Mystery built upon mystery that morning, from an unexpected source. Life—you gotta love it. Always keeping us on our toes.
“Aramis, we made it through our first week together.”
“Huh? What’re you talking about?”
“Since the Elliston shooting.” Brianne brushed back her blond hair. “You and I, we put things back in order and cranked this place back into action.”
“Didn’t lose too many customers, that’s true.”
“Most are more loyal than ever, I’d say. Plus the tips’ve been great.” She grabbed a bag of whole-bean coffee and weighed it in her palm. “Think about it. You could’ve given up, but, no, you rose to the challenge. You’re Back-in-Black.”
She nailed me in the chest with the bag.
“Hey.” I looked into the dining area. “We have customers.”
She glanced up from beneath dark eyelashes and put her finger to her lips in feigned remorse. “Sorry, boss.”
“What’s got into you this morning?”
“Well, you have been leaving me on my own quite a bit, so—”
“Done a great job, by the way. Thanks.”
“It’s just nice to have you around.”
“Now you’re buttering me up. What do you want, Brianne?”
“Can’t a girl have a little fun?”
“Without trying to get something? No. Not from my experience.”
“You’re a bitter old man.”
“Twenty-seven is not old.”
A smile played along her lips. The sun was shining through the front window, cocooning us in the morning’s warmth. Standing there in our ridiculous aprons amid the heat and the aroma of coffee, I felt a rush of attraction. Her gray blue eyes locked on to mine, holding me in place.
“We should have dinner together,” she suggested.
“Not a good idea.”
“How about tonight?”
“Can’t.”
“Give me one good reason.”
“We’ve got Johnny Ray packin’ the house at seven thirty.”
“Tomorrow night then. I’ll cook calzone, my specialty.”
“No, Brianne.”
“You’re avoiding it, aren’t you?”
“Avoiding? No, listen. We’re in a working relationship.”
“So let’s work at it.”
“I’m your boss. It’s not right.”
“And I’m your only employee, so what’s it matter?”
“What is with you college girls? What happened to subtlety? Used to be that the guys made the first move.”
She arched an eyebrow. “All I did was mention dinner.”
I retied my apron, turning toward the mahogany counter.
“Anyway,” she added, “you are interested.”
“Get to work. Make sandwiches for lunch. Clean the sinks. Anything.”
“Your tattoos don’t fool me, Aramis. You’re afraid of your own emotions.”
I looked back at her. “Listen. We shouldn’t be mixing our work and our private lives. I doubt Sammie would approve.”
“Now I see.” Brianne blinked once. “It’s okay if it’s you and your boss.”
“Hey. Wait.”
She moved into the kitchen and started cutting ham into thin, precise slices.
The chiming of the door pulled me away to meet the next customer. This tug and pull, this hesitation on my part—these are the reasons workplace relationships are unwise. I couldn’t even focus on my job.
All that was forgotten when I saw the heavyset woman at my counter, her fleshy face recognizable from the Channel Two broadcast a week earlier. She wore a loose floral blouse over her wide frame, pleated slacks, and white nurse’s shoes.
“Aramis Black. You know who I am, don’t you? Reckon we can talk?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“Didn’t make the drive down here for nothin’, now did I? Been a week today.”
“Today,” I echoed.
Mrs. Michaels let her violet eyes run over the counter, the tiled floor where her son had died, then back to my face. She teared up, raised a hand to her mouth, and nodded toward the entry.
“Yes,” I said. “Let’s take a walk.”
After tossing aside the green apron and informing Brianne that I was stepping out, I joined Mrs. Michaels on the sidewalk. Don’t ask how it happened. Within ten strides along Elliston Place, I’d taken the woman’s hand in mine.
It felt natural. Necessary.
We walked like that for the next five or ten minutes. A mother. A son. Cut through with grief, she clung to my hand so tightly I thought my bones would break. Her hips and tummy quivered with each step, and I watched approaching pedestrians move aside in veiled disgust.
I thought she was beautiful.
A woman without much education who’d raised seven children. She was someone to be honored and appreciated. She would not walk this earth forever, as I’d been reminded by Miss Eloise’s feeble form at the Rosewood table a few hours earlier.
“I don’t hold nothin’ against you,” Mrs. Michaels told me. “I didn’t mean what I said. Weren’t the fault of you or no one else, what happened to my boy.”
“I should’ve done something …”
“Darrell, he just got hisself mixed up with the wrong sort. Can’t punish yourself over that, Mr. Black. He’s in the good Lord’s hands now.”
“The killer should be brought to justice.”
“Let’s keep walkin’,” Mrs. Michaels said. “Got some things I’d like to tell ya.”
The cool shadows of Centennial Park’s magnolia trees welcomed us. The day was warm. I spotted ducks bobbing on the pond’s wind-feathered waters. Magnolias and dogwoods extended over the serpentine path where a pack of college students jogged, some old men played chess, and a bag lady inched along with a wooden cart and a dog on a rope.
The dog strained to reach me as we passed, yipping, wiggling its body.
“She’s just the cutest, ain’t she?” said Mrs. Michaels.
“She knows me. We visit almost every morning on my way to work.” I freed my hand and waved. “Hey, Tina. Seen Freddy C?”
Tina barely lifted her chin. Between her mumblings, she said, “Hard to find, by daylight’s glow. An owl flying at night, so low.”
“Tell Freddy hi for me if you see him. Tell him to swing by.”
“Walking in alleys, rarely dallies.”
“See you later.”
As we continued on, Mrs. Michaels gave me a questioning look. “Not to be rude, but that woman don’t seem right. You say she lives in the park?”
“Something like that. Rhymes are Tina’s thing, her trademark.”
“Is she able to feed herself?” Spoken with concern.
I nodded.
“And that dog?”
“They get by. I’ve brought stuff from home a time or two, but Tina prefers to scratch out a living on her own. She makes crafts, wall hangings, centerpieces from twigs and flowers. All sortsa stuff. Sells them when she can.”
“Mighty respectable.”
“And she always feeds her dog first.”
“A good woman.” Mrs. Michaels looked back over her shoulder.
“So.” I stopped to scoop up a stone. “You told me you wanted to talk.”
“Mr. Black, I just plain don’t know how to start this off.”
“Look, I’m skipping rocks. Just say what comes to mind.”
“An awful lot on my mind these days, and that’s the Lord’s honest truth. But he don’t give us more than we can bear. Ain’t that so? He won’t allow it.”
“Seems like he allows a lot of things. I don’t claim to understand.”
She sighed. “My boy. Darrell.”
I threw another stone, counted eight skips.
“Darrell was trouble right from the get-go. My third child. A preemie. Not quite four pounds and able to fit right here in my hand. Like a little bird. We was livin’ in Memphis then, didn’t have no insurance, and that put us in a spot. His daddy started workin’ overtime, two jobs and some mechanical repairs on the side. Anything to get by—that’s what he done. We had two children already. The twins and the rest came later.” She watched my next throw. “Wasn’t no one’s fault, not really. But when his daddy started sellin’ dope, with his buddies at work and all, we thought we finally had ourselves a way out. Just long enough to get our heads above—that was the plan.”
Five large skips. And a frightened duck. I looked up at Mrs. Michaels.
“Darrell seen his daddy go to jail the first time when he was eight or nine. The second time, his daddy got eighteen years. Still there. Well, he was Darrell’s hero, and my boy weren’t never the same after that.” Mrs. Michaels shook her head and brought both hands to her neck so that bags of flesh wobbled on her arms’ undersides. “Yessir, he was his daddy’s shadow. That’s how it was from day one. He did just like him, followin’ his footsteps. The drugs. The jail time. All along, even when the judge was pointin’ that finger, I knowed he was a good kid. Heart big enough to go ‘round.”
“He was cleaning up, wasn’t he?”
“Hard to say. I moved here in ninety-eight, that house on Neely’s Bend. Old place, run-down, but a fenced yard for the young uns to play. Told Darrell he weren’t welcome bringin’ his crack hoes into my home. He was a charmer. Always had hisself a girl. Well, he comes knockin’ on my door one night, all the ways from Memphis. He’s in real trouble. Done got a man ready to kill him.”
“Let me guess. A jealous husband.”
“Coulda been. Didn’t ask, didn’t wanna know. I told him if he wants my help, he first needs to take hisself straight to the police and tell them what he done. Drugs and all. Get it off his chest and stop runnin’.”
“I like your style.”
“Helpin’ my boy—that’s all I had in mind.”
“So he did it? Went to the cops?”
“And he was sittin’ at my side come Sunday. A good kid, like I told you.”
“Okay. He did time, got out, did the church thing, and straightened around.”
“His PO was keepin’ an eye on him, said he been testin’ clean.”
“Leroy Parker, right?”
She huffed in agreement.
“They said on the news that Parker suspected drug dealers in Darrell’s death. Do you think that’s true?”
“Could be. Darrell had been tryin’ to keep clean. He was supposed to meet up that mornin’ with his PO. They’d been worryin’ themselves over some deal, some money-makin’ scheme. Darrell and Mr. Parker, they found somethin’, they said, a gift from above.” She noticed my expression. “ ’Tween you and me, Mr. Parker ain’t the shiniest penny in the jar. But he’s smart, yessir. He was keepin’ my boy occupied. Fact is, I think he made it up, the whole entire thing.”
“You lost me, Mrs. Michaels. Made what up?”
“Oh, this nonsense about gold bullion and Meriwether Lewis.”
“As in Lewis and Clark?”
“All a big secret, accordin’ to Mr. Parker. Don’t tell no one, he says. Well, plain as the nose on my face, it was hogwash. A lie to keep Darrell’s mind off them drugs and all. Seemed like a good thing. Until it went belly up on ’em.”
“You don’t think he was telling the truth?”
“Mr. Leroy Parker may be many things, but an honest man? No sir.”
“So it was all a joke.”
“A joke?” She cupped her hands over her belly and peered across the water. “Not now that my boy’s dead, it ain’t.”
“Maybe there’s something to it, though.”
“Not by my reckonin’. That Mr. Lewis, he’s been dead and buried two hundred years. The man took secrets to the grave, and all y’all would be better off not knowin’ what they were. Darrell ought never to have listened to Mr. Parker. I see that now. They was just askin’ for trouble when they started diggin’ up them ghosts.”
“Ghosts,” I repeated.
“That’s right.”
“Can I ask a silly question?”
“Leroy Parker. Does he, by any chance, wear golfing visors?”
She turned and gave me a curious stare. “Seen him wear orange for the Tennessee Vols, but come basketball season he’s a Tar Heels fan through and through. He puts on North Carolina blue.”