by Nancy Rue
She licked her substantial lips. “No. I was scared I was gon’ threaten them. It was Jasmine set ’em straight.”
“What did you say to them, Jazz?” I said.
“I just tol’ them Sacrament House Sisters don’t sell they bodies no more. Not for nobody.”
Mercedes finally smiled. “She tried to tell ’em about Jesus, but they didn’t want no part of that.”
I wasn’t sure Jesus wanted any part of them either, whoever they were. And whoever they were, I was going to find out.
Once I was sure the Sisters were finished freaking out, I left the House and hurried to Chief’s bike, my cell phone already in my hand. Nicholas didn’t answer, but I left him a message and hoped he could hear the fury in my voice. Maybe it was a good thing he didn’t pick up. I might not have been able to refrain from calling his brothers in uniform what no woman of God should call anybody. Even if they were jackals.
I had to sit on the Road King for a good five minutes before I felt safe to ride. Even then I took off too fast and almost lost it on the first turn. I was shaking when I got to West King and headed back toward the historic district. That was probably why I didn’t notice at first that the car behind me was way too close.
“Come on, back off,” I muttered into my helmet.
I tried slowing down, hoping the driver would get frustrated and pull around me. There was virtually no traffic at that hour. It wasn’t like he couldn’t pass.
But the more I geared down, the closer he crept to my tail pipe. If I lost any more speed I wasn’t going to be able to keep my balance. Ahead, the light at the St. George Street intersection turned yellow. I rolled the throttle and bulleted through it. The driver of the car gunned its engine and ran it right behind me.
Tentacles of fear threatened to wrap themselves around my brain. I had to get away from this loser before my already unsure riding landed me in the gutter.
Toques Place was only a few yards away. I still hated those alleys on a bike, but I waited until the last second to downshift and made the turn without dumping it. The only light ahead of me came from the beam from the Road King, which meant I narrowly missed that same line of trash cans I’d almost taken out before. Using up the last morsel of my wits, I reached out and grabbed one as I rode by. I had to speed up to keep from hitting it myself, so I wasn’t altogether sure it fell over. I didn’t dare look back, though, not until I reached the other end. I could only steal a glance before I rounded the corner onto Hypolita. The car still sat there, behind a domino pile of garbage cans.
Even through the lifting fog I could see it. A black car, with black windows.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Although the dark car didn’t find me to follow me home, it chased me for hours in my dreams, and I woke up at dawn marinating in my own sweat. Someone else was evidently awake, too, because I was just stepping out of the shower when my phone rang.
I hoped it was Nicholas Kent, who still hadn’t gotten back to me, but it was Ms. Willa, who greeted me with, “How is a person supposed to sleep with you roaring through the back alley like a Heck’s Angel in the middle of the night?”
Not knowing which part of that to try to unpack, I just laughed.
“I fail to see the humor,” she said, though I could hear it in her yippy bark. “Why didn’t you stop by while you were in the neighborhood?”
I grabbed my bathrobe and struggled into it with my one free hand. “Like you said, it was practically the middle of the night.”
“Well, what about now?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I said what about now? I want to talk to you.”
Since Ms. Willa seemed to get whatever she wanted, I said I’d be there in thirty minutes. Besides, twice I’d thought she was going to write a check for Sacrament House. Maybe the third time was the charm.
“And don’t bring that noisy piece of machinery with you,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
I got dressed and was about to go out the door when I saw Desmond’s silhouette of Ophelia’s rapist on the bistro table with a Post-it note attached.
Opie Taylor made this copy and left it for you. Hank
It took me a second to realize she was talking about Nicholas. There was so much going on that I couldn’t keep up with, I didn’t even try to figure out when all of that had taken place. I rolled the drawing carefully and stuck it in my bag and took off on foot for Ms. Willa’s.
It was one of those late-March mornings in north Florida when the air is so soft you wear it like a cashmere sweater. With the sun playing against the coquina walls and the moss roses starting their journeys through the flower beds, I had a hard time believing this was the same labyrinth of dark alleys I’d ridden through with my heart up to my tonsils the night before. I wondered if maybe I’d just overreacted.
The disgruntled man in bermuda shorts and a canned tan picking up trash containers at the end of Toques told me otherwise. I hurried past and turned onto Cuna, the cashmere air forgotten.
Speaking of fine fibers: When I arrived, Ms. Willa was already decked out in a chartreuse silk number that did nothing for her complexion. I was glad to see she hadn’t gone for the matching hair today. Just as before, she didn’t get out of the chair. The same unsmiling Hispanic woman let me in, and Ms. Willa told me to sit on the brocade love seat and pour the tea.
Like I said, Ms. Willa was used to getting what she wanted.
“I see you didn’t waste time dressing for the occasion,” she said.
“You told me to come right over,” I said. “I don’t wake up looking like I’m ready for the Easter parade the way you obviously do. Sugar?”
“Milk. That’s the only way to drink tea.”
I handed her the china cup, but she just looked at me.
“You’re right attractive when you aren’t telling everybody to go to hell,” she said.
“I never told anybody that!”
She pondered the tea for a moment. “No, I guess not. That was probably me. I get the two of us confused. We’re on the same mission.”
“Are we?” I put two cubes of sugar in my tea and then wished I hadn’t. Their failure to dissolve indicated they might have been in the bowl since Ms. Willa’s society debut. “And what is our mutual mission?”
“We both want to see Troy Irwin go down.”
I sagged. “That’s not my mission, Ms. Willa,” I said.
She ignored me as she attempted to peel the newspaper from the piecrust table at her left elbow. The old fingers looked stiffer than usual this morning, and the length of the nails didn’t help. I was about to offer to get it for her when she was finally successful enough to get it into her hand and wave it toward me.
“Page Two, Column A,” she said. “Read that.”
I set down my tea and looked at the section she already had it folded to. The paper smelled like it had been soaked in Ms. Willa’s lavender talcum powder. I stifled a sneeze.
“‘Alleged Rape Reported’?” I said. “Is that the one you want me to read?”
“That’s one of your girls, isn’t it?”
“It is. Ophelia Sanchez. You washed her feet.”
“Was she assaulted?”
“She was.”
Ms. Willa jabbed her arthritic index finger at me. “Then why does it say ‘alleged’?”
“Because—”
“I will tell you why. They think she’s lying. The police, the doctors, everybody. They think because she was a—how did they put that? Let me see it.”
She snatched the paper back and squinted at the print. “Right here. ‘Sanchez’—they couldn’t even call her by her first name—‘has been arrested twice for solicitation.’ Why don’t they just come right out and say she was a—”
“You’ve got
me, Ms. Willa,” I said. I stood up and went to the window, but the sunlight dancing through the lace had lost its charm. “What I don’t understand is why it’s just now making the paper. It happened a week ago.”
“Because this town is so determined to keep its so-called image, the powers that be will do anything to cover up a stain.” She dropped the newspaper back on the piecrust table in disgust. “This has Troy Irwin’s fingerprints all over it.”
I turned from the view of the town in question and returned to the chair. “As much as I would love to blame anything I can on Troy Irwin, I don’t get the connection.”
“My word, child, he owns the Record and everybody who works there. The chief of police has his hand in Irwin’s pocket. He bought that new wing at the hospital, so everybody in a white coat bows down to him.” Ms. Willa’s eyes seemed to grow closer together. “I like that girl. She shows promise. But she won’t amount to a thing with this following her like a bad smell. I want to help you take Troy Irwin down.”
There was something about this I wasn’t understanding. I folded my hands under my chin. “Maybe it would help if you told me what exactly it is that you have against him.”
She licked her dry lips as if she relished the opportunity. I might regret asking, but I settled in to hear.
“I was only married to my late second husband, Quincy Livengood, for fifteen years,” she said. “Married him when I was sixty-four, and he died five years ago.”
There was nothing wrong with her arithmetic.
“Before that I was Willa Renfroe for thirty-five years.”
Renfroe. That was a name I recognized, vaguely. It made me uneasy enough to have belonged to one of my father’s associates.
“Now he was my first husband, you understand.”
I wasn’t sure I did. It was hard to keep up.
“Harold Renfroe built a successful financial firm in St. Augustine from the ground up, and he never borrowed a dime to do it. He was a man of integrity and a genius with money.” Ms. Willa’s voice went from proud to shrill. “And then Chamberlain Enterprises put him out of business, and it killed him.” She worked her mouth, forcing the web of lines into a sad dance. “I held your father personally responsible, not only for Harold’s death, but for my being left virtually penniless.”
I rubbed at the ache in my chest. “Unfortunately, Ms. Willa, you weren’t the only one that happened to. My father was a ruthless man and I’m ashamed to be related to him.”
“I know you’re nothing like him or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
I looked around at the camelback sofas and the Lladró clowns watching us from the china cabinet. “If you were left with nothing—”
“I was rescued by Quincy Livengood. He was a bachelor of some means.”
Ya think?
“And he promised to support me and help me seek restitution from Chamberlain Enterprises.” Her eyes nearly met over her nose. “By then it was being run by Troy Irwin, who still had peach fuzz on his cheeks. But he was evidently trained by the best, or the worst, I should say.”
“My father,” I said.
“Quincy was never successful in taking Irwin down. He left me everything, and I know I should be satisfied with that.”
Again, ya think?
“But I still lie in the bed sometimes with a bitter taste in my mouth because that company cost my first husband his life, and not just his, as you say. Troy Irwin is still undermining everything that ever was good about the people of substance in this town. He doesn’t think of us as people. You saw him at Cordova that day. He didn’t even know who I was.”
Ms. Willa let out a long, uneven breath and caved slightly into the chair. Her face was gray, and I was sure that wasn’t due to wearing an all-wrong shade of green.
“You don’t have the money,” she said, “but you’ve got the good. I’m a bitter old woman, but I do have the means. Together, we can stop him.”
I pushed out a long breath of my own. This would be the answer to so much of what was roiling around in my life. In all our lives. Bonner wouldn’t have to list my house. Desmond and I could stay there. There would be a place for Zelda and Ophelia and more. Wouldn’t there, God?
I got nothing. Except the image of India having a stroke if she heard what I was about to say, what I had to say.
“Ms. Willa,” I said. “There is a part of me that wants to storm the Bastille and march down St. George Street with Troy’s head on a pole.”
“Now you’re talking,” she said.
“But I can’t take your money and use it for that. If you give to Sacrament House, it has to be so we can buy a second house for more women who need help, not so we can outbid his investors and buy up all the businesses on West King Street. Your money has to be given to what we are for, not what we’re against.” I shrugged. “Besides, although I’m flattered, I don’t know why you think I could pull off what neither of your husbands were able to do, and they were financial wizards.”
Ms. Willa jerked forward in the chair so sharply, I thought she was the one having a stroke. “They didn’t have your passion,” she said. “That’s what this town needs.”
“Then this town needs God,” I said. “Because that’s where it comes from. It’s not me.”
The old head shook. “I don’t understand you, Allison Chamberlain,” she said. “But I think I admire you.”
Evidently not enough to write a check. Or make an offer. Or tell me she’d think about it. The meeting was clearly over, and I left more confused about Ms. Willa than ever.
One thing I was grateful to her for, and that was for bringing the pathetic excuse for a newspaper article to my attention. On my way home, I stopped at the Monk’s Vineyard. It wasn’t open yet, so I left the rolled-up silhouette on the doorknob with a note for Lewis, explaining what I needed him to do. I hoped the old journalist was better at convincing editors than he was at making lattes.
At noon, Desmond and I headed out to see Chief, with one false start.
When I wheeled the Road King out of the garage, I tossed Desmond his helmet, which didn’t bear a scratch from the accident.
“I shouldn’t hear any whining today,” I said. “I can’t make you wear your leathers. We’re going to have to replace those. They kind of took it heavy in the accident.”
I stopped because he was shaking his head, harder than he had to for just about any reason.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
“I don’t wanna ride no bike without leathers,” he said.
I faked a smile. “Now you start listening to me. Okay, wear your old ones. They’re a little short, but they’ll work.
He still shook his head.
“Nobody’s going to give you grief for wearing high waters,” I said.
“It ain’t that!”
His voice shot up into the atmosphere and with it his cocky confidence. A little boy stood before me, all but scraping his toe in the dirt.
“Desmond, are you afraid?” I said.
He didn’t answer. He just looked miserable.
“Anybody would be,” I said. “That was a scary experience. Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t even think about whether you’d be ready to get back on a bike.”
“S’all good.”
“No, it’s not. But you need to speak up about stuff like this, all right? I’m a lousy mind reader.”
Actually, I wasn’t. I could see right through his helmet of hair to the fact that riding a Harley wasn’t the only thing scaring him into silence.
“We can take the van, no problem,” I said. “We might need to pick up some stuff from Chief’s place anyway, so we’ll need it. Is that cool?”
“That’s cool,” he said.
But I was right. He was still scared spitless.
He was no mor
e at ease when we got to the hospital, which completely mystified me. I couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t tearing down the hall ahead of me to see Chief. But I didn’t ask because I wasn’t sure he even knew.
“Is it okay if we go in?” I said to the nurse on the new floor they’d moved Chief to.
“The social worker’s in there with him,” she said. “But you know what, go on in. I think it would be a good idea.”
I was about to ask her why, but Desmond tugged at my sleeve. “How come Mr. Chief need a social worker?”
“You got me.”
“I don’t like social workers,” he said.
Evidently Chief didn’t either. He was sitting up in bed, still-massive arms crossed over his chest, eyes piercing a somewhat lumpy-looking middle-aged woman. Chief was back in full force.
“I can manage fine at home,” he was saying.
“No, Mr. Ellington, you can’t,” was her reply. She didn’t have the voice or the physicality to compete, but then, he was attached to a bed by traction, and she wasn’t. It would have been amusing if smoke hadn’t practically been coming out of Chief’s nostrils.
“She better look out,” Desmond muttered to me.
“Keep quiet and I’ll take you to Sonic later,” I muttered back.
This was not the time for Desmond to come out of his sullen silence and slip back into his outrageous self.
“Hey,” I said. I didn’t usually do breezy, but it seemed like a good choice at the moment.
The social worker gave me the official this-does-not-concern-you look, but Chief waved me in.
“This is Allison Chamberlain,” Chief said. “She’s handling things for me until I go home, which is where I’m going straight from here.”
“And why wouldn’t you?” I said.
“He is going to need round-the-clock care for several weeks.” The woman tugged her too-tight blazer over her stomach, but to no avail. “Maybe you can get him to choose a convalescent home, because that is where he’s going to need to go.”
“You talkin’ ’bout a nursing home?” Desmond said.
Sonic evidently didn’t have the power it once had.