Of Blood and Sorrow (18 page)

But there were still the memories. Race memories, my grandma called them. Up until the day she died, she warned me that white men could “ruin you.” Sweet Thing probably had stories that hurt too much to tell and were best left unshared.

“I did the best I could do with what I had,” she said. “I just hope she don’t blame me much.”

“Lily?” I called Lilah by her given name, but Sweet Thing said nothing.

Troy, more interested in his newfound baby than Sweet Thing’s memories, didn’t ask more questions after that. He did, however, call his mother and tell her where he was, and when he glanced at me, his eyes said he was ready to leave.

“You going to take that baby with you?” Sweet Thing asked as he began to gather her things.

“She’s my daughter.”

“A daughter is something you don’t never throw away,” she said, her gaze dropping to the floor.

“You don’t have to worry about that!” Troy said.

“You going to bring her back to visit?” she pleaded with her voice and eyes.

“You’re her family, same as me. My dad is dead. Lilah’s dead. She doesn’t have too much family left, does she? Me, you, my mom, Thelma Lee, that’s it.”

“Speaking of Thelma, why did you think she was with me when we came by tonight?” I asked Sweet Thing, recalling her earlier words. I’d almost forgotten the reason we’d come.

Sweet Thing shrugged. “Said she had to go to your house.”

“My house? Why?”

“Said she was going back for something she’d left and to drop off something she’d taken. I don’t know what the girl was talking about.”

“How long ago did she leave?”

“She left with Jimson around nine o’clock, about an hour before you got here. He said he’d drop her off at your house and go to work from there.”

I glanced at my watch. “It’s late for her to be coming home by herself.”

“She might be waiting for you. I told her to call you, but she said she had to tell you in person.”

“Did she say what?”

“No, just said you’d want to know.”

“She’s probably still at my house. I haven’t been home yet,” I said, and a chill crawled down my back, that sense I get when things aren’t falling right. Troy Barnes glanced at me again, his baby asleep on his shoulder. It was time for him to take his daughter home.

But I didn’t like leaving this vulnerable woman by herself. There had been too many killings already, and I didn’t know the reasons yet.

“Why don’t you come home with me?” I said. “Thelma’s there, and you both can spend the night. I’ll drive you back tomorrow.”

“That’s nice of you, Miss Hayle, but I don’t think so,” she said with a shy smile. “I’m going to stay right here. Jimson wouldn’t like it if I left without telling him.”

“Then don’t tell him!”

“He’d know,” she said, not looking me in the eye. There was a darkness to this love I hadn’t seen.

“But you shouldn’t be here by yourself,” I said. She lit a cigarette, sucking the smoke in deep, reminding me of the day I met her.

“You talking about Lily?”

“And the others.”

“Who else besides Lily and this boy’s daddy?”

“Turk Orlando.”

“The boy come over here with Lily?”

“Did you know he was dead?”

“I got to stay here and wait for Jimson. He’ll be worried about me if he don’t find me here,” she said, staring at the smoke from her cigarette and avoiding my question.

“Aren’t you afraid?”

“Jimson Weed will be here soon.”

“He’s not a young man.”

“He’s stronger than he look.”

“To tell the truth, I could use your company,” I said.

“You scared?”

“A little,” I admitted. “Three women together are always stronger than one.”

“You think Thelma still over there?”

“Probably. I tried to call her earlier, but she didn’t answer the phone. There are some dead spots in my house where cell phones don’t work. She may not have picked up the signal.”

“That’s why I don’t bother with the damn things half the time. What good is a phone if it don’t work? But I’ll ride over there with you if you want me to. Ain’t no fun being scared.”

“Thanks,” I said, relieved.

So she threw a few overnight things for herself and Thelma Lee into a paper bag, and the four of us piled into my car—Sweet Thing with her black handbag on her lap in the passenger seat and Troy laden down with baby and supplies in the back. I was glad the night was finally over. Monday was coming soon enough.

I dropped Troy Barnes off at his mother’s place—a big, sprawling mansion in a fancy gated neighborhood just ten minutes from where I live. Sweet Thing’s eyes got big when she saw it.

“She got two big houses now, from her mama and her daddy. She’s going to grow up to be a real little lady, just like my Lily would want. Don’t forget me, Dolly,” she whispered to the baby, kissing her gently so she wouldn’t wake her.

I helped Troy unload the car but left before he opened the door to go inside. He and Nellie Barnes deserved privacy to celebrate their joy and cry their tears.

“Did Thelma Lee mention what she left at my place?” I asked Sweet Thing as I drove home.

“It must have been that bracelet. The one her mama left her.”

“But she should have it by now,” I said, more to myself than to Sweet Thing, who had closed her eyes and looked as if she were nodding off.

Every light in my house was on, which told me that Thelma had looked high and low for her bracelet. I left Sweet Thing asleep in the car and ran up the stairs and in through the front door.

“Thelma Lee!” I yelled out, then ran upstairs, searched, and ran back down calling her name, but the house was empty. I found a note on the kitchen table, neatly printed on a paper towel, the spare keys that I keep over the dryer in the basement laid on top of it.

Dear Miss Hayle,

It’s me, Trinity Sweets, again. I was going to wait for you but changed my mind. It wasn’t all that important. Here are the keys I took when I went to buy them donuts. Forgot I put them in my pocket. Sorry about that!!

I lost my charm bracelet, the only thing my mama left me. Except Aunt Edna’s house, which my sister wanted to sell. But now she’s gone, so I guess we get to keep it.

I looked everywhere for that bracelet, but it’s not here. I must have lost it in the other place, where my mama’s soul lives. Jimson said if I didn’t find it here, he’d take me there to get it before he went to work.

Your friend,
Trinity Sweets (Thelma Lee)

Suddenly everything fell into place.

SEVENTEEN

I
GOT TO GET BACK SOMETHING
that belongs to me. Something important. Stolen property, you might say. It’s mine, and I want it back.

It was that grand old house Lilah had been talking about, the one bought with her mother’s flesh. It was hers, and she would get the biggest, fastest buck she could for it. Selling Baby Dal was an afterthought.

“Thelma ain’t in there?” Sweet Thing’s voice was calm when I got back, but her eyes were filled with fear. “She must have gone back home. We must have just missed her. You can drop me off at the PATH train. I don’t want you to have to go all the way—”

“She didn’t go home, Miss Sweets.” I gave her the note, and she read it quickly.

“What does it mean?”

“Just what it says.”

“Call her to see where she is! Call her!”

I did, and there was no answer, which was no surprise. “Jimson Weed took her to the place where your sister died, Miss Sweets. He took her to find a bracelet he already had. I know because I gave it to him the day she lost it.”

“But why would he do something like that?” she asked. I shrugged as if I didn’t understand, although I did.

I know everything that affects you, baby. Everything.

He knew about every call she got. He feared anyone who kept him from controlling her. He protected her from people he deemed her enemies, which was everyone but him.

Sometimes I think he loves me more than is good for him. You ever have a man love you like that?

Did she know she was his prisoner?

I glanced at her now, head resting wearily against the window, eyes closed.

“Jimson wouldn’t hurt that child. I know that. We’re family, Miss Hayle. He forgot about that bracelet, that’s what he did. He’ll tell you that himself when I talk to him like I do.”

I drove on without speaking, focusing on the road ahead as Edna Sweets, Jimson Weed’s Sweet Thing, rambled and cried about her good man and how much he loved her. It was what she believed, so I let her have it for as long as I could. But not forever.

“Why did Lilah come back home?” I said after a while. We were close to the motel where he had taken her. She looked at me as if she didn’t understand what I was saying.

“Lily’s dead.”

“She told you she was going to sell that house, didn’t she? She told you she didn’t care where you went or what you did, but it was her house to sell, and she was throwing you out. And he stood there, and he listened to her, didn’t he? He knew how much you loved that place, what it meant to you and your sister, that you had nowhere else to go.”

“Lily never was no good. She never was no good, but I loved her anyway, God help me, I loved her anyway, and He is punishing me for what I did to her, what I didn’t do.”

Who was she talking about? Lily or Lilah? Did she even know the difference?

“What didn’t you do for Lily?”

“I didn’t claim her.”

“Lilah didn’t give a damn about you, Miss Sweets, she told me that. She didn’t love Thelma Lee, either. She just loved herself. You shouldn’t blame yourself for her. Why should you claim her? She didn’t claim you,” I said, hoping to give the woman some peace, some resolution.

She looked at me then, and her eyes were filled with anguish. “I’m talking about
my
Lily, Miss Hayle. Lily Sweets was my only daughter, and I never told her nothing. I came up here from Mississippi, raised her like my sister, never told the truth to her or nobody else. You live a lie, and there’s no end to it.”

Her words stunned me; there was nothing I could say. I stole a look at Sweet Thing’s face and saw the image of the woman in Thelma Lee’s locket, the one as pretty as her Aunt Edna, except for the soft beige of her skin.

Things that happened to me down in Mississippi, I ain’t told nobody yet, don’t nobody have a right to know.

I understood then what I had seen in her eyes. She’d been “ruined” down there in Mississippi, so she’d brought her baby north, kept her shame to herself, found a new life for her and Lily. But nothing had turned out like it was supposed to.

“What happened to your Lily?” I asked, as gently as I could.

“Drugs,” she said.

And who had supplied those drugs? I was pretty sure I knew.

Why had she told me this now? Could it have been holding Baby Dal, her great-grandchild, whose dimpled grin had brought her to the truth? Or the death of Lilah Love and the danger now confronting Thelma Lee. Did she know what I did now? Had she always known it?

It’s easy to tell a stranger a truth that you’re ashamed of, and it was pure chance that she had chosen me. We rode in silence then, her lost in her thoughts, me in mine. The time for words was over, so we gave the truth the quiet it deserved.

As we approached the motel, its harsh neon lights threw yellow rays into the dark car, illuminating her pretty skin and high cheekbones, and I saw her as he must have when he got home from the war. His beautiful woman. Miss Edna Sweets.

Shit don’t never go nowhere. Just back to where it come from when you don’t expect to see it.

The truth had come back for Edna Sweets, and it would come for him as well. I’d call the police before I confronted him. I knew now what he was capable of, and what he’d done. Lilah died because she was after that house, and Turk because she told him whom she was meeting the night she was killed. Jamal had overheard that conversation. I was just lucky he didn’t know who my son was. He would have known or guessed where Thelma Lee and Turk would go that night. It would be risky for him to leave her alive. But why had he killed Treyman Barnes? Had killing become a habit?

I glanced over at Sweet Thing, remembering how gently he had taken her hand that morning in my office.

“Miss Sweets?” Her eyes were fixed on the window, her fingers clasped in her lap; she was lost and broken.

“Miss Sweets, I’m going to go inside the motel to see if Jimson has Thelma in there, and I’m going to call the police and tell them what I know. Do you understand me?”

She glanced at me as if she didn’t know me.

“I’ll be back as soon as the police come. Stay here and wait for me, okay?”

Her head dropped to her chest.

I got out of the car and headed for the lobby. The place deserved its reputation. The walls were a shitty brown, and the lobby smelled like pee. The room was bare except for two scarred orange sofas that looked as if some deranged soul had taken a knife to them. A light-skinned man with muttonchops and a name tag that said “Herbert” sat behind the desk reading the sports section of
The Star-Ledger.

“Rooms are twenty an hour, sixty for the night. Cash money,” he said without looking up.

“I’m not here for a room. I’m looking for two people. A teenager and an older man in his sixties.”

He put down his paper and stared at me. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding,” he said.

“No, as a matter of fact, I’m not,” I said, with a dignified lift of my head.

“Teenagers with old men? That’s all who comes through here. What you want? White, white; black, black; male, male; female, male, female?” Disgusted, he went back to his paper.

“The teenager’s name is Thelma Lee Sweets. She was here on Tuesday night; she was with that man who got his throat cut.” That got his attention. He put the paper down.

“Who did you say you were?”

“I’m Tamara Hayle, a private investigator,” I said, and handed him a card.

He glanced at it, then back at me. “Who sent you?”

“The girl’s guardian. She’s underage.”

He went back to the paper. “I just came on duty, so I ain’t seen nothing. Half the girls come in here are what you call underage. What she look like?”

“About sixteen, probably in black, hair pulled back, plump, pretty face—”

He looked up. “You talking about Trinity?”

“Yes! You know her?”

“Sure, everybody knows Trinity. Likes to go up there to 311 and sit on the bed. She’ll sit in that damn room for an hour or so, then come back downstairs. Never touches nothing. Don’t even use the bathroom.

“But she ain’t here now. Never comes at night. Just in the afternoon, when hardly nobody is here. She says she don’t like old men staring at her tits.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, sure, they stare. I told her ain’t nothing she can do about it. That girl acts like she’s from a different planet sometimes. She’s a good-looking girl, and men—”

“No, fool! Are you sure about her not being here?” I said without thinking.

“Who you calling a fool?” He poked his chest out belligerently.

“Sorry.”

“Yeah, I’m sure. You got some wrong information, sweetheart. First of all, Trinity wouldn’t be with a guy like that, dumb enough to get his throat cut. She’s a nice kid, schoolgirl who likes to dress like a freak. She wouldn’t be mixed up in something like that.”

“What room was he killed in?”

“Three eleven.” He looked confused for a moment, then shook his head. “That’s Trinity’s room all right. But she can’t be there now because nobody is. We can’t let nobody in there. The cops closed that room up. It’s a crime scene. The whole damn floor is closed.”

“She’s here, I know it. And she’s in trouble.” I leaned toward him, my voice urgent. “Listen, you need to call the police right now and tell them to come quick because a girl’s life is in danger.”

“Don’t you got a cell phone?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure if…well, I’d rather not…uh…talk to the police at this point. It would be better if you did.”

He gave me a knowing smirk and went back to his paper.

“What the hell is wrong with you? Did you hear what I just said? Trinity is up there! She’s with a man named Jimson Weed, who is a killer. He’s the one who—”

The man slowly folded the newspaper in a neat square and placed it on the counter. “Where you think you at, the Hilton? You want me to call the goddamn police? Sure, I’ll call the goddamn police. Watch me!”

He picked up the phone, dialed 911, then repeated what I’d just told him, giving the address of the motel and his number. With a triumphant grin, he placed the phone back on the hook.

“What did they say?” I asked.

“What do you think they said?”

“Are they coming?”

“Yeah, that’s what they said. They said they were on their way, and they will be here…in an hour or two.”

“But a man was murdered here on Tuesday night! Do they realize that? Did you tell them what I said?”

“Didn’t you just hear me tell them?” He cocked his head and glared at me. “Now, you listen to me, lady. I call the goddamn cops at least five times a night about mess going on around here, and you know how long it takes them to come? Half the time, my shift is over when they stroll through the door. They don’t give a shit about this place or anybody in it. As far as they’re concerned, people who come in here deserve what they get.”

“But you know Trinity! Why don’t you—”

He looked at me contemptuously. “Yeah, I do know Trinity, and I know she didn’t have nothing to do with that murder like you said, and I know she don’t come here at this time of night because she’s a good kid, and I know she ain’t nowhere in this place. I called the cops for you, that’s all I’m going to do, because the person I don’t know is
you
! For all I know, you’re just some nut come in here off the street, carrying on about some murder that ain’t gonna happen. You got trouble with the police your own self. Why should I listen to you?”

“But—”

He glanced at my card. “I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do, Miss Tamara Hayle Private Investigator. I’m going to give you the benefit of a doubt, since I’m a nice guy and want to finish my paper in peace. I’m going to let
you
look for whoever it is you’re looking for, so you can get the hell out of my face. You want to look for some kid, be my guest.” He tossed me a key ring filled with keys. “Half are empty anyway since that murder. But knock before you go in, and bring these back in fifteen minutes. Don’t use the elevator; it’s been broke all week.”

I stood there a moment, too stunned and angry to move, then ran up to the second floor, found Room 211, listened at the door, and opened it.

“What the fuck?” A gray-haired white man, butt-naked, with penis erect, jumped off his partner and came toward me. I slammed the door and ran down the hall. I dashed up two flights, found 411, banged on that door, then opened it. Nobody there. Midway to the fifth floor, I stopped. He would take her to where her mother was killed. That was how he would cover it. He knew that the guidance counselor had warned Sweet Thing about Thelma Lee’s obsession with her dead mother. He would make her prediction come true.

I ran down to the third-floor landing and onto the floor. Thelma’s words came back, about spirits living in the place where they died, and I thought about her mother, whose legacy had caused one daughter’s death and who never knew the truth.

I took off my shoes and walked barefoot to 311, careful to be quiet, and stood outside the door to get my bearings. I leaned toward the door and heard nothing. I unlocked it, thankful that this cheap motel had no security chains. I cracked it, peeked inside.

A noose dangled from the light fixture in the ceiling. I knew how he would use it. A knife was on the dirty carpet, still stained with blood. Thelma Lee lay sprawled across the bed, her mouth stuffed with her black T-shirt, her hands handcuffed behind her back. She rocked back and forth, sobbing as she did so. She saw me, and I put my finger to my lips. A light came into her eyes. The toilet flushed, and she began to tremble. I stepped back into the hall, closed the door, left it cracked. Jimson Weed grabbed Thelma Lee and shook her hard, muttering as he did so.

“I killed you once, now I got to do it again? Why you got to come back from the dead, Lily Sweets? Why you got to come back from the dead?” He swung his arm around her neck, holding her in the crook of his elbow, choking off her breath in what cops call the “sleeper hold.” Soldiers knew it, too, I remembered. Trained killers like he used to be. It can kill a person in moments or render them unconscious. She fell against him, head limp on her chest. He tossed her on the bed, then slowly dragged the bed directly under the noose. I guessed what he would do. He would hang her from it and watch as it choked out her life.