DIVA

by Susan Fleet

  Ziegler gnawed his thumbnail. Worrying about how to tell Belinda about the notes, he assumed. If they even existed. He had worse things to worry about. He handed two business cards to Ziegler.

  “Give one to Belinda. If she gets any more notes, I want to see them. Tell her to call me if anything unusual happens. Anything at all.”

  _____

  “Someone’s been sending you weird notes,” Jake said in his doom-and-gloom voice, his dark eyes somber.

  She stared at him, horrified. First the note on her doorstep, then an ugly voicemail message, now weird notes? Had that awful man revealed her secret to Jake? “Why didn’t you show them to me? What did they say?”

  “I didn’t want to upset you.”

  “Tell me what they said!”

  “They were nice enough at first, typical fan mail, raving about what a great flutist you are. Then he started saying how much he loved your eyes and your hair and your . . . lips.”

  A sick feeling cramped her stomach and her palms grew sweaty. Thunder rumbled in the distance as she sank onto her mother’s rocking chair. Afternoon thunderstorms were frequent in New Orleans. She hated rainy weather. Nothing good ever happened when it rained. Thirteen years ago her family had died on a rain-slicked highway.

  “Show them to me.”

  Jake cleared his throat. “I can’t. I threw them away.”

  “You threw them away? Why?”

  “That’s why I screen your mail, remember? To weed out the crazies and send form letters to your fans. I was just doing my job!”

  Gooseflesh crawled down her arms. “How many were there?”

  “Fifteen or twenty, I guess, over the past four or five years.”

  “Four or five years?”

  Jake nodded.

  “And you threw them away. And told me nothing.”

  “Belinda, I stood by you when your family died, and when you begged me to work for you, I chucked my own career to be your assistant or whatever the hell it is that I am. Tour manager, publicist and chief cook and bottle washer!”

  His anguished expression made her melt. “Please, Jake, I can’t stand it when you get upset. I’m making a fuss because, well, it does upset me if someone’s sending me notes and—”

  “The last one was different. The others were mailed in Boston. The one last week—”

  “On the anniversary?” Her heart slammed her chest, vicious hammer-strokes pounding her ribs.

  “No, the week before. Postmarked New Orleans. It said You know how much I love you, Belinda. Soon we’ll be together. Love, B. Just the initial.”

  She felt like a horse had kicked her. Impossible. How could it be?

  “I know this is upsetting but—”

  “Upsetting! It’s fucking unbelievable! Did you throw that one away too?”

  Jake ducked his head, avoiding her gaze. “Yes. Detective Renzi wasn’t happy about it, either.”

  Aghast, she said, “You told Detective Renzi? Why?”

  “Bee, you don’t get it. At the restaurant some maniac tried to kill you.”

  She clenched her hands around the arms of the chair and rocked harder. How could this happen right before the biggest concert of her life?

  “Jake, you really let me down.”

  He flinched as if she’d slapped him. “I let you down? When have I ever let you down? I sacrifice my own happiness for you all the time. You call me at home anytime of the day or night. You did it on Saturday. Dean and I can’t even eat dinner together in peace.”

  She stared at him. Really, did she make that many demands?

  “Ten years ago I had a good job in New York, organist and choir master at a cathedral. I’ve got a Masters degree from New England Conservatory. Maybe it’s time I pursued other options.”

  Pursued other options. A Titanic-sized iceberg lodged in her stomach.

  Jake would never leave her, would he?

  “Detective Renzi said to call if anything unusual happens.” Jake handed her a business card. “We’re both upset right now. Finish practicing. Let’s talk later when we’ve calmed down.” He turned and left the studio.

  Finish practicing? How could she practice with all these hideous distractions? Voicemail threats. A note on her doorstep. Weird fan mail, signed with Blaine’s initial. And now Jake, her oldest and dearest friend, her only friend, was threatening to abandon her.

  Her throat closed up and tears fogged her vision. She blinked them back and studied the card Jake had given her. Frank’s card.

  She pictured him seated at his desk. His craggy features, rock-solid jaw and penetrating eyes gave him an aura of strength. Always a turn-on. If Jake told him about the notes, he must have told him about her family, too. The thought galled her. Maybe she should talk to Frank herself, and tell him about the note and the voicemail threat. But not until she returned from London.

  London was crucial, the biggest concert of her career.

  If she gave a perfect performance—and she had no doubt that she would—it was sure to win her a fabulous recording contract and the international fame that went with it.

  CHAPTER 6

  Mama LeBlanc had a nasty gleam in her eye when she waved him into the tidy kitchen of her Creole cottage. A big stainless-steel pot on the stove gave off a delectable spicy odor, whirled through the room by a ceiling fan. Barely five feet tall, Mama had a big heart, sixty years old and still a bundle of energy, nary a wrinkle on her milk-chocolate skin.

  It never ceased to amaze him how a woman so tiny could manage four delinquent teens at once, as she often had. But not this time.

  “Chantelle ran away,” Mama said, frowning up at him, her hands on her hips. “Stole my cell phone, too. Brand new one I got last month, left it on the counter overnight to charge.”

  “That might be a break. Can you write down the number and provider for me?”

  “Sure can.” Mama gestured at a wooden stool by the door to the dining room. “Take a load off, Detective Frank. Want coffee? I made a fresh pot.”

  “No thanks, but you go ahead.” On the wall above the stool, a cork bulletin board held a list of emergency numbers, his included. Tacked beside it was a chore schedule—Take out trash, Clean bathrooms, Do laundry—mapped out in a time-grid with penciled-in names.

  “What about the other girls? Do they know anything?”

  “They do, they ain’t telling me.” She came over and gave him a slip of paper with her cell phone information, then leaned against the counter and sipped from a mug of coffee. “Ramona might give you something. She’s young, pregnant and scared. The other two girls got, you know, at-ti-tude.”

  “Tell me about Chantelle. How did she act while she was here?”

  “That’s the thing, Detective Frank. I thought we were gettin’ on okay. Chantelle seemed like a nice girl. Polite, you know, please and thank you, no backtalk like some of ‘em. When I asked about her family, she said her moms was in Houston, last she heard.”

  “Last she heard. Sad.”

  “You got no idea the sad stories I hear.” She went to the stove and lifted the lid on the big pot, releasing a steamy aroma. After stirring the contents with a wooden spoon, she replaced the lid.

  “Something smells good,” he said.

  “Creole gumbo. Want some?” Mama grinned. “Nah, you’re too busy. The attitude twins are in their room watching TV or listening to the crap that passes for music these days. Ramona was bunking with Chantelle in the back bedroom. Come on, I’ll take you.”

  As they walked down the hall he heard television voices. Mama stopped at the first door on the left and opened it without knocking. “Shut off the TV, girls. Detective Renzi wants to talk to you, so be polite and speak up.”

  He stepped into a large square room with two neatly-made twin beds, the corners of their blue bedspreads squarely tucked. The whole room was shipshape, no clutter on the dresser, no dust on the mirror above it. An older-model TV sat on a metal stand. Slouched on blue-plastic armchairs facing the now-dark te
levision screen were two girls, one dark-skinned, the other lighter. Neither looked happy to see him.

  He gave them a reassuring smile. “Hello, ladies. Let’s start with names.”

  “Tameka,” said the dark-skinned girl with the dreadlocks and the round chubby face.

  “Linyatta,” said the other, gazing at him with mistrustful eyes.

  “What time was lights out last night?”

  “Midnight,” Tameka said. “Mama came in and tol’ us shut off the TV and go to sleep.”

  “Uh-huh. Did you?”

  An insolent smile appeared on Linyatta’s face, quickly suppressed.

  “What’d you do, hit the mute button and stay up all night watching a silent movie?”

  “Not all night,” Linyatta said. “Just till the movie was over.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Around one-thirty,” Tameka said.

  “What happened after that? Did you hear anything?”

  “We went to sleep, woke up when the alarm went off.”

  “Did Chantelle talk to you about running away?”

  “Didn’t talk to us ‘bout nuthin,” Linyatta said. “Snotty bitch.”

  He believed it. These girls had rap sheets. Chantelle wasn’t likely to have confided in them. “Thank you, ladies,” he said. “Don’t get any ideas about going AWOL like Chantelle.”

  Linyatta waved the TV remote at him. “Can we watch TV now?”

  “Sure.” He left the room, depressed beyond measure. Both girls were high-school dropouts, nothing to look forward to but lives of crime and dope and making babies with gangbangers.

  And that’s how Chantelle would wind up if he didn’t find her.

  At the far end of the wood-paneled hall Mama stood outside another door. “Told you nothing, right? Hard cases, those two, but you might get something from Ramona.”

  Mama opened the door and they entered the room. A Hispanic girl with an angelic face and large dark eyes lay in bed, propped against two pillows, wearing an over-sized cotton shirt with a big bulge, clearly pregnant.

  “This is Detective Renzi,” Mama said, “here about Chantelle. If you care about your friend, you best tell him what you know about where she’s at.”

  He sat on the empty bed opposite hers. “Did you see Chantelle leave?”

  “Didn’t see nuthin, didn’t hear nuthin,” Ramona said, twisting the white bed-sheet with thin bony fingers.

  “Uh-huh. But I bet you got to know her a little bit, rooming with her for a few days. Did she talk to you? Tell you about her friends?”

  The girl shook her head, hugging her swollen belly with stick-thin arms, gazing at him. Tears filled her large dark eyes. “She gone.”

  “Did she say where she was going?”

  Ramona’s eyes overflowed and tears ran down her face.

  “She jus’ gone. Left me all alone.”

  ______

  At one-thirty Frank drove into Iberville and parked his unmarked Chevy Caprice in front of a three-story red-brick building. After Katrina many of New Orleans’ public housing projects had been scheduled for demolition. Not Iberville, a two-block collection of buildings grouped in around cement courtyards. It reminded him of the projects he’d worked as a Boston detective, except that here plywood covered many of the windows.

  About as charming as a sardine factory.

  He walked into a courtyard, absorbing the vibe, weeds peeping through cracked cement, security lights on poles with electric wires that carried no juice. At night the complex would be pitch dark. A scary place for a teenaged girl on her own. Now the midday sun baked weedy grass littered with empty beer cans, crumpled candy wrappers and fast-food containers. On the cement were spray-painted gang tags, Day-Glo squiggles marking their territory.

  A dilapidated swing-set stood in the center of the courtyard, no kids on the swings. No plywood on the windows facing the courtyard, either. Some were open, but the courtyard was eerily quiet. No babies crying, no kiddie voices, no music floating through the windows.

  A creepy sensation crawled down his neck. How many eyes were watching him through those windows? His SIG-Sauer was a reassuring weight in the holster strapped to his right ankle, but it wouldn’t help much if some banger decided to pop him from a second-floor window.

  Sudden motion caught his eye, jumping his heart rate.

  Two black kids emerged from between two buildings, shuffling along in their Nike’s or whatever footwear the ‘bangers favored these days, heads bobbing to sounds from the I-Pods plugged into their ears. Both wore loose T-shirts and baggy pants that hung off their skinny asses.

  Baggy enough to conceal a gun.

  They saw him but feigned disinterest, assuming slouched postures as he approached. He’d changed into scruffy jeans and an old T-shirt, but they knew he was a cop. A spiderweb tat covered the taller one’s neck. The other had tattoos on each forearm, ugly daggers dripping crimson blood.

  “Hey, guys, I’m looking for someone. Maybe you can help me out.”

  Got back dead-eyed stares. He showed them Chantelle’s mug shot, the full-face version with the height-chart background edited out.

  “Seen this girl around here lately?”

  “Uh-uh,” grunted the tall one, Spiderweb, avoiding his gaze.

  “How about you?” he said to Dagger. “She lived here before Katrina.”

  Dagger pointed, extending his forearm to display his bloody-dagger tat. “That her pitcher?”

  “Yes. Do you know her?”

  “Don’t know nuthin, Mr. Po-leece-man,” Spiderweb said. He jerked his head at Dagger and the pair sauntered away.

  After watching them swagger across the courtyard, he mounted the steps of the nearest building and entered a dark hallway that stank of every foul odor imaginable: stale cigarette smoke, spoiled food, vomit and urine.

  A swarm of gnats buzzed his head. He swatted them away.

  Halfway down the hall he came to an open door and stuck his head inside. The stench got worse. Two chrome kitchen chairs with torn plastic seats stood by a window, surrounded by mounds of trash that included a broken crack pipe. Stuck in a crevice between the filthy carpet and the baseboard was a used syringe with a bent needle.

  Appalled by the squalor, he flashed on Chantelle’s roommate, Ramona, fourteen-years-old and pregnant, about to have a baby fathered by her uncle. Not much older than Janelle Robinson, a black girl in Boston who’d hung out with bangers and wound up dead. Different project, same sad story.

  Before Katrina, 673 of Iberville’s 836 units had been occupied. Now only 200 housed legal residents. Many of the others were occupied by drug dealers and crackheads. Forget finding someone to help him locate Chantelle. The bangers wouldn’t tell him anything, and the legal residents were too scared to talk. He scratched the scar on his chin. If Chantelle was hiding in one of the eight-hundred-plus units, he’d never find her.

  Lost in thought, he pushed through the exit door into the sunlight.

  “Yo!” a deep voice called. “Help you with sump’n?”

  A young black man with milk-chocolate skin leaned against the side of the building. He was five-ten or so and barrel-chested with powerful arms and shoulders. Looked like he’d just worked out, the skin on his shaven head gleaming with sweat, approaching him now with a self-assured swagger. Over the obligatory baggy pants, he wore a white dress shirt. Gold cufflinks at the wrists glinted with diamond chips. Heavy bling. Surprisingly delicate features decorated his face: almond-shaped eyes, a narrow nose, thin lips.

  Frank showed him the photograph. “Have you seen this girl around?”

  The man stared at him with dead flat eyes. “You a cop?”

  His voice was deep and resonant, sounded like James Earl Jones.

  “Detective Frank Renzi, NOPD. And you are?”

  A big smirk. “Mos’ folks call me AK.”

  Known to NOPD as Atticus Kroll, age twenty-four, gang leader and drug kingpin. Also known as AK-47 due to his preference for that part
icular weapon of destruction.

  “You live here, AK?”

  “Hardly nobody lives here. The city ain’t got no money to fix the place.”

  He tapped the photograph. “Have you seen this girl? She lived here before Katrina.”

  AK gazed at him, face closed, eyes hard. “Never seen her before.”

  The next moment an insolent smile parted his lips, and a gold tooth glittered at the front of his mouth.

  “Nice tooth, AK. The pharmaceutical business must be good.”

  The smile disappeared, the eyes hardened, and AK stalked away.

  _____

  Thursday, 19 October

  “I better go,” Antoine whispered. “It’s almost midnight.”

  “Stay a couple more minutes.” Spooned against him on the mattress, Chantelle felt his velvety-soft lips brush her neck. She loved the feel of his bare skin against hers. Loved it even more when he reached back and stroked her cheek. He’d brought her two bags of groceries, including a big package of Doritos, her sweet lover-man buying her favorite treat.

  Beside them on the floor, a flickering candle sat on an aluminum pie plate, the only light in her bedroom, but enough to see the love in his eyes, the cinnamon-scented candle masking the awful stink in her apartment.

  “Stay all night if I could, but Uncle Jonas be home from work soon.”

  She stroked his cheek. “Thank God the cops didn’t catch you.”

  “You got that right. Jesus-God-A’mighty, thought I’d die when AK shot that cop, idiot got the brains of a flea, you know, shoot first, think later.”

  “Wasn’t your fault, Antoine.”

  “Maybe not, but the cops’ll blame me, just the same. Woman died ‘cause AK only cares about saving his own ass. I shoulda never gone with him.”

  The truest words ever spoken. Only reason her lover man did was ‘cuz AK had told him he’d protect her. Bullshit. AK was the one bothering her.

  “I want you to go back to that foster home. You be safe there.”

  “No! Then I won’t be able to see you.”

  He kissed her mouth, a soul kiss that made her tingle. “I love you, Chantelle. I want you to be safe. Call that cop and tell him what happened.”