CHAPTER 9
Another week passed before I regained enough strength to travel and Dulcey could clear her client schedule. I called Bates to let him know I was coming. He had called once since I’d asked him to look into Nareece’s disappearance, only to say there were no new developments.
On the way out of town, we stopped at the hospital to see Calvin. The nurse at the station said his condition remained unchanged, now three weeks in a coma. Three weeks since someone had tried to kill us.
I stood outside the door unable to move farther until a nurse came and pushed it open. She was on a mission to take his vitals. I stood in the doorway for a bit, then stumbled in behind her and waited for her to finish and leave before I inched up to his bedside. He looked as though he was just sleeping. I mean, there were two jagged lines on his forehead, and a scrape across the bridge of his nose, but his expression was uninhibited. I rubbed my fingers over his forehead and down his cheek. His skin was as smooth and shiny as a sandstone. My heart beat hard and fast. I kissed his stilled lips and his cheek.
Driving through New York took two hours, a drive that really should have taken half that time. Another three hours passed before patches of green with splashes of yellow, pink, and purple streaked by, the backdrop on both sides of the Massachusetts Turnpike. A long winter riddled with record snowstorms had finally given way to spring peeking through. Spring had bloomed all the way twenty years ago when Cap and I had moved Nareece to Boston. The tepid breeze and vibrant colors were even more inviting then, until I almost decided to move with her. Nareece shunned the idea. She said she needed to stand on her own two feet, which was a major contradiction where she was concerned. I thought her being in Boston would give me relief from wondering and having to deal with whatever insanity she managed to find on any given day. Really, her move became a twenty-year, long-distance upbringing, with no vacation from worry for me, until she met John, ten years ago.
“Hmm, not even then,” I said out loud without realizing it, but for Dulcey coming back at me.
“Girl, what you talkin’? I thought you were asleep.”
“No, just thinking. Nareece and her crazy self. Twenty years and still she acts crazy more than she acts sane, and even then you have to wonder if she really does manage to exhibit a lucid moment in her madness. John has to love the ground she prances on to put up with her stuff. What is she thinking, leaving those babies?”
“She’s not. You and John haven’t let her. Every time the child burps, one of you wipes any spittle from her cheeks and then you want to wash her up while you’re at it, and dress her up in bows and frills and put her in a bubble lined with cushiony stuff so she won’t bump anything or get bruised anywhere.”
Blah, blah, blah. Sweat beads popped out on her forehead.
I appreciated Dulcey being the devil at my back most times, but sometimes she pushed so hard I could hardly resist the urge to snatch her face off. I was watching her mouth moving fast, spit spraying out every other word, head bobbing up and down, and I was wondering how she was driving with so much other action going on. “You know I’m talkin’ true,” she was saying. “You and Reecey need to fix this so everybody can move on.” She looked sideways at me. I glared “enough” to her—one eye brow up, the other furrowed, lips sucked to one side.
After about a half hour I entered the Nareece conversation arena once again. Dulcey could be hard to take sometimes, but she was my other half and I needed her mouth to be running, feeding me and helping me find a halfway straight path to follow through this situation.
“I’m really worried about her this time, Dulce. It’s been three weeks since I was supposed to go there so we could open the letter.”
“Wait one minute. You mean she still hasn’t opened the letter?” Dulcey shook her head in wonder, then went on before I could say anything. “Yeah, I guess not since you been out of commission.”
“She wouldn’t open it until I got there and I never got there, and now I don’t know where she is or whether or not she has opened it yet. It’s been two weeks since I talked to John. He’s not answering his phone. Bates says one of the neighbors saw John and the girls a few days ago, so no missing persons there. I don’t know what the hell’s going on.”
An hour later we checked in to the Crown Plaza at Exit 17. The hotel hangs like a bridge over the Massachusetts Turnpike in Newton. Newton is about fifteen miles west of Boston and twenty minutes from Milton, where John and Nareece live.
When we got to the room, I called John. No answer. We went to the hotel restaurant, Applebee’s, and ate, then drove over to the house anyway. The time was 9 p.m. when we left the hotel. Surely they would be home by the time we got there.
I did not know my way around the area well, but I knew my way between the hotel and Nareece’s house. I had made the trip at least fifty times in twenty years: Massachusetts Turnpike east to Exit 14, I-95/Route 128, to Route 38N toward Milton, to Canton Avenue, right to Indian Spring Road. On most visits, I stayed with Nareece and John, but some situations warranted separate space.
The neighborhood consisted of a mixture of sprawling homes and medium-sized sprawling homes set on a minimum of three acres each, a pumped-up version of a Stepford Wives community. Yards showcased perfectly shaped trees, manicured lawns, and vibrant flower gardens, despite spring not having sprung to its full potential yet. Nareece and John’s house was a medium-sized sprawling colonial set back a ways from the street, the front partly hidden by foliage. John had done well, though I still did not understand exactly what he did. Dulcey pulled into the half-circle driveway and stopped just past the front door. A faint light shone through the large picture window, giving off an eerie aura.
“Spooky,” Dulcey whispered.
“Oh girl, get your scary ass out of the car.” I chuckled with tentative sincerity.
Dulcey got out and came around to my side. “Now this is what I’m talking about,” she said, looking up and down the street and perusing the houses. “Reecey done good for herself. Maybe I’ll move here when I retire.”
“Shut up. You’ve only been out of Philly twice, once on your honeymoon and now. You are never leaving Philly and that’s a fact.” We laughed until Dulcey choked. It took a few minutes for her to stop coughing and catch her breath.
“There’s a time for everything,” she said, stealing her way up the driveway to the front door. I got to the door first. It stood ajar. I pulled my gun from its holster at my waist and waved Dulcey to get behind me. I pushed the door all the way open and stepped inside, flicking the light switch on in the same movement.
To the left, the cushions of the Italian leather couch and chair, Nareece’s prized possessions, were strewn across the floor, along with lamps, papers, and tchotchkes.
I whispered, “Stay put, Dulcey,” which was a waste of breath. Dulcey followed me step for step as I searched each room, then went upstairs.
At the top of the stairs to the right, John and Nareece’s bedroom door creaked open with a light touch. Everything seemed to be in its place. I tiptoed down the hall to the twins’ room.
He charged out the door at us like a bull, knocking me back and causing my gun to fire. Dulcey swung and landed a punch, knocking the man against the wall. He pushed her back and ran for the stairs, as Dulcey flipped sideways over the railing. I reached out and caught her arm, holding on for about three seconds before my grip slipped, and she fell to the stairs below, barely missing falling on the man, who fled through the open front door to the outside. She tumbled down the stairs like a rag doll, flipped head over body once, and landed at the bottom spread-eagle.
I almost fell down the stairs on top of her, trying to reach her. She waved me away to the chase. I ran outside, but he was gone. I returned to Dulcey, who was struggling to get up.
“I’m going to feel this for the rest of my natural life,” she moaned. She was bent over, massaging her lower spine with one hand, while I held the other and guided her to the couch. She twisted her neck around until it cracked. I shuddered at the bone-breaking sound.
She held my arm to brace herself and eased back to lie down on the couch. I picked up a lamp from the floor and placed it on the end table for light. The creak of the front door made me spin around and draw my gun toward the intruder.
“Freeze! Police!” an officer yelled.
Dulcey popped up and hollered from the pain the sudden movement caused. I lowered my gun, set it on the floor, and raised my arms, slowly, against the fear of an edgy trigger finger. Bates marched in behind several police officers.
“Well, well. Police come running to gunfire in this neighborhood,” I said, lowering my arms.
Bates signaled the officers to lower their weapons. “I was heading home and heard the ten-eleven for this address,” he said. He did a one-eighty and ordered the four officers with him to check the house for more intruders. “Anybody else home?”
“No. The door was open when we arrived. Caught one of them in the act, but didn’t get a good look at him. He was black, bald, about six-one, two-twenty, dark blue hoodie, black sneakers, gloves, nothing specific.”
“For this neighborhood, that’s specific.”
An officer came into the room, holstering his weapon. “Place is clear, sir. Should I get a bus for the lady?” he said, gesturing toward Dulcey.
From a reclined position, Dulcey waved the offer away. “I know I’m gonna have a mother of a bruise and be sore as heck, but no, thank you. Nothing’s broken.”
“I’ll take over from here,” Bates said. The officers cleared the house, and the army of police cars left the neighborhood as fast as they had come. I was closing the door when Mrs. Crowley stuck her hand in to stop me. Mrs. Crowley was a munchkin, about four and a half feet tall, a female black version of Mr. Kim. I smiled at the thought. Mrs. Bourgeoisie with a capital B.
“Is everything all right? I heard gunshots and called the police,” she squeaked, ducking under my extended arm to gain entry. “Another break-in, huh? I haven’t seen John and the girls around for a bit. The good Lord only knows what would have happened if they had been home.” She marched up to Bates and extended her arm for a handshake. “Carolyn Crowley.”
“Detective Bates. You said ‘another break-in.’ Have there been other break-ins in the neighborhood?”
“No, no, only here. I saw two men looking around outside the house about three days ago. I called, but no police came. They were two black men. They didn’t get in, however.”
“How do you know?”
Giving Bates a twisted look, she snarled, “I watched until they left. I had hoped the police would come before then.” Bourgeoisie got ghetto.
“Mrs. Crowley, do you know John’s whereabouts?” I asked.
“Where John and the girls are? Oh, my dear, they’ve been gone for a week or more, I would say. John came back Wednesday late afternoon and left again on Thursday about the same time, three o’clock. I don’t stay in people’s business, so I couldn’t tell you where they went.” She stretched her neck to take in more of the house, then she began flitting around like a stray bullet bouncing off surfaces until it finds a penetration point. “That poor man, he can’t handle this mess and the girls, too,” she said, picking up a lamp and setting it on the other end table.
“But do you know where they went?”
“No. But they might be at John’s mother’s house in Watertown, no Newton, she lives in Newton. Yes. Lovely lady. Ama, I think her name is. The girls call her Ba, or something like that. It means ‘grandmother’ in Vietnamese. I met Ama when she came to visit a few months ago, I think it was.”
“Thanks for your help, Mrs. Crowley, I’ll check that out.” I captured her arm and escorted her out with her pulling against my hold all the way.
“Now, you be sure to tell John he can call me to help clean this mess up. I have some oatmeal-raisin cookies for those little darlings, too. And tell Nareece she can count on me for the girls’ school bake sale. You know, I bake my cookies and red velvet cake every year for them. They always tell me my baked goods are the first to sell every year.” She chuckled, then shook her head and ranted on in a different direction with a darker expression.
I ushered her down the driveway and released. She muttered the entire distance to her door, snatches about how the devil had the neighborhood in his grip, and now the children needed protection from the devil’s fiery breath.
Bates was sitting at John’s desk in the corner of the room when I returned. “Is there anything missing? Because they were definitely looking for something.” Papers covered the top of the desk and the floor around it. He sifted through some of them. “I don’t think they found what they wanted, though. You must’ve interrupted the search.”
I went to the couch to check on Dulcey, who had dozed off. She slept with a pained expression, which gave me pause about her decision to forgo the hospital. I threw a blanket from the back of the couch over her and headed to the kitchen. Bates followed.
“Want something to drink?” I offered, busying myself at the sink to keep my back to him. “Water, maybe.” He ignored me.
“You might want to know that we have a lead on your friend’s location. She used a credit card at a motel two days ago, the Doubletree in Cambridge. The clerk said she was alone. At least she checked in alone and stayed two nights. That’s it. Still nothing on her car, so it must be off the street. Her husband never filed a missing person’s. If she’s okay and doesn’t want to be found, well, the odds change.”
I stayed silent.
“Look, Muriel. If you want this to go further, you’re going to have to file a missing person’s report yourself. I can’t authorize any more man-hours on this, officially, anyway.”
When I turned around, Bates was in my face—nose-hair close. A dry mouth made me swallow hard. Cornered with the sink behind me, I leaned back, not sure if he was hitting on me, which I did not want, or if I felt guilty about lying to him. Technically, Reecey was still in the witness protection program and I wasn’t sure sharing that information with Bates was best for her safety. A glass of water seemed an appropriate distraction. I turned around to the sink. When I turned back, glass in hand, Bates was still staring.
“I’ll keep checking and write this incident up so it will remain open. It might lead to something useful. I don’t think we’re going to find any unusual fingerprints.” He didn’t move his body or his eyes. I gulped water, pretending I didn’t notice. When I finished, I sidestepped his position and moved toward the front door, hoping he would follow my lead.
When I reached the door, a straight shot from the kitchen sink, Bates was still in the kitchen, turned around and staring after me. A twitch took over my right eye. I held his stare until he gave in and made the move toward me, to leave, I hoped.
“Thanks, Bates. I owe you. If you ever have issues in the Philly area, I got you.”
He pecked my cheek and left.
I closed the door and went back to the kitchen to find something to eat. The refrigerator contained a bottle of soda, two sticks of butter, a half dozen eggs, and a half gallon of milk. The end date stamped on the milk carton was two weeks ago. Some canned goods, Smartfood popcorn, a box of Honey Nut Cheerios, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch were all that filled the pantry cabinet. The kitchen was clean with everything in place—even the dishwasher was empty. It seemed like there hadn’t been any cooking going on or planned for some time. I tore into a bag of popcorn.
After a few handfuls, I went upstairs to John and Nareece’s bedroom. A borderless king-sized bed set against a redbrick wall. The bed was covered with a beige down comforter that puffed up as though being fed by a blower. Large earth-tone pillows made up the headboard, and a reddish-orange throw adorned one bottom corner. At the opposite end of the room, a large redbrick fireplace extended up to the ceiling and the width of the wall. A light oak mantelpiece held several photographs of the girls, and John and Nareece. Mom’s old Windsor rocker sat in front of the fireplace. It was the one keepsake Nareece took with her when she moved. I went into the master bath and opened the medicine cabinet. The three shelves were empty, except for a few cosmetics and some Q-tips. What nagged at me was that the house was too clean, almost unlived in.
I went back downstairs to John’s desk. It was John’s when he needed to work, and the twins’ desk when the Twofer Detective Agency was on a case. The phone, which sat on the right corner of the desk, showed there were messages, but I couldn’t access them without a password. I went through the papers spread across the desktop and rifled through the drawers, which contained mostly papers with drawings the girls had made. A picture envelope, pencils, pens, and paper clips filled the middle drawer of the desk. I accidentally pulled the picture envelope out by the wrong end, emptying photos on the desk. Travis and Kenyetta stared up at me. I was stunned. The photos showed them going in and out of my house, at school, and in an unfamiliar location, the twins playing in the backyard here, and my mother and father leaving out the front door of our family house. Though no dates or other distinguishing marks on the pictures provided any clues, my parents’ clothing was the same as the night they died. I was positive about that. Tears stung my eyes.
I flipped the envelope over, looking for markings or Carmella’s name. Nothing, just a plain white envelope. I rifled through the drawer again, looking for a note or something to indicate who had taken the photos, or where they’d come from. The only thing I came up with was a photo of me and Nareece when she was about seven or eight. I would not have remembered when or where it was taken except that I had my cap and gown on, so I knew it was at my high school graduation. Still, I don’t remember the picture being taken, or rather I had a mental block about it. About Nareece back then.
Now losing Nareece was not an option.
As close as I thought Nareece and I were, there was a canyon between us. Yes, we talked on the phone every day, or we used to anyway. Yes, we said we were each other’s best friends, that we would always be there for each other, and that we’d always love each other—no matter what. And I knew we would. But we never talked about our parents, we never talked about their death, or the attack. We never talked about our feelings or changes we’d gone through after they died. We never talked about Travis, really talked about Travis. Five years ago, she’d started making inquiries, more like that of an acquaintance being polite. Now, suddenly, she wanted to know everything about him and she wanted him to know everything about her.
Dulcey stirred. “I guess the excitement wore my butt out,” she said, peeking over the back of the couch at me. “What’s up?”
I got up and brought the photos to her. On my way across the room, the front doorknob jiggled. I dashed to the door, gun in hand, and hid behind the entryway retaining wall with a visual of the doorway. Dulcey dropped to the floor behind the couch.
“Muriel,” John called as he entered.
I exhaled and stepped out of hiding. “I’m here.” He turned and faced me.
“I saw your car in the driveway and wondered what the hell you were doing here at this time of night. You should have called—” He stopped short, focused on the mess in the living room. “What the hell happened?”
“You had visitors.”
John stepped farther into the room and perused the damage, then picked up a couple of tchotchkes and put them back in their place. He looked around with a blank expression, then stumbled over to his desk, fell into the chair, and began opening and closing drawers and shuffling around papers.
“Why haven’t you been returning my calls? First you ask me to check into Nareece’s disappearance, then you and the girls disappear.”
“I haven’t received any calls from you.”
“John, I’ve called you at least five times.”
He continued looking through his desk drawers and ignored me.
“Is something missing?”
“What? No, nothing’s missing, I mean, uhhh. I think maybe some important papers I had gathered for a job I’m doing is all.”
“Are they there?”
“Ahh, no, I don’t see them.” He shuffled through the piles of papers on the desk and then through the drawers. After a time, when he had straightened the piles and closed all the drawers, he sat straight up and forward in the chair. “I just remembered I left them at my office,” he said as if he’d just experienced an aha moment.
I wanted to choke the life from him, but I felt a little tender physically, so I reeled in my emotions and backed off my aggressive intentions.
Calmly, I asked, “What’s going on, John? I came down here to check on you and the girls and look into Nareece’s disappearance. When I got here, the house was like this and someone was hiding in the twins’ room. Almost killed Dulcey.”
His eyes got big and darted around the room until they landed on Dulcey.
“Hey, John,” Dulcey said, waving her hand from her perch on the back of the couch. He just stared at her like he didn’t know her.
“Did you call the police?” he asked, still staring her down.
“No, Mrs. Crowley did when she heard gunshots,” I told him. He looked big-eyed, then got up and headed to the staircase. I stayed at his back. “Whoever was hiding in the twins’ room caught me by surprise and caused my gun to go off.” I followed him up the stairs and into the master bedroom. He ignored me as he searched through dresser drawers and the night table drawers. I walked across the room and pulled his arm so he would face me. “Where are the girls?”
“They’re at my mother’s in Newton. She’s taking care of them while I’m trying to work and deal with Nareece.” He pulled his arm away, releasing my hold, and hastened out the door and down the stairs. I caught up with him again in the kitchen, all control lost.
“What do you mean, ‘deal with Nareece’? You’ve talked to her? You know where she is? Tell me that’s why you didn’t report her missing, even though you told me you did?” The heat welled up inside me, this time anger feeding it.
John opened and closed cabinet doors, keeping his back to me. “I lied because I didn’t want you to insist on telling the police. No sense getting them involved. She’s not missing, just off on another one of her mental escapades, I’m sure.”
“That’s not how you felt a few days ago. A few days ago, you were hysterical about whether she was alive or dead. What changed your mind?”
“Muriel, if we get the police involved, they are going to ask a lot of questions and get in our business.”
“What business?”
He turned around so he faced me. “I’m sorry you made the trip. You should have called me first,” he said and stormed away.
“I did call. You didn’t answer!” I was yelling by this time.
“You are welcome to stay the night in the guest room. I’ll call the housekeeper in the morning.” I followed him to the stairs and stared at his back until he disappeared into the bedroom again and closed the door.
“What the hell?” Unable to swallow his last words, I hauled ass up the stairs and banged on the bedroom door. “John, we’re not finished.” I banged harder and kept banging until he opened the door and almost lost his face to my fist.
He grimaced at me. A snap later his eyes softened and welled up with tears. For the first time, I noticed how whipped he looked. He wore a rumpled suit, like he had worn it for a week nonstop, sported scraggly chin growth, and blinked through crusty eyes. John was an attractive Vietnamese man with a dark complexion, long straight black hair that he wears pulled back in a ponytail, and a scanty beard. His puffy eyelids covered dark, seemingly black eyes, and added a mystique that I imagined was what had caught Nareece’s fancy. That and his sleek muscular build and dignified stature, which right now looked unsteady and ready to collapse. He backed up to the bed and sat down, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“Talk to me, John. I haven’t heard from you in weeks. Then I come here and Dulcey and I are almost killed by some guy. What the hell is going on?”
He wiped his tears with his forearm, got up and went over and into the bathroom, then closed and locked the door. A few minutes later he returned, his composure regained and with a determined expression on his brow.
“Muriel, I have this under control and I don’t need your help.”
A Mike Tyson punch to my gut.
“Nareece is fine and will soon be coming home. Please don’t hound me with any more of your questions. This is our business. We don’t need your interference.”
A Mike Tyson punch to my chin.
I tried to speak, but my tongue was dead in my mouth. I wanted to karate chop his big head, or better yet, shoot him. A little extreme, maybe, I thought. Perhaps just one kick to the head to crack his brain, so he could start talking sense.
He walked up on me, overcrowding my space and pushing me back, stepping to the doorway. My voice kicked in.
“Now I’m interfering? You blow up my phone for weeks, and now you don’t need my help? Whatever’s going on with you two, I don’t have a clue, but I’m going to respect your wishes and leave you and Nareece to work it out.” I turned to leave, then had a second thought and spun back around. “Before I leave, I want to talk to my nieces.”
He reached in his inside jacket pocket and pulled out his cell phone. One push of a button, a few words in Vietnamese to whomever answered, and he handed me the phone.
Not knowing which twin was on the other end, I picked a name. “Hi, Rose. It’s Auntie M. How are you and Helen doing?” It was a lucky guess. The twins took turns talking on the phone, telling me the latest about their detective agency and how they wanted to make me a partner and could they stay with me in the summer and had their mommy come home. I kept the conversation light, as though I’d just called to say hello. Throughout the conversation, I drilled a hole in John’s face with my eyes. After about ten minutes, I gave him back the phone.
“You’ll be coming home soon,” he cooed into the receiver. “Mommy is excited about seeing you, too. I love you, too.” Then he clicked off. To me, he snarled, “Satisfied?”
I stopped at the door and turned to him again. “I found some pictures of Travis in your desk. Who took them?”
He showed a flash of surprise. He walked toward me and started closing the door as I backed out. “Nareece had them taken. She’s always kept an eye on Travis one way or another.”
Now I flashed surprise, as he closed the door between us.