Blanche Cleans Up Page 9

  “I don’t want to try to make any plans until I talk to Pookie.”

  Pookie. Right. The more the child talked, the more depressed Blanche became and the more reluctant to say what she had to say. But she couldn’t let that stop her.

  “You’re a very mature and steady young woman, Quita, but I think you’re still too young to have a baby.” Blanche congratulated herself on her diplomacy, for not saying We don’t need another child having a child. But from the way Shaquita’s back stiffened, diplomacy hadn’t helped.

  “I’m as old as my mom was when she had me.” Shaquita looked at Blanche, then away.

  From the look on Shaquita’s face, it wasn’t necessary for Blanche to point out that Shaquita’s mother was not exactly a role model: She’d begun a serious love affair with heroin soon after Shaquita was born. She’d died when Shaquita was just four years old.

  “Then tell Pookie soon. The two of you need to have a real heart-to-heart. A child needs more than love, Shaquita, and I don’t think you and Pookie—”

  Shaquita stopped her. “You don’t even know him. He’s not like everybody says, he—”

  Blanche raised a hand to stop her. “You’re right. I don’t know him. Okay. You talk to him. Then we’ll talk.” She gave Shaquita a hug. Shaquita leaned heavily against her and began to cry. “What will Grandma say? She’s gonna be so mad!”

  Blanche wiped Shaquita’s eyes and kissed her on the cheek.

  “The big question is not what will Cousin Charlotte say, but what you’re gonna do. Talk to Pookie. Tomorrow.” She gave Shaquita another squeeze and told her everything would be all right. She hoped it was true.

  Blanche shut her bedroom door and sat on the side of the bed rocking and hugging herself as the memory of her own teenage pregnancy and decision to have an abortion played in her mind. She’d been older than Shaquita, almost nineteen, and determined to do what Mama would not have her do: get out of Farleigh, take her life in her own hands, and try to live it her own way. Had she already decided at nineteen that she didn’t ever want to have children? She felt a rush of warmth and protectiveness toward Shaquita, and the girl she herself had been. Is that what this was all about? Wanting to help Shaquita, the way Cousin Murphy had helped her? But an abortion might not be the kind of help Shaquita wanted.

  Blanche went to her altar and lit a candle and a stick of incense, then spoke to the Ancestors about what was on her mind. If only I knew how to keep my mouth shut, she told the picture of her mother’s mother. Why did I have to even notice that the girl’s pregnant? She closed her eyes and listened to their silent answer confirm what she already knew: Whether she liked it or not, she had to talk to Shaquita about her options, just in case Cousin Charlotte turned out to be useless on the subject. But she didn’t have to do it tonight.

  She switched on her radio, already tuned in to WGBH. Blues After Hours, her favorite program, was on. She fell asleep to Sippie Wallace singing “Black Snake Blues.”

  FOUR

  DAY THREE—SATURDAY

  Blanche could feel the tension before she turned down the Brindles’driveway. The house looked glum. She hadn’t cared much for the house’s airs when she’d first seen it, but having met the family, she now felt some sympathy for the place. She silently apologized to the house because she had a feeling she was about to add to its blues.

  She put on her apron and took Ray-Ray’s note to Allister Brindle from her handbag. Ray-Ray’s childish handwriting stared up at her. Did the note mention that he’d been in the house when the Brindles were out? If it did, she’d have some explaining to do.

  She heated water in the kettle but didn’t let it boil much. Too much steam would make the paper soggy. For a quarter of a second she felt bad about opening someone else’s mail, especially since Ray-Ray had told her the less she knew the better. But while she was prepared to play dumb if it suited her, she wasn’t interested in being dumb. She held the sealed flap of the envelope over the kettle spout, then carefully opened it and read the note inside:

  Man, this is a grate tape. I bet the voters will love watching it, too.

  R-R

  A videotape! That’s what Ray-Ray took the day she’d caught him in the house, damn him. Wait till she saw him! She read the note again. Ray-Ray couldn’t spell, but he knew how to threaten without using a threatening word. But what was he after? The note didn’t mention money. And what was on the tape, anyway? Damn! What to do now? What if she didn’t give the note to Allister at all? Would that fool Ray-Ray show up here again or call Allister to make sure he’d gotten it? She found some glue, resealed the envelope, and put a stamp on it. She studied Ray-Ray’s childish handwriting, then imitated it as best she could, adding the street address and city under Allister’s name. She bent the ends of the envelope and scooted it across the floor with her foot to give it a mailed look before she put it in her apron pocket.

  She peeped into the breakfast room while Carrie was serving breakfast. Brindle and Sadowski looked as though Carrie were offering them arrest and bankruptcy instead of Blanche’s buttermilk pancakes and Canadian bacon. Felicia had already called down to say she didn’t want anything just now.

  “Them two look like their mamas just died,” Blanche said when Carrie came to the kitchen.

  “Ain’t none of my business.” Carrie adjusted her hair net so that it just touched her eyebrows.

  “I didn’t say it was your business, Carrie. I want to know their business. What were they talking about?”

  “Ain’t my job to pay no attention to what they say.”

  Blanche stepped in front of Carrie and looked directly into her eyes. “Well, you ought to make it your business. If they’re all being dragged off to jail, or lost all their money and can’t pay us this week, I think we need to know about it, no matter whose business it is.”

  Carrie frowned up at her from behind her narrow glasses. “Well, if you put it that way, Mr. B. was poutin’ about sharing the newspaper with some broken-down athlete. Mr. Ted said it wasn’t so bad and they could make up for it, but he didn’t sound like he believed it hisself.”

  “You sure remember a lot for somebody who don’t pay attention.”

  Carrie tilted her head and gave Blanche a sly look. “Didn’t say I wasn’t payin’ attention; I just said it wasn’t my job.”

  Blanche laughed as she dug out her as-yet-unread copy of the Boston Globe. brindle enters gubernatorial primary was the main headline, complete with a picture of Allister and Felicia dancing at the announcement party the night before. To the left of the Brindle-for-governor story was a picture of Saxe Winton over a caption that said “Champion skier dies.”

  Blanche read the caption again, struggling to connect its message to the picture of Saxe smiling his sexy smile, to the feel of his fingers wrapped tenderly around her hand just a day or two ago. And now he was dead. Just like that. Life’s latest little surprise. She suddenly wanted to get up and dance, to kiss the kids and Mama, to find a way to get to Africa, to learn how to sing alto, to do all the things she loved to do and every and all the things in her dream box that were labeled “someday,” “maybe,” “if I’m lucky.” She gave Saxe’s picture a last look and read the article.

  Saxe Winton, six-time Olympic downhill skiing champion, was bludgeoned to death in his Back Bay condo sometime Thursday. Police believe Winton frightened a burglar and was killed in the subsequent struggle. A pillowcase full of small valuables was found on the scene. Winton’s Olympic medals and other trophies are reported to be missing.

  Winton was a distant relative of Bradley Winton, one of New England’s founding fathers. Since retiring from competitive skiing, Winton had become personal trainer to a number of prominent people in the Boston area. He was 37.

  Blanche stared at Saxe’s smiling face once again. A shadow crossed her mind and made her shiver.

  “Carrie, look.” She handed Carrie the paper.

  “Oh no! Oh sweet Jesus! God rest his soul.” Blanche watched tears well
in Carrie’s eyes as she read. While Blanche felt the sadness of a young life ended, she and Saxe had been nowhere near on crying terms.

  “This is a wicked, wicked world,” Carrie moaned.

  The intercom interrupted her tears: Felicia. Carrie wiped her eyes on her apron and hurried up the back stairs mumbling to herself. Blanche pictured the two of them upstairs boo-hooing over the loss of all that dick power.

  She took a fresh pot of coffee and clean cups into the breakfast room. She replaced Brindle’s and Sadowski’s half-filled cups with fresh ones. Brindle was talking.

  “I don’t want her questioned, mentioned, or interviewed. My name cannot be attached to this in any way. You understand that?”

  “Of course, sir. No problem. We’re covered at police headquarters, and the D.A.’s office. I’ll call in a favor or two in the newsroom of both papers. But Mrs. Brindle…”

  Allister sipped his coffee. “I’ll talk to her. She can’t go running around.…You know how emotional she can be.”

  Sadowski was smart enough not to respond to that.

  Blanche took a detour to the front hall. The mail was scattered on the floor under the slot in the door. She picked it up and stuck Ray-Ray’s note in the middle of the pile. This was her half day. She’d be gone before Allister got to the mail. She shuffled the envelopes into a neat stack and put it on the hall table.

  Carrie came back to the kitchen carrying Felicia’s scarf to be pressed.

  “How’s Felicia holding up?” Blanche asked her.

  “Look like she been crying. Couldn’t hardly make up her mind what to wear.”

  Not know what to wear! Now ain’t that a sign of grief, Blanche said to herself.

  “Anybody’d think Mr. Saxe was a relative ’stead of just her trainer, not that I ever did know just what he was training her for.”

  Blanche gave Carrie a sharp look, not at all sure the woman wasn’t putting her on.

  Sadowski came to the kitchen to tell Blanche that Allister wanted some ice water. Blanche was drinking from one of the squat crystal glasses the Brindles used for their morning juice.

  “I don’t think that glass was meant for you.” Sadowski looked at her as though he’d caught her stealing the silverware.

  Blanche sipped her water slowly until it was all gone, all the while looking at Sadowski. He didn’t return her gaze. She set the glass on the drain board. “Thanks for telling me,” she told Sadowski. “I’ll ask the Brindles which glasses were bought for the help’s use and make sure to serve your drinks in them next time you eat here.”

  Sadowski’s blush became a full-face flush. Blanche filled a pitcher with water and ice, plopped it and a glass on a tray, and thrust it at Sadowski.

  He tried to stab her with his eyes before he turned and left without speaking.

  “Asshole,” Blanche muttered, and went back to her work.

  She didn’t see Felicia until she knocked on her door to say she was leaving for the day.

  Felicia was on the phone: “Please call me back, Marc. I need to talk to you. I…I love you, darling.” She hung up and turned toward Blanche.

  Blanche could see why Carrie thought Felicia had been crying. Her eyes were glassy and underlined with half circles so dark they might have been painted on with eyebrow pencil.

  “Morning, ma’am. Sad news about Mr. Winton.” Blanche watched for Felicia’s response, wondering if it would be bigger and louder than Carrie’s had been.

  Felicia didn’t respond—not what Blanche expected from a woman whose joy boy had just bought the farm.

  “Had he been working for you long?” Blanche asked.

  Felicia didn’t seem to hear her. Maybe Saxe was one of a set, so he wouldn’t be missed much.

  “I just left a message for my son,” Felicia said, as though Blanche hadn’t mentioned Saxe’s name. “He didn’t say where he could be reached? He hasn’t called again?”

  “No, ma’am, and he only called once, yesterday.”

  “I’ve been calling him for days now. I haven’t seen him for nearly two months.”

  Blanche wondered why Felicia had taken so long to notice her son was out of touch. And why the hurry now?

  “Oh, you know what kids are like,” Blanche said. “Don’t think of calling home unless they need something.”

  “Yes, of course.” Felicia said, but she looked as though she thought Blanche was lying through her teeth.

  Blanche suddenly saw trouble swirling around Felicia like a swarm of flies.

  If Blanche hadn’t spent so much time upstairs with Felicia, she’d have been gone by the time Carrie crashed into the kitchen.

  “Mr. B wants to talk to you!”

  “About what?”

  “The mail. I took it in, like usual, then went to do the beds. He come runnin’ upstairs while I was making his bed, told me to wait in the hall. He shuts the door, then comes out asking me where did this letter come from, was it in the regular mail? I told him I didn’t know ’cause the mail was already on the hall table, so somebody else musta picked it up.”

  Shoulda left it on the floor, Blanche thought.

  “He was cursin’ and sweatin’, and told me to git you,” Carrie said. “I think he’s having some kinda fit!”

  Blanche went to the front of the house and stopped just outside the library doorway.

  “Cocksucking black bastard! How the hell did he get in the safe? Who—”

  Sadowski broke in: “But sir, I was just in the safe and there was—”

  “Not that safe, you fool.”

  Sadowski was standing by the sofa looking as though he didn’t know whether to sit or shit. “Sir, I still don’t understand. This other safe—”

  “Just shut up, Ted.” Allister suddenly looked almost too tired to stand.

  “Sir, is there something I should know, something you’d like me to do?”

  “Get Samuelson on the phone,” he told Sadowski. “Tell him we have a problem.”

  Sadowski headed toward the phone, then stopped. “Sir, if it’s of a delicate nature, perhaps Reverend Samuelson isn’t exactly the right—”

  “Let me handle this, Ted. I can trust Samuelson completely. Unless he wants to go to jail.”

  Allister noticed Blanche standing in the shadows on the other side of the doorway. He took a deep, pull-yourself-together breath, but it didn’t help. He shook the note from Ray-Ray at her as she moved into the room.

  “You! Er, ah, um…”

  “Blanche, sir,” Sadowski told Allister.

  Allister looked from Blanche to Sadowski and back to Blanche, as if checking the difference between what he saw and what he was being told.

  “That’s right, Blanche White,” she said. “What can I do for you, sir?” She looked him hard in the eye and held him for a few moments before he remembered he was supposed to be in charge.

  “It had to be you! Everyone else denies it.”

  Blanche stared at him without speaking. What could you say to someone who believed a person was guilty just because other people said they weren’t—even if it was true?

  “Where did this come from?” he demanded.

  “Excuse me?” Blanche said in her calmest voice. She could smell Brindle’s panic.

  “It doesn’t have a zip code or a postmark!” He pointed to the corner of the envelope. “Was this in the mail when you picked it up at the front door?”

  “I didn’t go through it. I just picked it up and put it on the table. Is something wrong?”

  “Just answer my question. Did this note come in the mail?”

  Blanche shrugged. “Like I said, I didn’t go through it, so…”

  “No one gave it to you? Asked you to put it in with the mail?”

  “Why would anyone do that? They could just stick it through the letter slot.”

  “What if I told you someone saw a black man come in the front door on Friday? What would you say to that?”

  Blanche folded her arms across her resentment at being tre
ated as though she had no more brains than a marshmallow. Did he really think she’d believe this trumped-up story? He didn’t even have the right day.

  “If somebody came in here, I’d say he must have had a key.”

  “Then someone was here?”

  Blanche shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “What the hell does that mean? Either he was here or he wasn’t.”

  She’d never seen anyone’s eyes get bloodshot while she watched. Could she make him froth at the mouth next?

  “If somebody with a key came quietly in the front door, I wouldn’t know a thing about it.” They say if you’re gonna lie, stay as close to the truth as you can.

  “You know Ray-Ray Brown, don’t you?”

  “I’m working in his mama’s place,” she said.

  “Was he here?”

  “I didn’t let him in.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “I don’t quite remember.”

  Allister stared at her as though she’d just announced that she didn’t remember her name.

  She could hear Sadowski murmuring on the phone.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked again, then looked over her shoulder.

  “Seems to be,” Felicia said. Blanche had sensed her coming down the stairs. Now she glided into the room wearing enough makeup for the stage. She curled up in one of the big armchairs. “Has somebody finally got the goods on you, Allister?”

  “Stay out of this, Felicia; just stay out of it.”

  “How can I stay out of it when I find you badgering the help? The woman has answered your questions. What more do you want? You may go, Blanche.”

  Blanche hurried back to the kitchen wondering just what it was that Allister had on Samuelson that was serious enough to give Allister the right to call Samuelson to deal with darky problems. She snatched her handbag and hurried up the driveway, almost giggling with relief that this was her half day so she didn’t have to hang around the fire raging in the Brindle house.