by Smith, Julie
For all Skip knew, Bettina wasn’t guilty of anything more than being young and dumb, but it still pissed her off that the woman had so easily walked away from a human train wreck.
Shelllmire said, “Any other followers?”
“Doing time.” That, at least, was gratifying, but unless Jacomine wanted to mastermind a jailbreak, they were never going to be any use to him again, thus no use to Skip and Shellmire. “Look, I should be going.”
“Don’t go yet. We’re just getting started.”
But she wanted to go; the conversation was making her anxious.
“Would you like me to sweep your house?”
“Sure.” This was something she hadn’t thought of. “Could you do Steve’s too?”
“Consider it done.”
He sent someone out the next day and reported later that both her phone and Steve’s were tapped.
So the feds checked Jimmy Dee’s and found it clean, but that provided little solace. Skip felt as if she’d been kicked. How the hell was she supposed to think about cemetery angels when the devil himself was eavesdropping on her?
I’ve got to do something, she thought. I can’t just let it lie.
An idea came to her: Why don’t I just work the case as if I’m assigned to it? In my off-hours, say?
It was time, and she knew it. She’d let herself feel safe for too long. Why, she couldn’t have said, except that she so desperately wanted to live a normal life. And because she didn’t know what else to do. In reality, her safety was as fragile as a thread and had been for two years.
Maybe, she thought, there’s nothing you really can do. Maybe it’s like owning a house in the French Quarter. You whack away at it for a while, rebuilding and painting and fluffing and buffing, and then you lie down exhausted; next thing you know you have termites.
I have termites of the lifestyle.
She doodled on a yellow pad, stars and spirals that came out of nowhere. And she wrote: What would I do if I were working the case?
The answer was obvious: Go see Bettina.
Bettina Starnes, her name was, but she wasn’t in the phone book.
Okay, fine. Maybe she was still on probation.
She was, and her probation officer had her address, in New Orleans East. After work, Skip drove out there, just to get a gander, maybe check out the neighborhood, see if it looked like Bettina had a sugar daddy.
But if Bettina was still in contact with Jacomine, it sure wasn’t for material reasons. She lived in a rundown brick fourplex, poorly maintained and badly built to begin with, one of six or eight in a small, under-financed development. One of the four apartments was boarded up.
Bettina was a smallish, youngish, plumpish woman, African-American with a round face that wasn’t really pretty but managed somehow to be so downright pleasant you just couldn’t imagine her involved with a bunch of thugs and murderers, no matter how sheeplike their clothing. She had frustrated Skip and the feds— and certainly the D.A.’s office— when she was arrested shortly after giving birth.
Surely, Skip thought at the time, she didn’t know what she was doing. How could she have believed the vicious claptrap that came out of Jacomine’s mouth? She couldn’t possibly have a violent bone in her body.
But everyone did, according to Cindy Lou Wootten, the police psychologist. She’d evaluated Bettina and pronounced her a woman who practiced the fine art of manipulation the way a doctor practices medicine.
Damn, she was good— as her freedom attested.
She met Skip at the door in surgical scrubs, fuschia in color, an ear-to-ear smile showing slightly buck teeth, her baby on her right hip.
With her left hand nails painted a pearl-white, she reached out and grabbed Skip’s elbow, the best handshake she could manage with the baby in her arms. Skip was grateful for the encumbrance, reasonably sure the woman would have tried for a hug if she’d had her hands free.
“Detective Langdon! How’ve you been?”
“Just fine, Bettina. Mind if I come in?”
“You’re always welcome. You know that, baby.” Baby! To the detective who’d tried to pop her for murder. She spoke in the soft maternal voice of a favorite aunt, a voice that wrapped around you like a comforter. It had to be half the reason she was free today.
Bettina stepped aside to let Skip in, revealing a living room so Spartan Bettina might have been a Shaker instead of an evangelical fanatic. There was a greenish square of carpet on the floor, probably a remnant. A wooden settee and a hard wooden chair that matched it were the only furniture, except for a couple of ancient end tables, undoubtedly found at a thrift store. The chair sported a yellow pillow large enough to fit on the seat.
Two or three toys were scattered on the green rug, certainly not the exuberant litter one might expect in the home of a working mother with a child under two. Not a single picture hung on the walls.
The place was stifling. Bettina said, “Sorry it’s so hot in here. AC broke; they never did fix it.”
Bettina put the child down and pointed to a narrow hall, evidently opening out to a bedroom. At any rate, Skip could hear electronic murmurs coming from that direction. “Go watch television, darlin’. Go on, now.”
The boy bounced on rubbery knees, raising his arms to be picked up. When his mother failed to respond, he began to make little whiny noises, his sweet face twisting and turning in panic. Bettina put a hand at the back of his head, “Go on, baby. We’ll play with your toys in a little bit.”
The kid stuck out his lip but seemed to decide TV was his best course of action. And once he’d made up his mind, he tore off down the hall like a chubby missile.
Skip grinned after him, as silly as any adult around a two-year-old. “Sweet baby.”
“Ohhh, you don’t know. You don’t know what a devil that child can be.”
Considering his suspected paternity, Skip was startled by the aptness of the phrase. The baby was light tan, a color that could easily mean a white father. “What’s his name?” she asked.
“Jacob. You know Daddy. He liked names out of the Bible.” She meant Jacomine, of course; his whole following called him Daddy.
Skip deliberately misunderstood. “So his father was the Reverend Jacomine?” It nearly killed her to give him the title.
Bettina sat down, motioned Skip to do the same, and gave her visitor the full benefit of. her too-large teeth. “All children are the son of God. You know that, Sister.”
She’d never called Skip “Sister” before, and never again would be soon enough. But it might mean they had a rapport going; Skip sure wasn’t going to ruffle it. She said, “You’re looking good, Bettina. How’s everything going?”
The other woman, sitting on the wooden settee, rocked back and forth, turning what looked more or less like an instrument of torture into an imaginary rocking chair. She smiled again, this time barely parting her lips. Hot red-orange lipstick, walnut-colored skin, and fuchsia scrubs formed a fascinating play of color. “Doing good. Doing real good. Got me a nice, good-paying office job, working for Ochsner Home Health.” She pulled at her sleeve. “They give you a choice. You wear these or pantyhose, nothing in between. What would you pick?”
Skip smiled back at her, as if they were neighbors passing the time of day. “I’d wear those if they looked that good on me.”
The comment apparently made Bettina uncomfortable; evidently she was so used to using compliments to her advantage she felt attacked when one came back at her. Her smile flicked on again (though she kept the wattage down), and she said, “What brings you around, darlin’?”
“I was wondering if you’ve heard from Daddy.” Calling him that was worse than calling him Reverend.
Bettina surprised her by saying, “Ohhhh, Ms. Langdon, I just wish I would.” She seemed to have forgotten the story that had kept her out of jail.
Skip was about to comment when suddenly the television blasted at them like an explosion. Jacob, bored and curious, must have unwittingly cranked up th
e volume. Great broken-hearted wails began to layer themselves on top of a booming aspirin commercial.
Bettina was on her feet in an instant. “Goddamn motherfuckin’ shit!” Without so much as a glance at Skip, she disappeared down the hall, screaming at her kid the whole time. “Jacob! What the fuck you think you’re doin’? Can’t you use the sense God gave you?” And then there were pounding sounds, a kid being systematically hit, louder and louder wails, and the television went off.
Slowly, Bettina walked back in, for all the world as if Jacob weren’t sobbing his heart out in the background. For a second, Skip wondered if she should make sure he was all right but decided the sounds she’d heard were probably no more than a palm slapping against a disposable diaper. If Bettina didn’t treat him any worse than that, she probably wasn’t going to do him any physical harm; though she might end up raising another criminal.
Bettina’s temper tantrum had passed like a squall in a harbor. Once again she gave Skip that too-broad smile and spoke in that saccharine voice. “Every day I pray for my Daddy’s safety, and I pray to hear his voice, and I pray to be reunited with him. In my heart of hearts, I know the good Lord’s keeping him safe, and I’m grateful for it every minute of the day.”
“You haven’t heard from him at all?”
“Oh, my Lord, my Lord. I only wish my savior, Jesus Christ in heaven, would send my Daddy home to me.” She sounded almost as if she were in a trance.
Skip absolutely couldn’t believe, given her official story, that Bettina could speak this way to a police officer.
“So you’ve forgiven him for holding you prisoner?”
“Lawd, he didn’t mean nothin’ by that. Daddy just thought it was the best thing for me.”
“What would you do if he called you?” she asked.
Anguish replaced the longing on the woman’s face. “Well, I couldn’t do anything, Detective Langdon. You know that. Not and stay out of jail.” She bit off the last sentence, for a moment sounding furious.
But almost immediately the rapt look came back, along with the spun-sugar tones. “I’d just give anything in the world to know he’s alive and all right. Anything in the world.”
“If you hear from him, are you going to call me?”
“You know I’ve got to.”
And we both know you won’t, Skip thought. She felt unsettled, as if her business with the woman were unfinished. Bettina’s longing to hear from Jacomine, so freely and ingenuously expressed, was frightening, but then so was everything about the man.
She stood and said her good-byes. On her way out, she saw a familiar pear-shaped figure dodge into a doorway across the street. She wondered if Shellmire were following her— acting as unofficial bodyguard— or if he’d decided on his own to come see Bettina. She ignored him, knowing an acknowledgment could be a Judas kiss, and he, in turn, ignored her. He phoned a couple of hours later, catching her at Steve’s. “Bettina went to a pay phone about half an hour after you left. Did you notice a phone in her apartment?”
“No, but who doesn’t have one?”
“Yeah. Could be she’s in touch with him.”
Skip felt her neck prickle and her cheeks get hot.
Shellmire said, “We can do a few days’ surveillance. Maybe we’ll get something.”
“Thanks, Turner. I appreciate it.” She got off the phone, heart still pounding. The agent’s diligence should have been reassuring, but she found her mind drifting in a thousand paranoid directions. She drank two glasses of wine, inducing an uneasy slumber, and sometime in the night Steve woke her. “You were having a nightmare.”
She was clammy with sweat. The damn termites again.
CHAPTER SIX
“You haven’t eaten all day?” Isaac sounded as if he didn’t believe it. “They have to feed you.”
Terri felt sulky. No one believed her about anything any more. Probably if she mentioned her name was Terri, he’d challenge her on that. “They didn’t, okay?” she snapped.
Isaac pulled into a McDonald’s.
“What are you doing?”
“We’re getting you some food. Now.”
“No.”
“Terri, you’ve got to eat.”
“I can’t eat. I’ve got to go home. Just take me home, all right?” She heard herself snapping and whining, but she couldn’t help it.
Isaac drove her home without another word, the lie between them hovering ominously in the background. She got out of the car alone, ran inside, ripped off her clothes, and got in the shower. When she emerged, some twenty minutes later, she staggered, weak and disoriented, to the kitchen, but there was nothing in the refrigerator. Literally nothing that wasn’t in a jar or bottle or didn’t have green stuff on it.
She lay down on her bed and cried, thinking of the chocolate cake she’d thrown at Isaac’s door the night before. Had it really been less than twenty-four hours?
She didn’t know how long she lay there before someone knocked. Frightened, she looked through the peephole, half expecting the police. It was Isaac, holding a fast-food bag. She flung open the door, feeling calmer and very much ashamed of herself.
“I’m sorry I was such a butthead.”
“No, I’m sorry. I brought you some food. I’ll leave. I know you want to be alone. I just—”
“No, come in. I feel better. I’m really sorry.”
He came in shyly, holding the bag at arm’s length, as if offering it to a slavering beast.
Nestled in the paper bag was a shrimp po’ boy— her favorite. She fell on it while Isaac made her some iced tea.
She drank a little: The sandwich had made her thirsty. And she said again, “I’m so sorry.”
“Would you rather have some wine?”
She managed a smile. “I guess I would. I think there’s some in the fridge. From about a week ago. You?”
“I’ll get it.”
He got her a glass, handed it to her, and eyed her warily. “Terri, what happened?”
She sank back into a chair. “I was thinking about it while I was in jail. They gave us foam pads to sleep on, but I couldn’t sleep. I think I know. I think it’s something to do with that mix-up I had at the bank— you remember that?”
“Yeah, those fines. I thought you had it all straightened out.”
“You know, I remembered something they said the last time we talked. They said they turned it over to security.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I don’t know. By then, I was so over it I just…”
“Terri!”
“Isaac, don’t yell at me!” He fell back against the sofa he was sitting on. She realized he hadn’t yelled at all.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
“If you don’t want to talk about it, I can understand.”
“No, I do. I want to see if I can get it straight in my head.” She looked down at the floor and up again, flinging her still-wet hair out of her eyes, surprised by the color of it. She couldn’t believe she’d done a stupid thing like dye it blue to annoy her mother. “Remember when I talked to my friend Ronnie?”
“Uh-huh,” he said, his voice nervous, as if he expected her to do the yelling.
“Well, I was doing such a bad job of keeping track, I had all these fines, and Ronnie said I needed a second account to keep everything straight. See, here’s what I didn’t know. Sometimes, when checks come in to banks, like other people’s banks, you follow— ?” He shook his head. “Like, say, my account’s at First Carnivore, and my client’s account is at T. Rex. Well, then, I deposit her check, but my bank holds it for seven days to make sure it’s cleared.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “They just say it’s a policy, but I don’t think it always is. I guess it’s because I never have enough money to cover the check if it bounces.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with what happened.”
“Well, I didn’t know they were doing it,
and I’d think the checks had cleared, so I’d just write checks of my own, thinking I had money in the bank. But I didn’t. And then the bank would charge me a fine every time I didn’t.”
“For the overdraft.”
“Yeah, I guess.” She felt her shoulders go up in a big, defensive shrug. “I don’t know how banks operate. I mean, how could I know? See, they’d take out twenty-two dollars a check, and I wouldn’t know it, then they’d put through the new checks I’d written, and they wouldn’t clear, plus the old ones, and they wouldn’t clear again. And I’d get charged again. Only I wouldn’t know.”
“Terri.” His voice was accusing. “Surely you’ve had checking accounts before.”
She shrugged again. “I have, but if I bounced a check, I’d pay the fee. It was no big deal. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“But what about your records?”
“Well, I never wrote anything down. I just couldn’t be bothered. And I never saved bank statements either. I’d never had a problem. I’d think, OK damn, and I’d pay the fee. I just… never banked with a bank like this. But, anyway, I got all messed up, and my mom bailed me out—” She stopped, noticing her unfortunate choice of words. “I mean, she said she’d lend me five hundred dollars to get me out of trouble, and my friend Ronnie, who works at a bank, said he’d straighten everything out for me. So I went to see him—”
“You mean at a different bank?”
“Yeah, and he opened a business account for me. Then I’d just deposit money at whichever bank was convenient and write checks at both accounts. But when my mom gave me the $500 check and I took it to the first bank to straighten the whole mess out, no one would talk to me.”
“What do you mean no one would talk to you?”
“They said, ‘You need to talk to someone in security,’ so I asked for security, and the same thing happened. No one would talk to me there either. I deposited the five-hundred-dollar check, and after that, they never sent me any more bills. I thought it was fixed.”
“Oh, Terri!”
“I know, I know. Basically, I just ignored it, which I know was bad on my part.”