“Don’t go off in a huff,” Allister said as she reached for the doorknob. “No one’s accusing you of anything.”
Blanche looked over her shoulder at him, but she didn’t turn around, didn’t walk back to the desk.
“Will that be all, sir?” She didn’t wait for Brindle to answer. She was tempted to let the door slam or at least close with a definite thud, but she couldn’t afford that. She stood with her ear pressed to the almost-closed door.
No one spoke for a couple of seconds. Then: “Insolent bitch! She’s lying. He might have used the key to get in, but she’s in on it. She put his note with the mail, and if she doesn’t have the tape, she knows where it is. I’m sure of it,” Brindle said.
Sadowski agreed. “But better to have her here, sir, so we can—”
Samuelson interrupted: “But why would Ray-Ray give her the tape? She’s not—”
“I don’t care why, Maurice.” Brindle said Samuelson’s first name as though it tasted bad on his tongue. “I just want that tape found, Maurice, and I want it found now. If you hadn’t fucked up and ki—”
“Boss…” Sadowski sounded like a parent warning a child against saying a bad word. Brindle didn’t finish his sentence.
“How many times do I have to tell you I—” Samuelson began.
“I don’t give a shit about how you fucked up or why! Just get me that goddamned tape!” Allister shouted.
Blanche went to the kitchen wishing, once again, that she’d torn that damn note up and flushed it down the toilet. Ray-Ray should have just put Brindle’s business in the street without selling wolf tickets. It was amazing how simpleminded some black men could be about white folks. What happened to all that mother wit that had helped them survive more than three hundred years in a cold, cruel country? What had Ray-Ray expected Brindle to do? Beg him to please not tell anybody? Offer him the guest room? Apologize for whatever it was she was sure Brindle had done to make Ray-Ray hate him enough to want to ruin Brindle’s run for governor?
And what had Brindle done about it? The question made her stomach rumble. Maurice Samuelson is what he did about it. Why else would Brindle have him in the room? Listening, watching. A scorpion waiting to strike. Like Ray-Ray was struck. But why kill Ray-Ray without getting the tape? Brindle’s got to be hot over that. That’s what he meant when he said Samuelson had fucked it up—he didn’t get the tape. Maybe Samuelson made Ray-Ray tell him where it was, but it wasn’t there. Maybe he gave Samuelson a phony tape. And what was on the damned thing anyway? Now Ray-Ray was dead, the videotape was out there somewhere, and Brindle thought she had it. She wished Samuelson had let Sadowski finish his sentence about why it was a good idea to have her in the house. Shit! She wanted to find out what happened to Ray-Ray, but she didn’t want to have a so-called accident of her own in the process. She jumped when the intercom buzzed.
“Such a shame about Ray-Ray,” Felicia said when Blanche went up to her room. “Inez called last night. She is so thoughtful, even at a time like this. Of course, I told her to take all the time she needed, that you were doing just fine.”
“Did you know Ray-Ray, ma’am?” Blanche asked, even though she already knew the answer. She wanted Felicia’s version of what Ray-Ray had been to the family.
“Oh yes! He and my son, Marc, were great good friends. Ray-Ray was probably in this house as much as he was in his own.”
Blanche wondered how many times Marc had been to Ray-Ray’s house.
“Things sure have changed between y’all, haven’t they, ma’am? I mean Ray-Ray was your son’s friend, but your husband doesn’t seem to think much of Ray-Ray now.” Blanche hoped this would prompt Felicia to tell what had soured Ray-Ray on Allister.
Felicia looked surprised. “Yes, well, that’s life, isn’t it? People we think are our friends, who we think we can trust…”
Felicia’s voice was suddenly so thick with sadness, Blanche was sure it wasn’t Ray-Ray she was thinking about.
“But that’s another story,” Felicia said without finishing her comment about friends and trust. Instead, she gave Blanche a speculative look. “Have you any idea what it is my husband is missing? I could ask that ass, Sadowski, but I’d rather not.”
Blanche was surprised by the question. Clients were generally more roundabout when they pumped her about another family member’s business. She was tempted to say “It ain’t my place, ma’am,” but she found that usually worked only on Southern women and women with dreams of grandeur, not the ones who could actually afford it. She liked the fact that Felicia had come right out and asked her, like a grown woman, instead of trying to trick or bribe her into telling.
“A videotape,” she said.
“Do you know what’s on it?” Felicia asked, and was obviously disappointed when Blanche said no.
“Well, if you hear anything or know someone who might know where this tape is, please come directly to me. I promise you, I’ll be extremely generous.”
Blanche decided not to respond to that. She never liked being in cahoots with a client. They rarely had your back when shit got stinky. Still, she was glad Felicia wasn’t in on what had happened to Ray-Ray. Felicia was still avoiding major eye-to-eye; Blanche wondered what she thought her eyes might show.
Around noon, people poured out of the house like water: Neither Wanda nor Mick had time for a snack; the Brindles went out and took Sadowski with them; even Carrie had an errand to run. Blanche called home. The line was busy.
The person Blanche sensed approaching the back door banged on it in a way that really got her back up. She opened the door eager to give hell to whoever it was. The sight of the red-eyed young man the color of just-done toast made her pause long enough for him to speak.
“Would you ask Miz Inez to come to the door, please. I have to see her. I’m not leaving until she talks to me.” He crossed his arms over his slim chest and stuck out his chin like somebody willing to start trouble but not likely to be able to handle it.
Despite his badass attitude, Blanche had to smile. Just as cute as he can be, she thought, taking in his pert nose and dreamy brown eyes, the way his lips lifted at the corners even while he was trying to be tough. She liked the way he dressed, too, in a kind of old-fashioned dark gray suit with wide loose pants and a long square jacket. He had a clean, crisp smell, like limes or juniper berries.
“Well, honey,” she said. “If you’re planning to hang here until Inez comes out, you gonna be standing here for a long time, ’cause she’s not here.”
The young man swayed like a hypnotized snake as he tried to see around her.
“I told you she’s not here, and I don’t appreciate you acting like you think I’m lying.” She wasn’t about to tell him anything more. Cute or not, for all she knew, he could be a bill collector. She made to close the door.
“Wait, wait, please. I’m sorry. I’m just so upset.” He gave Blanche a sad, haunted look. “She’s not home. I’ve been to her house. It’s locked tight. I called her all day yesterday. I just want to know when the viewing and the funeral are going to be. I got a right. I loved him, too. Maybe more than she did. At least I loved him for what he was…He’d want me there, want me to…” The young man broke off in an attempt to stop the tears already flowing down his face.
“Who are you?”
“It’s not fair. It’s just not fair,” he said. “We loved each other. We’d just found a place over in…He was going to…”
Oh shit. The boyfriend! And she hadn’t even realized Ray-Ray was gay! That’s what Miz Barker meant about Ray-Ray being different. Why hadn’t Mick told her? Blanche stepped outside the back door and closed it behind her.
“Listen, honey. I’m sorry, but Ray-Ray’s body is on the train headed for North Carolina, where his people are from.”
The young man turned his face away, his pain too private to share. This was not a good neighborhood for a
black man to be walking through looking half crazy. But she wasn’t about to let him in the house. He might be Ray-Ray’s lover, but that didn’t necessarily stop him from being a hatchet murderer. A lot of serial killers looked and acted like the nice boy next door when they weren’t gouging out people’s livers.
He took a snowy handkerchief from his pants pocket, wiped his eyes and face, and blew his nose. “Thanks for telling me,” he said. “You’re the first person who…” He struggled not to cry again.
“What’s your name?”
“Donnie. Donnie McFadden.”
“Donnie, I’m real sorry about your loss. I’m Blanche White. I’m taking over for Inez until she gets back. I can’t invite you in, but if you want to sit out here for a few minutes until…”
“No, no. I’m okay.” He put his handkerchief away and straightened his shoulders. He looked so tender, she thought he’d bleed if she touched him.
“Look, I gotta get back to work, but I really appreciate…you’re the only one I know who…Could I, I mean, could we talk later, after you get off?”
And listen to you talk about Ray-Ray? Blanche said to herself. You betcha. Who was more likely to know the whereabouts of that tape than Ray-Ray’s lover? She agreed to meet him at Connolly’s bar at eight-thirty.
She called home again and was almost sorry she did.
“You let me do the interviews, why can’t I go to City Hall with Aminata?” Malik wanted to know. “She can’t go till around three-thirty on Thursday. I can skip the Mediation Committee, so why can’t I go?”
Blanche would have told him if she’d had a good reason. But “No” had just popped out of her mouth when Malik mentioned Aminata’s name. Got to get over this! She told herself.
“You’re right, honey. Yes, you can go. I just don’t want you to spend so much time on this project you get behind in other subjects.” She cringed at the excuse-making whine in her own voice.
She talked to Taifa next, or rather listened to Taifa tell every detail of her not-very-interesting conversation with her friend Rasheeda. They’d had a big fight and were trying to make up. Shaquita came on last and said there was no mail, except bills, and Blanche hung up.
She figured out which of her regular clients Cousin Charlotte’s niece was supposed to be working for right then and called her.
“Aunt Charlotte already called me,” Larissa said.
“Well, I’ll call all my clients and tell them. Is everything going all right?”
Blanche couldn’t decide whether to be happy or nervous when Larissa, and later, all her clients, said everything was going just fine without her.
Felicia reached for her martini almost before she was in the door. Allister Brindle sprawled in his chair.
“Who is it tonight?” Felicia asked.
“The Garrisons. Oil money. He could be very helpful with—”
“A campaign contributor, of course,” Felicia interrupted. “Why else would we go there for dinner? God forbid we should have dinner with someone you weren’t planning to fleece.”
“There was a time you enjoyed going out with me,” Allister said. His eyes spoke of missing those times.
“We used to be on the same side, believe in the same things, like the same people.” Felicia said. “Now…” She looked as though she had more to say, but didn’t.
“Does everything have to be about politics?” he asked.
“You tell me. You’re the politician,” Felicia said. “I’m going to get dressed.”
Blanche was always interested in the way couples conducted their fights. Walking out of the room before Allister could get his two cents in seemed to be one of Felicia’s major battle techniques—that and pitching orange juice. Blanche chuckled.
Allister took a long swallow from his glass and set it down before he, too, left the room. Blanche caught a glimpse of him in the sunroom on her way to the kitchen, nursing his hurt feelings and his plants. Two hours later, they were both gone, with Carrie right behind them.
Blanche had planned to take a good look around Allister’s rooms and office before she left, but that would have to wait. She wanted to spend some time at home before she went off to meet Donnie.
Taifa was at a low spot on her hormonal roller coaster. If she wasn’t laughing like a ten-million-dollar lottery winner, she was evil as a drunk on a water diet or so fresh Blanche could see steam rising from her.
“I don’t know why I gotta take some old Spanish noway. None of my friends have to take it.”
“That’s between your friends and whoever is in charge of their education.”
“Gawd! It’s just too stupid!” Taifa stomped up the stairs.
Blanche was sometimes tempted to tell Taifa and Malik that she understood it was their job to rebel against her, to twist and turn and chafe themselves to independence so they didn’t have to work at it so hard—but that information could backfire. She had a flash fantasy of Malik bringing home his Aminata look-alike girlfriend and there was Taifa in a see-through blouse and beat-me-daddy stiletto heels. She shook those thoughts off. Reality was scary enough.
“Moms! Phone.”
The voice on the phone was so much less oily than in person that Blanche didn’t recognize it at first. When she did, she made a face and wished like hell she hadn’t taken the call.
“How’d you get this number, Maurice?”
“I got my sources, I got my sources.” He laughed in a way that made her think he was at least uncomfortable, if not nervous, about calling her.
“Your choice for governor tell you to call me?”
“Now, don’t be like that. The man don’t mean you no harm. He’s just worried. A lot’s riding on his finding that tape Ray-Ray stole.”
“How do you know he stole it?”
“Like I said, I got my ways. The real question is, where’s the tape now?” He paused as if he actually expected her to tell him.
“Well?” she said.
“I wouldn’t fool around with Brindle if I were you, sister. He’s serious as a heart attack. Whoever has that tape is going to end up in some deep stuff.”
“Like Ray-Ray, in the deep end of the pool,” she said without thinking.
There was a moment of silence before Samuelson said, “I don’t know nothing about that, sister. Not a thing. I just hope…I just wanted to make sure you were okay and not taking Brindle’s attitude personally. Like I told you, the man’s upset. Very upset.” Another pause. “So, if you can help him out…”
“You mean contribute to his campaign, or make sure his shorts don’t get starched?”
Samuelson’s laugh was as real as the tooth fairy. “I thought maybe you could talk to Ray-Ray’s mama, see if she might know where he…”
“If Ray-Ray stole something from his mama’s employer, I doubt he’d call her long-distance to brag about it.”
“Just trying to be helpful, sister, trying to save you some trouble.”
“Yeah, right. And my name’s not sister.” She hung up the phone and slumped against the wall. When she’d been listening at the library door, Samuelson had sounded as if he didn’t believe she had anything to do with the tape. Had he changed his mind, or was he hedging his bets? Bad news in either case. He hadn’t actually threatened her, but it was definitely time to start looking for that tape. But first, it was time to meet Donnie and see what he knew.
Connolly’s was Blanche’s favorite bar and live jazz outlet. It was the only bar she knew in Roxbury where a mature, lone woman could go without carrying a baseball bat. She thought the jazz called in the old heads and chilled out the young.
Donnie was waiting for her at the last small table in the back, beyond the long oval bar. He rose and waved to make sure she saw him. Blanche ordered a gin-and-tonic from the bartender.
“Hey, girl.” Blanche turned around. Lucinda, who worked at
The Steak Shop near Dudley Square, sat a stool away.
“I didn’t know you ran with the quick-change artists,” she said, tipping her head in Donnie’s direction.
“Cab!” a voice hollered from the door.
“That’s me!” Lucinda jumped off the stool and hurried out the door before Blanche could ask her what she meant. Blanche had a feeling it was some kind of slur against gays. She left the money for her drink and a tip on the bar. She took a sip from her glass, then carried it to the table, where Donnie was making rings on the tabletop with the bottom of a full glass of beer. He looked calmer, but sorrow hung around him like heavy weather. He had on the same clothes but managed to seem just-showered and newly pressed.
“Look, I’m sorry about this afternoon,” he began before Blanche could speak. “I know I was out of line, going on Miz Inez’s job like that, but I didn’t know what else to do.” He took a swig from his beer. “I didn’t think she’d be glad to see me. Another friend told me how she treated him when he went to her house to pick up Ray-Ray. She called him a freak! Can you believe it?” Donnie looked at Blanche as though it had just occurred to him that she might be on Inez’s side. “You a close friend of hers?”
“Relax, honey. I’m holding Inez’s job because she’s a friend of a relative, not because I believe she knows sunshine from shoe polish.”
Donnie relaxed against the back of his chair.
Blanche stirred and sipped her drink. She wondered why Donnie had bothered to go to the Brindles’. If Miz Inez didn’t want gays at her own door, she certainly wouldn’t put up with one at her white folks’ house, especially one claiming to be Ray-Ray’s lover.
“Listen, Donnie,” she told him. “I don’t want to beat around the bush. Ray-Ray’s funeral will probably be the day after tomorrow. I’m sorry.”
Donnie covered his eyes with his hands. Blanche patted his arm. He lowered his hands and held his head back as if his tears were a bloody nose. They sat quietly for a minute or two. Someone put money in the jukebox—something slow and sad. Donnie excused himself and went to the bathroom. His eyes were red-rimmed when he returned. He avoided meeting Blanche’s gaze.
Blanche Cleans Up: A Blanche White Mystery (Blanche White Mystery Series Book 3) Page 14
