Tea Leafing: A Novel (8 page)

The three girls piled
into bed around Birdie, wedging her in so she couldn’t thrash. Using hardcover
coffee table books as trays, they tore into their Mexican feast.

“Suspended, huh?” Mary
Jane peeled the wrapper back on her soft taco, “Are you gonna’ go to another
club or stick it out?”

“I don’t know. I’m too
mad to think straight tonight. I’m sure I’ll have an opinion about it tomorrow.
I just can’t believe he had the gall to say that we’re lucky . . . Prick.”

“Yup,” Grace mumbled
with a full mouth, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

The three chatted about
the evening and finally decided to crash at Birdie’s since dawn was breaking
and morning rush hour had begun. Thank God for blackout drapes.

CHAPTER 11

Sam was the first up.
She shuffled around the loft trying to wake up. Starting a pot of coffee she
noted the digital clock read 12:17 p.m. Birdie’s bed was certainly comfy, even
with three other people, Sam slept like a log.

The girls were a motley
crew before they’d had their morning drinks. After being rousted from a dead
sleep, silence prevailed until Sam passed out beverages. She handed Birdie an
obnoxiously large pair of stark white, plastic rimmed Jackie Onasis sunglasses
to help her deal with the sunlight. They passed around a container of make-up remover
wipes since no one thought to wash it off before they fell asleep. Hair
disheveled and make-up smeared made them look like a troupe of tired, slutty
clowns.

As they were settling
into their second cup, Mary Jane lit her first cigarette.

“I’m a little surprised
you have a coffee machine Bird.”

Birdie was stretched
out on the bed, sunglasses on, staring into space. “Most of the people I’m
sleeping with drink coffee.” She deadpanned, turning her bug-eyed sunglasses in
Mary Jane’s direction.

Mary Jane spit her
mouthful of coffee back into her cup, laughing.

“I know you hens think
I’m a bloody Cretin, but I do occasionally think about company. ‘Ave a look in
the freezer Mary Jane - fresh box of fags, your brand even. Sam’s favorite
lemonade is in the pantry next to Grace’s gum sweeties.”

Grabbing her cell
phone, Sam headed into the bathroom. Settling onto the seat, she thumbed her
phone. Three messages. She couldn’t help but hope one might be from Gio, who, having
realized the error of his insensitive ways, was offering an apology. But she
knew better.

“Sam, it’s Amanda.
Could you call me whenever you get this? I need to talk to ya’ll. I’ve found
something I think you need to see. I don’t care if it’s late, or early, or
whatever.” The other two messages were also from Amanda. Her tone in each
successive message intensified slightly. Worried, Sam hit call back. Amanda
picked up on the second ring.

“Sam?” Amanda’s voice
seemed strained, fighting background noise that sounded like wind.

“Hey babe! What’s goin’
on?”

“Where are you?”

“I just got up, we’re
all at Birdie’s. What’s going on? You sound stressed.”

“I’m just north of
Macon, heading your way. Can I meet ya’ll somewhere? I really need to see you.”

“Yeah, absolutely. Do
you wanna’ come to the loft?”

“Sure, that’ll work. Can
you tell me how to get there from 75?’

Sam recited directions
for Amanda and asked, “Are you ok? You sound, well, freaked.”

“I am freaked, but I’d
rather not talk about it over the phone. I should be there in about forty-five
minutes.”

“Okay, when you’re at
the gate, look up Beatrix McGregor, that’s Birdie. See you soon.”

Sam knew Birdie’s legal
name because she’d gone to court with her on several occasions. One trip for
parking tickets, two for drunk and disorderly and another two for speeding.
Birdie had threatened bodily harm if Sam ever let “Beatrix” slip. Sam assured
her that it wasn’t awful and in fact was
kinda
’ cute.
But Birdie wasn’t having it.

CHAPTER 12

The phone rang and
Birdie buzzed Amanda in.

Amanda’s hands shook as
she took a package, neatly wrapped in cloth from her backpack. Setting it in
front of her on the floor, she carefully pulled back the edges of the
pillowcase, revealing a leather-bound journal.

“It’s her diary.”
Amanda murmured.

Icy fingers stretched
across Sam’s scalp as Mary Jane ran her hands up and down her arms, trying to
smooth the goose flesh away. Birdie pushed her sunglasses up onto the top of
her head, barely containing the wild twists of red hair that stuck out in every
direction. Her eyes glazed a bit as she looked down at it. Grace gasped, “But
that’s private. Should we be looking at Lena’s personal things like this? I
mean, after she’s gone? I just want my stuff burned, please don’t read my crazy
notes to myself if I die.”

Sam took Grace’s hand
and caught her eye. “She’s gone Grace. Nothing we read is going to change how
we feel about her. And if something happens to you, it’d be the same. No matter
what you think you’re hiding, we know you better.” She smiled a little. “We
would be the ones who get rid of your porn and vibrators before your family
gets there.”

Grace blushed.

“I don’t care if me mum
finds porn here, I just don’t want her to find the homemade stuff I’m in.”
Birdie instructed.

“Ahem.” A wide-eyed
Mary Jane nodded briefly towards Amanda who had stopped shaking and started
smiling.

“Sorry Amanda, I guess
that was pretty off.”

Amanda grinned, “Thanks
for not treating me like a little kid. You guys each remind me of a different
piece of Alex. Anyway, don’t worry Grace. She clearly meant for this to be
found. And read.”

CHAPTER 13

Lena had gone home to
visit her family a week and a half before she was killed. Amanda guessed it was
then that she hid her diary behind one of the loose cedar planks that lined the
large walk-in-closet dividing their rooms. It was the secret space they had
shared since they were little girls, leaving notes and presents for one
another. Lena must have known that sooner or later Amanda would look to see
what lingering mementos were hidden behind the wall, only to discover the book
of Alex’s innermost thoughts and confessions. It was clear that if the storm
had blown over, Alex could have gone back, retrieved the diary and no one would
have been the wiser. If Amanda found it, Alex would have told her the truth.

Amanda only stayed at
the loft for an hour or so, having to be back in Savannah by dark. She lied to
her parents, telling them she was going to a performing arts festival in the
historic district and would be out all day. She prayed they didn’t think to check
her odometer. Atlanta was a solid four-hour drive each way. She was exhausted
by the time she pulled past the guardhouse at the entrance of the gated
community where they lived.

Amanda felt good about
leaving the diary and all its clippings and scribbled notes with the girls.
She was comforted by the feeling they’d know what to do with it
.
Her initial thought had been to give it to her parents, or perhaps the police
so Alex’s murderers could be tracked down. The investigating detectives had
filled her parents in on Lena’s job while they were questioning the family
about her murder. After the funeral, her parents made several comments about
her sister’s murder being a consequence of her lifestyle. Not that they felt
she deserved to die, but that if she’d walked the straight and narrow no harm
would ever have come to her. She could tell that they felt Alex invited her own
death. It broke Amanda’s heart to think about those spoken words. She knew it
was a defense mechanism. If they could name the reason, identify the
fault,
they could save Amanda from suffering the same fate.
Their protective grip on her had tightened since Alex’s death. Amanda hoped it
was a knee-jerk reaction that would ease with time. She was beginning to feel
like she was suffocating.

She understood the
disdain for Alex’s job and friends, chalking them up to night crawlers that lived
on the underbelly of society. But Amanda saw things in a different light. The
light Alex had shown her during their long talks about her adventures, the
girls, and the side of life she’d never seen before. She was sure that if she
tried to talk to her parents about Alex, they would either dismiss her ideas as
sophomoric or be infuriated that Alex had somehow tainted her baby sister by
exposing her to dangerous elements. Life outside the walls of their sequestered
existence of golf, tennis and private education was to be discouraged. It was
dangerous.

In the end, Amanda had
decided turning the diary over to the foursome was the best thing to do.
Something deep within told her they would not allow Alex’s death to go
unpunished. Even if no one else wanted to dirty their hands with the task,
these women would track her killer to the ends of the earth and make that
person suffer in the most thoroughly imaginative way.

Amanda smiled to
herself as she punched the garage door opener.

CHAPTER 14

Sam set her bag down on
the kitchen counter and began sorting through the pile of mail she’d been
neglecting since the whole ordeal began. She dropped the envelopes into three
piles — bills, undetermined, and trash. Kicking off her shoes, she padded
over to the couch in her stocking feet. Even though she’d slept a solid eight
hours at Birdie’s, she was still feeling tired. Punching the ‘speaker’ button
on her cordless phone, she dialed into her voicemail system, making notes about
who had called and placing small stars next to those messages that required a
response.

Logging onto her
laptop, she scheduled bill payments. She sifted through the “maybe” pile of
mail, sorting it into a new “keep” pile and the existing trash pile. She
straightened all the papers and carried the stack of rejects to her shredder.
Fishing her tablet out of her bag, she settled herself back into the couch
cushions, pen poised for her favorite activity — list making. Nothing
soothed her nerves like a little organization. Labeling things in her apartment
was a guilty pleasure she indulged in when the daily stress closed in. The pads
she bought were lined on one side and gridded on the other so she could make
sketches and doodles of things she needed to remember in addition to her
printed list. This tablet was her own version of a diary, but rather than
thoughts, she recorded events, purchases, earnings, and interesting facts. To
most, it would have looked like a hodgepodge of scraps. But to Sam it was a
timeline. She took great comfort in ritual.

Flipping back through
the pages of her pad, she thought about what Lena had written. She wondered if
she would have been smart enough to leave such a detailed log of events in case
her notes would have to speak for her. Pulling the cloth-wrapped diary from her
bag, she leafed through the pages, letting her eyes skim the neatly penned
cursive.

She walked to her
computer and positioned the open diary on the glass plate of her scanner. Methodically,
she scanned every page, converting them to PDFs and saving them to a memory
stick attached to her keychain. She had been elected by the group to scan and
archive the contents of Lena’s diary since she had all the requisite equipment
and know-how to accomplish the task.

It took a few hours to
record the entire book, but in doing so, Sam had had the opportunity to reread
every page several times. She jotted cryptic notes onto the grid paper along
with her sketches and hooked the pen clasp into the spiral binding.

“I’m scared. I don’t
know where this will end.”

Those were the last
words Lena had written in the diary, save for the notation “FLW.”
 
In fact, “FLW” was the cryptic coda to
each of the last five entries Lena had made in the chronicle of her truncated
life.

Stopping to give her
thirsty plants some relief from the drama-induced drought, she put Shostakovich
on the stereo.

The task completed, she
headed out to drop the evidence in her safe deposit box.

CHAPTER 15

Sitting next to Grace
in an oversized, heated, massaging pedicure chair, Sam relaxed. A small Laotian
lady worked on her feet. Kneading out knots and sloughing away the nubs of dead
skin that built-up quickly from the eight-hour stints in platform shoes was a
big job. Rocky, her favorite nail guy, worked on one of her hands, massaging
and filing to perfection. Everyone at the salon knew Sam and Grace by name. In
fact, they knew a lot of strippers because they tip better than almost anyone,
earning them the royal treatment. Beauty being their business, it was all a
legitimate tax write-off.

The girls were always bumped
to the front of the line, even as walk-ins. The business types and
suburbanistas glared as the girls were ushered back to the prime real estate.

“Tell me what you know,
Rocky.” Sam said to the large Laotian man gently working her cuticles back with
an orange stick wrapped in cotton.

The Rock was the nail
man of choice because he kept Sam laughing, but also because he was one of the
best nail techs in town. Standing at an impressive six foot three, Rocky had a
boyish handsomeness and was straight as an arrow. Straight enough to realize
that doing nails surrounds you with women all day long. Rocky’s station
overflowed with the tall, gold-tone trophies he’d won for his modified Acura at
specialty car shows. He had framed articles from magazines that featured his
ride hanging over a small Buddha guarding his emory boards. He’d told Sam that
he had come to the states when he was five. His English was perfect. He had a
slightly thuggish, hip-hop way about him, but he was harmless.