfume bottles and a jewelry box to the carpet in a wild crash.
I shrieked through it all, and closed my eyes as Mom whipped past me, leaving the bedroom for the bathroom. She swung her arm across the countertop, and everything—toothpaste tubes, lotion bottles, the big jar of Vaseline—crashed to the tile floor. She screamed again, then kicked the bathroom door with her bare foot. The door banged against the wall, and the doorknob cracked the plaster. Mom shouted, then, screamed and cried out to the ceiling, “Why? Oh God! Why?”
Unable to stand it, I covered my ears with my hands. I crouched in the hallway until Mom’s cries became sobs, until sobs became whimpers. She stripped off her nightgown and, with swollen red eyes, stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her chest heaved as she panted, as she tried to catch her breath.
Too scared to move, too scared to speak, I watched her from my spot in the hallway. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from my mother’s body. Couldn’t look away from the jagged scar beneath her belly button, or from the stretch marks that traveled like bumpy highways from her waist down to her thighs. Mom moaned, then leaned against the counter. She muttered, “Okay then,” and stepped into the bathtub, pulling closed the plastic curtain. The shower knobs squeaked, and water pelted the porcelain walls. Steam licked the ceiling, and the fragrance of melting soap drifted out to the hallway. “Did you eat?” she asked.
I hugged my knees tighter.
Land of Shadows Page 19