by Sean Black
It was true, Ty did look a little like a cop. Undercover, narcotics, but definitely law enforcement. His years in the Marine Corps had given him an official vibe that he hadn’t managed to shake off.
“Okay, I’ll be in the diner,” said Ty, closing his door.
“Great,” said Cressida, exiting the car, then running up the steps of the library and inside before Ty could remind her to call him if she needed anything.
He decided to leave the Honda where it was, and walk across the street to the diner. As he hit the sidewalk his cell phone rang.
It was Lock, no doubt checking in and making sure that Ty hadn’t done anything crazy. Ever since Ty had gotten involved in the hostage situation in Long Beach, Lock had become a little like a helicopter parent who wanted to track his business partner and friend’s movements.
Ty hit the green answer icon. “Hey, Ryan, what’s up? How’s the hotel?”
Lock had booked himself and Carmen into a place called Sandy Lane, a jaw-dropping luxury hotel right on the beach. No-expense-spared vacations were one of the upsides of their new ultra-wealthy Chinese clientele.
“Off the hook. So what’s this about you taking a gig babysitting a journalist?”
Ty had emailed Lock before he’d left Los Angeles to let him know about the job. Rich Chinese immigrants had been great for their bottom line so he wasn’t sure how Lock would take the sudden shift.
“It’s a one-off. There’s only so many erdais you can fend off in a day while you’re explaining why they shouldn’t leave the keys of their Benz in the car while they go shopping on Rodeo.”
Erdai was Chinese slang for the mistress of a wealthy Chinese businessman. Many of them were stashed in multi-million-dollar mansions in Arcadia. They made up a largish sector of their new security-review business. Most of them hit on Ty. At first he’d been flattered, but after a while it had gotten irritating.
“So what’s the story that they need muscle along for the ride?”
Ty bristled. “You’re calling me muscle?”
“Apologies. A high-level elite close-protection specialist.”
“That’s better.”
“Okay, so what’s the deal? I mean, I know Florida has more than its fair share of wack-jobs, but if there is a specific threat you’re supposed to be looking out for?”
“Honestly? Not that I’m aware of. There wasn’t a lot of time to do a full risk assessment, but nothing popped. If anything, apart from the murder she’s investigating, the place is about as low crime as it gets. I guess reporters aren’t the most popular people, these days. That, and she’s a black reporter covering a hate crime, but it was a long time ago.”
“Well, someone must have been worried about something, so keep your head on a swivel. People don’t usually drop cash for protection for no reason.”
“Always,” said Ty.
“I mean it,” Lock reiterated. “The situations that catch you out are usually the ones you think are low risk.”
“Okay, Dad.”
“Funny,” said Lock.
“Look, I’ll be fine. Just go enjoy your vacation.”
“I’ll check in with you tomorrow.”
“Ryan, I’ll be fine. You concentrate your attention on that lady of yours. If I need you, I’ll be in touch. Listen, I gotta go. I just caught a whiff of the pancakes at this diner I’m standing outside. I think they’re calling me.”
Lock laughed. Ty’s lifetime obsession with food was a running joke between them. “Okay, brother. You stay safe.”
“Always,” said Ty, ending the call, and pushing through the door into his date of destiny with some pancakes, and possibly a side of bacon.
As he stepped inside the diner the low hum of conversation fell away sharply to a stony silence.
An elderly man, sitting at the counter, slopped coffee down his shirt. A couple sitting in a booth glanced at him, then awkwardly looked away. The short-order cook, a heavyset man with sweat pouring down his face as he stood over the grill, was set statue-like, the ladle he was holding suspended in mid-air.
A middle-aged waitress with curly red hair, and even redder lipstick, broke the spell, sashaying over to Ty with a menu and a broad smile. Her name badge read ‘Sue Ann’. “Take a seat, sweetie. I’ll be right with you.”
“Are you sure?” said Ty, taking in the other customers’ reaction to him with a raised eyebrow.
“Oh, don’t mind us,” she said. “We don’t get many visitors from out of town, that’s all. Anytime someone walks through that door we don’t know it’s kind of an event.”
She sounded sincere and it had a ring of truth to it. It would have been the same in a barbershop in Long Beach, or any number of places. Someone unfamiliar walking in where the crowd was always the same would draw glances.
He took the menu from her with a polite ‘Thank you,’ and slid into the nearest empty booth as the conversations started up again, and people went back to whatever they’d been doing before he’d walked in.
5
Lock accepted the two cocktail glasses from the waiter, and headed back to where Carmen was laid out on a lounger by the pool. He wasn’t really a hotel-holiday kind of guy, but he had to admit he was enjoying this vacation. They even had a man who came round and cleaned your sunglasses for you, should they need it.
He took a moment to admire the amazing woman he’d found himself with. Intelligent, compassionate, engaging, funny, and pretty damn attractive, inside and out. They’d already been through more together than most couples experienced in a lifetime, and seemed to be stronger for it.
“Here’s your drink, Madame,” he said, kneeling down and handing Carmen one of the cocktails.
She took a sip. “Damn, that’s strong. You trying to get me drunk, Mr. Lock?” She laughed.
“Absolutely.”
“Were you back there checking in with Ty?”
“Guilty.”
“How’s he doing?”
Lock told her a little about the job Ty had taken, and the background to it.
“It doesn’t surprise me that they’d want someone with her,” Carmen said, when she’d digested what Lock had told her. “All this talk of fake news, and how the media are biased. Plus people get upset a lot easier, these days.”
Lock agreed with the last part. As for fake news, he didn’t believe in it, but he did know from experience that you could take pretty much any event and spin it to make a good guy look bad, and vice versa.
“It can be dangerous, being a reporter,” Carmen continued. “Maybe not here so much, but overseas, it’s a scary gig. You start looking into things that people don’t want you to look into and things can get very real, real fast.”
“Well, if anything happens, I’m not too far.”
Carmen shot him a look. “Don’t you dare. We’re on vacation.”
“I said, if anything happens. And, like you said, that’s hardly likely in Darling.”
6
For a town with the population of Darling, Cressida had to give it to them, the library was pretty impressive. It was set over two floors with the second floor being a galleried mezzanine that wrapped around the entire inside of the building.
Cressida stopped in the entrance and closed her eyes for a moment. She took a deep breath in, savoring the distinct aroma of all the books. She had always thought of libraries as magical places.
Off to one side there was a pinboard display with photographs of the town that stretched from its earliest origins. She took a moment to study it. Unsurprisingly there was no mention of Carole Chabon or the events that had led up to her death. The display was probably for the benefit of visitors, and no one would want to lead with such a horrific event. It didn’t exactly fit the narrative of a mom-and-apple-pie small town.
From the research she had already done in New York, she knew that the town had done everything it could to wash Carole Chabon’s murder from its history. Which was why she was standing there now.
“Miss King,”
a woman’s voice called.
Cressida turned to see an elderly woman in a smart pants suit walking toward her. “You are Miss King?” the woman repeated.
“Yes,” said Cressida.
“I thought so. I’m Claire Parsons. You emailed me.”
Cressida shook her hand. The woman’s skin was like paper. She must have been seventy if she was a day. It was one of the things Cressida was noticing about Darling. Besides being entirely white, a lot of the people were getting up there in age. It wasn’t too surprising. It was off the beaten track, and there didn’t seem to be much economic activity, apart from occasional tourism, and a visitor would have to be intending to go there. It wasn’t a place you stumbled into on the way to somewhere else.
“Pleased to meet you.” She turned side on to the pinboard. “That’s quite the local-history display.”
The librarian’s polite smile struck Cressida as a little forced.
“I’m amazed we gathered enough pictures to fill a single board.” She rested her hand on the crook of Cressida’s arm. “It’s a pretty boring place, if truth be told.”
Cressida flashed on the crime-scene photographs she’d viewed online of Carole Chabon’s ravaged body. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”
The librarian’s smile receded a little, and she led Cressida into the library. “I’ve gathered up as much material as I could find. I even contacted some of my fellow librarians elsewhere in the county to see if they had anything that might be relevant. I have it all laid out for you down in the basement.”
She stopped. Her arm was still linked through Cressida’s. “Some of the material is sensitive,” she added. “We have children who use the library. I didn’t want them getting curious, peeking over your shoulder and seeing something they shouldn’t.”
I bet you didn’t, thought Cressida. She smiled. “That’s probably for the best.”
Miss Parsons led her by the arm toward the main library desk. She opened the gate, letting go of Cressida, who followed her into a neat back office, full of publishers’ catalogs and book request forms, toward a door at the back.
Miss Parsons opened the door to reveal a steep set of wooden stairs. She reached for a light switch just next to the door and flicked the stairway lights on. A little hesitant, Cressida followed her down the dozen or so steps into the basement.
“Mimsy lent me a desk so you would have somewhere to go over everything,” said the librarian.
“Mimsy?”
“Oh, sorry, habit of a lifetime. Mary Elizabeth Murray, our mayor. Everyone still calls her Mimsy. Guess that’s what happens when you grow up in a place like this. The nicknames stick around.”
The name rang a bell with Cressida. More than one. The mayor was someone she had on her interview list for her week here. But she had wanted to find her feet first and, if she could, gather some more ammunition. She had questions for “Mimsy’ that no one would enjoy having to answer.
“Small towns, right?” said Cressida.
“Quite so,” smiled Miss Parsons, flicking on a lamp to reveal an old wooden desk laden with papers and newspapers neatly laid out in bundles. Several stacks of box files were piled next to the desk. There was a lot to look at. Then again, she had pretty much requested everything she could possibly think of that might be held here.
Cressida had believed since journalism school that, even with Google and other search engines, libraries were an underused resource. Especially small ones like this, with local news sources that they couldn’t afford to digitize, never mind make publicly searchable. “This is great. Thank you so much,” she said, pulling out the metal folding chair that was pushed under the desk.
“Can I confess something to you?” said the librarian, leaning in conspiratorially.
It was a little early for confessions, but Cressida was happy to hear whatever it was. “Sure,” she said casually.
“This is terrible, but . . .”
“Believe me, I’m pretty hard to shock.”
“Well, when I got your email, I was kind of . . . excited.”
“Excited?”
“It’s like one of those crime shows on TV, isn’t it? What do they call them? Cold cases.”
Cressida hadn’t been sure about Miss Parsons, and how she was behaving, but this seemed real enough. The woman was almost giddy with excitement. It wasn’t a feeling she shared. Not having learned about Carole Chabon’s horrific fate. Or what had come after it, the additional horror that had been piled on top. It wasn’t entertainment. It wasn’t a TV show. It had been all too real: a woman brutally tortured and murdered while, of all things, selling Bibles and spreading the word of the Lord. And for no other reason than the color of her skin.
She couldn’t find it in herself to share the librarian’s almost childlike glee, but she needed her help. She pasted on her best reporter’s smile. “Well, maybe we can crack it together.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said the librarian, suddenly serious. “I mean, likely whoever did it is long gone.”
She stared at Cressida, then brightened again. “It sure could be fun to try, though.”
And with that she was gone, clattering back up the steps with a breezy “I was going to make some mint tea. I’ll bring you some, if you’d like.”
“That would be nice, thank you,” said Cressida, and turned her attention to the paper-laden desk.
The librarian stopped at the top of the stairs. “Would you like me to leave this door open?” she called down.
“Please,” said Cressida, not giving it any real thought.
“I may have to step out a little later, so if anyone comes and rings the bell on the desk, be a dear and let them know I won’t be gone long.”
Cressida glanced up the stairs to where Miss Parsons was standing at the top, silhouetted in the doorway. “Happy to.”
“What I said earlier, about this being exciting. I didn’t mean to be flippant. I’m sure you take your job very seriously.”
“I do, but it’s okay. Miss Parsons?”
“Yes?”
“There was one thing I wanted to ask you.”
“Go right ahead. If you’ll pardon the pun, I’m an open book.”
“You said you grew up here?”
“Yes,” said the librarian.
“So you would have been in your teens when Carole Chabon was murdered?” Cressida had estimated she might have been a little older than the victim, maybe by ten years, but part of being a reporter was getting on someone’s good side: thinking they were younger than they were was a proven way of doing that. She’d used it lots of times in the past. Flattery almost always worked.
“I was twenty,” Miss Parsons corrected her.
“So you were here?”
“Thankfully, no, Miss King. I was at college. Florida State. I’m afraid I only heard about it like everyone else did.”
“And what about friends, Mimsy for instance?”
“I couldn’t really say. But she’ll be along later so I’m sure you’ll have the opportunity to ask her.”
Cressida had the feeling she wasn’t going to get anything else from Claire Parsons, but it was a start. Better to let it go for now and circle back. “Thank you.”
The librarian stood for a second longer. She didn’t say anything. Finally, she turned, and disappeared just as Cressida thought she heard something scuttling about in the basement. She looked in the direction of the noise, but it was way too gloomy. The sound faded and she sat down, ready to dig in.
7
Ty sat in a booth, ate his surprisingly good pancakes with maple syrup and a side of bacon, watching small-town life unfold outside. People might have seemed a little startled when he’d walked in, but that was hardly a new experience. He was six feet four inches tall, 220 to 230 pounds, and less than ten per cent of that was body fat. Plus he carried himself like a proud US Marine, chest out, shoulders back, chin tilted up.
Black, white or yellow, a man of his size, who occupied a space i
n the world in the manner he did, often drew attention. He didn’t doubt that his being African American dialed up people’s curiosity switch a couple of notches, but he wasn’t about to get paranoid just yet.
He finished his food, drained the last of his coffee, and signaled for the check. The waitress came over with it.
“Now that’s what I like to see, a man who enjoys his food,” she said, lifting the empty plates.
“It was delicious, thank you.”
“Can I get you anything else, honey?”
“No, thank you, ma’am,” said Ty.
Bearing in mind it was the South, Ty was careful to be polite. “Please” and “thank you” counted for something among people here in a way that they didn’t back in Los Angeles. Also, he was thinking there was nothing to stop him seeing if he could assist Cressida’s investigation into the Carole Chabon murder, even if it was only by preparing the ground for her.
“You lived here long?” he asked the waitress, giving her his usually winning smile.
“All my life.”
“Must be a pretty special place.”
“Oh, it is.”
“Looks pretty quiet too.”
Her easy-breezy manner was starting to fade. “Is there something you want to ask me, honey?”
“I don’t want to put you on the spot, but I’m here with a reporter who’s looking into the murder of that young black girl back in ’seventy-four. You were probably only a kid, but . . .”
Before he could finish, she’d slapped the check on the table in front of him. “You have a nice day, y’hear.”
She walked back to the counter and settled into a whispered conversation with the cook, who shot Ty a couple of hostile glances. Ty shrugged it off. It was worth a shot. He studied the check, dug out enough cash to cover it, along with a hefty tip, placed it on the table and got up to leave.
The cook abandoned his grill to intercept him on the way out.
“Great pancakes,” said Ty, hoping to wrongfoot him.
