By Familiar Means

by Delia James

  But she wasn’t the one who answered us.

  “It’s okay, Jake,” said somebody from upstairs. “It’s done anyhow.”

  We all whirled around to see a wiry young man with dark hair and a sparkling stud in one ear clump down the stairs. Max and Leo yapped in surprise.

  If my jaw dropped, I feel that is a perfectly understandable reaction. Chuck, aka the Rhinestone Barista, came slowly down the stairs.

  Chuck’s gaze flickered from Jake to the rest of us, and I wasn’t sure if he was going to bolt or just be sick on the spot. I couldn’t help noticing he had his sleeves rolled up and a pair of bright yellow latex gloves on his hands.

  “Oof!” Val covered her nose. “What is that smell? Is that bleach?”

  “Did you get it all?” asked Jake quietly.

  “Yeah, pretty sure.”

  “Good.” He turned to us and sighed. “There. That’s who was upstairs.”

  “What was it you were cleaning up?” I said before anybody else could speak.

  “Just get on out of here, Chuck.” Jake patted the kid’s shoulder. “You can go tell Miranda everything’s cool here. She might have seen the cops coming out.”

  But Chuck didn’t move. “No way. I’m not going anywhere, not if they think you’ve done something.”

  “Except you have, haven’t you?” I said to Jake.

  Jake shoved his fingers under his wire-rimmed glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Well, that depends who you ask. Look, we might as well go upstairs. That’s going to be the community meeting space, and this looks like it’s going to be one heck of a meeting.”

  20

  Upstairs, we unfolded some of the gray, rust-spotted chairs. Julia sat with the dachshunds in her lap and her walking stick laid beside her. Val took the chair next to her. She also checked her phone in its hip pouch. Satisfied with whatever she saw on the screen, she tucked it away again. Grandma passed Julia a fresh granola bar. She’d brought Val’s tote bag upstairs with us, because while she might not cook, she never let anybody go hungry.

  Chuck did not sit. He just went over to the windows and looked out into the street while he stripped off his gloves. The sky was gray and a couple of raindrops spattered against the glass.

  Jake didn’t sit either. He pulled the stepladder away from the wall, climbed up and pressed his hand against the ceiling panels. Unlike downstairs, the original ceiling up here had been replaced with cheap white acoustic tile, which was a crime against architecture, if you asked me.

  “Um, you need some help with that?” I asked.

  “Nope. Got it.” Jake grunted, and a section of the dimpled white tile shifted and came away in his hands. “See, the reason I was so surprised to see that trapdoor downstairs was I thought we’d already found the secret panel in here.”

  Jake climbed back down the steps and of course we all crowded around and looked up. Now that the cracked plaster ceiling was exposed, we could see the rectangular outlines of a door to the attic, the kind that you pulled down to get to a folding ladder.

  “You remember we told you about that security camera?” Jake said as he climbed back down. “It showed us somebody coming in and out of here after dark, and so we took a look and we found—”

  “Don’t tell me.” In my head, Blanchard’s questions at the station bumped up against his crack about Julia having the munchies. “Four marijuana plants and a grow light?”

  “Well, maybe more like two dozen,” he said. “And a whole modern hydroponic rig-out. But, yeah, there were grow lights.”

  “Chuck?” I asked.

  “It wasn’t much,” said Chuck. “I mean, not really.” He wasn’t looking at any of us. He pressed his fingertips against the window, lining them up with the raindrops. “You know, just a little on the side to some friends. I was going to quit it before this, swear I was. Jake and Miranda . . . they talked to me about how it was going to come back on me, but then—” He stopped. “My girlfriend’s pregnant.”

  Val laid her hands on her belly.

  “Oh. Dear,” murmured Grandma B.B.

  “We’re both trying to get our degrees, and we got loans, and all I’ve got is the barista gig. She wants to keep the baby, and I—I want to be a dad, you know? I have to come up with some money for us.”

  “I understand, Chuck,” Val told him with a small smile. “It’s crazy expensive, isn’t it?”

  He nodded.

  “We told you we’d find you something,” said Jake. “The word’s out. It’ll be all right.”

  “So that’s it,” I said. “That’s the reason for all the secrecy. Because if Blanchard found out there was pot growing in the attic here, with Jake and Miranda’s record, and you working for them, he’d connect the obvious dots.”

  “I tossed most of the stuff, like, weeks ago,” said Chuck miserably. “But then Upton turns up dead with all that cash on him and it all hit the fan. I was up there today, trying to scrub the place out.” He waved his hand toward the jug of bleach. “What’s going to happen? I just—I can’t go to jail.” He twisted his fingers together. “Cherie’s counting on me, and the baby and . . . crap.” His knees buckled and he slid down until he was crouching against the wall, both hands knotted in his hair.

  “Nothing is going to happen to you,” said Jake as he knelt beside the younger man. “No one here is going to turn you in for a mistake.”

  Chuck didn’t seem to have heard him. “I have effed this all up so bad. I didn’t mean to. But we needed so much stuff and a bigger place, and Cherie’s fighting with her folks . . . and I promised I’d be there, and now it’s all gonna go straight down the toilet.”

  The dachshunds trotted over and nosed Chuck’s knees, but he didn’t respond. I wracked my brains for something to say. His distress was real. He was tired and afraid and still not much more than a kid. There had to be something we could do.

  “Annabelle,” said Julia quietly to Grandma B.B. “Do you think you might be able to help here?”

  Grandma flushed. “Well. It has been a long time. But I’ll do my best.” Grandma walked over and sat down cross-legged on the bare floor in front of him. I could only hope I was still that limber at her age. “Give me your hands, Charles.”

  “What?” Chuck lifted his head. His cheeks were wet.

  “You want to know what’s going to happen, don’t you?” Grandma said. “To you, and to Cherie and your baby? If you give me your hands, I might be able to show you.”

  She was telling the truth. I can’t explain how I knew. It was just there, like the sound of the rain against the glass. Chuck felt it, too. He swallowed nervously, but he also laid both palms against Grandma’s, and she closed her fingers around his wrists.

  The air around us stirred. No one was laughing now. The dachshunds were sitting on their haunches beside Julia, ears alert, but still. Even Alistair, who had climbed up the stairs from . . . somewhere, had tucked his legs under him and was watching us without twitching even the tip of his tail.

  Grandma B.B. closed her eyes.

  I felt the prickling begin, starting at my fingertips and traveling up my arms. There was no mistaking it. Grandma B.B.’s mouth moved in a silent whisper, invoking her personal energies and asking assistance from the elements and the spirits. Chuck’s eyes darted this way and that. Even he could feel something was happening.

  “Charles Dwyer,” murmured Grandma. “So very worried. So very afraid.” She paused, and her eyes snapped open. “She loves you,” she said firmly. “Loves you, is sorry, wonders if she’s doing the right thing, wishes you would talk to her . . .”

  “We’ve been telling the kid that,” muttered Jake.

  “Strong,” said Grandma. “Heart is strong; head is catching up. You will . . .” She let go of one of his hands, and covered the other with hers. “Work will out; heart will out. There’s news coming. An answer. Movement. Change
. Good health and hope to you. All of you. You can do this. You have the heart to do this thing. A reunion.” She turned his hand over. Her fingers traced one line of his palm, but whatever Grandma was looking at, it wasn’t in this room with us. “A reunion will bring the answers.”

  Grandma blinked heavily and slowly lifted her hands away from Chuck’s. He was breathing like he’d just run the four-minute mile. So was Grandma B.B., and the prickle of the magic faded slowly away.

  “That’s all,” she said. “That’s what I have for you.”

  “Wow,” said Chuck. “That was . . . intense, you know what I mean?”

  “Yes, dear, I certainly do.” She patted his hand.

  “I’ll second that wow, Grandma,” I said. “You could take it on the road.”

  “Oh, no, dear. It doesn’t always work so well. Charles is a very good subject.” She beamed at him and Chuck ducked his head bashfully. It was good to see, because it meant that crushing worry had eased up some.

  Jake cleared his throat. “It’s not that I don’t respect your practices, and I’m sure Chuck—”

  “No, it’s okay, boss,” Chuck told him. “I . . . I called my brother out in San Francisco a couple weeks ago. He’s working with a tech start-up. They might be interested in my online coffee connection idea.” He stopped and swallowed. “I haven’t seen him in, like, five years. So, you know, a reunion really might bring the answers.”

  Jake let out a long breath. “Far out,” he whispered.

  “Merow,” agreed Alistair, who was sitting at the top of the stairs, casually licking his paw.

  “Um, Anna,” said Jake. “How’d your cat get in here?”

  “Don’t ask,” I told him. “You’ll be happier that way.”

  “Anna, dear,” said Grandma B.B. “I think I may need some help getting up.”

  That got us all into motion. Jake unfolded a chair and Chuck helped pull Grandma B.B. to her feet and walk her over to it. Valerie dug another bottle of Vitaminwater out of her bag. I opened the cap and put the bottle and the last granola bar in Grandma’s hands.

  “I’m going to have to start packing more snacks.” Valerie laughed. “Roger will be so pleased.”

  “So what are you going to do now?” asked Jake.

  That was a really good question. I ran both my hands through my hair like that would help me smooth out my thoughts. Everything had been flipped around and I was having trouble getting my bearings again.

  Except. Maybe. I felt my gaze swiveling to Chuck.

  “Chuck?” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I hate to do this, but I’ve got to ask—”

  “Oh, no, Anna,” Grandma waved the granola bar. “After everything this poor boy’s been through, you are not going to ask if he murdered Jimmy Upton. Don’t you think I would have noticed that at once?”

  “I, um, don’t know?” I answered. “But that’s not what I was going to ask. I was just going to ask if you ever pulled some shifts with Jimmy Upton’s sister when she was working at Northeast Java.”

  “Mow-aow,” grumbled Alistair, who had moved on to washing his right paw. I knew that tone. It meant finally.

  “Do you mean Michele?” Chuck’s eyebrows went up. “The chick who went AWOL? You know her name’s not Upton, right? It’s Kinsdale.”

  Well. That was news.

  “Kinsdale?” said Jake. “When did she tell you that?”

  “When she came back.”

  “Back?” There were three or four of us humans joining together on that particular exclamation, and at least one dachshund.

  “Yeah, she showed up again, yesterday, no wait, the day before. She was all decked out in a suit and heels and everything.”

  Jake frowned. “You never said.”

  “Yeah, well.” Even though he was sitting down, Chuck shuffled his feet. “This was after we found out about Jimmy, and the way things were going, I figured you might not want to hear it.”

  Jake looked uneasy at this. “It’s not the crime; it’s the cover-up,” he muttered. “Man, after Nixon, you’d think I’d’ve learned.”

  “So what happened?” I prompted Chuck.

  “Michele who the heck ever says she knows I’m looking for a better job,” he said. “She tells me she’s opening up some kind of a new property in town, and I can come talk to her, anytime.”

  “What new property?” I demanded at the same time Valerie asked, “Where?”

  “Don’t know,” Chuck told us. “I mean, after you found her brother all dead in that tunnel? I told her thanks but no thanks. I didn’t want anything to do with it, or her.”

  “Wait.” I made the time-out sign. “She was back after Jimmy was murdered?”

  “Yeah. I figured she was talking to the police or identifying the body or something.”

  “Do you know where she is now?” We needed to talk to her. Of course Pete and Kenisha would have interviewed her as soon as they found her, if they’d found her that is. But Blanchard’s appearance here said the police were still watching Jake and Miranda closely. If we were going to help find out who’d really killed Jimmy, we were going to have to keep digging on our own.

  “No idea.”

  I said several things then, and earned a hard frown from my grandmother. I’d apologize later.

  “Sorry,” said Chuck.

  “Not your fault,” said Jake.

  “Yeah, I just—” Chuck stopped, and he swore. Now Grandma B.B. was frowning at him. “The fishbowl!”

  “Fishbowl?” said Julia.

  “Yeah, the fishbowl.” Chuck gestured, like he was trying to conjure the shape of what he was talking about out of thin air. “For, like, the, like, cards, like, you know . . .”

  We were all staring at one another, trying to translate this.

  “We keep a fishbowl on the counter,” said Jake. “People drop a card or a note or something in there and we do a drawing for free coffee.”

  Val grabbed one of Chuck’s flailing hands. “Michele dropped a card in the fishbowl?”

  “No. I did. After she gave it to me.”

  “Karma!” Jake shouted. “Beauty!” He strode down the stairs and out the door, which we knew because the bell rang sharply.

  “Right,” Val heaved herself to her feet. “To the Batcave, everybody?”

  “Yip,” agreed Max.

  * * *

  When we got to Northeast Java, the crowd was at low ebb. Miranda was behind the counter. Chuck charged up and grabbed the fishbowl. Now I remembered I’d put a card in myself once or twice, to try to win a free beverage.

  “Chuck, what the heck?” Miranda demanded as the barista dumped a snowdrift of business cards out onto the counter. “Jake?”

  “It’s cool, Miranda.” Jake slid behind the counter to stand beside her. “Chuck might have found a clue.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Sweet. I guess.”

  “Got it!” Chuck yanked a small paper rectangle out of the pile and passed it to me. Julia, Grandma and Val all crowded around and we all read:

  SHELLY KINSDALE

  VP of Properties

  Dreame Royale Group

  There was a red logo of a pillow with a crown floating over it. At least, I think that’s what it was supposed to be. It was so stylized, it was hard to tell.

  “What’s the Dreame Royale Group?” asked Grandma B.B.

  Valerie made a face. “They’re one of the biggest hospitality chains in the country. They specialize in the high-end and exclusive, boutique and luxury properties, all that . . . stuff.”

  “So, what does it mean?” asked Miranda. “Was she in town to talk to her brother?”

  “But then why would she bother getting a job with us?” asked Jake. “I mean, why hide at all?”

  “I don’t know, but I know who we better call.
” And it definitely wasn’t Ghostbusters. We’d had enough of that for one day.

  I pulled out my phone and hit Kenisha’s cell number.

  “Britton,” she answered. “What’s going on?”

  “We found Jimmy Upton’s sister.” I admit there may have been a teensy ring of pride in my voice.

  The silence on the other end was very long and very patient.

  “So?” said Kenisha at last.

  My pride did this little thing where it kind of just . . . evaporated. “I thought maybe you’d want to talk to her.”

  “We have talked to her,” said Kenisha. “And before you say it, yes, we found her first. We’re the police, Anna. It is what we do.”

  I glanced at my friends and family, who were all looking back expectantly. “Um, right. Of course. I just . . . I thought if you had, you . . .”

  “You are not going to ask what we found out, right? Because you know better than to ask me that, especially when I’m on duty.”

  “Um, right. Of course,” I said again. “Sorry. We’ll talk later?”

  “Yeah, we will,” agreed Kenisha, and she hung up and I hung up.

  “Something tells me that did not go well,” said Miranda.

  “Anna?” said Grandma B.B. “What happened?”

  My Nancy Drew pride just took a hit, and the most obvious way to find out what Michele-slash-Shelly Upton-slash-Kinsdale was doing in town had gotten a big roadblock put up in front of it. I turned the card over in my fingers.

  But maybe there was another way.

  “Hang on, just one more second.” This time, I hit Frank’s number.

  “Anna? What are you doing?” asked Grandma B.B.

  I didn’t answer, because just then Frank picked up on his end. “Hey, Anna? What’s up?”

  “Hi, Frank,” I said as I flipped the business card over in my fingers. “I need you to arrange an interview.”

  “With who?”

  “Jimmy Upton’s sister,” I told him.

  “You found her? I can’t get Blanchard or Pete to even admit she exists.”

  I smiled at my friends and family. “We found her and she’s been back in town, really recently.”