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  BLANCHE CLEANS UP

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 1998, 2014 Barbara Neely

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN: 1941298435

  ISBN 13: 9781941298435

  library of congress cataloging-in-publication data

  Neely, Barbara.

  Blanche cleans up / BarbaraNeely.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-670-87626-7

  1. Afro-American women—Massachusetts—Boston—Fiction. 2. Women

  detectives—Massachusetts—Boston—Fiction. 3. Women domestics—

  Massachusetts—Boston—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3564.E244B56 1998 97-39834

  813’.54—dc21

  Published by Brash Books, LLC

  12120 State Line #253,

  Leawood, Kansas 66209

  www.brash-books.com

  Books by Barbara Neely

  Blanche on the Lam

  Blanche Among the Talented Tenth

  Blanche Cleans Up

  Blanche Passes Go

  This book is dedicated to the people who literally made it possible: Andrea, my dearest Babs Bigham, Beth Baldini, Denise Barry, Diane Bird, Donna Bivens, Alan Brush, Dick Cluster, Peggy and Peter Dickey, Priscilla and Junie Dickey, Lisa Dodson, the Economics Dept. at U. Mass Boston, Nancy Falk, Roz Feldberg, Deborah George, Charlene Gilbert, Gladys, Hilary Gomolin, Hattie Gossett, Gloria Harris, Chanel Hunt, Miz Janie, Lisa Kirchner, Deborah McGregor, Terri Malloney, Steve Mentzer, Alberta Neely, Miss Ann who took it like a big girl, Bernard Neely, Bryan Neely (the all-time gold medal winner in the brother department), nephew Rasheen Neely, my wonderful sister Vanessa Neely, Claes Nillson, James Page, Barbara Reeves, Liz Roberts, Elaine Thomas, Charles Tolbert, Suki Tye, Pauletta and colleagues, Gwen and Tommie Williams, Emani Wilson, the women and men of lla & b (especially Judy and Jay), Chu-Han Zhu, and finally, foremost, and always, to Jeremiah Cotton who did it all with grace, courage and love.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many, many thanks to the people who did their best to make this a better book: Babs Bigham, Dick Cluster, Juanita Guidry Copeland, Jeremiah Cotton, Pamela Dorman, Deborah George, Charlene Gilbert, Mimi Hersh, Amy Manson, Ann and Vanessa Neely, Alice Roberts, Terri Small-Turner, Phyllis Wender, and Kate White, with special thanks to my dear friend, Joycelyn Moody.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This book is a work of fiction. Characters and events are the product of my imagination. Any resemblance to real people, organizations, institutions, or incidents is entirely coincidental. While the novel is set in the Roxbury section of Boston, some of the area’s features have been altered for the purpose of telling this story.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ONE

  MAY 1998

  DAY ONE—THURSDAY

  Blanche climbed out of the cab by the mailbox that read 1020. She ignored the sharp little wind that smacked at the backs of her legs—a reminder that spring in Boston could often pass for winter—and walked down the sloping driveway. She stopped halfway to the house. Her hand automatically rose to her hip as she gave the Brindle place a good looking over.

  The house reminded Blanche of her mother’s friend, Miz Alicemae, who still wore lace-up corsets and knee-length cotton bloomers as though the year were 1902. It was an old-fashioned brick house, with shutters and trim in richest green. It rose up from the ground like a grand diva reaching her full height. Vain like Miz Alicemae, too, Blanche muttered. She adjusted the strap of her slip and continued down the drive.

  Understanding houses was part of how she made her living. Just like a good surgeon didn’t open up a patient without an examination, she didn’t clean or cook in a house until she’d done the same. She couldn’t remember when she’d first understood how much houses had to say about themselves, but it was information she’d come to depend upon.

  She had an uneasy feeling about this place but wasn’t sure if it was due to the house itself, the job she’d promised to do here, the people who lived inside, or all of the above. She wondered if the house had a secret, like those nips of Beefeater gin Miz Alicemae kept hidden all around her house.

  This was not the sort of job Blanche liked. Being housekeeper-cook was the kind of position she woke up worrying about in the middle of the night. She wasn’t scared of it. There was no type of domestic work that she hadn’t aced in the twenty-six years since she’d taken up the profession. It was her ability to cook, sew, clean, launder, wait table, and all the rest that made it possible for her to make her way in the world and feed and clothe her dead sister’s two children. Part of the problem with this job was that she never liked supervising folks—too much like being an overseer. She hoped that Carrie, the housemaid she’d met yesterday, and Wanda, the cleaning woman, didn’t need somebody looking over their shoulders, because she already had two kids at home.

  She had Cousin Charlotte to thank for this job. Charlotte had shown up at Blanche’s house first thing last Saturday morning, one of her ever-present hats cocked on the left side of her head. (Did she sleep in those things?) That day she’d had on her what-to-do-with-old-dishes hat: two overlapping, grungy, gray, felt-covered saucers turned face-to-face with a long, nervous, iridescent feather poking out to the side. That feather had danced a jig while Cousin Charlotte explained that she expected Blanche to stand in for Miz Inez, Cousin Charlotte’s friend, so Miz Inez and Cousin Charlotte could travel down home to Farleigh, North Carolina.

  “Are you sure you can’t get somebody else?” Blanche had asked. She’d been smart enough not to add how badly Miz Inez got on her nerves with all that tiresome talk about her wonderful white employers and best-in-the-world son.

  “Blanche, I ain’t got no time to be foolin’ with you!” Cousin Charlotte had told her. “If you ain’t got the common decency to help out my oldest and dearest friend, a poor woman who ain’t never had a real vacation in her life, as a favor to me, your own mama’s first cousin, then I…”

  Blanche had tuned Cousin Charlotte out. It was all over but the shouting, and she was the loser—not that she’d gotten a bit of thank-you from Cousin Charlotte. Of course, Cousin Charlotte didn’t need to thank her: She’d taken Blanche and the kids in when they’d moved to Boston in a hurry three years ago. And then there was Mama. She’d tongue-lash Blanche up one side and down the other if Blanche refused to help Mama’s favorite cousin.

  Blanche just hoped her usual day customers got good service from Cousin Charlotte’s niece, Larissa. Cousin Charlotte said Larissa used to work for a housecleaning service, but that didn’t mean she knew what she was doing. Blanche had called her clients and warned them that she’d had to replace herself for a week. She’d made note of which ones complained so she could replace them. Any employer who couldn’t understand an emergency would likely be a problem before long. One of the major reasons she chose to do day work was being
able to pick up and drop clients as she saw fit. This meant she didn’t have to take no mess from nobody, her preferred way of living.

  Now she let herself into the Brindle house with the key Miz Inez had given her. She’d gotten here early so she’d have some time to get a feel for the place. She stashed her bag and jacket on a hook in the utility closet. The house felt like sleep was still in charge, but she walked through the downstairs, looking into each room, making sure the Brindles were still upstairs.

  It was a good-sized house: Five bedrooms with baths, two master suites, and another bathroom occupied the two upper floors. A living room, breakfast room with sunroom, dining room, library, an office, two bathrooms, the kitchen, and the laundry room took up the first floor. Each of the major rooms was nearly the size of a small apartment in Blanche’s neighborhood. The house was furnished in what Blanche called undeclared rich: gleaming wood chests and tables with the kind of detail that said handmade, sofas and chairs that looked like they’d grown up in the rooms, Oriental carpets older than her grandmama, and pictures so ugly they had to be expensive originals. Light streamed down from a large window over the stairs to the second floor. The library, with its battered hassocks and mashed throw cushions, looked like the most used room. The office smelled of smoke and men.

  Blanche went back to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. While the water boiled, she looked around the room where she’d be spending most of her working hours for the next week. It wasn’t the most modern, the largest, or the best-appointed kitchen she’d ever worked in. There was a microwave but no convection oven. There was enough work space on the counter between sink and stove, but Blanche was partial to a butcher-block station in the middle of the floor, especially one with wheels. The appliances were on the older side, too. It had been a while since she’d used an oven she had to bend over to reach, and the dishwasher looked to be in its teens. What did impress her about the kitchen was how well Miz Inez had organized it: the bottles and cans arranged by size, the spices alphabetized, and labels on the shelves so you didn’t waste time looking for beans where only canned fruit lived. From the looks of what the shelves contained, not a lot of fancy eating went on here, which was fine with Blanche. Less work.

  She carried her tea and the note from Miz Inez to her already favorite spot: the sunroom off the breakfast room. She always liked to use the front of the house if she was going to be working in a place for a week or more—a way of reminding herself of her equality with her employers. She took a deep breath and felt her pores soak up some of the moisture. There were palms and rubber plants nearly touching the curved glass ceiling; Boston ferns on narrow columns drooped to the ground. A spleenwort with leaves wider than her hand took up a whole corner. A huge anthurium with what she could think of only as an erect penis in the middle of its flat red flower shared a five-tiered stand with a spider plant, a piggyback plant, and several others she didn’t recognize. Another circular stand held at least twenty plump African violets in every possible color. The white-sailcloth-covered chairs seemed to float among the plants. She leaned back in an armchair and kicked off her shoes. The tile floor felt warm beneath her feet.

  She sipped her tea and looked over the four-page note from Miz Inez. It included mealtimes: eight-thirty for breakfast (she checked her watch; she had over an hour to get that together), one o’ clock for lunch, drinks in the library at four-thirty, dinner at seven. Next came the list of meals for the week and the name of the grocer to call, if necessary. Inez reminded her that Mr. Ted Sadowski, who worked for Mr. Brindle, usually arrived for breakfast (he had his own key) and would take lunch if he was in the house. Allister Brindle himself took care of the plants in the sunroom. The Brindles’ schedules followed, including lots of lunches and dinners out, Blanche was pleased to see. This job was looking up.

  As for the staff, Carrie had Sunday off and a half day on Wednesday; Wanda Jackson, the cleaning lady, came on Tuesdays to do the downstairs and Thursdays to do the upstairs, which meant she’d be working upstairs today. Blanche got Inez’s regular days off—Saturday afternoon and all day Tuesday. Felicia Brindle’s personal trainer was due today, too, and her masseuse tomorrow. Friday was payday for Blanche and Carrie; Wanda’s check got mailed to her.

  Blanche didn’t have much information on the family, except that there were just two of them, a man and wife. She’d met the woman, Felicia Brindle, yesterday when Miz Inez had brought her in to show her around.

  “Inez says they’re real nice people,” Cousin Charlotte had said when Blanche asked her about the Brindles. “They even hired her son, but it didn’t last. He didn’t used to be so—You’d think he’d spend some time with his Mama, stop by and—But don’t get me started on Ray-Ray. What was I sayin’? Oh yeah. Inez been with these Brindles since Jesus was a child. I know she told you how they just love her.”

  Exactly. In Blanche’s experience, the more a person believed love was a part of what they got from their employer, the more likely it was that the person was being asked to do things that only love could justify. Who knows what all Inez did for these people? Blanche thought about the woman down in Farleigh who routinely told her maid how much she loved her and insisted the maid call her Auntie—things the young maid had bragged about. But the woman also emptied her bowels in a slop pot so the maid could keep a written description of its contents. Blanche doubted Inez went anywhere near that far, and like it or not, this was the job she was stuck with, but only for a week, she reminded herself. She drank the last of her tea and sighed. It was time to get to work.

  Blanche was cutting the biscuits when Carrie arrived, breathless and grumbling about the bus being late.

  “I’ll serve breakfast this morning, Carrie. I haven’t seen Allister Brindle yet. I want to check him out. And this Ted who works for him, too.”

  “Do anything you wanna do. You the boss,” Carrie said, but didn’t sound like she meant it.

  Great! A sister with an attitude, Blanche thought. Thank you, Cousin Charlotte; thank you, Miz Inez. She gave Carrie a sharp look. Carrie was a plain-faced, dark brown-skinned woman—nowhere near as dark as Blanche—with permanent frown lines in her forehead and a chin round as a Ping-Pong ball. Her deep-set black eyes peered suspiciously out at Blanche from behind dinky little metal-framed glasses. Who could tell her age? Anywhere from fifty to eighty, Blanche figured. Straightened, gray-streaked hair was visible through the thin black hair net that covered her hair, the tops of her ears, and her upper forehead. She held her mouth as though she’d just had a vinegar cocktail. Blanche had never seen a grumpier-looking woman. Probably constipated, she thought.

  She set the biscuit cutter down. “Am I stepping on your toes by serving breakfast?”

  “Ain’t got nothin’ to do wit me.”

  Blanche waited, sure this lie wasn’t all Carrie had to say on the subject.

  “It ain’t no job of mine, noway. It’s Ricardo’s job,” Carrie said.

  “Who’s Ricardo?”

  Carrie blinked at her. “He works here.”

  Okay, it’s like that, Blanche thought. If I don’t ask, she won’t tell. Is she mad because a stranger’s come in to tell her what to do? Or does she have a constipated personality, too?

  “So where’s Ricardo?”

  “Mr. B sent him and Elena home to Argentina.”

  “Because…”

  “Till after the election. That’s why Inez said I could wait table and get the door. It don’t make me no never mind.”

  “Why’d he send them home?”

  “ ’Cause Mr. Ted said it wasn’t right for somebody running for governor to have personal servants like that in these times.”

  “Who’s running for governor?” Blanche wanted to know.

  “Mr. Brindle.” Carrie’s tone said everyone in the world knew this but Blanche.

  “So Elena is Felicia’s personal maid, and Ricardo is his valet and the butler?”

  Carrie barely nodded. “That’s right.”

  “What
about Elena’s work?”

  “I’m s’posed to help Mrs. B with her toilet, but she don’t seem to need me much, so I just wait table and…I’m just doin’ what Inez said for me to do. It ain’t no big thing.”

  “Yeah, right.” Blanche folded her arms and stared at Carrie.

  Carrie tossed her head. “Well, it do make a change.”

  That’s better, Blanche thought.

  “Well, honey, you can keep on waiting table, but not this morning. This morning I wanna check out the household, like I said. After that, you got it.”

  Carrie gave her a barely visible nod. She didn’t look happy but she went off to set the table without further comment.

  Sweet Ancestors! If she’d known she was going to have to arm wrestle the housemaid, she’d have gotten more rest. And what a hypocrite this Brindle character was, sending off their personal servants! As if anybody would mistake somebody who lived in this kind of house for just your average Joe.

  One of the two men at breakfast looked to Blanche like a high school boy in his dad’s best suit. Ted Sadowski, no doubt. His bright blue eyes snapped with energy. Hungry eyes, Blanche thought. He sat on the edge of his chair.

  Allister Brindle looked like what Blanche called The Leadership: square face, graying Kennedy hair, and squinty eyes. Was there a men’s grooming shop that specialized in making white men look like born politicians or was it a gene thing?

  The two men talked and chuckled together. Something about them reminded her of a couple of dogs sniffing each other and romping in the park. Felicia Brindle showed no interest in either of them.

  “Morning, ma’am, gentlemen.”

  Felicia looked over the top of her newspaper. She was a thin, sharp-boned woman who reminded Blanche of ribbon candy—all curves and gloss. Her pearly white skin, red jumpsuit, and red-blond hair only added to the effect. She looked directly into Blanche’s eyes.