by Kylie Logan
He knew better than to enter the house on Bridge Avenue.
Oxygen feeds a fire, and when air rushes across the superheated surfaces of a closed room, the results are instantaneous.
And deadly.
That evening, like always, thinking about the scene that played out just across the street from where she stood made Jazz’s insides knot. The lot was empty now, a tangle of overgrown grass and weeds. But it once held a house much like the ones on either side of it.
Two stories plus an attic. Maybe the house had roses tangled around an arbor like the pristine Victorian on the right, with its gingerbread trim and yellow front door. Maybe, like at the house on the left, there was a stroller parked in the middle of the front walk, a van with a busted-out back window in the drive.
Four adults and five children made it out of the house alive that night.
Her dad did not.
When she bent at the waist and fought to catch her breath, it wasn’t because she’d run the two miles from her home in Tremont to the equally gentrified Ohio City. Heck, she helped coach the cross-country team at St. Catherine’s. For Jazz, running was relaxation and meditation. It kept her in shape to work with the dogs.
A year earlier, every single time she ran, she ended up at the vacant lot. But then spring melted into summer, and summer burst into the fiery shades of autumn, and autumn froze and then melted again and …
She didn’t run to this spot as often as she used to. Sarah told her that was a good thing, it meant she was getting a handle on her grief. Jazz wasn’t so sure. She thought maybe it meant she was starting to forget.
And she didn’t ever want that to happen.
She crossed the narrow street. The fire had happened a little more than a year before and there was no way she could still smell the smoke that hung in the air the way it had the morning after the blaze when Jazz and her mom and her brothers, Hal and Owen, stood right here on the slate sidewalk with their arms linked, holding each other up in the face of a pain made even more impossible when they heard the word arson. Still, Jazz was convinced the acrid smoke was stuck in her lungs. Sometimes she swore she could still feel the grit of the ashes in her eyes and taste the salt of her tears on her lips.
He was fifty-two years old, and he was her best friend. He was her hero.
And he knew better than to walk into that house.
A car zipped by, its radio blaring Lil Wayne, and the vibration of the bass line shook Jazz out of her thoughts.
She hadn’t come to Ohio City to think about the past.
There was something she had to do.
She didn’t bother to give the vacant lot one last look. She would be back. Besides, by now she knew where every empty beer bottle on it winked in the sun, and she turned her back on them and on the weeds and on the memories that would always burn with all the intensity of the back draft that killed her father. A couple blocks away, she went north, looped around another corner, and stopped in front of the home of Larry and Renee Allen.
Thanks to the massive Italianate crammed onto the double-wide lot on the left, its garden already in full springtime yellow daffodils and early red tulips, the Allens’ house looked like the wallflower at the ball. The house needed paint. The driveway was cracked and overgrown. The wooden steps she climbed to the sagging front porch were cockeyed, the gray paint nearly worn completely away in spots.
Florie’s parents weren’t expecting her.
She still couldn’t decide if that was good or bad, and not knowing made her queasy. Jazz ran a hand over her hair, took off her sunglasses, and tugged her loose-fitting tank top into place before she pressed the doorbell next to the aluminum screen door. For the hundredth time since she decided to come, she wondered what she would say to the Allens. What words could possibly penetrate their grief?
It took a few minutes for the inside wooden door to open. When it did, she found herself looking through the screen at a man with close-cropped dark hair and a paunch that rounded the orange T-shirt he wore with jeans. He didn’t invite her in. In fact, he didn’t even ask who she was. He blinked, squeezed into the pie slice of doorway, and stared.
Jazz swallowed her misgivings. “Mr. Allen? I’m Jasmine Ramsey. I work at St. Catherine’s. I was in the area and I stopped by to tell you how sorry I was about Florie.”
“What?” The question came from somewhere behind Larry Allen. A woman’s voice.
“Someone’s here asking about Florie.” He raised his voice and a second later, a woman wedged herself into the small space between Larry and the door. She was short and round, and her dishwater blond hair hung around her shoulders. Like her husband, Renee Allen looked at Jazz through the screen door.
Jazz studied them, too, wondering if they’d look less careworn without the crisscross of fine metal over their faces.
“I came to offer my condolences,” she said. “Florie was a great kid. I’m very sorry.”
Larry Allen had a wide nose and he smelled like cigars, but even that wasn’t as strong as the musty odor that seeped from the house. Jazz wondered what could smell so dank and heavy on an evening when the skies were blue and a crisp breeze snapped the buds of the maple tree on the perfectly manicured lawn next door.
It was completely inadequate, but the only thing she could think to say was “If there’s anything I can do…”
Larry glanced at his wife. She looked down at her powder-blue fuzzy slippers.
“You work at the school, huh?” Larry asked.
“I’m Sister Eileen’s administrative assistant. I think we met once.” She wasn’t sure. In fact, she thought they probably hadn’t. She would have remembered Renee’s watery blue eyes and Larry’s missing front tooth. But it seemed like the right thing to say. “Maybe at one of Florie’s cross-country meets.”
“That Eileen, she’s the one who gave us the money to send Florie to that school.”
“Eileen doesn’t give the money, not directly.” Jazz wasn’t sure why, but it seemed important to point this out. “The decisions on scholarships are made by the board and a committee of teachers, and—”
“You think she’d give us more? Funerals are mighty expensive.”
Jazz caught her breath. Was that all there was behind Larry and Renee’s blank expressions, the thought of how much and from where? Where were the tears Florie deserved? Where was the ache, the anger, the despair?
Where was Jazz’s own sense of compassion?
The thought knocked some sense into her. If there was one thing she’d learned from her father’s death, it was that everyone dealt with grief in their own way. It wasn’t her place to judge.
It was, though, her chance to see what she might get in exchange for the promise of considering their request.
“I can talk to Sister Eileen,” she told them. “But speaking of that … When was the last time you spoke to Florie?”
Larry pursed his fleshy lips. “The cop who came around, he asked us that.”
Jazz didn’t need to ask which cop. “And what did you tell him?”
“It was maybe three, four weeks ago.” When Renee spoke up, Larry flinched. “She called one day.”
“What did you talk about?”
Renee lifted her scrawny shoulders.
“What did Florie say?”
She wrinkled her nose.
“Did she want something? Need something?”
It might have been a trick of the evening light and Jazz’s slightly blurred view through the screen on the door. She could have sworn Renee’s top lip curled. “Same as always. Florie was always looking for money.”
Larry grunted. “Like we have any to give her. I told her that, and she got all mad. Said she’d figure out some other way to get what she needed.”
“Did she say why she needed the money?” Jazz wanted to know.
“Like I said,” Larry snapped. His cheeks darkened. His eyes popped. “We didn’t have any to give her and she knew it.”
Jazz automatically stepped back in
the face of his fury.
She tensed, watching Larry’s barrel chest rise and fall, listening to the sharp intake of his breath.
And she decided there was nothing to be gained by making either of the Allens angry. Clearly, money was a touchy subject, one far more likely to get a rise out of him than talking about his daughter’s murder.
She pulled in a breath. “Florie was very talented.”
At his sides, Larry’s hands curled into fists. He clicked his tongue. “She took pictures.”
She managed a smile. “Florie’s pictures were special, weren’t they?” She hoped she didn’t sound as perky to the Allens as she did to herself, then realized it probably didn’t matter much. What was important was to get their conversation back on even footing. If it had ever been there in the first place.
“We’ve got a few of Florie’s photographs hanging in the hallways at St. Catherine’s. She had an eye for light. She used it to create a mood. There’s a picture of trees she took when she was just a sophomore. Sunlight filtering through the leaves. It’s a black-and-white photograph and every time I see it, I imagine how blue the sky above the trees is, and how the summer breeze feels.”
Larry shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Anybody can take pictures. All you need is a phone.”
She wasn’t about to argue the point. Jazz cleared her throat. “You said you hadn’t talked to her for a few weeks. Florie didn’t live here?”
As if they weren’t quite sure, the Allens exchanged looks before Renee shook her head. “She shared a house with a few other kids over near school.”
“It’s all been in the paper,” Larry said, and as if media attention was some sort of honor rather than the intrusion Jazz knew it to be, he inched back his shoulders. “A couple of the TV stations came by and interviewed us. What did they expect us to say?”
Even though those same TV stations had shown up at her parents’ house in the days after her dad’s death, Jazz still couldn’t even begin to imagine. “There’s nothing you can say.” She didn’t bother to mention that she knew this from experience because her experience wasn’t theirs, and she didn’t want to patronize them. “I’m sure whatever you said was the right thing.”
“I thought maybe that’s who you were.” Larry looked her up and down. “When you first came to the door, I thought you were that What’s-Her-Name, you know, the skinny chick with the long hair. The one on Channel Three.”
Just to go along with him, Jazz looked down at her blue shorts and her purple tank top and laughed. “I have a feeling reporters dress better than this. But maybe they ask the same kinds of questions. Did they ask about the last time you saw Florie? When was that?”
“Halloween,” Renee answered instantly, then just as quickly corrected herself. “No, it was around Christmas. Maybe.”
“I know that was a while ago, but did she say anything about anyone being angry at her?” It was too blunt, but there was no other way to put it. “Was there anyone who might have wanted to hurt Florie?”
Larry narrowed his eyes. “You say you work at the school? Why do you care? Why are you asking the same things that cop did?”
Legitimate questions. Too bad Jazz didn’t know the answers.
“I don’t mean to pry,” she told them, because that, at least, was true, “but at St. Catherine’s, we think of the girls as family.”
Not the whole truth. That had more to do with the bruises on Florie’s neck, the broken heel of her boot lying next to her body. It had to do with how Jazz hadn’t been able to sleep, not without waking up startled, certain she’d heard Luther bark three times.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
The Allens’ daughter had been taken from them, just like her dad had been taken from her. For that, if nothing else, she owed them the truth she hadn’t even faced up to herself.
When she opened her eyes again, she found both the Allens watching her carefully.
“I thought if I understood more about what Florie was up to, if I heard more about what she’s been doing, I thought I could try and make some sense of what happened to her,” she told them.
Renee hung her head.
Larry settled his weight on his back foot.
Jazz felt heat rise in her cheeks.
“I’m sorry.” She stepped back, closer to the tipsy stairs. “I’m sorry for your loss and … I’m sorry I bothered you.”
“You gonna talk to that Sister Eileen?” Larry wanted to know.
She couldn’t believe she didn’t know better than to leave well enough alone. “Do you have any idea what Florie could have been doing in that old building in Tremont on Saturday night?” she countered.
Larry puffed out his cheeks and Renee clasped her hands at her waist.
“It just seems strange, that’s all,” Jazz said. “I mean, the building is being rehabbed, but right now, the walls are practically falling down.” She stopped herself before she said any more and they realized she’d been there. “It seems like a weird place for Florie to hang out.”
“Like I said…” When Larry moved back, there was no room for Renee at the door. She had no choice but to melt into the shadows behind him. “We haven’t talked to Florie for a while.”
“Yes, of course.” Jazz scraped her palms against her shorts. “There’s no way you would know.”
“And Sister Eileen?”
She had bothered them enough. “I’ll talk to Sister Eileen,” she told Larry, and Renee, too, though she wasn’t sure if Renee was still anywhere around. Larry had moved to his right and closed the door so much that she could only see a strip of his jeans and shirt, just a patch of his mouth and nose. “I can’t say for sure, but there might be money in the St. Catherine’s emergency fund that could help pay funeral expenses. I’m not making any promises, of course, but—”
In the end, but what didn’t matter because Larry closed the door.
Jazz wondered briefly if he’d come back, but she knew he wouldn’t. She turned and went down the steps and for the first time, she realized there was a woman on the sidewalk watching her.
“You’re here about the kid, right?” The woman was short and thin and had a cascade of dark, wavy curls. She poked her chin in the direction of the Allens’ house. “Florie? Are you a reporter?”
“Did you know her?”
“Sure. I live right here.” The woman walked not toward the Italianate, but in the other direction and a block of yellow stone row houses. On the tiny front porch of the closest unit there was a Pack ’n Play portable playpen, and the woman glanced at it long enough to check on the baby in it.
“I work at the high school Florie attended,” Jazz told the woman. “She was a nice kid.”
The baby up on the porch started fussing and the woman went and got him. He was maybe a year old and he reminded Jazz of the old men who played bocce in Lincoln Park on Saturday afternoons. Three chins, no hair, chubby legs. The kid had a round head, a nose too big for his face, and eyes that, Jazz hoped, could somehow be uncrossed before he started school and was the butt of too many cruel jokes.
The woman held the baby over her shoulder and patted his back. “I sure am going to miss the money I made off Florie,” she said.
Jazz was so busy staring at the ever-growing wet stain on the back of the baby’s pants, she hadn’t been paying attention and she snapped to.
“Money? Florie paid you money?”
“Twenty-five dollars. Each and every time.”
“Each and every time you did…”
The woman laughed, and now that he’d quieted, she flipped the baby around and propped him on her hip. He promptly let out a long string of drool.
“Every time I let her take Lalo here.”
“She babysat and paid you to do it?”
“Nah, nah, though now that you mention it, I guess that is kind of what happened. She never stopped to see them when she was in the neighborhood, I don’t think.” The woman glanced at the Allens’ house. “But after I had
the baby, she’d come by and talk to me once in a while and sometimes she’d ask if she could take Lalo out for the day. It was always a treat to get some alone time, you know? But Florie, she wasn’t babysitting. Not exactly. Sometimes she’d take Lalo to the park or over near the Market where there are places to sit outside. And every time she did, she gave me twenty-five bucks. You know, as a kind of a payment. Because she was taking pictures of him.”
Jazz thanked the woman and walked away, more curious than ever about what the last years of Florie’s life had been like, and what she was up to that brought her to the abandoned building where she’d been strangled.
And why on earth a girl who was apparently desperate for money would pay twenty-five dollars to take pictures of the homeliest kid on earth.
CHAPTER 5
The doorbell rang as Jazz was rinsing the last of the shampoo out of her hair.
It was Tuesday, and just a little after six in the morning. Even before she stepped out of the shower and grabbed her terry-cloth robe, she knew there was no way anyone made a social call at that hour.
“I’m coming,” she yelled as soon as she had a towel around her head and the bathroom door open. “Wait a minute. I’m coming!”
She got downstairs and to the front door in record time, then stopped, surprised.
“Sorry.” Looking more than a little embarrassed, Greg Johnson mouthed the word through the window on the front door. At his side Luther thumped his tail on the front porch, thrilled to see Jazz.
She opened the door. “What’s up?”
“I’m sorry, Jazz. I should have called. It’s just…”
Though it was a cool morning, his jacket was open, and Greg hadn’t combed his hair. She stepped back and out of the way so he and Luther could come into the house.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
Greg scratched a hand along the back of his neck and, now that they were inside, he dropped Luther’s leash. The dog had visited before. He headed straight for the corner next to the couch, the place he’d napped the last time Greg and his wife, Toni, dropped by.