“I told you she was here all night,” Laneer whispered. “She don’t know nothing. I’m gonna have to tell her what happened to her mama when she wakes up. Can you let her sleep till then? Please?”
McDaniel surprised Faye by whispering, too. “I’ll call you sometime after noon and I’ll be back right after that. Make sure she’s here.”
Faye took a step to follow him, but he put up a hand. “I’m going back to the crime scene. No unauthorized personnel are allowed until we’re done with the forensics. I’ll let you know when I release it so you can start your dig. A couple of days should do it, I’d think.”
As McDaniel walked away without so much as a good-bye, Faye paused on Laneer’s porch, surrounded by the happy colors of his vegetables and his paint. She wasn’t sure how she was supposed to get back to her car. It was a only few minutes’ walk away, if she could walk down the creekside path that McDaniel was blocking with his crime scene, but she couldn’t. She had no idea how to get there any other way. And also, Joe would kill her for walking alone in an area that suffered under the crime rate this one did.
It occurred to her that the attack on Frida was not going to help Joe’s attitude at all.
She reached out a hand to shake Laneer’s, planning to say both “Good-bye,” and “Can you help me figure out where I need to go?”
Before she could speak, Kali rolled over and opened her eyes. Just one word came out of her mouth, and it was “Faye.”
Simultaneously, Sylvia and Laneer said, “Come in and shut the door.”
Chapter Ten
Kali pushed back the quilt and sat up. She was still wearing her clothes from the day before, red knit shorts and a sleeveless black top. When Faye, Laneer, and Sylvia entered the room, she bolted.
The girl crawled over the back of the couch and tumbled to the floor, her legs snarled in the quilt. If Faye had been trapped like that on the floor, with three pursuers just steps away, she would have been just as panicked.
Panicked or not, Kali was quick and she was strong. She grabbed the back of the couch, pulled herself upright, and just ran. The quilt clung to her bare legs for several steps, hobbling her retreat, but it fell away as she reached the closed door.
The door must have been out of square or covered with many coats of sticky paint, because it didn’t open right away. The little girl yanked hard on the cut-glass doorknob as three adults advanced on her. When the door opened suddenly, with a creak, she was thrown off balance, but she was still able to dart through it before they reached her. She slammed the door shut behind her, and it closed with the grinding screech of a slab of painted wood that didn’t quite fit in its frame.
Faye looked from Sylvia to Laneer for guidance on what she could do for this child that, quite frankly, she barely knew.
Sylvia said, “Leave her be.”
Laneer said, “Can’t do that. She’ll go out the window if we leave her alone in that room.”
“Not if we’re standing out in the back yard passing the time of day.” Sylvia moved fast for a woman carrying a few extra pounds around the middle. She was out the side door before Faye or Laneer had time to say, “That sounds like a good idea.”
Laneer’s back yard was too shady for vegetables that made large fruit, like tomatoes and eggplant, but leafy vegetables don’t need much help from the sun to grow. His back porch was lined with green plants growing in flower pots in all shapes and colors. The pots overspilled with herbs, lettuce, and cooking greens.
Faye immediately saw that Kali was at the window, trying to force the latch open. It, too, was probably glued in place by years of paint. When she saw the three of them standing guard outside, her little face fell, then she turned quickly away.
“She’s going to try the front door now, so I believe I’ll go sit on the porch. That’ll stop her,” said Sylvia as she headed to the front of the house. Her steps were light and quick for a woman who had to be well along in her fifties. A cell phone had emerged from one of her apron pockets and she was tapping on it as she spoke. If McDaniel had wanted the details of Frida’s attack to be kept secret, he should probably have made this plain to Sylvia.
Laneer shook his head and gave Faye a gentle smile. “That child ain’t going nowhere today that Sylvia don’t let her go.”
“You called her Kali’s candy lady. What’s that?”
Laneer gave her the same appraising glance she’d been getting all week, first from Jeremiah, then from Kali and Sylvia. Even Detective McDaniel had given her that look. It said, “Can’t quite figure you out. You ain’t white, but you ain’t poor, and anybody can tell that you ain’t from around here.”
Laneer gestured toward his house and, presumably, toward the woman sitting on its front porch. “That apron Sylvia’s wearing? Them pockets are full of candy. Sylvia makes her money selling it.”
“You can make a living selling candy?” Faye was quick-thinking enough not to insult his home by following that question with a disbelieving “Here?”, but Laneer knew what she meant.
“She gets a check from the Social Security since her husband died, but the candy money don’t hurt. And people do for her when they can, ’cause everybody’s kids need a candy lady.”
“To look after them when their parents aren’t around.”
“Sure. Can’t nobody be all the places all the time.”
Faye’s children were a thousand miles away with Joe, so she knew that.
“Besides, kids tell their candy lady stuff that they wouldn’t ever tell their folks.” Laneer leaned down to pluck a bug off a lettuce leaf. There was a ladybug next to it and he left it alone. “I found Kali on my front doorstep this morning, not an hour before we heard the sirens.”
“You told McDaniel she was here all night.”
“She was. Frida sends her down here when she’s gonna be out late. I don’t know what Kali was doing out of my house at daybreak. She won’t say. Won’t say anything at all. When she said your name just now, it was the first time she talked at all since I found her on the doorstep.”
“McDaniel needs to know this.”
The old man stared at her silently. He didn’t have to say, “You would trust the police? With the well-being of a child?” His face said it for him.
Figuring there were other things Laneer hadn’t told McDaniel and might never tell him, she asked the obvious question. “Do you know of anybody who might have wanted to hurt Frida?”
Laneer then launched into a list of truly terrifying people. “There’s her ex-husband, Linton. He comes to mind first. She kicked him out when he slapped her, couple years back, and more power to her for finally getting smart. I never thought much of that man. I saw him standing in front of her house last week, so he’s either back with Frida or trying to get back with her. Me, I think he was just hoping she’d get weak and take him back, but Frida’s too smart to get hit twice.”
Laneer heard what he’d just said and his eyes slid shut. Faye remembered Frida’s broken nose and the blood spreading over her chest. Maybe Frida was as smart as Laneer said, but it hadn’t kept her from getting hit again.
“Is there anybody else besides Linton who you think might want to hurt Frida?”
“Never liked the looks of her boss at the restaurant. He was always trying to turn her head but she wasn’t having none of it. Don’t actually know why. Never heard anything bad about him,” Laneer said.
“She works at a restaurant?”
“Yeah, downtown where the tourists go.”
“She works waiting tables? Cooking? Hostessing?”
“She cleans the place in the evenings, after everybody goes home. Kali’s here most nights until it’s time for her to go to bed. I go with her to Frida’s and sit with her until her mama comes home.”
“Her boss. What’s his name?”
“Armand’s Rib Palace is the name of the place where she wo
rks, and Armand’s her boss.”
“Okay, so we add her boss to the list. Anybody else?”
“I most especially never liked Mayfield, down at the store.” Laneer waved his hand down the street.
“You mean the convenience store at the end of the block? Has he worked there long?”
Laneer made another vague gesture with his hand. “He works there for now. Night shift. Linton works days.”
“Frida’s ex-husband?”
“Yep. Linton’s a piece of work, for true, but Mayfield is the one I can’t stand the sight of. He don’t think much of nobody but Mayfield. He’s all the time asking Frida to go out with him, and he’s all the time putting little extra things in her bag. Candy bar. Bag of chips. Pack of gum. Let me tell you something ’bout guys like that, trying to kiss up to pretty ladies by stealing from the stores where they get their paychecks. They ain’t never any good. You’re a pretty lady, too, so you know how it works.”
Faye gave him an “Aw, shucks,” shrug.
“Yeah.” Laneer said. “Mayfield had a crush on Frida back in high school and it ain’t never gone away. Linton’s still kinda new in town—been here six years, maybe seven—but Mayfield goes way back. Born here, I think.”
“Linton’s only been here six or seven years? So he’s not Kali’s father?”
Laneer shook his head. “Frida never would tell a soul who Kali’s daddy was. She knew. I know she knew, because she wasn’t never one to run around with a lot of men. She just wants one man that wants her back and keeps wanting her. And treats her right. Good Lord, she has had a devil of a time finding one of those and I couldn’t tell you why. Anyway, it wasn’t Linton that was Kali’s daddy, that’s for sure, since he didn’t even live here then.”
“Do you know their last names?”
“Linton’s last name is Stone, same as Frida’s. Mayfield? Not sure. Everybody just calls him ‘Mayfield.’ Maybe that is his last name.”
Faye needed to call McDaniel as soon as she left Kali and her family. He needed to know that one simple question to Laneer—“Who might want to harm Frida?”—had resulted in three names in as many breaths: Armand the restaurant owner, Linton the ex-husband, and the single-named Mayfield. One of those names might belong to a man who wanted to hurt Frida, or wanted to put her in her place, but it was entirely possible that Laneer and Sylvia would never trust a policeman enough to share that information.
The top of a small head appeared at the bottom of the window they were guarding. Faye watched it rise slowly until a pair of eyes peered over the sill. After a few seconds spent scanning the back yard and glaring at Faye and Laneer, the little head dropped out of sight again.
“Somebody wishes we would go away and let her make an escape,” she said.
“She likes you, Faye. Anybody can see that. Do you think maybe you can get her to tell us what’s wrong?”
Faye wanted to say, “We all know what’s wrong. She just saw her mother buried alive,” but the words wouldn’t help Kali and saying them would be like punching Laneer in the gut. Instead she said, “I’ll do my best.”
“Don’t you want to tell the police about these people who might have hurt Frida?” she asked. “Armand? Mayfield? Linton?”
“You tell ’em. But also, you tell ’em to keep theirselves and their badges and their guns away from that little girl.”
Faye wasn’t exactly sure how she was supposed to do that. As soon as she told McDaniel that Kali had been outdoors at the time of Frida’s attack, he’d put that information together with the half-melted ice cream sandwich. Then he would immediately be on Laneer’s front doorstep, and he would be wearing his badge and carrying his gun. She wanted to say, “The police are here to help us. We need to let them do their job,” but she knew how naïve that would sound to Laneer.
Two little eyes rose again above a bright blue windowsill. McDaniel was busy gathering evidence and he’d said that he wouldn’t be gone long. Faye decided that she was willing to give Laneer a few hours, just until McDaniel came back that afternoon, to get the little girl to talk to him instead of to the police. But no more.
Chapter Eleven
He was falling, just as he always did, falling from the dizzy heights of a kill. A rush so powerful could not last forever.
One moment, adrenaline was pushing him along, adrenaline and all the other seductive brain chemicals. Dopamine, serotonin, endorphins—after a kill, he had no doubt that they were all pumping from every gland he had. They made everything fun, even the tedium of hiding his tracks. Even the fear. When the biochemical magic flagged, taking their rosy glow from his world, he remembered to be afraid.
It ate him up inside to imagine being caught. How would he explain himself to a policeman while standing beside a car’s open trunk, when the trunk held pieces of a shovel that had once been very bloody?
As he came crashing down, the paranoia settled on him like a black velvet cloak. Everywhere he looked, he saw people who surely must know that he had done terrible things. And beside them stood people who might not know, but they could guess.
What did the woman who found Frida know? Who was she, and what was she doing in Sweetgum State Park at the crack of dawn? She had no right to be there, not when he had been so careful to choose a place where he and Frida could be alone.
If she could have seen his face, and known it, then a detective would have come knocking on his door by now. But had she seen his body? Had she seen the way that he moved as he ran, the way his left elbow hung just slightly closer to his body than his right, just as it had since the last time his father beat him? The woman had to go. There was no doubt about that. He just had to find out who she was.
The idea thrummed inside him, an electric spark that was fresh and new. He had never committed a killing so close on the heels of another, but this felt right. The thought of killing this woman brought the lovely brain chemicals back.
He had no doubt that his victims left his hands and went directly to heaven. He chose them for their air of innocence, and surely paradise welcomed their purity. Perhaps this unnamed woman was as pure or, at least, perhaps she was pure enough. Paradise was probably waiting for her with arms outstretched.
Chapter Twelve
Faye’s phone rang. It was McDaniel, wanting to know if Kali was up.
“Not yet,” she sort of lied, thinking that a child who had been crouching beneath a bedroom window for hours was not technically “up.”
Since McDaniel left, there had been time for Faye to clean herself up in Laneer’s shower and change into a pair of pants Frida kept in his guest room. There had even been time for her to call Jeremiah and tell him that they needed to delay the start of their project.
When she emerged from the house after her shower, Laneer and Sylvia were right where she left them, and Kali was still lurking by the window. The four of them—Faye, Laneer, Sylvia, and Kali—had spent the entire morning like this. At noon, Laneer had gone inside to make some sandwiches, and the adults had eaten them while waiting for the child to get hungry enough to come out of her room. The detective had said that he’d leave them alone till after noon, and he seemed to be a man of his word, because here he was on the phone.
Faye wanted some privacy for her talk with McDaniel, so she walked around the side of the house.
“I can’t put you through to Kali, but I do have some information for you,” she said. “You’ll find two men who knew Frida down the street at the convenience store. Mayfield works nights. Linton works days. Laneer seems to hate Mayfield even more than Linton, despite the fact that Linton is Frida’s wife-beating ex-husband. Not sure if that’s relevant, but I thought you might want to know.”
Then she said a quick good-bye and hung up without telling him what he really wanted to know, which was that Kali was awake. The child just wasn’t talking to anybody.
As she pocketed her phone, she heard v
oices in the front yard. The top of Kali’s head was still visible, so Faye knew that she hadn’t strolled outside for a chat with Sylvia. Somebody else had arrived.
Laneer was still in the back yard, crouching next to a barrel-sized ceramic pot full of mustard greens. He was plucking weeds, so Faye squatted down and helped him. Keeping an eye on Kali, he told her, “I hear somebody talking to Sylvia. You go check that out. I’ll stay here and watch for a bit.”
In the front yard, Faye found a man about her own age, early forties. He was chatting amiably with Sylvia, who looked to be standing straighter and smiling bigger. One capable hand was smoothing the apron down over her hips, and the other one was offering the newcomer a handful of candy.
Faye could see why. It wasn’t that this man was so very handsome, although he was tall, heavily muscled, and flat-bellied, and he stood with confidence. His eyes were a little too deep-sunk for beauty’s sake and his teeth were a little crooked, but he had an open smile that would have shone all the way to the back of a Broadway hall.
“Faye, this is Mr. Walker—” Sylvia began.
“Call me Walt,” he said. His deep voice was as arresting as his smile. He looked at Faye just long enough to say, “Sylvia just calls me ‘Mr.’ because I teach school,” then he turned his expansive charm back to Sylvia, leaving Faye in the cold. “I came to check on Kali. I missed her at the playground today.”
Faye shoved away the feeling of being snubbed. Kali’s well-being was more important than her feelings, so she needed to know more about who this man was. Giving him a closer look, she said, “I remember you. You gave Kali an extra juice box yesterday, didn’t you?”
“Yep. That was me. She’s a sweet kid and I don’t want her to get thirsty. Besides, a little extra Vitamin C never hurt anybody.” And again, he returned his face to Sylvia.
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