Blanche Cleans Up: A Blanche White Mystery (Blanche White Mystery Series Book 3)

by Barbara Neely

  Bea gave Blanche a sidelong glance. “You’re maybe thinking I’m some kinda kook, meeting you here like this.” They stood at the end of the meat counter in the back of the store. From there they could see who was seeing them.

  “No, I don’t think it’s kooky. I know what Samuelson’s like.”

  Bea carefully examined a woman checking out the nearby pork roasts.

  “He come to see me. Told me not to talk to anybody about his business. Told me too much talking could be bad for my health. Course, he didn’t stop me talking. I just try to be more careful.” She gave Blanche a slightly panicky look. “You did say you weren’t a member?”

  “No, no. I’m not a member. I just wanna know…”

  “Who told you to talk to me? Oh yes, Charlotte.” Bea’s eyes followed a woman who’d looked in their direction when she passed by.

  “Why did you leave the church?” Blanche asked her.

  “Temple,” Bea corrected her. “I dreamed about him, you see. Saw him plain as I see you. Didn’t know who he was until I saw his picture in the paper a week later. I knew right off I was meant to join him, to help him in his mission.”

  “His mission?”

  “To bring all religions and races together. At least that’s what he said he wanted to do. Now I know better.” Bea’s eyes narrowed. “Now I know…”

  Blanche waited for Bea to go on for as long as she could. “Know what?” Blanche asked her.

  Bea clutched the handle of her shopping cart until her knuckles stood out like huge marbles. “I gave that man five years of my life. Five years…I did everything for that man.”

  Blanche stifled a yawn. He-did-me-wrong stories were never her favorites.

  “I didn’t have no family here, no children. All my spare time went to working for the Temple. I brought in new members, did the typing, and even swept up sometimes.”

  “What happened?” Blanche was eager to have it all told and over with so that she could go home.

  “I tried to tell people when I left the Temple, but nobody listened to me. I even wrote a letter to the newspaper. But they didn’t print it.”

  Blanche was two seconds short of tearing at her hair and running from the store. “I really want to know what—”

  “In time,” Bea interrupted, “my relationship with Maurice Samuelson became what you might call close.”

  Blanche grimaced.

  “Nothing improper!” Bea said. “I’m not that kinda woman.” She drew herself up. “Besides, I wasn’t born yesterday. I know how some of these ministers like to take advantage. But Maurice was devil enough to seem sincere. In fact, he asked me to marry him. This was before he married the wife he got now.”

  “Oh!” Blanche said, beginning at last to sense a little more than just the usual ministerial sex story. “What happened?”

  “The Lord saved me from the devil’s clutches, that’s what happened! Well, like I said, I don’t have no family, but I got friends. Good friends. Right here in Boston and down in Delaware. That’s where I’m from.

  “Course, when I decided to marry Maurice, I called my dearest friend, Rachel, to tell her the news. She still lives in Delaware. That’s when she told me about Laconia Waterford and poor Murleen.”

  “Who are they?” Blanche was having a harder and harder time concentrating as it began to sound like the same old story with a few extra twists.

  “Didn’t matter that she wasn’t alive. She was dead because of what he did to her.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “She was already dead when he asked me to marry him, you see, but it was what killed the woman that made me know he was just a devil pretending to be a man of God.”

  Blanche didn’t think it was Bea’s friend who was dead, but who the hell was? She’d have to bluff it.

  “What did he do to her?”

  “Poor woman come home and find that low-down negro in their marriage bed with her own daughter.”

  “What woman? Laconia or Murleen?”

  Bea gave her a sharp look. “I don’t like to keep repeating myself,” she said.

  “I’m sorry. I’m kinda tired today, and I got lost when you were telling me about…”

  “What I’m telling you is that Maurice Samuelson married a woman down in Delaware. Her name was Laconia Waterford. She was a widow with a grown daughter, name of Murleen. You understand me this time?”

  Blanche nodded.

  “Well, Laconia had a heart attack and died when she come home and found Maurice in bed with poor Murleen, who was born slow as a white-faced mule. After Laconia died, Maurice put poor Murleen in an institution for the retarded! She’s still there, for all I know. Folks down Delaware was quite upset about it. That’s why that Samuelson negro left Delaware and come here to do the devil’s work, after he got all Laconia Waterford’s savings and insurance money and deserted her only child by a previous marriage.

  “Course I gave him a piece of my mind, trying to marry me after what he did to that woman and her child! I wasn’t having none of that, and I told him so, you can be sure!”

  Blanche stared at Bea for a moment, partly hypnotized by her story and half hoping to hear something more, something she could use—like Samuelson’s stealing the money instead of having it left to him, something that made him ask “How high?” when Brindle said “Jump.”

  “How old a child was Murleen?” she asked Bea.

  “Wasn’t no child by then, except in her mind.”

  So that’s that, Blanche thought. But it was kinda funny. Samuelson must have got the shock of his life when Bea got in his face with his skanky business. Blanche could see why he didn’t want it talked around town. But it couldn’t hurt him in the way she needed to.

  “Well, I sure thank you for telling me about him,” Blanche said. “If this doesn’t convince my friend to stay out of that Temple, nothing will.”

  “You send her to see me! I don’t care what that sinful man says, I’m gonna tell the truth and shame that devil!”

  “You be careful,” Blanche said as they parted.

  Disappointment dogged Blanche’s steps. It wasn’t right that Samuelson was going to get away with all he’d done to so many people—murder, rape, thuggery, lies, the boy had been at all that, although she was no longer so sure about the first and worst of his crimes. But even without that, Samuelson was guilty of plenty. It wasn’t fair that he should be the religious star in the community when he was really a mangy dog showing signs of rabies. She’d stopped expecting life to be fair when she was about eight years old and had yet to be proven wrong. Still, that didn’t mean she couldn’t try to even things out a little bit.

  She stopped at the hardware store and picked up two spray cans of red-orange paint. She also bought herself a pocket-sized container of pepper spray. From now on, she intended to be better prepared for pigs like Mr. Muscles.

  By the time she got home, her head felt swollen with the need to think about all that she’d learned, to figure out what she needed to do. She went up to her room and undressed. She lay on her bed and relaxed her body. As her breathing slowed, she let the picture of Donnie float once again to the center of her mind’s eye. She sighed and willed herself to accept the meaning of what Othello and Pam had told her: Donnie had lied about not having seen Ray-Ray for four days before Ray-Ray died. He’d lied about being afraid Ray-Ray’s killer might come after him. What else had he lied about?

  She shifted back to the evening she’d met Donnie at the bar. What was the remark Lucinda had made about him that night? Something about artists. Maybe it wasn’t a slur against gays, as she’d thought. Maybe it was about Donnie himself.

  She got out the Yellow Pages again.

  The woman who answered the phone at The Steak Shop said Lucinda wasn’t working today. Blanche knew better than to ask for Lucinda’s home phone number, but she tried to
get the woman to pass her number on to Lucinda.

  “Can’t,” the woman said. “She outta town. Be in Monday.” She hung up.

  Blanche made herself a cup of tea. Nothing she could do now but wait. She turned on the radio and switched the station from the children’s preferred WILD to WGBH. Blues After Hours was on tonight. She’d ride the music away from here for a little while.

  TWELVE

  DAY ELEVEN—SUNDAY

  Joanie came to fetch Taifa and Shaquita at 8:30 Sunday morning. Othello picked Malik up at nine. None of them would be back before evening. Blanche had planned to go back to bed and sleep another hour or two, but the prospect of a whole day on her own was too exciting to waste on sleep.

  She turned on the radio before she turned on the kitchen light. For once, her station hadn’t been changed. Maybe the children finally accepted that this was her radio, not to be mistaken for family property—just like Grandma tried to teach me. She chuckled to herself, then stared at the radio:

  …His father, Allister Brindle, recently declared his candidacy for governor. The Brindle family is one of the…

  The reporter droned on in his best we’re-so-sorry-to-have-tell-you-this voice saved for the tragedies of the well-to-do and famous. If sympathy for the family was how the press was playing it, there’d be no ambitious junior reporter poking around for the story under the story, and the cops had no reason to ask any more questions. For once, rich folks’ privilege was paying off for her, too.

  The doorbell rang as she was pouring some of the bubbling bath salts Malik had given her for her birthday into the tub. She jerked upright and caught her breath. She knew who it was, just as she always knew when somebody close to her was calling on the phone or ringing her doorbell. But it can’t be! she thought. They hadn’t done any more than exchange birthday cards since he got married. Her mind argued with the hard, pimply flesh at the tips of her breasts and the first hint of a throb between her legs. It couldn’t be, but it was.

  She turned off the water and looked in the mirror on the medicine cabinet. She smoothed her hair, then ran down the hall to her room. Where had she put that condom she took from Malik? She found it in her night table drawer and put it under her pillow. The bell rang a third time. She straightened and retied her robe before she went down to the door. She laid her palm flat against it for a moment, then flung it open.

  “Y-Y-You surprised?” Leo held his hat between those knowing hands. A grin squinted his deep, dark eyes and creased his broad forehead. His stutter, which showed up only when he was really nervous, told her he wasn’t sure of his welcome. She stomped on the urge to run her tongue over his full, red-black lips.

  She stepped back to let him in, then quickly locked and chained the door. She turned to face him. Damn, he looked good! She tried to wipe the lust off her face, although she was sure he’d felt it already. The heat that sprang between them when he passed her in the doorway had nearly singed her hair.

  “What brings you to Boston?”

  “My brother Roscoe’s wife’s mother died. They live over in New York. I was the only one of the brothers who could get up here to the funeral. So…I took the bus here from New York. Nice ride.”

  Blanche felt him searching for something more to say. She didn’t help him out. He was the one who got married.

  “Nice funeral, too. Real nice.”

  Blanche wanted to laugh. She’d never seen him squirm so, like he had to pee or something. She folded her arms across her chest and waited.

  “I thought I’d surprise you. Maybe buy you a drink, or…”

  “You want some coffee? Hot tea? Iced tea? Orange juice? Gin? Water?”

  “Uh, yeah, coffee. Coffee would be good.” He followed her into the kitchen.

  “Nice place you got here.”

  Blanche measured coffee into the coffeemaker and let the silence between them settle into something a little less nervous.

  “Saw your mama last week. Spry as ever.”

  Blanche put cups, cream, and sugar on a tray.

  “Haven’t seen Ardell for a while. Somebody said she’s away. Course you’d know more about that than me.” He gave Blanche a help-me-out kind of look.

  “How about something to eat?” she asked him.

  “Uh, I’m fine, I’m fine.”

  There was no argument about that. She carried the tray into the living room and put it on the coffee table. She invited him to sit. He took the sofa. She took the armchair to his left. She poured coffee and handed him a cup. They stared at each other over it until she sat back in her chair.

  “So how’s everything down home?”

  “Fine, just fine. Everybody’s healthy. Weather’s good.” He sipped his coffee. “How’s Taifa and Malik?”

  “Growing fast. What’s up with Luella? How she doing?” Blanche asked, knowing he knew she didn’t give a damn about the answer. She wondered if he also knew she was going to have him even if he said Luella was standing just outside the door. But that didn’t mean she was going to make it easy for him.

  Leo looked everywhere in the room except at Blanche. “She’s okay.”

  “Just okay? That don’t sound like newlywed talk to me. Why didn’t she come with you?”

  Leo squirmed like the sofa was heating up beneath him.

  “Well?”

  Leo’s usually slow, clear voice became a quick mumble: “Seem like she don’t want to be a wife no more than you. Spends all her time in that new church.”

  Blanche threw her head back and laughed.

  Leo leaned forward and set his coffee cup on the table and looked at her as though her name were Cake.

  “Goddammit, Blanche! What you want me to say? Okay, okay, maybe I made a mistake, maybe…” His words were like groans from deep in his gut.

  Blanche unfolded like brand-new butterfly’s wings.

  “Serves you right for quittin’ me.” She crossed her legs and let her robe fall open.

  Leo stood and reached for her. Blanche let him pull her from the chair. “Aw, shit, woman. Don’t nobody ever quit your fine ass.” He cradled the cheeks of her behind with his hands and slid his tongue between her lips, slowly, deliberately exploring her mouth. She felt light as laughter. And greedy. She wrapped her arms around his neck. His hand slid between her legs. She yanked his shirt from his pants, lifted it, and moaned at the touch of his velvet chest, the muscles in his back. She pulled away to take off her robe. Leo helped her with one hand while the other stayed between her legs, touching everything she owned and turning it to a hot stickiness. Those magic fingers. Dear Ancestors! This was the sweetest man. She traced a circle around his left nipple with her tongue. They almost didn’t make it to her bedroom.

  He stayed all day, most of it in Blanche’s bed. In the middle of the afternoon they showered and played in the tub until they were both hot enough to sizzle. Blanche didn’t tell him anything about what had been happening, but she leaned into him and let him pet her in ways she could see surprised him and made him happy. She fed him lightly, not wanting to waste his energy on digestion. She rode him like he was the last train away from certain disaster, and lay panting and sweaty next to him, more relaxed and present in her body than she’d been in months, her floor littered with Leo’s condom supply. Laughter rolled up from her belly and rocked the room.

  “Damn! I missed you, woman! Just hearing you laugh, I…” Leo rolled toward her. “Listen, Blanche, I…”

  She put her tongue in his mouth. What was there to say? He was the one who’d gotten married.

  Leo pulled away from her. “So, this is it?”

  “You always was greedy, Leo. That’s what got you Luella.”

  He frowned down at her. “What you mean?” He made small circles around her navel with his index finger.

  “You wanted somebody to own. That’s why you got married. This wasn’t enough,
just being happy as two pigs in slop.” She slid her hand along the shaft of his penis. “You had to own a wife. Well,” she laughed, “you got one. And God, too, it sounds like.”

  Leo wanted to talk. “Can’t we work something out?”

  “Something like what?”

  “Something regular, something sweet and…”

  Blanche laid her hand on his cheek. “Leo, honey, you know better.”

  “Blanche, baby, I miss you so much. You don’t know what it’s like. Every time I look at Luella, I know I made a mistake.”

  “Then fix it,” she told him, but softly.

  “That could take awhile. In the meantime…”

  “I haven’t changed, Leo,” She almost wished it weren’t true. “It would be just like before. You don’t know how to do openhanded loving, and I can’t do it any other way.”

  “Aw, Blanche, we…”

  She leaned over and kissed him. “Don’t waste what time we’ve got talking about what we can’t have.” She rolled toward him. There was one last condom on the night table.

  An hour later, she shooed him into a cab, which gave him exactly forty-five minutes to make his bus.

  Blanche was still in her bathrobe when Malik flew into the house.

  “Moms! Guess what?” He threw his backpack on the sofa. “We found the names of two officers in the company that owns the abandoned building. They’re related. Two ladies named Laconia and Murleen Waterford. We don’t know who they are yet, but…”

  “That’s great, honey,” Blanche said from the one corner of her attention not engaged in savoring her day.

  “Man, that computer was awesome! And guess what else? These Waterford people own some other buildings, too, where people are living, and we…Why’re you smiling like that?” Malik asked her.