Minders

by Michele Jaffe

  But his greatest desire right then, Sadie could tell, was not to think. And for that, Plum was ideal. Even if Sadie didn’t like the hungry way Plum ran her eyes over him when he’d pulled his shirt off and breathed, “My god, Ford, you’re a treasure,” Ford did.

  “I’m glad you approve.” Ford’s tone was smug, yet beneath the words Sadie felt the stickiness of humiliation.

  You don’t have to do this, she wanted to say. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Please, just leave. But she knew that would just make it worse.

  Plum exhaled, then took his hand and led him through the apartment to her bedroom. It had tall windows, but she pushed a button on the wall and dark blackout blinds slid down over them.

  Cupping the back of Plum’s neck, Ford pulled her mouth to his and brushed her lips softly. Plum’s mouth opened beneath his and she caught his lower lip between her teeth and nibbled it, setting off an explosion of sparks in his body.

  Stop! That’s not fair! a voice whispered from a far corner of Sadie’s mind.

  She hushed it, to keep him from hearing, and because it was a voice she was embarrassed about. The voice of a little girl in a flannel nightgown with tiny blue flowers and lace smocking being left alone in a house on Christmas Eve, scared out of her mind but instead of admitting that, saying, “It’s not fair. How come you get to go out and have fun and I have to be here alone?”

  Her mother holding a big pearl earring in one hand and a big square-cut diamond in the other, trying to decide which went better with her mustard-yellow gown. “Because Alma has the night off. It’s Christmas Eve, Sadie. Don’t be spoiled.”

  “Not the housekeeper. You. Why can’t you stay?”

  Her mother gave her a pitying look. “Now you’re being silly. You know we have supper with the senator and her husband.”

  “Other people’s parents stay home on Christmas Eve.”

  “Other people’s parents don’t get invited to the parties we do, darling,” her mother explained.

  “Why can’t I come too?”

  “Because it’s for grown-ups. Now stop acting like a child or Santa won’t deliver your presents.”

  “You can’t accuse me of being a child and then talk to me about Santa as though he exists. Either I’m a child and can believe in Santa, or I’m an adult and can go to the party.”

  Her father said, “God, kid, you’re giving me a headache.” He looked over at her mother. “No wonder we have to go out.”

  No wonder.

  “One day it will be your turn to have fun,” her mother said on their way out the door, her cheek soft, just the faintest hint of perfume.

  “When?” Sadie had asked, and the front door had closed on the sound of their laughter.

  When will it be my turn? Sadie wanted to know now, suddenly afraid that she may have missed it.

  You signed up for this, she told herself. You agreed to the terms. You knew you could never have him.

  I didn’t know what it was going to be like! she wanted to yell. What he was going to be like. How could I have guessed—

  “Oh, yes,” Plum moaned.

  —that I would fall in love with him?

  Or that he would hate me so completely.

  Sadie closed her eyes and wept.

  A little while later Plum stroked his head and whispered, “Sleepy time for my big boy” into his ear as though he were a baby or a dog, which seemed demeaning to Sadie.

  Ford didn’t mind anything now. He relaxed and repeated “Sleepy time,” like a macaw. “Can you set an alarm for an hour?”

  “Sure,” Plum said, unnecessarily giving him a kiss on the lips.

  Ford’s arms came around her. He held her to him and kissed her back, deeply and passionately. Sadie ached with envy and desire.

  “Sleep,” Plum whispered in a soothing voice.

  He turned onto his side and she lay in the curve of his body, her head pillowed on his shoulder, and Sadie had to bite her lip from crying out. Ford kissed her hair and said drowsily, “Why are you being so nice to me?”

  “Because it amuses me,” Plum told him.

  Ford chuckled as he dozed off, but Sadie didn’t think Plum was joking.

  CHAPTER 28

  They slept until the cock-a-doodle-do! of an alarm woke him. He groped for it, knocking things off the night table, turned it off, and opened his eyes.

  He was only partially alert, and Sadie sensed deep disorientation, not just because it was pitch black in an unfamiliar room but because he’d expected something entirely different. Bunk beds? she thought she registered. Brown plaid comforters? The old room he shared with James, she realized. But the air was wrong, and aside from the familiar alarm, the sounds were wrong too—

  The next instant he was completely awake, aware that he was in Plum’s apartment, his mind vibrating with the thought It’s too quiet.

  There, in the dark, it hit them both simultaneously. It was too quiet. Not here, now, but in the message James left for Ford right before he was killed.

  There were no trains, no buses, no horns on the message. Cali hadn’t been able to hear a word of the message Ford left for her from the same place at nearly the same time, but Ford could hear every word of James’s message perfectly. Because there was no background noise at all.

  Which meant James didn’t leave the message from the playground at Happy Alley, Ford thought. And that he wasn’t killed there.

  Then where? Sadie asked before remembering she should stay quiet. Why had he ended up at the playground? On the merry-go-round?

  Ford was too distracted to notice her voice among the different sounds in his mind, too busy rooting around the destruction of the day before, trying to make sense of the confusion. He remembered the events of the previous night and saw he was alone in bed but shouldn’t be. He glanced at the clock and saw it was seven. Hadn’t they gone to bed at ten? How was that—

  Ford scrambled to his feet, pulling aside one of the blinds and getting a face full of daylight. It was seven in the morning. Crap. Lulu was going to be terrified, his mother—he couldn’t even imagine. He crossed to the wall and pushed buttons until the blinds went up, thinking, Crap crap crap.

  The bedroom door opened with a click, and Plum peeked in, wearing nothing but a transparent robe and a smile. “What are you doing up, puppy?” she asked, grabbing the end of the black boxer briefs he was about to put on. “Go back to bed. I just ordered breakfast, it should be here in ten.” She sighed. “God, your body is great.”

  Ford, naked, towered over her, shaking with rage. “What the hell is wrong with you? I told you to set the alarm for an hour.”

  She looked at him innocently. “But you didn’t say which hour, so I picked one. I hate having breakfast alone.”

  He stared at her. “Do you ever think about anyone but yourself?”

  Plum let go of his briefs and took a step back. “You’re joking, right?

  “How would I be joking?” He stepped into his underwear. “I asked you to do one simple thing—”

  “I don’t understand what’s so important.” Plum retreated around the bed and bent to pick up the book and bear wind-up toy he’d knocked off the nightstand.

  Ford yanked his pants from under the bed. “I was such an idiot. I knew you’d toyed with James. Why should I think you’d take anything seriously, even a simple request to set an alarm?”

  “You don’t know anything about my feelings for your brother,” Plum said, her voice tight with emotion.

  Ford was too busy looking for his socks—by the wall, Sadie whispered—to notice the intensity in Plum’s tone, but Sadie heard it.

  “I think you should go,” Plum said. She was clutching the toy, almost desperately, and with her mass of hair she looked small, like a young girl.

  “We’re in complete agreement there.” He turned around, looking for his shirt.

  Kitchen, Sadie whispered, wanting to get him out of there.

  He stormed into the kitchen and threw on his shirt, not bothering
to button it.

  Plum followed him and got busy straightening things, opening and closing drawers. “If it was so important, you could have set your own alarm. All phones have them.”

  “Everything is so simple for you,” Ford said and headed to the front door. “How nice that must—”

  He stopped. His mind settled. A beautiful, crisp image in glittering dots of brown, gray, and orange flashed together, his room with James, bunk beds, plaid comforters, early morning, his own voice saying, “Man, there’s a reason we don’t have real roosters—”

  “Cock-a-doodle-do” had been the alarm on James’s phone, Sadie realized. It could have just been a coincidence, she heard him think, but the next moment he’d whipped out his own phone and started dialing. The song “Frosty the Snowman” started to play from the bedroom.

  It was James’s alarm that woke him. James’s phone was here.

  “That’s my brother’s phone,” Ford said, holding his up, now getting James’s voice mail message, “James. Message. Bye.” Sadie felt a stab of grief and caught a flash image of Ford dialing James’s phone over and over after his brother’s death just to hear the voice. Sadie hated the raw pain inside of him, hated being powerless to ease any part of its sting.

  Plum’s chest was heaving. “I’m calling security.”

  Information and connections began flooding Ford’s mind, making Sadie dizzy. Image after image layered one on top of another like a huge glittering machine.

  “It was here,” Ford said, tugging together the silence from the message and the presence of the phone. “He must have been killed here.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Plum told him, and Ford’s vision didn’t dim. It wasn’t a lie, but she did look nervous. “Besides, I told you, I was in Paris.”

  “He called me from that phone right before he was killed.” Ford’s eyes bored into hers.

  “So?”

  “That means either James was killed here or someone brought you his phone after he was dead. You must know something.”

  Her hand came out from behind her, and it had a kitchen knife in it. Apparently she hadn’t just been opening and closing drawers. “I know I want you to leave. Now. Or I’m going to call security.”

  Ford laughed. He grabbed her wrist and twisted it until the knife fell into his other hand. “Tell me what happened to my brother.” He held the knife by the side of his leg, not outright threatening, but there.

  “I don’t know,” Plum said, her eyes going from the knife to his face. “The day after I got back from my trip I heard something ringing in the couch and found the phone. It was you calling, actually.”

  Raw pain struck Ford, and hazy images formed of him alone on a street corner, in the shadows of the living room, in the morning at work, by the lake, dialing James’s phone just to hear his voice. “James. Message. Bye,” playing an endless loop in his mind.

  “That’s how you got my number,” he said, shaking off the memory. So it had been the right wrong question, Sadie thought.

  Plum nodded.

  “Why did you keep the phone? And keep it charged? I stopped calling because I figured it would be disconnected.”

  Plum’s eyes went behind him. “Sometimes I like to make calls I don’t want anyone to know about.”

  Ford nodded sagely. “Must be hard having to sneak around. Your sugar daddy is a resourceful guy. His thugs found me in the middle of—”

  “I told you, there is no daddy about it,” Plum interrupted him, but Ford wasn’t listening. He was thinking about his question when he regained consciousness, how the thugs who told him to stay away from Plum had found him at the tree house.

  The chip, Sadie breathed, her thoughts keeping time with his. Of course. Just like the gunmen at the theater. The Pharmacist’s men. Which meant—

  “Your patron is the Pharmacist,” Ford said.

  Plum twisted her hair to one side. “You’re boring me. I’d like you to leave now.”

  Ford toyed with the handle of the knife in his hand. “Can I meet him?”

  “I’m going to call security.”

  We should go, Sadie urged silently.

  “He murdered James,” Ford said.

  Plum picked up her phone and dialed. “Please send a security officer up to my apartment. I have an unwanted guest.”

  “Don’t you care? Even a little?” Ford demanded.

  “He has a knife,” Plum said into the phone. “Yes, right away.” She hung up and her mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “You think you’re the only one who cared about James? You didn’t even know him. He loved me more than he loved you.”

  “Right,” Ford grunted.

  Plum’s eyes flashed triumphantly. “He was going to run away with me to Paris. Did you know that?”

  “Sure he was,” Ford said. Thinking, Not likely since James didn’t even have a passport.

  “That’s why I was in Paris when he died. James was supposed to meet me there two days later.” Plum bit her lip. “He was going to set me free. And we were going to have breakfast together every morning for the rest of our lives.”

  Sadie heard Ford thinking that the setting-free part sounded like Lulu’s story about James slaying the monster. Only her version didn’t end with James leaving them and moving to France with the monster’s mistress.

  Security is on the way up. You should go, Sadie thought.

  Plum held Ford’s eyes as if daring him to look away or disbelieve her. Ford stared back at her levelly, but his mind was churning. Could it be true? Had James been ready to abandon them?

  Ford said, “If you loved James so much, why are you protecting his murderer?”

  Plum’s eyes hardened, becoming two glittering dark stones. “You don’t know anything about love.”

  There was a heavy knock on the door. “This is Security Officer Milan. We had a call from this apartment. Are you all right, ma’am?”

  Go, Sadie urged.

  Ford ignored the knocking. “I’m going to get him,” he told Plum. “I’ll make sure he pays for what he did.”

  Plum gave a high, brittle laugh. “Not if he gets you first.” Beneath the hardness in her eyes, Sadie saw a glimmer of something else: fear.

  Another knock. “Ma’am? I’m coming in.” They heard the sound of a keycard sliding into the front door lock, and Sadie yelled, What are you waiting for?

  Ford growled at the sound of her voice, but he listened. He crossed to the back door, ran down four flights, and called the elevator from the fifty-ninth floor. He rode all the way to the garage and was already on the street when the two security guys with their walkie-talkies burst out of the stairwell.

  He had no idea how he was going to get home, but he started walking, and Sadie heard him thinking he wanted to get as far as possible from that nutcase.

  You mean the one you had sex with, she thought, but did not say out loud. A white van passed him and he stiffened, like muscle memory, until it drove by.

  “Ice!” a voice shouted from behind him.

  Ford’s head swung around, suspicion and anger flaring to life. It dispersed when he saw that it was Willy calling him from the driver’s seat of an old yellow Camaro.

  “Get in, man,” Willy said, throwing open the door. “You’re in trouble. Big trouble. They’ve been looking for you all night.”

  “Who?” Sadie felt Ford’s mind scanning Willy for signs of deception. Out of the corner of his eye Sadie saw another white van turn onto the street. “Why?”

  “Get in the car. If you’re with me they won’t be able to track you and you’ll be safe, at least for a little while. It’s the only chance you have.” Willy looked over his shoulder. Another white van went by. “They ordered a large with anchovies for you.”

  “A what?”

  “Large means the recipient is an adult male. Anchovies means he should swim with the fishes. Which means—”

  “I know what that means,” Ford said, getting into the car.

  CHAPTER 29

 
Where are we going?” Ford asked as Willy careened through the streets.

  “I have a little bolt-hole. Nothing fancy, but should be comfortable enough. That okay with you, Citizen?”

  Sadie counted a fifth white van.

  “Yes, absolutely,” Ford said, as Willy floored it through an intersection. “You sounded like Bucky just then.”

  Willy laughed. “Guess I did. Funny how things come bubbling up.” He stepped on the gas, taking a corner on two wheels.

  Ford gripped the armrest. “When you said they ordered a large with anchovies you meant—”

  “From the top.” Willy pointed at the ceiling. “Rush too. But don’t worry, if we stick close together, you’ll be okay.” He reached out and patted Ford’s leg. “Granted, it’s only a short-term fix.”

  “Why are you helping me?”

  Willy swerved across four lanes of traffic. “You’re smarter than those other guys, but you never hold it over people.” Horns blared. “Always liked that about you.”

  Sadie felt a lick of the warm, golden caramel feeling that was Ford’s friendship. It made him think of Mason. Was he all right?

  “I did that demo work with James for a while,” Willy went on. Traffic had thinned, and he was weaving in and out smoothly. “Couldn’t stomach it. Wanted to build something, not destroy it. Seems like you understand that.”

  Sadie heard Ford wonder how he hadn’t really known Willy before, and think that James had been in front of him, in front of everyone, the whole time. He needed his own friends now.

  Bright, new images popped up in his mind, tiny dots forming precise outlines of houses restored, parks built, a girl—

  Willy made a sharp turn and slammed on his brakes.

  “Here we are. Home sweet home.” He’d pulled up alongside a gray stone building, parking next to a blue Porsche. “Former home of Woodland Baptist. Now home to yours truly.” Willy tapped his chest proudly.

  “The Porsche yours too?” Ford asked.

  Willy grinned. “Just holding it for a friend.”