Blanche Among the Talented Tenth (Blanche White series Book 2) Page 22

  Blanche: Thurs. Adamson called. Sorry, can’t identify.

  sending anklet back fed ex today. T.

  Blanche’s disappointment was a chill that radiated out from her stomach to her limbs. She was going to have to give it up. Christine and David were due back day after tomorrow. She wasn’t going to have time to find out who had attacked her; and she wasn’t sure she could figure it out even if she had more time. One thing she could do was follow Stu’s suggestion and put people out of their misery.

  The dulled brass box sat in the middle of Mattie’s kitchen table. Blanche sat across from Mattie.

  “Why did he think I had the box instead of you?” Blanche asked.

  “Good question!” Mattie sounded like a school teacher. “Who knows there’s any connection between you and the box?”

  Blanche snorted. “Everyone, probably. Arthur and Veronica saw me with you at Faith’s. Maybe she told Martin, maybe not. But don’t they all know you have a safe? Wouldn’t that be the logical place for the box to be?”

  Blanche thought back to the night she and Mattie had taken the box from Faith’s. With the memory came the feeling of helplessness that she’d felt as she was sinking to the floor after being struck. She’d had a similar feeling when she left the cottage—a feeling of being a target and not being able to do anything about it. Yes, she remembered now.

  “He saw us!” she said. “He was still outside when we left. Maybe he was planning to go back to Faith’s after we’d gone.”

  “But he couldn’t have been following us,” Mattie protested. “There’s too much open space!”

  “And a lot of deep shadows.” The more Blanche thought about it, the more certain she became. It was being knocked on the head that had confused her, otherwise she’d have realized at the time that someone was following them.

  “But what if he did follow us? Why would he assume you had the box and not me?” Mattie wanted to know.

  Blanche saw herself and Mattie leaving Faith’s, walking to Mattie’s, then…Yes. She turned to Mattie. “I left your place with the bowl, the one I’d used to bring your biscuits that morning. I tucked it under my arm, the same way you carried the box from Faith’s to your place.”

  She decided to take the children home as soon as the Crowleys got back. No matter who killed Faith, there was a sneaky person around here willing to hurt her and to break into her room, just down the hall from where her children slept. What if one of them had wandered into her room? As for Hank and Carol, until she’d heard what Carol had to say, Blanche had believed Hank’s note. As she’d said to Mattie, why would he lie? But if Carol was telling the truth—and she didn’t seem to be in good enough shape to make up a good lie—Mattie could be right about Hank lying because he thought Carol killed Faith. Stupid! Why didn’t he just ask her? Maybe he wasn’t prepared to believe her, no matter what she said. Maybe he needed to think his dying would be useful to her.

  Blanche pulled the box toward her. “Mr. Adamson was no help either. He didn’t recognize the marks. He’s sending the anklet back.”

  Blanche dove into her planned speech: “Mattie, remember when you asked me to help you I said there may be nothing to find? That’s not exactly how things turned out. We did find the box. But I don’t think we’re going to find what you’re looking for. I don’t think there’s any way to prove Hank lied in his suicide note and that Carol killed Faith. And frankly, I don’t think Carol had anything to do with what happened to Faith.” Blanche lifted the article and envelope, the folded papers, and the book from Faith’s box and spread them out on the table. “I’m leaving day after tomorrow. Let’s have a good-bye burning and get rid of all this stuff.”

  Mattie’s face was closed. “What about the person who struck you? I thought you were anxious to know who it was?”

  “It really galls me to leave here not knowing which one of these people thinks it’s OK to knock me out and push me around. I would like to get in the face of that bastard! And it was a man. Veronica isn’t big enough to shove that hard. But Christine and David are back day after tomorrow. I’m not staying once they come back. Neither are the children.”

  Mattie was still quiet but she was watching Blanche closely. Blanche took a deep breath.

  “I think we should destroy this stuff. I think you should let Hank go. Blaming Carol won’t bring him back. Whether he killed Faith or not, he wanted to die. He wanted it.”

  “The hospital called. Carol is asking for me again.” Mattie looked at Blanche with eyes that seemed even deeper than usual. “I miss Carol.”

  A moment later, Blanche could feel Mattie’s temper flair.

  “Damn Faith and her viciousness!” Mattie swept her hand across the items from Faith’s box, scattering the folded pages and envelope and sending the article floating to the floor.

  Blanche leaned down to pick it up. It had flipped over on its back side.

  “Look at this. There’s another article on the back. Why didn’t we look at the back side?”

  “We assumed the side with the date on it was the important side. A logical assumption, I think.” Mattie’s voice said she still thought their approach was right.

  Blanche read the article aloud:

  The body of an Asian woman was found in a dumpster behind 177 Drake Street. The cause of death is currently unknown. 177 Drake is also the address of an alleged Chinese gambling club said to be owned by major figures in the growing Chinese criminal underground.

  “Curious,” Mattie said without much interest. “Who here could possibly have anything to do with someone in Chinatown?

  Blanche left Mattie for a walk on the beach. After lunch she took Taifa and Malik aside and broke the news about their leaving.

  “But why, Mama Blanche? Why?” Malik asked. Taifa squinted the way she did when she was trying to figure something out.

  Blanche didn’t have a ready answer she wanted to share. She could have told them they needed to be protected from the worst in themselves and that this place and these people weren’t helping; she could have told them there was somebody here who had tried to hurt her twice and she didn’t want her children around such a shit; or, that the Christine and David who’d left them might not be the ones who’d return day after tomorrow. “Families need to be together sometimes just to keep their family thing going. I think we could use some of that right now, and so could the Crowleys.”

  Neither Taifa nor Malik had anything to say. They went out on the porch to join their friends. Blanche heard disappointed groans from that direction.

  Tina was in the kitchen. “What’s all that groaning and moaning about?”

  Blanche told her.

  “Durant and I are thinking about leaving tomorrow instead of waiting ’til Monday when the Crowleys come back. Would that be all right with you?”

  Uh-oh, Blanche thought. “You and Durant are leaving together?”

  Tina grinned and held out her left hand to show Blanche the square cut ruby with small diamonds surrounding it. “His grandmother’s engagement ring. She left it to him to give to his fiancée.”

  Blanche admired the ring for longer than it merited. She needed a little extra time to let her disappointment drain from her face. “Well, this is a big change from the woman who didn’t want to get married!”

  Tina brushed back her dreads. “I know, I know. But I made Durant promise not to hassle me about a wedding date for at least a couple of years.”

  Like trying to slow down a mule headed for the barn after a long day in the field, Blanche thought. Had Tina listened to anything Mattie had told her? Was it possible to listen to sound advice when you were deep in a love affair spiced by evil parents?

  “So what happened?” Blanche asked.

  “I just took a good, hard look at him. He’s decent and responsible and kind, and I think he really loves me. How can I ask for more than that?
” She looked as though she was sorry she’d asked that question. “Anyway,” she went on, “at least my children won’t have to go through the kind of color crap you and I had to put up with.”

  Blanche thought about Stu’s mother becoming a prisoner in her own house, she thought about the families she knew where there was a dark child and a light child and what happened to them.

  Tina seemed to read her thoughts: “I know it’s not going to be easy with a color-struck mother-in-law, but I’m not marrying her and don’t intend to waste any time on her.”

  “Well I think he’s damned lucky!” And I hope you are, too, she added to herself. “Congratulations to both of you!”

  When Tina left with Durant, Blanche decided it was time to call Ardell.

  “I told you to get your ass out of there!” Ardell told her. “I hope whoever is messing with you is walking in front of fast-moving truck right now. I’m glad you’re takin’ the kids, too. That place definitely has a bad vibe. In the meantime, if I was you, I’d call that big fine man and tell him to wrap me in his arms and protect me!”

  “Not only are you a fool, you’re a lying fool, Ardell. You’d choke to death before you’d let some mess like that come out of your mouth!”

  “You wouldn’t have been there to be pushed around if you’d gone on and given the boy some.”

  “There is nothing more disgusting than a middle-aged horny female. You better go take a cold shower, girl.”

  They laughed their way off the phone.

  By way of announcing her leaving to the children, Tina fixed them a wonderful stir-fried chicken and rice dish and one of the best green salads Blanche had had in a long time. The girls were openly disappointed. The boys did a guy thing and pretended to ignore the whole business.

  “But you promised to let us help you twist your hair!” Taifa reminded her.

  “And what about my cornrows?” Deirdre added.

  “OK, OK. A promise is a promise. One more day won’t make a difference.”

  Blanche spent her evening walking on the beach, listening to the news on the radio, reading, and pretending to watch Taifa and Deirdre teach, or try to teach, Malik and Casey to dance. None of it kept her mind off the phone and the fact that she still hadn’t heard from Stu. Tina was in her room trying to figure out how much wash she needed to do before she left. Blanche read for a while before she went to the phone, but she didn’t call Stu. He’d said he’d call her when he got back. He hadn’t. She also hadn’t taken him up on his invitation to a night of hot fun. Were those two things related? Too bad if they were, but no harm done. She was almost gone from here. But she wished he hadn’t turned out to be another typical pussy hound who couldn’t stand to be turned down. She chided herself for falling for romance under the stars. She locked the front door and made sure the children’s windows were open from the top instead of the bottom.

  She tossed for what felt like hours before she slept. When she finally did go under, her dream was waiting for her:

  She was walking the streets of a pretty city with pink and blue buildings and palm trees. It was a warm and beautiful day. She could just glimpse the ocean in the distance. She was the last of a group of people laughing and talking as they walked down the middle of the street. She quickened her step, but the group grew further away instead of closer. She speeded up, but so did they, until they were nearly out of sight. Now she passed stores and a movie theatre, all open, but no people, only those in the distance, moving further and further away. She could still hear the buzz of their voices, although she could hardly see them now. She called out to them to wait, but the sound curled inward, ringing through her body, unheard beyond the walls of her skin. The day grew white and hazy, the buildings dissolving into gauzy mist. She could see no one ahead. She hurried after the voices growing more and more faint until they were hardly a rustle. Faster and faster she ran, straining to hear them, to at least hear them. But it was as quiet as falling snow. The people were gone; even their voices were gone. And in the way of dreams, she knew that they were gone forever. That she had seen and heard her last human being; that she was alone in a way that made her understand the word as she had never done before. Grief seeped into her bones and guts and heart and eyes until she was drowned in sorrow, drowned and alone. She looked down at herself, but couldn’t see her body. She felt her insides drain away until she was hollow. Empty and alone.

  She sat straight up in the bed. Warmth poured over her at the sight of the room, the solidness of her breasts hanging heavy on her chest, the golden glow of the morning outside her window. But the hollowness was still there. She got up and peed. She was back in bed again before she realized that she’d remembered her dream.

  She lay in bed thinking about it, examining it in relationship to recent events in her life—like the growing knowledge that her children were not all that far from being on their own and their potential for moving away from her. And there was Mama, and Miz Minnie, Aunt Cora, and Uncle Johnny, and all the old folks she was lucky enough to have in her life. That wasn’t going to last for much longer. At least some of them would be dead before Taifa and Malik left home. She was momentarily paralyzed by the remembered loneliness of her dream. Al J. had talked about the world becoming different when his wife died—cold and far away. She saw Mattie’s empty eyes and heard Carol repeating “no” over and over again as if she could reverse death by denying it. Maybe the strongest of us is a fool in the face of that hollowness, she thought. She got out of bed and rang Stu’s number. There was no answer.

  FOURTEEN

  All the children had something they wanted to do before it was too late. The boys wanted to finish their fort, which now had three and a half walls. Taifa and Deirdre were deep in debate about zig-zag parts and which way they wanted their braids to fall. Blanche began packing and sorting their things and grew increasingly depressed. Mr. Adamson called to say he’d left the anklet at his office and totally forgot to mail it. He’d make sure it went out in today’s mail. Blanche took his call as a reminder of her failure to identify her attacker, let alone protect herself. She leaped at Mattie’s invitation to come over for coffee.

  “My young friend at the Post called. There was a follow-up piece on the article.” Mattie told her when she arrived. She read from a notebook:

  “Susan Moon, aged 35, Vietnamese. Autopsy said natural causes, heart attack. But the way they found the body makes the police wonder if somebody didn’t cause her to have a heart attack. Aggravated assault, or maybe even manslaughter.” Mattie held up her hand for emphasis. “The police are seeking a man, possibly African-American or Hispanic with whom the dead woman was seen in the area.”

  Mattie shrugged. “No one from here, I’m sure. Unless, as you suggested, one of the Outsiders. Of course, a person like Faith…What is it, Blanche?”

  Blanche ignored Mattie and went to the kitchen. The box wasn’t on the table, but Mattie seemed to know what Blanche was looking for. She hurried into another room and returned with it. Blanche opened it and removed the contents until she found the envelope the article had been in. She looked at it closely—a small, plain white envelope, nothing on it. At least nothing written. She looked at the way the envelope bulged in one corner, although there was nothing inside, the way her shoes held the shape of her feet. She turned the envelope over. It was a two-sided dimple, like something lumpy had lain in the corner of the envelope for a long time, with other things pressed on top. She picked up the article and held it up to the light. One corner of it was waffled slightly. She’d bet money the anklet and the article had once been in the envelope together. Belonged together. She lay it slowly down and looked up into Mattie’s inquiring face.

  “Philadelphia,” she said and picked up the phone. When Mr. Adamson answered, she asked him if he’d mailed the anklet, since she hadn’t yet received it. She flashed Mattie a triumphant fist when he gave the right answer. “You know any jewelers in Ph
illy?” she asked him. She also asked him to tell her what the anklet said, although she was pretty sure she remembered it exactly. She hung up and turned to Mattie.

  “You are my sun and my moon—Susan Moon,” she said.

  Mattie got it immediately. “Susan Moon! Very well could be,” she said in her aren’t-you-more-clever-than-I-thought voice.

  But Mattie couldn’t hear the conversation playing in Blanche’s brain—the one in which Stu told her that he’d lived in Philadelphia, that he’d brought an Asian lover home to meet his parents. Maybe it was Mattie’s tone that stopped Blanche from saying what she suspected; maybe it was because she didn’t want to believe it herself.

  “I’ll be back.” Blanche was out the door before Mattie could speak. She needed air and room to think. She walked along the beach at a near run, away from Mattie, away from Susan Moon, away from the anklet. She told herself she could be jumping to conclusions. Even if she’d made the right connection between Susan Moon and the anklet’s inscription, there were a lot of Asian women in the world. It didn’t have to be the same woman, but she knew it was. She knew. She turned around and headed for the village.

  Stu’s shop was closed. Blanche banged on the door with her fist. The door to the living quarters was next to the shop. She tried it. It was open. She climbed a steep set of stairs and banged at the single door at the top. “Stu? Stu, are you in there. I want to talk to you! Stu?” She gave up. He’d said he had a boat. Where was it? She put a big friendly smile on her face and played Stu’s pal well enough to get the man in the craft shop to walk down the pier with her to point out Stu’s boat, since he couldn’t remember the name and she didn’t know one kind of boat from another. But there was no boat to point out. She thanked him and headed back to Amber Cove Inn.

  She thought back to when she’d first met Stu, when she’d thought her sense that he was half-hidden had made him all the more interesting. Fool! She whispered to herself. Fool! She made a harsh sound that might have been mistaken for a laugh. Stu had kissed her like he meant it. He had looked at her as though he saw and appreciated who and what he saw. He had also hit her over the head hard enough to knock her out and pushed her with enough force to give her a backache. She didn’t want to have to make a place in her mind for all that he had done to her.