Seventeen years had gone by, but the acid indigestion was still with him. Sometimes he could go for weeks, months even, without a trace of it. But when something was not right there it was, back again. It was a warning sign, a red flag, a smack in the head that said, “Listen up, this is important!” Mahoney stopped at the drug store, bought a roll of Tums, then drove to the Wyattsville Arms apartment building, uncertain of whether what he had to say was going to be perceived as good news or bad.
Ethan Allen was already home from school, and he was the one who answered the bell. “Hey, Mister Mahoney,” he said and yanked the door open. “You here for more questioning?”
“Perhaps,” Mahoney answered, then asked if he could have a moment alone with Olivia.
Ethan yelled, “Grandma!” and moments later, Olivia came from the kitchen drying her hands on a dish towel. She knew by the look on Mahoney’s face he had something.
Turning to Ethan Allen she said, “You and Jubilee scoot on out of here. Go work on that puzzle you’ve been doing.”
“There’s pieces missing,” Ethan answered and stayed put.
“Then go do your homework.”
Ethan gave a disgusted sigh. “I guess we’ll work on the stupid puzzle.” He turned and motioned for Jubilee to go with him.
Jubilee, who had begun to tag after Ethan like a shadow, didn’t move. Instead she narrowed her eyes and looked at Mahoney suspiciously. “You gonna ask me more questions about Paul?”
“Maybe later,” Mahoney answered.
“Scoot,” Olivia repeated. She led Mahoney into the kitchen and closed the door. He settled into a chair, and after she’d poured two cups of coffee she sat across from him. “Have you found Anita?”
“Not yet,” Mahoney answered, “but I’m pretty sure I’ve found Jubilee’s brother.” He went on to tell of the hospital visit and how the mention of Jubilee’s name brought a glimmer of recognition. “Right now he seems to have very little memory of anything, but I believe seeing his sister could change that.”
Olivia gasped. “Absolutely not. The child has been through enough. If he is her brother and doesn’t recognize her…”
“I know it’s chancy, but I think the kid will respond.”
Olivia shook her head. “There’s got to be another way to find Anita. If Jubilee had some real family to care for her, she might be better able to handle her brother going to jail.”
“Whoa there,” Mahoney said. “First off, you’re jumping to conclusions. I’m not even sure the boy was involved in this. And secondly—”
“Not involved? But you said—”
“No, I never said I think he’s guilty. Gomez is heading up the investigation and he thinks the kid is guilty, but—”
“Sargent Gomez? The one with the bushy black mustache?”
Mahoney nodded. “But he’s not Sargent Gomez anymore, he’s Detective Gomez.”
“Oh, dear.” Olivia remembered Hector Gomez all too well and wasn’t eager to have another encounter with him. “We have simply got to find Anita.”
“Yeah, well,” Mahoney said with a sigh, “right now I’m coming up with a lot of dead ends. Your F.M. Jones gave me a lead on a woman in Norfolk who years back rented an apartment to Bartholomew Jones and his wife. Supposedly there was a woman named Anita who visited frequently, but I’ve gotta say this is thin at best; more than likely going nowhere.”
“You never know,” Olivia said hopefully.
For several minutes they sat there saying nothing. Mahoney stirred his coffee three times even though there was not a drop of cream or sugar mixed in. Olivia fussed with folding and refolding her napkin. After a long while she asked, “Do you honestly think there’s a chance Paul’s not involved?”
“Possibly,” Mahoney answered. “But we won’t know anything until we hear Paul’s version of the incident. That’s not going to happen until he remembers who he is.”
“What about Mister Klaussner? What does he say?”
“Unfortunately, Sid is in a medically-induced coma. And the prognosis is iffy.” The last of Mahoney’s words hung in the air weighted with an ominous unspoken question mark.
Olivia thought back to the beginning of their conversation. “Earlier on you started to say secondly. What was that secondly?”
Mahoney rubbed the back of his hand across his chin pensively. “I was gonna say if Paul does get his memory back, maybe he can also tell us where to find the aunt.”
Olivia nodded knowingly.
The coffee was gone, and the cups had grown cold before she spoke again. “I don’t believe in forcing a child to needlessly face the terrible truth of reality, but neither do I want to make a decision that could change her life. I know Jubilee is only seven, but she’s sensible enough. I think we should explain this to her and ask how she feels.”
“That’s a wise decision,” Mahoney said. “A very wise decision.”
After going through what would or wouldn’t be said, Olivia called Jubilee into the kitchen. Ethan Allen was right behind her.
“You don’t really need to be here,” Olivia told him.
“Yeah, I do,” he said. “I promised to stay by her.” Before he sat, Ethan scooted his chair to where it was bumping up against Jubilee’s. Once everyone was settled, Jack Mahoney began to speak. His words were wrapped in a softness only parents are capable of.
“Jubilee, I know you love your brother, and he loves you too. When Paul told you to wait for him I’m sure he had every intention of coming back, but sometimes things happen and we can’t do what we’ve promised.”
As he spoke, an odd sense of knowing settled on Jubilee’s face. There was no frown, no smile, just an empty look of resignation. Before Mahoney finished the speech he was working through, she asked point blank, “Did you find my brother?”
“Yes, Jubilee, I think I did.”
“Did he say he’s not coming back to get me?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Then he’ll be back,” she answered flatly. A thin shell of resolve crusted over the outside of who she was. Inside there were a million broken pieces, fragments of things taken from her life—a mother, a father, a brother, a place to call home, friends, familiar roads, a garden—the shell kept all those things from spilling out like handfuls of Cheerios.
“What makes you so sure?” Mahoney asked.
“Because he promised.”
Mahoney saw the certainty in her face. She trusted Paul would be true to his word. There was no maybe or extenuating circumstance, it would happen. She believed in someone bigger than herself. Someone for whom even the impossible was possible. This tiny little girl had a faith that most grownups prayed for.
With a heavy heart Mahoney said, “Sometimes bad things happen and no matter how much you love someone, you can’t keep the promise you made.”
The look on Jubilee’s face was one of wariness. “What kind of bad things?”
Mahoney explained how Paul had been hurt in an accident and was now in the hospital. As Olivia had insisted, there was no mention of the robbery. He said, “Your brother doesn’t remember anything, not even you. He’s sad and scared, but he might start remembering if he could see you.”
“He’ll remember,” Jubilee answered. “I know he will.” Coming from her mouth the words had a ring of surety, but if you looked closely you could see the tears welling in her eyes.
Ethan Allen
Jubie is scared. Not scared like when you scream on a roller coaster. Scared like when you have a bad dream and can’t get woke up. People ain’t really scared on a roller coaster, they just scream ‘cause it’s fun-scared and they know it’s gonna end soon. Jubie don’t know if her being alone is ever gonna end.
I can tell when she’s most scared, ‘cause she curls up like a snail and sticks her thumb in her mouth. When Jubie does that, I say, Let’s play poker, and let her win a few hands. It makes her happy, and she forgets how scared she was feeling. Winning makes a body feel happy; I know ‘cause when I play w
ith Grandma I win most every time. But it’s not ‘cause she lets me; Grandma’s just not real good at poker.
Yesterday I asked Grandma if maybe Jubie could live here with us and she rolled her eyes like it was the most dumb-ass thing she ever heard. “No, she can’t,” Grandma said. “She has a family and needs to be with them.”
I was gonna remind Grandma that right now she ain’t got nobody and it ain’t looking none too promising, but she’d already said to get on outta there and quit bothering her.
After Detective Mahoney told Jubie Paul didn’t remember nothing, she got curled up and didn’t even wanna talk about playing. “Don’tcha get it?” she said. “If Paul don’t remember me, I got nobody!”
You got me, I said, and I meant it. If Grandma ain’t gonna do something to help Jubie, I’m gonna do it myself. I ain’t too sure of what it’ll be, but I’ll think of something.
Leastwise, I hope I will.
According to Bertha
When Mahoney left the Doyle apartment he called Captain Rogers, reported his finding, and tried to get clearance for bringing Jubilee Jones to the hospital.
“I’m okay with you working the case,” Rogers said, “so long as it doesn’t turn into a pissing match between you and Gomez. Work with him, or step back.”
Mahoney agreed to share what he had with Gomez, but as he hung up the telephone he muttered, “When I’ve got time.”
He turned the car around and headed toward Norfolk and the address Frances Margaret Jones had written on a scrap of paper.
Bertha Kaminski was no longer at that address. A frazzled mother carrying a baby who wouldn’t stop crying answered the door. “We bought the house a year ago,” she said. “They didn’t leave a forwarding address.”
“Do you know if they were staying in town?”
She shifted the crying baby to her other shoulder. “No idea,” she said and pushed the door shut using her foot.
Mahoney’s next stop was the post office.
After going through two different clerks, he was able to speak to the shift supervisor who dug through the files and came up with a change of address for Benjamin Kaminski.
“You’re lucky we still got it,” she said. “Generally we only keep these six months.” She wrote the address on a note paper and handed it Mahoney.
He looked at the address, a bad section of Norfolk on the far side of town. Before heading over, he checked the telephone listings—nothing. He got back into the car and started toward the side of town where people seldom went unless they had to.
The address was a tenement building with a whiskey bottle leaning against the rail and cement steps broken on both sides. The windows of the ground floor apartment were covered with different-colored bed sheets, too dirty to see through. He climbed the steps and entered the vestibule. Several broken mailboxes hung halfway open.
Apartment 5A was tagged B. Kaminski. Could be Bertha, could be Benjamin, or could be both. Mahoney started up the dark narrow staircase.
When he rapped on the door a male voice called back, “Whaddya want?”
“I’m looking for Bertha Kaminski,” Mahoney answered.
The voice yelled, “Hey, Butterball, it’s for you.”
For a long minute there was nothing more; then heavy footsteps thumped across the floor and the door swung open.
The woman looked nothing like Frances Margaret, or Myrtle, as the case might be. She was round and nearly as wide as she was tall. “Yeah?” she said looking square into his face.
“Bertha Kaminski?”
She nodded.
“You owned the house on Kilmer Street in Norfolk?”
“If this is about the basement flooding, I don’t want to hear it. We sold that house as is, and we told them—”
“It’s not about the basement,” Mahoney said. “When you lived there, did you rent an upstairs flat to a couple by the name of Bartholomew and Ruth Jones?”
“Good Lord, that was twenty years ago. I don’t see how they could have a complaint after all this time.”
“There’s no complaint. They’re both deceased.”
“Lord have mercy,” Bertha murmured. “Young folks like that dying already.” She gave a weary shake of her head.
“Do you remember a woman named Anita visiting them? Anita Walker or maybe Jones?”
“Shoot, yeah, I remember Anita. You don’t forget one like her.”
“Is her last name Walker or Jones?”
“Was. It was Walker, but it ain’t no more.”
This was the first solid lead Mahoney had and he jumped on it. “When did she change her name?”
“Sixteen, maybe seventeen years back, when she married Freddie Meyers.” She gave a sorrowful shrug. “Poor Freddie. If Ben would’ve known how she was gonna treat Freddie, he would’ve never matched them up.”
“Ben, he’s your husband?”
“Sort of,” Bertha answered. “We never really got around to the official marrying part.”
“Oh.” Mahoney gave a nod, unsure of whether to say “sorry,” “good,” or nothing. He opted for nothing and moved on. “You got an address for this Freddie Meyers?”
Bertha turned her head and screamed, “Hey, Ben, you got Freddie’s address?”
“Not the new one,” Ben hollered back.
Bertha turned to Mahoney. “Ben said—”
“I heard him.”
“It’s someplace out on the Eastern Shore,” she said. “Franklin, Federal, something sounds like that.”
“Fairlawn Bay?”
“Yeah, I think that’s it.”
“Thanks.” Mahoney turned to leave.
Before he’d taken a step, Bertha said, “But if you’re looking for Anita, finding Freddie ain’t gonna do you no good.”
“Oh?”
“They got divorced five, maybe six, years ago.”
“Did Anita go back to using her maiden name, or did she stay Meyers?”
“No idea.”
“So you didn’t keep up with her? Get her new address?”
“Hell, no. That woman ain’t one you wanna be friends with.” She went on to itemize Anita’s multitude of shortcomings, which included that she was lazy as sin, mean-tempered, and cheap to a fault. “Don’t never ask her to pick you up a quart of milk from the store,” Bertha said, “’cause she’d charge you double!”
It was close to five when Mahoney thanked Bertha for her help and returned to the car. The hour gave him justification for not stopping by the Wyattsville station. Tomorrow he’d report his findings to Gomez. Tomorrow, after he finished taking Jubilee to see her brother. Better that way, he figured. Less intimidating. Gomez had been hammering the boy with questions for three days, and it stood to reason that by now the boy had built up a wall of resistance. If it was just him and Jubilee, Paul would be more likely to respond. In the meantime he could look into finding Freddie Meyers.
He turned onto the causeway and headed back to the ferry.
Mahoney had planned to have a quick dinner, then head back to the station house and see if he could find anything on a Freddie Meyers, but when he arrived home the dining room table was set for seven. “Hurry and get changed,” Christine said. “Lynn and Henry will be here in fifteen minutes.”
“Lynn and Henry Ontiveros? On a Tuesday?”
“Yes,” Christine answered. “She gave me an absolutely wonderful recipe for baked chicken but it serves eight, so I invited them over to share.”
“Can’t it wait? I’ve got something I wanted to take care of down at—”
Christine turned and looked at him with a sad-eyed expression. “I’ve already invited them.”
Of course, dinner turned into an evening of conversation and then expanded itself again when Christine insisted that Lynn show Jack the pictures of their vacation. It was near eleven when they ended the evening.
All through dinner Mahoney thought about Olivia’s words. “If Jubilee only had someone—real family, someone to love her.” His children had so
much, and that little girl had so little. The more he thought the slower he ate. Twice Christine glanced at the food still on his plate and asked if perhaps he didn’t care for the chicken. “No, no,” Jack answered. “It’s good, very good.”
The truth was his mind simply wasn’t on food. He was thinking of the possible ways he could track down Anita. Although one side of his brain chastised him for not being down at the station searching for Freddie Meyers, the other side counted up the blessings of being here with friends and family. He tried to imagine one of his girls in the same dilemma, but it was impossible. It could never happen. Even if something were to happen to him and Christine, the kids had their grandparents, aunts, and uncles. They were loved.
Jubilee Jones had one person, a brother who quite possibly wouldn’t even recognize her. And an aunt she had never laid eyes on; an aunt who was proving herself impossible to find. He had to find Freddie Meyers. He’d know where Anita was. He had to know.
When Jack Mahoney climbed into bed that night, his heart was far heavier than his eyelids. He couldn’t rid himself of the image of Jubilee Jones standing in a giant circle of aloneness. On the far edge there were crowds of people, but no one reached out. The pain she felt was visible; it was a jagged scar that ripped across her face and ran toward her heart. As Jack tossed and turned, a second image came into view: the memory of Ethan Allen scooting his chair closer to Jubilee’s.
Ethan Allen was a boy who understood loneliness. He’d been there himself. He’d reached out and a stranger—a woman who never wanted children—answered the plea. Now he was ready to do the same for Jubilee. “I promise I’ll stick by you,” he’d said.
Jubilee's Journey Page 15
