by Nina Wright
“You just missed her.” Looking grim, Roy held open the back door. “She was all worked up. Insisted I come in and take a look around so I could see for myself that all the kids were gone.”
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know. She said she had an appointment. She insisted I come in and see that she did what you asked and ‘got rid of the kids.’”
A sick feeling twisted my stomach. “Did you go in?”
Roy nodded. “Looks fine to me. Her stuff’s all over the place, but there’s no sign children ever lived here.”
When I told him that Yolanda had seen Twyla loading trash bags in her car, Roy said he’d noticed that her trunk was lashed with a bungee cord.
“Probably stuff for the kids,” he concluded. “I suppose she’s taking it to them, wherever they are.”
I wanted to agree but felt compelled to utter the worst thought on my mind: “You don’t think she . . . did anything to them, do you? The kids, I mean?”
Roy stared at the empty house. “One thing I learned during my nine years inside was how to read a person. Twyla Rendel’s not capable of hurting kids.”
“But is she capable of telling a whopping lie?”
Roy said simply, “We all are.”
My peripheral vision picked up Yolanda waving broadly from her porch. I’d been so single-minded when I arrived that I hadn’t noticed her. Roy joined me as I jogged across the street to hear her latest report.
“I missed your coming and her going,” she confessed, referring to Roy and Twyla. “Even I have to go to the bathroom once in a while. I thought the action was over after that other guy left.”
“What other guy?” I asked.
Yolanda described a tall dark-haired white man in his early to mid-thirties who drove a black sedan. She didn’t remember having seen either the man or the car before.
“He say something to Twyla got her all upset. I couldn’t hear him, but she was plenty loud, yelling how it wasn’t fair to send goons to threaten her. I know you don’t hire goons, Miz Mattimoe. You don’t have to, with that crazy dog o’ yours.”
I turned to Roy. “Why would Twyla think I sent the guy?”
“Maybe this has something to do with Tina Breen,” offered Roy. “She was agitated when she called me this morning.”
“Tina’s always agitated,” I reminded him.
“This morning she said she’d had a guy in the office who reminded her of James Bond.”
“Sean Connery,” I revised. “MacArthur reminds her of—“
Roy and I stared at each other.
“You go first,” I said.
“I have two questions,” he said. “One: Does Tina use speakerphone? And two: Is there any chance that this MacArthur fellow fits Mrs. Brewster’s description?”
I knew the answers. One: Tina liked to use speakerphone even though I urged her not to. I considered it poor form to broadcast the other half of phone conversations except during conference calls. Two: Tall, dark-haired, white, thirty-something, and driving a black sedan . . . like Cassina’s Maserati, maybe? The description fit MacArthur except that Yolanda hadn’t said he was handsome.
I turned to my tenant. “Would you say the man you saw talking to Twyla was good-looking?”
Yolanda cocked her head thoughtfully. “He wasn’t bad. For a white man.”
“Excuse me.” Flipping open my cell phone, I enjoyed a rush of personal pride; I had remembered not only to charge it last night but also to slip it into my briefcase this morning.
My speed-dialed call to Tina was brief but emotional, on her side. Yes, she had been using her speakerphone, and she was very, very sorry. Was I mad? No. Had she screwed up big time? I didn’t think so.
“I know an office manager is supposed to be discreet, but it’s so much easier to talk on the phone when I don’t have to use my hands.” she said.
I reminded her that a headphone provided the same benefit, plus privacy.
“I know, I know,” Tina sniffled, “but I like the comfort of another voice filling the room. It’s like being home again, with the twins.”
I hung up before I said something I might regret.
Roy was still studying me. “I have a third question. Maybe you can answer it. Is there any reason MacArthur would take it upon himself to set Twyla Rendel straight?”
You mean because he’s the cleaner? And he wants to impress me so that he can get back in the real estate game? I didn’t announce those thoughts, but they were front and center in my head. And they started me speculating in disturbing new directions. For example, did MacArthur already know Twyla? Could she have been the woman with Rupert yesterday? I wouldn’t have imagined that a man who traveled in Rupert’s orbit would meet a woman like Twyla, let alone . . . ahem . . . desire her. Wait. Twyla couldn’t have been with Rupert yesterday; she was tending all those kids. Was there another way the cleaner might know my tenant? Say, from her very brief stint at Food Duck? Or from her past life in Flint? Neither seemed likely.
Stumped, I thanked Yolanda and told Roy it was time to move on. Roy planned to spend the day tidying up the new duplex next door to Twyla’s, so he was where he needed to be. He promised to phone me if he saw Twyla, the kids, a certain dog, or anything else worth mentioning.
Although Twyla no longer appeared to be in violation of her lease, I felt deeply curious, a little worried, and, truth be told, guilty. Where were all the kids, including her own two? How had she managed to make them disappear so fast? Yolanda had to sleep occasionally, as well as use the bathroom, so I couldn’t rely entirely on her observations, as accurate as they tended to be.
What was in the trash bags Twyla had hauled from the house? And where had she taken them? The wildly imaginative part of my brain played with the notion that she might have smuggled the children, disguised as trash, to another location. If so, where—and why?
Mercenary though it might seem, I had another concern, too. As her landlord, I couldn’t help but wonder how Twyla intended to pay the rent now that she’d lost her job at Food Duck.
Despite Roy’s assurance and my own intuition that Twyla wasn’t the type to inflict bodily harm, things didn’t add up. Twyla had seemed way better suited to watching other people’s kids than I was, yet the ones in her charge had vaporized. Granted, the ones entrusted to me sometimes vanished, but at least they left a trail.
* * *
On my way back to the office, I left urgent voicemail messages for two real estate professionals. The first was for Odette, informing her that an issue had come up regarding Druin, and we needed to review the way we were showing that property. The second message was for MacArthur; that one was harder to word. I didn’t want to drag him into matters best kept confidential unless I was reasonably sure he was the man Yolanda had seen talking with Twyla. Leo had taught me to be very cautious about making assumptions. Even if MacArthur had gone to Twyla’s house and said something that upset her, I had no way of knowing what was up. And I’d seen enough mafia movies to know I didn’t want to anger the cleaner.
One hazard of a career in resort real estate is getting buried in business hassles and losing sight of that most basic truth: location, location, location. I was blessed to live and work in a simply gorgeous locale, a place where many people chose to vacation, and others—like Twyla—dreamed of starting a better life. As I drove the few miles back to Mattimoe Realty, I pondered the charms of my hometown, with its picturesque location on the shore of what is arguably the Great-est Lake. Although the North Side neighborhood where Yolanda lived was “in transition,” most of Magnet Springs measured up to its travelogue reputation. A quaint harbor village with nineteenth-century architecture and pristine beaches, it was a more or less authentic version of the simpler, sweeter world Walt Disney had spent billions trying to simulate in his Magic Kingdom. Sure, the people who lived and visited Magnet Springs were capable of behavior as petty and appalling as the rest of the human race. But whatever our sins of omission or commission, w
e made them against a backdrop of scenic tranquility.
That being said, I had barely set foot inside Mattimoe Realty before our new part-time receptionist informed me—without so much as a bracing “Hey, Whiskey”—that Odette was in my office, and there seemed to be “something wrong with her.” Considering the receptionist’s age (no more than eighteen), race (even whiter than I am), and length of time on the job (less than two weeks), I doubted she’d be able to tell when something was wrong with Odette. My superstar sales agent had a mysterious habit of occasionally retreating into what I assumed was a traditional Zimbabwean meditative state. Although it never lasted long, it could be alarming to the uninitiated since it affected Odette like this: She narrowed her eyes, pursed her luscious lips, and refused to respond in any way whatsoever. The only sound she made during these episodes was a vibrating “mmmmmmm” on every third or fourth exhalation.
I was both relieved and, admittedly, a little annoyed to find her in exactly that mode in my office. In my desk chair, to be precise; that was the annoying part.
“Do you realize you just freaked out our new receptionist?” I said.
“Mmmmmmm,” Odette replied.
As far as I could tell, her nearly closed eyes were fixed on a point in the middle of the room. I tried to line up my body with her stare, thinking it might help the communication process.
“Hello.” I exclaimed, bending down to match her eye level.
“Mmmmmmm.”
“Is that a hello or just another exhalation?”
When she didn’t respond, I decided it was a breathing thing. Waving my arms got no result, either. If only I could remember a convenient Tonga language phrase. Trouble was I’d never learned any. Or had I? Something I’d often heard Odette mutter popped into my brain.
“Mubike . . . tasiki . . . bana,” I offered. The syllables came out haltingly, but I was pretty sure I’d got them right.
“And yet you do not,” Odette sighed.
“Huh?”
Emerging rather quickly, I thought, from the trance that had rattled our receptionist, Odette said, “Do you have any idea what you just said?”
“Nope. But it seems to have done the trick. Now do you mind getting your butt out of my chair?”
“Keep away from children,” Odette intoned.
“Excuse me?”
“That’s what you said to me in Tonga.”
“It is?” I gaped at her. “I was trying to shock you awake using a phrase from your native language. Guess I got it wrong.”
She shook her glossy head. “You got it right. That’s exactly what I say every time you take care of someone else’s kid. It always turns out badly, and it always distracts you from running your business.”
Keep away from children? That was too close for comfort, given the events of the past twelve hours and my prickly twinges of remorse. In my zeal to be an efficient landlord, was I to blame for whatever had happened to the kids left in Twyla’s care?
I forced myself to focus on Odette. “Why the ‘mmmmmmm’? What’s up?”
“I just drove past Best West Realty,” she said, “and I saw someone I shouldn’t have seen.”
“Who?”
“The owner.”
“Of what?”
“Best West.” She spat the two syllables at me.
Our eyes locked. Gil Gruen’s office was closed, and had been since shortly after his death. His very certain death.
“Damn that Rico.” I said. “Ever since he made his announcement at the Goh Cup yesterday, everybody’s on the lookout for the ghost of Gil.“
Odette gave me her signature shrug, an indignant rise and fall of her narrow shoulders. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Gil was the last thing I expected to see this morning. I took my usual shortcut back from the bank. When I turned down the alley, there he was—peering into his office window. I nearly lost control of my car.”
“You’re saying you didn’t know about Rico seeing Gil in Chicago?”
“Not a clue. Last night Reginald and I went to bed early. I’ve heard no local gossip.”
Until that moment, I’d been able to explain away every rumor of our dead mayor’s return. Now my head hurt.
“But if you were driving down the alley, and he was peering in his own window, you couldn’t have seen his face,” I said. “So how can you know it was Gil?”
“I know that body, Whiskey. And the back of that head. Who else around here dresses like a cowboy?” The memory made her shudder. “I am positive I saw Gil Gruen.”
“That’s impossible!” I said, slamming my desk so hard that day-old coffee sloshed out of my mug. “Even if he was alive, which I’m sure he’s not, why the hell would he poke around town in broad daylight?”
Odette reminded me that she had seen him in the alley, where there was virtually never any traffic.
“You were there. You saw him. I mean, you saw someone. There’s no way you saw Gil!”
I continued to rant, pointing out that the former mayor wouldn’t need to peek into his office; he could surely come up with a key.
Odette disagreed, reminding me that Gil’s attorney had ordered the locks changed when he’d estimated how many disgruntled former Best West employees—and their key copies—were still around town. Until decisions could be made about Gil’s estate, including the disposition of the building that housed his now closed realty, the attorney wanted to keep the office contents intact. If he could have gotten away with it, the lawyer would have nailed plywood over the windows and doors. But the Main Street Merchants Association vetoed that notion. Boarded-up downtown buildings had a negative effect on the tourist trade.
My desk phone buzzed, interrupting our argument about Gil. The caller had dialed the direct line that bypassed both Tina and the new receptionist. Frankly glad for the distraction, I grabbed the receiver on the second ring.
“Whiskey, it’s Jenx. You’re at your desk, right?”
“Right. Why?”
“I want to make sure you’re sitting down. You’re not going to like a single thing about this call.”
I steeled myself for what was coming next.
“Brady apprehended Abra at the beach by Thornton Pointe.” Jenx’s voice was flat.
“That’s good news, right?” I said.
“Yeah, most people would think that part’s good, but most people don’t have as much trouble with their dog as you do.”
When Jenx paused, I wondered if the second part was that Abra—or Norman—was hurt.
“No sign of Norman,” she said, “but Abra’s fine. She had a kid’s tennis shoe in her mouth. Brady thought she wanted him to follow her. So he did. You’re sitting down right?”
“I said I was,” I snapped.
“Abra led Brady to a god-awful mess. A quarter-mile-long spew of black plastic trash bags. Debris everywhere.”
“From the riptide?” I pictured the beach location Jenx meant, less than two miles north of downtown.
“Maybe,” the chief said. “Kids’ clothes and toys scattered all along the shore. And something else.”
“Not the kids,” I moaned. “Please don’t let it be the kids.”
Jenx was silent for so long that I took her wordlessness as confirmation. Tears were already coursing down my cheeks when she said, “Not the kids, Whiskey. Twyla. She’s dead.”
Chapter Twelve
Either before or during my crying jag, I dropped the phone. I’m confused about the sequence because I never cry. Well, almost never. And Odette almost never hugs anybody. But she held me and rubbed my back and whispered soothing phrases in my ear. Mostly in English, I think, but a few were in Tonga.
I didn’t have Jenx’s call on speakerphone; Odette had used her telephone telepathy to pick up the police chief’s highly charged message about my tenant’s drowning and the scattered evidence of lost kids.
I wasn’t crying for myself although I felt plenty awful. A twenty-three-year-old woman was dead. A young mother trying to m
ake it alone in the world. Moreover, the fate of her two small children—and possibly nine or ten other children—was unknown.
Whatever had gone wrong, it seemed obvious that I, as tight-assed landlord, had played at least a small role. I didn’t need the Seven Suns of Solace to remind me of my karmic obligation to make amends; the way to begin was to figure out what had gone wrong. Only then I could do my part to help those I had directly or indirectly hurt. Of course, there was no bringing Twyla back. Assuming the missing children were still alive, I had a cosmic imperative to help find them.
The chief had said that Brady spotted Abra near Thornton Pointe with a kid’s shoe in her mouth. I wondered if she’d found it among the debris at the shore. If so, had I seen that very shoe on someone’s tiny foot only the day before?
I found temporary comfort where I needed it most. Not in Odette’s backrub, nice as that was. No, I found reassurance in the knowledge that she was too cool to ever reveal my momentary emotional lapse. For Odette, all actions flowed from the answer to one simple question: “Will this help me sell real estate?” There was no way in hell that stories of Whiskey Mattimoe’s self-loathing would contribute to Odette’s commission-based income.
As proof of her professionalism, she interrupted my noisy nose-blowing with a reminder that I’d left her a voicemail message regarding “an issue at Druin.” That brought me back to earth. I quickly recapped Felicia Gould’s early morning visit.
Odette’s nostrils flared. “I called the chatelaine at least thirty minutes before we arrived.”
“What did she say?”
“That she would notify the guard to expect our arrival.”
When I asked Odette about Felicia’s mood yesterday, she replied, “Neither happy nor unhappy. Like somebody doing her job.”
I suspected that Felicia had a bad day; perhaps Vivika criticized her performance, and Felicia lashed out at Odette. If there was one thing I’d learned from dealing with people, it was that most problems were personal.
Although Fenton hadn’t wanted to discuss Druin with me last night, Odette was confident that his first reaction to the property was positive.