Too Far to Say Far Enough: A Novel (5 page)

I let out a long breath of relieved air. “I gotta tell ya, Maharry, I never heard an employer complain that his employee was ‘too smart.’”

He stopped midway into wiping saliva from his weedy moustache. “She complain about me? She did, I can see it on your face.”

“She did say you fussed at her.”

“I just want her to know she might be smart but she’s not smarter than old Maharry. Not when it comes to the car repair business.”

He poked his thumb in the general direction of the window that separated the repair bay from the front of the shop.

“You know what I got back there right now?”

I tried to see through the glass but as yellowed and wavy as it was I could only make out the vague shape of a black vehicle. Or it could have been a beached yacht. Hard to tell.

Maharry smacked his lips. “Big fancy Lincoln.”

“Owen Schatz’s car?” It was a ridiculous question. Owen’s car was brand new, although I wouldn’t put it past him to bring it in for repairs it didn’t need just to keep Sherry and Zelda working.

Maharry waved me off. “This is a special job. Guy said nobody else could figure out why it keeps breaking down, even over at the dealership. That’s because these new mechanics, all they can do is rely on computers.” He hammered the side of his hand into his chest. “Maharry isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty.”

That was obvious. I was sure those old digits hadn’t been clean since he first learned to use a crescent wrench.

“Daddy?”

Sherry marched around the end of the hubcap aisle. She skidded when she saw me.

“Is everything okay, Miss Angel?” she said.

“Actually, it is. Your dad just gave me a good report on Zelda.”

Her eyes popped slightly, but she nodded and turned to her father. “You didn’t take your pills this morning, Daddy.”

“I’m not taking those things. I’m not sick.”

“You will be if you don’t. I put them on the counter with a glass of water.”

Maharry scowled so deeply the only thing left visible was his nose. “I got to get some men in here. You women are driving me crazy.”

I held back a smile until he’d muttered himself out of sight across the shop. Sherry, however, was far from a grin.

“Is he okay?” I said.

“Blood pressure. You need anything else, Miss Angel? Because I need to go make sure he takes those meds.”

“I just need to know if you and
I
are okay. After our conversation the other day.”

She shifted her eyes to a wire wheel. “What conversation?”

“About Sultan. You left upset.”

“Because I want you to let it go and you won’t.”

“That’s hard to do when you’re the one who brings it up. Maybe not verbally, but you were thinking it.”

Sherry’s gaze moved from the shiny chrome to the ceiling. “Only because I know he’s not coming back.”

“You’ve heard from him?”

“No!”

“Then we don’t know—”

“That’s what I was trying to say to you. He’s got no reason to come back. Geneveve’s gone. Desmond is yours now. We’re all of us off the streets. He’s done.”

“Except for the revenge he obviously wanted last spring and didn’t get.”

Sherry tried to look at me, but once again her eyes darted, this time to some place beyond us both. “He knows if he comes back here that detective will be all over him.”

“Detective Kylie.”

“And Sultan knows he doesn’t have it like he used to.”

“What does that mean?”

“You told me he’s all deformed since he was shot. No girl is gonna work for him now. He can’t even drive a car. I’m telling you, he’s done.”

“I want to believe that. But for me he’s not done until I see him serving a life sentence. That’s the only way I’ll ever know Desmond is protected. I’m going to ask you this again: Do you know something—?”

She whirled to face me. “I just know, the same way you know things. But I can’t prove it so there’s no point in us discussing it anymore.”

I couldn’t answer. The thing that was strangling her had its fingers around my throat as well.

She straightened her ghostly shoulders. “So to answer your question, you and I are okay. We through here?”

Before I could answer she crossed the shop, once again calling, “Daddy?”

Sure. We were done. Until the next time I had reason to believe Jude Sultan Lowery was nearby. It was clear Sherry and I both hoped next time would never come. But in Sherry’s case, I still didn’t know why.

CHAPTER THREE

Friday mornings I always met with Hank, who invariably helped me put the piles on hold for an hour so I could focus on my own stuff. And I knew exactly what I wanted to put on the café table for discussion.

After I delivered Desmond at school on the bike—so his prepubescent “women” could be impressed by his arrival on a “bad-butt Harley”—I parked it at Palm Row and walked to St. George Street. I wanted to take advantage of the rare morning breeze that would seem like a figment of our imaginations by eleven o’clock. The start of a Florida September was infuriating that way. Besides, I only had to walk two blocks to where St. George was closed off from traffic so pedestrians could wander freely in the heart of St. Augustine’s historic district.

When I stopped to let a family of sulky kids pass so I could cross to the coffee shop I took a long look at the building Ms. Willa had bought for us. As she never tired of pointing out to me, it was a coveted piece of real estate just by virtue of its location. But our guys had made it even more enviable than it was when the Monk’s Vineyard owned it.

One of the HOG members was a contractor and had headed up a crew that built an outside stairway and shored up the balcony on the second story so Jasmine could set her plants out there, and widened the porch below to accommodate more tables. Inside Stan, a finish carpenter, had replaced the wine bar and the shelves with a counter and booths for Patrice’s Sacred Grounds customers.

Upstairs the dark apartment that had housed Ophelia’s former life was now a bright secondhand boutique, hung with castoffs donated by India’s customers, Ms.Willa’s wealthy friends, and, of course, Miss All-Hair. The rent Patrice paid us for the coffee shop on the lower level went straight to Sacrament House. Income from Second Chances Boutique hopefully would as well. Hopefully being the operative word.

Hank was sitting at our usual table on the porch, hair still in a red bandana. She’d shed her jacket, but she apparently wasn’t too hot for a caramel and hazelnut coffee. We’d have to be on the equator for her to turn that down.

She slid a menu across the table as I sat down. “Patrice has added some new items. The woman has the ministry of carbohydrates.”

I scanned the menu and groaned. “White chocolate and amaretto? Dark chocolate and banana? This is way more over the top than when she had the Spanish Galleon.”

“That’s because you give her a decent rate on the rent.”

“Toffee nut coffee? I can
not
bring Desmond here anymore. His teeth will decay just reading this.”

Patrice appeared on the porch, her long hippie hair lifting as she made her way toward us with an order of eggs Benedict. “What are you having, Miss Allison?” she said as she set the plate in front of Hank, who was virtually salivating.

“Café latte, Patrice,” I said.

She shook her bohemian head at Hank. “She’s so boring.”

“Give her two shots of espresso,” Hank said.

I stared at her as Patrice left us murmuring that her white chocolate raspberry truffle in a cup would be wasted on me anyway.

“What?” Hank said.

“Two shots?”

“I hope that’s going to be enough.”

“For?”

“For whatever you’re fighting with. Bring it.”

“Miss Angel!”

“Or not,” Hank said.

I didn’t have to turn around to know that Jasmine was on the outside stairs and that she was close to tears. Her voice was so shrill she momentarily chased off a grackle picking at cracker crumbs on the porch railing. He returned, disgruntled, after Jasmine hoisted over it to join us. If India had been there, she’d be having a litter of kittens about now.

“I’m going to go see about that latte,” Hank said.

She patted the chair she was vacating and nodded Jasmine into it before she disappeared into the shop with her plate in her hand. I watched Jasmine drag her palms over her eyes, which did little to stop the stream. I wasn’t worried yet. Tears could mean she’d witnessed a stabbing in the alley or that she was merely mourning a dead geranium. Her chin was the litmus test. If it wasn’t quivering we were probably okay. I used to think her jitters were drug-induced, but she’d been clean for nearly a year and she still looked at times like she was suffering from hypothermia.

Only her lower lip was trembling so I said lightly, “What’s up, Jazz?”

“Can we get fired?” she said.

“Who?”

“Me and Ophelia and Mercedes. Can we get fired from the boutique?”

“Tell me some more.”

She plastered her hands over her caramel-colored face. “We failin’, Miss Angel.”

“Jasmine,” I said. “Look at me.”

She lowered her hands, but her large liquid eyes stayed glued to the table top. Close enough.

“Did somebody say you were failing?”

“Didn’t nobody have to. We ain’t sold nothin’ in days.”

“Have you had customers?”

“We got people comin’ in, but don’t nobody buy nothin’.”

“Jasmine, what are you doin’?”

Even I jumped. The grackle took off for good, leaving the biggest of the crumbs for his fellow scavengers. Mercedes took the bottom three steps in one long, annoyed stride.

“I saw Miss Angel down here,” Jasmine said, “and I just—”

“You just botherin’ her with stuff she don’t—doesn’t—need to be bothered with.”

“Who else I’m gon’ bother with it, then?”

“Your own self, that’s who.
We
got to work this out.”

“We can’t!”

“Maybe
you
can’t—”

“Ladies.” I put up both hands and simultaneously smiled at an elderly couple below us who had been startled from their study of the tour map. India would be having more than the aforementioned litter by now.

“How about we discuss it over coffee?” I said.

Mercedes pulled her eyebrows so close together they nearly traded places in her forehead. “We ain’t—we don’t have time for no coffee. We got to get up there and fix this.”

I took the latte Patrice put in my hand and turned it over to Jasmine. “We’ll have another one of those, Patrice. You want sugar, Mercedes?”

She shook her head, deposited a glare into Jasmine, and headed back up the steps, leaving a wake of muttering behind her. Jasmine stared miserably at the foam in the cup.

“We’re fine,” I said to Patrice.

“If everybody was like y’all I’d go out of business,” she said.

When the door closed behind her I touched Jasmine’s arm.

“Mercedes, she says we got to do this,” she said, “and I’m so scared we can’t. Maybe we wasn’t ready after all, Miss Angel.”

She was retreating toward the railing and I was already imagining her vaulting back over it and landing on the ground in a puddle of hot milk and tears.

“Not to worry,” I said. “We’ll figure something out. And Jazz?”

“Ma’am?”

“Use the gate, babe.”

She flung both arms around my neck, barely missing the returning Hank with a waterfall of coffee.

“Business slow?” Hank said when Jasmine was gone.

“Slow?” I took the cup she handed me and paused until she sat with her still unfinished eggs dish. “It has apparently come to a complete halt. Not that that’s the total point of the shop. All I really want is for them to learn how to get to work on time and not dress in hooker wear.”

“That part seems to be working.”

I took a sip of the latte. “Patrice snuck chocolate in here.”

Hank waited.

“They need to feel productive and successful,” I said. “And apparently
that’s
not happening.”

“Trust India. This is her baby.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Absolutely. I can leave it to her.”

“Then why are you about to squeeze that cup in half? Sit.”

I did, and watched Hank neatly pile her fingers into a fold on the table between us. “We were about to talk about why this is a two-shot day.”

I took a gear-shifting breath. “Okay. This isn’t exactly spiritual. Well, I mean it is, but it doesn’t have anything to do with my work for God, but then I guess everything does, except when God doesn’t tell me what the Sam Hill to do—”

“You’re killin’ me, Al,” Hank said. “Let’s just cut to the chase: this is about Chief.”

“OhdearGod yes.”

Hank gave me a rare full-blown smile. “I love young love. Or in this case I guess it’s middle-aged love.”

“He’s taking me out for our ‘anniversary’ next Friday.”

“It’s been a year since you met.”

“Why am I the only one who didn’t remember that?”

“Because you’re scared spitless.”

I had to grin at her. “Yes, why
don’t
we cut to the chase?”

“Are you afraid he’s going to propose?”

“Is he? Did he tell you?”

She stopped with her fork halfway to her mouth. “Have you met the man?”

“Okay, yeah, I’m afraid he will. And I’m afraid he won’t.”

“Guess that kind of puts you in a hurt locker.”

“Whatever that is, yes, I think I’m in it.”

“I know why you’re afraid he
won’t
propose. You’re nuts about the guy.”

“I never thought I could love any man the way I love him.”

She nodded and went for the bacon. “So why are you afraid he
will
ask?”

“Because I want to make sure I can say yes.”

“Because of God.”

I closed my eyes. “Thank you for not making me explain that to you.”

“You don’t have to explain it to
me.
You have to explain it to yourself. I’m just the sounding board.”

She popped in a mouthful and looked at me while she chewed.

“It’s the one thing that keeps
me
from proposing to
him.
He’s come a long way. At first he didn’t even believe in God.”

“Or so he said. Personally I think it was more that he didn’t believe in the God he’d been introduced to by organized religion.” She shrugged the stocky shoulders. “I don’t believe in that one either. Neither do you.”

“At the Sisters’ baptism, on Easter, he said he wanted to believe what I believe, and it seemed like that was enough.”

“Enough for who?”

“For God. God’s not coming right out and saying it, but what I feel for Chief is different than just ‘this man is hot.’” I glanced around at the still empty nearby tables. “Chief respects that I try to be obedient to God. We agreed, Chief and me, not to …”

Hank leaned in, eyes sparkling, and lowered her voice to a hoarse whisper. “Have sex?”

“I don’t even like to say it like that. I don’t want to just ‘have sex’ with Chief. Not that I don’t
want
him. I’m dyin’ here.”

“I suspect he is too. You’re a bit of a hot mama yourself.”

“But it’s more than that. I don’t know, it’s surreal.”

“I think what you’re feeling is joy. You haven’t had a lot of it in your life so it would be hard to pinpoint.” She set the fork down and folded her hands again. “It’s like when you experience serious pain for the first time
.
Or panic. It doesn’t seem real. Or maybe it’s a little too real.”

“So—”

“So marry him. You said God appears to be fine with it.”

“What I’m getting from God is ‘go another mile,’ and I don’t know if that even applies to Chief or if it’s about something else. And if it is about Chief, does it mean go ahead and marry him even if I’m not totally sure we’re on the same spiritual page? Or go another mile until I find out …” I swallowed as if I were the one downing a six hundred–calorie breakfast. “I just keep going deeper and deeper with God and I want to make sure that’s not too much for Chief.”

“Have you talked to him about it?”

I raked my hands through my hair.

“You’re afraid to do that, too.”

“I’m terrified.”

Hank pushed the plate aside. “One thing I’ve learned in my marriage to Joe: if you can’t talk about everything with your partner without being afraid, you aren’t going to make it. You’ve faced thugs in dark alleys and dragged prostitutes out of darker ones, and yet you’re afraid to talk to the man who is so crazy about you he’d cut off that ponytail if you asked him to.”

“I’m a mess.”

“We all are. But you less than most because you get the big time Nudges.” She patted her mouth with a napkin. “I want to go back to ‘go another mile.’”

“Anywhere, as long as it takes me someplace,” I said.

“You know where that expression ‘go the extra mile’ comes from?”

“The Sermon on the Mount.”

“‘If somebody asks you to go one mile, go the next mile too.’ I’m paraphrasing, but that’s basically it.”

“Why didn’t I even think to look that up?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Because you’re trying to do about sixteen things at once.”

I glanced at my watch. “Aw, man, I’m supposed to be meeting with Chief right now.”

“Perfect timing.”

“I don’t know about that. We’re going to talk about my personal finances.”

Hank’s eyes bulged. “Whose idea was that?”

“Bonner’s.” I put up both hands. “I’m not asking Chief to handle them. I’m just hoping he’ll know somebody who can.”

Hank waited again.

“Okay,” I said, “and then I’ll be less strung out and I can look this up and talk to Chief and stop freaking out.”

“You’re killin’ me, Al,” she said. “You’re killin’ me.”