She rang the doorbell at five-fifty. Punctual to a fault, everything to a fault but compassionate.
“Come in, B,” I yelled. The door was unlocked.
She came in, slowly surveying the room, and lingered in the foyer.
“How did you know?” she said.
“Why did you lie?”
“You assumed I was Janice so I just let you think that.”
“Answering ‘yeah’ is more than just letting me think you were Janice.” Petty point of clarification.
“Well, I thought you might not want to speak with me considering our earlier conversation and your suspicions.”
“Ill talk to anyone who can help me find Rachel. Can you?” I said.
“Perhaps. But … how did you know?”
I started to ask why she cared, but I didn’t have time to play question tag. Rachel might be the loser.
“I know Janice’s voice, not well, but I know it. And you have very distinct ways of inflecting certain words, ‘suggest’ being one of your favorites,” I said and beckoned her in, without grace. “Please come in. Into the living room and have a seat.”
Even after she finally decided that it was safe, that this was not some kind of trap, she waddle-walked into the living room sweeping for land mines. She stood by the rust-colored armchair in the corner. Interesting. She is running a shelter poorly, possibly criminally; withholding information about at least one missing girl, probably two; gaining entrance to my home under false pretenses and demanding a critique of her performance; and she’s afraid.
This conversation would be short.
I would have told her to make herself comfortable, to take off her jacket, and to have some cocoa, but I really didn’t care about her comfort, I hoped she wouldn’t stay long, and she could see the cocoa and the two cups on the coffee table.
“Why did you call instead of Janice?” I said in a neutral tone. Whatever information she had, I needed. I had to remember that. But patience and concealing my feelings were not my strong suits.
She smiled, a lopsided smile, and plopped her abundance in my poor little armchair.
“You gave a note to Janice, so she came to me,” she said, as if “naturally” should have followed “so.”
“Why?”
“She had given me a little information earlier that might be related to the … disappearance.”
I wanted to slap her, to beat her with the cane leaning against the sofa. I knew I could take her, was faster than she even in my weakened condition, but I did still need that little information.
“Might be related? Could you be a little more specific, B?”
“My name is Bernetta.” She threw me a nasty little fat-cheeked smile. “Actually, my friends do call me Bea, a word you have a special way with.”
“Okay, Ms. Bennett”—we were not, would never be, friends—“one girl has been missing for months, the other has been missing for almost twenty-four hours.” At least it felt that long. “Both were last seen at your place.”
“I don’t know anything about two girls. That’s one thing I wanted to clear up.” She clutched her black kid-leather purse a little closer. “I decided to come to your home so that I could explain the situation, without being interrupted or disconnected, so that you would understand my position.” She made friendly eye contact. I didn’t return it. “You do understand that I didn’t have to come here.”
“Here, or you could have gone down to the First District to share information with a professional information gatherer.” Though Bernetta Bennett might be arrogant and uncaring, I doubted that she was overtly criminal.
This conversation was taking too long, and she was gaining the unacceptable impression of being in control.
“You apparently have connections in the Police Department, but I suggest … advise you not to threaten me.”
“I suggest that you get on with it. I never threaten anyone, though I’ve been told that one of my most consistent attributes is ‘follow-through,’” I said, with no play in my voice. “Can we get back to business? You’ve been here for ten minutes and the only information that you’ve supplied is your first name.”
She clutched her purse again, then dropped it in her lap and rubbed her hands together in a greedy little manner. She looked up at me and scanned the room again, with much neck movement.
“Are we alone?”
“Unless you brought somebody with you.”
She swallowed hard. “Janice recognized your daughter—”
“My daughter?” I jerked forward, forgetting about my sore knee momentarily. I wondered if she was playing with me, but she couldn’t possibly be that stupid or that cruel.
“I—I mean your friend. The girl who came in with you. Janice saw her and thought she looked familiar. Well, she remembered where she had seen her. In church, at the Congregation of the Faithful, Reverend Nelson’s church. The girl is the Reverend’s foster child,” she said, suddenly speed-speaking. “He is a fine man and on our board, so I called him. His wife came for the girl. That’s all I know. I hadn’t even seen the girl, so I had no way of knowing that she had been beaten or anything like that.”
And you didn’t care enough to find out why she’d left the Reverend’s good home to stay in a shelter. I was jumping to conclusions, this time about the Reverend.
She continued on the fast track. “Mrs. Nelson called to say that she had forgotten the girl’s overnight bag, so I asked Janice to get it for me. It’s locked in my office now. After your little scene, I wasn’t sure what to do with it.” She began to regain her composure. I was likely to get more information if she stayed a little un composed.
Under the best of circumstances, I would hate this woman. My little scene. I may have been premature in judging her not to be overtly criminal.
I reached under a big peach pillow on the sofa. She noticed the movement and stiffened. I pulled out the bright yellow rhinestone from Janice’s headband and put it on the coffee table, leaving something—fully loaded—under the pillow for her to get stiff over.
“Please give this to Janice. She’s really a very decent woman, and I know she thought she was doing the right thing telling you about Rachel’s connection to Reverend Nelson.”
“She was. Of course she was. After all, how do we know that the girl wasn’t involved with drugs or prostitution or a rough boyfriend or something? Wandered into A Woman’s Place … uh …” she said, losing that composure again.
Enough.
“What is the Reverend’s address and what is Rachel’s real name?”
“What are you going to do?
“What-is-the-Reverend’s-address?”—my hand was involuntarily moving toward that pillow—“And-what—”
“Here, here, I don’t know her name, but I’ve written the address down. I knew that you would want it. But the Reverend is a good Christian man. His church donates money and food to A Woman’s Place. The congregation donates clothing and time with residents and occasionally the Reverend and Mrs. Nelson take a woman into their home to help her make the transition—”
“So you sent that baby back to that man and his wife because they donate things and they take other women in. Have you ever talked to any of the women after they’ve been taken in?” I said, unable to look at her. She had to get out. Now.
“No, but … Running a shelter is difficult work, dealing with those people every day who no one else wants to be bothered …”
“And you love it, don’t you? Just how superior does it make you feel? You are a woman with too much attitude and no conscience. You only called because you knew Janice wouldn’t keep this little information to herself, she does have a conscience, and you’re afraid something really awful like death might happen to Rachel. That might get associated back to your little concrete jungle.”
“I always have done what is best for the shelter. I do what is best for the women who make it their home.”
“No woman makes it her home, not even temporarily. You see to
that.”
She stared at me and forced a tiny gasp of indignation. Her eyes shifted to the pillow and remained there as she hoisted herself from my poor little chair. She let herself out.
Every man in my life has hated the extremes of my independence. Lew was no exception. He’d be furious when he found out I’d gone to see the good Reverend and his wife without backup—one of his favorite police words. Actually, I did have backup, but I’d never fired it.
By the time Bernetta Bennett got back to her car, probably parked around the corner, I had called a cab. Cabs came when called to this neighborhood.
Then I called Betty at DHS, hoping she still had foster care connections. She wasn’t happy with my request—foster care records are confidential and she could lose her job and her license—but she came through anyway.
In the ten minutes that it took to get to the Reverend’s house, I hadn’t come up with a plan. So, I just said a prayer, well, not a prayer, but the only Scripture I could think of at the moment. “Jesus wept.”
“That’ll be four-fifty, miss,” the driver, a stocky man with a ready smile but no cabside conversation, said. His dashboard was dominated by the pictures of two dark-haired beauties he said were his daughters, Maria and Ana.
The cab stopped in front of a three-story rowhouse with an immaculate lawn and a small garden dominated by pink azaleas.
“Could you wait here for me? I won’t be more than five or ten minutes. I’ll pay you twenty-five dollars for a ten-minute wait. If I’m longer than that, please, call the First District police station and ask for Lt. Lew Davis,” I said without emotion.
“Miss, please, just pay me the four-fifty and call another cab when you get ready to leave. Hey, how about I call the dispatcher and someone will be here within fifteen, twenty minutes. This is a nice part of town.”
I explained the situation briefly: I was removing my child from an abusive environment. I expected no violence or resistance. In fact, I had been told to come and get her. But you just never knew how people would act.
“Okay, miss. Ten minutes, that’s all. Ten minutes, and I don’t know nothing about this police thing,” he said.
Cane in hand, I deftly made my way up the long walk and rang the doorbell. The door opened in the middle of the second ring.
“Hello, can I help you?” Mrs. Nelson, I presumed, said. She was about my height and general build and had an open, friendly face. I hoped she was not a part of this.
“Hello, are you Mrs. Nelson—the Reverend Clarence P. Nelson’s wife?” I said officiously.
“Why, yes, I am. How can I help you?” she said in a ministerial tone.
“My name is Rose Cleary, Mrs. Nelson. I’m here to conduct an unscheduled home visit with the child in your foster care,” I said and hoped that they had only one. “May I come in, please?”
“Why, of course you can, but I don’t understand. We have had other foster children before Akua”—Akua—“but never one of these unscheduled visits. And it is so late,” she said. When her mild protest was answered by a cold officious smile, she graciously waved me in. She was young, younger than I’d first thought. Probably in her late twenties.
“We schedule these checks at unusual times to be able to observe the normal home and family environment,” I said. I stepped into a lovely, airy living room, decorated in warm earth tones. Just my style. “Is your husband in? Akua?”
She pulled her earlobe and hesitated before lying. Thank God for bad liars.
“No, I’m here alone. Why isn’t … Mrs. Browne, Akua’s caseworker, conducting the visit? Perhaps I better call her. Why, I don’t know if I should even have let you in without seeing some form of identification.”
“Her caseworker’s name is Lisa Gordon. She’s a short, thin woman with Senegalese twists and a trace of a Jamaican accent. Has someone else indicated to you that she was handling Akua’s case?”
I’ll have to do something really nice for Betty.
“Oh yes, why, of course, you’re right, Miss Gordon. Please,” she said, waving me to a pretty paisley chair.
“Let me get right to the point. We received a report of trouble with Akua, and I need to speak to her, privately. I’m sure she is at home now, considering the incident last night. I just need to reassure myself, for the division, that she’s all right.”
Mrs. Nelson aged ten years before my eyes. Everything just suddenly drooped, literally, and her open face closed.
“Mrs. Nelson, you don’t want this to be any more unpleasant than it has to be for you, your husband, or Akua. If I’m not given access to her, I will have to call the police to have her removed from your home. I can do that, you know.”
I hoped she knew less about these matters than I did.
She sat down and put her face into her hands. I wanted to comfort her, but I didn’t have time to stop for every hurting person that I encountered. An awful thought, but we all have to pick our spots. I hoped someone had picked Amani.
I had already gone over ten minutes, and I had no idea when the good Reverend would be home, although I’d checked and knew he had prayer meeting until seven. It was seven now. I had a feeling that he wouldn’t be as easy to deal with as his wife was proving to be.
“Mrs. Nelson, Mrs. Nelson,” I said, walking over to her and putting my hand on her shoulder. Was this head-hanging, no-eye-contact thing required in this home? “Please let me speak with Akua.” I had to go for it. “In fact, I think you know that you should let me take her away. Where is she?”
She lifted her head and uncovered her tear-streaked cheeks. I thought I should probably take her away, too. I waited for her response.
“She is upstairs in her room, the first room on the right. Here is the key.” She handed me a key. I tried to take it without touching her.
No, she wasn’t going with me. This sister was on her own.
“You lock her in?” I said, flat but caring.
“Clarence was afraid that she might run away so …”
“Did Clarence happen to mention why she might want to run away? But, of course, you would already know,” I said, first trying to make it up the steps, but my leg was really throbbing. On the second step, I turned back to Mrs. Nelson. “Go upstairs and get her, now.” I put the key on the step.
“I … you just don’t understand. Clarence is a good man, but he expects a certain standard of behavior both from himself and from all of us.… You are probably not a religious woman—”
“Nor are you, or you wouldn’t be defending that piss-poor excuse for a man. You are even worse than he is. You are his willing accomplice. He’s just a degenerate with a following and an unimaginative cover.… Mrs. Nelson, you are a coward, it is one thing to allow yourself to be beaten. I understand the psychology of that, or at least I try. But to allow a child, any child to be beaten …” Enough. “Come get this key and let her out, now.”
She did. The combination of a big woman’s presence and unwavering eye contact made people take you seriously.
Almost immediately, Akua appeared at the top of the stairs and stopped, looking at me and shaking her head almost imperceptibly. Shaking off a dream.
Before she could speak, I said, “Akua, Mrs. Nelson has agreed to let you come and stay with me for a while, if you’d like.” She looked confused, so I added, “My house is just a few blocks away over on Sixteenth Street. Would you like to come?” I reached for her hand.
She said, “Yes, ma’am,” and looked down the hall before coming down the steps and taking my hand. She noticed the cane.
“I had a little accident,” I said. “Let’s jet.” One of Amani’s expressions.
Akua smiled. “I hoped you’d come, Miss Gloria.”
I didn’t try to hide my tears.
We jetted, me at a quick hobble. And our cab awaited. I’d hoped Maria and Ana’s father would wait, would help us.
He took us straight home. I gave him every dime I had in my purse. By nine-thirty Akua was in the guest room asleep. Amani�
��s room was still Amani’s.
Lew had left a message on my machine, begging off from dinner but saying he’d call later. When he did call and I told him what had happened, he came over despite my protest that he shouldn’t, that everything was all right. He said that he had something that I’d want to see.
He arrived at about ten-fifteen, with a friend, another police officer. Amazin’ Grace. She’d been undercover at the shelter since Amani’s disappearance.
After a long conversation with Lew and his wife’s threat to testify before the congregation, the Reverend volunteered to have Akua officially removed from his home. Betty helped me get temporary custody.
I am not finished with the Reverend Nelson.
I called A Woman’s Place about a month after Akua officially came to live with me. The phone rang five times before anyone answered. I prayed that the B was on duty and threw in “Jesus wept” for good measure.
“Hello, this is A Woman’s Place. How can I help you?” a woman said. Very professional.
“Hello. May I speak to Bernetta Bennett?” I said.
“Bernetta? … I’m sorry. She’ll be with you in just a moment.”
Five minutes later she picked up. I am learning patience. Some things are worth waiting for.
“Hello, this is Ms. Bennett,” she said, still full of herself.
“Hi, this is Gloria Bell. I called to let you know that I’ve been appointed to your board to complete the Reverend Nelson’s term. He expects to be tied up with the legal system for a while. The board is about to begin upgrading services and staff,” I said. “And, oh yeah, I am going to find out what happened to my daughter. If you, either directly or indirectly, had anything to do with her disappearance—”
“I know, you’re going to see to it that A Woman’s Place is closed down. You’re going to destroy it.”
“No, Bernetta, if you are involved at any level, I’m going to destroy you. I hope the shelter won’t come down with you. I’ll be seeing you. Often.”
LINDA GRANT is the author of the Catherine Sayler series. Sayler, a San Francisco private investigator, specializes in high-tech crime, taking cases that range from sabotage in a genetics lab in Lethal Genes to sexual harassment in a software company in A Woman’s Place. The first and third books in the series were both nominated for Anthony awards. Grant, a former president of Sisters in Crime, lives in Berkeley, California, with her family.
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