A Toast Before Dying (14 page)

“Okay. Around noon.”

She gave me the address and hung up.

I let a minute pass before I picked up the phone again and dialed Elizabeth Jackson. She came on cool, crisp, and professional until she heard my voice, then
said, “Hey, girl, I was trying to reach you. I already told Bertha …”

“What?”

“Autopsy confirmed Thea was three months pregnant.”

“Then it’s true.” I sighed. “I even heard the news from Miss Viv at the Pink Fingernail.”

“Did she happen to know who the father might’ve been?”

“She didn’t say but I’m going to Thea’s apartment tomorrow. With Gladys Winston. Maybe something’ll turn up.”

“Good. Lots of stuff to be found in nooks and crannies, not to mention what might be under the carpet and the mattress.”

“I know where to look. I just need the opportunity. How’s Kendrick?”

“The same. He mentioned your visit and how you might have someone, a witness.”

“I’m not sure about this guy being a witness. Maybe he didn’t see anything. Maybe he did and at the time was into some shaky stuff and won’t want to talk at all. Tad’s due back soon. Maybe he can pull the guy in for questioning. Meanwhile, I’m trying to locate him myself. Maybe he’ll talk to me.”

“I hope so. Kendrick’s about at the end of his rope.”

“I hear someone special is handling his expenses.”

“Damn. The drums are working overtime. Anyway, it’s an actress who must have a part interest in a
gold mine. Walked in the office and dropped dollars that still have me blinking.”

“Indeed.”

“Indeed. I had to check her to make sure it wasn’t crack cash. Seems she’d married a Wall Street man who was old as water, and on their honeymoon three years ago his emotion couldn’t take the motion. Ticker quit and he went out with a smile. Now Miss Thing is kicking back, making merry with millions.”

“And wants to make it with Kendrick.”

“Too bad. I was kind of eyeing the brother myself. Making plans to make a move when all this is over and he walks. He’s so fine I would’ve done the work pro bono. But hey, the girl has dollars that hollers.…”

“Well, her dollar might holler but the echo’s not that deep. Kendrick’s not interested in her. And Thea had nothing—in the bank, that is—but he loved her and would’ve eaten that bullet for her. So money, as they say, ain’t everything.”

Graham Court at 116th Street and Seventh Avenue was an eight-story monolith of marbled halls and four columned entrances facing an interior court. It was built at the turn of the century by William Waldorf Astor for upper-class New Yorkers and was the last major apartment building in Harlem to become integrated.

In 1928 the wrought-iron gates swung open to its first black tenant, but the Gothic gray-stone structure did not collapse as some had predicted. Since then, Graham
Court had had several notable black tenants, among them Zora Neale Hurston.

When I approached the building, Gladys climbed out of her car. The only hint that she was prepared for heavy-duty house-cleaning was the Hermés scarf covering her hair. Other than that, she seemed more prepared for a trip downtown for a heavy-duty clean-out of Saks.

Up close, the skin around her eyes looked puffy, and her voice was still subdued.

“Glad you could make it. I’m really glad.”

I followed her into the interior court and walked around the large planted area in the center of the circular drive. We entered the building on the far side and took the elevator to the eighth floor. Thea’s apartment was large and light-filled with two bedrooms facing Seventh Avenue and a kitchen, dining room, living room, and small den looking out on the shops and restaurants of Little Africa on 116th Street.

Gladys disappeared into one of the bedrooms, leaving me to stand in the middle of the living room wondering why I had come. My presence now seemed like an intrusion.

There’s something about a person that remains long after the person is gone. I remembered opening a drawer in Benin’s bedroom and being stunned by the inescapable scent of Shalimar, the only perfume she’d ever worn. Faint as it had been, it resonated through the room, cutting me with a feeling of loss, love, and abandonment My sister was gone, yet her essence was still there, contained in that drawer. And I had sat on her
bed staring at the wall for an hour before I realized she wasn’t going to walk into the room.

When Gladys reappeared I was surprised to see her in a pair of old jeans, flat shoes, and a T-shirt.

“I have some clothes here,” she said, looking at me. “There were times when Thea couldn’t stand to be alone. When she called me, I came over.”

She walked into the other bedroom and I remained where I was.

Couldn’t stand to be alone. With all the men in her life, when had Thea ever been alone …?

I began to wonder how Gladys really fit into the puzzle of Thea’s life. When Gladys had walked into Bertha’s shop that day, she’d been ready to beat down anybody even remotely connected with Thea’s death. Pretty strong emotions until Bertha had offered to straighten her out with that straightening comb.

“How often did Thea feel that way?” I asked when she stepped back into the room to open a small cabinet and pull out a fifth of Dewar’s and two glasses.

“Quite often. Sometimes, I’d be here two, maybe three times a week.…”

I nodded. The bad thing about lying is that we have to work to remember the lie. In her office, she’d said something entirely different. Maybe it had been the vodka fogging her memory.

I watched her now as she poured the Scotch, handed me a glass, and sat down on the sofa. The living room was large and expensively furnished. The sofa, a camelback gray ultraseude number, was soft enough to disappear in if you sat down too hard. Two brown
leather ottomans flanked the tiled fireplace and a large square of glass rested on a low rough-cut granite base in the center of the room. A small Catlett sculpture was on the marble mantel next to a small Bose sound system, and a series of Jacob Lawrence paintings covered the wall over the sofa. There were no superfluous toys such as cell phone, TV, or CD player, unless they were concealed in one of the cabinets.

Not bad for a barmaid. Not bad at all, I thought as I took a sip and put the glass down. Scotch was not my favorite drink and I needed a clear head if I was to look for anything.

“Where shall we start?” I asked.

“We’ll each take a room. You start in there,” she said, pointing toward one of the bedrooms. “There are boxes in the foyer.”

I left her sitting on the sofa and entered the bedroom. It was the smaller of the two and I stood near the door. Something was missing. A minute later, I realized that there was no intimacy, no sense of life or living, anywhere in the apartment. It was cold and sterile despite the sunlight splashing across the bed piled with damask quilts and tasseled pillows. The place was a decorator’s showcase roped off from human emotion.

There was no bedroom clutter, personal pictures, or small trays on the dresser where broken earrings or unpaid bills accumulated, yet Thea had lived here for several years.

Her death had been a public spectacle and everyone knew how she died, but few knew how she had lived. Had she lived at all? Or simply floated through
the present like a ghost, not touching, feeling, seeing, or wanting anything, a figment of the imagination of all the people she’d come in contact with? But I knew she had wanted something, because her hostility was unmistakable the night, several years ago, when she’d met me at the club.

“
So this is your dad?
”

So what? Why get attitude? Had she wanted him as a lover? Had she wanted him at all? Or was she simply jealous because he was my father and perhaps she hadn’t known her own.

I could not feel her presence here so it was easy to start opening every drawer in the dresser and chest. I quickly poked through lingerie, sleepwear, sweaters, blouses, and scarves, listening the entire time for Gladys. Then I refolded each piece and placed them in the boxes I’d dragged from the foyer.

I tiptoed to the door and heard Gladys in the next room. She had turned on a small radio, and the music muffled her movements. I went to the dresser again and quickly slipped my hand behind the mirror but came up with nothing, not even a dust ball. Whoever did the cleaning, I’d certainly like to bring them over to my place.

I pulled each empty drawer out again and turned them over, looking for envelopes or papers that might be taped to the undersides. Nothing. In the closet, two dozen shoe boxes were stacked three rows deep on the floor. I flipped the covers and saw beautiful shoes, size 7, which made me mad thinking of my own size 10s.

I went back to the chest and eased it away from
the wall. Because of the carpet, the chest barely moved. I leaned against it and squeezed my arm behind the small space. Nothing. I still heard the music from the adjoining bedroom but no movement. Maybe Gladys had given up and was simply sitting there, lost in memory. I needed to work faster because there was no telling when she might decide she’d had enough for one day.

My work on the force had taught me that most folks hid stuff in their bedrooms and most of the time at eye level. I sat on the edge of the bed and looked around, then leaned back and poked the long tapestry-covered bolster. It was solid stuff, whatever it was made of. I passed my fingers over the quilted headboard, and along the edge felt a small zipper. I opened it, eased my hand into the sliver of space, and extracted a small plastic freezer bag containing a bankbook.

Something was wedged between the pages but I didn’t have time to look. I tiptoed to the door again, listening, then lifted my shirt and the pouch disappeared in the pocket of my jeans. I adjusted my shirt and called out.

“What would you like me to do next?”

There was no answer and I moved toward the other bedroom. Gladys sat on the bed with a small notebook on her lap and a half dozen letters spread out beside her.

“What would you like me to do?” I repeated.

This time she looked up. “Sorry, I … didn’t hear you.” She snapped the notebook closed and stuffed it along with the letters into a large shoulder bag. “I’ll
take care of this room. Did you get to the other closet, the one in the den? The boxes are already in there.”

I watched her bury the shoulder bag on the chair beneath the dress she had worn and knew there was no way I could get to it, not even if she went to the bathroom. I’d have to make do with whatever information the bankbook held.

From the look on Gladys’s face, I wondered if the notebook might have been Thea’s diary or journal. Whatever she’d just read wasn’t sitting too well with her.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“Yes. Yes, fine.”

“Where’s the bathroom?”

“There’s one in here and there’s one off the foyer.”

I chose the one off the foyer and left her sitting there. I locked the door and looked around, noting with small satisfaction that Thea and I had at least one thing in common: large old tiled bathrooms with deep, claw-footed tubs, old tulip-shaped basins, and toilets that sounded like the ocean when you flushed.

I sat on a small velvet-covered bench and quickly unwrapped the plastic. The bankbook had a balance of over a hundred thousand dollars with three entries a month of a thousand dollars on the first, tenth, and twentieth for the last three years. There was also a small faded photograph of an old woman.

I heard Gladys moving down the foyer, and I quickly flushed the toilet and washed my hands with a gel that filled the room with the scent of lilacs. I stepped
out to see Gladys in the living room refilling her glass. I picked up my own and drank it down.

“Let’s call it a day,” she said. “Maybe come back next week.”

“That’s good,” I said. “We can’t do everything all at once.”

G
ladys dropped me off at home. In my bedroom, I put the plastic pouch in my desk next to the other file, wondering if Thea had accumulated this nest egg from Michaels, Laws, or her husband, Roger.

When the phone rang I answered it quickly, grateful for the distraction.

“Mali? Hello baby …”

“Tad? Where are you?”

“Newark. Just arrived. But I’ve got good news and some bad news.”

“Wait,” I whispered, holding out my hand as if he had just stepped in the room. “Don’t tell me now. You’re back and that’s it. I can wait for the bad news.”

“Did you miss me?”

Did I miss him. I held the phone so close my ear ached. Did I miss him. His voice, the sound of him, flowed toward me like a train in a tunnel and everything seemed in danger of collapsing from the vibration.
I sat down. My back was wet and a tight urgent feeling was already blooming near the bottom of my stomach. Did I miss him.

“You’re at Newark?” I asked again, just to hear the sound of him.

“Yeah. I’m hopping a cab. See you in a little bit.”

I couldn’t figure out how long a cab took to get from Newark to Harlem, but when I hung up it took two minutes to fill my bath and slide into a bank of hibiscus-scented foam.

One hour later the bell rang and I shooed Ruffin into the dining room and opened the door. Tad was standing there and I felt the ache even in my bones. His arms closed on me and I breathed in the familiar mint scent. His mouth was near my ear.

“Mali. Mali. Baby. Damn you look good I missed you my bag’s in the cab come on over to my place damn you look good your dad home get your keys come on Baby …”

One urgent, strung-together rush of expression. No time to reply, no time to say, No Dad’s not home he went to see the movie
Sankofa
with Miss Laura and yes we’ll go to your place where I’ll step out of my panties—why did I put them on in the first place I knew you were coming—step out of them and step into you and drown myself in the scent and smell and odor and musk and whatever else it is about you that makes me laugh and cry and sweat and act so damn crazy.

The cabbie was a polite Pakistani who pretended to concentrate on the traffic as my wrap skirt came off in the backseat. He coughed discreetly when we pulled
up in front of Tad’s place and nearly shook Tad’s hand in response to the generous tip. Upstairs, Tad moved through the apartment opening the windows and the door to the terrace.