by Kylie Logan
Jazz would be sure to call Grandma Kurcz the next day.
“That still doesn’t explain what you’re doing all the way over here.” Jazz polished off another hummus-coated cracker. Her Ramsey grandparents were retired and living in Florida, but Grandma and Grandpa Kurcz—Doris and Stanley—lived in Independence, a suburb to the south of the city. Tremont was not on Claire’s way home.
Her mom’s smile was quick. She picked up her mug, set it back down. “Like I said, Easter candy. I didn’t want to wait until Easter to give you your basket.”
“Owen’s bringing his latest girlfriend, you know.”
This was news to Claire. She took another sip of tea, and over the rim of the cup, Jazz saw her cheeks flush with color. “I hope she’s not like that last one. That girl could drink a sailor under the table.”
“This one’s nice. I went to high school with her.” Jazz did not mention the cigarettes. There was no use prejudicing Claire. “You could have given me my Easter basket then.”
“I could have.” Claire set down her mug so she could dip her cracker in hummus. She paused, cracker nearly to mouth. “I saw the picture. The one in your living room.”
“Owen and Hal—”
“Yeah, Hal stopped by on Sunday and told me about it. It’s a great picture.”
It was just as well Jazz had a mouth full of hummus—she didn’t have to answer.
“It’s kind of nice, don’t you think?” Claire tipped her head. “You know he’s always thinking about you.”
“And you.”
“Well, if he’s thinking about me, he’s thinking about that Honey Do list he never got done!” Claire finished her chip and washed it down with the rest of her tea. “It’s a mile long.”
“You know I’ll help with anything you need to do. Just let me know and—”
“And really, that’s not what I came over here to talk to you about.” Claire reached across the table and covered Jazz’s hand with hers. “It’s been a long year,” she said.
Jazz sighed. “You got that right.”
“And last year at this time, I never even would have believed I could be sitting here telling you this, but…” A short, uncomfortable laugh bubbled up from her. “Life is full of surprises.”
Jazz wasn’t sure where the conversation was going, she only knew that wherever it was, she wasn’t going to like it. She flipped her hand so she could wind her fingers through her mom’s. “What’s up?”
Claire pulled her hand away and popped out of her chair. She walked as far as the doorway that led into Jazz’s tiny dining room, then whirled around again. “It’s like this,” she said. “The boys don’t even know, Jasmine. I wasn’t sure how to tell them. I wanted to tell you first. You know, to see how you’d react. I figured if you understood, then maybe when I bring it up with them I can be a little more … I don’t know … a little more confident, I guess.”
Jazz’s stomach soured. “You’re sick.”
“Oh my gosh, no!” Claire sat back down. She leaned over the table and looked Jazz in the eye. She pulled in a breath, swallowed hard. “I’ve got a date.”
It took a minute for Jazz to process the information, and even after that minute, the only thing she could manage to blurt out was “What?”
“Yeah, I know. I’m surprised, too. Like I said, a year ago I couldn’t have imagined it. Heck, a couple months ago it would have seemed impossible. But…” She was wearing a gray sweatshirt with the red Cleveland Division of Fire logo on it, and when she shrugged, it pulled across her chest.
“His name is Peter Nestico. We’ve been working the Friday-night fish fries together at Our Lady of Angels and we got to talking and—”
“You can’t just go out with some random guy you met at church!” Jazz couldn’t believe her own ears. Was she lecturing her mother? Well, maybe she was. Maybe she had to. Maybe she needed to talk some sense into her. “How do you know who he really is? He could be looking to steal your identity or he could be some sort of crazy person or—”
Her preaching might have been far more effective if Claire didn’t burst out laughing.
“I’ve known Peter for years,” her mother told her. “Through church. His wife died of cancer three or four years ago.”
“And now he’s out trolling for a new woman so he can—”
“Jasmine.” It was not so much her mother’s tone of voice that stopped Jazz cold as it was the look that flew at her from across the table. Oh, she remembered that look, all right. Claire Ramsey was laid-back and quiet. She could afford to be. When she brought out that look, it was far more potent than any amount of yelling could ever be.
“We are not going to run off to Vegas and get married.” Claire’s voice was level. Jazz remembered that tone from the old days, too. It clearly told her the subject was not open for discussion. “We are going for coffee. Tomorrow evening. Maybe we’ll do something crazy after like grab a burger or something. I am not making a lifelong commitment, and Jasmine…” This time when her mother reached for her hand, Jazz felt the frisson of emotion that passed between them. “It doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten Dad. That’s never going to happen. It just means that Peter is nice, and he’s fun to be around, and that sometimes, I’d like to have someone I can talk to. Someone who isn’t Big George.”
Jazz bit her lower lip. “Is he coming for Easter?” She wasn’t sure why it was important; she only knew it was, and she held her breath, waiting for her mother’s reply.
“No. He’s going to his daughter’s because he wants to spend the day with his grandchildren.”
“He has grandchildren? How old is this guy?”
“He’s just a little older than me. And I’d have grandchildren, too, if my children could ever get their acts together and decide to settle down.”
Jazz was in no mood for a lecture she’d heard more than a few times, sometimes with Hal as the subject, sometimes with Owen. More often featuring her. She steered the conversation back where it started. “You’re going to meet him at the coffee place, right? You’re not going to let him pick you up at home? That way you’ve got a car there if you need to make a quick escape.”
“I promise.”
“And you’re going to text me when you get home. I mean, the minute you get home.”
“Cross my heart,” her mother told her.
“Well, all right then.”
“Don’t tell the boys. I want to do that.”
It was Jazz’s turn to promise, and once she had, Claire patted Luther, hugged Jazz, and left for home.
In a matter of minutes, Jazz was on her computer, Googling Peter Nestico.
Except for things like his address and the fact that he owned a small company that did some sort of metal-fabricating work, Peter Nestico was pretty much a nonentity in the world of cyberspace. Jazz finally gave up the fruitless search for the juicy information she’d hoped to find, the damning facts that would make her mother change her mind about having coffee with the man.
By then it was late, but Jazz was too keyed up for bed. Since she couldn’t make sense of what her mother was doing—and because she desperately needed something in her world to make sense—she switched tactics and did a little more digging into the mystery that was Florie Allen.
Thanks to Owen mentioning that he’d talked to Florie, and Florie telling him that she lived on Murray Hill right next door to where there had been a recent fire, she had new information. On Thursday—the day of her mother’s date—she drove to school, and as soon as her day was done, she hopped in the car and headed for Little Italy.
Like the city’s other ethnic enclaves, Little Italy was once home to the immigrants who flooded the city in the late nineteenth century. Most of the neighborhood’s earliest settlers were stonecutters who left their native Italy to work at the grandiose Lake View Cemetery just up the hill. These days, like in Tremont and Ohio City, the streets of Little Italy were filled with restaurants and art galleries, coffeehouses and bars. But here, every one of
them had an Italian accent.
Parking was at a premium and Jazz considered herself lucky when she found a spot on the street not far from the house where she was headed. It was typical of the neighborhood, tall and skinny and painted a dull green that at one time must have looked good with its white shutters and trim. These days the colors were faded and pocked. Like so many of the houses around it (like the one next door where the windows were still boarded and the siding was streaked with smoky gray trails), this one was built at the top of a small rise. Jazz needed to climb four cement steps, walk a short path, then go up the wooden porch steps to get to the front door. There were three mailboxes there—first, second, and third floors. Under each was a single sheet of paper listing the names of the tenants. BRONSON, KRAKOWSKI, and ALLEN lived on the second floor.
She rang the bell and got to the top of the stairway just as a tall young man with hair that stuck up around his head in a curly auburn halo opened the door to the second-floor apartment a crack.
“Yeah, Florie. Sure, she lived here,” he said in answer to Jazz’s question. He was dressed in gray flannel sleep pants with the Batman logo all over them and a white V-neck undershirt. His feet were bare. He didn’t invite her in. “The cops have been by to talk to us. If you’re a cop—”
“I’m not.” She wanted to make that perfectly clear. “I’m an old friend. I thought maybe you’d be able to tell me more about what Florie’s been up to lately. You lived here with her.”
“Not for long!” The voice—it belonged to a woman—floated out from behind the half-closed door.
Jazz peered around the boy with the red hair, and he got the message. He moved back and opened the door wider, and Jazz stepped into the apartment.
It was pretty much what she expected from a students’ rental on Murray Hill, a bare-bones living room with one beat-up easy chair, a couch that had a red-and-blue tie-dyed blanket thrown over it, books, and the faint smell of old beer and laundry that needed to be washed.
The owner of the second voice was in the kitchen. Jazz heard dishes clatter.
“What do you mean, not for long?” She raised her voice, but when she didn’t get an answer, she turned again to the boy. “What did she mean?”
“Florie.” With the way the light flowed in from the front window, Jazz could see that the young man’s cheeks were dotted with freckles—hundreds of freckles—that danced this way and that when he made a face. “She wasn’t sticking around much longer.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, well, she was—”
The woman Jazz heard rambling around in the kitchen walked into the room, a dishcloth in one hand. She wasn’t much younger than Jazz, and she, too, looked like she’d just gotten out of bed. Her long dark hair was tangled, her outfit was nearly a match for the man’s except that her sleep pants were decorated with the grinning face of Hello Kitty, and her T-shirt was pink.
“Meg Bronson.” She stuck out a hand and Jazz shook it. “The guy with the big mouth is Jeff Krakowski but you can call him Croc. Everyone does.”
“I’m Jazz,” she told them. “And I just wondered—”
“Yeah. Pretty much everyone is wondering about Florie,” Meg told her.
“Not over at North Coast. The students there act like they hardly knew her.”
Meg draped the dish towel over the back of the couch. “She hated those asshats.”
“Do you know why?”
Meg’s phone pinged. She took it out of her pocket, checked the text message, and didn’t answer it. “I know she wasn’t staying there after this semester.”
“Her grades were bad.”
“And her finances were even worse.” Croc strolled over to the other side of the couch and flopped down.
“Is that what you meant…” Jazz looked at Meg. “When you said she wasn’t going to be living here much longer?”
“Look…” Meg scooped her hair out of her eyes. “We weren’t best friends or anything. Me and Croc, we roomed together last year and we lost the med student who was living with us. He went back to Uruguay or Colombia or—”
“Costa Rica,” Croc provided the details.
“Yeah. Costa Rica. Whatever.” Meg got back on track. “Once he left, we advertised for a roommate and we got Florie. And she was an okay person, but there was only so long the two of us could keep fronting her money. She finally paid January rent in February.”
“And she never did pay February and March,” Croc added.
“We’re not jerks, but it wasn’t fair to us,” Meg said. “We told her she had to be out by the end of the month. Now … well…” Her eyes welled and she looked away, composing herself. “I guess she really is out for good.”
“And you’re out the money she owes you,” Jazz pointed out.
Meg brushed the thought aside. “We’ll get by. Croc’s been working extra at the place he bartends, and I’ll call and give my dad a sob story. That usually works. But it’s the principle of the thing, you know? Florie owed us, and she never paid.”
“And she was weird,” Croc put in.
Since Croc had already settled in with a game of Call of Duty, Jazz turned to Meg for the answer. “Was she?”
She laughed. “Hey, I’m a theater major over at Case. I see weird all the time! I wouldn’t exactly call Florie weird, I’d say she was … strange.”
“In what way?” Jazz wanted to know.
“Come on.” With Meg leading the way, Jazz walked through the dining room (there was a card table in the center of the room with two backpacks on it, and a case of Bud Lite over in the corner) and to a short hallway where there was a bathroom and three bedrooms. Meg opened the door of the room at the end of the hall and stepped back to allow Jazz inside.
“Florie’s room?” Jazz asked, but she didn’t really need Meg to answer. The first thing she saw was a print of the same photograph she’d seen Tate Brody take out of Florie’s studio at school, the computer-manipulated picture that was a swirl of colors and images.
It was the only touch of color in a room that was otherwise a study in monochrome—white bedspread, black fuzzy throw rug, a wooden desk painted white. There were no clothes lying across the single white wooden chair in the corner, no papers on the desk, no signs of life.
The thought was especially poignant, and Jazz got rid of it with a shake of her shoulders. “The cops looked around?”
“I guess they didn’t find much of anything.”
“Was it always…” Jazz took a couple steps further into the room and glided one finger over the surface of the pristine desk. “Was Florie always this neat?”
“I think that’s part of the reason Croc thinks she was weird,” Meg confessed. “But hey, to each his own, you know? She was the same way when it came to the kitchen. Didn’t like things on the counter, cleaned up the table as soon as she stood up.” It reminded Jazz of what Loretta at St. Catherine’s had said about how Florie liked nothing better than cleaning up the cafeteria kitchen.
“Sounds like Florie should have been the ideal roommate,” Jazz ventured. “If it wasn’t for the fact that she never had money for rent.”
“You got that right. Rent money, and…” There was a single closet in the room, and Meg went over to it, opened the door, and stepped back.
Jazz leaned forward and, as much as she tried, she couldn’t help herself. She stared wide-eyed at the item of clothing that was front and center, an ankle-length black robe with long sleeves. There was a black veil attached to the hanger, a rosary long enough to wear as a belt looped over it. Odd? This definitely qualified. “Don’t tell me, let me guess. This is what Croc meant when he said she was weird.”
Meg fingered the nun’s habit. “It’s not like she went out and bought it or had it specially made or anything. I mean, if she did, then that would be really strange. But she borrowed…” The way she emphasized the word told Jazz it was true only in the broadest sense of the word. “She borrowed stuff from our theater department. Stuff like this. Well,
really, I borrowed it for her once in a while.” Meg scooped the habit off the hanger and hung it over her arm. “I’m glad I showed you this, I would have forgotten about it otherwise. I’ll take it back to the theater with me tonight.”
“Did she say why she needed it?” Jazz asked.
Meg laughed. “I never asked. What that girl didn’t do with clothes! Sometimes she’d go to Goodwill and come back with the strangest stuff.”
“Like an old raincoat and galoshes?” Jazz asked.
Meg eyed her with new interest. “Yeah, she did buy that stuff once. And once she bought an old bridesmaid’s dress. Pink satin. Hellish! But every once in a while…” The habit slipped on her arm and she hoisted it back into place. “Every once in a while Florie would ask me if I could get something special for her. Like this outfit. Or one time it was a pair of those really old lady shoes, the kind that tie up the front and have chunky heels.”
“Stuff she couldn’t find even at the thrift store.”
Jazz was talking to herself, but Meg’s eyes lit. “You’re right. I never thought about it that way.”
“Did you ever ask her why she wanted clothes like that?”
“I didn’t much care. She paid me a little something every time I got an outfit out of the costume room for her. But don’t tell anyone.” Meg looked at her hard, waiting for Jazz to promise she wouldn’t.
“Where did she wear this stuff?” she asked instead.
Meg shrugged. “Sometimes she’d dress up in the morning and head out. Sometimes she’d go out late in one outfit or another. I dunno. I pretty much don’t care, except I wondered if maybe she and that guy of hers were into some kind of kinky sex. You know, role-playing and all.”
As far as Jazz could remember, no one else had mentioned that Florie had a boyfriend. Unless …
She told herself not to give in to the tingle of excitement that told her she might be onto something, and instead kept her voice even. “Any idea who that guy was?”
“I never saw him.” Meg led the way out of the room. On her way through the dining room, she dumped the habit on the table. “Hey, Croc.” He was busy shooting Nazis, so she raised her voice and tried again. “Croc!”