by Susan Fleet
He let out the breath he’d been holding, as winded as if he’d played a whole chorus of Sweet Georgia Brown in one breath. The cop gazed at him, expectant, seemed like he thought Antoine was about to tell him something important. He wasn’t.
“We got prints off the left rear window, too. They matched the prints of the woman that died.” Renzi’s eyes went hard as granite. “Someone pushed her out of that car, Antoine. Her head hit the pavement and she died of a fractured skull.”
The words hung in the air like a horrible stink.
“I’m sorry she died,” he said. And he was. Sorrier than he’d ever been about anything in his life except for Chantelle being dead. But he wasn’t the one shoved that poor lady out the car.
“Who pushed her out of the car?” Renzi said.
Seemed like the man could read his mind. Scary. “I don’t know, sir.”
“I think you do. Why was Chantelle in Lakeview that night?”
The cruelest question of all, one he had no intention of answering. He blinked back tears. No way was he gonna cry in front of this cop. But he wasn’t going to betray Chantelle, either.
“I think she was involved in the robbery. Maybe she was the lookout. Is that it?”
He shook his head, unwilling to speak the lie aloud.
“Someone killed her and I think you know who it was. I want to nail the bastard and put him away for good. Don’t you, Antoine?”
He nodded, unable to speak.
“Chantelle was squatting in her old apartment in Iberville. She must have known AK.” Renzi lowered his voice. “I think AK pulled that stickup, but I can’t prove it. Help me out, Antoine.”
He looked away, avoiding the man’s gaze. “You gonna get me killed, you know that? Come here and pull me out of class.” Lady sends Georgina to get me, Georgina knows a cop’s waiting in the office, sure as shit gonna tell Marcus.
“Why were AK and his homeboys bothering you in the parking lot the other day? AK knew Chantelle was your girl, right? He killed her to make sure she didn’t talk about the Lakeview robbery. And the murder. That’s what it was, Antoine, cold-blooded murder, shoving that woman out of the car. AK was threatening you to make sure you keep your mouth shut, too.”
He took a deep shuddering breath. “You gonna get me killed.”
“We’ll protect you, Antoine. Tell us what happened in Lakeview and we’ll cut you a break.”
He looked the man in the eye. “I’m not the only NOCCA student that knows AK.”
Watched the cop’s eyes, saw the wheels turning in the man’s mind.
No way was he gonna give up a name.
He was in enough trouble already, hiding from AK, hardly set foot outside his uncle’s house except to go to school.
If Marcus told AK he’d talked to this cop, he was toast.
CHAPTER 19
Saturday, 4 November Cincinnati
Relaxed and jubilant, she changed into her satin baby-dolls and sat down at the dressing table in her hotel room to brush her hair. An hour after the Cincinnati Pops concert her cheeks still had a rosy glow. A standing ovation and two curtain calls thanks to her perfect performance. Best of all, PBS had videotaped the concert, which meant added revenue and wider exposure.
Things were looking up. No more threats to expose her secrets.
Her lips tightened resentfully. If reporters got wind of her affair with Guy, it would ruin her image. But not Guy’s. Men could screw around. Women couldn’t. Ramon’s wife had threatened to tell every gossip columnist in Boston that she was a home wrecker. Nonsense.
Ramon had seduced her, not the other way around.
No more ugly car incidents, either. She still thought the parking lot episode was some kid hot-rodding around. But being forced off the road and crashing into a tree was different. Different and terrifying.
Still, that didn’t mean someone was out to get her. She gazed into the mirror at the sapphire-blue eyes that stared back at her, recalling how caring and considerate Frank had been that night, his intense dark eyes focused on hers as they sat in her kitchen. But that had been an illusion, too. He hadn’t even come backstage to compliment her NOCCA performance.
Three taps sounded on the door of her room. “Bee? It’s Jake.”
She set down the hairbrush, put on her white terry-cloth robe and opened the door. “Come on in, Jake. I was just brushing my hair. Want a nightcap? There’s wine in the mini-bar.”
“Uh, sure, that would be good.” Jake gazed at her, solemn-eyed.
“What’s wrong? The concert went well, but you don’t seem very happy.”
He flashed a perfunctory smile. “Your performance was fabulous, Bee.” He perched on one of the easy chairs grouped around a low table and cleared his throat. “Now that the concert’s over I was hoping we could talk.”
Now that the concert’s over. Jake hadn’t come to her hotel room for a cozy late-night chat. He had something unpleasant to say.
She took two splits of Merlot out of the mini-bar, poured them into glass tumblers and carried them to the sitting area. “What did you want to tell me?” Keeping her voice calm though her heart was racing.
Jake gulped some wine. “I may be moving to New York City.”
Her heart slammed her chest. “Jake! No!”
“Please try to understand. This isn’t about you. You know I’d do anything for you—”
“If you move to New York, what can you do for me?” Hearing the reproach in her voice, knowing how selfish she sounded. But what would she do without Jake?
“Bee, this is difficult enough. Please don’t make it worse. Dean wants to go to art school. He interviewed at Pratt Institute, and if he gets accepted—” Jake heaved a sigh and gave her an imploring look. “I can’t stay in New Orleans if Dean’s living in New York.”
A sick-ache invaded her stomach. “Can’t you fly up on weekends?”
“I’ve been with you for nine years, and all those years I put my relationship with Dean second. But I can’t do that forever. I love him, Bee. I don’t want to lose him.”
She fought back tears. These hideous problems were piling up like snowdrifts in a blizzard: the thirteenth anniversary, voicemail threats, creepy fan mail, car accidents. And now Jake, her dearest friend in the world, her only friend, was abandoning her.
Gripping the glass tumbler to stop her hands from shaking, she forced herself to speak in a calm even voice. “When will you be moving?”
Jake visibly relaxed. He even smiled. How could he?
“Classes at Pratt start in January, but don’t worry. I’ll take care of the holiday performances. I’ll just need to go to New York a couple of times early in December.”
“Fine.” She feigned a yawn. “I’m really tired, Jake. I need to go to bed.”
“Of course. You had a long day.” He sprang to his feet and went to the door. “Thanks for understanding, Bee.”
Understanding? She didn’t understand, but she couldn’t stop Jake from leaving, anymore than she could undo the accident that had killed her family thirteen years ago. Unlucky thirteen. `
She should have known this year would be horrific. Nine weeks to go.
What other nightmares were in store for her?
______
He opened the top drawer of Belinda’s dresser and gazed at her panties: pale pink, pastel yellow, baby blue, white with lace trim. He ran his fingers over the silky fabric. He liked the black ones best. Sexy.
He couldn’t wait to see her in them. Already he had an erection.
Too bad she wasn’t here to enjoy it.
He pulled off the latex gloves, raised the panties to his nose and sniffed the crotch. And smelled laundry detergent, not the sexy scent of his beloved. He dropped them in the drawer and went to the clothes hamper in the corner of the room. Inside he found a pair of pastel-blue panties with a faint stain on the crotch. He raised it to his nose and inhaled the scent of her sex. Bliss!
His erection throbbed with a wild yearning.
/> How could she be so mean? Humiliating him when he demonstrated his knowledge of pianos and chamber music repertoire. Rejecting his suggestion to transcribe the Busoni Violin Sonata for flute. Laughing when he invited her to play duets with him. Laughing!
She wasn’t ready to satisfy him yet, and he had his needs, as all men did.
Like Pa. He fingered the acne pits on his cheek, recalling the night Rachel had revealed her dark secret.
Twice a week Pa took his talented daughter to Boston Symphony concerts. Forget his talent, Rachel was the star. He had to stay home with Ma, wasting away in her wheelchair. Late one night he heard Rachel tiptoe past his room. Two minutes later he crept down the hall to her room and walked in on her. She was sitting at her makeup table, admiring her sharp-featured face in the mirror as she brushed her long blue-black hair.
“Did you ever hear of knocking?”
“Why do you and Pa get home so late? It’s after midnight. Concerts don’t last that long.”
“None of your business, Zit-face.” Stroking the brush through her lustrous blue-black hair, gazing at him in the mirror with her glittery-green eyes.
“You don’t really go to symphony concerts, do you?”
Pink rose on her cheeks. “Of course we do. If Pa didn’t take me to concerts, I wouldn’t do it.”
“Do what?”
A brittle smile. “After the concert we go to a motel and Pa fucks my brains out.”
Shocked, he stared at her. Pictured his father, naked and hairy, screwing his fifteen-year-old sister. Strangely, the image excited him. Rachel lied a lot, but not this time, he was certain.
“What if . . .” he said, trying to act cool, “what if you get pregnant?”
“Duh!! I’ve been on the pill since I was twelve.”
“Twelve? You and Pa have been doing this since you were . . . ?”
Her mouth twisted into a terrible smile. “Before that.”
“You’re disgusting!”
“And you’re jealous. Pa loves me more than he loves you. How could anyone love you? You’re the disgusting one, all those pimples. Mr. Zit-face with the puny dick,” she said, unerringly finding his vulnerability. “Pa’s is bigger. Big and fat and—”
“Shut up!”
He wanted to strangle her with his bare hands, wanted to see her face turn purple, wanted to watch those glittery-green eyes bug out of her head.
“You know it’s true,” she said, smirking at him in the mirror. “Remember when we used to take baths together when we were little? I can’t believe how puny your dick is compared to Pa’s.”
His face turned crimson with embarrassment.
“Shut up or I’ll tell the social worker.” The woman visited twice a week to see how Ma was doing, as if she expected some miracle would allow Ma to rise from her wheelchair and walk like a normal human being.
Like a normal mother. The normal mother he’d never had.
“If you tell, I’ll say you’re a liar. I’ll tell Pa about your porn magazines.”
She’d been in his room! His hands clenched into fists. He took a step toward her. He wanted to fuck her, like his loutish excuse-for-a-father had fucked her, wanted to punch that smirk off her face and rip off her clothes and throw her on the bed and—
“Don’t come near me! I’ll tell Pa you attacked me.”
His rage escalated. An impotent rage. Pa would believe Rachel, not him. Pa would beat his naked butt with a belt, jeering if he cried, telling him to take it like a man. Defeated, he turned and left. Rachel’s triumphant laugh had followed him down the hall to his room.
Shaking with remembered rage, he sniffed Belinda’s panties and touched his throbbing cock. Later, he would jerk off on them.
His wretched substitute for her love.
He pulled a pillowcase off a bed pillow and dropped in the panties, went to her bureau and opened her jewelry case. What would a thief steal? The pearl necklace and matching earrings for sure, the gold pins and diamond earrings, too. He dropped them in the pillowcase.
Belinda’s flutes were the most valuable items in the house. She’d taken her platinum Haynes flute to Cincinnati, but others worth thousands were in her safe. No. If he stole them Belinda would be devastated. Still, he should take something else. A portable CD player and four compact discs lay on her bedside table, her favorites no doubt. He stuffed the disc player and CDs in the pillowcase, shut off the light and went downstairs.
He opened the door to Belinda’s studio and gazed longingly at her Steinway. Ziegler had rebuked him for playing it, had said she never allowed anyone in her studio. Bullshit. Once his beloved realized how talented he was, she would love playing duets with him.
But he didn't dare play it now. If her neighbors heard someone playing her piano it might fuck up his plan. He shut the door and crossed the hall to Ziegler’s office. The window shades were down so he turned on the desk lamp and riffled the file cabinets. Press clippings? No, he had all of those. Contacts for possible gigs? Of no interest to him.
A folder labeled Press Kit Photos. He took it out and opened it. His cock throbbed as he studied the photographs, his beloved in various poses: provocative and smiling, demure and businesslike.
Perfect for his late-night longings. He slid the folder into the pillowcase.
Another file cabinet held folders labeled Utility Bills, Tax Returns, Concert Payments and CD Royalties. He dumped them on the floor, scattering papers everywhere.
Fuck-all! If anyone did that to him, he’d kill them. He hated it when things were out of place, especially his Belinda collection.
A folder on the desk held receipts for the Cincinnati flight and the hotel. They had booked separate rooms. That didn’t fool him. He knew they were lovers. He’d put an end to that soon enough. Then he would show his beloved the orgasmic delights of having sex with someone who adored her.
Someone who knew how to fuck her.
A snifter full of M&Ms sat on Ziegler’s desk. He picked it up and threw it against the wall. The glass shattered and M&Ms scattered across the floor, a multi-colored fuck-you. Another dish held Hershey miniatures. He flung the candy on the floor and shut off the light.
He’d been here forty minutes. After entering the house, he’d used the code Ziegler had given him to disable the alarm. Let Ziegler take the heat for failing to arm the security system. No one could blame it on him.
He had the perfect alibi.
CHAPTER 20
Sunday, 5 November
The resonant voices of the African Baptist Gospel Church choir rolled over him like a tidal wave. Made him think about Chantelle.
His stomach cramped and his eyes welled up.
Praise the Lord! sang the choir, sending a shiver down his spine.
Beside him in the wooden pew, Uncle Jonas was clapping on the backbeat, swaying to and fro like the rest of the congregation. Dressed in their maroon and gold robes, the choir did their best to belt out a joyous hymn, only twenty-five strong now, unlike the fifty-voice choir before Katrina.
When the church reopened, he’d tried to persuade Chantelle to sing in the choir, but she wouldn’t. “Got no decent clothes, Antoine, got no money to buy any. Besides, I don’t want folks to see me. Somebody drops a dime they’ll send me to Houston to be with my Mom.”
Goin’ to . . . CLAP Praise the Lord.
Goin’ to . . . CLAP Join the Lord.
Goin’ to Heaven, Al-le-lu-lia, goin’ to . . . CLAP Be with the Lord!
Was Chantelle in Heaven, he wondered? Uncle Jonas thought so.
He blinked back tears and began clapping. He couldn’t cry now, not in front of the Reverend Samuel Goines. He stared at Marcus, sitting beside his mother in the front pew. Marcus, the rat.
When the music ended Reverend Goines left his elegant carved-wood throne on the altar and marched to the pulpit to deliver his sermon, an imposing presence in his flowing gold robe, his kinky gray hair neatly combed, the pecan-brown skin on his face clean-shaven.
Toda
y’s sermon was Demon Drugs and Alcohol. To Antoine they all sounded alike, the Reverend shaking his finger at folks in the pews.
“Do not allow drugs and alcohol to derail your life,” Reverend Goines thundered in his deep bass voice. “Do not allow those twin devil demons to keep you from the good graces of the Lord!”
Antoine wondered what Reverend Goines would do if he found out his son was dealing drugs. Drugs supplied by AK, which meant AK had a hold on him. Marcus was probably the one who’d told AK about Antoine talking to a cop. For the next forty minutes, he meditated on this, sitting blank-faced beside his uncle, shouting Amen! at the proper intervals, all the while feeling the heat of anger rise inside him.
When the service ended, the congregation filed into Fellowship Hall next to the sanctuary. Uncle Jonas headed for the coffee urn. Antoine hung back and leaned against a side wall. He didn’t drink coffee, had no appetite for the home-baked cookies and frosted slices of sweet bread that filled the platters on the table beside the big shiny coffee urn.
His mind was on Marcus.
The last stragglers entered Fellowship Hall, followed by Mrs. Goines, Marcus, and Reverend Goines. The Reverend saw him and said, “Morning, Antoine, how you doing today?”
He summoned a smile. “Doing just fine, thank you, sir.”
The Goines family forged deeper into Fellowship Hall, greeting one clump of parishioners after another, Marcus glancing around, casual-like. Antoine knew what he was doing: Keeping an eye on Antoine Carter. A spurt of anger stabbed his gut. He strode across the room to Marcus. The little rat’s face was set in a belligerent expression, but traces of fear showed in his eyes.
“We need to talk,” Antoine said in a low voice. “Outside. Now.”
He strode to the side door, went out on the porch, leaned a hip against porch railing and waited, vengeful thoughts churning his mind.
A minute later Marcus came out the door in his navy-blue Sunday-go-to-meeting suit. Acting cool, but wary-eyed.
“What you been telling AK about me?”
The little rat’s eyes hardened. “Ain’t been telling him nuthin'.”
