Days of Rage: A Smokey Dalton Novel (36 page)

Then, to my surprise, a woman yelled, “Hang on.
I gotta get to you.”

There was some banging, as if drawers or doors closed, a curse, and then a small woman, barely bigger than Jimmy, pulled the door open.

She peered around it as if she expected trouble.
Her hair was cut short, and her features were delicate, making her small face seem even smaller.
She wore gold eyeshadow that accented the brown of her eyes, but no other makeup.
One eye appeared to have eyeliner, while the other didn’t.

Apparently I had interrupted her morning routine.

“Now what is it?” she snapped.
“I paid off the stupid loan.”

She thought I was some kind of enforcer.

“I’m not here to collect a debt, ma’am,” I said, using the same soft voice I’d initially used with Serena Wexler.
“My name is Bill Grimshaw.
People hire me to investigate things, and I’d like to ask you some questions if I could.”

“Sorry,” she said, starting to close the door.

I grabbed it, knowing that would scare her, but I had no other choice.
“Your son’s name is Junius, right?”

She froze, and I saw fear in her eyes.
“So?”

“Was he named for someone?”

She tilted her head slightly.
I had her attention.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I came across a shirt with the name sewn in, and I have reason to believe that shirt had been hidden for a long time.
More than forty years.”

She stared at me as if I had just told her that President Lincoln was alive.

“Who did you say you are?”

“Bill Grimshaw, ma’am.”

“You’re a detective?”

“I do that work sometimes, yes,” I said.

“Where did you find that shirt?”

“That I can’t tell you,” I said.
“But I can answer some other questions, if you would like to answer a few for me.”

She opened the door wide, then stepped away from it.
She wore a gold waitress uniform with white piping and nylon stockings, but no shoes. I clearly had interrupted her routine.

As she walked across the worn gray carpet, she said, “I let you in, you hurt me, and my son-in-law’ll make sure you never hurt anybody again, you understand?”

“I do,” I said. “I promise I won’t touch you.”

She looked at me over her shoulder, grabbed a pair of white nurse’s shoes off a nearby wooden chair, and sat on the edge of an afghan-covered armchair.
“Junius was named for his grandfather.”

“Same last name?” I asked. “Pruitt?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said.
“Both names were in the shirt?”

“They were,” I said.

“How come you’re investigating this? An old shirt doesn’t seem like much.” She was clutching the shoes as if she would throw them at me if I came near her.

I had thought all the way over here how much I would tell her and how much I would keep to myself.
“It’s not a lot by itself,” I said. “But I found it in a bricked
-
up area, along with the skeletons of three men.”

“My God.” She leaned back and nearly tumbled into the armchair, her hand over her breastbone.
“You think that one of those skeletons might be Grandpa Junius?”

“I don’t know, ma’am,” I said.
“Until you asked that question, I wasn’t even sure he was dead.”

She took a deep breath and got her balance again, setting the shoes on the seat of the armchair.
“We didn’t either.
We just guessed.”

“Mind telling me what happened?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said.
“It was before my time.
He disappeared when my husband was a little boy.”

“Disappeared?” I asked.

She nodded. “That’s all I know.
I mean, there’s a family story, but it’s been years since I heard it.
You’re probably better off talking to Minnie.”

“Minnie?”

“His wife.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

Minnie Pruitt lived with her eldest son
,
Jasper, but she spent her days at the South
S
ide Senior Center.
The center wasn’t too far from Poehler’s Funeral Home.
The neighborhood had deteriorated
—
gang graffiti decorated the door of a nearby building, and the dry cleaner’s next door had clearly gone out of business.

But the
S
enior
C
enter seemed to have an attitude that carried it through the decay.
A sign on the door said
Anyone Under Sixty Enter at Own Risk
.
Through the large
,
plate
-
glass window of what had once been a storefront I could see twenty or so elderly people at various tables, cards in hand.
The group at table closest to me seemed to be playing for money.

I knocked on the door and pushed it open, stepping inside as I did so.
The place smelled of coffee and old age.
A refreshment bar stood just behind the door, with coffeepots sitting on warmers.
A window opened to a back room with a kitchen.
More coffee percolated on a stove back there.

“Kid, can’t you read?”

The voice startled me because it came from directly behind me.
An elderly man with rheumy eyes stood as close to me as anyone had gotten in years without me knowing it.
He held a cane in one hand and a brownie in the other.

His face was as scarred as mine.

“No one’s called me kid in a long time,” I said.

“You’re a baby,” he said.
“And I don’t care how hungry you are, you aren’t getting our snacks.
Danine made them special, and baking is something she can do, unlike playing cards.”

“Sit down,” said an elderly lady with a voice deeper than mine, “and I’ll show you who can play cards.”

She had to be Danine.

“I’m looking for Minnie Pruitt,” I said.

Half the room whooped at me.
The other half laughed, and looked at a woman who stood near the kitchen door.

“Told ya you still had it,” one of the men said to the woman.

She was statuesque, with a long face and dark, dark eyes.
Her hair had gone white, but that was the only sign of her age — that, and the orthopedic shoes she wore.
She wore a blue dress that accented her still-impressive figure, and a single gold band on her left hand.
Unlike her daughter-in-law, she wore no makeup at all.

“Do I know you?” she asked, her voice a vibrato
-
filled tenor that suggested either a lifetime spent in music or standing in front of a pulpit.

“No, ma’am,” I said. “My name is Bill Grimshaw.
Your daughter-in-law sent me to you.”

She made a sound like an elongated phshaw.
“What’s that no-good girl done and got herself into now
?
”

“Junius’s mother,” I said, just in case she misunderstood and thought I meant the other daughter-in-law, the one she lived with.

“I know who you’re talking about.
Jasper’s wife knows I like my privacy and wouldn’t send nobody here.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” I said.
“She didn’t explain that to me.
But she thought what I had to say was important enough to tell me where you were.”

Minnie Pruitt crossed her arms beneath her ample chest.
“She thinks everything’s important.”

The games around the room had stopped. The level of conversation had been high enough that I hadn’t realized a radio played in the background. WHO’s noontime news program thrummed across the room, too softly for me to pick out much more than the anchors’ voices.

“Well, she may have been right this time,” I said.
“Is there someplace we can talk?”

“Right here’s fine,” Minnie Pruitt said.

“This’s rather personal.
You might want—”

“These are my friends,” she said.
“They can hear this.”

I glanced at them, feeling trapped.
The more people who heard about this, the more the risk I took in getting the word out.
“Ma’am, please.
We can stand outside in full view.
I just think—”

“Heavens, young man,” she said.
“You’re a caution.
You don’t look it, but you are.
Grab me a chair, Hector.
I’m taking the young man to the woodshed.”

Everyone laughed, and I felt my face flush.
That phrase brought back old memories, memories that predated my parents’ death, and made me feel like I was six years old again.

One of the younger men — he had to be about seventy — picked up a folding chair and carried it into the kitchen.
“You asked for it, son.”

“It’s not every day that Minnie takes a man to the woodshed,” said one of the nearby women, her eyes sparkling.

“Thank you,” I said to Mrs. Pruitt, and followed her through the kitchen, ignoring the comments and the catcalls.

The woodshed, apparently, was the back office.
Hector flipped the light switch and fl
u
orescents flickered, then caught.
A desk was already inside, with a dirty coffee cup on top, and a half
-
eaten donut still sitting on a plate.
Papers sat off to one side.
I glanced at them as I walked in. They were registration forms for a bridge tournament that was going to be held on Halloween.

“This isn’t the woodshed that I remember,” I said, and Mrs. Pruitt laughed. It was a deep, throaty sound, the sound of a woman who knew how to enjoy herself.

“It’s all we have.”
She sat behind the desk and looked pointedly at Hector.
“You mind waiting in the kitchen?”

“I’m winning penny-a-point,” he said.

“Bring the game in there.”

Hector sighed, then glared at me.
“You be nice to her, you hear?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

He backed out of the room, keeping his eye on me, pulling the door closed behind him.
Mrs. Pruitt and I watched as he made his way to the kitchen serving window and beckoned the other players inside.

“Your daughter-in-law sounds like she’s in some trouble,” I said.

“She told me after my son died that her kids were going to get the education he promised them come hell or high water.”
Minnie Pruitt stacked the papers, thumped them on the desk to even the edges, and then set them aside.
“It’s been hell.
I expect the high water any day now.”

I sat on the folding chair.
It creaked beneath my weight.
“I’m not it.
I’m here because I found something in the course of an investigation.”

Her eyes brightened. I had caught her attention.

“I do odd jobs,” I said. “Sometimes that includes finding things out for people.”

She nodded her head once, indicating that she understood.

“Recently I found a shirt
hidden in an enclosed area.
It might have been a jacket, it’s hard to tell.
But it had the name Junius Pruitt stitched inside.”

Her expression didn’t change, but she threaded her hands together, clasping them so tightly that her unpainted nails reddened.
“Probably belonged to my grandson.
Didn’t Irene tell you that?”

Irene, apparently, was the other Mrs. Pruitt.

“No, ma’am,” I said.
“We’re both sure it didn’t belong to her son.”

Minnie Pruitt’s eyes narrowed.
Her lower lip trembled.
“Are you having fun with me? Because if you are—”

“Ma’am, I’m sorry,” I said. “But I found it in a wall, along with three skeletons.
One had been shot in the head.”

“Oh, my God.” She ran a hand over her mouth.
“Oh, my God.”

“The shirt wasn’t on one of the skeletons that we could tell.
But it was there with one.
It might’ve been stolen, or it might’ve been someone’s clothing.
We don’t know.
Your daughter-in-law told me your husband disappeared when your son was just a baby.”

“When Wayne was just a baby, yeah.
Jasper was five or so, and Jolene, she was three.”
Her eyes were lined with tears.
“Only Junius, he wouldn’t run from us.
He loved those babies.
He loved them.”