The man at the desk glanced from me to the flowers to the pictures and seemed to make up his mind that I was safe. He cleared his throat and tapped on the picture of Darien and my mother. “They were here, but they ain’t no more. I don’t rightly know where they went off to, though. They moved recently.”
“Damn it,” I muttered. Frowning, I dropped the flowers on the desktop and turned around to survey the neat, spacious lobby. It was a nondescript place, old, but well kept. I glanced back at the doorman and asked, “No idea at all where they may have moved to? I’d hate to have flown all the way out here for nothing. I was really looking forward to seeing my mom.”
The doorman shook his head. “All I know is they don’t stay here no more. You want to talk to the landlord? He in his office. He might know something.”
I sprang at the opportunity. “Definitely. Let him know I’m here.”
A moment later I was sitting in a stuffy cubbyhole of an office sitting on a plastic chair across from a grey-haired man wearing demi-glasses and a stern expression. He studied me as the doorman told him why I was there.
“I don’t know if I can help, but I can try. You say you lookin’ to find where they moved? I don’t have an address on ’em. What you say you need Richard for?”
“He’s my mother’s husband,” I replied.
“You Stacey Staple?” The landlord seemed to brighten. It wasn’t my name, but I had to assume my mother had given them an alternate name for her long-lost son. “Why didn’t you say so sooner? Oh, Ruby used to talk about you nonstop, boy.”
I smiled. I was getting somewhere. I leaned forward on the off-balanced chair and asked, “Were you close to my parents? You must know, then, I’ve been away awhile.”
“I should say. You’re the apple of your momma’s eye, boy. You shouldna had her missing you like that. I know folks don’t always see eye to eye. She was real proud of you, though. Said you was in business school?”
“Uh, yeah. I was. I work for a corporation in New York now.”
“Fancy stuff, there. Well, now, let me see. Richard and Ruby moved on way from here after the situation at the theology school. You ain’t from ’round here, so I suspect you don’t know about that. Essentially, some money went missing from a fundraiser, and there was speculation Richard had some involvement in the disappearance.”
“Oh, really?” The bad business to which Sissy was referring—she was a devout Catholic. Stealing from a church would go against everything she valued.
“If you ask me, he didn’t have nothin’ to do with it. I knew Richard. He was a standup guy, a real religious man. The cops, though, they came down on him real hard. Never found another suspect and couldn’t make no charges stick on Rick, but I think it’s still an open case.”
“I see. Why would they think Richard was involved?”
“See, he was teaching at the school of ministry, and he was in charge of the funds they was raising for a mission some place out of country, I forget where. Now, he handled the money, but I say he didn’t do it ’cause he wasn’t the only person had a hand on it. The other guy come up dead, and you know what I think? I think he had a partner what gave him the shaft. Probably took the money and ran, kilt him off so he wouldn’t have to split the cash. I ask you, if Ricky stole that money, why would he stick around town for months afterwards?”
I shrugged, knowing that was his usual method. Stay around long enough to appear innocent, but not so long as to get caught. “When did they leave?”
“Few weeks ago. Your timin’ couldna been no worse. Bet you coulda got ’em a good lawyer with your New York City job. Ricky don’t have a thievin’ bone in him. He used to be all up in my office. I never had nothin’ missing, and Lord knows I keep money in—well, let’s just say I trust him.”
“Oh, yeah. Everybody does,” I commented dryly.
“Anyhow, I know where they is, but I’m skeptical of tellin’. I don’t rightly know you. Why’d you say you stayed away so long, again?”
I scrambled for an answer. The question could be a trick if Sissy had spun a story that differed from mine. “Um, I was…that is…well, plain and simple, I got too full of myself. I went off to school and started feeling like my folks weren’t good enough.” It sounded like something Griess would say about me. It was a lie, but believable. Even if it differed from Sissy’s story, it could reliably be considered my side of things.
I swallowed and hung my head, letting my shoulders drop as if defeated. I looked up with emotional eyes. I had learned from the best. A time or two in my childhood, Darien had made me play the impoverished youth to win over reluctant participants to his cons. “I’m ready to make amends. I prayed on it, and I don’t want another year to pass without my mother fully in my life,” I said.
“God bless you, son,” he said. “Listen up, this here is top-secret information. With the heat on Richard’s tail, I let him use my yacht out in Houma. I can take you down there if you like. It’s kind of tough to get to.”
“I have GPS.”
“I got GPS, too. God’s Perfect Sense. That modern junk don’t work going through them swamplands, boy. You’ll be lost lickety-split.”
“Well,” I said, “I have a friend from the area who came down with me, and I think he may be able to help. If you can give me the name of the yacht, I’ll—”
“Listen here, you cause trouble for those folks, and it’s gon’ be between me and you. Your mother is frail. She’s a sweet gal, and I don’t think she needs no more trouble’n what she already got on her hands. They was so happy here before the fallout and accusations, and it cuts me to the core to know how people from round here changed on ’em. Wasn’t right.”
“I assure you, sir, I have no desire to cause trouble for anyone. I just want to find my mom.”
He wrote down the name of the yacht and rough directions to its location. I tried to hold my excitement inside as I watched him scribble. I was that much closer to finding out if Sissy was ready to give me the chance to make her life better. I accepted the writing and left the Gateway Condominium with new pep in my step. If Sissy wanted to leave, I would help. I could get her an apartment in New York. I’d set up a healthcare plan and life insurance, get her settled and stable. I would make sure she lived the lifestyle Griess had promised and never delivered, and she wouldn’t have to commit fraud to get it.
I went back to my hotel the prepare for the drive, repacked my bags, and printed out driving directions, since the old landlord said my GPS wouldn’t hold out. When I checked out of the hotel and stepped back out into the unseasonable warmth, I was jittery with anticipation. I drove with the windows down, and the highway stretched out before me like an endless grey-black ribbon until the miles ticked away beneath the speeding Mercedes, each stretch driving me deeper into thought.
I could remember when my mother was younger, when I was about four or five, how she would rock me in her arms like I was still a baby, smothering my face with kisses. She would sing Sicilian lullabies with me on her knee while she watched her soaps on the busted black-and-white television we owned at that time. We were staying in a tiny apartment. I remembered the yellow walls because it was Sissy’s favorite color. She’d tell me, “Someday I’m gonna feel like that color.” I believed her with the naive faith of a child.
It had taken me years to realize feeling yellow only lasted as long as Griess wasn’t around to make us blue. He worked a short stint at a machinery factory at that time, and he would come home from work drunk and cussing up a storm. He’d drag me out of my mother’s lap. “You’re making him a sissy, Sissy,” he’d say. Or, “Stop mollycoddling that boy before you turn him into a Molly.” He’d laugh cruelly at his joke, and I’d scurry off to my room feeling ashamed to be loved by my mother.
She’d let him. When Griess was around, if I injured myself or had a really shitty day at school, Sissy would shush me harshly and tell me to man up. “Be like Griess,” she’d say.
Even as a child I knew I didn’t wan
t to be like him. His rages were like the tantrums of a toddler, only he was big enough to do real damage. There was the time he had slung my mother against the wall so hard she had gone blind in one eye for a few days. She’d lied to the doctor and told him she fell and hit the back of her head. She was diagnosed with a concussion. I remembered.
My childhood wasn’t full of mud pies and stick wars. I had real battles at home. It was up to me to make sure Momma stayed lucid enough during the day when she sank into hazes of deep depression. She needed to cook, clean, or Griess would be on her ass faster than lightning across a black sky. By the time I was in school, the load lightened when Griess reverted from making an honest living to getting by on schemes and scams.
The very first con I remembered him pulling was on a disabled man who worked with him at the machinery factory and occasionally let Griess drive him to the bank and help cash his check. Griess would hold back wads of bills and tell him the company was cheating him because he was slow. Griess knew the guy was too scared to take up a dispute for fear of getting fired, and that lasted about a month until Griess decided he didn’t need a nine-to-five to rip people off.
For a few years when cocaine was in its heyday, he had sold drugs out of the back of his car. There was an occasion when I had gotten into his stash thinking it was baby powder, and was covered in the stuff when Sissy found me. That was the only time I’d seen her stand up to Griess. She made him find another hustle, because I could have died of an overdose if enough of the drug had been absorbed into my skin, and that terrified her.
There were ways Sissy had shown her love for me, although few. I owed it to my mother to help her escape, and this time I would insist. The times I had asked before, I had left it up to her. Sissy wasn’t strong enough to make her own decisions. As much as it pained me to think of her weakness, I knew I had to be the one making the calls this round.
“I’m on my way to Houma. Got a tip from the landlord at the condominiums,” I said into my phone.
“They weren’t there?” asked Gervais.
I shook my head and said, “Nope. I apparently just missed them. Griess got tangled up. Cops were on him about some money missing from a theology school where he was teaching, and before you ask, I have no idea how a snake like Darien Griess weaseled his way into a school of religion. Just proves how much better he’s gotten over the years. This is serious stuff. I’m headed to Gulf Port, where his former landlord says he has a yacht he’s letting Griess and Sissy use to lay low.”
“Excellent, sir. Can you give me the exact location?”
“Yeah.” I told him the address the man had given me.
“Just in case you go missing,” said Gervais. “The more I hear about your stepfather, the more I wonder why he isn’t under the jail by now.”
I laughed. “Griess isn’t my concern. My mother wants out. I can make that happen for her. I’m not scared of an oversized bully like Darien. He’s like the rest of the punks in the world who hurt women. Not man enough to fight a man.”
“I hear that. I’ll be waiting to hear from you once you find out what’s what.”
“Yeah, I’ll give you a call. Hey, I know it’s dumb to ask, but have you heard from Hanna?”
“Well…” He took a breath. “The Pages ran a piece the other day announcing a farewell party for a niece of Ettie Danos-Monroe, congratulating her on successfully meeting criteria for the position at the Smithsonian. It’s scheduled for a month from now.”
“So, she’s still in New York,” I murmured. I missed her like her life itself. Not even the dark days of missing Lynn could compare. This time, nobody was to blame for losing love but me. I sighed and said, “Thanks, Gervais. I’ll call back later.”
“Very good, sir.”
I hung up the phone and accelerated smoothly down the freeway headed to the southern edge of Louisiana. By nightfall, if all went well, I would be face to face with my mother.
CHAPTER 9
Finding the yacht proved to be as difficult as the landlord at the Gateway Condominiums had suggested. Once I got off the freeway there was a mix of myriad bridges over still, murky water, with spindly cypress stretching skyward like skeletal fingers. Greyish brown moss swayed in the breeze as I drove by, and I felt like I was entering a land forgotten by the rest of the world. I stopped off at a battered shack of a gas station where the men inside spoke with a patois I couldn’t quite understand, a mix of French and bayou dialect that sounded melodic and foreign.
When I opened the cracked glass door with handwritten signs advertising crawfish and boudin and walked into the malodorous interior of the place, I felt like a trespasser. A skinny, gnarled old lady behind the counter eyed me suspiciously, though her stained teeth were bared in a smile. She pointed out directions with a twisted hand. I had no idea what she said. I had to guess, wing it.
But somehow, early in the night I was pulling my car into a gravel parking lot at the dock. The choppy ocean was a black sheet past the shore, and the sky was the same shade of stygian. I rubbed at my eyes that itched and burned from the vigilance of keeping my gaze on the road for an hour, and yawned sleepily. My mouth had an acrid taste after the cracklings and soda I had snacked on during the drive. Other than that, I hadn’t eaten since breakfast at the hotel, causing my stomach to rumble in reminder.
I reached in the center console and brought up my cell phone to call Gervais back, as I’d promised. He answered on the first ring. “Hey, I’m down here,” I said.
“Keep your cell phone handy,” he told me.
As he spoke, the phone crackled with weak reception.
“Middle of nowhere. It’ll be on, but it might not work,” I said.
“Either way, just in case.”
I hung up and unfolded my tall frame from the cramped interior of the car. Stretching to the clear, bright stars, I turned around in a circle to survey the area. There were boats of all sizes lining the pier, and the sharp sting of salt water burned my nostrils. I inhaled the fishy aroma and shook my head, wiping my nose.
“Let’s get this over with,” I muttered to myself.
I took off strolling along the pier, straining my tired eyes to read the names on the sides of the boats. I was looking for Walk on Water. It took a few treks along the bank, but finally I spotted the small yacht anchored near the end of the line. I had missed it the first time. It was a small brown and tan boat with dual decks, bobbing in the waves. I walked up to it and hopped from the dock to the deck with a soft grunt.
At that moment, Darien Griess stepped out.
Our eyes met and his face registered alarm. I looked over the man I hadn’t seen in some years, expecting some change, but he was still the same old Darien Griess. He was a good-looking middle-aged man with close-cropped sandy blonde hair and a neatly trimmed grey-streaked beard. He wore cropped pants and t-shirt, a black hoodie giving him a slightly younger appearance. Steel-grey eyes roved over me.
I saw a tick at the corner of his mouth that signaled he wasn’t too happy to see me.
“Cecilia,” he barked.
I braced myself to see my mother, but I wasn’t ready. Sissy walked out on the deck looking just as I remembered. Her smooth olive skin glowed in the soft light, and her black curls frizzed around her face, hanging down her back. Her dark blue eyes, so like mine, teared up at the sight of me. I reached for her involuntarily.
“Momma,” I said hoarsely.
She pushed past Griess and clung to me. Her fingers twisted in my shirt as she held me tighter. Her head pressed into my chest. I smoothed her curly hair then pulled away from her to stare down into her lovely face, my heart lurching in my chest. She looked healthy and beautiful.
“Let me look at you,” I said, smiling and sniffling at the same time.
Sissy giggled and stepped back. She was wearing a simple black blouse and khaki shorts with dusty old tennis shoes and no socks. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, and she rarely had when I was younger. I felt transported to seasons past, when I
was too young to know her shortcomings. She looked perfect to me, my mother.
“What are you doing here?” Sissy asked me, laughing in joy as tears rolled down her full cheeks.
“I came to find you,” I replied. I glanced at Darien, who was watching us with wary eyes.
“How did you find us?” he asked. When he caught me looking, he fixed his face to smile. He marched over with his hand outstretched for a handshake, his grip firm and strong, and he squeezed my fingers harder than he should have. He kept his smile, but I read a threat in every line of his face.
I had to take a careful approach to protect Sissy. I replied, “I’m a wealthy man now, Griess. It was nothing to hire someone competent enough to seek you out. Am I intruding? I just wanted to see how my mother was doing.”
Sissy stepped up and wrapped her hands around my arm. She beamed at me happily and said, “I’ve missed you so much.”
There were still tears on her face, which I wiped away with the pad of my thumb. I wanted to hug her again and get her alone so I could talk to her in private. I needed to gauge her level of resistance to the idea of leaving with me. But Darien was observant, and he wasn’t about to let my mother out of his sight.
“Oh, don’t just stand there. Please, come on in. We were just about to sit down to dinner. Your mother cooked up the catch of the day, although you’ll have to excuse us. We cooked for two. The meal may be a little spare,” he said. It was always a shock to hear Darien speak in his natural voice and cadence. He affected so many different dialects and styles of speech throughout his cons that he could go from sounding like a salt-of-the-earth farmer to a Russian businessman without batting an eyelash. In reality, he was an articulate, soft-spoken man with cultured speech and a robust vocabulary.
Dane - Book 2: A Foster Family Saga Page 7
