Authors: Randall Peffer
Old School Bones (5 page)
“I don’t know, Dr. P, I don’t think Michael Decastro believes us!” Gracie squirms in the over-stuffed chair, eyes dart around the office.
The Director of Minority Affairs Office is a converted classroom in the foreign language building. She has decorated it with amazing art. Theatre masks from Malaysia, mahogany statues from Africa, Chinese scroll paintings, a Wampanoag medicine stick carved from the rib of a pilot whale. Stuff she used to keep in her classroom when she was an English teacher here. Stuff from before she gave up teaching to play Mother Teresa to Tolchie’s minority kids.
“He thinks we’re tripping on grief and paranoia.” Tory leans back in her chair, runs her hands up the back of her neck, rakes the last of the melting snow out of her blond hair.
“Give him a little time, girls. I can see why he wants to talk to her mother. A healthy skepticism can be a good thing.”
As soon as she says the words, she feels something starting to shrivel in her chest, her hands going numb. Has to spin in her desk chair to bring back the flow of blood. She hates the idea of having to defend him before these girls.
Damn Michael Decastro.
“Well maybe skepticism is a good thing when you are conducting a chemistry experiment … or watching some cheesy love triangle thing on
Grey’s Anatomy.
But what if there’s a killer on the loose? You know, like what if he’s coming after Gracie?”
“Yeah, what if right this minute Freddie Kruger is stalking my tender, young, Hong Kong booty?”
She can’t decide whether these girls are just impatient and milking the drama or are genuinely scared. “You want me to call the police? If you feel in danger, we have to tell them.”
The girls look at each other, scowl.
“They’ll just tell us we better take a leave of absence. Like go home you twitchy chicklets.”
“Maybe they’re right.”
“Doc. We’ve been through all this before. We’re scared, like hell yes. But we don’t want to leave. We have to stand by Liberty. If we quit on her, then maybe this whole thing is going to happen again to someone else. Maybe these secret societies are—”
“You realize all this about secret societies is a lot of speculation. A conspiracy theory?”
“You think that note Liberty got just came out of the blue? After almost three years of clear sailing at T-C, someone suddenly decides to hit her with that racist crap?”
“I don’t know. The police didn’t seem too suspicious. So that’s where we hope Michael Decastro can help us. Let’s give him a chance. We just dragooned the poor guy into being our knight in shining armor!”
She feels the shriveling in her chest again.
“You said he was all hung up about how someone could have faked her suicide.”
“I don’t think we should be talking about this. It’s too awful, too—”
“Doc! We’re not little kids. Come on!”
She swallows a thick mouthful of saliva, wishes she could rush out of here. To someplace where she felt safe herself. Her lover’s long arms.
“He said that if someone had tried to slit Liberty’s wrists there would have been some signs of a struggle.”
“Not if she was unconscious.” Tory’s voice sounds suddenly pumped, defiant.
“But how …?”
“You know, Doc, like in the movie ET?” Gracie shifts to the edge of her chair. “When the science teacher made the kids drop those cotton balls soaked with chloroform in the jars. To put the frogs to sleep before the dissection.”
Her face sours. “I think that kind of thing only happens in Hollywood. If someone had drugged Liberty, the medical examiner would have discovered it during the autopsy.”
“Maybe not.”
“What are you saying?”
“You ever hear of roofies?”
“What?”
“Date rape drugs.”
“Yes.”
“They leave your system in hours. And they can kill.”
WHEN he unzips the side curtain of his jeep on the shotgun side, she leans so far in she is almost close enough to touch her nose to his. Her breath is smoky with the sharp scent of cinnamon Altoids. Her hair a bleach-blond fro, epic proportions. Tina Turner.
“You want to party?”
He glances ahead down the business strip of Blue Hill Avenue in Mattapan, then into his rearview mirror. Looking for cruisers or the plain Ford sedans of the vice squad. Except for a pusher and a pimp sharing a forty from a brown bag outside a convenience store and three hookers passing a spliff at the bus shelter, no one else has come out tonight. Besides the snow plows. A gang of three grind south away from him just now, their orange lights flashing against three-foot banks of snow.
“Tedeeka?”
“It’s Teddie, honey. Can I get in? Do you have any idea how fucking nasty it is out here?”
He pauses for a second, catches her eye, tries to read her face. But it is a mask. Part rock star, part pirate wench. Beautiful, cruel. The eyes on fire from a recent fix. Crack or maybe crystal meth.
“Hey, cha cha cha, baby! Let me in or move it along. It’s freezing on the street.”
“Sorry,” he says, opens the door.
Her faux leopard coat flashes as she pounces in beside him. “What you have in mind?”
Your dead daughter,
he thinks.
Lost girls.
“Talk to me, honey.”
“You drink coffee?”
“She was a good girl, an angel, that one. Liberty. You hear what I’m telling you?”
“Is that why you sent her away to that boarding school?”
Her eyes sear him. “Fuck you, honey. She got a scholarship. Fuck you for asking!”
He takes a sip of his coffee, knows that after fifteen minutes of her flirting, bullshit, digression, he has finally touched the mother in her. The raw core. He rolls the coffee in his mouth. Now he wishes he had added a fourth pack of sugar.
“Yeah, right, fuck me for asking!”
She reaches across the jeep, puts her hand on his thigh. “Leave it be. You know what I mean? The hurt just too deep. I loved that child! And she knew it. Word! But nothing anybody can do to bring her back.”
“Sorry, but—”
“Dead is dead. We going to do something here? I got bills to pay. I can’t be wasting the night away … getting no action.” Her thumb rubbing the inseam of his jeans.
“Cristo,
Teddie. Talk to me.”
“I got to get back on my corner. My regulars will be coming by looking for me. You know what I mean?”
She tosses her empty coffee cup on the floor, grabs her enormous red purse, reaches for the door latch.
“Wait!” He grabs her hand away from the door. “I’ve got money.”
She tugs, tries to free her hand. Her eyes dart wildly around the inside of the jeep.
“Let me go. I don’t want your money. I don’t want your honky-ass questions. Why can’t you let my daughter rest in peace?”
He sees the tears pooling in those big black eyes. Hears her breathing, fast and shallow, sees her free hand going into the calf of her red vinyl boot, probably for her blade.
The end of the road for this chat.
So he drops her hand, hits the latch.
Her door swings open.
“OK. Go, Teddie. Sorry to have troubled you. My bad. I guess the cops got it right. Liberty couldn’t hack it anymore. So your daughter took the easy way out.”
She splits the jeep in a swirl of snow.
“Fuck you. Easy way!? The child was scared out of her mind. Thought someone might try to kill her.”
“She called you, didn’t she?”
They are in a diner now. Almost midnight. Her skin dusky, eyes red, glaring at the stack of pancakes on a plate in front of her.
“It was the night before she died?”
“She didn’t call but once a month or so. But when she did, we always talked good. Long.”
He toys with a forkful of Spanish omelette. Takes a bite. Listens for a lie, but feels something else. The miracle that was Liberty maybe.
“Like I said. She was an angel. Never held it against me what I do to earn the bread. She had a powerful faith, growing up in that church school she went to before Tolchester. Said it was God’s will. God’s will we love each other to death … I lost my baby.” Tears.
He feels the pain flow, ebb. Waits a while before he speaks again.
“But that last call … it was different? She was scared?”
“I don’t know what time she called. Late. Like I was at this after-hours joint in Roxbury. Me and some of the other girls, partying, looking for maybe one last trick to make our night.”
“She called you on your cell?”
“She said she wanted to come home. Like to the hood. Like fuck all those white folks. Some kind of terrible racist thing going down.”
He takes another bite of the omelette, screws up his face. Swallows hard.
“The note? It called her a ‘wog gash.’”
“She said it was something awful. I didn’t really understand. I couldn’t hear her very well. Lot of noise in the club, you know?”
“Anything else?”
“She was crying. I told her be cool. Give it a day. That school was a big opportunity for her. Don’t just piss it away because of one ignorant threat. There are ignorant people everywhere want to bully you. But …”
“But what?”
“She just kept saying,
I feel so lonely tonight, Mama. So scared.”
“
She mention any names? Another student, a teacher?”
“Just her friend, that China girl Gracie. Said Gracie was the only one who knew about the note.”
“I’ve got to ask you. You think that note could have put her in such a dark place, she would take her life? Or was there something else tearing her apart?”
She takes a tentative bite of pancake. “Liberty was always such a happy kid. You said you saw her videos. Sure she would get down sometimes, but it was like for fifteen minutes or so. We talk on the phone, she tells me some problem. Work it out for herself before we ever done talking. She was like that. A survivor.”
“But that last time …?”
“I thought it was pretty much the same old thing. She was on top of it when she hung up. Said she was going to pray on the problem, talk things over about the note and such next day with that Indian lady, Dr. Patterson. She was good to Liberty, you know? But she had her own life, too. Good-looking single woman. Boyfriends. Lot of guys sniffing around …”
He feels a jolt in his gut. Maybe he has been missing something, like the Drag Queen Tuki Aparecio’s boyfriend who ambushed him a year ago when he was representing Tuki in the Provincetown Follies murder case.
“What about boyfriends? Did Liberty have a boyfriend? Problems with a romance?”
“Kevin.”
His hand drops his forkful of omelette on his plate. He stares at the omelette like there’s something foul about the taste. “You ever meet him? She talk about him much?”
“Some. He’s a white boy.”
Sweat soaking the brown face. Fine white sand crusting over the cheeks. Her long, black hair trailing in the seaweed. The roar of the surf. What you going to do now?
“I think his father teaches at the school.”
“How long had she been seeing him?”
“Since last fall.”
“Any problems?”
“We didn’t talk that much about him. She just said he made her laugh.”
He suddenly grabs the bottle of squeeze ketchup and starts squirting it all over his omelette. “You think she was sexually active?”
“She said she was saving herself for marriage. I kid you not. It was something she picked up from that church school.”
“You get any sense he might have been trying to change her mind?”
“WHAT’S the matter, sweet?”
Danny’s hand starts raking up the back of her neck, lifting her hair in waves.
She shudders, pulls away. Lying on her side. Her eyes trace the shapes of tree limbs in the shadows cast by the moonlight on the bedroom wall. The comforter crushing her into the lumpy bed. Not her bed.
“Please …!” With a violent heave, she throws off the covers. Sits up.
“What?”
“I feel all itchy inside.”
“Just lie back … close your eyes … let me help you …”
She feels Danny easing her back onto the sheets. Lips on her belly. A gentle hand rising up her thigh. Her lover’s tenderness, desire. What she has always wanted, maybe, a focus on her own needs. For once. Not a man’s needs. But a lover whose body can give and give and give. Maybe unto death.
“Danny …”
“Relax … you’ve been under a mountain of stress.” Lips and tongue gliding along the horn of her hip. Fingers, frighteningly smart, finding their ways into secret coves. Her loins begin to roll, rise with the voice of Billie Holiday calling from the stereo: “All of Me.”
But her heart shouts.
Stop. Please.
“Stop!”
She sits up again, puts her face in her hands. “Love?”
“I feel like I want to rip off my skin.”
“Have a sip of wine and …”
She pushes the offered goblet away.
“I can’t do this tonight, Danny. God knows I want to … But I just can’t.”
“If it’s this place, we could go to somewhere more private like—”
“No. I don’t … I just can’t …”
“It’s OK.”
“No it’s not. You’ve been so patient and kind and generous and …” Her voice wet with sobs.
“Shsssssssssss …”
“I feel like something has been tearing me in half. Ripping me into short, hard little pieces.”
“Is it me?”
“Why did I let you stop me from seeing Liberty that night, from helping her?”
“You want to talk about it?”
Praise Allah. The tribal drums. Flutes. Dulcimers. Pounding. And now tears. Pleading. You want to kill me, American? Kill me now? Like the others?
“I can’t.”
“Did I ever tell you about Liberty’s mother?” She tries to relax the iron rods that are her arms, legs. Settle back in Danny’s arms. The bed frame creaks as they put the full weight of their backs against the antique maple headboard.
“The hooker?”
“Michael went to see her.”
“The fisherman you told me about.”
“The lawyer. My mother’s friend.”
“The hired gun Gracie made you—”
“He was my idea. I just need someone outside this whole mess with Liberty to help put this behind me. Tie up the loose ends.”
“You could have asked me.”
“You’re so busy … And I need you for this.” Snuggling. “How’d this guy find Liberty’s mom?”
“On the street.”
“He picked her up?”
“I don’t know.”
“But he’s one of these sick people you were talking about?”
“No. Damn. How do I know? My mother liked him a lot.”
“I heard that drag queen client of his on the Cape did too.”
“She told him something.”
“The queen?”
“Liberty’s mother.”
“What?”
“Liberty called her the night before she died.”
“Really?”
“Like while we were … you know?”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. She told her mother that I had a boyfriend sleeping over.”
A child calling for her. Pain in the voice. A tearing loose of the soul. A heart in free fall. Needing her.
“So? It’s nobody’s business but our own. We’re adults. Just because you live in a fishbowl doesn’t mean—”
“I don’t like it. Him asking about me. About us.”
“You don’t have to tell him anything. He works for you.”
“Not really. I’m not paying him. No one is. I think he sees himself acting on Gracie’s behalf. You know? If someone really killed Liberty, maybe Gracie is in danger too. She’s started calling him. She says she talks to him. A lot.”
“Jesus, I don’t know. I think these girls have gone way down the rabbit hole with their conspiracy theories. If it looks like a suicide, and smells like a suicide, it’s probably a suicide. Awful. But understandable.”
“But what if somebody wanted to hurt Liberty?”
“Why?”
“Maybe she found out something nobody wanted her to know about the existence of secret societies at T-C.”
“You think kids would kill her because of a club?”
“OK, it’s a long shot, I admit. But she did get a threat.”
“Did it mention one of these clubs?”
“No.”
“Well?”
“I don’t know. OK, maybe it was something else she did to make an enemy. You know Liberty had a boyfriend? Kevin Singleton.”
“Jack Singleton’s boy?”
“Captain of the track team. A senior.”
“Ummm.”
“What if he wanted more from her than she was willing to give?”
“So he slit her wrists, dumped her in the bathtub?”
“It makes me feel like there are nails exploding inside my heart.”
“I’m sorry you feel so miserable. I wish there was something I …”
“This talking helps. I need perspective.”
“There is absolutely no evidence that Kevin Singleton or anyone except Liberty hurt Liberty Baker.”
She says Michael has been saying the same thing—with great conviction. Until this afternoon.
“What changed?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Can I ask you a question? What do you think is in it for this guy Decastro? What does he care about Liberty Baker or Gracie or Tory or you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we all have some debts to pay the gods?”
“Maybe he has a thing for dead girls.”
