Five Fortunes (28 page)

“She’s so pleased,” Amy whispered to him in bed. “You were really listening to her.” Jill and her friends were deeply opposed to the killing of sweet little beasties for their pelts.

“I always pictured giving her a mink when she went off to college.”

“I know you did, but she’d have hated that. How on earth did you find such a beautiful thing? You don’t even know what avenue Saks is on.”

“I have my methods,” Noah said. “By the way, what avenue did this come from?” He was appreciating the filmy nightgown.

“I have my methods too.” She kissed him, perfectly happy again.

I
t was broad daylight when Shanti was killed, three days after Christmas. She had been sitting in her front window watching Flora playing on the floor with her new Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. A rusted Buick drove slowly down the street outside her house; inside it a young man in the backseat took careful aim with a rifle and shot off the back of her head.

A watcher saw it happen. Carter got the call as she was on her way to West Hollywood on another job. She got to Shanti’s house one step behind the ambulance and two steps before the police.

There were people gathered on the street outside the house.

Somewhere was the sound of a woman sobbing. Carter pushed past them and ran up the steps.

Two medics had brought a stretcher with them to the living room.

Shanti was still sitting on the couch, or rather, slumping forward and to the side. Carter stood in the doorway, staring. She was swept by a wave of anger and grief, followed by nausea at the smell of so much blood.

“Who are you?” Two cops with guns drawn crowded into the room behind her, one of them barking questions. Carter turned to stare at them. Guns drawn? Who are
you
assholes?

The medics were talking to each other softly, and moving with a deliberation that showed there was no need to hurry at all for this patient anymore.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” she was asked again, 215

216 / Beth Gutcheon

more aggressively. She showed her PI license and said, “Friend of the family.”

“You surveilling her?”

“I said
friend of the family
,” she said louder. “And she was a client.”

“What’s her name?”

“Shanti Amos.”

The second cop had spotted Flora, sitting in the corner. She had flattened herself into the shadows when the first of the big white men crashed in.

Carter now realized that whoever had arrived first, probably the fire department, had had to break the glass in the door to reach the inside lock. It was a good thing Shanti hadn’t had the double locks on, they’d have chopped the door down, with Flora sitting on the other side, watching those hatchets crashing through the wood.

The first cop nudged the second and pointed to the baby. Both men stared at the wide eyes, the blank, terrified expression.

“Must of seen the whole thing,” said the first one.

Brilliant, Sherlock, thought Carter. With every passing second her desire to scream or weep was growing.

The first cop took a step toward Flora and then it was Flora who was screaming. She howled terrible wordless sounds, the loudest noise she could make as she stared at the big white man who was starting to come for her. In a second Carter was on her knees between Flora and the uniform. She held out her arms, not knowing if the baby would let her pick her up. In a swift motion, Flora wrapped her arms and legs around Carter and clung fiercely, still shrieking, and Carter stood up and turned around, so that it was she who faced the police and the body on the couch, not the baby. She could smell the sweet milky smell of Flora’s skin, and from across the room, the reek of blood.

“So what is this, a drug thing?”

“Looks like it,” said one of the medics.

“She dealing? Or using?”

The cops were clomping around the apartment, looking out the window at the street, then back at the body.

Five Fortunes / 217

“It was an execution,” said Carter. She carried Flora to her bedroom, found Flora’s pink backpack, and started stuffing things into it. She took some clothes from the drawer and a small teddy bear that looked worn with love, and crammed them in. She remembered Flora sitting on the floor of her office reading a picture book to herself, and she grabbed a few small books from the shelf. Flora clung to her so hard that Carter didn’t even need to hold her. She could use both hands to pack.

One of the cops appeared at the door.

“The ME’s on his way. Could we talk to you, please?”

“I have to get this child out of here.”

“I’m sorry, you can’t leave until we ask you some questions.”

“No,
I’m
sorry,” said Carter. “You know who I am, you know where to find me. I’ll be happy to tell you anything you need to know, but not here, not now.”

“I can’t let you leave…”

“You can’t make me stay, except by force, and what goddamn good would that do you or this child?”

The cop stared at her, nonplussed. Carter was nearly as tall as he was, and looked to be in considerably better shape. And she was holding a baby.

She walked past him and out the door. On the steps she nearly collided with the medical examiner, who looked extremely surprised to see her, or any civilian, leaving the crime scene.

On the street, most of the rubberneckers had melted away when the police arrived. Carter was careful not to meet anyone’s eye as she marched out. In a day or two someone would come to her for Flora, but anyone who spoke to Carter now would be making himself, or herself, a moving target for whoever had killed Shanti.

Carter set Flora on the front seat of her car, close beside her, and started the car.

“This is my car,” she said. “I’m going to take you to my house.

No one is going to hurt you.” Flora stared at the dashboard and clutched the pink backpack. Carter pulled out and drove.

218 / Beth Gutcheon

It was only when they were inside her house with the door shut that Carter got a good look, close up, at Flora. She had blood on one hand, and on her clothes. She must have gone to her mother to try to wake her up or comfort her. Carter could imagine the bewilder-ment, giving way to fear…but no, she couldn’t. How could you imagine a thing like that?

She asked Flora if she would like to change to clean clothes. Flora shook her head, very slightly. She asked if she wanted some lunch.

Flora shook her head. Of course she didn’t. She wanted only one thing in the world, and it was dead in a living room sixteen miles away.

Carter found herself just looking at the child as if, if she looked at her long enough, she would guess what Flora was feeling and then finally she could do something that would make it better. But Flora was very still. Her eyes moved. Her little body sat quiet in the chair where Carter had put her, and once in a while, for a second or two, she looked at something. Cased the room. The rest of the time she stared at Carter. As if she would vanish. Or the back of
her
head would explode and she would slump over and never move again.

Or if she just stared at her hard enough, Carter would produce her mama.

Carter went to the phone. She intended to call DeeAnne, but when the flutey voice of the receptionist answered, she found she had called Jerry’s office.

“Mr. Carter, please.”

“Mr. Carter is in a meeting. Who is calling?” said the secretary.

“It’s Carter Bond. Would you tell him…” Then she paused, and to her astonishment, began to cry. Mortified, she hung up, and sat hunched over the telephone in the kitchen, shaking with tears.

The phone rang.

“Carter?” It was Jerry.

“Yeah, I’m…” She put her hand over the phone and took deep breaths. It was so long since she’d cried she had no idea what you could do to make yourself stop.

“Jerry…”

“I’m here.”

Five Fortunes / 219

“Hold on…” In another moment or two she was ready to try talking again. “Okay, I’m back.”

“What’s going on?” His voice sounded anxious.

“I’m sorry…I hope you’re keeping clients waiting. What do you bill at now, two hundred a minute?” Her voice was ragged.

“Three. Now, what’s happened?”

“I killed someone this morning.”

There was a silence. “Do you need a lawyer?”

“I think a priest.”

There was a pause. “I better come over.”

“No, you can’t do that. You’ve got a client there.”

“Fuck ’em. It’s just a movie star and his ‘people.’” That at least made Carter smile.

Carter watched Jerry park and come up the walk. She’d been sitting at the window, holding Flora, waiting for him. The minutes had seemed preternaturally slow to pass, as she lived again and again through the moment of walking into the room and seeing that brave young woman so still and painfully bent on the couch, with her blood all over the back of her furniture.

Jerry was wearing an impeccable blue suit that seemed to give grace to his broad-shouldered figure. He walked quickly, looking at the spot right before his feet, as he almost always did. Carter thought it was because he dreaded looking people in the eye and having them imagine they’d been invited to speak. Jerry only talked and listened to exchange information. The idea of talking just to talk, talking to establish a bond, to pass the time, to disguise social unease, seemed to frighten him.

The door opened, and Carter stood waiting for him with a small caramel-colored child on her hip. She had lost even more weight in the last few weeks, and she looked unstrung.

He kissed her on the cheek. “You didn’t mention you’d given birth,” he said. Flora, at the sight of another huge white man, had buried her face in Carter’s shoulder, much as she once had hidden against her mother when she’d first met Carter.

220 / Beth Gutcheon

Carter led Jerry into the living room, explaining as briefly as she could about the drug sting, and the night she “arrested” the enforcer.

“It’s gang territory. They know everything. They have members as young as ten. So we moved into their market and fucked it up, and when they tried to stop us I
dissed
this guy. I couldn’t have done him worse if I’d cut his nuts off in the street. He knows who saw.

Or worse, he doesn’t know, so he has to guess, so it’s like
everyone
saw. I thought Shanti would get such a charge out of it. Then I changed the cars and rearranged the schedule so they never saw me again, and I thought I was so smart. But they were smarter. They couldn’t kill me, so they killed the person who hired me.”

They sat in silence for a moment. Jerry just breathed, and looked at her.

“She was almost eight months pregnant…” Carter said, and started to cry again. She was exhausted. She couldn’t remember being hit so hard by anything, maybe since her own mother died.

“Carter. He jumped you. What do you think he was planning to do to you?”

She shrugged. “Rape me. Kill me. Something along those lines.”

“So?”

“I know. It just doesn’t help.”

“What would?”

She thought for a few minutes. She knew this was not an idle question; Jerry didn’t ask idle questions. She thought of a range of things, from a neck massage to a week in Acapulco to a shot of Valium. Flora shifted a little on her lap, and Carter realized that the exhausted baby had finally gone to sleep.

“Tell me what to do. I can’t make my brain work.”

Jerry leaned back in his chair and recrossed his long legs. He exposed an expanse of shin, and Carter, who never noticed such things, suddenly realized that even
she
could tell that for dark gray socks, those were very fancy socks.

“All right. First. Don’t go back to that neighborhood, ever. That case is over.”

Carter didn’t say anything.

Five Fortunes / 221

“God, Carter…you weren’t
going
to try to go on with it, were you?”

She shook her head, more to say I don’t know than to say no.

“Next, tell me about this baby. What about the father?”

“I have no idea.”

“Do you know anyone who would?”

Carter thought. “I might be able to track him down, but not without going back there.”

“Or the father of the baby she was carrying?” Carter just shook her head. She didn’t know if it was the same man, or anything about him.

“How about relatives?”

“Her parents are dead. She has a sister on the streets.”

“Do you know how to find
her
?”

“I hardly think she sounds like a candidate for motherhood, at the moment,” said Carter.

“I wasn’t suggesting that. I’m suggesting that you find out who owns the house. If there’s a will. That sort of thing.”

“Oh,” said Carter. She thought he was telling her it was absurd for her to try to take care of this baby, even for a day.

“In other words, the
baby
needs a lawyer.”

“She might,” said Jerry.

The doorbell rang. Since Carter had a babe in arms, Jerry got up to answer it. He was soon back with a uniformed policeman, the one who had ordered Carter not to leave Shanti’s house, and a man in plainclothes who had to be from Homicide. Introductions were performed.

“Forgive me for not getting up,” said Carter. She indicated chairs, and Jerry too sat back down. The detective got out his pad. “You are a private investigator, Ms. Bond.”

“That’s correct.”

“And you were employed by the deceased.”

“That’s correct.”

“And you are?” he had turned to Jerry. “Her lawyer?”

“Friend of the family.”

The cop rolled his eyes.

I
n the first week of January, the whole Knox family drove up to Sun Valley. Ketchum was a four-block traffic jam, so full of day-trippers that all the restaurants and galleries and even the gas stations were packed. Hunt insisted on stopping for the out-of-town papers and then Cara and Tessie just wanted to pop into a clothing shop for a minute, “Just a
minute
, pleeease, we promise,”

where their classmates had caught sight of Demi Moore with her children. While they were gone Anna decided to hop across the street for a latte, she’d get it to go, it would really be one second.