Nobody's Child (The Jeri Howard Series Book 5)

by Janet Dawson

  Silently I agreed with her. There was only that thin green line of money between Naomi Smith and Denny. Except Denny was more honest about his need for liquor.

  “Why have you stayed with her all these years?”

  “For the same reason you took this case, Ms. Howard.” Her voice turned scornful. “Money. Because I need the money. My husband walked out on me the year my second child was born. It was all I could do to keep a roof over our heads when I worked as an LPN. After Preston Smith died, Naomi offered me a pile of money to stay there in that big house and hold her hand. And take care of her little girl, so she wouldn’t have to.”

  Now she swept her hand up and gestured around her. “I bought this house with that money. And I’m putting both my kids through college on it. I’m not about to do anything to put my job in danger.”

  “Including let Naomi Smith know where her daughter ran to?”

  “She didn’t care. She thought that fancy-pants professor she’d been dating was fucking her daughter.” The way she said them, the words sounded even uglier than they were. “Wouldn’t surprise me if he was. That kind likes to stick his tool into anything that walks by.” She laughed but there wasn’t any humor in what she was saying. “He reminded me of my ex-husband.”

  “Did Maureen get pregnant while she was staying with you?”

  Something glittered in Ramona Clark’s eyes. “For all I know she was pregnant when she got here. Girls these days don’t have any scruples when it comes to boys. They’ll sleep with anything in pants.”

  “Was Maureen like that?” Mrs. Clark didn’t answer. “If she was, maybe she was looking for someone to love her.”

  I stuck my hands into the pockets of my jacket, thinking about all the teenage girls who mistook hormones for human closeness. I remembered how that felt. Now I hoped I was immune to such misconceptions, or maybe just older and wiser. I walked closer to the refrigerator door and looked at the snapshots once again. I pointed at one that showed the boy and girl I’d guessed were hers.

  “Are these your children, Mrs. Clark?”

  “Yes.” The word came slow and stretched longer than it needed to be.

  “And who is this?” The photograph I indicated showed the young man whose graduation picture I’d seen in the living room. He was a few years older than the other two. I saw a name and date written in ink at the bottom of the snapshot. “Who’s Patrick Ennis?”

  She didn’t answer. I turned and looked at her.

  “My nephew.”

  “Does he live around here?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Because he looks very much like Dyese Smith. Enough to be her father.”

  She stared at me. Her lips compressed into a tight line that seemed to prevent a response. Silence grew and I probed further.

  “Is he the child’s father, Mrs. Clark?”

  “Maureen seemed to think so,” she said finally, begrudging every word.

  “You seem to have a little trouble getting past the black-and-white thing too.”

  She looked stung as I reminded her of what she’d said about Naomi Smith’s reaction to her mixed-race granddaughter. Then her face twisted with anger. “That’s got nothing to do with it. It’s not about that at all. My nephew has a future ahead of him. He didn’t need some little stray white girl making accusations.”

  “What sort of accusations? Did she say he raped her?”

  “No, no, she never said that.” Ramona Clark put her hands against her temples as if she wanted to drive my words out of her head. “I don’t know what happened. He was living here with me while he was going to Laney College. Then he transferred to another school and moved out. After he left, I noticed Maureen throwing up. When I realized she was having morning sickness, I asked her who it was. She said it was Patrick.”

  “You didn’t believe her?”

  She tightened her mouth again. “That baby’s father could be anyone. Who knows who that girl had been with before she showed up here? They’ve got black students at Piedmont High School too.”

  “I’m sure they do. It’s just that there’s such a resemblance between your nephew Patrick and Dyese Smith. I suppose you didn’t notice. Or didn’t want to. What did Patrick have to say about all this?”

  “He doesn’t know.” She squared her jaw and dared me to cross her. “And he’s not going to.”

  “I’m beginning to fill out the picture,” I said. “You didn’t want anything to get in the way of your nephew’s college career. So you just tossed Maureen Smith back out onto the street, pregnant this time.”

  She didn’t deny it. Instead a wave of emotion passed over her face. “I tried to talk her into getting rid of it. But she wouldn’t listen.”

  Somehow that didn’t surprise me. I’d read the articles that theorized why teenage mothers often kept their babies. Maureen may have wanted someone to love, someone to love her unconditionally. Maybe Dyese filled that empty spot Maureen had felt since childhood.

  “The first time we met, Mrs. Clark, you said Naomi Smith wanted to find her granddaughter because she felt guilty about never making any effort to find her daughter. Maybe you feel guilty. About throwing Maureen out and about that baby that may be your great-niece.”

  Mrs. Clark winced. “I tried to make it up to her.”

  “This year? When Maureen showed up again?” She nodded. “You saw Douglas Widener and he told you he’d seen Maureen up in Santa Rosa. You told him that Naomi was ill with pneumonia. So he relayed that message the next time he saw Maureen. Then she and the baby showed up at Naomi’s house, last March. And you realized she’d been telling the truth when she said Patrick was the baby’s father.”

  She folded her arms across her chest as though she still couldn’t admit the possibility. “I just wanted to help her, that’s all. She had some money from this job she’d had up in Sonoma County, just enough for the deposit and first month’s rent on a studio apartment here in North Oakland. I agreed to take the child. Temporarily, while Maureen got herself situated. There’s a woman down the street who does child care in her home. Dyese would stay there while I was at work, then I’d pick her up. Maureen came over several times a week. She had a job waiting tables, at a place over on College Avenue. She made barely enough to pay her rent.”

  I asked for the name of the restaurant and she told me it was the Bumblebee Café, near College and Ashby. Maureen’s apartment was a few blocks away on Sixty-first.

  “When was this?” I asked.

  “Spring. And into the summer.”

  I leaned against the kitchen counter, picturing the calendar and thinking back to what Serena had told me when I interviewed her Sunday at her studio. She’d seen Maureen panhandling on Telegraph again sometime in late August, then for the last time in September, right after Labor Day. Maureen had told Serena then that Dyese was in a safe place. Presumably she meant with Mrs. Clark.

  If Maureen had been working, why was she panhandling? Had she lost her job at the restaurant?

  When I asked Ramona Clark this, she nodded, a short curt movement “I didn’t find out she wasn’t working until I went into that café on College. They told me they’d had to cut back on staff so they let her go. I went by the place where she was living and they told me she’d given up that apartment.” The tight look was back around her mouth. “She had been lying to me. Saying she was working, and trying to get on her feet. But she was back living on the streets and begging for money.”

  “Maybe she didn’t have any choice. Maybe she was afraid to tell you she’d been fired.”

  “She didn’t have to lie to me.” Now she looked angry again. “I couldn’t take care of a two-year-old indefinitely.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything. Maureen came and took the baby.”

  “When?”

  “In October. She said she was going back north, up to Sonoma County. So I let her and the child go.”

  “You washed your hands of it.�
��

  The brown eyes gave me a sharp look. “I think of myself as a good woman.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes, I do,” she snapped. “How many people do you know who would do what I did? I took that girl into my home. Then later on I took care of that child. I did what I could for her. It’s not my fault she went off and got herself killed. Like as not that child’s dead too, just like her mother.”

  “How convenient for you if that’s true,” I said. “Then you won’t ever have to tell Patrick he fathered a child.”

  That brought Mrs. Clark out of her chair. “I don’t have to listen to this. Not in my house. I don’t want to talk to you anymore. Get out.”

  Twenty-five

  THE BUMBLEBEE CAFÉ ON COLLEGE WAS A LITTLE hole-in-the-wall with plain wooden tables and chairs lining one wall, a counter against the other. The decor was black and yellow, the walls crowded with colorful drawings of bees. When I pushed through the door, I felt as though I were entering a hive. I walked past the dinner customers who occupied a few of the tables and stepped up to the cash register. My inquiry about Maureen Smith met with the night shift’s blank stares. One of the waitresses told me my best bet was to come back in the morning and talk to the owner.

  From there I drove to the address Mrs. Clark had given me, on Sixty-first Street, closer to Telegraph than to College. The two-story, brown-shingled house had been converted into apartments. It looked rather down-at-the-heels, despite the Christmas wreath hanging on the front door. I rang the doorbell several times before anyone answered.

  She was a woman about my own age, dressed in gray sweatpants and sweatshirt, thick quilted slippers on her feet and a red wool sweater wrapped around her, its color matching the redness of her nose in the overhead porch light As one who had just gotten over a cold, I felt an immediate surge of sympathy for her.

  “I’m really sorry to bother you,” I said, handing her one of my business cards.

  “Private investigator?” She sounded as though she hadn’t been breathing through her nose for about a week. “What’s this about?”

  “I’m looking for information about a young woman who used to live here.” Now I took the snapshot from my purse. “Her name was Maureen Smith. She rented a studio apartment here last spring.” The young woman peered at the photograph as though she were woozy from over-the-counter cold medicine. “Look, it’s cold out here and you don’t need to be standing in this draft. May I come in?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” She opened the door wider and I stepped into an entry hall with several doors decorated with brass letters. The first door on my left was open, and I guessed it was her unit. She scuffed through the doorway and held the snapshot under the faded blue shade of a brass table lamp. The glossy surface of the picture reflected the light from the bulb. “Why are you asking about her?”

  “She’s dead,” I said quietly. “I’m looking for her child.”

  “Wow.” She was silent for a moment, peering at the snapshot as she digested this. “Yeah, I do remember her. She didn’t have a baby with her, though. And she didn’t live here very long.”

  “Is that unusual?” I took the snapshot as she handed it back to me.

  “Nah. The landlady rents to lots of students. They come and go. She wasn’t a student. At least I never saw her with any books.”

  “What can you tell me about her? Ms....?”

  “Just call me Linda.” She shut her front door and waved me in the direction of a low-bottomed rocking chair with a padded cushion. Then she went back to her spot on the sofa, where she proceeded to wrap herself in a patchwork quilt, her slippered feet on an ottoman. On the end table was a box of tissues and a stack of paperback books. To one side of the ottoman a waste-basket was filled with used tissues.

  “There’s this little dinky studio at the back of the house. Hardly bigger than this room.” She swept her hand around, indicating her living room. “This girl, I didn’t even know her name, she rented the apartment. Guess it must have been April. She was only here a few months. You’ll have to check with the landlady for sure.”

  “When did you realize she’d left?”

  “I saw her moving out,” Linda said. “She didn’t have much stuff. Just some clothes in a bag, and a cardboard box.”

  “When was this?”

  “July, I think.” Linda furrowed her brow. Then she sneezed and reached for a tissue, pulling one from the box. “Yeah, July. End of the month.” She shrugged. “I thought she was moving in with the guy.”

  “What guy?”

  “The guy she was with. I thought he was helping her move. She was carrying the bag and he was carrying the box.”

  “What did he look like?”

  I was expecting a description of Rio, but Linda’s next words made me lean forward in the rocking chair. “Young guy. I figured him for a college student”

  “Are you sure? Can you tell me anything else about him?”

  “It was six months ago,” she protested. “I only saw him once.”

  “Think about it,” I said. “Try to see it now the way you saw it then. What color was his hair? How tall was he? What was he wearing?”

  Linda frowned as she mopped her nose with a tissue. “I’d just come home from work. As I was going up the walk, they came around from the back of the house. She was carrying the bag, he was carrying a cardboard box. Hair? Somewhere between blond and brown. I guess you’d call it sandy.” She thought again. “Medium height. Blue jeans and a T-shirt.”

  “Did you see what kind of car he was driving?”

  Linda shook her head. “I turned away to check my mailbox. When I looked back toward the street, they were gone.”

  Before I left, Linda gave me the name and telephone number of her landlady. As I drove away from the house on Sixty-first Street I turned this new development over in my head. Rio wasn’t the only man in Maureen’s life. There was a younger man with sandy hair. It sounded like Emory, Kara’s high school friend, whom I’d seen this morning at a Telegraph Avenue coffeehouse. Where did he fit into the picture?

  When I got home, Abigail greeted me at the door with a chorus of grumbles. Part of these no doubt had to do with the fact that it was late and I was remiss in my duties, foremost of which was to provide food. Some of the harangue was also due to Black Bart, I was sure. I dropped to my stomach in front of the sofa and looked into the narrow space next to the wall. The black kitten with the white mask was still wedged near the back corner. I wondered if he’d been there all day, afraid to come out and confront Abigail, afraid to come in search of food and water.

  I got to my feet and went to the kitchen to perform my duties. While Abigail was eating, I fixed another bowl of food and water, grabbed an old dish towel and carried both into the living room. I spread the dish towel on the carpet and set the food and water on it

  “You have to eat something,” I told the kitten. “So you can get big and strong and defend yourself.” He just looked at me with big yellow eyes.

  The phone rang while I was fixing myself something to eat. It was Duffy LeBard, checking in about our date to see The Nutcracker tomorrow night at the Paramount Theatre. We agreed to have dinner before at Nan Yang in Oakland’s Chinatown. I’d introduced Duffy to my favorite restaurant, which featured Burmese food, and he couldn’t get enough of their ginger salad. After I’d hung up the phone, I tried the telephone number of the woman who owned the house where Maureen Smith had lived, but I got an answering machine. I left my name and number, nothing more.

  I woke up at three in the morning to discover myself clinging to one precarious corner of my down pillow. Abigail’s rather large and solid bulk was draped over the top of my head, taking up most of the remaining space. Grumbling, I shifted my head to the other pillow. As I did so, I saw the light from my bedroom window reflect off another set of eyes. Black Bart had left the safety of his hiding place behind the sofa and had joined us on the bed.

  He was perched at the foot, as far away from me and Abigai
l as he could get. His presence was a surprise. I knew that eventually the feral kitten would warm to me, or at least realize that mine was the hand that wielded the can opener. But I thought that would happen later rather than sooner. He’d lived on his own since he was born, and he had no reason to trust either the large human who’d caught him or the large cat that kept hissing at him. Maybe he’d seen us both retire to the queen-sized bed and he felt left out.

  Abigail growled. So that’s why she’d taken over my pillow. Either she was trying to get as far away as possible from Black Bart, or she was asserting her ownership of me. I wriggled my foot. Black Bart leapt off the bed. As I settled down to recapture sleep, I felt rather than saw the kitten jump back onto the bed. But he wasn’t there when I got up the next morning. He’d retired to the safety of his hiding place.

  I had pancakes for breakfast, early Thursday morning at the Bumblebee Café, where the owner confirmed what Ramona Clark had told me the night before. Maureen Smith had worked the night shift for nearly four months, April through July. It was nothing personal, he assured me. She was a good worker. But business had dropped off and he just didn’t have enough work.

  I went back to my office in Oakland, and discovered that the landlady had called me back. When I returned the call, she told me Maureen had moved out of the studio apartment with only a few days’ notice. “She said she’d lost her job, she couldn’t afford the rent and was moving in with a friend.”

  “Did she leave a forwarding address?” I asked.

  “Yes. Ordinarily I would have kept the deposit since she didn’t give me much notice. But seeing as she’d lost her job, I sent it back to her. Let’s see, I have it here somewhere.” I heard the rustle of papers. “Here it is. Mailed her a check for five hundred dollars.” Then she read me an address, a familiar one.

  I locked my office and headed for Berkeley. The university might be on its Christmas hiatus, but I had no doubt the people who lived in the apartment were still in residence. No one with any smarts would give up an apartment this close to campus, unless forced to by graduation or transfer to another institution. The three-story building on LeConte Avenue had a security front door, accessible only by a key, so I waited outside until someone exited and caught the door as it was closing.