Why was I here? I studied the glass-and-steel building, chin on the steering wheel. Whatever way this investigation turned, this place always seemed to come up. Now I knew Ashley had been here too. And Brandi. What were the odds Zander was a patron? Pretty good, I’d say. He loved to party, and this was a good place to do it.
Staring at the building was getting me nowhere. I thought for a few minutes, devising a plan to find out what I needed to know. When hadAshley been here, and with whom?
Snapping my fingers, I reached for my purse. Dug around in its belly until I found what I was looking for. Shut the purse in the trunk, and went to see if Kaleidoscope was open.
It was. Three men were inside. One was in the deejay’s little room, behind the Plexiglas window among all the TV screens. The sets were off, their square faces dull black. Another man stood in the middle of the dance floor, watching the third who was working on an enormous speaker pulled out from the wall next to the bar.
The space was vastly different in the daytime. It looked stripped, all its magic gone, like being in the Tunnel of Love when the lights go up. A sour smell of old beer mingled with stale cigarette smoke and a spirituous hint of booze.
The man in the deejay booth manipulated some controls. He spoke into a microphone as he looked at the man on the dance floor, and his voice filled the room. “Okay, try it now.”
I flinched as the rapid beat of a Narcotic Thrust song shook the air. The music halted and the deejay announced, “Donovan, you have a visitor.”
Donovan was evidently the guy on the dance floor, in the black suit. He turned around, saw me, and held up one finger. I nodded. He said something to the man working on the speaker and then walked over to me.
“Sorry, we’re having some trouble with the sound system. Can I help you?”
“Hi. I’m Claire Conover.”
“Donovan Grayson.”
“I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions?”
He studied me, starting at my bare legs and working his way up to my face, with just a slight layover at my breasts. I took the moment to assess him, too. The suit was well cut. A silver tie and black shirt. Trendy. Brown hair, receding, and dark brown eyes.
I was too underdressed to be a salesperson and his curiosity was getting the better of him. “Of course. May I ask what this is about?”
“I’m trying to find out what happened to a client of mine.”
“Let’s go up to my office.”
He led me to a stairway behind a door in the far corner. The deejay’s little room was at the top of the stairs, and an office across the hall from that. It was large and well decorated with modern furniture and a bright abstract-patterned rug on the tile floor. On the far wall was a cluster of framed newspaper articles and pictures. Donovan’s glass-topped desk was laden with papers and stacks of CD cases with names like Junkie XL and Electric Indigo. He closed the door and gestured to a chair. “Please. Now, what’s this about?”
I pulled out the newspaper article I’d dug from my purse, the one about Ashley’s sentencing that I’d meant to file in the chart, and showed it to him. “I’m trying to find out if this woman has been here recently, and, if so, who she was with.”
He scanned it. “That’s the woman whose kid died of the overdose. She pled guilty.”
“That’s right. She used to come here with a friend.”
He handed the article back to me. “Who’s she to you?”
“I used to work with her.” I left it vague. If it somehow got back to DHS that I was here, I was in big trouble. Okay, bigger trouble.
“Where?”
He wasn’t going to let it go. “I was her son’s social worker. I’m trying to piece together what might have happened the night the boy died. I heard she hung out here sometimes.”
“I see. The person you want to speak with is my brother, Lucas. He’s the bartender most nights.”
“Oh.”
“Hang on.” He reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a phone. He scrolled through his phonebook, hit dial, and said, “Where are you?” Then, “So you’re on you’re way here?” A second pause, then, “Come to my office when you get here.” No greeting, no good-bye. He snapped the razor-thin phone shut and relayed to me, “He’ll be here in just a few minutes if you care to wait.”
“Thanks.”
I wandered over to the large wall of framed memorabilia. One photo was of Donovan standing with a group of men on a golf course. Another was Donovan cutting a ribbon to open a club, a crowd of supporters behind him. I recognized the building as a countrywestern bar I was dragged to once for a bachelorette party. Fiddles. Three of the frames contained articles from the entertainment section of the paper about club openings. Kaleidoscope was the subject of one, Fiddles another. Another I didn’t recognize, Flow.
Behind me Donovan said, “Can I get you something to drink?”
“No, thanks. How many clubs do you own?”
“Three, as of now. Another one opens this fall in Inverness.” Inverness was a suburb southeast of town. He rose, picked up a gray business card out of a glass holder and offered it to me. ECLIPSE ENTERTAINMENT. DONOVAN GRAYSON, OWNER. Two circles, a black overlapping a white one. Professionally printed.
“And Lucas is your brother? Is he an owner, too?”
“No, just me.”
“Who’s older?”
“We’re twins,” he said. “But you’d never know it from looking at us. We’re fraternal.”
“Oh.” To kill time I kept asking questions. “And how long have you been doing this?”
“I opened my first club when I was twenty-two. Three years ago.”
He was twenty-five, four years younger than me. He looked older. I said, “Wow, and now you own three?”
“Four, when Goal opens in October. It’s a sports bar and restaurant. I’ll be breaking into the restaurant business for the first time.”
“That’s impressive.”
“Thanks.” He accepted the compliment easily. A person used to praise.
The door opened and Lucas walked in. He saw me and stopped short, surprised. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t know there was someone here.”
He looked much as I remembered. Shaved head, tattoo reaching up the left side of his neck. What I thought was a phoenix the first timewas actually a man with wings. The flames below the figure were not flames, but the sun. Icarus.
“This is Claire Conover,” Donovan said. “She’s a social worker. She wanted to ask you about someone who may have visited the club.”
The mood in the room had suddenly altered. Lucas and Donovan hadn’t said more than two sentences to each other, but I could sense a current of emotion between them. Something dark. Mac’s wisdom floated to the top of my pool of thoughts. Something he’d taught me years ago. Pay attention to what you are feeling when you are with your clients. Your own emotions are a mirror of theirs. If you feel defensive or angry or afraid, so do they. So what was I feeling now? I searched deep, and realized it was fear. I wanted out of that room. Lucas was looking at me expectantly. I held out the newspaper clipping. “Do you know this woman?”
“Sure, that’s Ashley. Her kid just died.”
“She came in here sometimes?”
“Yeah, with her friend Brandi.”
“When was the last time you saw her here?”
He thought back, blue eyes on the ceiling. “Oh, let’s see. About three weeks ago, I think. About the middle of June. It was a Saturday, the day we were running the rum drink specials.”
“The eighteenth,” Donovan supplied.
“But Ashley didn’t drink. She’d gotten sober,” Lucas said. “Did she look high?” I asked.
“Not at all.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“Yeah.”
I was missing something. “What about?”
“Just stuff. You know, catching up.”
“How long have you known Ashley?” The atmosphere was tenser, the fear in my gut increas
ing. I looked at Donovan, seated again behind his desk, arms resting on the top, hard brown eyes riveted on his twin.
“A while. A few years.”
“How?”
He shrugged. “We’ve hung out before.”
“You know a guy named Flash? Ashley used to run around with him. He’s a drug dealer.”
Donovan didn’t move a muscle.
“I know who he is,” Lucas answered.
“Was he here that night?”
“No.”
“How do you know Ashley?”
“Look, I’ve done some stuff in the past I’m not proud of.”
What the hell did that mean? Was he a drug buddy of Ashley’s? One of her johns?
“You know anything about GHB?”
“What do you mean?”
“Ashley’s son died of a GHB overdose. You ever see Ashley do any of that? Here, or —”
“No.”
“What about you? Have you ever —”
Donovan cut me off.
“Lucas is working very hard to get his life straight. Part of that is working for me. He needs to go set up the bar for tonight.”
Lucas moved toward the door. “Yeah, I gotta go start stocking. If you see Ashley, let her know I’m thinking about her.”
“I will.”
After Lucas left, Donovan walked me to the door. “I’m sorry we couldn’t be more help.”
“It’s fine. You were very helpful. I’m sorry if I pried too much. I didn’t mean to offend you, or your brother.”
“Lucas is going through a difficult time right now.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
“Can I ask one more question?”
“What?”
“In the club, are drugs a big problem?”
“Sure, we have a few people who show up under the influence. And Lucas is real good about cutting people off when they’ve reached their limit. The bouncers usually call them a cab. I don’t allow drugs in here, but we can’t always catch it. More than anything, Ecstasy is an issue.”
“I see.” I thanked him for his time as he walked me down the stairs. Some early customers were already in the club. A girl, long black hair reaching all the way to her Daisy Duke shorts, sipped a tall drink as she chatted with the guy fixing the speaker. Another young man with long, shaggy, blond hair and dressed in casual business attire sat at the bar. His finger traced the rim of his glass. He and Lucas stopped talking when Donovan and I came through the door. Lucas waved to me from behind the bar where he was stacking bottles of imported beer in a cooler. Under their gazes, Donovan and I crossed the dance floor to the door and he showed me out.
According to Lucas, Ashley hadn’t been high. And, of course, her drug screens had been clean. She’d been here three Saturdays ago, but had nothing to drink. Could she have gotten the G here and kept it for later? I doubted it. If Ashley was going to use again, she would have done it immediately, not squirreled it away. So what had I learned from coming here? Not much, other than Ashley and Lucas knew each other, and that Lucas was a drug user. Or in recovery.
It was a quick trip to Avondale, where I parked in my usual spot in front of Ashley’s. Her upstairs neighbors were on their balcony, a barrel smoker filling the air with the aroma of hickory and pork. They raised beer cans to me as I walked to her door. I fished out Brandi’s key and unlocked it.
I jumped inside my skin as the door opened. Al Mackey was standing at Ashley’s battered dining table, flipping through her mail.
`
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Al and I spotted each other at the same instant.
“Holy crap, you scared the shit outta me,” he said, once he saw
who it was.
“Same here. What are you doing?”
“Dee sent me down to look and see if the bills was paid. I don’t see
none. What’re you doin’ here?”
“Same thing. Ashley asked me to check on the bills.” “Hell, if I’da known that, I coulda saved me a trip.”
“Sorry.”
“Ah, well.” He tossed the handful of flyers and envelopes on the
table. “Least the ball and chain will quit her bitchin’ about it.” Never mind that the ball and chain provided the beer in your belly
and the sexually explicit clothes on your back. I walked to the table
and thumbed through the pile he’d just dropped. Grocery ads, three
catalogs, some coupons, and a credit card offer. “Looks like someone
paid them, anyway.”
“Yeah.” Al waddled over and opened Ashley’s fridge. Over his
shoulder I could see what was inside. Not much. Some pickles, mayo,
a small hunk of cheese, and a Tupperware container. Zander had
cleaned her out.
Not finding what he wanted, he closed the door. “Well, I guess I’ll
be headin’ back.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“You know if Ashley had any life insurance on that kid?” That kid. Disgust rose in my throat like bile. “I don’t think so.
Most people don’t carry policies on children.”
“How come?”
“Well, the purpose of the insurance is to provide for your family
should anything happen to you. Children normally don’t die suddenly, and they don’t have income that needs to be replaced.” I felt
like I was lecturing to a kindergartener.
“What about insurance for her?”
“I believe Ashley has a policy.” We’d discussed it at one of her intervention meetings, and had made it a goal. Just in case something
were to happen to her unexpectedly. Although I hadn’t envisioned
Ashley being poisoned by the juice in her own refrigerator. “She won’t need hers now, now that the kid’s gone, right?” “Why?”
“I was just wondering. I thought maybe if she’d had some insurance on the boy we could give some of it to that drunks’ home, since
— what’s her name — the big black one — helped so much with the
funeral and all.”
“Nona.”
“Yeah, Nona.”
“No, as far as I know there’s no insurance for Michael.” “Too bad. Maybe Ashley could cash in hers.”
“I don’t know.” If she did, I hoped Al would be the last person to
know about it.
“Well, I’ll see you.”
I nodded. “I’ll lock up.”
He exited the apartment, beer belly leading the way, and pulled
the door shut behind him. I peeked out the front blinds and saw him
cram himself into a rusty Dodge Colt, his stomach jammed against
the steering wheel like a clown in a tiny car. The sight made me
chuckle.
Ashley’s apartment was still a wreck. I folded the blanket on the
couch, then draped it over the back. Emptied the ashtray and cleared the coffee table of wrappers and empty fast-food bags. Took out the trash. Washed a stack of dishes in the sink and left them to dry in the rack. Why the heck I was cleaning up after Zander, I had no idea. I just knew Ashley had been through enough without someone trashing her space. Even though she wouldn’t see it again for nearly a year. If
she found a way to hang on to it.
When I was finished, I laid the dishtowel on the counter. Ashley’s
room was neat, the bed smooth under a double wedding-ring quilt.
Her clothes hung in the closet, as if she were due home any minute.
I opened the door across the hall from her bedroom.
Michael’s sky blue sheets were unmade, just as he must have left
them the morning he died. The pillow on the toddler-sized mattress
was still indented from his little head. Toys were scattered all over the
floor. Matchbox cars, trains, a plastic dum
p truck. I sat on the bed, put
my hand in the small hollow in the pillow and talked to him. After a while I turned off the lights and locked the door behind
me.
Rush hour was winding down, the sun sinking over west Birmingham. At home, my message light was blinking.
The first call was from some solicitor. The next was a surprise.
“Miss Conover, this is Alexander Madison. I understand you met my wife at a function this afternoon. I’d like to talk to you in person. Tonight, if possible. Please call me back.”
Heleft a number. An 879 prefix. Mountain Brook or Homewood. His voice revealed no emotion.
So the first question was how the hell did he get my number? As a person who took children away for a living, I tended to piss people off occasionally. Once, I’d even been threatened at gunpoint. I was overly careful about my privacy for the sake of my own safety. Then it hit me. Kelsey. Karen had probably called Kelsey at Our Mothers Have Wings and asked for my number. Kelsey was friendly, but not so bright. And the Madisons gave a lot of money to her organization. She surely wouldn’t let a little request like a phone number stand in the way of a generous donation.
I listened to the message again, then called the number. A teenagesounding girl answered, and I asked for Alexander Madison. He came on the line, all business.
“Mr. Madison, this is Claire Conover. I got your message.”
“Yes, Miss Conover. Thank you for returning my call. I was hoping we could get together this evening. For drinks?”
I could have been any of his chaps he was asking around for a Scotch, instead of the woman who knew his greatest secret.
“Certainly. Where?”
“How about here? I’d rather not discuss this in public, as you might imagine.”
Yeah, I could imagine. Still, going to his house wasn’t my safest option. He continued, “Say, in forty-five minutes? Would that be convenient?”
I couldn’t think of a decent excuse not to go. “Fine.”
He gave me directions. Off of Cherokee Road, near the Country Club in Mountain Brook.
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