Sweet Paradise

by Gene Desrochers

Junior had then scurried off to Georgia Tech, but he kept searching for his mother. Whenever he wasn’t doing school work, archery, or biking, he ran through databases, social media, had even tried background check companies. His father had threatened to cut off his credit card if he saw another related charge, so Junior had filled out one of the dozens of credit cards offered at the student union. He was eighteen. He was a man, even if he didn’t feel like one right now.

  He thought if only he could find his mother, answers about himself and his discontent with life would come. Little did he know, finding her would lead to darker paths and no real release from the painful realities of being human. It didn’t really matter who your mother was.

  “Now, you will go to sleep, then you are heading back to Georgia on Sunday. I’m pleased to see you and so is Aunt Hill. I’ll let you stay a few days, but we are not wasting your tuition over this mission to find your grandmother. First it was your mother, now it’s your grandmother. Leave it alone. They’re both hopeless causes. You understand me, boy?”

  “Yessir.” Junior snatched a change of clothes out of his dresser and shut himself inside the bathroom. Thirty seconds later, he heard his father leave the bedroom. Using the clothes, he constructed a pillow and crunched into the fetal position on the bathroom floor.

  Thoughts of the women in his family he actually knew swirled in his head. Aunt Hill had always been distant, formal. She was family and greeted him with her own brand of enthusiasm, but underneath she was cold as white marble. She avoided the sun, but her skin remained a hue or two darker than Herbie’s. He possessed the true colonial European look. Who lived on a tropical island their entire life only to shun the sun? But he had some warmth for his Aunt Hill. She was never cruel to him like papa. She never defended his father’s abuse, but he sensed her loyalty was to papa.

  Grandma, on the other hand, had helped Junior. She had sent him off to boarding school and college in a place where he’d fit in. He didn’t function in New England schools. Too formal. He needed the relaxed atmosphere of the South. Grandma Francine knew and respected that. For all practical and emotional purposes, she was his mother. He was damned if he was going to let her disappear without digging up every grave on this island if he needed to. At least that’s what he used to think.

  Now, his respect for her had begun to slip. He had learned things about all of them. Heroes were people, too, it turned out. When you looked closer, your so-called protector was often the same person who set you up to need protecting. Besides, she’d also avoided telling him about his mother. She’d claimed not to know her last name or where she was from. Junior wondered if Gertrude was even her real first name.

  As he tried to imagine what his mother looked like, he fell into an exhausted sleep on the cold tile.

  Chapter 7

  Walter Pickering, a man who never seemed to sleep, woke me at nine. I trudged down the hallway to the bathroom and showered next to a stateside tourist who wouldn’t stop yapping about how authentic The West Indian Manner was.

  “The place is so real. I feel like I’m in the mess with the locals, you know?” He kept on about how this trip was on his bucket list and he was running out of time. “So’s Charlize Theron, but I think that ship has sailed.”

  As I left my room, I paused to admire Christina’s World once again. A dark underpinning beneath the midday glare of a relentless sun.

  Why was Christina on the ground? Was she hurt? Was she tired? And the streaks of gray. You couldn’t accurately judge the woman’s age. She had a slender figure and a dress that could be worn by a woman anywhere from fifteen to fifty. Even more intriguing, an open-minded person might ask if Christina was even a woman.

  Then there’s the house. Is it deserted? What’s that ladder on the side? Are they painting or patching the roof? The place looked like a tinderbox ready to explode into flames if a stray ember grazed it.

  Christina’s longing seeped through the back of her head, like a second face. No need to see her eyes, her mouth, or her curled lip. The crush of her shape and the way she stretched toward the distant farm told you everything. It also told you that whatever she longed for would always be just out of reach.

  I fingered the top edge of the frame and leaned in, searching for someone in the window of the farmhouse. Only shadows greeted me. Empty shadows. Such darkness on a golden canvas. No one there. Christina was alone.

  After an egg sandwich prepared by “Silent” Marge, a name I’d secretly given the nearly mute co-owner of the guesthouse, I hoofed it over to my office. I figured I’d put a clean coat of paint on the door, but a police officer was there. He said they had a few more forensic matters to take care of before I could have it back. The island shrug was his response when I asked exactly when he expected my office to be released. Loosely translated, this meant he didn’t know and didn’t care.

  “You know you are not supposed to hold the crime scene for any length of time after the crime scene guys are finished. Back where I used to live ... ”

  He waved me off. “I don’t know nothing about that, but I was told to keep it clear. Check?”

  Admittedly, I was cynical about police specifically and the government’s use of our money in general. We needed the police and my office had to be properly vetted before I could return, but it was my office and my rent money going down the drain. I clenched my jaw as I turned to leave.

  Watching all those years when my father, Terry, drank too much and made a fool of himself taught me something about discretion, especially around cops. Terry had wound up very close to a felony conviction. It should have been a felony, after all, since he clobbered a fellow bar patron over the head with a beer bottle. The guy needed twenty-six stitches and nearly lost sight in his right eye from a stray shard. A damned talented and expensive attorney my maternal grandfather paid for had negotiated a misdemeanor. My parents had promised to pay him back, but never managed to.

  I never heard from or spoke to my grandfather again after moving to St. Croix in 1994. None of us did, including my mother. Patrice Montague’s father had principles to replace family. Mom never forgave her dad for that.

  The tension in my household, which had always been high, permanently ratcheted up to a ten out of ten that year. For some reason Patrice loved Terry and willingly gave up her family to stay with him. To her, “Till death do us part,” was literal.

  The stack of hundreds Harold had handed me the day before bulged contentedly in my front pocket. A real retainer. Legitimate private-detecting. Dana Goode, the reporter who’d helped me on my first case on St. Thomas and the closest thing I had to a partner, would be proud. My mother, on the other hand, would continue to be disappointed that I hadn’t become a pulmonologist.

  A text came in from Harold: “Meet me at the house at four. They have some fundraiser to attend. We’ll have a couple hours to rummage.”

  I replied, “I’ll be there.”

  I didn’t relish discussing Kendal with Pickering, but why worry? I knew nothing. I’d say Junior’s presence must have been a coincidence. Pickering probably didn’t even know Kendal was working the kid or Francine.

  Robin Givens threw me the twittering-finger wave as I edged past her desk and tapped on Pickering’s doorframe. He held up a finger, then dismissed a young reporter with a clap on the shoulder. Pickering’s scalp had a spattering of growth, something I’d never seen. He was really letting himself go.

  “Hey, Boise.” He pumped my hand once and gave me a tired nod. “Mind closing the door?”

  It would be one of those conversations.

  I shut the door and sat. “What’s up?”

  “If Dana weren’t on assignment, I’d have her in here with us. As it is, she’s swamped over in Tortola.”

  “What’s she doing?” I asked.

  He shot me a don’t-change-the-subject stare.

  “Do you see my people out there?” His open palm extended to the cracked horizon
tal blinds behind me. Bags under his eyes and the deeper grooves across his cheeks had aged him noticeably in less than twenty-four hours.

  My back cracked as I swiveled. Seven reporters milled about. They all had forlorn faces, except one guy talking on the phone whose hands moved wildly as he spoke. I turned back to Pickering.

  “They’re my family. You understand?”

  When I didn’t say anything, he repeated the question, an edge in his voice and a menacing lean over his desk. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Walter. I understand.”

  He leaned back. “Good. I want you to write out a statement about what happened.”

  “The cops have my statement, and I don’t work for you. Writing is not what I do, otherwise I’d be a reporter.”

  “I have a copy of that. I want another one. More details. More about that kid who was with you.”

  “Sorry, he’s a client. I’m not telling you about him.”

  “I’m not asking, just being polite,” Pickering said, plopping a yellow legal pad in front of me. “In fact, it’s not formal at all, I want you to stream of consciousness anything you know onto this pad.”

  “Look, I’m happy to ... ”

  Pickering stood. His chair rolled backwards and thudded against the wall. “Get a fucking waiver from your client! I want to know everything about everyone in that room.”

  “What’s in it for me?” I asked.

  “You do realize a man was murdered in your office. A man who worked for me. We are reporters, not cops. Dying is not part of this job.”

  “Yes, but again, just because your man came into my office and died, does not make me beholden to you or your newspaper. I’m an independent operator who rents space in the same building.”

  “Free advertising for one month. Eighth section.” He sounded like he was giving up his first born. “That’s the best I can do.”

  I’d been working on my codependency. I wanted to appease Pickering. The guy had some father-figure thing going on with me, but I resisted the urge. Instead, I did what Henry “Batey” Bateup, the guy who’d trained me in Los Angeles, had told me worked better than anything in the world both when negotiating and questioning people: I waited in silence.

  Pickering rummaged through a file drawer in his desk. He placed a legal waiver on top of the pad. “Fine, a quarter-page. You happy? You know the newspaper business is suffering. I need that ad space for paying clients.”

  I picked up a blue pen he’d placed on top of the legal pad and clicked it a couple times.

  “That’s the form, but I’m happy to shoot an email version over to your client. You know his address?”

  I texted Junior, who responded immediately. He agreed to sign the waiver and for me to detail our investigation, so long as I left out the identity of the missing person.

  Pickering grudgingly nodded. “I’ll get it out of him myself. Give me your version of events. Call the missing person Ramona.”

  “Ramona? Why not John Doe like everyone else?”

  “Call them Ramona.”

  “Fine, I’ll call them Ramona,” I said.

  I started writing, then paused. “Hey, when’s the funeral?”

  “Not for a while. Autopsy. They have to send him to Puerto Rico for some reason. Probably not for a month. But, we’ll have a memorial service at Kendal’s favorite watering hole on Saturday. Informal, but we’ll all be there as will his family.”

  “Can I come?”

  “Why? You two didn’t exactly hit it off.”

  “Still, he was someone I knew. I mean, we worked together in a sense. Same building and all.”

  Pickering lifted his jacket off a hook and draped it over his arm. “Fine, it’s informal, I doubt anyone will care. But you have to dress decently.” He looked me up and down like I was a rodent with rabies. I wore my usual t-shirt and shorts ensemble with a straw fedora.

  “What? This is a new t-shirt,” I said, tugging at the thin material.

  He picked something out of his teeth, flicking it into the wastebasket beside his desk, and tightened his tie knot in a fold-up mirror propped on his desk. After replacing the mirror in a drawer, he huffed on his sunglasses and rubbed them with a cloth.

  “Okay, okay, I have something nice,” I conceded.

  When I’d first returned to St. Thomas, Aunt Glor, my deceased friend’s grandmother, had made me get something presentable to attend a mass at the local cathedral. She was a religious firecracker of a woman, who liked to ply me with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and a glass of milk.

  “I’m going to let you stay in my office for one hour. Stay and write whatever comes to mind. I’ll be back.”

  It felt good to spill the events onto a sheet of paper. Like I was releasing some stored trauma or throwing up a rancid bratwurst. My breathing flowed as if I was a car with a new air filter. When next I looked up, Pickering stood in the doorway.

  “So?”

  “Why are you back so soon?”

  He held up his gold watch. “Been an hour and fifteen.” He read my face. “Got more to say? I’ll work at Dana’s desk. You keep at it.”

  He shut the door, but the spell was broken. A few more details, then I wrapped it up. One new observation had occurred to me as I re-examined the events surrounding Kendal’s death. Something struck me about the angle of the arrow’s entry. I thought it had come straight through the door, but in fact, Kendal had been facing to the left of the doorway slightly, so the arrow had come in from that side of the parking lot. After I finished, I made a copy of the pages and handed the copy to Pickering.

  “I want the original,” he said, squinting at the pages.

  “Sorry, but I’m keeping the originals.”

  After a tense moment, he shrugged, stapled the copied pages together, returned to his office and shut the door.

  Chapter 8

  “T hat Pickering guy called me,” Junior said when I walked into the Bacon house. “The guy’s relentless. I spilled that it’s my grandma who’s missing, but said that stuff I always hear about being off the record. He didn’t like it but I stood my ground. Whaddya think?”

  I sighed. “Well, as I said, newspaper guys want to print things. They aren’t in the business of keeping secrets, but if Pickering says it’s off the record, I think you’re all right. Don’t tell him too much more.”

  “Why’d you?”

  “Guilt, I guess,” I muttered. “I have a load of guilt about things like this. Even Kendal the Jackal has a family. In the end, we all want the same thing.”

  We walked into the expansive backyard. Harold was taking aim at a target. He hit a bullseye. Junior picked up the joint Harold had balanced on the edge of a portable table and took a hit.

  “How does your dad feel about that?” I asked.

  “He doesn’t know,” he said pointedly.

  I wiped sweat off my upper lip. “He won’t hear it from me, but hard to miss the smell on clothes.”

  “I’ll blame him,” he nodded at Harold. “Second-hand smell, right?”

  He cracked a smile at his uncle who gave him a knowing look. “Those two been blaming me for all the negative habits of this one for years. Why ruin a good pattern?”

  Junior pinched the edge of his shirt and sniffed. “He’s a dick. Uncle Harold’s the only good one besides grandma around here.”

  Junior offered me the joint. I waved him off.

  “Ready to do some recon, amigo?”

  After Harold and Junior each tugged on the joint one more time, Harold killed the spark. He dropped the roach in a dime bag, and pocketed the bag. The three of us headed upstairs. Wilma was in the kitchen, banging pots around as usual. The smell of fried food occupied this section of the house.

  “Shouldn’t you guys have a bunch of servants running all over the place?” I asked.

  “Not grandma’s style. Right, Uncle Harold?”<
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  “We used to have more, but mama’s been simplifying over the years. She’s more and more uncomfortable with servitude.”

  “How long will they be gone?” I asked.

  “Who knows. Hill’s afraid of her own shadow at social gatherings. She acts tough, but they might have to break off anytime. Then again, if she drinks enough wine ... ”

  Harold took out a key and unlocked a room at the back of the house. We ascended a mahogany staircase that ended at a single door. Outside the door on the right was a Haitian-style landscape painting vibrant with yellows, reds and blues. Once inside, the far wall was dominated by a set of African masks, some smooth and simple with red and gold lines, others more elaborate, with strips resembling hair, eyebrows and beards. You felt watched. The walls were painted an earthy color. A window overlooked the ocean. Shadows from drifting clouds played across the shimmering sea.

  There was one photo on her nightstand of the entire Bacon clan at what looked like a luau, complete with tiki torches and a boar on a spit in the background. I had met everyone in the photo except Francine, who stood in the center wearing a hula skirt. A petite woman with short, silver hair. She resembled Betty White. Using my phone I snapped a photo of the photo.

  Next to the picture, facing the spot where Francine presumably slept, was a small painting of reeds. Above the reeds, looking almost like it was rising out of the water, were the bold words, “If not me, who?”

  There was more to that quote, but I couldn’t remember it at the moment.

  “So, what are we looking for Inspector Gadget?” Harold asked. The pungent scent of weed hit me as he edged toward the dresser. “And what’s with the limp?”

  “War wound.” I turned in a circle, taking in the rest of the room. “What happened in here?”

  Harold and Junior gave me blank stares, so I clarified. “The furniture.” I indicated the bed and side tables. “Not Victorian. Appears to be African and some Caribe style. Simple. Much more suited to the island than the rest of the house. Either this room was changed or the common areas downstairs were. From the looks of things, I’d say it was this room that underwent the most recent transformation. Am I right?”