EIGHT
The conversation with Greer two days prior made me acutely aware that I had a lot of unfinished business to take care of. If a fraction of what he’d told me was true, I needed to start finding my own answers. I knew exactly where to start.
I’d been avoiding the place since I came back. Ava’s shop was one thing, but this was where the real ghosts lived. The building didn’t look as old as I remembered, and it was obvious that developers had snatched up the vertical space to transform the charm of the old apartments into something more commercially appealing to the business community. It was a sad but common sign of the times. My mother believed that an educated child was a relatively safe child. If she hadn’t drilled our address into my head, I’m not sure I would have found it.
I climbed the steps and just stood there waiting for my hand to move toward the door. It would be locked, but that’s not what kept me from reaching for the handle. It wasn’t the ghosts either. It was the possibility that I might find nothing. My past might be completely gone.
My last memory of this place was being walked out by my mother’s best friend. Ava held my hand as the door slammed shut, and within minutes New York was nothing more than a former address.
It was serendipitous the way the man held the door open for me as he exited the building. I must have looked trustworthy, because he waited for me to enter before letting go of it. I took the invitation and entered the foyer lined with mailboxes. The second door leading to the stairs was unlocked—another sign that I just needed to get on with whatever needed settling.
With each step, I felt heavier with the weight of memories of being in that exact spot before. The green walls were gone and the space had been expanded to accommodate a bike rack, but the basic structure of the building hadn’t changed much.
I turned right at the top of the stairs and headed down the hall in the direction of our old apartment. Instead of finding the front door, I stared at a solid wall where it used to be. My memory must have been foggy, because all the doors looked out of place. The entire wall seemed as if it had shifted. It was a sign that this wasn’t such a good idea. There was no history left, no marker that I’d spent the first five years of my life here, no past waiting to be found.
The hallway was quiet except for the muted voices coming from a television somewhere behind the wall, and the sound of my heels hitting the floor. As I turned back toward the stairs, I heard the hinges of a door squeal as it slowly opened.
“Who are you?” It was a woman’s voice.
“I’m a neighbor,” I said without turning around. “Who are you?”
“You don’t live here.”
“How do you know I don’t live here? Do you know everyone who lives in the building?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. Lived here thirty-three years.”
I did the math and then backtracked to get a better look at my old neighbor.
“Thirty-three years?”
“That’s right. I may be getting old, but I’m way too young to be senile.”
“My name’s Alex Kelley. I used to live on this floor.”
The woman stretched her head past the crack in the door. “I don’t believe it.” She came out of her apartment and looked me over like she was searching the past to make sure I fit the memory. Based on the way her mouth dropped, I wasn’t the only one confronting ghosts today.
“You’re Maeve’s girl.”
“Yes. Maeve Kelley.”
“You were just a little thing when—”
There was that look. I’d seen it over and over again while I went from one foster family to the next—Poor thing. Her mother is dead. They were referring to Ava, though. After we left New York, Ava became my mother. She died three years later, and I became the daughter of not just one dead mother, but two.
“You remember us?”
“Oh, I remember everyone who’s lived in the building. May not remember their names, but I remember their faces. I remember everything about you and your mother, though.”
“Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”
“Why don’t you come inside? I’m Hazel. Don’t remember me, do you?”
I was embarrassed to admit that I didn’t. She said she used to watch me while my mother ran errands or washed clothes at the laundromat across the street. I had a faint memory of someone younger living next door. Hazel looked to be about sixty. Shave off twenty years and she’d fit the memory.
I looked around the room for something to jog my mind. I remembered our apartment being smaller. Hazel explained that the units were consolidated and turned into co-ops twelve years earlier. In fact, the eastern half of her unit used to be our apartment. A lump formed in my throat because even though the room was unrecognizable, it used to be my home. This space was where I saw my mother for the last time.
Hazel left to make tea, leaving me alone for a few much appreciated minutes to take in all the residual memories. One after the other they came back to me. The kitchen used to be over there. We used to sit in the living room just a few feet from where I was sitting now, listening to the sounds coming up through the vents. This was my first home. I’d lived in a lot of places, but this was the first and last place I ever called home.
She returned with Earl Grey. We were having our tea and discussing the changes to the building when she leaned in and took my hand in hers. “What happened to you?”
I had no idea what she meant, but the shift in her eyes from nostalgic to grave indicated that the question wasn’t meant to be small talk about the past twenty-one years.
“What do you mean?”
“After your mother—” Her eyes furrowed deeper as her mouth hung on the last word. “You just disappeared.”
I pulled my hand away from hers. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.” What did she mean by disappeared? Ava was my legal guardian. We moved to Indiana after the murder.
“Ava and I left. What are you saying?” My defenses lit up. Ava was the only thing that kept me going after my mother died. Whatever she did, she did because she loved me and because my mother trusted her.
Her head shook absently as she delivered the final blow. “You just vanished. No one knew what happened to you.” She took my hand again, but this time she gripped it so I couldn’t pull away. “You were a missing child. Your face was all over the papers for months.”
The words struck me like an oncoming jet. I replayed what Hazel said and tried to pinpoint exactly where I’d misinterpreted her words. I was always doing that—listening with half an ear and getting the facts mixed up. I got bored easily, so I selectively filtered what I wanted to hear. High school was the worst. I think I missed half of my junior and senior years.
“Alex, do you understand what I just said?”
“Are you serious?” I snapped. “I wasn’t missing. I moved.” How dare anyone tell me my life wasn’t just a little screwed up—it was a freaking train wreck. I already knew that. No reminder necessary.
“Alex, I had no idea.” She stopped talking and stared at me with her mouth gaping.
Either Hazel was a little off-kilter, or I was about to have my life turned upside down—again. How many times was a girl supposed to rebound from being told her life was nothing but a lie?
“I’m sorry, Hazel. I didn’t mean to be rude. I just don’t know what’s happening anymore.” I steadied my nerves and asked the next question with a heavy heart. “I need for you to tell me everything you remember about my mother—and her murder.”
Hazel sat back in her chair and thought about what I’d just asked. I wasn’t the only one impacted by the conversation, and it was obvious Hazel hadn’t bargained for the shock either. “Maybe I’m not the person you should be talking to.” She got up and started to clear the teacups from the coffee table. The cups rattled in her hands from the small tremors seizing her limbs.
I put my hand out to stop her. “Hazel, you’re exactly the person I should be talking to.” I forced a smile a
nd pleaded with my eyes. “There is no one else.”
She nodded, and I knew she was about to sit back down and tell me everything she knew about the night my mother died.
“Let’s see…I distinctly remember it was sweltering that night,” she said. “Early August. Hot as hell. Most of the apartments didn’t have air conditioning back then, so we all kept our windows open.” She shook her head and laughed. “I don’t know how we all tolerated the heat. Younger and used to it, I guess.”
I was surprised at how well she remembered the details, but when you’re personally connected to a murder, the memories must be stored like a burning brand on your brain. I’m sure it made for interesting dinner party conversation.
“Your mother had been…well…on edge for a few days. I remember this because she’d asked me on several occasions if I would keep an eye on you.”
“You said you used to watch me.”
“Yes, but this was different. She wanted me to keep an eye on you all the time, even when she was sitting right next to you. Safety in numbers, I guess.” She shook her head and drifted off in the memory.
“Hazel?”
She refocused her eyes on mine as my voice pulled her back. “Maeve started to see threats in the most innocent things.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like the postman taking too long to get the mail in the boxes, or someone new coming into the coffee shop downstairs.” She took a deep breath and swallowed hard as if clearing an obstruction in her throat. “I remember one incident in particular. I’d taken you down to the coffee shop while Maeve finished up at the laundromat across the street. It wasn’t quite as hot that afternoon, so we sat at one of the sidewalk tables.”
Her brows pulled together as her face swung toward the window. She had a smart face, just as attractive as a woman ten years younger, but the tension around her mouth gave away the disturbance of the memory.
“You were sitting in the chair next to me, swinging your little legs back and forth. Full of energy that day, you were. Something rubbed against them and you let out a shriek. It was happiness, not fear.”
“My legs?”
“Yes.” Her eyes furrowed deeper, and the irony of her smile made me uncomfortable. “It was a cat. A big white cat with a black mark on its forehead.” Hazel uncrossed her legs and smoothed the wrinkles along her skirt. “You were delighted. The cat seemed to be just as happy. All that purring. Kept getting louder as it rubbed and wound itself around your legs, faster and faster. I though the thing was going to take a bite out of you.”
“Cats do that, you know.”
“Yes, I know, but there was something different about this one. Its eyes weren’t normal, the way they watched me the entire time.”
“And?”
“Maeve came out of nowhere. She ripped a path through the tables to get to you.” She closed her eyes and slowly shook her head. “She screamed at it. Called it by some strange name, and then she threatened it. I couldn’t believe it. Maeve was calling this cat by a name and threatening to kill it if it came near you again.”
“How could I forget something like that?” I whispered, more as a thought than a question.
Hazel continued. “You’d think the animal would’ve run for its life from all the screaming. But it just put its tail straight up in the air and whipped the tip around. It took one last look at Maeve and then me, before casually walking off down the street. It even stopped for a moment to look back at you.”
“Do you remember what she called the cat?”
“Not at the time. But later, when we were back in the apartment and I was trying to pry you out of her arms, she started mumbling the name again. I wrote it down. I don’t know why, but the name was so significant to her that I thought it might be important.”
“Do you still have it?”
“Possibly, but I’d have to look for it. If that piece of paper survived the past twenty-one years, I’ll be sure to give it to you.”
I gave Hazel my cell phone number and asked her to call me if she found the name. It was a long shot that the piece of paper has survived, but if it did I wanted to know.
“That was two days before it happened,” she said.
“Before she was murdered?”
“Yes.”
The conversation we were about to have had my adrenaline hitting me square in the chest. The thought of finally hearing an account of what happened made me feel hopeful and nauseous at the same time. Could I sit and listen to the events leading up to what the New York Times archives described as a barbaric butchering? I already knew the facts. Everyone got that through the media, but I was about to get an insider’s view of my mother’s murder.
I had no recollection of the days leading up to my mother’s death. For a five-year-old, I had an extraordinary memory. I could tell you how we spent a typical day at Ava’s shop. I could recite the dessert menu from the coffee shop below our apartment. I could tell you all sorts of random things most five-year-olds wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about, but I had no memory of the most significant few days of my life.
“You were with Ava that evening. I remember this because she usually asked me to watch you. Not that night.” Hazel got up from her chair and started looking for something in the large bookcase against the wall. “I came out of my apartment just as you and Maeve were leaving. Your mother was very nervous. It was late, so I asked if she needed me to watch you. She shook her head and said she was dropping you at Ava’s.”
“I don’t remember any of this.”
“By the time I went to bed around eleven, she still hadn’t returned.” She shook her head. “Something wasn’t right. I could feel it.”
She stopped rummaging through the shelf and pulled out a folder. “I still remember the exact time. It was 3:22 a.m. when I heard the sounds coming from your apartment. I remember because the first thing I did was glance at the clock. I just assumed Maeve came home and couldn’t sleep.”
“You heard her? The night she died?” What Hazel was telling me didn’t make sense. My mother's body was found on the other side of Manhattan. Was she attacked in her apartment and then moved? Had Hazel heard her struggling with her attacker? The images formed with such sickening clarity that I nearly lost my tea all over Hazel’s carpet.
As I fought to maintain some semblance of control, it was the recollection of the archived news stories that answered my questions. Estimated time of death was around midnight. That meant that she couldn’t have been in the apartment at three in the morning. By then she was already dead. Someone else was in our apartment that morning, scavenging for whatever it was that cost my mother her life. Maybe Greer was right and the amulet really was something worth killing for. I had no memory of that night, but I do know where the amulet was when my mother was killed. It was hanging around my neck.
I caved as the emotion hit me like a giant wave. My chest heaved as it expelled the incomprehensible grief, and a guttural sob made its way up my throat as tears poured from my eyes.
Hazel’s arm wrapped around my shoulders and pulled me into an embrace. At that moment, she knew just what not to say, and she let me take what I needed without the awkwardness of words.
As I pulled myself together and prepared to leave, Hazel took an envelope out of the folder and slipped it into my lap.
“I suppose I should have handed it over to the police,” she said. “It’s from your mother.”
I looked at the envelope in my lap, debating whether I should rip it open or wait until I was behind a locked door at Crusades. I chose the latter. “Why didn’t you?”
“It wasn’t addressed to them.”
NINE
It was dark by the time I got back to Crusades. I’m not sure how the day slipped by, but I knew I’d pay for my lateness as soon as I walked through the front door. I crept down the side of the building and tried the door on the backside of the club. It was open, so I slipped in and headed toward the area behind the bar. It might have been dark ou
tside, but it was still early by New York standards. Anything before ten p.m. is early in New York.
Blue lights threw a glow over the club floor like the interior of a giant fish tank. The room was empty and I realized the club wasn’t open yet. Thomas was prepping at the other end of the bar with his back to me, so my chances of making it up the stairs without being seen were good.
“Nice try.”
“Thomas. You scared the hell out of me.” I wondered how he got from the bar to my back in about two seconds.
“Not as scared as you’re going to be when Greer gets a whiff of you. He damn near tore the city apart looking for your lovely little ass this afternoon.” He leaned back against the polished oak. “Sweetness, you’re busted.”
“I’m terrified.” My eyes widened in mock fear. “What’s he going to do, spank me?”
“He just might.” His eyes glanced past me as he lifted off the bar and moved back behind it.
“Oh, come on.”
My gut instinct told me not to turn around, but like that train wreck you can’t stop looking at, my eyes turned in the direction of the hurricane coming toward me.
“How?” Greer was practically on top of me. The decibels pierced my ears and forced me backward until I hit the edge of the bar.
“How what? And why are you screaming at me?”
His hand raked over the top of his head as he paced the floor like a caged tiger.
Thomas stopped polishing the glass in his hand and leaned over the counter. “He means how the hell did you get past his eyes?”
I’d forgotten about the surveillance. Apparently I wasn’t as covered as I thought, because I’d managed to slip past Greer’s Gestapo. The fact that I hadn’t done it intentionally didn’t seem to matter. I was a defector.
I’d spent the afternoon wandering around Greenwich Village, staring at the envelope with my name written across the front. Hazel explained that she’d received it in a larger envelope two days after the murder. It was addressed to me.
The Amulet Thief (The Fitheach Trilogy Book 1) Page 8