The Sea Grape Tree (27 page)

CHAPTER FIFTY

S
ecuring her easel with one hand, Sarah swooped a line of acrylic up the large page Roper had given her. She held her breath with the boldness, the bigness of it. After several more stripes, she dabbed her brush in the dark green paint on the palette and started feathering in the narrow leaves springing from the stalks. Her subject was the bamboo grove encircling her patio. Once unsightly to her, she now welcomed the privacy it afforded from passing cars and the curiosity of strangers and journalists who wanted to see
the Englishwoman who was kidnapped
.

She missed her sea grape tree. She thought of it often, saw its flat, red-veined leaves outside her cell window, wondered who would look at it now. Who would learn what it taught about perseverance and survival, about living behind a wall of jagged glass? Maybe a dog, she decided, a dog grateful for its shade.

The fluttering in her chest hadn't stopped yet, although she could feel it starting to slow with her painting. Her hand holding the brush was only shaking a little. It felt good to paint again, her way, she knew now, to soothe the anxiety that had plagued her for two decades. Since her release the day before, there'd been no rest. Even the bedside lamp that stayed on all night hadn't helped her to sleep. When she did doze toward morning, she'd dreamed of being buried alive in a coffin lined with a pink sheet, and she'd awakened suddenly and moaned into her pillow.

There was no escaping the reminders. Every minute of her ordeal was replayed either in her head or in her reluctant words. Earlier that morning, Sonja had come to tell her that a Sergeant Neville Myers was there to see her. The man was waiting for her with a young corporal who'd lugged all her baggage into the living room. Squeezed into his uniform and squeaky shoes, the sergeant had spent an hour asking her questions, the corporal taking notes, and she'd tried to be patient. She'd shown him her sketches of the room where she'd been held captive, but he didn't seem interested. He seemed to have other things in mind.

“And you say you didn't know these men before they took you in the car?” he'd asked her twice.

“I'm totally sure,” she'd snapped the second time.

When the sergeant got to his feet, Sarah had jumped up. “Why didn't you come looking for me? In England—”

“No one reported you missing,” Myers had said, and shrugged, as arrogant as any London copper. As soon as they left, she'd returned to her room and set up to paint as far from the ringing phone as possible. There was nothing she could do about the swirling thoughts but try to paint them away.

“Visitors?” a hesitant voice said behind her. It was Danny at the open door to her bedroom. He was barefooted, his face and arms sweaty.

“Of course.”

He walked across the patio's flagstones and kissed her upturned cheek. “If you want to paint—”

“No, it's fine, honestly,” she said, swirling her paintbrush in the jar of water. “Did you walk down?”

“Ran on the beach, needed it.” He sank into a lounge chair and pulled up his shorts.

“Hey, you're working on the whole page!” he exclaimed softly. She nodded, unable to say that she'd lived every minute in her cell with terror and rage and longing, enough to fill many large sheets now that she was free.

“Sonja tells me the phone is ringing off the hook,” he said. He was trying to sound cheerful, she could tell. “Every newspaper and TV station in the Caribbean and England want to talk to you.”

She shrugged. “I'm not taking any calls, although I had to talk to a man from the British High Commission, from Intelligence or something.”

“You're a celebrity now. You thought about that? It'll probably make your paintings more valuable, particularly if you paint a Jamaican series, like you been saying.”

“That's what Penny said.”

“You spoke to her?”

“And my mother, last night.” She dipped the brush in a blob of lime-yellow and stroked on a few highlights. “They want me to come home right away.”

“Are you leaving?”

“Roper said I could leave or stay as long as I wanted, but I'll probably go next week. He's got his painting, the one I—the one of sea grape leaves. The police brought it with my things.”

“Aren't you going to keep it?”

“Oh, God, no.” She shuddered. “I don't need any reminders, and it was part of the deal. I think what he really likes is the painting of Man-Up on the back, even though it's unfinished. He calls it a
two-fer
.”

“How are you feeling, by the way?”

She pushed at her hair with one hand, the hair she'd decided to keep red. “Not quite the old self yet, but I'll get there.”

Danny stroked his scalp as he looked down. “Listen, I have to—I want to—I'm sorry I got you mixed up in this.”

“It's I who should be thanking you. I mean, you bloody well rescued me.”

“But if it hadn't been for me and my—my—the whole Janet thing, you wouldn't have gone through this. I didn't have a
clue
what she was up to, honest, but I still feel responsible.”

She squeezed more acrylic onto the palette. “Apology accepted, I suppose.”

“You may not believe me,” he said, leaning forward over clasped hands, his smoky eyes with their yellow circles pleading. “I was really
really
worried about you. That's why I came back. I had a hundred things doing in the States, but I couldn't—like I couldn't concentrate. I kept thinking about you, wondering why you left—just like that—and where you went to.” He reached out to touch her arm and she drew away, the gesture making him pause.

“I thought—I knew you were mad at me,” he said at last.

“I was.”

“When the housekeeper told me you'd left, I was stunned.”

She lay down her brush. “Stunned? How do you think it felt being kidnapped for no reason, not knowing what you'd done wrong? And I still can't believe that someone can disappear and nobody look for her. Thank God, Shad kept looking. If it hadn't been for him—I called him last night to thank him.”

“I was in touch with him—but if I'd thought—”

Heat rose from the base of her spine, steaming into her chest, until she had to stand up to give it space. “Thought what, Danny? That somebody could snatch me right under everybody's eyes and nobody notice? That you and everybody else could go on with your lives as if nothing had happened? Nobody even reported me missing, did you know that?” She tried to hold her voice down, tried and failed.

“I told Shad—he went to the police—”

“I've been
locked up
in a room, men with
guns
to my head, my life threatened almost every day.”

She put her hands on her hips and gave herself permission to speak as loudly as she had to. “I
waited
and
waited
for somebody, anybody, for Christ's sake, to come and get me. All I could think was that nobody cared if I lived or died. I thought you'd all
forgotten
about me. Then I started to imagine all kinds of things, that you'd had me kidnapped—”

“Me?”

“I thought you wanted me out of the way, or those two men you were with when I first met you, maybe, had kidnapped me for—I don't know—money or something.”

Danny shook his head. “Alphonsus is an Anglican minister, and his brother has a grocery store. Why would you—?”

“
Dammit,
Danny!” she shouted. “What do you expect? My mind was all over the place. I was in
prison,
for God's sake. You have no idea what I've been through. I was terrified the whole time. All I had were my thoughts, my suspicions to keep me company. I even thought Roper had me kidnapped because he didn't want to buy my ticket home.”

“Oh, God, I'm so glad we found you.”

“I could have
died
and no one—”

“If I'd had any idea—but I swear to you, I thought you'd just—
left,
you know, because you were angry with me. You had every reason to leave. I'd told you I'd broken off with Janet—then I got back with her. I couldn't blame you for being angry. I called Penny—”

“Much good it did me.”

“—and she said you hadn't come back, and that's when I started to get worried. Then Shad found your passport.” He pulled the dark blue booklet out of his shorts pocket and handed it to her. “He ask me to give it back to you, by the way—and we knew you were still here. That's why I came back to Largo. I'm just glad we got to you in time.”

She answered by staring at the bamboo, unmoving, and he walked to the edge of the patio and turned around, his forehead knotted.

“Sarah, I want you to tell me the truth.” The great arms were helpless at his sides. “Were you raped?”

Sonja had asked the same question. The writer's perky voice had lowered when she placed a bowl of soup in front of Sarah the night before. She'd put one hand on her trembling back and leaned over her shoulder.

“Did anyone—you know—
hurt
you, Sarah?” she'd asked. “Maybe we should report it.” No one, not her mother, not her father, had ever asked her that before.

The question had come after Roper had apologized for—
everything,
he said before rushing out of the kitchen. Sonja had sunk into the chair beside her, miserable, explaining that they hadn't called the police because they were sure she was furious with them, especially with Roper (
he can be so damn controlling,
the writer had said with tears rolling down her cheeks). They were too embarrassed to try to call her in London, she said. They'd thought she'd call when she was ready. A kidnapping was the last thing on their minds. Everything had been cleaned out of her room, after all, and she'd had reason enough to leave. She'd begged Sarah's forgiveness and Sarah had said she forgave her, although she hadn't, part of her still behind the blue wall.

Danny leaned over in front of her, the dove-gray eyes not allowing her to escape the question again. “Talk to me, Sarah. Did he rape you?”

It was her turn to walk away until the bamboo stopped her. She reached out and grabbed two slender stems. The leaves felt stickier and sharper than she'd expected, not rounded and comforting like sea grape leaves.

“No, he didn't,” she said without turning her head. “He tried, but I wouldn't let him—I got this enormous—wave of strength, and I—I couldn't let him do it.” The rage was subsiding, allowing her to breathe even though her voice was shaking. “Got a bit dodgy before you lot came in, but I was fighting and kicking like hell. I told myself that if there was ever a time to die, it was now. If there was ever something I would die for, it was—to protect myself. Nobody would get away with it ever again, not this time.
No
man would—”

“What do you mean
not this time
?”

She shook her head wordlessly, the anesthesia of twenty years putting the words to sleep. Danny came up behind her and slipped his arms around her waist. He kissed her long neck gently, like he was blessing her.

“Take all day, all week, all month if you have to, years if you need to, but we're going to talk about it.”

She turned and buried her face in his still-damp T-shirt, smelling his odor, seeing herself as an egg nestling into his earth. It was her series of paintings come alive, never to be painted but to be lived. And inside of her, she felt a cracking and opening, and sensed the hollowness filling up with a river of tears, heard the sobs of a hysterical teenager, and knew it was finally her turn to make a fuss.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

T
he music was sweet, flowing right into Shad's and Beth's swaying bodies. She was wearing the orange dress he loved, the one with the neckline he had to snuggle in close to enjoy. All around them, the dance floor—the restaurant reborn—was packed with dancers, even Horace MacKenzie with his date, a buxom woman nobody knew. They were all moving to Ford's trumpet as he wound through “My Mother's Eyes,” one of the classics he'd said when he introduced it. Around the bar the fairy lights blinked on and off, almost in time to the music.

“Your cousin Junior playing nice on the guitar,” Beth murmured as she rocked in his arms.

“I promised to run the bar for his next dance party.”

“We should have more dancing here, man.”

Shad looked down at the tops of her breasts glowing orange inside the dress. He drew her closer, glad she was his woman, glad he wouldn't have to kill Horace or even curse him out. “The boss can't afford no live music. We lucky tonight.”

“We lucky you alive, you mean.”

“Pshaw, man, I not going nowhere.”

“I should fling away that detective book. It only causing you to get into all this
cass-cass
confusion. Every few months is another excitement, somebody trying to shoot you or something.” She pulled back and looked at him hard. “You know what would happen to me and the children if you dead?”

“Not a thing, now you making big money at the library.”

“I
serious
!”

“Just keep going to church and praying for me. You always say prayers is powerful.”

She nestled close and sucked her teeth right in his ear. “Powerful enough to make you get married, you mean.”

She looked at him again, chin down, her no-joke look. “If July come and go and we not married, is trouble, you hear me, Shadrack Myers?”

At the back of the restaurant, the end of the song was approaching with a long final note from Ford's trumpet. When he finished, the dancers on the floor clapped and hooted.

“Beautiful!” Danny called. Beside him in her aqua dress, Sarah continued clapping after everyone stopped.

“Thanks, folks,” Ford said into the mike, nodding in Sarah's direction. “We're going to take a little break now and we'll be back in ten.”

Shad walked behind the bar to check on Tiger, one of the wayward village men he'd set straight who now did bartending for big parties. Solomon was slouched on Shad's stool grinning from ear to ear, like he was serving himself as much as he was serving the customers. At the end of the counter, Maisie was selling beef patties and plantain tarts, the cash in a jumble in front of her.

“You need help, Miss Maisie?” Beth called, and the woman beckoned her over.

The bar counter was filling up with thirsty dancers and Tiger raced to fill orders. Rising reluctantly from his stool, Solomon took an order for three beers from a group of young women still swaying to the music. Shad placed the Red Stripes on the counter and Tiger collected the cash.

Making their way through the crowd, Danny and Sarah joined Eric, Lambert, and Jennifer, who were sipping wine at one end of the bar.

“Drinks on the house for the handsome couple,” Eric called to Shad, and the bartender shook his head. The boss must be getting soft in his old age, giving away free drinks and playing the odds with Danny, calling him handsome. He was attractive, maybe, tall like the Englishwoman, but they looked odd together. Sarah was pale like a baby chick, and Danny dark and sturdy like a tree. Janet had looked better with him. She was evil itself, but they'd looked more like a couple. It just went to show, two people could look good together and still be poison.

“Look like we making money tonight, eh, Solomon?” Shad commented to the man at his elbow. “We don't have a crowd like this in a long time. I think we making enough money to get us through another few months, what you think? Like how we don't have to pay Ford nothing. He even paying the musicians himself, say is to give thanks that Sarah come home safe.”

“But it don't seem right without Janet,” Solomon sighed. “She would have like the party. I don't know what make her mix up in all that drug business with Lizard girlfriend.”

“Queen of diamonds, that what she call herself, right?” Beth reminded them. “She forget to tell you the diamonds she was talking about coming from cocaine and ganja.”

Maisie handed a customer a bag of patties and brushed crumbs off her hands. “She make her bed, she have to lie in it,” she declared.

“She making her bed in Port Antonio jail tonight,” Shad said, “she and all Gecko posse. And they don't even make a dollar yet.” He placed two beers on a tray and walked them over to Eric's group.

“I thought you had the night off,” Danny said as he took his bottle and handed Sarah hers.

“I just helping out,” Shad said.

Jennifer touched Shad's arm, her bracelets tinkling. “I hear you were helping out big-time the other day, too.”

“Your husband don't tell you he saved us?” Shad replied. “If he didn't come in—”

“Good thing you spotted that woman, man,” Eric said to Lambert.

“How did you grab her, anyway?” Sarah asked, leaning one hand on Danny's shoulder like she wanted to stay glued to his side.

Lambert waved his wineglass. “After Danny and Shad knocked on the door, we saw Danny and that man—what was his name?”

“Slim Jim,” Shad threw in. “The sergeant said he owned the house, a longtime criminal.”

“Yes, so we see him and Slim Jim fall to the floor fighting,” Lambert continued, “and we know we have to do something. I drive along the side of the wall around the house and we get out, but we can't climb over the wall because of the damn glass. So, we're creeping along beside the wall when a taxi pulls up to the front gate—and who should jump out of the taxi but the woman, Francine, whatever her name is.”

“Franchette,” Shad corrected him.

“We decided to split up,” Eric said, nodding.

“I catch up with the woman as she's opening the gate,” Lambert continued. “She sees me and starts to run toward the house, but I grab her and drag her up the driveway to the door—and she's cursing and fighting me the whole time.”

“Thank God, Janet arrived after in her cousin's taxi,” Danny said, chuckling. “If they'd come together, boy, you woulda had two crazy women to deal with.”

“When you walk in the door with Gecko”—Shad shook his head—“I swear to you, you look like an angel—”

“With a devil on his arm!” Danny added.

“I didn't even know she was the leader of the gang,” Lambert put in, looking as bewildered as Lambert could look. “All I was thinking was that she'd make a good hostage.”

“You got in the way of history, boy,” Eric said. “She would have been Jamaica's first woman don.”

“I still have a question for you, Eric,” Jennifer said. “How'd you make the car alarm go off?”

“I knew all hell would break loose once Lambert went in the house with a hostage. And then I saw Janet pull up in the other taxi, and I knew I had to do something. I had this idea that I would ram the gate with the car or something—I hadn't even thought it through or anything—but the damn car door was locked when I got back to the car. I was sure Lambert had left the key in the ignition, so I tried pushing the window down so I could pull up the door lock—and the thing went off! The loudest fucking alarm (sorry, ladies) I ever heard in my entire life, right in my ears.”

“Best mistake you ever made, boy,” Lambert said, shaking his head.

“What I loved,” Danny added with a sharp nod, “was how Sarah kicked Man-Up's leg in. I couldn't believe it was the quiet woman I knew.” He looked at his companion with mock amazement. “You saved us, you know that?”

She wagged her head at him. “I suppose I did, really. I was so—so furious with Man-Up for roughing me up, and I could have killed Gecko for kidnapping me. I swear to God, it was all or nothing for me at that point.”

“It give us time to jump up and hold Batsman,” Shad said with undisguised glee, and, with a whinny and a spin on his heel, Shad did what Shad did best. He reenacted the entire scene from start to finish: Danny and Slim-Jim falling to the floor, Man-Up running in zipping up his pants, he and Danny getting tied up by the skinny man, Lambert breaking in with Franchette, Janet trying to battle Lambert from behind, the alarm shocking them all, Sarah kicking Man-Up and punching the daylights out of Janet, and, at the end, there wasn't a person who wasn't roaring with laughter, Sarah with tears in her eyes.

“What I want to know,” Danny said when the laughter subsided, “was how Shad knew the young guy, Batsman, was Lizard's brother.”

“Easy, man,” Shad said, a warm feeling inside him, knowing he knew something that the rich American didn't. “He brought his baby to show Carthena, and she is Lizard family. They all look so much alike, same short people, same round face, it hard to miss the likeness. Then Batsman and Franchette call each other by home names, not street names—only family do that.”

“That's right, she called him Bertie,” Lambert recalled.

“He was either brother to Franchette or Lizard, but he stumpy like Lizard, so I took the chance.”

“And Clementine, the helper who took care of me, was his mother,” Sarah put in.

“Mother to Janet, Carthena, and Bertie,” Jennifer said, counting them off on her fingers.

“And don't forget Lizard,” her husband reminded her. “Mother to the don himself.”

“A real family affair,” Danny said.

Eric waved his glass around the group. “Does anyone know anything about this Franchette?”

“She come from Bog Walk, near Kingston,” Shad said. “My cousin tell me that she living with Lizard five years now. You can't live with a man like that and not get into the business. What make her different was that she was planning her own operation. Lizard is working England now, but they can't touch him yet—so Neville say. She was going to start the American branch, like how she don't have no record.”

“Lizard must be some kind of a liberated man, to let the girlfriend head part of the operation,” Jennifer said, winking at her husband like it was a private joke.

“I bet police hoping they can get to Lizard through Gecko,” Shad said, “make her talk.”

“The whole thing was—I don't know—kind of flimsy,” Eric commented. “I mean, kidnapping Sarah in order to get a visa—how crazy is that?”

“That's how most small businesses start,” Danny whipped back, “with one crazy idea.”

“It was actually quite brilliant when you think about it.” Surprised eyes turned to Sarah, who had a new shimmer of importance about her. “I was the only fly in the ointment. They already had Danny lined up—” She glanced at her dance partner, who looked away guiltily.

“And they'd set up an infrastructure ready to swing into action as soon as Janet got up to the States—” Jennifer added.

“—with Lizard's experience behind them,” Lambert said, finishing his wife's sentence. “Not to mention millions hanging in the balance if they'd succeeded.”

“I guess all they needed was one small detail—the visa,” admitted Eric.

“A little obeah and Sarah out of the way,” Danny said, “they thought it would be all tied up.” He stroked his companion's hand as he said it.

Roper and Sonja joined the group, glasses already in hand. “Sorry we're late,” Sonja said. “A policeman came to ask all kinds of questions about Carthena.”

“They're going to charge her, right?” Sarah asked.

“Apparently not,” Roper said, dropping his eyes. “We've fired her, of course, but—”

“But she was an
accomplice,
for God's sake,” Sarah interrupted him. “She
must
have packed my bags and handed them over.”

“She denies it,” Sonja said, “and there's no way to prove it, since there were no witnesses. Plus, she's cooperating with the police. There seems to be some bad blood between Janet and herself that goes way back. Plus, Carthena is furious with Franchette for getting their mother—what's her name?”

“Clementine,” Sarah said.

“Right, for getting her involved and causing her blood pressure to go up, but she's even angrier with Janet for bringing their little brother into the whole thing, and he just got out of the Pen. She's singing like a bird, told them that Janet and Franchette had been planning the business for a couple years now. No love lost between them, apparently.”

Shad frowned. “If Carthena was angry with Franchette, why'd she call to warn her?”

“She didn't,” Roper said. “According to what she told the police, she called her mother to tell her what had happened and the mother told Franchette, and she must have called Janet.”

“And to think,” Shad said, the man who usually knew everything in Largo, “that nobody in Largo knew that Janet and Carthena was sisters, that they were even related.”

“Or that the woman in the bar with Carthena was a don—or a don in waiting,” Sarah added.

“A wicked family, Lord!” said Beth, who'd just joined the circle holding two beers. She handed Shad a bottle.

“Janet never talked about her family—a brother who's a don and another brother who just got out of prison,” Danny protested, looking around at his companions, each engrossed in his or her drink. Shad fingered the edge of his starched collar. He knew they were all thinking the same thing: that the man from New York had been running after
pum-pum,
trading green-card promises for a piece of ass.

From outside the circle came Ford's low drawl. “You guys like the set?”

“Brilliant,” Lambert said.

“I love the last song,” Beth said, slinging her arm through her man's. She gave Shad her one-up smile. “Maybe Ford can play it at our wedding reception in July, right, sweetness?”