by Kylie Logan
No one but Eileen and Jazz.
She slipped into the chair behind her desk. “You know I can’t tell you that. And what difference would it make, anyway? Florie’s been gone for two years. I wonder how she was doing at North Coast.”
“Not so good, I don’t think.” When Jazz looked at her in wonder, Sarah raised her hands in a gesture of innocence. “Hey, I keep track of my art students. Or at least I try. Florie and I used to talk right after graduation, and she was always…” Sarah let her hands fall back down on her lap. “Florie was Florie. You know how she could be, wisecracking and sarcastic, and funny enough to make you bust a gut.” Her voice cracked, and Sarah took a minute to compose herself.
She cleared her throat. “But the last time I talked to her, I asked about school, and she danced around the subject and never gave me a straight answer. I’ll admit it made me curious. You know how I like to stick my nose where it doesn’t belong.” Sarah didn’t give Jazz a chance to confirm or deny and it was just as well because yes, Sarah did have a way of minding everyone’s business but her own, and Jazz was tired of reminding her. “I checked with someone I know at North Coast. He said he’s heard Florie was having problems. Academic problems. She was always such a smart kid. I wondered what was going on.”
“You weren’t about to let that pass you by without checking it out.” If Jazz was feeling more like herself and less like the woman who hadn’t slept since Saturday, she might have smiled. Typical Sarah.
Sarah grinned. “Damn straight! I called Florie. I texted. I emailed. I never got a reply. Florie fell off the radar.”
“Something was up with her.” It was so obvious, Jazz didn’t have to say it, yet something about the words helped her feel as if she was at least trying. Trying to do something. Trying to understand. Trying to make sense of what would never make sense, even if she did have answers.
She got up and crossed the room. The architects who had refurbished and reconfigured the seminary into St. Catherine’s had been wise enough to keep its old-world character. Jazz’s office had fifteen-foot-high ceilings, ornate plaster moldings, and bookshelves that filled one wall and closed with leaded-glass doors.
When she first started working at the school, she often wondered why Russian Orthodox priests—or anyone else, for that matter—needed such elaborate furnishings, but four years in the admin office and Jazz had long since stopped speculating. Like so many other buildings in the neighborhood, St. Catherine’s was a mixture of bygone beauty and modern convenience, with state-of-the-art science labs, a chapel where they all attended monthly Mass, and a library Jazz hardly ever went into, one that Sarah claimed was one of the city’s forgotten wonders.
But then, there was a lot about Tremont that was a little different from the rest of Cleveland. The neighborhood had once been home to thirty-six different churches, and the why of it was no surprise—many of the immigrants who flooded the area to work in the nearby factories kept the customs and the languages of their home countries. They stayed within their own ethnic groups and, street by street, the South Side grew up around them. The Poles had their own church, their own stores, their own doctors and pharmacies. So did the Ukrainians, and the Lebanese, and the Slovaks, and the Greeks. In the midcentury, when the neighborhood was bisected by a new freeway system and the descendants of those immigrants fled to the suburbs, they left a slew of schools and churches and social clubs behind, and when the next wave of people moved into the area—Southern whites and Puerto Ricans and African Americans—there were more than enough big, empty buildings to go around. Some, like the one Jazz had been in Saturday evening, were turned into pricey housing. Others were restaurants, wine bars, boutiques, art galleries.
And St. Catherine’s.
Still at the bookshelves, Jazz ran her finger along the spines of fifteen years’ worth of yearbooks and pulled out the one that featured Florie’s graduating class. Since the senior girls were pictured alphabetically, Florie’s photograph was one of the first.
Her hair was honey brown, not the charcoal black with red streaks that Jazz had seen on Saturday night.
She had no piercings or tattoos. At least none that showed.
What Florie Allen did have were brown eyes and a wide smile, tawny skin, straight teeth, a dimple in her left cheek.
“Class Treasurer,” Jazz read the words printed under Florie’s picture. “Habitat for Humanity volunteer, Choir, Art Club. Plans for the future art school, brilliance, and changing the world!”
She snapped the book shut.
“The world changed her instead,” Jazz said. “When I found her, she was dressed in what we used to call goth. Black clothes, lots of piercings, plenty of tats.”
“None of which means she wasn’t still a nice kid.”
“I didn’t say that.” Jazz slid the book back in place and closed the glass bookcase door. “I just said she’d changed. I wonder—”
The first bell of the morning rang, and Jazz headed back to her desk. “You’d better get a move on if you’re going to get to your homeroom on time,” she told Sarah.
“I’ve got plenty of time.” She waved a dismissive hand. “And you haven’t told me nearly enough. Were you listening to what I said, Jazz? I said the story was in the paper. So was the name of the lead detective on the case.”
Jazz sat down and, though her desk was just as she’d left it when she walked out of the school on Friday, neat and orderly, she rearranged her notepad and her mouse and the nameplate that said JASMINE RAMSEY in block letters. If only it was so easy to put all the emotions that seeing Nick again had churned up back into the tight box where she’d kept them in check over the past year. “So?”
“So, bad enough you didn’t call me about Florie. I can’t believe you didn’t call and tell me you saw Nick.”
“Who says I did?”
Sarah grumbled a word she shouldn’t have used inside St. Catherine’s. “If there’s one thing I remember about Nick Kolesov, it’s that he’d never let someone else interview the person who found a body. Not when he’s in charge of a case. You talked to him, all right.”
“I talked to him.”
“And?”
“And nothing.” Jazz’s phone rang and she answered and took down the information from a mother calling about a girl who would be out sick that day. “There’s nothing to tell, Sarah,” she said when she was finished.
“Right.” She stood and grabbed her tote bag. “There was a time you would have told me he was a son of a—” She whispered. “A son of a bitch.”
“And have I said anything today to contradict that?”
“It’s not what you’re saying, it’s what you’re not saying.”
“He showed up. He interviewed me. He took my statement. I left.”
“End of story.”
“Yes, end of story. It was end of story over a year ago. You know that.”
“Did he say what he’s been up to?”
“I didn’t ask. Because I don’t care.”
“Did he ask what you’ve been up to?”
“He didn’t. Because he doesn’t care.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. And I know the second bell is about to ring.” Right on time, it did, and Sarah took the hint. She was out of the door in a flash, but not before she gave Jazz the kind of look that clearly said best friends should be more open. And less evasive.
“We’ll need to make some sort of announcement.”
Sister Eileen Flannery entered a room the way she did everything else, quickly and efficiently. There was little time for dawdling in Eileen’s day, and less time to waste on people or projects that weren’t a direct benefit to St. Catherine’s, the all-girls school she’d started and nurtured for fifteen years, the one she hosted fundraisers for and talked up every chance she got. To anyone who would listen.
Eileen was nearing retirement age, but no one who didn’t know her well would ever guess that. Her hair had dulled from its once-coppery glory t
o a color that reminded Jazz of nearly spent embers. It was cut short and stylishly, as was the navy suit she wore with the Toms shoes she claimed were too casual to be seen outside the walls of St. Catherine’s but were the only shoes comfortable enough to get her through the miles of hallways she walked each day.
Before she breezed into her office, she stopped at Jazz’s desk, and Jazz didn’t need to ask who she was talking about, what she was talking about. She and Eileen had the uncanny knack of always being on the same wavelength, and this day was no exception. But then, the news of what happened over the weekend hung in the air of St. Catherine’s like a pall. “She was one of our girls, and we can’t let her passing go unnoticed.”
Eileen didn’t need to elaborate.
Jazz picked up a paper that she’d put on her desk on Friday before she left school. “We can add something about Florie to today’s announcements.”
The way Eileen tipped her head told Jazz she had her approval. “And let’s leave a minute after for prayer. It’s the least we can do.” She turned and started for her office, then stopped and spun back toward Jazz. “Are you okay?”
Twelve years of attending Catholic school, and another four years of working at one. Jazz found it impossible to lie to a nun. “I’m coping.”
“And you’re doing that how?”
She shrugged and hated herself for it. “My mother made a pot of chicken soup for me.”
“That’s your mother coping, not you.”
Jazz made up her mind in an instant. “I’ll go for a run after school. Five miles is coping, right?”
“It is.” Eileen pulled open her office door. “But talking is, too. Promise me you’ll remember that.”
Jazz had no doubt of it.
Even if she had no plans to do it.
It was a shame that though her head knew as much, her gut (or whatever part of her anatomy was responsible for producing the sense of apprehension and restlessness that filled her all that day) wouldn’t ease up.
By the time sixth period rolled around and the girls were finished with lunch and there wouldn’t be another surge of activity out in the hallways until the last bell rang, she had made up her mind. Yes, running was coping, and for all Jazz knew, so was talking out the feelings that made it seem like her insides had been filled with ice water since Saturday night.
But something told her an even better way of coping might be found in asking questions.
And even more importantly, finding answers.
She rapped on Eileen’s door and stuck her head inside her office. “Are you busy?” It was a silly question because Eileen was always busy, but that didn’t stop the principal from waving Jazz in while she finished the phone call she was on.
Eileen’s office was even more elaborate than Jazz’s. It had the same kind of glass-enclosed bookcases, the same high ceilings and windows that looked out on the street and Lincoln Park beyond, but there was a fireplace behind Eileen’s desk and an Oriental rug on the floor in shades of blue and cream and green that had been given to the school by a generous donor and didn’t fit in any of the other offices.
The principal finished her call. “What’s up?” she asked.
Jazz wasn’t sure where to start. “It’s about Florie.”
Eileen sat back, her head tilted, ready to hear more.
“Have you seen her since she graduated?”
“No, I haven’t, but I’ve certainly heard about her.”
It was news Eileen had never shared with her. “Recently?” Jazz asked.
Eileen reached for the calendar on the desk and paged through it. “Yes. Just after the last board meeting.”
“A month ago? You never told me that Florie had changed from the kid we knew into some kind of vampire chick.”
“The person who ran into her … well, when she told me the story, she didn’t mention that Florie looked like something out of a scary movie.” Eileen found the date she was looking for and tapped her finger against the page, satisfied to have her facts straight.
She sat back. “Did you realize what was going on when Florie was here?”
“Going on? Here in school? As in…?”
“As in certain girls in that particular class not getting along with each other.”
It was the same story in every class, and Jazz wasn’t surprised. Some girls were just plain mean. Others were easy targets. Some of it could be explained by hormones or petty jealousies or, sometimes, Jazz swore, by the phases of the moon. St. Catherine’s had standards, and a zero-tolerance policy when it came to bullying. But girls could be sneaky. And cruel.
“They don’t all get along,” she reminded Eileen.
“And I wouldn’t expect them to. We’re trying to educate intelligent women here, not robots. But Florie’s class…” She allowed herself a sigh. “Those girls took it to a new level. There was a wave of threatening text messages—”
Jazz sucked in a breath. “I didn’t know.”
“No one knew. No one but me. I’m sorry I kept you out of the loop, but I wanted to handle it myself.”
“Did you?”
Eileen chuckled. “Not very well, as it turns out. Oh, I pretty much kept a lid on things, I kept the girls from going at each other openly, but I’ll tell you what, I was so relieved when those girls graduated and got out of here! I’ve never seen anything like it. They were like a pack of coyotes.”
“And Florie was one of them.”
“She was in one of the packs. Yes. Not that they had any sort of formal organization. You know how girls are, one day they’re best friends with this person, the next week they can’t stand that girl and they’re best friends with someone else. The only thing that remained consistent was Florie and Grace Greenwald. They were friends at first, all through seventh and eighth grades. And freshman year, too, I think. Joined at the hip. Then during sophomore year, something changed. Big time. It went downhill from there.”
Jazz remembered Grace, blond, pretty, full of herself. Grace had never had an opinion that she wasn’t ready to share with the world.
“Grace has a sister who’s still here,” Jazz said, even though Eileen didn’t need the reminder. Eileen knew every girl in the school, and if any one of them was ever in a bad mood, Eileen not only knew it, she knew why.
“Dinah is the polar opposite of her sister,” Eileen said. “She’s sweet, one of those girls who is so quiet, you barely know she’s around. But she’s as smart as can be, a real math whiz.”
“And not nearly as overbearing as Grace.”
Eileen’s laugh was all the answer Jazz needed. “Grace and Florie were gone on the same graduation day, thank goodness.”
“It was a couple years ago,” Jazz reminded her.
“Yes, it was. Except last month…” To emphasize the point, she tapped her calendar again. “Last month after the board meeting, some of the trustees went to Ohio City for a drink.” Ohio City was the historic neighborhood next door to Tremont. It was just as trendy, just as busy, just as jam-packed with restaurants and bars and the crowds that patronized them.
“I was all set to join them,” Eileen added, “then I got the call about that pipe that burst in the science lab.”
Jazz remembered the incident well. Eileen had been called by the security company that got the alarm, Eileen called Jazz, and they both spent most of the night at the school dealing with plumbers and soaked science equipment.
“The next day, I talked to one of the other board members, Laura Kerchmer. Seems she and the others stopped in at the pub at Great Lakes Brewing, and according to Laura there were two girls there who got into an epic fight.”
“Grace and Florie?”
“Well, Laura didn’t know that. Not at first. She’s new to the school, remember, so she wasn’t around when Grace or Florie were here. The other board members were seated in a different room, and Laura passed through the bar on the way to the ladies’ room. That’s how she saw what she saw. And she says she never would have paid much atten
tion to any of it except she heard one of the girls say those magic words, ‘St. Catherine’s.’”
“And after that?”
“Laura listened up. And that’s when she heard their names. Yes, it was Florie and Grace. She said it took about two seconds for them to be in the room together before they started going at each other.”
“It’s been two years since they graduated.”
“Yes, but they were both attending North Coast now, so chances are they’ve seen each other plenty since they left here. According to Laura, smoke started coming out of Grace’s ears the second she clapped eyes on Florie and the two of them went at it like cats in an alley. One of the restaurant workers had to break things up. He escorted Grace out the front door and Florie out the back.”
“Then what happened?”
The way Eileen smiled, one corner of her mouth pulled tight, Jazz knew she was feeling just as helpless as Jazz had felt since Saturday night.
“After that,” Eileen said, “Laura went back to her drink. By the time she left the pub, both girls were gone. And it was a month ago and that’s a long time, but…”
Her cheeks darkened, and Eileen looked out the window, and Jazz knew the principal didn’t need to say another word. They both knew what Eileen was thinking, and there was no use giving voice to words that were so poisonous.
One month ago, Florie and Grace were still at it like the hateful teenagers they had once been.
And now, Florie was dead.
CHAPTER 4
Jazz knew there were telltale signs.
Before a back draft turns a smoldering fire in an enclosed space into an explosive inferno, the smoke coming from the structure morphs from black to a sickly grayish yellow and puffs through cracks and under doors, huffing in and out as if there were a dragon breathing in the bowels of the building, daring anyone to step nearer. Windows vibrate and rattle. They get coated on the inside with pitch-dark soot.
Every firefighter knows this. With all his experience and all his smarts, Captain Michael Patrick Ramsey certainly did. At a time like that, the worst thing that can happen is for oxygen to be reintroduced into the structure.