"How come you're not taking notes?" she wanted to know at one point.
Hank tapped his temple. "I am. You just can't see them."
She gave him a quizzical look, then shrugged and went on with her story, smoking, talking, looking at the table mostly, or just over his shoulder. Only occasionally would she meet his gaze. But as he listened to her talk, Hank came to the same conclusion Marty had. She hadn't done it. She wasn't a Pollyanna, not by a long shot, but she hadn't killed Ellis. That left only one real suspect—so far as they knew. Philippe Couteau. Trouble was, he was dead, too.
"So this guy you were with during your break," he said. "He wasn't a regular?"
"I don't pay a whole lot of attention to their faces, but I think I would've remembered the tattoo."
"Think any of the other girls would know him?"
"You'd have to ask them."
"What about your friend Chrissy. Any idea why she took off? Where she might be?"
She shook her head. Lit another smoke.
"People come and go in my business," she said. "You know how it is. It's not like we keep a list of people to send Christmas cards to or anything."
Hank nodded. He knew how it was all too well.
"What can you tell me about Philippe Couteau?" he asked.
"The Frenchman?"
Hank nodded.
"Cold. I never saw anybody as cold as him."
"Ronnie was having problems with him?"
She gave him her crooked smile. "Christ, haven't you been listening? Ronnie had problems with everybody."
"So it could have been anyone?"
She shrugged. "Could've been. But it was all small-change crap. Piss you off at the time, but not the kind of thing you'd kill somebody over."
Hank took in the bruise below her eye, thought about the casual way she'd referred to Ellis beating her when she'd been telling her story earlier. It wasn't what he'd call small-time, but he held his peace, let her speak.
"It's funny, you know. Ronnie was like my Prince Charming when I first met him. This guy I was seeing, Louie, he was beating the crap out of me in the parking lot of a diner and Ronnie just stepped in and took care of him for me. Put Louie in the hospital." She shook her head, remembering. "They had to sew him back together, like, fifty stitches—something like that."
She lit another cigarette, chain-smoking, stubbed out the one that was done. The ashtray was overflowing now with five butts stuffed into it.
"Ronnie treated me like I was gold, you know? I could do no wrong. He moved in with me and it was like a fairy tale."
Hank wondered which fairy tale it was that had Prince Charming pimping his girlfriend.
"So where did it go wrong?" he asked.
She shrugged. "Who knows? He had one hell of a temper, I'll tell you that, but he always made up after. You could tell he was truly sorry. He'd bring flowers, sometimes. Maybe we'd do a few lines. Things'd be good." She sighed. "For a while anyway."
Hank wanted to get back to Couteau, but he knew from experience that sometimes you learned more just letting a person talk.
"Thing is, I loved Ronnie. I think maybe I still do. So what does that make me?"
"Confused?"
"I guess. I think about the way he treated me and I'm not sorry he's dead, you know? But then I keep expecting him to walk in the door and say, 'Okay, babe. Everything's been fixed.' And then we're walking out of here and everything is okay."
She was staring at the ashtray as she spoke. Tipping the end of her cigarette against one of the butts, she watched the ash fall onto the table.
"You must think I'm such a loser," she said, not looking up.
"I don't judge people by who they've been," Hank told her. "Only by who they are."
Her gaze lifted. "You're a lot like Marty, aren't you?"
"How so?"
"You really listen to what someone's saying. It's not like the cops, or that guy from the D.A.'s office—you know they're just trying to catch you up in something. You and Marty make it seem like you're really interested."
Hank shrugged. "Some people think a person hasn't got any money, or maybe they're sick or too old, and all of a sudden it's like they're invisible. They don't want to know them—don't even want to know they exist. Me, I figure if someone's taking the time to talk to me, I should take the time to listen."
"Like some bum off the street comes up to you—you're going to stop and listen to him."
"Some of my best friends are what other people call bums."
She sat back, making it obvious that she was taking in the suit and tie. "Yeah. Right."
Hank looked at her for a long moment. "There's something I heard Nicholas Payton say once. You have to be humble enough to understand and accept information from people who know something you don't. The way I see it, everybody's an expert in something."
"Who's this Payton guy?"
"A trumpet player."
"Yeah, well, he's a chump."
Hank let it pass. It didn't matter what she thought of him or Payton.
"Let's get back to Couteau," he said. "What happened between him and Ronnie?"
"Ronnie owed him money for some dope he'd been fronted. Not the Frenchman himself, but some guy he works for. Ronnie didn't have it. The Frenchman said he'd be back."
"When was this?"
She blew out a stream of smoke. "Tuesday—no, Monday. He came by the club because Ronnie was with me, checking out one of the new girls. She does this thing with snakes, you know? Really classy."
Hank nodded encouragingly.
"The Frenchman doesn't look at Selma—the girl with the snakes. Doesn't check any of us out. Like I said, cold. Talks to Ronnie like I'm not even there, then he just walks out."
"Did you see him again?"
"Nah. Ronnie got the money together and paid him off."
"Who'd he owe the money to?" Hank asked. "Who was the Frenchman working for?"
"How would I know?"
Hank shrugged. "I figured a girl in your position—she'd hear things."
"Nobody ever told me squat." She sighed. "Did Marty say if they're going to set bail?"
Like they'd let her out on bail with a murder one charge hanging over her head.
"What we're working on," he said, "is getting them to drop the charges."
"No shit?"
Hank nodded. The hope in her eyes made him wish he could take her out with him when he left.
"But to do that," he said, "we've got to find the guy you were with on your break."
And the hope was gone, just like that. Replaced with the same flat gaze she'd had when she first came into the room.
"Guess I'll be here awhile then."
"Hang tough," Hank told her. "We're working on it."
"Whatever."
Her depression was contagious. It followed Hank back outside, across the yard, beyond the walls. He felt no relief when the gate closed behind him and he was out on the street, the weight of the building gone, being inside returned to something he remembered, instead of someplace he was.
Loosening his tie, he started down Lee Street, heading downtown. He started to make a list of tattoo parlors in his head as he walked, then went looking for a phone book to fill it out. It was a long shot, but the tattoo Sandy's trick had sported was unusual enough that, if he'd had it done in the city, someone was going to remember.
8.
Considering how long it had taken her to finally get to bed the night before, Kerry awoke feeling surprisingly rested. There was no residue of jet lag from her trip, none of the usual morning fogginess that followed taking a sleeping pill, and no bad dreams. Or at least none she could remember. Forgotten, too, was last night's visitor by the piano. Instead her heart was light, her mind uncluttered with worry. Pushing back the sheets, she sat up, eager to meet the day.
And it was going to be a good day, she decided. Everything pointed to it. The unfamiliar sense of well-being. The sunlight, tinted green by the leaves of the elm, streaming int
o the room where it woke a honey glow from the wooden floors and made the light-colored walls gleam. The clean smell of the room, as though the futon and pillow were stuffed with lemon balm. There was still no furniture, but she found herself reveling in the feeling of space that the lack of furniture gave the room.
Leaving the bed unmade, she washed and put some water in the saucepan that was serving as her kettle. She got dressed while she waited for it to boil. White T-shirt, blue jeans, Birkenstock sandals. When the water started to boil, she made herself a mug of tea and took it into the living room, but the view from the window wasn't enough to satisfy her. She had to be outside on a morning like this. So she took her tea downstairs to the front porch, walking quietly on the wooden stairs and easing the front door open so as not to wake anyone in the house who might still be sleeping.
There was a wooden two-seater swing at the far end of the porch, but the white wicker bench closer to hand, with its sprawl of blue-and-yellow flowered cushions, struck her as far more inviting. Sinking down into its comfort, she sipped at her tea and regarded the street. It was hard to imagine this morning that she'd ever found its tree-lined length in the least bit unnerving. The street was peaceful and quiet, the canopy of the trees so welcoming. A crow's caw made her look up into the branches of the enormous, fat-bellied oak directly in front of the house. She spied the crow first, high up, then waved when, lower down, she saw a familiar face looking at her from out of the jumble of browning leaves.
"Hello, Maida!" she called, pitching her voice low.
The small dark-haired girl dropped down onto the lawn and sauntered up the stairs. There was a wonderful mildness in her features, Kerry thought. Like the peaceful face of an animal. And she seemed so comfortable in her body, the way a child would be, perched on the porch railing in front of Kerry, her legs dangling, an easy smile on her lips. Her good humor was irresistible and Kerry couldn't help but smile back.
"I'm not Maida, you know," she informed Kerry.
"Really? Then you must be—" Kerry had to search for the name. "Zia?"
The girl nodded. "We like to look the same."
"Well, you're doing a great job of it." Kerry couldn't imagine two people looking more alike and not being twins. "I can't tell you apart at all," she said. "Are you sure you're not sisters?"
"Of course I'm sure. But we were born at the same time and we've been friends forever and ever."
Kerry smiled. "And do you really live in a tree?"
"Oh, yes. But not this one. We live in the elm behind the house. You can see it from your living room window."
You couldn't miss that enormous elm, Kerry thought.
"But where do you live in the winter?" she had to ask. "When it gets cold?"
Zia gave her a puzzled look. "We always live in the tree. Why would we move just because it got cold?"
"Because … well, you'd freeze."
That woke a merry laugh, reminding Kerry as much of Maida as did Zia's looks.
"Oh, we don't feel the cold like you do," Zia said. "I mean, we feel the cold, but it doesn't make us uncomfortable. Sometimes we'll sleep in the snow, just for the fun of it."
"But … ," Kerry began, then let her next question trail off unspoken.
She knew she was missing something here, some piece of a puzzle that would make sense of the sheer unlikelihood of two teenage girls living year-round in a tree, but she wasn't ready to pursue it. Not at the moment. Zia's calm description of things that were so patently impossible brought back too many uncomfortable memories of similarly confusing conversations she'd had in the past. Already she could feel tension settling in behind her eyes and in her neck muscles. She wanted to avoid anything of that sort right now. She wanted to recapture the feeling she'd had when she first woke up this morning and hold on to it forever.
"People used to live in trees, too, you know," Zia was saying. "But that was a long time now, when you were still furry and way more fun than most of you are today."
Kerry nodded, but she wasn't really listening. All she wanted to do was retrieve her earlier mood. She heard the screen door open and looked in its direction, grateful for the interruption, only to find herself completely confused. It was as though, in the moment it had taken Kerry to turn her head, Zia had teleported herself from her seat on the railing and was now standing by the door. Though, of course, it was Maida coming out onto the porch and Zia hadn't moved at all.
"Hi, Kerry," Maida said. She held up the photograph of Nettie. "Who's this?"
"That's my—where did you get that?"
"It was on the window seat in your living room."
"I know that. I meant …"
Kerry sighed. It was hard to be angry with the picture of innocence that Maida presented as she came down the length of the porch with that same easy stride as Zia, and sat down beside Kerry on the bench. Pulling her legs up under her, Maida faced Kerry and put the picture on her lap.
Kerry was used to a lack of privacy—she hadn't had a choice in the matter for years. But that didn't mean she'd ever liked it or had to put up with it now. She had to remember to lock her door.
"You shouldn't go into other people's apartments without being invited first," she said.
Maida regarded her with obvious bafflement. "Why not?"
"Because it's not polite. You have to respect people's privacy."
This was so weird. Kerry felt as though she was explaining the basics of common courtesy to a child, except the gaze that met her own wasn't a child's gaze. It wasn't even the gaze of the young woman that Kerry assumed Maida was—seventeen, maybe eighteen—but that of someone far older. An eerie feeling went whispering up Kerry's spine.
"We know her," Zia said, leaning forward to study the picture.
Kerry glanced at her in surprise.
"Remember?" Zia went on, her attention turned to Maida now. "She lived in the yellow house with all the flowers around it. You could swim in those flowers, there were so many. She was always drawing pictures of them and writing in that little book of hers."
Maida's face lit up. "I do remember her now. She'd have those oatmeal cookies that she'd share with us—the ones with all the nuts and bits of dried fruit in them."
Zia nodded. "She called them field food."
"And she had a nettle in her name—remember?"
"I do, I do," Zia said. "And she made houses for bees so that they'd give her honey."
Maida licked her lips. "Mmm. Honey for the tea and she never minded when you took a dollop on your finger."
Kerry could remember those cookies and the honeyed tea, but how could either Maida or Zia have tasted them? They couldn't have been more than five or six when Nettie died. Yet here they were, talking about the yellow house and the fields of wildflowers surrounding it as though it was familiar terrain. They knew that she'd kept bees. They knew about the cookies and how Nettie called them field food because she always took a few with her when she went hiking. They knew about her sketches and the notes she was always taking that were later turned into essays.
"Why did we ever stop visiting her?" Zia said.
Maida frowned in thought. "Because Ray told us to?"
"No, Ray wouldn't be so veryvery rude. Cody's the rude one."
"But handsome."
"Oh, veryvery."
"But then …"
A sudden stillness settled over Zia. "I remember now," she said, her voice soft. "It's because she died."
"And she wasn't supposed to die," Maida said, subdued now as well. "That's what was so sad."
Tears welled in Kerry's eyes. The confusion she'd been feeling as she listened to their conversation succumbed to a familiar sadness made strange by being able to share it with others who'd known and cared for her grandmother—no matter how impossible that seemed.
"How do you know her?" Zia asked.
First Kerry had to swallow. "She … she was my grandmother."
"So that's why you have fire here," Maida said, reaching out to stroke Kerry's messy
tangle of hair.
Her hand moved on, a finger gently touching the corner of Kerry's eye, the tip glistening when she took it away. She licked the tear from her fingertip, then put an arm around Kerry's shoulders.
"Don't be sad," she said. "Nettie's gone back into forever now. Raven says it's a good place to go."
Kerry looked back and forth between them. "I don't understand any of this," she said. "How could you have known my grandmother? Who are these people—Raven and Ray and Cody?"
"We know everybody," Zia said.
Maida nodded in agreement. "Because we've been around forever."
Kerry was beginning to think that maybe they really did live in a tree. Maybe they were faeries, the little earth spirits that Nettie used to tell her about. But if that was true, then maybe it was also true that—
"Man, is this a beautiful day or what?"
Kerry hadn't even heard the screen door open this time. She lifted her gaze to find Rory joining them on the porch and just like that, everything changed. Mysterious, wonderful things, seeming so plausible, so possible a moment ago, returned to their proper place as only a part of stories and fanciful imaginations, and the real world clicked back into place. The odd conversation she'd been having with Maida and Zia felt more like something she'd dreamt once than anything she might actually have experienced.
Rory smiled at her, though there was an odd look in his eyes when his gaze settled on Maida and Zia, as though at that moment he was seeing them for the first time. The way he studied them started to bring back her own fey feelings, but then he shrugged and it went away once more.
"So," he said. "You still up for a little shopping today?"
Maida perked right up, happy as a puppy who'd just heard the phrase "go for a walk."
"Shopping?" Zia said. "Oh, can we come?"
"Not a chance," Rory told her.
"Why not?" Kerry asked.
"Because they shoplift," he said. "I almost got arrested the last time they came with me."
Someplace to Be Flying Page 12
