The high pitch of the gable lent the house, my home, a slightly surprised expression. Ours was grey and white. The neighbours had gone all-out pastel, lilac and peppermint green, with a fountain in the front yard, too big for the space and looking more like a giant spinning top, abandoned.
‘Would you believe, it even lights up at night?’ Mom had told me about it, as it had arrived just after I’d left, and at least had given her something safe to call me about. ‘Like Walt Disney’s castle, pink and blue. I mean, I don’t mind a few lights at Christmas, but do they mean to have this on all year?’
I meant to skirt round to the kitchen, but there was a neat little truck already parked out front, with ‘Smarter Party Catering’ on the side. So instead, I walked up to the front porch, and got the big door key ready. Close up, I saw the blinds in the parlour were pulled half down, so the house looked both sleepy and surprised, as if I’d woken it up.
In the entrance hall, I could hear noise from both the kitchen to the right, and the parlour to the left. The people from ‘Smarty Party’ must have gotten busy setting things out on trays and polishing glasses, and from what I could tell, Mom’s sister Elsa was talking to Francis in the parlour. I wasn’t ready to speak to either side, so I closed up the door with long-practiced stealth, stepped out of my broken-back sneakers and tiptoed up the stairs.
I had my good shoes in my bag. I thought about going into my old room and distracting myself by looking through what I still had to collect, when I heard her crying. I paused at the top, still on my toes. She was crying the way Mom always did, like she was really hoping nobody would hear, but if they did and came in, then at least she wouldn’t be quite all gone to pieces. Wouldn’t be in too much of a state, so nobody would feel awkward about it.
She didn’t hear me of course, stockinged feet and all. One side of the double doors to their bedroom was open, not all the way, but enough. Everything still smelt of the carpet they were having put down as I was moving out; but it was the other smell that made me falter, stopped me from letting her know I was there. Cigarette smoke.
The scent of it took me right back to when I was eight or so, younger perhaps. Summer, light strong so that Mom was almost in shadow, and me at the door like this, watching. She was wearing a slip, something delicate with a frill at the hem, and she was smoking, flicking the ash into a cut-glass ashtray on her dressing table. Even then, I knew this was unusual, something other mothers didn’t do.
I had Mr Pooter in my hand, Mr Pooter to give me courage, but I hadn’t been able to speak. I’d stood there and there she’d been, seeming to watch the smoke as it curled in a grey tendril between mouth and nose. When she looked at me, I saw she’d been crying, tears rolling over her cheeks.
‘Mamma’s got a headache,’ she’d said.
She hadn’t seen me this time yet. She wasn’t at her dressing table either. Now she was on the corner of the bed, half turned away and in a simpler, more austere black slip, and what I could see the most, was the dress she’d laid out for today. It was black crepe with a high neck and short puff sleeves, a dress that was half old lady, half little girl. She could wear better stuff, she had the figure for it, but it was what he’d have liked, how he’d have liked her to be.
I don’t think I make a sound, but then she was aware of me and looked round, ‘Oh, hello,’ and she was fussing to reach for fresh Kleenex from the nightstand and sitting back down to dab at her eyes. ‘Oh, goodness, I didn’t see you there. I’m such a state!’
I went in. I couldn’t see the ashtray or the cigarettes, but found I was scanning the room for them, as if I was doing a dorm check for narcotics.
‘I won’t be a moment,’ Mom said. ‘I was just, well, I was just going to get dressed. The caterers are here. Francis let them in, but I don’t want him snitching all the—’
‘Mom, it’s okay,’ I said and I sat down next to the dress. ‘It’s okay for you to be upset, you know?’
She looked at me as if she wasn’t sure why I’d say such a silly thing, then nodded and allowed herself a smile. Her eyes were puffy, the skin that was only just beginning to soften into chiffon creases, plumped out by grief. She was good at sad, I thought, good at melancholy. It did her good, like the way the sun calms some people’s acne.
‘How was last week?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘You said you had to go out of town, take flight, for work, wasn’t it? Weren’t you at the airport or something when I called?’
‘Oh, sure, yeah. It was fine.’
‘Was the flight good?’
‘It was coach, Mom. It’s never good.’
‘I suppose not. Such a long way though, you must have felt quite the Yankee down there.’ She smiled at me. ‘You look nice, dear. That dress suits you.’
‘I got pumps,’ I said, as if she might have thought I meant to go barefoot, but she flicked her hand – of course she hadn’t thought that. I looked down at myself. ‘Hey, it’s not like I don’t got a whole lot of black. Funerals I can do; I just suck at weddings.’
I kind of expected her to tell me off for trying to be funny, but she didn’t.
‘It’s your colouring,’ she said. ‘You’ve got your father’s skin tone, so you can carry bold colours. You should wear more of them, red and blue, because you could, you know, you could carry them off.’
‘Mom, please,’ I said and I got up, because I didn’t want to hear that again, that I’ve got his colouring.
‘But I was just saying,’ she said, and she sounded hurt and fragile, and had the ball of Kleenex all twisted up between her hands, working it tight. ‘I was only saying because you’re so pretty, dear, and you always wear such dull colours, such—’
I put my hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s okay Mom. I get it.’
She let go of the Kleenex with one hand so she could touch mine, then leant her head against my side. We were silent for a moment. I thought about asking about her smoking and didn’t, and then the silence started to feel awkward. I heard footsteps as someone crossed the hall below, and voices, which sounded like a question, and Francis and Elsa discussing the answer. They didn’t know, I decided, and as I thought one of them was probably going to come up and ask Mom, I started to say, ‘Hey, look, is there anything you want me to—’ but she cut me off, all in a rush.
‘Do you know where she is?’
Chapter 14
THE SHOP HAD BEEN what I’d expected, what I’d imagined by reading the name alone. It had tiny windows full of symbols from a different faith, another world, not my world, the world where I was rational and calculating and prepared. The world I’d taken a plane to see, three days before my father had died.
An artifice had been created inside the shop, a stage set to prepare the receptive; books and charts and objects in jars, in boxes. It was an Aladdin’s cave of the occult, and I wasn’t sure why I was there, other than I had to be somewhere while I waited to speak with the Sheriff.
‘This time ya’ here in more corporeal form.’
I’d been looking at some jewellery draped across a wooden hand, and I jumped because I hadn’t heard her appear. Her voice was thick and heavily accented, which I took as part of her costume, along with her richly decorated turban and the regalia of beads clattered about her neck.
‘I’m sorry?’ I asked, but she ignored my question.
‘Ya head much better, no?’ Before I could reply, she brushed her forehead and closed her eyes for a moment. She smiled. ‘Ya must forgive me. I realize as how ya won’t understand, because y’are …’ She paused, searched the air for the word. ‘A little out of time.’
‘I’m just here to look around,’ I said and smiled, fearing she was going to sell me something. She came round from behind her counter, moving as if her hips towed her body in their wake. She paused a few feet away and looked me up and down in such a direct, open manner, I was unsure whether to be annoyed or impressed.
‘Ya come back to me,’ she said and held out her long,
elegant hand. ‘I see the good in ya, but ya must be careful.’ I took her hand, and the slender, cool fingers closed round mine as if they held something wounded.
‘I was just looking for someone,’ I began.
‘I know,’ she said, ‘an’ he’s seen ya.’
‘No, it’s not a man …’
‘He passed ya by just now, when ya was walkin’ along the esplanade.’ I made a gentle move to pull my hand away but she did not let go. ‘He passed by in his big black car, an’ he looked at ya, because there was something in ya form, in the way ya walk, which made him think of her.’
‘Who?’ I asked.
‘Who ya binlookin’ for, because him binlookin’ for her also …’ she closed her eyes for a second, forestalling my question. ‘Now, him binlooking after da way ya gone.’ She let go of my hand.
‘Look,’ I said, and began to rummage in my bag among the papers and the pictures and the fragments of Lisa I had with me. ‘She’s a few years older than me, and her name is Lisa; she’s blond, well, she was blond, I have a photo of her, perhaps …’
‘Non.’ She placed her fingers on the mouth of my bag. ‘I have not seen her, ma Cherie – but here …’ she reached inside her robes. ‘Ya’ll know him when ya see him. Ya ever heard what it mean when tha’ rain fall when tha’ sun shine? Mean the devil beatin’ his wife.’ She held out six silver dollars.
‘I don’t want money …’ I said, but she withdrew her hand and slid behind her counter without a backward glance.
‘Go get yourself a coffee,’ she said with her back to me. ‘Little place on the corner, name of ‘Mademoiselle’s’. Tell them as I sent ya, but hurry …’ She risked one long glance back. ‘Ya don’t want them to run out of sugar cookies before ya get there.’ The beaded curtain over the entrance to the back of her shop parted.
‘What’s your name?’ I asked, reaching for her. For a moment, I felt the loss of her as keenly as my sister’s.
‘Angelique.’ The beads clattered, and she was gone.
‘Mademoiselle’s’ was on the corner as she’d said. If the wrought iron sign over the door had not caught my eye, the rich thick smell of coffee would have drawn me there. The floor above jutted out, following the corner of the block and supported by an iron pillar with a filigree of leaves at its point. I skirted the small collection of ornate tables outside and went in.
There was a long glass-topped counter, surmounted by a parapet of glass cake domes. The menu on the wall behind was almost as esoteric as the sigils in Angelique’s boutique, special blends chalked up in pink and blue. There were three baristas serving behind the counter, the espresso machines sang and hissed, the low buzz of chatter and laughter was as warm as the air.
‘Good morning darlin’, what can I get for you today?’ The barista who turned his radiant smile on me, was a little over forty and a little overweight.
‘I’ll just take an Americano, thank you.’
‘Sure thing, can I get you somethin’ to go with that? We got a new batch o’ praline ready just now.’
‘No, I’m good thanks,’ I said and then I remembered what Angelique had said. ‘Someone said that your sugar cookies were good?’
‘They sure are, I’ll look some out for you. They’re a dollar apiece, or I can give you six for four.’
‘That would be good, thank you.’
The cafe was not busy, not the hive of caffeine seekers as it might have been at home, but there was a regular flow of people in and out even in the short time I lingered. There were a few tables inside, one of which was occupied by a man reading a newspaper.
As I waited, I caught the movement of the paper as the reader folded it away and stood up, scraping his chair on the tiled floor. He walked toward the counter and stood a little to my left, waiting to pay for his coffee and the ornate cake box he took from his server. I glanced sideways and saw a man, in his late thirties perhaps, with an angular face and blond and brown hair. He’d tucked his paper under his arm, and was whistling between his teeth as he waited for his change.
The barista handed me my coffee and a brown paper bag neatly folded round the cookies.
‘That’ll be six dollars,’ he said, and I counted them into his hand. As the man with the paper turned to go, he nudged my arm reaching for the coffee.
‘Whoa, forgive me darlin’.’ He smiled. ‘I hope I didn’t spill nothin’?’
‘No, I’m fine, thank you.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ he said, and the light caught on the teeth behind his smile, before he turned on his heel and walked out into the sunshine. I looked after him, sure that there was something familiar about him, though not quite sure what.
The Sheriff had a neatly trimmed moustache, which gave him the air of an old prospector from the Klondike. I wondered if he cultivated it on purpose to go with his swagger and the uniform, which had a crease pressed into each sleeve. The image of old west charm was only spoiled by the bluetooth earpiece he was wearing a little self-consciously.
‘Please, sit down,’ he said and smiled warmly. ‘You’re fortunate to be visiting us outside the hurricane season; though mind you, not everyone sees fit to inform the hurricanes when they can or can’t stop by.’ He smiled at his joke, his office as neat as his uniform.
‘Did you read them?’ I asked. He looked a little deflated by my lack of ceremony.
‘Sure ma’am, I read them.’ He took the folder I’d sent him from a tray on his left and placed it firmly and squarely in front of him. He folded his hands together on top as if he were scared something might escape it.
‘What do you think? Did you speak to him?’
‘Ma’am …’ the Sheriff paused, unlaced his fingers and traced a circle on the folder. ‘I can see that, to read this, would be concerning for anyone.’
‘She said he hit her,’ I said. ‘Look …’ he didn’t move fast enough, so I snapped open my bag and shuffled through the tattered copy I had. ‘Look, here, she says he locked her in, stopped her from leaving? I mean, that’s kidnap, right, false imprisonment? That’s illegal, even down here, right?’ I shouldn’t have said that, it riled him, though he tried to hide it.
‘Miss, please. I personally take a very dim view of any man who is violent towards a woman …’
‘So, what’s this then?’
The Sheriff raised his hand. ‘Miss, please, I’m tryin’ to explain that I’m on your side here, I share your concern.’
‘Then what have you done?’ I said, standing up and pushing my chair away. ‘Did you go see him?’
My outburst prompted the Sheriff to resort to a double hand raise. ‘Miss, I understand your distress, but can I ask you to please lower your voice and remain calm?’
‘Did you?’ I repeated.
‘If you sit down,’ he said, ‘if you sit down and give me a moment, I’ll explain to you what I found.’ In a lower tone he added, ‘Look miss, I’d slap his sorry ass in jail tomorrow if I thought I could get away with it, just to amuse myself.’ He risked a smirk under his moustache.
His confession had the desired effect on me and I sat down again. When he was sure I was calmer, he got up and closed the door ostentatiously. He did not return to his official chair but drew up a plastic one from the side and sat down near me.
‘What you got here,’ he said nodding toward his desk, ‘what you got is nasty, nasty stuff, and I ain’t takin’ it lightly. Like I said, I don’t have time for excuses, violence against a woman is second only to violence against little’uns. The problem is, there ain’t much I can do with this.’ He raised his hand a little as he saw I was about to interrupt again. ‘It’s hearsay, if you want the legal term, but I done what I could for you, trust me, Miss – took it as far as possible.’ He glanced towards the door again.
‘Did you go see him?’
‘Yes, I did.’ He sniffed. He smelled clean, as if his wife still used starch in the wash. ‘Most folks round here know of the Levines, they’re pretty much what we’ve got for aristocracy in thi
s parish, so I’m askin’ you to make me a promise before I go any further.’
I frowned at him. ‘A promise?’
‘That you’ll not repeat anything that I say to you, because by rights, I shouldn’t be takin’ you into my confidence.’
He was just like all of them, I thought, trying to take care of me, trying to pretend like nothing had happened, trying to protect me.
‘If you won’t help me, what use is what you tell me anyways?’
He shifted a little in his chair. ‘I guess it ain’t, for now, but hell, I ain’t sayin’ that things might never change, and you shouldn’t think it won’t. If you go poking round you could ruin any chances I might have of one day sortin’ this out, if more evidence comes to light.’
He means a body, I thought. He means Lisa’s body.
He looked seriously at me, and we both pretended that I’d agreed to what he’d asked.
‘So, what did Rooster say?’ I said, pulling my fingers through my hair. ‘Was he surprised to see you?’
The Sheriff cleared his throat. ‘Mr Levine was …’ He smiled at the memory. ‘He was a little surprised to see me, but he made time in his busy schedule. His Daddy was out, so he was able to …fit me into his diary.’ He gathered himself and drew his brow into a frown. ‘Anyhow, well, I said as how the absence of his wife had been brought to my attention by some of her family, said as how I’d been asked to make enquires, as she had not been heard from in some months.’
‘How did he react?’ I asked, leaning forward as if I could see what he’d seen if I only got closer to him.
‘I asked him how long it had been since he’d had word from her.’ The Sheriff tilted his head. ‘His timescale … basically coincided with yours, he seemed …’ He inhaled. ‘He seemed surprised but not overly hostile. I would almost have said he was … prepared.’
‘You asked him if he hit her?’
‘Miss, trust me, a direct accusation like that right now, would have done nothing but make him clam up. I asked him to describe the nature of his relationship with his wife, and Mr Levine openly admitted that they’d been havin’ … serious marital problems after he returned from his tour of duty.’
Nemesister: The gripping women's psychological thriller from Sophie Jonas-Hill Page 11