“I didn’t want to do my chores. I heard my mother call me again and figured it probably meant my father was home and it was time for me to surrender.
“I went up the stairs and had just emerged from under the stairwell when we heard an explosion in the night.
“‘What was that?’ my mother said. She went to the stereo and turned off the music—Vivaldi, I think. I’ve never been able to listen to it since, to this day.
“As she walked toward the front door, I thought I heard my father’s voice calling her, then we heard the second explosion. ‘Oh dear Lord,’ she said. ‘Your father!’
“Summer came out of her room and said, ‘What was that?’
“My mother ran outside screaming.
“I followed her and our lives were never the same again. By the time I reached them, she had blood all over her dress. She was screaming, ‘They killed him! They killed him! My God! Oh my God!’
“Our lives changed from day to night in that moment. My mother was hyper, trying not to fall apart which, of course, she kept doing. She sobbed, shrieked, and howled like a banshee all night long.”
“Where were the other girls when the shots were fired?”
“Brooke and Spring were in the music room watching a television show when I’d last seen them. I think it was over and they’d gone to their room to listen to music, or whatever. They never let me in there.
“My mother found something in my father’s effects a few days later. Made us all go with her to a storage unit.
“I was playing around outside. My mother and the girls came out, all crying and shaky. She said what my father left in the storage unit would be a disgrace, a disaster for us all. She kept talking about the family name.” Sky laughed heartily.
“I don’t know what family name she was trying so hard to protect. My damn grandfather was a smuggler, a rumrunner for God’s sake. My dad used to tell me stories about him, when Mother wasn’t around. We used to talk a lot. I was the youngest, the only boy, his favorite.
“They brought a box, like a chest, out of the storage unit and took it down to the cellar. I kept asking, ‘What is it? What’s in it?’ Nobody would tell me, and all of a sudden the cellar was off-limits. I’d played down there all my life. The girls, too. We used to hide down there.”
“Hide from what?” Burch said.
Sky pointed his coffee stirrer like a gun. “Hey, don’t you start in, too. You sound like my mother. All us kids would hide down there from time to time. From each other, from our parents when they wanted us to do chores or homework. We’d play hide-and-seek. Typical kid stuff.
“But all of a sudden it was forbidden. So naturally, I went down there to snoop the first chance I got. The box was on a shelf. Padlocked. I was trying to get the lock open when she caught me.
“She freaked, went totally crazy. Said we had to get out of the house, started to throw our clothes in the car. I didn’t want to go. I was surprised that the girls didn’t put up an argument or balk, too. They knew something I didn’t and seemed all too willing to get out. My mother drove us away from there like somebody possessed. We never slept there another night, never went back. It was like we were on the run from the Shadows. From that thing in the cellar.”
“Did you know what was inside?” Nazario said.
“Hell, no. Nobody would ever tell me. But I do now.” He shrugged. “I read the newspapers. Back then I had all kinds of fantasies about what was down there.”
Like his sister, Sky agreed to give a DNA sample.
“Have you seen my mother yet?”
“Our next stop,” Nazario said. “Any message?”
“No. I’m over it. Every once in a while I get letters from their lawyers wanting me to testify in one of their lawsuits against each other. My father had established trusts for us in his will. He named my mother as administrator. We were all at her mercy financially. The girls periodically sue her for breach of fiduciary duty, her handling of the family money. And she files outlandish complaints against them. I never respond. I’m done. I was done a long time ago.” He paused for a moment to reflect. “But no matter what your relationship is with a parent, you regret when they are gone from your life.
“The Shadows,” he said as they stepped out onto the street. “Is it still standing? I read they planned to knock it down. If it’s still there, I’d like to go back and see it one last time.”
“If you’re serious, don’t put it off,” Burch advised.
The detectives skirted yellow crime scene tape to enter the posh high-rise San Francisco apartment building where Diana Nolan lived. The shrouded corpse of a jumper awaited removal from the bloodstained sidewalk.
The detectives exchanged alarmed glances. “You don’t think…” Burch said.
They were relieved when a uniformed maid said they were expected and that Diana Nolan was out on her penthouse terrace plucking roses from her private garden.
Pierce Nolan’s widow, now eighty, had delicate, almost childlike features. She wore a woven straw hat with a round brim to protect her from the sun. With her hat and curls she resembled a wrinkled, wizened Shirley Temple.
She brought in an armful of roses in lush, velvety shades of pink and red and handed them to the same maid, who waited while she peeled off her gardening gloves. She took them as well.
Diana Nolan ordered tea, then settled herself into a plush red chair as though preparing to hold court.
“I believed in truth and beauty,” she told them imperiously. “I was the belle of New York, debutante of the year. Walter Winchell wrote about me in many of his columns. So did Dorothy Kilgallen. I was photographed at every opening night on Broadway, at the Metropolitan Opera, and at the ballet. I would have been the Paris Hilton of my day except, of course, that my parents and I had style, class, and good breeding. You should have seen our listing in the blue book, the Social Register. My friends were Gloria Vanderbilt and Cary Latimer, but then I met Pierce Nolan and isolated myself in Miami for him. I lamented the lack of culture there, but did it all for the love of the wrong man. That was the great tragedy of my life.
“He had a dark side I never suspected and it brought an end to him. If he was that perverted, I knew what must have happened in our own home, a place built by his father, a notorious adventurer and criminal. When I asked our daughters to tell me if their father had ever touched them, they denied it. To this day they refuse to admit it. Deny, deny, deny.” Her voice grew shrill. “They lie and lie and swear to each other’s lies. They all lied to me, starting with him. They are obviously their father’s children, as was he. The apple never falls far from the tree.
“I believed our life was idyllic. Despite the backwater climate in Miami, we had music in our home, took trips to New York for the opera, the shows, and the shopping. I tried to bring style and grace to Miami. I believed that love would compensate for what my surroundings lacked. I was so naive.
“Our children, all of them damaged goods, damaged by their devil of a father, repaid me by lying. They grew up greedy, ungrateful, and grasping. Lucky sperm, demanding money because of a mere accident of birth.”
“I thought Sky hadn’t asked for anything since he left years ago,” Nazario said.
“He’d better not plan to in the future, either. He’s so like his father. God knows what double life he leads wherever he is. Now that I’m rid of that cursed house and know it will be destroyed, my attorneys and I plan to see to it that none of them ever see a dime of that money. Not one deserves a cent.”
“What we want is to solve your husband’s murder and identify those infants,” Burch said. “Did you know they’d be there when you took your children to the storage unit that day?”
“Of course not. No one was more shocked than I.”
“Do you have any idea who they were?”
She shook her head.
“It seems impossible that seven infants could be found in a house occupied by only one family, yet nobody in that family has a clue who they we
re, or where they came from.”
She shrugged. “Obviously they were bastards. Who the mothers were, how many women there were, over what period of time, I have no idea. My husband had to be the father.”
“No,” Burch said. “He wasn’t.”
“What are you saying?” She looked startled. “Who else would have fathered them? Pierce rented that unit, he paid for it. He clearly hid them there shortly before his death. And just as clearly a killer took revenge for his reckless philandering.”
“No,” Burch said again. “You’re wrong. We haven’t made it public yet, but DNA test results show that none of the infants are related. None shared the same parents. We’ve taken DNA samples from both Summer and Sky. They’ll tell us if your husband was related to one, but we believe it will show that he wasn’t the father of any of them.”
“That’s preposterous!”
“No. Now, knowing this, do you have any idea where they came from?”
She was silent.
“Sometimes,” she finally said, her voice less shrill, “I wonder what Pierce would look like today, had he lived. Would we recognize each other if we passed on the street? His memory burns like a flame in my soul, but my heart was broken forever.”
She swore she knew of no other motive for his murder. She had no jealous admirers, he had no financial or business problems. Like everyone else had told them: Pierce Nolan had no enemies.
Burch checked his watch as they rose to leave. “When we spoke to Brooke, she agreed to meet us here. Do you know where we can find her?”
Diana Nolan looked up, startled.
“You just missed her,” she said slyly.
The shocked detectives conferred with the police down on the sidewalk.
“The way the mother took the news, dry-eyed and calm, almost as though she expected it, struck me as odd,” the San Francisco detective said. “But people react in different ways.” He shrugged.
“All she said was that her daughter suffered from periodic bouts of depression and they’d been involved in a series of long-running family disputes. The daughter apparently left the apartment upset after they exchanged words today. Instead of leaving the building, she took the stairwell to the roof.
“An employee up there to repair a flagpole saw her. He yelled to her but said she didn’t hesitate. Dove off, arms out, like she was trying to fly.”
CHAPTER 20
Stone feared she’d missed her flight.
Miami International Airport was chaotic as usual, a cacophony of languages, police whistles, and the blaring horns of taxis, shuttles, and impatient drivers. He had said he’d pick her up. It made sense. She didn’t know the city, it would give them more time to talk. He could drive her right to the station, take her to lunch later, then drop her off at her hotel.
He tried not to stare at a beautiful, sophisticated-looking black woman in a tailored blazer and continued to scan the streams of arriving travelers in search of Ashton Banks.
He felt a light tap on the shoulder.
“Detective Stone?”
It was the beautiful woman, skin like chocolate, black hair pulled back, big eyes alive with intelligence and anticipation. Stylish and smart-looking, she stood about five feet four inches tall, no more than 110 pounds, with a wide mouth and thick eyelashes.
“You’re Ashton Banks?”
“That’s right. Call me Ash. You walked right by me.”
“I didn’t know you were black.” He hated himself when he heard what he said. What he really wanted to say again was, Thank you, Jesus.
He was glad he’d worn his good jacket and had taken the time to put on that industrial-strength goop so his hair didn’t walk through a door before he did.
She flashed a megawatt smile. “For a detective, you sure don’t know a lot of things, do you? Let’s go meet Gran.”
He warned during the drive that his grandmother would be hostile. “She refuses to talk about it. She’s afraid something will happen to me.”
“Can’t blame her.” She gave him a sly once-over.
Was she flirting? Was the instant attraction mutual? Nah, he couldn’t be that lucky.
“Particularly after what happened to her son,” Ash said.
They found Gran picking herbs in her garden. She looked up as they exited the car.
“Gran, I want you to meet someone.”
“I see you’ve got basil, chicory, and parsley,” Ash said before he could even introduce them. “Is that peppermint? Bless your soul. People usually grow spearmint.”
“That’s right,” Gran said. “Sonny likes it in his iced tea.”
“Sonny?” Ash cut her eyes at him, amused.
He winced. “Nickname,” he muttered, “from childhood.”
“I live in an apartment,” she told Gran, “so all I have is a little window-box herb garden. I mostly grow catnip for Snugglepuss.”
As the two women talked fertilizer, a rare and refreshing sudden summer breeze clapped the palm fronds together overhead.
“I do love that sound.” Ash shaded her eyes and looked up.
“The palm trees are clapping their hands for God,” Gran said, nodding.
“Nice line, Gran,” Stone said.
She shot him a withering, sidelong look. “That’s from Psalms, boy. When did you quit reading your Bible?”
“Yeah,” Ashton Banks said. “When?”
“You two are ganging up on me. I can’t win.”
After the garden tour, they went inside.
“So you’re a Cold Case girl from Mississippi,” Gran said as she added peppermint leaves to the iced tea. “Guess that means you and Sonny have a lot in common. Are you married?”
Stone rolled his eyes but held his breath for the answer.
“No, I’m not. It’s hard to build a social life when I’m always working. Why? Is there someone you’d like me to meet?”
“Maybe,” Gran said coyly. “Very good-looking, a little bit spoiled, but a good boy.”
“Gran!” Stone interrupted, embarrassed.
She smiled up at him. “What do you think, Sonny? Wouldn’t she and your cousin Robert make a handsome couple? I bet they’d hit it off.”
“Robert?” he said, startled. “No way! I wouldn’t wish him on any woman.”
“How did they happen to name you Ashton?” Gran was asking.
“It was my maternal grandmother’s maiden name. She had no brothers to carry it on, so my mother gave it to me.”
“That’s nice.” Gran nodded. “I like remembering family. Very nice. If I ever was to have any great-grandchildren,” she said, casting a baleful eye at Stone, “it would be nice to name one Oliver. That was my daughter-in-law’s maiden name.”
“I know,” Ash said. “They were so brave to go to Mississippi that summer.”
Gran nodded. “When my son said he wanted to do civil rights work that summer, I was proud. Idealistic at the time. I wanted to see Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream realized. I’d listen to the church choir, think about his words, and it seemed like the whole universe was singing. The waves beating on the shore, the wind moving in the trees, and the sounds of streams and brooks. I thought life was like church, where you have to sing with a full voice. I encouraged my son to answer the call, to help people register to vote. I encouraged him. It was a terrible mistake.”
Ashton reached for her hand.
“I remember the last lynching here in Miami, in Ojus, in 1937,” Gran said. “I was just a child then. Later I was teargassed once, at a peaceful protest here in town. I still remember the screams when the tear-gas bombs were thrown. All I could think of was, Change this.”
“I didn’t know about that,” Stone said.
“A lot you don’t know,” she said. “Your daddy and your momma, they got sprayed with water hoses and had police dogs set on ’em. They were shell-shocked that summer. When your daddy came home two weeks early, he looked like he’d aged ten years. He brought her with him. First time I met the girl.
/> “She was a precious daughter-in-law, but Lord a mercy, up till that summer, she hadn’t seen the bad in people. Took some time before they told me all they saw. My son said, ‘Mama, there are smiling people out there with devils’ faces.’ We never talked about it again.
“Then, all those years later, a man from Mississippi called to tell my son they wanted justice for that young man who was killed. We talked and talked about it and, God forgive me, I made my second terrible mistake. I said they should stand up for justice. You can be a quiet soldier, I told him, an unarmed soldier. Education and knowledge are weapons. History is a weapon. So is the law. And the best way to help yourself is to help others.
“But evil never changes,” she said, her voice small, hands clasped in her lap. “It was my fault. If I’da argued against it, hard, they wouldn’t have been taken from me and Sonny.”
Stone sat listening. “It wasn’t your fault, Gran.”
“So you always believed that their murders were connected to what they saw in Mississippi?”
“Yes, ma’am, I did.”
“Call me Ash, please. Did you tell the homicide detectives that?”
She shook her head. “They were white policemen. I didn’t know if I could trust them. Or if they’d believe me. It wasn’t so much that I was scared for myself, it was that I had to take care of Sonny. What if something happened to me? I had to be here to raise him right. If I didn’t, who would?”
“You made the right decision under the circumstances. Obviously you did a wonderful job. Just look at him.” Ash paused and smiled warmly at them both.
“What about Officer Glover?” Stone asked.
“He was different,” Gran said. “He knew your momma and daddy. He’d go by almost every day for lunch or for a meal to take home. He always insisted on paying, not like those police who always expected everything free.
“That’s how he happened to find ’em that night. Ran out of his patrol car in the rain to pick up some barbecue. Had to be right after it happened. Said he could still smell the gunpowder in the air when he walked in. It tore him up. He was a good man. Remember how kind he was that night, Sonny? Even came to the funeral to pay his respects.
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