Peggy Holloway - Judith McCain 02 - Portrait on Wicker

by Peggy Holloway

  “I love her too, daddy,” Brad said as he ran back into the dining room.

  We laughed and it broke the tension some. I still had a bad feeling about this whole setup.

  That evening we all went to see Julia. She looked so much better. She still had a lot of bruises but she was overjoyed when she saw both Mark and Brad. This was one of the reasons I wanted to put her in Westpark. They encouraged family involvement no matter how young.

  “Where’s Tracy?” Julia asked after all the hugs and kisses were out of the way.

  When we finished filling her in on everything, she was silent for awhile.

  “What are you thinking, Julia?” Mimi asked.

  “It scares me that she decided to stay at my house. You need to tell her that Calvin has a key. He might very well come back there. I think this is a stupid idea. I’m scared for her.”

  CHAPTER 15

  For the next two days, when one of us talked to Tracy, she assured us that everything was going all right, but was boring. They hadn’t seen any action. After showing Calvin Lessiter’s picture around, they had found a few people who had seen them, but had not in the last few days.

  On the third night, after Tracy left for Florida, we got the call in the middle of the night. It was the sheriff’s department of St. John’s County in St. Augustine. They were trying to locate Julia. They hadn’t been able to reach her at her condo in New Orleans. She had given Mimi’s number in case of emergency.

  At 3:00 a.m., I heard the phone ring and Mimi answer. “What? Oh, my God, no!”

  I ran to Mimi’s room expecting to hear bad news about Julia. She had attempted suicide once while in psychiatric treatment before.

  When I got to her room, Mimi was lying face down on her bed crying so hard she was shaking. I put my arms around her and she turned her head onto my shoulder and wept.

  I was afraid to ask, but she finally said, “Julia’s beach house has been burned to the ground. An accelerant was used. It was arson. They found two bodies but no positive identification has been made. There were a man and a woman in two of the bedrooms.”

  We held each other and cried for what seemed like forever. Then Mimi said, “We have to tell Mark.”

  “I’ll do it Mimi. Mark and Brad are going to be devastated.”

  Mark came to the door fastening his jeans. It was all he wore. He took one look at my face and broke down and started crying.

  “How,” he said when he had calmed down some.

  “They believe it was arson. They haven’t finished the investigation but they do know an accelerant was used. There hasn’t been a definite identification…”

  “Son of a bitch,” he yelled, “I told her not to stay there…”

  I watched as sweet gentle Mark proceeded to destroy everything he could get his hands on. Mark, the man who had held me all night while I slept when I was a scared sixteen year old.

  I would have let him destroy the house just to get his emotions out, but there was Brad to consider. He came down stairs rubbing his eyes.

  When he looked at his dad he looked scared to death. I ran to him and picked him up. I carried him to our house and tried to put him down but he clung to me.

  “What’s wrong with d-d-daddy?” He cried. I looked at Mimi and she shook her head.

  I took him into the kitchen and began making hot chocolate.

  “Is it time for breakfast?” He asked.

  “No, I just thought you’d like to have some cocoa.” I had him distracted for the moment and decided not to mention Mark until he brought him up.

  He pulled a chair up to the counter top and stood on it to help me. He looked so sweet and innocent it broke my heart. I wished I could hold him and take away all the pain to come but knew there was nothing I could do.

  By the time Brad was finished with his hot chocolate he was nodding off and I took him to bed with me. We left Mimi dozing on the couch. Sometimes when a person has had news that’s impossible to deal with, they numb out and sleep. It’s partly shock.

  We didn’t stir until almost noon the next day, and we hadn’t heard from Mark. We went to break the news to Julia. We would talk to her psychiatrist and see what he said first.

  Dr. McKinsey was Julia’s psychiatrist and his approach was altogether different from Dr. Anna Stevens which was why I chose him. He was tough and was more of a cognitive/behaviorist.

  We met with him in his office after leaving Brad with Julia. He was coloring her a picture. She had looked at us with questions in her eyes but didn’t ask any questions.

  “Look, Julia already knows something is going on. I think it’s better if you go ahead and tell her,” Dr. McKinsey said after we told him about Tracy.

  “She’s doing extremely well about opening up and not bullshitting me. I really think she can handle this. She will be able to grieve here where she has major support from the other patients and staff.”

  He was right. We told her, and we all cried together, after leaving Brad at the nursing station drawing a picture for one of the nurses. We still hadn’t told Brad anything and decided to wait and let Mark tell him.

  When we got home Mark’s car was gone so we took Brad inside our house and made sandwiches.

  “I want peanut butter and jerry,” Brad said. After he ate a few bites he put the sandwich down on the plate and started out the front door.

  I hurried after him. “Hey, Brad, where are you going?” I said.

  “I have to talk to daddy.” He said opening the front door.

  I picked him up and closed the door. “We’ll see him later. I don’t think he’s there right now.”

  By 10 p.m. Mark was still not home, so we got Brad ready for bed.

  “You want to sleep with me Brad?” I asked.

  “Oh, all right Aunt Judith. But I have to go home tomorrow. Daddy might need me for something.”

  It broke my heart looking at him. He was so sweet and innocent.

  After Brad fell asleep, I went back downstairs and found Mimi in the kitchen. I’ve never seen her so angry.

  “Where in the world can Mark be? I can’t believe he would leave his little boy like this, after busting up his house like he did. I just went over there and looked. He’s made a mess and it’s after eleven. He’s not home nor has he let anyone know where he is…”

  While she ranted and raved in this way, I put on some coffee and got out the cups, cream and sugar. When it was ready, I was pouring us a cup when we heard Mark’s car pull in front of our house.

  When he came in he was drunk. He walked in and slammed the front door. Coming into the kitchen, he took one of the bar stools and slung it against the wall.

  Mimi lit into him “How dare you,” she said. “You don’t get to indulge in your temper tantrums. I know you’re hurting, but so are we all. You have a little boy up there that needs you. He knew something was wrong before his daddy disappeared. We finally got him to sleep and I won’t allow you to come in here, in the middle of the night, and wake him up to make yourself feel better.”

  She took a deep breath and before Mark or I could say anything she continued, “I’ve never known you to be selfish, Mark. Go home and sleep off whatever it is you’ve been drinking and come back in the morning so we can figure out what we’re going to do about this situation. Oh, and by the way, clean up that mess before Brad sees it.”

  Without another word, Mark turned to go. I ran after him and asked what he planned to do. He looked at me like I had lost my mind.

  “I’m going after the son-of-a-bitch of course,” he said before gently closing the door.

  CHAPTER 16

  Mark asked me to be there when he told Brad about his mom. I took Brad over the next morning after giving him pancakes for breakfast.

  Mark had cleaned up the house and the three of us went into the den. Mark began by telling Brad how much he loved him.

  “I love you too dad, but I’ve got to get ready for school.”

  Mark took Brad on his lap and said, “No
school today Brad. I have something to tell you and you need to be a big brave boy.”

  “I’m a big brave boy, daddy.”

  “I know you are, son. I have to tell you that mommy is not coming home…”

  Before he finished Brad jumped down from his daddy’s lap and grabbed his teddy bear and started hitting it.

  “She promised me she would be back. She promised me. I told her she should take me with her.”

  I could see tears in Mark’s eyes and he looked to me with a pleading look in his eyes. I picked Brad up and started gently rocking him.

  “Do you know about heaven, Brad?” I asked.

  “That’s where you go if you’re good,” he recited. “That’s what my teacher said.”

  “That’s right. And your mommy was very good wasn’t she?”

  “She went to heaven? Oh, that’s okay, then. When will she be back?”

  “When you go to heaven you don’t come back. I’m sorry, Brad. We will all miss her.”

  His little arms went around me and he clung to me. Mark came over and put his arms around both of us. We all three wept. I knew it was the beginning of the healing process but it would take some time.

  Mark had Tracy’s body shipped back to Houston and we prepared for her funeral. Brad was a changed little boy, but I hoped he would be back to himself eventually. Julia was allowed a pass from Westpark. My best friend, Ben, came to support me. It had been awhile since I had seen Ben. He was still working offshore but Mark was still trying to talk him into joining McCain Oil. I think he was pretty close. We went through the routine of daily life for a few days afterwards. Brad returned to school and tried to concentrate on his school work.

  CHAPTER 17

  Mark went to see Tracy’s boss, Alan Coleman. When he came home he asked me if I would go somewhere and have coffee with him. We went to a small coffee shop in Montrose.

  After taking the first sip of coffee he looked at me and said, “I don’t see any progress in this investigation, Judith. It took all I could do to not to tear Tracy’s boss apart. He sat there in his plush office telling me they’ve done all they can. They have no leads and they didn’t find anything in the remains of the house to connect anyone to the arson.

  “I don’t know, Judith. I think there’s some major covering up going on. I need to look into this myself. I’m leaving for St. Augustine tonight.”

  “What about Brad? I’ve seen how he clings to you since losing his mother.”

  “He’s also been clinging to you and to Mimi. I’ve talked to Mimi and she’s going to have him live at the big house with her. She’s also bringing in a nanny. You know her. Her name is Jesse Evert.”

  “Jesse? You mean Jesse from Dave Boudreau’s?”

  He was laughing. “I caught you off guard on that one, didn’t I? Yes, one and the same. What you don’t know is that after Dave’s house was closed down and Dave and the girls served their time, a judge by the name of Chester Gadsby started a program to help former hookers…”

  “Wait, wait,” I interrupted him. “What about Dave?”

  Dave was the person who had picked me up, at the bus station, when I was a fifteen year old runaway. He had inherited his parent’s house in the Garden district of New Orleans.

  Dave basically has a good heart and wanted to help young girls but he also wanted to make some money in the process. He carefully chose the girls he took in and wouldn’t take in any seasoned hookers. He had taken in three other girls besides me.

  He also had a drug business on the side and I was a drug runner for him but, being a naïve fifteen year old, straight from the backwoods of Georgia, I didn’t realize all those trips to the park, exchanging paper bags with other kids and old men, were drug runs.

  I had met Mark there when he came to be my date for Mardi gras. He had known who I was before I did myself and he had begun to unravel the puzzle from one end while I was unraveling it from the other.

  It was during the trial, when the DA was trying to prosecute Mr. Reynolds for the murder of mine and Julia’s parents and our kidnapping that I found out that Mark was my uncle.

  Anyway, getting back to Dave, I was to have my first “John” one night and he turned out to be a cop. We were all arrested and Dave’s house had been closed down. Since I had been under age at the time, I had ended up in a run-away shelter where I ran away and stole a car. I had eventually ended up with the Lessiters and ran again after Mr. Lessiter tried to rape me.

  “Dave has completely turned his life around,” Mark continued. “He now uses his house for a placement service for former hookers who are trying to have a more normal life.”

  I was amazed. “This is wonderful news. When will Jesse be here?”

  “She’s coming in later on this afternoon. Dave called me earlier today and told me all about his business. He’s so proud of himself. He called to ask if I had any work for any former hookers. This couldn’t have happened at a better time.”

  “I can’t wait to see Jesse. I don’t know what I would have done if she hadn’t taken me under her wing all those years ago. I want to see Dave while we’re in New Orleans too.”

  “Does that mean you’re going with me?”

  “It does, but I need to arrange for someone else to see my patients while I’m gone. None of them are in crisis right now, so it shouldn’t be a problem. This judge sounds promising. He sounds like someone we can trust.”

  “He sure does. I had decided to go see Tracy’s boss after I got all this news to give him one last chance. I changed my mind. He won’t hear about any of this.”

  CHAPTER 18

  I arranged for my practice to be covered, by Dr. Alvarez. I went with Arnold, the chauffer, to the airport to meet Jesse’s plane.

  When she got off the plane, we ran to each other and hugged. She was just a beautiful as ever, but had gotten rid of all the braids. Her hair had been cut very short. Being a Quadroon (What they call someone in New Orleans who is one-quarter black) her skin looks like the coffee you get at Café Du Monde.

  She had lost some weight but the thinness and the short hair made her look like a model. No longer wearing the hooker type cloths, she had on a crisp white blouse and tan a-line skirt. Still favoring the big hoop earrings and bracelets, her ears sported gold loops and her wrist were loaded with bangles. She wore flat sandals instead of the spikes she used to wear.

  Her speech had improved but I missed the Cajun syntax. I could see Arnold looking at us in the rearview mirror and smiling. We were both talking at once, trying to catch each other up.

  When we pulled into the circular driveway Jesse said. “Holy shit, look where you ended up, girl.”

  I laughed, “If you’re going to be a nanny, you’ve got to watch your language, Jesse.”

  “Don’t worry. I know how to behave in polite company now. But when it’s just you and me I might revert back to my old way of talking.”

  Mimi hugged Jesse when I introduced them. I could see they were going to be friends.

  When Brad came home from school and they were introduced, he said, “Why don’t you have any hair? Did you have cansher? A boy at school had cansher and they had to shave his hair off. I hope I never get cansher. Did you know my mommy went to heaven? She might come back one day, though.”

  We all looked at each other and I knew this was how he was copping. It wasn’t unhealthy for a boy his age. He seemed intrigued with Jesse, taking her hand to lead her upstairs to the playroom. Mimi had designed the room for him when he was born. Later Mark and I went up to say good bye to Brad. He seemed perfectly okay with us leaving.

  We flew Southwest airlines and arrived at 7:20 that evening. I had talked to Julia on the phone before we left and she told us to stay at her condo.

  As soon as we walked in we knew someone had been in there. There was a smell of cigarette smoke and a saucer filled with cigarette butts.

  I pulled Mark out of the door, “Don’t touch anything,” I said, “I’m going to call John.”


  I dialed their number from my cell phone and John answered the first ring. “Whoever this is, call back later. We’re on our way to the hospital to have our baby.”

  “This is Judith, John. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Why did you hang up, Judith?”

  “Rosa’s in labor. There’s no help there. It’s probably unnecessary anyway. We don’t need fingerprints. We already know who was here.”

  We looked through the condo and saw other evidence of someone being there. The bedspreads were rumpled like someone had taken a nap without turning the covers down. There was food in the refrigerator, part of a carton of milk and some eggs. I had thrown out everything in the refrigerator when I had gotten to Julia’s a week ago.

  Mark opened the sliding glass doors and we stepped out onto the deck. Gazing out at the mini yard, each of us dreaded to go down the plank walkway to Julia’s studio.

  We looked at each other and made a silent decision. Stepping onto the walkway, we started toward the shed. Before we get halfway there, we noticed a horrible smell. When Mark opened the door to the studio, the first thing I saw was a pool of blood on the wood floor.

  CHAPTER 19

  It was Mackey Broleen. He had been shot through the head. I dialed 911 from my cell and we backed out. I threw up on a hedge outside Julia’s studio, and made a mental note to tell the police when they got there.

  We waited for the police in the back yard, not wanting to disturb the crime scene. It seemed like only minutes before the parking lot in front of the condo was filled with police cars, an ambulance, the medical examiner, a CSI unit, and of course the press.

  I sat on the grass and watched the police trying to keep the press back. Yellow crime scene tape was strung all around the building and the yard. A couple of plain clothes detectives ducked under the tape and I recognized them. The man was the officer who had arrested me for prostitution when I was sixteen. The woman was his partner, who had aided him in questioning me at the police station later that night.