He didn’t oblige her.
“How long has it been since she stopped coming around?” he asked.
“Excuse me?”
“When was her last visit here? Last week, last month …”
“Oh. We last saw her about two weeks ago, maybe. Give or take a day or two.”
“And Nina went home when?”
“Nina? Nina went home last month some time. Around the eighteenth or nineteenth, something like that. Why—”
“I was wondering if there was any connection. Between the time Nina went home, and the time Trini lost interest in coming by the house here.”
Singer paused before answering, as if she’d been dreading the question. “Why should there be a connection?”
The black man shrugged innocently. “No reason. I was just wondering.” He kept his eyes on her a while, then said, “If Trini stopped coming by about two weeks ago, and Nina went back home around the eighteenth of February …”
“Yes?”
“Then there would have been about a week in between the two events. Correct?”
“I suppose so, yes.”
“That just a coincidence, you think?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know what else it could have been. The two things were totally unrelated.”
“Trini had no objection to Nina’s going home? She wasn’t disappointed or upset by it in any way?”
“Any more than any of the rest of us were, you mean? No. She wasn’t.”
“You were unhappy to see Nina leave?”
“Me? Oh, yes. Definitely.”
“Do you mind if I ask why?”
“Because I thought her timing was bad. We all did. Nina had just served her husband with papers two weeks before, and here she was going back home where he could reach her, before he’d had any real time to cool off. It was suicide.”
“Suicide?”
“That’s right. It was suicide. She should have stayed with us here another week, at least, and I told her thats. But …”
“But she left anyway.”
“She wasn’t afraid of Michael anymore, she said. She’d learned so much here, become so much stronger …” She shook her head wistfully at the sheer depth of the dead woman’s foolishness. “There was just no talking her out of it. She’d made lip her mind she was going home, and she went. She had that right.”
“You sound more than a little angry at her,” Gunner said.
Singer eyed him evenly, determined not to rush her reply. “Working here is not all that different from working in a drug rehabilitation center, Mr. Gunner. The disappointments, the heartbreak are the same. You take a wounded, addictive human being under your wing and nurse her back to health. You educate, encourage, and empower her, until her self-esteem is once more intact. And then you send her back out into the world and watch her destroy herself all over again. In the exact same manner. Just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “Like she’s on a string he just has to pull …” She nodded her head. “Yes, it makes me angry. It makes me very angry, sometimes. I wouldn’t be human if it didn’t.”
She looked off to her left at the clock on the wall, being careful to make sure Gunner noticed the gesture. Either tired of answering questions, or afraid of the direction they were taking.
“Tell me about Nina’s enemies,” Gunner said, refusing to take the hint.
“Her enemies?”
“Is that too strong a word, ‘enemies’? Okay, how about ‘people she didn’t get along with’? There must have been a few of those.”
“Here? I’m afraid not. Nina had words with some people from time to time, certainly. She had words with me, on occasion. But—”
“What kind of words? Words about politics, religion, racen …? What?”
The look on Singer’s face told him he’d just hit on something else she had hoped would not enter into their discussion.
“You and she had words about race. Is that it?”
“Not Nina and I, no. But …” Singer was having difficulty making her mouth move. “There was a woman here who used to … use a certain word that Nina didn’t care for. And she and Nina would get into it about it every now and then.”
“A word for black people.”
“Yes.”
Gunner didn’t ask her which word it was; he had seen Nina go ballistic at the mere utterance of the word “nigger” too many times to ever forget the effect it had on her.
“Who was this woman?” he asked Singer instead.
“She’s not here anymore. She left in late January.”
“What was her name?”
“Agnes. Agnes Felker.”
“If I wanted to talk to Ms. Felker, would you know where I could find her?”
“I suppose so. Her address is in our files. But why would you want to talk to her?”
“Because it sounds like it would be stupid of me not to. Not all bigots are murderers, of course, but—”
“Bigots? Agnes wasn’t a bigot,” Singer said.
“No?”
“No. She couldn’t have been. Agnes is a black woman herself, Mr. Gunner. If using that word she’s so fond of makes her a bigot, she’s the strangest one I’ve ever seen.”
Now Gunner was the one who couldn’t get his mouth to move.
“All the same,” he said finally, “I’d better have a talk with her. Just to see how deep her problems with Nina really ran.”
Singer shrugged. “Of course. I’ll give Ginger instructions to provide you with whatever information you need.” She glanced up at the clock again. “Will there be anything else, Mr. Gunner? Or—”
She was interrupted by a loud, baleful cry, the latest and most insistent of several she and Gunner had been trying to talk over for some time now. It sounded like it was coming from somewhere just outside the building’s perimeter.
“What in heaven’s name …?” Singer said.
“It sounds like somebody calling out for someone named Sidney,” Gunner said.
Recognition lit up Singer’s face. “Oh, no. No!”
The next thing Gunner knew, he was sitting in her office all alone.
“Don’t come any closer,” Leo Cagle said.
He was on the outside of the fence, and Gunner was on the inside, but Gunner did as he was told, anyway. The gun in Cagle’s left hand had a lot to do with that.
“Is she coming out?” the baby-faced white man asked, tears streaming down the rosy red flesh of both cheeks.
“She” was Sydney Cagle, Leo’s wife. And the answer was no, she wasn’t coming out. She didn’t care how loudly he screamed her name, or threatened to commit suicide out there on the sidewalk for all the world to see; she and Leo were through, and she had no intention of leaving the building to talk to him. Which was fine by Wendy Singer. Leo had a gun, and Singer felt that men with guns were best disarmed by officers of the law, not the men’s ex-wives. Even when they were relative teddy bears like Leo Cagle. She wanted to call the police.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Gunner had said.
The downside to calling the cops, he told Singer and Leo’s disaffected, pleasingly plump ex-wife Sydney, was that the very sight of a black-and-white could set him off. If somebody else had a talk with him first, maybe he’d lose interest and just go away, without hurting himself or anyone else. It was worth a try, wasn’t it?
Singer thanked him for volunteering his services and walked him to the door. Sydney didn’t even get up out of her chair.
So here Gunner was now, standing less than ten feet away from the distraught Mr. Cagle, trying to determine how serious the white man was about doing himself harm. And how he would take the news that his ex didn’t care if he blew his brains out or not, she just wanted to be left alone. Forever.
“She’s afraid to come out,” Gunner said, starting things off right with a lie. “It’s the gun. She said if you gave it to me—”
“I’m not going to hurt her! The gun’s for me, not her! Sydney!”
“Come on, Leo. Take it easy. Let’s talk about this for a moment …”
Cagle put the nose of the revolver to his head, shaking like a leaf. Gunner had seen his kind before. The fool who’d just learned the hard way that a woman never says good-bye until she’s already gone. “That’s what I’m trying to do, talk,” Cagle said. “But not with you. I didn’t come here to talk to you. I came here to talk to Sydney!”
“I understand that, but—”
“Who the hell are you, anyway? Security?”
“No, I’m—”
The white man was suddenly sobbing, both eyes squeezed tightly shut. “You do everything right. Everything they ask you to do. And it’s still not enough …”
He was starting to get some attention on the street. That was bad. Too many onlookers around could make him panic, push him straight over the edge.
Gunner didn’t know what to say to the man.
“I don’t understand,” Cagle said, opening his eyes again. His gun was still pressed against his left temple, though he didn’t seem to notice.
“Nobody understands, Leo,” Gunner said. He really felt sorry for the poor bastard.
“I haven’t put a hand on her for four years. Four years! But she won’t forgive me. No matter how I try to make it up to her. No matter what I do to change …” His voice trailed off. “It’s just never enough.”
Gunner took a couple of steps toward him.
“Being a good man’s supposed to count for something, isn’t it? Isn’t being a good man supposed to count for something?”
And just like that, he was angry now, glowering and spitting like a man possessed. Gunner could see that the hammer on his revolver was cocked to fire.
“Give me the gun, Leo,” the black man said, thinking how easy it would have been to just let the cops handle this, if he hadn’t had such a big mouth.
“You bust your ass to become what they want! You make every single sacrifice!”
“I know, man, I know.”
Gunner took another step forward. Two or three more and Cagle would be close enough to touch.
“It isn’t fair,” Cagle said, his mood shifting back to melancholy again. His eyes were filled with fresh tears. “Am I weak? Is that my problem?”
“Weak? No, man, you’re not weak. You’re just in love with the wrong woman.” He had the gun out of Cagle’s hand before the man even knew he was reaching for it. Cagle didn’t say a word.
“It happens,” Gunner told him. “To all of us. Suck it up and move on, Leo. Your Sydney’s old news.”
Cagle nodded his head slowly, knowing it was true, then turned and ran away.
nine
“THAT WAS NICE WORK,” SINGER SAID.
She had watched the whole thing from the open front door, a small flock of the women in her charge encircling her. They all seemed quite impressed.
“Thanks,” Gunner said. He couldn’t help but notice that Sydney Cagle was not among the curious onlookers.
“Tell me that thing wasn’t loaded,” Singer said, eyeing the gun the investigator had just taken from Leo Cagle.
It was a .38-caliber Charter Arms, with a two-inch barrel and a silver finish. Gunner flipped open the cylinder and turned the weapon over, dropping six live shells into the palm of his left hand.
“My God,” somebody behind Singer said.
“Yeah,” Gunner said. “I was thinking the same thing myself.”
Shirley Causwell wouldn’t see him alone, so he had to interview them together. “Them” being Causwell and Angela Glass, the two Sisterhood House residents Singer had identified as Nina’s closest friends. She’d been ready to get rid of him only minutes ago, before Leo Cagle had shown up, but now of course she felt obligated to grant his every wish. Hence the interview he was about to conduct now.
Singer hadn’t told him what Causwell’s problem with being alone with men was all about, and he didn’t ask. Maybe later it would help to know, but right now, it was unimportant. Right now, Gunner just wanted the lady to talk to him.
Not that one-on-two’s were his arrangement of choice. Interviewing multiple subjects simultaneously created all kinds of problems—from the simple matter of keeping track of who said what, to the reluctance some interviewees had to being frank and forthcoming with their answers when someone else was around to hear them—but it was the only way this would work. He either did them together, or imposed on Singer even further by asking her to sit in on his conversation with Causwell.
He elected to do them together.
This time, the interview took place outside the house, out on the patio he had caught a glimpse of earlier through Singer’s office window. They all sat in white plastic deck chairs around a white plastic table, an open patio umbrella over their heads and a light, uninspired breeze in their faces. Glass sat to Gunner’s left, Causwell on his right, the latter so far removed from the table that she hardly seemed to be with them at all.
The black women were strikingly dissimilar. Glass was fair-skinned, Causwell dark; Glass tall and rather dumpy-looking, Causwell short and petite; Glass wore a jagged Afro, Causwell’s hair was straight, long, and raven-black.
And Glass knew how to smile. Causwell apparently didn’t.
“Don’t mind Shirley,” Glass said, reaching out to pat Gunner’s knee. “She’s just a little gun-shy, that’s all. She’ll warm up in a minute.”
“Fuck you,” Causwell said. Not amused, not angry … As near as Gunner could tell, not anything.
Glass just smiled at her, then said to Gunner, “Or maybe she won’t.”
Whatever her experience with domestic violence, it hadn’t cost her her cheery disposition. Or perhaps more accurately, her ability to artificially effect one. She was as unrelentingly ebullient as anyone Gunner had ever met.
“So you were a friend of Nina’s,” she said. Like that automatically made him all right.
“It looks like we have that in common, yes,” Gunner said. Then, to Causwell: “All three of us.”
Causwell didn’t say anything.
“You know, the idea of having Angela here with us was to make you feel more comfortable.”
“I’m comfortable,” Causwell said.
“You don’t act like it.”
“How would you like me to act?”
“Well, for starters, it’d be great if you could act like you don’t know me. As opposed to treating me like someone who killed your dog and torched your village in a past life, or something.”
Glass thought that was pretty funny, but Causwell just said, “Maybe you did.” As deadly serious as she could be.
Sighing, Gunner said, “Okay. I’m a devil. You don’t want to tattoo my name on your left breast, and you don’t want to have my baby. Fine. Now that you’ve made that clear to me, we should be free to talk about Nina.”
“Nina’s dead,” Causwell said.
“I’m aware of that. That’s why I’m here. Didn’t Ms. Singer explain—”
“She told us you’re a private detective,” Glass said. “And that you came here to talk to us because you think somebody here killed Nina. That isn’t really true, is it? Because if it is—”
“You’re wasting your fucking time,” Causwell said.
“Nina’s husband killed Nina. Nobody else. He told her he was going to kill her, and he did. It’s as simple as that.”
“Damn right it is.”
“When the cops catch up with him, you’ll see. He’ll cop a plea, go to jail, and be out on the street again in five years. Maybe three.”
“The cops have already caught up with him,” Gunner said. “But he’s in no condition to cop a plea. Right now he’s got his hands full just trying to stay alive.”
He told them where Pearson was, and how he had come to be there.
“You shot him?” Glass asked.
“Reluctantly,” Gunner said.
“My hero.”
“I appreciate the sentiment, but I think you’re missing the point.”
“What point?”
“The point that the man might not be guilty as charged.”
“Shit. He’s guilty,” Causwell sneered.
“And if he’s not? What then?”
“Then we only celebrate half as hard.” She smiled.
“But if somebody else killed her—”
“There is nobody else,” Glass said.
“And even if there was, you wouldn’t find ’em here,” Causwell said. “Only people you’re gonna find here were Nina’s friends. The kind of friends men don’t have. It’s not in your nature.”
“Is that right,” Gunner said sarcastically.
“Yeah, that’s right. The name of the house is Sisterhood for a reason, brother. We’re all sisters here, and we treat each other that way. Every single one of us.”
“Including Agnes Felker.”
“Agnes? Agnes was crazy.”
“Crazy or not, she didn’t like Nina. And she was a ‘sister.’”
“Agnes didn’t like a lot of people. So what?”
“So maybe Agnes wasn’t the only crazy lady living here. That’s what.” He gave the two women a moment to dispute that, then went on. “Look. I understand this is a very special place for you people. That you all share a certain life experience that bonds you together like nothing else could. But all of your talk about sisterhood aside, this is not a monastery. You’re not all monks, and you’re not all angels. So you get on each other’s nerves and you piss each other off, and when one of you gets pissed off bad enough, you do something about it.”
“Do we get in each other’s faces? Is that the question?” Glass asked. “Sure we do. All the time. But it never amounts to anything. Wendy would make us leave if it did.”
“Like she did Agnes?”
“Man, we told you: Agnes was crazy. She and Nina got into it, sure, but that’s only ’cause Agnes got into it with everybody. She didn’t have anything against Nina in particular.”
“But Nina had something against her.”
Glass just blinked at him. “I don’t—”
“Agnes had a bad mouth,” Causwell broke in, showing some impatience with the way Glass was dealing with the subject. “Some of the language she used, Nina didn’t like much. A lot of us didn’t.”
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