A Commitment to Love, Book 3 (26 page)

The Abbey held a world craft interior—medieval craftsmanship and gothic architecture, captivating stonework and vaulted ceilings that fanned out in a complicated pattern and soared high in the air, much higher than any church I’d ever seen on TV. Gold ribbing and ivory columnar piers held the walls. Stained art served as the windows and took my breath away.

Troy shoved me out of my enjoyment. “We need some knives.”

Vivian turned her phone back on and faced the ceiling. The phone clicked as she took several pictures. “What about a gun?”

“Turn off the phone.” Troy shook his head. “Phones can be monitored, when they’re not active. In fact, you should take the battery off, too.”

“I’m not doing all of that,” Vivian said.

“Why take the battery out?” I asked.

“There’s malware out there that makes the phone appear to turn off upon request. The screen goes blank and all that, but it’s still powered up and conversations are still monitored.”

“Fuck.” I took my phone out and pulled out the battery. “Spies are such intrusive little assholes. Next they’ll be putting microphones into food, and that’s the moment when I’m going off.”

Ignoring Troy’s paranoia, Vivian continued to take a few more images. “Why not a gun?”

Troy shifted his weight to his other foot. “We can’t shoot him. Too bloody and messy. Plus, his guards will hear the shots and come for us. He might’ve told them to kill us, if we murdered him. Shooting is out.”

“Poison?” Viv snapped a picture.

Troy’s voice rose a little louder than before. “Turn off the phone.”

Sighing, she shut it off. “What about poison?”

“I doubt he would trust any food we’d give him, and how are we going to get the poison on his plate without him seeing it?”

“I could befriend Lou,” I offered. “Ask her to teach me some dishes and volunteer to cook dinner.”

“I’m sorry, Jazz. But you cooking dinner and putting poison on food at a table I’ll be sitting at, scares me more than shooting Benny.”

“Then what do you suggest, Old Grand Master?” I bowed to him. “You keep knocking down our ideas. Do you have a plan?”

Troy grinned. “We stab him. All together at the same time.”

“Hell no,” I said.

“Are you kidding me?” Vivian added. “Do Jasmine and I even seem like two people that can hold it enough together to stab our own father in the chest?”

“Not my father, yours.” Troy shrugged.

“We don’t know whose father he is. Either way, he’s been a dad to us all. A psychotic and overprotective father, but definitely something.” I looked at Troy. “Could you really do it?”

With no pause or thought to the question, he said, “Yes.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Me either.” Viv lifted the camera back to her face to snap another picture, realized it was off, and stuffed it back into her pocket.

“Okay.” I pointed to the entrance of Poet’s Corner. “This should be fun.”

“Why?” Troy asked.

“Because famous dead people are buried, here.”

“Yippee.” Troy punched the air. “Sounds like good times indeed.”

I gazed at the floor. Large polished blocks made up the floor. On each spot, a famous writer’s name was written. “So I’m thinking they’re buried under their designated stones.”

I tapped my foot. It felt weird, traveling over the rotting bones of people who’d crafted the most amazing works of their time. Men and women that I’d read in college, devoured on lonely nights, and praised once the story had finished.

I stood on top of D.H. Lawrence’s stone and searched the other names around him—Auden and T.S. Eliot, Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear.

“Wow.” Vivian gave up with the spy precautions, turned on her phone, and took pictures of all the names that she walked on “Can you imagine how amazing it would be to stand in here, after all of the bodies are woken up?”

Troy scrunched his face together. “After all of the bodies wake up? Did I just miss something?”

“You know, when the angels blow the trumpets and the dead clamor out of their graves to welcome Christ’s return. Haven’t you ever wondered about that?”

“What?” Troy asked.

“During revelations some of the dead get their souls returned and they come back to life.”

“I doubt it will happen in our lifetime,” Troy said.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Do writers have souls? That would be my question.” I traced my foot along T.S. Eliot’s name. “I read this article on how creativity can darken the soul.”

“That’s stupid. Anyway, back to revelations.” Viv pointed to one of the stones. “Can you imagine Emily Dickinson waking up and surrounded by the Bronte sisters? They’d probably have a lot to say about women’s literature and how it’s grown. Plus—”

“I’ve got an idea for how we’ll kill Benny.” Troy raised his hand. “We’ll bring him here, and have you two discuss this topic with him. Benny might commit suicide with one of these statues. I could see him banging his head into the stone over and over, just to get some peace.”

I placed my hands on my hips. “Fine. Would you like to change the topic?”

“Only if you think your life is in danger. If not, feel free to snap more pictures of the dead’s grave.” Troy didn’t even check the names that he walked by.

“Okay. Okay. No one’s around, but the occasional wandering tourist. We jumped ahead of that one tour group. We have some quiet time in here,” I pointed out. “What do you want to do?”

“We’ve got to kill him?” Troy said.

“We’ve said that already, over and over.” I blew out a long breath. “We thought up ways, and neither one of us, really has it in us.”

“My vote is still for poison.” Viv wagged her hand. “The chances of getting caught by him are low, and I damn sure don’t want any of us to be caught by him. He scares me.”

“Where are we going to get some poison?” Troy asked.

“We could make some,” she argued. “The internet provides everything to a sick enough person.”

“We would need something that he couldn’t taste or smell, that wouldn’t make him suspicious. A poison like that would be difficult to find and cost money. Besides tourist spots, it will be hard for us to get to someone who could give us that, and not be reported back to him by his guards.”

“Hmmm.” Troy placed his hands behind his back and held them. “Wait a minute. Maybe we are thinking too big. Too large scale movie shit.”

“What?” I asked.

“We could poison him,” Troy explained, “but on a low level. We could make him sick. Give him something little by little. This way, it’s not a huge immediate thing. He dies slowly.”

“How slowly?” Viv asked.

“I have no idea. You got a better plan?”

“Make him sick.” I twisted my lips to the side. “This could take forever, but it’s less violent and almost no blood.”

“But then what if he goes to the doctor?” Viv asked. “A couple of lab tests will show that someone’s messing with his food.”

“True.” He stared at Viv. “Is he allergic to anything?”

“Not that I know of.”

Troy checked with me.

I shrugged. “I have no idea. He’s always been healthy.”

“So we don’t have anything right now?” Troy admitted.

“None at all.”

“Then I’m back to the knives,” he said. “There’s a bunch in the kitchen. We each grab one, rush into his bedroom, and stab the shit out of him.”

I interrupted. “But then we’re back to his guards racing in and killing us all.”

“We do something with the cameras in his bedroom,” Troy suggested.

“How the hell do we do that?” I asked.

“I think I can get into his security computer system.” Troy’s face didn’t appear as confident as his words.

“No. I say we wait a day or two and try to figure out what the hell is going on with Mom and Sherman.” I felt weird about saying the next words. “We need to call Chase again.”

They both exchanged glances as if I represented a crack head that suggested a quick stroll around a neighborhood known for slinging drugs.

“Why do we need to talk to Chase again?” Viv asked.

“We’re not killers,” I said.

“He isn’t either,” she finished, before I could add anything else.

“Hmmm.”

We both turned to Troy.

“Jazz may be thinking with her vagina, but she’s probably right.”

“I’m not thinking with my … just shut up. You and I both know that Chase is a good person to contact.”

Troy waved my comment away. “He’s a bumbling fool in love. He’s going to get himself killed, but …”

Viv leaned her head to the side. “But what?”

“But he has Sherman and Mom. That’s better than us. No disrespect, but if I’m going to try and kill Benny, I don’t want to do it with you two. I would rather have Sherman and Mom with me. They know how to have a person buried by the end of the week.”

“I don’t know about all of that, but saying Vivian and I aren’t killers is the smartest thing you’ve said all day.” I saluted him. “It’s not that I want someone to handle the dirty work. I can get muddy and bloody if I need to, but I can’t go up against Benny.”

“You might have to.” Viv leaned against a wall with carved people pushing out from the surface. Each served as a memorial to a great lyrical artist, and each appeared to come alive before my gaze, and somewhat spy on our wicked conversation. “Jasmine is the only one that will be able to get close enough to him. Say we considered stabbing him. He would never let me hug him while I’m holding a knife, not Troy either.”

“Hell no, not me.” Troy nodded. “Jazz could sit in his damn lap with a knife and discuss food topics like how much of a layer of powdered sugar should go on a donut until it’s made to perfection.”

“I’m not that bad.” I tapped my chest. “Besides, everyone knows that you don’t layer the donut with powdered sugar. You douse it in a bucket of that white yumminess, and coat it all the way until there’s nothing but a thick amount of sugar all over the donut and your fingers.”

Troy rolled his eyes. Vivian smirked.

“Whatever.” I put my hands in my pockets. “I think we need to call Chase for another reason. The most important question right now for us is why is Mom helping Chase, when she’s usually in Benny’s corner.”

“That’s an easy answer.” Viv held her hands out. “She’s worried about you, Jasmine. You’re missing and maybe she thinks Benny will hurt you, or she can’t deal with the fact that you’re gone—”

Troy and I shook our heads.

Now it was Vivian’s turn to put her hands on her hips. “She’s your mother.”

“Yeah, but love doesn’t motivate her. Money is always the goal.” I walked over to Vivian. “Troy thinks Mom is a killer and mastermind. I’ve never seen it, and Troy is the type of person to support a conspiracy theory more than the facts. However, Mom isn’t the loving, emotional type either. She’ll ask you to give her twenty dollars, before she says she loves you.”

“If she’s with Chase, then it’s to get something.” I leaned next to Vivian.

If an Abbey employee came in, I was certain they’d want us to get off the carvings. I wouldn’t unless someone told me. Right now I needed the presence of something greater than myself to rub off all over me. If God’s love lingered here, then I hoped he painted me in the stuff.

Give me some mystical armor to shield me from the things that will come.

“Mom’s not motivated by money, the goal for her has always been power,” Troy said.

“And how do you know this?” I asked.

“Because all I had time to do in jail was read. Astronomy and psychology. Those were the topics I studied. I had to understand Mom. How she could be one person in front of us, but the streets could whisper about an entirely different woman, someone that no one fucked with unless they had to.”

“I never heard any whispers about Mom,” I admitted.

He smirked. “You never got to go outside. You never got to see the things that our brothers did. They did some crazy shit back in the day. You know the one thing I remember they did each time, before they left the house?”

“What?” I asked.

“They always went into Mom’s bedroom and talked to her first.”

“You ever hear what they say?” I asked.

“No, but I knew that she had an ear to every single thing they did. It took me years of sitting in jail to understand that. Right before Sherman and them committed some of their worst crimes and even got caught, they’d sit in Mom’s bedroom for hours exchanging rushed words in low whispers. No one ever told me what was going on.”

I touched my chest. “No one told me either.”

“Not like you really wanted to know. And you were so happy to have whatever book that Mom or Benny bought, you stayed in your room with your nose in a story and mind far away from South End.”

“That’s not true, I tried to—”

“You kept your head in the shadows.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Vivian got up from the wall. “Let’s get back to why we need to call Chase and how it’s going to end this nightmare.”