I sat in my office, fiddling with old files, scratching words on creased index cards. I thumbed through email to delete time-share pleas, online gambling opportunities, and offers to save my immortal soul with vegan supplements. Greasy smells from the restaurant below seeped through the floorboards to blend with the exhaust fumes from the street beyond the window. Squeaking of a desk drawer announced Brina’s arrival in the outer office. She didn’t stick her head in to greet me. I let her be.
After an hour, the silence grew oppressive, like the vague drone of distant lawn mowers. I left my office carrying a mug to pretend I was in search of more coffee. Brina wasn’t at her desk near the front door. When I reached the break room, I heard the rush of water in the bathroom. The roar was dull but furious, not a drip from the sink or the urgent whirl of the toilet. The shower was gushing in breakneck clamor.
I could have burst in, but uncertainty made me waver. When the water stopped, I leaned against the wall opposite the bathroom door. Brina would dress, emerge in a few minutes, and we’d talk then. I gripped my mug, ready with a joke and an excuse. After three minutes, she didn’t come out; another minute and she still hadn’t moved inside the bathroom. Long enough. I knocked once, then shoved into the answering silence.
Clothes were heaped on the floor below the white porcelain pedestal sink. Her black bra and panties draped over the closed lid of the toilet seat. I sat the cup on the edge of the sink and flung aside the white plastic curtain. Brina was standing naked in the shower stall.
“You okay?” I could see she wasn’t, but I asked anyway. As if this was an ordinary exchange rather than an invasion. Or an intervention.
She didn’t answer. Below dripping lashes, her eyes narrowed, then caught mine. They sparked bright, but as purposeless as the ocean surf. I reached for her hand and pulled. She had to step across the raised lip of the stall to keep her balance.
When she squared before me, I tried again. “Let me help, Brina.”
Water cascaded down her body onto the black-and-white penny tiles. She shivered, sending drops from her shoulders to my shirt front.
“I don’t know what to do.” The voice squeezed through her teeth in a whimper. “What am I supposed to do for Daddy now?”
I grabbed four green towels from a stack on the wire shelf beside the sink. They were skimpy and rough, only hand sized. Good enough. I patted water from her face and neck, taking care to run a corner of the first towel into the angles beside both eyes. The next two towels I dragged down her breasts and stomach, then her legs. I dropped the cloths on the floor to soak up the puddle. Another towel to dry her back. But water from her drenched hair continued to stream down the canal of her spine.
“There, all dry now, Brina.” Kindergarten teacher language. Or nurse-style baby talk. “Let’s get you dressed.”
She snatched a look in the mirror over the sink. The crease flickering between her brows registered puzzlement, not alarm. As if she wasn’t supposed to be here, wet and naked. Gripping my biceps, she balanced on one foot then the other to pull her panties over her hips. She snapped on the bra without help. I picked up her loose cream-colored pants. They had a paisley pattern in yellow and black. To put those on, she sat on the covered toilet seat. She crumpled the yellow t-shirt into a ball in her lap. Bold yellow; Dreamie’s favorite color.
“I’m too wet.” A wail shuddered through her words. “Wet all over.”
“Okay, let me help.” I edged around until I was behind her. I raked my fingers through the mop of her hair, untangling curls as I went. I dabbed a towel in a circle around her head from ear to ear, then from brow to nape. I finger-combed again, laying the black mass over her shoulders. Water dampened her bra straps. In that moment, I’d have surrendered my life to ease her suffering. “Baby, it’s alright. You’re alright. You’re safe. I got you.”
She shivered again, the words falling in a torrent: “I didn’t think I’d miss Dreamie. I hardly remember her. She’s just a vague profile from the past. A departed shadow. That’s what I thought. But now I know she’s dead, I can’t stop thinking about her.” Her lips pulled away from her teeth, a spasm that carved deep lines around her mouth. Her eyelids froze over huge pupils.
“That’s okay, Brina. You should think about her. She’s your mother.” I wanted comfort to slide from my puny words into her heart.
White flared around the pupils; the whites of her molars blazed too. “But I never really knew her. We just had a few years. So long ago it shouldn’t even count, right?”
Brina shivered again. Maybe from cold, maybe from the past crowding into the little room with us. Pops spouted from her lips. She wanted to talk. I stood behind her, a hand on her head, as she continued. “I never had anyone to look toward as a model. To learn how to be a woman. Not really. I’m pretty good at being a daughter by now.” She laughed, the bitter croak reverberating against the tiled walls. “I stayed in this job, being a good daughter to Norment long past the expiration date. But it’s all I know how to do. So, I stuck with it. Never moved on.”
I didn’t have words for relief, or explanation, or understanding. Nothing came. I pressed my palm against her scalp. She pushed her head into my hand, the way a cat does when it wants you to go on petting it.
I kept stroking as she talked. “If I knew how to be a daughter, maybe I could have figured the right way to be a grown woman too. Maybe even a mother, when the time came. But I never had the chance to learn.” A sigh curbed the rant. Then, with a shudder, she continued. “You know, Dreamie never wanted me. She didn’t choose me. I was a mistake, an accident. I was a slip-up. I just arrived. Plagued her every day for ten years. Then Dreamie disappeared. I sent her away and she disappeared.”
That was wrong. I wanted her to see how mistaken she was. I gripped both shoulders to seize her focus: “No, Brina. You didn’t cause Dreamie to go away.”
Brina shook her head, then stroked her cheek. “I did it. She slapped me, hurt my face. And my feelings. She didn’t choose me. So, I wanted her gone. Wished for it. Prayed for it. And two months later–poof–she vanished.” She flicked water into the air. A few droplets brushed my face.
“You were only ten, Brina. Just a little girl. Kids think in magical terms. Imagine they have special powers. But you didn’t cause your mother to leave. She did it on her own.”
I wasn’t sure Dreamie’s disappearance was voluntary, but I said it anyway. I wanted Brina to understand she wasn’t to blame for the loss of her mother. I raked my fingers through her hair again, stroking the damp coils into patterns against her scalp. She raised her right arm. A red elastic band squeezed her wrist. I twisted the elastic around her hair, making a loose ponytail at her nape. She drew the yellow t-shirt over her head and finished dressing. Sun yellow, Dreamie’s color, the shade of optimism and happy times. The shirt beamed its cheery glow toward Brina’s face. She stood before me, looking at her reflection in the mirror over the sink.
I pressed my mouth onto the wet top of her head and hugged her tight to my chest. A brief smile tickled the corners of her lips. Then she patted my hands where they lay on her stomach and pulled away. Another few seconds of silence to gather the wet towels, wipe down the sink and toilet cover. We returned to our desks.
I waited for Brina to join me, ask a question, give an instruction, start a new case. After five minutes of foot-tapping, I crept from my office again. She was sitting at her desk, hands frozen on the keyboard. I went to the breakroom and found a red mug. After filling it from the bathroom sink, I set the water to boil in the microwave. One minute was enough. A dig through cartons in a cabinet yielded a packet of instant oatmeal. Cinnamon and brown sugar. I let the oatmeal flakes drift into the hot water, spoon stirring with a slow beat until the cereal thickened. I splashed French vanilla coffee creamer into the mug. Not milk, but it looked alright.
Brina said nothing when I sat the mug on her desk. She pulled the cup acros
s the blotter, then shifted the spoon in a circle once around the oatmeal. She nodded, then lifted a thumbnail portion of the mush to her lips. Maybe I hadn’t baked Brina that fancy layer cake she deserved. But I could do something for her, if she’d let me. Maybe I was more than a dented wreck she’d found crumpled in a ditch, a fix-it project she’d taken on years ago and couldn’t find the heart to junk. Maybe in some small, but real way, the shower proved I could matter in her life.
After Brina swallowed a second spoonful of oatmeal, I slipped back to my office. I opened the laptop to see if she’d shoot me a message. Nothing. After three quiet minutes, I pulled a pen knife from the shallow center drawer and attacked the innocent desk top. I scratched at a new letter in my name, working the knife deep into serif flourishes on the B in Shelba. When I was nine, I’d learned the rainy-day basics of carving from my uncle Luis. I had a ways to go before I carved the whole tag into my desk. But my name was emerging from the wood. I flicked the shavings with a thumb, then blew dust from the raw scar to reveal its new curves.
Like the lines of my cobbled name, these two cases from the past would emerge with careful digging. If I was the detective I claimed to be, Dreamie’s death was my puzzle to solve. For Brina and her father, this strange death wasn’t a derelict notion buried under decades of neglect. Dreamie mattered now. Like Annie.
Now I had a second case from the past. Not abstractions or puzzles, solving these cases could determine my own future. Two women dead, two wives lost. Pieces missing, clues buried. My job was clear: I wanted answers and I’d dig for the results. Even if revealing those shrouded truths caused pain.
I jabbed the tip of my knife into the stained wood again. There was a third woman, living but trapped by her past. I needed answers from Carolyn Wiley too. I thrust the blade against the grain; a new splinter, fresh and pale, jumped across the desk.
Chapter
Sixteen
I’d promised Carolyn Wiley I’d join her for dinner that evening at the Swann Memory Center. I would have cancelled if Brina had asked. But she said no, repeating her quip: “We’re a detective agency, not a defective agency.” Coddling, crying, and pity parties were out of bounds.
She drove, dropping me in front of the Striver’s Row mansion at five-thirty. Balanced on the drain grate, I bent toward the open window. I meant to offer to stop by her apartment later. But before I could speak, she peeled from the curb. Sometimes our boss-lackey relationship worked like a charm, warding off awkward feelings and smoothing touchy situations. Sometimes the professional distance hurt like a bitch. This evening, it hurt.
I’d hoped my date with Mrs. Wiley would yield a few clues about her past life and current predicament. Maybe even about the skeleton in the basement. I wanted to ask for details about her missing bracelet. And if I could find a graceful way, I wanted to ask how Dreamie might have died in her house. But my plans were derailed.
We were joined at the front desk by her sometime friend, Queen Esther Monroe. I escorted the women into the dining room, both elbows getting a workout holding the ladies upright as we staggered to our table. Carolyn wore a variation on her uniform: this time the shirtdress was turquoise, accented with white pearl buttons. Her subdued outfit gave Queen center stage. She wore red from toe to top: scarlet sweater, pants, and shoes with gold heels. The red baseball cap crammed over her wiry braids was dotted with stars picked out in gold sequins.
Queen was the most exciting feature in the dining room. By far. Ten square tables covered in white linen were set in straight rows around the parquet floor. Only half the tables were occupied. Residents sat in pairs or quartets, some of the men wore three-piece suits, others sported striped pajamas. All the ladies had dressed for dinner like they were going to a prom or a night club. They wore dangling earrings, crimson lips, and slack muscles.
The oak-paneled room was stuffy, no open windows allowed, no air conditioning units in sight. Though the ceiling was high, the two overhead fans dumped hot air onto our scalps in sizeable scoops. After a few minutes I was gasping like a hooked fish flopping on a wooden pier. In sweaty desperation, I undid the top two buttons of my shirt. This drew an approving nod from Queen Esther. She fingered the neck of her red sweater. I was sure she’d have popped a button or two for me if she’d had any.
“Hot enough in here for you, young man?” Queen asked.
“Yes, ma’am. Plenty hot.” I swiped perspiration from my hairline. And just for Queen, I fluttered my shirt front to fan air onto my chest. The movement didn’t cool either of us.
“Nice! I like that, young man.” She batted her sparse eyelashes and tilted closer. Aromas of peony and mothballs rose from her neck.
“Don’t start up your nasty teasing again, Queen.” Mrs. Wiley used a hatchet-voice to guard the civility of our table. “I didn’t invite my guest here for any of your fool nonsense.”
Mrs. Wiley had called me Carl when she greeted me in the front hall. As she took my hand and leaned close, she’d twice whispered his name on clove-scented breath: “You came, Carl. I wasn’t sure you would. But you came. I’m so happy to see you again, Carl.”
But after those first moments, she avoided using her son’s name. In Queen’s company, I was a favored guest, not a long-absent child. Did Carolyn realize she’d made this switch? Had she suppressed memories of Carl on purpose? Or were these instinctive impulses that rose to guard her fragile stability? She smiled at me, then tilted her head toward a table near the bowed window dominating the dining room. Like a veteran cardsharp, Carolyn sat with her back to the window, the classic defensive position. She nodded me toward the chair in the middle. Facing the window, Queen squinted in the sunset glare, turning her head from side to side in search of relief. Carolyn smiled as I sat. The arrangement seemed to suit her just fine.
Despite Queen’s flirty style, our three-way conversation was as dull as the dinner offering. The bland menu was fixed by a dietician whose previous gig might have been Sing Sing prison. Every food item was gray: charcoal (meat loaf), gravel (mashed potatoes), steel (string beans) or lead (biscuits). All nutritious, all balanced, all dull. Serving restaurant style, two waiters in black and white loomed over our table. Crepe shoes made their movements silent; but their presence felt oppressive.
After thirty minutes of chatter about the weather, flu shots, arthritis, diabetes, heart murmurs, and shingles, I was ready to call it quits. I pushed my chair from the table and planted a hand on either side of the bowl of cement-colored pudding. Sensing my intention, Queen intervened.
“I wonder why she spent this entire dinner in the parlor?” Though the question was vague, Queen looked me in the eye. “The least she could have done was join us for dessert, don’t you think?”
Carolyn crumpled her eyebrows. “Whoever do you mean?”
“I mean his wife, of course.” Queen jerked her head toward the front hall. “She’s been waiting out there in the other room all this time.”
Before I could derail the inane conversation, Carolyn grabbed the question. “Yes, dear, what’s your wife’s name?”
“Annie.” I blurted the truth rather than join an argument I’d never win.
“Oh, what a lovely name!” Queen’s gummy smile gaped in delight. “A fine, old-fashioned name.”
Not to be outdone, Carolyn added, “Yes, I had a cousin named Annie. It’s a charming name. Why didn’t your wife join us for dinner? We saved a spot for her.” She fluttered her thin fingers over the unused fourth place setting at the table. Her keen gaze demanded an answer from me. The right answer.
“Annie said she would wait.” I gulped a quarter of the ice water in my glass.
Queen narrowed her eyes and hunched forward. She whispered a juicier breakdown of the situation: “They had a fight, you know. That’s why his Annie refuses to come.” She sighed at my imagined marital troubles. Heat tingled the ridge of my collarbones, aiming for my ears.
Carolyn rushed to my defense. “All young couples have their squabbles. You know that, Queen. No need to embarrass him over a thing like that.” She chirped and cooed as she patted my knuckles. My ears got hotter.
“Well, I hope he knows what to do to set things right.” Queen jigged her eyebrows until the bill of her cap bounced.
“Of course, he does, Queen. He’s a grown man.”
“Grown, maybe. But that don’t mean he’s educated in the ways of women. Too many men think all they need to make a marriage flower is that spade they got tucked below their belt.” Queen smirked, her glance stroking my shirt front, headed south. “I been married forty-four years. And I’m here to say there’s some other tools a handyman better use if he wants to do his gardening right.”
Carolyn snapped her lips into a tight purse. “Queen, we don’t need any of your nasty advice now.”
“Not nasty, just practical.” The imp glanced at my ears, grinning. “Look at him. Don’t he have the prettiest blush? He’s a handyman. Knows his way around a lady’s garden, don’t he? He knows exactly what I’m talking about.”
I stuck my hands below the tablecloth and gripped the hem to avoid touching my earlobes.
Carolyn’s voice was soothing. “I’m sure he and Annie will make up as soon as they get home tonight.”
Queen licked her bottom lip. “You better believe that’s true. My grandma always told me, never go to bed angry. But I say, go to bed angry and then rise up satisfied next morning. Satisfaction is what’s due. Right, handyman?” With a slurp, she pulled her lip from her gums. And winked.
As our talk skidded into the gutter, Carolyn bent her head toward me, trying to elevate the tone. “You’ll look for Annie as soon as we finish dinner, won’t you, dear?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ll settle your squabble?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll go back to Annie, won’t you?”
Murder My Past Page 14