Twist of Faith

by Ellen J Green

  He went from chair to chair, flinging clothing to the side after digging through the pockets. Becoming more frantic and irritated as he went. This girl had the photograph, and he was going to find it. He climbed to the second floor, each step feeding his anger. Her bedroom was half-filled with boxes and bags never unpacked. The night table was strewn with water bottles, empty coffee cups, a wineglass, the sticky red vestiges still in the very bottom.

  No sign of the photo.

  Back in the living room, he flopped onto the couch in frustration. Then he saw it. On the floor near the heel of his boot, half-hidden beneath the sofa. She must have been looking at it before she slipped off into a Bordeaux coma. He grabbed the Polaroid and stuck it in his pocket as he stood, growing more uneasy as the moments passed. He didn’t want to look at the place where Loyal died. The picture taken where he’d been butchered. A calling card for the next intended victim. Sweat trickled down his forehead. Thinking about Loyal’s murder only made him realize that whoever’d killed the others was coming for him next.

  He took a seat in a wing chair, out of view of the front door, and waited for his prey.

  CHAPTER 6

  Dark-gray clouds loomed overhead. I got into my car and sat there for a few minutes. I was going to head to Starbucks, then realized I didn’t have my purse. No caramel latte for me. Claire’s house was only a few blocks away. I contemplated whether it was worth it to go home and get money and come back, but then I just gave up altogether. What I really wanted was a long hot shower, a change of clothes, and some Motrin. I’d been slipping over the past few months. Drinking too much. A glass of wine turning into a bottle. Stopping at the liquor store to grab some small bottles of vodka to mix with my orange or cranberry juice when I was on the go. Something to keep me just a little unfocused. I wasn’t sure if I was consuming alcohol or if alcohol was consuming me. A little of both, maybe. But perhaps it was just a the-only-mother-I’ve-ever-known-just-died-and-I-can’t-handle-reality kind of consumption. Our relationship had been difficult, but I hadn’t been prepared for it to end so abruptly. Now there’d be no closure, no fixing it.

  The streets of Haddonfield were filled with the Sunday crowd. Shops opened their doors, contents spilling out onto the sidewalk despite the chill in the air. People were gathered outdoors, sitting under restaurant heaters, sipping expensive coffees and nibbling on bagels and smoked salmon.

  While I’d been contemplating my next move after returning from college, I’d stumbled onto a job that suited me—an internship as a translator at the Camden County Courthouse. So, despite my determination to get as far away from Haddonfield as I could, I’d somehow still been living out of suitcases and bags at Claire’s when she collapsed.

  I jogged up the steps to the house and went to put the key in. Unlocked. Had I left it unlocked? Sister Regina’s words rang through my head. But Marie worries that the child knows more than she should. That this is just the beginning. I pushed the door open and stood in the entryway, hesitating, unsure about going in. I’d opened up something by going to the Owenses’ house; I’d sensed it would happen before I’d gone. Marie was right, this was just the beginning. I stared inside the darkened living room.

  “Avaaaaaaaaa!” I turned to see Joanne, a coworker, charging along the sidewalk and up my steps. She grabbed me, the abundant sweetness of Shalimar wafting from her.

  “Come in,” I said when she’d released me from her grasp. “I just got back from church.”

  I took her arm and crossed the threshold. My eyes darted back and forth across the room, scanning for movement. Joanne Watkins was my shield, but she disengaged from me quickly and dropped her enormous canvas purse onto the sofa. She flopped down next to it and looked around.

  “Good God, Ava. You need a cleaning woman. Is everything all right with you? You know . . .” She waved her arm around, taking in the entire room. “And you’re lookin’ a little thin. And a little rough.”

  “Good to see you too, Joanne.” I scanned my mess with a critical eye. It looked like the beginning of a trashy hoarder’s nest. Something crunched under my heel. I stared in dismay at the smashed lipstick tube, the pink color now smeared against the hardwood floor.

  Her eyes were on it too. “Is that my tube of Lancôme Vintage Rose? You borrowed it like two months ago?”

  It was but I didn’t answer her. I was surveying the room. Was it this way before and I hadn’t noticed? My purse was upside down in the corner, the contents spilled onto the floor. I knelt and started putting my things away. My wallet was there, all my identification and three dollars. I tossed the small empty liquor bottle that had rolled out of my purse back in, hoping that Joanne hadn’t seen it. It was as if someone had been in here, rooting through my things. Even the sofa cushions were pulled out a bit. They hadn’t been like that when I left—but I couldn’t be sure.

  “Do you have anything to eat?” Joanne said. “I didn’t have breakfast.”

  Since I’d started at the courthouse, Joanne had become a friend—against her better judgment. She was older than me by fifteen years and a secretary for one of the superior-court judges. She hadn’t cared much for me when we’d met. I’d heard she called me “the stuck-up bitch with the green eyes.” She’d ignored most of my questions, giving me blank stares instead of answers. Joanne knew everybody and had a lot of pull. She practically ran that floor and could probably pass the bar exam in New Jersey if someone put it in front of her.

  I had shied away from her—civil but detached, I called it. Then one morning in the courtroom, our relationship changed. I’d followed a fellow translator into court to hear a young man during his central judicial processing. He was Dominican, arrested on drug charges, and couldn’t or wouldn’t speak English. He screamed at the judge in Spanish and spit on the floor, and they couldn’t do anything until a translator arrived.

  When Joanne saw me enter the courtroom, she rolled her eyes and muttered something to the secretary next to her.

  The other translator, Tomas, began translating the inmate’s Spanish word for word: “‘This is bullshit. I didn’t do it. I’ll take this to trial. You’re just doing this because I’m Dominican.’” Then suddenly the inmate switched to French. Tomas, confused, just listened.

  The judge looked at him and then at Tomas. “Is there a problem?”

  “He’s switched to a Creole,” I jumped in.

  The inmate turned to me and began an angry tirade.

  “Tell him to speak Spanish,” the judge said. “Or we’ll send him back to holding until he remembers how.”

  “I can interpret, Your Honor.”

  “Go ahead, then. Let’s get this over with.”

  I took a deep breath. “‘Fuck all of you white fat asses. You think you’re going to put me in jail. I’ll kill you first. I do what I want and nobody can stop me. You don’t even know my real name or where I come from because you’re stupid. And you’re a bitch thinking you can speak my language. You need a good ass fucking.’”

  I said this all with a straight face. The judge stared back at me, and the courtroom fell completely silent. “I believe he’s Haitian, not Dominican,” I added. “I would call ICE.”

  Later that afternoon Joanne pulled me aside. “I can’t believe that guy this morning. But you gotta admit it was funny.”

  I leaned in a little. “Which part? When he called you ‘white fat asses’ or when he said I needed a good ass fucking? Which I don’t, by the way.”

  Joanne roared at this. “You’re all right after all, you know.”

  Her iciness melted away and it became a running joke. “Hey, Ava, I’m going out, do you need anything?” If I said no, she’d add, “That inmate said you did. But I can’t buy you that at the food truck.” We started going to lunch together and sometimes came back popping mints to avoid smelling like wine. Once I got to know her, Joanne was open, warm, honest. We were as opposite as any two people could be, but we connected in ways that mattered. We might have been a funny sight walking
down the halls of the courthouse. I’d always had a slight frame, but over the past six months a combination of stress and lack of food had rendered me bony. I dressed conservatively, often in black. Joanne was short, a little plump, with brownish-red frosted hair, overdone makeup, garish accessories, tight, sometimes too-tight, clothing, and always high heels.

  “So are you going to feed me or what?” she asked again. “Bacon and eggs sounds good.”

  She followed me into the kitchen, scanning the place. “Ptomaine poisoning comes to mind. Maybe just coffee for me.”

  She plopped down at the kitchen table while I cleaned the coffeepot. “So, what’s going on, Ava? I wanted to go with you, to that house in the photo.”

  I’d told her about the Polaroid, but I didn’t want her coming with me. It really was something I needed to do on my own. I concentrated on the soap and water in front of me. “I was fine going alone.”

  “Why d’you think Claire kept that picture, anyway? Why didn’t she just throw it away?” She studied me. “No offense, but she wasn’t exactly all schmoozy and sentimental. Or even nice, according to what you’ve said.”

  I felt a heavy pull on my heart, the words speaking a truth I knew but wanted to deny. No childhood drawings ever graced our refrigerator. My Mother’s Day mementos were trashed a day later. Any mother-daughter threads connecting us had been ripped apart by constant criticism, anger, and my occasional bouts of drinking. I poured two mugs of coffee and sat across from her at the table. “It wasn’t a sentimental picture. It was probably important to her in some other way.”

  Joanne stared straight ahead. Deep in thought. I knew that look. “She never showed it to you, but keeping it meant risking you finding it. Where was it? Where’d you find it?”

  I stood up and waved her on. “Come look.”

  This Victorian had been gutted and modernized, yet the original fixtures and character remained intact. We climbed the steps to the second floor and entered Claire’s room.

  The walls were painted a shade somewhere between gray and pale blue; the woodwork was a dark varnished walnut. I stared at the bed, Claire’s slippers still sitting neatly on the floor where she’d left them, waiting for her feet. A book was on the nightstand, the tassel of the bookmark visible, marking the last page she’d read. I picked it up. La Prochaine Fois. I turned it over and smirked. She was reading Marc Levy. A little trashy for Claire even if it was in French. Joanne stood behind me.

  “What is it? What does that mean?” She pointed to the cover.

  “Until Next Time. Until next time, Claire.” I dropped the book onto the table and headed to the closet.

  A small dressing room had been made over into a walk-in closet. I buzzed by the clothes—pristine, perfectly organized—and dropped to my knees in the corner. There was a piece of wood, not even what you would call a door, closed and latched only by a hook. I pushed it open and crawled into a storage space behind the closet. The alcove was part of the space underneath the stairs to the third floor. The ceiling was at a sharp angle, and it was impossible to stand.

  Joanne followed with some difficulty. “A little creepy.” It was stuffy and dark.

  I crawled to the corner and pulled the white box to her. “Here.” A book of school photographs fell into her lap. Then the envelope. She tipped the box and pulled out the dress, holding it up in the dim light.

  She then turned it over. “Someone sewed this dress by hand. Cute hippo,” she said.

  “What?”

  “There’s a hippo on the back, didn’t you see it?” She turned the dress around to show me the blue embroidery.

  I reached out and ran my finger over it, finding the rough spot where the thread had been doubled, without knowing what I was looking for. Then a flash of memory came over me. I was hysterical when I was wearing this dress. I was lost, or alone, maybe. Very young.

  Joanne hit my arm. “What else is in there?”

  “Just my school stuff and the dress. Her passports too.” I tossed them into her lap.

  Joanne flipped through the pages, examining the photographs and stamps. “Issued nineteen ninety-two. She traveled a lot. A whole lot.” Every page was filled with the familiar stamps of Immigration from when she’d exited and reentered the United States. “Nineteen ninety-three, nineteen ninety-four, nineteen ninety-five, she was back and forth to Europe. Nineteen ninety-six. A lot of travel with a little kid. Do you remember any of it?”

  I was confused for a second. “We went to see my grandmother in France, but I don’t remember going anywhere else.”

  “Here, early nineteen ninety-six, it looks like she spent a month in Spain. And she went to Morocco. You don’t remember that? The marketplaces? The desert and the camels? You would have been what, three or four?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “Hmmm. What’s the first thing you do remember?”

  “I remember that dress.” I reached out and touched the blue checked fabric. Commotion, being grabbed roughly. Running. Chaos and maybe blood. And faces. Claire’s face. That was my first memory and I’d been wearing this. But I wasn’t going to tell Joanne that.

  She tossed the passports into my lap. “This is giving me the heebies. I’m going downstairs.”

  She turned and crawled back into the closet. I heard feet on the stairs, then the front door opening. I assumed it was Joanne, but when I got to the kitchen it was empty.

  “You left the front door wide open,” she said, appearing behind me several minutes later.

  “I did?” No, I remembered locking it after Joanne and I came in.

  “Must have. I stopped to use the bathroom upstairs and it was wide open when I came down. I’d be locking this place up tight, if I were you. This whole thing is creepy.”

  But I’d heard footsteps going down the stairs. I wasn’t going crazy. If it wasn’t Joanne, who was it? Had someone else been in here the whole time? I ran to the front door and secured the chain.

  Joanne followed me, her arms folded in front of her. “Are you okay?” I gave a slight nod. “So, anyway, how many times have you been in that crawl space in the past, say, coupla years?”

  “None. Zero. There would be no reason to. That was Claire’s closet.”

  “Exactly. It was hidden. The picture. The passports. The dress?” She leaned toward me. “It was important enough not to throw away. The date on that picture is enough to call the police. It’s connected to those murders. Do it, Ava. Now.”

  “No, not until I can think this through a little. And figure out why Claire had that in her possession. If she thought it was connected to me somehow.”

  “So what, then? You can’t do this by yourself.”

  “Do what?”

  “Play detective. People were murdered. It might have been a few years ago, but still . . . Why don’t we call Russell?” She punched me in the arm.

  Russell was a detective assigned to the Prosecutor’s Office. He was what Joanne called DDG. Drop-dead gorgeous. She would walk by me and whisper, “DDG is in the building, go put lipstick on.” And she never let me forget the one afternoon that she and I were sitting out in front of the courthouse when Russell asked to join us. He bought me a fruit salad and water. We got so involved in a conversation about his time in France when he was in the military—apparently Russell had been stationed in Cherbourg for a year and went back several times after that to visit—we forgot all about Joanne, and Joanne never shut up about it. I told her over and over again that Russell had a girlfriend and that he wasn’t really my type.

  “This attitude of yours is why I didn’t used to like you. Contrary to what you think, Ava, you’re really not too good for him,” she’d say. “Yeah, I know you’re all French and everything, but so what? He’s got that curly hair and those big brown eyes.”

  At first I’d try to defend myself, but after a while I figured out that was exactly what Joanne wanted me to do. Instead I would egg her on. “I am sort of too good for him, so let’s move on.”

  Yes
, I noticed Russell when he was around me. I couldn’t help it. There was no denying that he was good looking, but he was more than that. He was smart and funny and interesting. He’d been appointed to the Prosecutor’s Office after six years on the Cherry Hill Police Department. He downplayed it like it was just another job. I found out later that it was sort of a political assignment and in those circles it was a big deal.

  “So, what do you think? Just get his opinion?” Joanne was on the edge of her seat now.

  I was shaking my head before I even realized it. “No. I’d rather not involve anyone in this. I mean it.”

  “Seriously? You’re going to figure this out by yourself?” She glanced at me sideways. “Ummm, no. Russell. And that’s final.”

  I put my head down. “He’ll make this an official part of the record. Turn the photograph over to the Philadelphia police. You know he will. And I can’t take that. Not now. I need to know why Claire had it in the first place. Then we’ll talk about it.”

  “Ava—”

  “No, I mean it. If we tell him, you need to make sure he keeps it to himself.”

  Joanne rolled her eyes and I shut up.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Wait, back up.” Russell stared at me. His eyes could have shot me dead across the table. “The couple was murdered five years ago? Unsolved? And you never called the police after you left there? To give them your information?” I couldn’t help but notice that those irritated eyes were the color of whiskey. Jack Daniel’s, maybe.