“But, um …” As I stammered, shaken by the threat, he edged around me and went to Ashley. When he placed a hand on her shoulder, she turned and his arms enfolded her. It looked as though she were crying.
The two deputies were still some distance away. As Jimmy and Ashley whispered together, I made my way over to the officers and pulled out my ID. “I’m Ashley’s social worker. Can I have five minutes before you take her back?”
Cops and social workers are cousins. We’re all part of the same family of folks whose job it is to care for the suffering and the endangered. I thought the ID would gain their support, and I was right. The younger of the two deferred to the older, and he nodded. “Five minutes.” Ashley and Jimmy approached us, his hand gripping her elbow. He gave her one last hug and kissed her forehead, shot me another warning look, then went to his truck. The deputies walked to their marked car, chatting. The wind drowned out what they were saying.
I focused on Ashley. “I’m so sorry about everything. Do you need anything?”
Her head stayed down, eyes locked on the perfectly manicured grass. “No, I’m just ready to get back to jail.”
“Ashley, what happened? Where’d the GHB come from?”
Her head snapped up. “Why won’t you just let it go? It’s over. Michael’s dead. I don’t even have to talk to you no more.”
“I want to help you.”
“Why? What the hell difference does it make?”
“It matters to me. A lot. I had faith in you. So I was wrong?”
“Yeah. Okay? Yeah, you were wrong. I’m exactly where I should be. My son’s dead and it’s all my fault.”
“So you put the G in the juice?”
“Just drop it. Please. You don’t know what you’re getting into. These are dangerous people. They’ll kill me. They’ll kill you.”
It took a second for that to sink in. “You know who killed Michael?”
“I mean it. Drop it.”
“But — if you know who did it, who’s responsible — they can reverse your conviction. You can get out of —”
“No! I’m where I need to be.”
“But if you didn’t put —”
“My whole fucked-up life caused Mikey’s death. My bad decisions, my addiction. It’s God’s way of punishing me.”
“No —”
“Yes. And while I’m being punished, they can’t get me. Stay out of it, Claire.”
One of the deputies walked over and took Ashley’s arm. “Time’s up.”
“If you’ll just let me help —”
“No! It’s too late.”
“I’ll come visit you.”
She shrugged as the officer led her away. Once again, they helped her into the backseat. The sound of ankle chains tinkled over the wind.
I had zero business going anywhere but back to DHS. Enough work was piled on my desk to keep me busy until the end of the year. Instead, I flew down Sixth Avenue to the north part of downtown. Found a place to park, fed the meter, and went into the Top of the Hill Grill.
The special today was roast beef, and the smell of the rich brown gravy jolted my stomach, reminding me it was time to eat. It was twelve after one and the lunch crowd was thinning out. Brandi was taking an order at a table as I sat at the green counter. She finished and came around to me. Noticing my dark suit, she asked, “Was it awful?”
“It was sad, yeah.”
“How’s Ashley?”
“Okay. Did you see her this weekend?”
“Yeah, I went up there Saturday. Brought her some money for her commissary account. She looks terrible.”
“She say anything about Mikey?”
She shook her head. “All she said was that she deserved to be in jail. I asked her what that meant and she said she didn’t have no life on the outside so she might as well be in prison. I tried to tell her that was just her grieving talking, but that’s all she’d say. It’s good she’s in there, ’cause I’d be real worried about her killing herself if she wasn’t.”
“Jimmy been back in here?”
“Nope. You want some lunch?”
“Sure, something to go. A BLT.” Brandi wrote the order and slipped the sheet into the window. While we waited, she cleared a few tables in between listening to my report on the funeral. My sandwich appeared in the window in a white paper sack with the ticket taped to it. Brandi set it in front of me, then pulled her keys out of her apron.
“You still want the key, right?”
“Sure. Did you tell Ashley I’d asked about it?”
“No.”
I hadn’t asked Ashley, either, but I knew what the answer would’ve been. I didn’t care. I picked up the small silver key and my sandwich.
“Brandi, you ever been to a place called Kaleidoscope? In Lakeview?”
“Sure. The dance place. Sometimes.”
“You ever go there with Ashley?”
“Two or three times.” Seeing the surprised look on my face, she quickly added, “But Ashley didn’t drink or nothing. I made sure. We just went for a girls’ night out, like. Just to go dancing. She left Michael at the sitter’s. I’d never let her touch nothing to drink.”
“Okay.”
“Why?”
I didn’t feel up to a long explanation. “I was just wondering. It came up, that’s all.”
With a puzzled look, Brandi bid me good-bye. I paid at the register and wolfed down the sandwich, hardly tasting it, on my way to Avondale.
I parked in front of Ashley’s apartment. Several other cars were there, including Ashley’s beat-up old Saturn. Another was being worked on by a middle-aged black man. He was changing the oil. Ashley’s doorknob still hung loosely on the cheap door, and the gang sign was still on the wall.
I readied the key to unlock the door but stopped when I heard voices. From inside the apartment. I pressed my ear to the door.
“Tom, you are only ten questions away from becoming a millionaire. We’ll be right back.” Music. A game show. Then a commercial. Why was Ashley’s TV on?
Instead of using the key, I knocked, and a man opened the door.
`
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I was expecting Jimmy, or maybe Dee or Al, but not the guy who opened the door. Sandy blond hair, curly, cut short. An Eddie Bauer logo, unobtrusive, on his tee pocket. Diesel jeans. Not a cheap dresser, this guy. His body hadn’t yet broadened in the back and shoulders. A spray of freckles across his nose only added to his youthful appearance. And I knew him, from somewhere.
“Hello!” He greeted me cheerfully. “Are you a friend of Ashley’s? ’Cause she’s locked up.” His eyes were greenish-blue. Something about his eyes nagged at me.
“I know. I was her social worker. Who are you?”
“Oh, you’re Claire. C’mon in.” He swept an arm wide in invitation. I entered the apartment, which was a mess. Definitely not the way Ashley left it. Empty beer cans, cigarette butts, and snack bags covered the coffee table. A dirty shirt lay wadded on the floor and a tangled blanket was on the couch. He threw himself onto the sofa, shoved the blanket aside and said, “Have a seat.” He muted the game show.
“No, thanks.” I examined the room. Dishes were piled up in the kitchen beyond. I spotted the collage of pictures hanging over the television, and realized where I’d seen him before. He was one of the three guys sitting on the couch in the picture. “Who are you?” I repeated.
“I’m Zander. I’m a friend of Ashley’s.”
“I would hope so, since you’re in her apartment.”
He laughed, loudly. “Yeah. I’m gonna house-sit for a while until she gets out.”
“That may be a long time.”
“Yeah, I know. A year. You got any cigarettes?”
“Don’t smoke.”
“Damn, I gotta go get some.”
“Zander, huh? What’s your last name?” I asked, facing him. He licked his lips once, then again. “Why?”
“What’s your last name?” I gave him my best I’m-not-playing tone. It us
ually worked on kids.
“Madison.”
Zander Madison. Zander … Alex … Zander … Alexander Madison. Holy crap.
He’d been watching me while I put the name together. “You wouldn’t be a junior, by any chance?”
He giggled. “Good guess.”
“As in The Madison Group?” One of Birmingham’s largest business conglomerates.
“Yep.”
“And the Madison Center?” The newly renovated skyscraper downtown.
“Yep.”
“And the Madison Sports Complex?” Brand-new acres of soccer, football, and baseball fields in a nearby suburb.
“Yep.” He giggled again.“Do y’suppose if they named a street after my dad it’d be Madison Avenue?” He flopped around and guffawed like it was the most hilarious thing anyone had ever said. “Or maybe they’ll give him a Square Garden. Ha!”
Life is too good when you laugh that hard at your own jokes. It dawned on me what had bothered me about his eyes. They were dilated. I looked around for whatever he’d been using, my gaze searching until it rested on the end of a small glass tube sticking out from underneath the couch. It was charred with residue. He was as high as a kite in a hurricane.
I nodded to it. “That your pipe?”
“Yeah, you wanna hit it?”
“No, that’s okay.”
He shrugged, still smiling. “More for me.”
There was something else. The eyes. I sucked in a deep breath as it hit me. Those same eyes, in a picture I saw this morning. They were Michael’s.
“You were Michael’s father.” Michael Alexander Hennessy. So Ashley had given him his daddy’s name after all. And his grandfather’s.
He sat up, suddenly serious. “What makes you say that?”
“He had your eyes.” And hair color, come to think of it. And the curls, too.
The compulsive lip-licking started again. No doubt dry mouth, or a tic, from the drugs. “I’m going to miss that little guy.”
“Wait a minute. You knew him?”
“Sure.”
I looked at the pipe again, flabbergasted. He picked it up and stroked it like it was something precious. “Don’t worry. Ashley had strict rules when it came to visiting Michael. She wouldn’t let me near him if I was on anything. She could always tell. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere with him, and she watched me like a hawk when I was here. So he was safe.”
Apparently not, because he was dead. “Were you here the night he died? Last Monday?”
“I came by for a bit, yeah. Right when they got home.”
“You’re aware of how he died, right?”
“Yeah. GHB. Totally blew me away.”
“Was it your G?”
“No way! I told you, Ashley would never let me bring anything around here. She was real serious about staying clean. It just about killed her when you took Michael away the first time.”
“You think the G was hers?”
“I don’t know. Ashley and me, we were never into G much.”
“So what do you think happened?”
“Ashley was a popular girl. She had lots of friends. Any one of them could have mixed the stuff and left it here.”
“To kill them?”
“What do you mean?”
“The police have said that there was enough GHB in the pitcher to kill both of them.”
“So some idiot mixed too much.”
“What do you think happened, Zander?”
“I don’t know.”
I wasn’t buying it. I wondered if he was the self-proclaimed idiot who brought the GHB here. Zander dug around for cigarettes, finally finding an open pack under a large bag of M&M’s on the coffee table. He lit up.
“How did you and Ashley meet?” This romance between the son of one of Birmingham’s richest and most wellknown businessmen and an abused country girl from Adger didn’t make sense.
“I was partying with this dude and we went to some house in Irondale. He said he knew this guy that had some really good rock. She was there, and we hooked up.”
Hooked up in this case meant got high and had sex, I was sure. “And then she got pregnant?”
“Yeah, a few weeks later.” He dragged on the cigarette.
“Where were you when Michael was taken away?”
“Around. I mean, it’s not like me and Ashley were ever really a couple, you know. We just hooked up every now and then.”
“You know Flash?”
“I know who he is, and that Ashley got drugs and shit from him.” He tapped the end of his cigarette into the overflowing ashtray on the coffee table.
“You know how she did that?”
“I know she had sex with him, to get stuff. Ashley and I, we don’t judge each other. That’s what makes our relationship so special.”
Ashley had sex with far more men than just Flash and Zander. Luckily her HIV test had been negative two years ago. I wondered if Zander’s would be.
“Do your — did your parents know about Michael?”
He licked his lips again and sucked on the cigarette. “Oh, hell no. Well, I take that back. They know I got a girl pregnant. My father gave some money to,” he made quotation marks with his fingers, ashes falling onto the sofa that Ashley had saved so carefully to buy, “have it taken care of.”
“And?”
“And Ashley and I bought some really good shit with that money.”
“So he has no idea his grandson just died?”
He shrugged and crushed out the smoke.
“Does he know about your drug habit?”
“Oh, yeah. He thinks —” He giggled again. “He thinks I’m in rehab right now. In Ar-i-zona.” Whatever he was on — crack, I suspected — was taking full effect. His eyes were glazed and his words were starting to slur.
I was silent, taking it all in. Ashley lied to me about not knowing who Michael’s father was. And she allowed him access to Michael. What else was she lying about?
I started toward the door. “I gotta head back to work. Take care of yourself, Zander.”
He was sinking lower onto the couch. “Why don’ ya stay ’while. Hang out.”
“No, thanks. I have to go to work.”
“Work sucks. My parents want me to work. Want me to go into finance. Crunchin’ numbers. Can you ’magine? How fuckin’ borin’. ”
“I’ll see you around, Zander.” I locked the door behind me as he unmuted the TV. The unlucky contestant had not won the million dollars.
It was starting to drizzle as I went back to the office. When I got there, Mac had left a case file on my desk, an emergency that had to be investigated immediately. Because of the level of injuries, I wound up having to take the boy and his brother into custody and spent the rest of the day and most of Tuesday night finding them a foster home. I didn’t make it home until almost midnight. When I got there, a vase of gorgeous pink roses was sitting on my front stoop. The rain hadn’t smeared Grant’s handwritten note, thanking me for a great time and hoping to see me soon. I unlocked the door, put the roses on the coffee table, found his card, and called his cell phone.
“ ’ello?” His voice was throaty. I’d woken him up. “Hey, it’s Claire. Sorry. I woke you, didn’t I?” I could hear a narrator’s drone in the background on the TV.
“ ’s okay. I fell asleep on the couch.” The TV went silent. “How’re you?” he asked through a yawn.
“I’m fine, just got home from work. I was calling to thank you for the flowers. Pink roses are my favorite.” Their aroma was filling my living room.
“Glad you like them. Long day, huh?”
“Yeah, I had an emergency to deal with.”
“You free Saturday night?”
“Sure.”
“How about a movie? And dinner?”
“Sounds good.” We chatted a bit before saying goodnight.
Wednesday was another busy day, dealing with the remnants of yesterday’s emergency, the shelter care hearing at court, and the rest of
the stuff I’d left on my desk. It was Thursday before I had half a second to think about Ashley and Michael. And Zander Madison.
Royanne and I were meeting for our usual lunch date, although it was a little early to accommodate my twelve thirty intervention meeting. It was my turn to drive, and at ten fifty I pulled up to the front of the towering headquarters of Birmingham Financial Bank. BFB’s building was all silver, the mirrored glass reflecting the other skyscrapers around it. Royanne was waiting in the expansive lobby and quickly jumped in the car.
“Gawd Almighty I’m so sick of summer already.” She fastened the seat belt across her ample bosom and adjusted the vents to blow on her full blast. Her big blonde hair didn’t move.
“Amen.” I slid into the traffic and headed south. Our early arrival at Los Compadres meant we avoided the crowd, and we were seated immediately. Pablo brought our drinks without being asked. We ordered and when we were alone Royanne asked how I was doing.
“Okay. I went to Michael’s funeral on Tuesday.”
“Oh, God. How awful.”
“Yeah, it was sad.”
“I can’t imagine. I don’t want to imagine. If it were one of
mine —”
“I know.” I gave her a quick rundown of the memorial service,
then moved on to other gossip. Royanne insisted on hearing every
single detail about my evening with Grant. I admitted that I hadn’t
had a bad time with him, and actually found him kind of attractive.
That confession invited merciless teasing until Pablo brought my
chicken tacos and her burrito. Halfway through my first taco, I asked,
“You know anything about The Madison Group?”
She swallowed a bite of refried beans. “Sure, why?”
“I was just wondering what they did.”
“Lots of stuff. There’s MAS, Madison Accounting Services. They
do corporate accounting. That’s the largest company in the group.
Then there’s Madison Investments. And Madison Realty, they do corporate real estate. And, of course, the Madison Foundation that does
a lot of local charity work. They sponsor that huge golf tournament
every year. Why?”
“Just wondering.”
“Nuh-uh.” Royanne met my gaze. “You never just wonder. What’s
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