Sweet Child

by Brie Tart

  “You’re probably movied out. Ready for Swiss Rolls?”

  “Don’t wanna.”

  “What if I give you three? Our little secret.”

  Not a peep.

  Helen ran her fingers through her hair as she glanced at the kitchen clock. The hands hung around 8:15. “Shit. It’s past bedtime. You’ve gotta get ready.”

  Lucy stacked her paper, put her crayons away in a random order, then trudged to the bathroom. The kid ran through her nightly routine like she was four going on forty after she pulled her step-stool to the sink. She scrubbed her baby teeth in slow strokes and combed each of her curls with systematic stiffness. How had one day without Dylan turned Lucy’s mature self-sufficiency into disillusioned angst?

  Great. My kid hates me. Helen rubbed her throbbing temples. She could salvage this, she had to. Think, Hel. Think.

  Helen headed for her bedroom and Lucy’s small plastic bed huddled in the corner. Lucy came in soon after and grabbed her night shirt—one of Dylan’s old t-shirts—from her drawer in their dresser. Once she changed, she tossed her sky-blue sundress in the hamper by the door and crawled under her covers.

  “Hey, don’t you and your dad have a book or something?” Helen plopped on the foot of Lucy’s bed and hunkered down for the all important story time.

  “No. Daddy says story.” Lucy shook her head into her pillow, sniffling. “When he comin’ home?”

  “We’ve got a couple more days of girl time.”

  Lucy pulled her comforter over her head.

  Helen’s boyfriend forgot to mention he made up the stories off the top of his head. A hint would’ve been nice. “What kind of stories you like?”

  Lucy stayed quiet.

  “C’mon, let me try.” What would Dylan talk about? He loved comic books and corny old shows. What did those have in common? “You like superheroes beating bad guys?”

  Lucy peeked over the lip of her blanket.

  “Well...uh.” Superheroes was a definite yes. If only Helen read comic books. The art was pretty and the action wasn’t bad, but they only made her itch for her own adventures on the job. Wait... “I know somebody who does that in real life.”

  Lucy tucked the cover under her chin. “Who?”

  “Can’t tell you who she really is. That’s a secret.” Helen mimed zipping her mouth shut. “People call her Helli...” No, if she went with Hellion, Lucy would figure it out. “Hell...fire.”

  “Why?”

  “Everybody thinks she’s hot and she gives ‘em hell.”

  Lucy cocked her head to one side.

  Helen gnawed the inside of her cheek. That explanation sounded better in her head. “She helps me at work sometimes.”

  “What powers she got?” Lucy sat up and crossed her legs.

  “You’re pretty smart. Guess.” Helen booped Lucy on her nose. “She’s got a little girl sidekick with powers too, but they’re pretty different.”

  “Mam’s got fire.” Lucy’s nose scrunched as she thought. “Girl’s got...water?”

  “Yeah to both. Water powers are like Aquaman, right?”

  “Daddy says Namor’s better.”

  “Well, Hellfire’s sidekick isn’t allowed to come on our jobs yet.” Helen propped her elbows on her knees. “You wanna hear more about one?”

  Lucy nodded and wiped her wet eyes on her sleeve.

  “Lemme think.” Helen bit her lip as she went over the list of memorable perps she’d caught over the years. If she nailed that first story, it’d give them something to do that weekend other than watch an endless stream of fairy tales, fish, and poofy dresses. “Okay, before you were born, before your dad even came along, there was this nasty biker: Big Billy Hillard...”

  * * *

  Three-quarters through the story, Big Billy and Hellfire (and Helen) were a couple miles from the state border. That’s when the biker stopped running and pulled out his bowie knife. Lucy’s eyelids drooped, and she snuggled back into her pillow as she watched Helen stab at the air with a grumpy face—her best impression of Big Billy.

  The chorus to AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” played from Helen’s jeans as her pocket vibrated. Dylan’s ringtone.

  “Daddy!”

  Helen hushed Lucy with a finger on her mouth as she pulled out the phone. “Hey babe. Checking up already?”

  “I also wanted to say hi,” Dylan said. “But since you bring it up, how was today?”

  Lucy grabbed for the phone.

  “It went good. We got pizza and watched some movies. Y’know, sleepover shit.” Helen backed up to the end of the bed, keeping the phone out of Lucy’s reach. Lucy squirmed from her covers and crawled into Helen’s lap. “What about you guys?”

  “We made it to upstate New York before stopping at a motel. We’re in the middle of the boonies. Tommy’s still being mysterious about the job.” Dylan dropped his voice to a whisper. “Did he mention anything to you?”

  “Nothing much. Just that it was another lead about Mom.” Helen’s gut twisted as that uneasiness from Tommy’s confession reared up. “You be careful, alright?”

  Dylan missed a beat. The other line went silent.

  “Babe? You breaking up?”

  “Daddy!” Lucy shouted into the speaker. “Mam’s tellin’ me ‘bout Hellfire and Big Billy.”

  “That’s Lucy,” Dylan said, clear as ever. “Is she still up?”

  “She was about to nod off,” Helen said. “Then you called.”

  “She’s giving you trouble, huh? Don’t worry, I’ll be home soon.”

  Lucy climbed up her mother to the phone.

  “Take your time.” Helen couldn’t resist grinning at the toddler. “We’re doing okay.”

  “Night night, Daddy.” Lucy pressed her chubby cheek against Helen’s jaw, as close to the phone as she could get. “Mam’s gonna end story now, ‘kay?”

  “No, Mam’s saving the rest of the story for tomorrow, young lady.” Dylan got his stern voice. Helen bet he shook his finger at the air too. “You go to sleep after I hang up.”

  “I don’t wanna.” Lucy betrayed herself and yawned.

  “Lucy, you’ve got to promise.”

  Lucy opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She pouted and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “She’ll get her sleep,” Helen cut in. “Truth is, she was miserable all day and I just got somewhere with her.”

  “Well...finish by ten, at the latest.” Dylan spoke up louder. “You hear that Lucy? Promise.”

  “I promise I sleep by ten,” Lucy mimicked.

  “PM or AM?”

  “Night ten.”

  “Look at you being the hardass,” Helen teased.

  “Night night, Daddy.” Lucy kissed the phone and pushed the red hang-up button on the screen. Dylan’s voice cut off.

  “If he calls back, I’m telling him you did that.” Helen set the phone on her knee.

  Lucy rushed back under the blanket. “Big Billy stabbed. What’d Hellfire do?”

  Helen beamed, almost as proud as the moment she’d first seen her gunk smeared baby crying with an epidural induced halo.

  * * *

  Lucy fell asleep at ten o’clock sharp. Helen plugged in a blue-tinted night light before she closed the door. Her mind raced too much to turn in with her daughter. She took the key Tommy gave her out of her pocket and unwrapped the paper from around it.

  It was small and brassy with a round head. Not big enough to unlock a deadbolt. The wrong shape for a safe. She hadn’t thrown the wrapper away yet. Another peek, and she found something scribbled on it in Tommy’s chicken-scratch cursive.

  Desk drawer on the left, the message said.

  Tommy had a desk in his and Helen’s office downstairs. The particle board IKEA kit was flimsier than the dark-stained behemoths he loved in his noir movies. Their budget made him settle and modify the cheap version to fit his needs. That meant adding locks to the drawers. The key seemed right for that.

  Helen grabbed the
keyring with her copy of the office set from the kitchen counter and headed down to street level. The inner stairwell let out into an alley alongside the building. Street lamps on the sidewalk flickered, and made Helen’s shadow jerk across the walls. Night time should have awakened her sense of fun, full of opportunities littered in the city’s bulb-spackled skyline. Something about that darkness triggered her danger sense instead. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled like when a stranger’s prying eyes watched her.

  She peered at the fire escape ladder running from Tommy’s bedroom window, then checked down the street both ways. No cars or pedestrians. The balmy, late-summer air still had a funny thickness to it that made her stomach twist. Tommy’s talk must’ve made her imagination act up.

  She unlocked the front door and ducked into Carver Investigations. A row of padded metal chairs sat in the waiting area around Dylan’s tidy reception desk. Helen made her way to the office her and Tommy shared in the back. Her section of it had stacks and stacks of unfiled records laying out. She’d have to catch up on those, but later. Helen bypassed the filing cabinets and knelt in front of the desk on Tommy’s side. It had two sets of drawers on either half of it. She tried the one on the bottom left first. The key slid in and turned easy. Inside only had miscellaneous files from recent cheating cases and background checks.

  That left the top drawer. When Helen pulled it open, it felt as heavy as the bottom, but the only document inside was a black matte business card. The logo printed on it was a white tree over a bold serif font that read “Daath Books.” She flipped it over to find black text on a white background. “Daniel Middleton” was printed above a phone number, email, and address, but Tommy had crossed out the name. Beside it he’d written something else: “Yoel the Scribe.”

  Tommy had never mentioned anything about a Daniel, a Yoel, or a bookstore. Sometimes he came home from leads with a couple new paperbacks for his collection, but that was it. What would a bookstore have to do with her mom’s cold case?

  The address was around the university area a few miles away. Helen had ridden through it enough to know her way around. One of Lucy’s favorite ice cream shops was nearby too. If her and her daughter happened to take a detour on the way there, maybe they’d bump into this Scribe guy and see how he knew Uncle Tommy.

  She pocketed the key and the card before walking out. Helen never left Lucy in the apartment alone too long, and she could do any internet searches into the bookstore on her smartphone.

  Street lighting coming in through the lobby’s horizontal blinds made glowing lines across the floor. A dark shape against the window interrupted them.

  Helen approached the blinds and peeked between the plastic slats. A tall brunette man stood on the sidewalk in front of the office. He had a lithe physique and a high-fashion navy overcoat that clung to it. A put together person like that fit better roaming the heart of downtown than their neighborhood.

  The stranger stared Helen down through the window. Shivers ran through her like when a target was about to pull a gun.

  A car sped by. Its headlights glared in Helen’s face.

  Helen blinked, and opened her eyes to an empty sidewalk.

  She flung the front door open. She looked left, right, then left again. Only that car. No pedestrians.

  She’d gotten enough sleep, and her system was clean of any drugs. It couldn’t be a hallucination. As Helen locked the office back up, checking over her shoulder every couple seconds, she suspected her action-free dry spell was coming to an end sooner than later.

  CHAPTER 3

  Helen kept watch a few more hours. When the stranger didn’t show up again, she passed out. She would’ve slept the rest of the morning if Lucy hadn’t dove into the bed and shook her awake.

  “Ugh, what time is it?” Helen groped for her phone on the end table. The time read 9:26 A.M. “Don’t we got a rule not to wake up Mam ‘til after ten?”

  Lucy eyeballed Helen, hovering over her face.

  The girl wanted something, that much was obvious. But what? The leering couldn’t have anything to do with the upcoming ice cream surprise or bookstore visit. Was she hungry? No, Lucy knew how to drag her step stool out from the bathroom if she wanted fridge snacks she couldn’t reach; both Dylan and Helen had also caught her climbing on the counter to get in the upper cupboards. Sugary treats stayed hidden even higher, where only Helen could reach them.

  “You don’t get Swiss Rolls yet.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t you gotta...brush your teeth or something?”

  “After?”

  “After what?”

  Lucy huffed and crossed her arms.

  “Baby girl, listen.” Helen propped herself on her elbows, coming to Lucy’s level. “I’m not your dad. I can’t read your mind. With me, you need to say things. What do you want?”

  “Hellfire story again.”

  “Ain’t that a bedtime thing?”

  “Yeah,” Lucy said, very matter of fact. “Story for now. Story for lunch. Story for dinner. Story for bed!”

  “You really liked it?” Helen couldn’t resist a lopsided grin. “I’ve got plenty more. You can take your pick after breakfast. Then I’ll tell it on the way to Dizzy Splits.”

  Lucy squealed and tackled her mother. The affection helped settle Helen’s stomach where the ominous foreboding from the night before still lingered.

  “C’mon, Diamond Girl.” Helen pried Lucy off one arm at a time. “I’ll start breakfast.”

  Lucy puckered her mouth. “Mam’s gonna cook?”

  “Don’t worry. I’m just reheating the pizza.”

  “Whew!” The girl sighed and flopped backwards.

  “Watch it.” Helen did her best impression of Dylan’s signature finger-wag.

  Lucy burst into a giggle fit as she rolled to the edge of the bed and climbed down.

  Helen waited until Lucy ran off and opened the drawer in the end table. She dug out her boot knife. It wasn’t likely anyone would try to attack her during the day, in front of all the popular shops that surrounded the university. That didn’t mean she’d risk the mystery man catching her unprepared on the slim chance he tried, not if her daughter was with her.

  * * *

  Lucy spent the bus trip riding on Helen’s shoulders while Helen held onto the hand bars overhead. Helen started another Hellfire story about “Pretty Joe” on the way. They got off a few blocks away from Dizzy Splits, a hole-in-the-wall gem that got popular after a few big travel articles featured them. The sidewalks had light foot traffic: students milling about between classes and tourists who stopped every few steps to gawk at a landmark. A pair of mounted police officers strolled by—Lucy’s favorite “Pony Police”—and one of them let Lucy pet his horse. Helen made good progress until she hit a couple taking up the entire sidewalk who had their noses stuck in their smartphones.

  The chorus of Pink Floyd’s “Hey You” played from her back pocket, Tommy’s ringtone. Helen ducked out of the clogged line forming behind her and found the mouth of a nearby alley.

  “Hey, I got your note,” Helen answered. “It’s awful empty in there.”

  “You didn’t figure it out.” Tommy groaned. “Come on girl, I trained you better than that.”

  “You trained me with a first aid class and a PI movie marathon.”

  “The movies are what I’m talking about. Check again.”

  “You can’t tell it to me straight?”

  “This is practice, Hellion. Be clever. You can’t just be a cowboy. They’re smarter than us. They have all the secrets and resources we don’t, so we’ve got to use our streetwise.”

  “I’ll check it again. But being a cowboy is my streetwise.”

  “They’re better at that too.”

  “What about the lead?”

  “That’s why I called.” Tommy dropped his voice to a whisper. “All the other leads were going to this one. It’s the source, the one that’s gonna land me the big kahuna.”

  “Soun
ds dangerous.”

  “So far, so good. Nobody’s noticed us yet. We’re about to go out again to scout the place.”

  “Wait, somebody’s there? Like security or something?”

  “I’ve gotta go, Hellion. Pipsqueak’s coming back from the can.” Tommy paused. Something muffled the background noise like he’d covered the speaker. “I’ll fill you in when we get back.”

  “Bye Pa!” Lucy patted the top of the phone.

  Tommy hung up.

  Helen mulled over the phone’s home screen. Honest to God fear knitted her nerves to knots. Should she call Tommy and tell him to forget his big break? He might head back if she told him about the maybe-stalker in the navy coat. It was all she could think of to keep him and Dylan out of the trouble they’d found.

  “More story!” Lucy pulled on Helen’s hair. She’d used a couple clumps like reins the whole trip to the point that Helen’s scalp got numb.

  “Easy on the hair, Baby Girl.” Helen set her phone in her pocket as she adjusted Lucy to her hip. “First, let’s call Pa. I forgot to tell him something.”

  A noise behind her made the hairs on Helen’s neck stand up. Steel rubbing against leather, a knife being pulled from a boot sheath or belt.

  Helen swiveled around. A high chain-link fence blocked off anyone cutting into the alley from the back. The buildings rising on either side of her made layered shadows across the city trash bins on the left, and a rusty fire escape dangled off its wall on the right. A rat skittered across the black asphalt. It disappeared into a pile of trash bags by the closed loading door of a store.

  Sunlight flashed against a skinny silver blade five times longer than a knife. The figure in a navy coat behind it blurred as he stabbed at Helen’s rib cage.

  Lucy screamed.

  Helen caught enough of the motion to side-step in time. The blade cut into her bicep. The open air stung against the wound. An old penny smell floated to Helen’s nostrils as her fresh blood dribbled out.

  She sucked in her next breath through gritted teeth. Her hands were too full of Lucy to pull her knife from her boot.