DIVA (16 page)

“Hey, Belinda,” a voice called, “that was a great solo. Can I have your autograph?”

Her lips spread in a smile. At least someone liked her performance.

She stopped and turned to look. A burly bearded man approached her, waving a piece of paper. He looked like a lumberjack: dark beard, massive shoulders, scruffy jeans and a Minnesota Vikings sweatshirt.

“You’re a hottie, Belinda.” He stepped closer, looming over her, his breath reeking of alcohol, his piggish eyes devouring her body. “How ‘bout a kiss for one of your fans?”

Her heart jolted. What a disgusting man. In all her years of playing concerts, nothing like this had ever happened to her. She started to turn away, but he reached out and tried to grab her, his expression angry. “Hey, bitch, gimme your autograph!”

Her knees went weak with fear. What if he stole her flute? Panic-stricken, she gripped her flute case with both hands. Mr. Silverman stepped in front of her, shoved the disgusting man away.

The man staggered back, lost his balance and fell to the ground.

Silverman grabbed her arm and hustled her toward his van. She hurried to keep up, her feet skimming the blacktop, clutching her flute case against her pounding heart. Spouting vile curses, the drunk followed them. When they reached Mr. Silverman’s van, he ran up to them. With a look of insane fury, he lunged at her, swinging his ham-like fists.

Silverman grabbed his arm, twisted it hard and threw him to the ground.

“Snotty bitch,” the man screamed. “I’ll get you . . .”

Silverman shoved her into the van and slammed the door.

She sank onto the back seat, shaking with tremors, heart pounding like a wild thing. Through the window she saw Silverman yank the drunk to his feet and force-march him away, shoving him toward the railroad tracks. She could still hear the man’s vile curses.

Unwilling to look, she put her face in her hands.

And then Mr. Silverman was opening the van door. He climbed behind the wheel, turned and looked at her with obvious concern.

“Are you all right, Belinda?”

She took a deep breath, fighting for control. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

He gazed at her, his pale blue eyes intent. “I’m sorry that idiot accosted you. These things are hard to anticipate. You never know when some drunk might come along.”

“It’s a good thing you were here.” A nervous laugh escaped her lips. “You saved me.”

He smiled. “That’s why you hired me, Belinda. Relax. I’ll have you home in no time, safe and sound.”

CHAPTER 16

“That girl wasn’t just lost, right?” Angela gazed at him, eyes solemn in the dim glow of the streetlight beside his car. “I ask around, you know, show that picture you gave me? Nobody wants to talk. And now she’s dead.”

He locked eyes with her. “Right. Now she’s dead. Somebody killed her.”

“She living in Iberville, AK mixed up in it.”

“You know that for sure?”

“No!” A vehement headshake. “That just be my guess.” Angela wouldn’t look at him now, hunched her shoulders and stared out the windshield, sank lower in her seat as a bus lumbered past them belching smelly exhaust fumes.

“I need a lead, Angela. She was only fifteen. She didn’t deserve to get murdered. I want to catch the thugs that killed her."

His plea got him nowhere. "Anything you can tell me might help.”

“Heard a couple girls talking in the laundry room the other day. They work housekeeping, same as me. Heard ‘em say Chantelle had a boyfriend that plays some kind of instrument. Saxophone, I think they said.”

“What else did they say?”

“Nothin.” Angela gazed at him, fear blatant in her eyes. “And you didn’t hear nothin from me.” She jumped out and ran to her car.

______

Ten minutes later he was sitting in the Bulldog, a funky bar that catered to locals and featured a huge assortment of draft and bottled beers. This time on a Saturday night the place was jammed. On the sound-system, barely audible over the conversational buzz, Ahmad Jamal was playing some tasty jazz piano. Looking equally tasty in a V-necked paisley-print top, Kelly O’Neil was sitting beside him on a stool at one end of the eight-foot bar.

“My CI thinks AK’s involved in Chantelle’s murder,” he said. “Angela’s pretty astute about these things. She grew up in the St. Bernard project.”

“But not Iberville,” Kelly said, and drank some of her Bud Light.

“No, but AK’s got clout in this town. Enough to scare Angela.”

And Angela had pretty much confirmed his theory: Antoine was Chantelle’s boyfriend. He’d seen the updated composite sketches from the wounded cop’s description. One sketch looked like AK: shaven head, delicate features, deadly eyes. Unfortunately, the other one, the kid with dreadlocks, looked a lot like Antoine, a fact he would have to report to Vobitch.

“Tell me about your rapist,” he said, shifting gears to the ostensible purpose of their meeting.

“I think he stalks them first, jumps them when they walk to their cars after work. He doesn’t seem to care if they see his face.”

“And the victims don’t give you squat for a description, right?”

Her lip quirked, an unhappy grimace. “That’s the problem.”

“Typical. They’re too scared to look at him. They don’t want to be there, don’t want it to be happening, don’t want to think about it. Afterwards they’re so happy to be alive, they block it out.”

“That’s what Julie said. She was positive he was going to kill her.”

His mind was a split screen, one half processing details of the rape, the other focused on Kelly. When she laughed, one of her front teeth overlapped the adjacent one. When deep in thought, she rolled her lower lip over her top lip. When outraged, as she was now, her eyes were sea-green agates. “He complements them like it’s a fucking date or something!”

Frank shrugged. “To him, it
is
a date. He wants her to like him, so he sweet-talks her. A gentleman rapist. So called anyway.”

“He’s no gentleman. He’s an animal. He forces these women to do disgusting things.” She stared into the distance. Bright-blue Z-shaped earrings dangled from her earlobes. Maybe she was a Zephyr’s fan. The Mets Triple-A baseball team played at a ballpark on Airline Drive.

“Does he hurt them? Punch them, slap them around?”

“No, but he uses a knife to intimidate them.”

He tried to focus on the case but he felt weird, discussing the sexual habits of a rapist while sitting this close to a woman he found enormously attractive. Were they here to talk about the rapist? Or did she have something else in mind? When it came to romance, he was an optimist, but he never took women for granted. Still, the buzz in his gut told him they might be headed in that direction. He could smell her scent, perfume or body lotion maybe, a delicious aroma of vanilla and spice.

“Did she leave any prints? On the door handle maybe, when he forced her into his car?”

Kelly’s eyes went wide. “Damn! I didn’t think of that. I’ll go back and ask her.” She cocked her head as a new tune came over the sound system. “That’s Chet Baker, isn’t it? I love his sound.”

“One of my favorite trumpet players. You like jazz?”

“Big time. Terry and I used to . . .” She twisted a lock of dark hair and shook her head. It made her bright shiny Big-Z earrings sway back and forth.

“I love your earrings.”

“Thank you.” She smiled, gazing into his eyes. “I made them.”

“Aha! A woman of hidden talents.” Damn, he loved her eyes.

“I majored in art at Loyola, thinking I might hit it big like the Blue-dog guy, Rodrigue.” She grinned. “I’m saving up to start a jewelry business.”

Mesmerized by her smile and her deep-sea-green eyes, he leaned closer. Caught more vanilla-spice scent. Although they were in a crowded bar, it felt like they were in their own private bubble. “Tell me about it,” he said.

“My brother Sean used to spend hours in the garage, making all kinds of stuff out of metal. He taught me welding and soldering. He said I was good at it, said I had great manual dexterity. So I started making jewelry.”

“Huh. I’ve never been out with a woman welder.” Realizing he’d just implied this was a date, he quickly added, “Is Sean a cop, like your father?”

“No. Sean and Patrick—he’s my next older brother—run a construction business in Chicago. When they were little, they owned every Tonka trunk ever made. Michael, my oldest brother, he’s a detective like Dad. They’re peas in a pod, same temperament, same foul-mouthed language.” She let out a low throaty laugh. “Good thing the nuns can’t hear us at Christmas dinner.”

Her smile faded. She turned away, a muscle working in her jaw.

“Holidays are the toughest, right?”

She turned and looked at him. “Holidays are a bitch.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“What, you want to analyze me like the department shrink?”

He touched her wrist, felt the thrum of her pulse. “They made you see a shrink? What a kick in the ass. They did that to me, too, in Boston. I hated it. They think you can’t handle your problems without help from some mental health jerkoff.” He traced his fingers down her forearm. She didn’t pull away, but her eyes had a speculative look.

“What was your crisis?” she said.

“Work related.”

“And you don’t want to talk about it, right?”

“Tell me about Terry. I hear he was a nice guy. A good cop.”

“He was great guy. And a great cop. I still miss him.”

He wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her. Not in a crowded bar, someplace private. Someplace where he could feel her skin against his.

“How long were you together?”

“Nine years, married for seven.” She smiled, a wistful smile painful to see. “We were happy, you know? Lots of married people aren’t, but Terry and I were. He was the softy, always bringing home strays. I’m the practical one. I told him we couldn’t afford to feed three or four dogs if I was going to start a jewelry business. I’m not wild about being a cop, but Terry lived for the job. He loved helping people. That’s what got him killed.”

“What happened?” He’d heard the story, but he wanted her version.

She raked her fingers through her dark spiky hair. “Terry was in Slidell, helping his brother repair the deck on his house. We were supposed to go out that night. It was a Saturday. We were going to Snug Harbor to hear some jazz. Astral Project was playing.” She stared into space, lost in the memory.

“It rained that day, not a downpour, but the roads were slick. Terry was driving home on the I-10 and saw a car in the breakdown lane. The driver was changing the left rear tire. So Terry, being the good Samaritan, stopped to help him.” She looked at him, eyes wet with tears. “He called me before he got out of the car and said he might be late. He didn’t want me to worry. And I was . . .” She heaved a sigh, a half-sob. “To tell the truth I was pissed, because we don’t go out for dinner that often and . . .”

He squeezed her arm. “Don’t beat up on yourself. It wasn’t your fault.”

Her mouth quirked and her eyes got squinty. “No, it wasn’t. It was the fucking truck driver’s fault. Terry was working on the lug nuts, and this eighteen-wheeler came along and crushed him. The doctor told me Terry never knew what hit him. He didn’t suffer, and I am, thank-you-God, grateful for that.” She picked up her beer mug and drained it.

“I can’t tell you how to deal with it, Kelly. But for me, when something like that happens, when you lose someone you love, you have to focus on the good times.” She gazed into his eyes, as though he’d thrown her a life jacket. “Remember the wonderful times,” he said. “Little things like laughing over a stupid joke. And big things like how great it was to make love and lose yourself in him and remember how he smelled and how his skin felt.”

She traced a finger down his cheek. “You’ve been there, right, Frank?”

The words pierced his heart. “Yes. And I know how much it hurts.”

“Thank you for listening. You’re the first . . .” She heaved a sigh. “Except for my dad, you’re the first person I’ve talked to about it.”

“Yeah? And how was it for you? Was it good?” Grinning to show he was joking, wanting to lighten things up after her painful recitation.

Her eyes crinkled in amusement. “Yes, Frank Renzi, it was very good.”

His cell phone rang. Bummer. He checked the ID. Not someone he wanted to talk to right now. What he wanted right now was to build on the intimacies he and Kelly had just shared.

“Sorry. I need to take this.” He punched on and said, “Renzi.”

“Hello, Frank? It’s Belinda. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“It’s okay,” he said, conscious of Kelly beside him. “What’s up? You got a problem?”

“It’s not an emergency or anything. I was just wondering if you, uh, if you had any leads on the jerk that ran me off the road.”

“I don’t. Sorry. I wish I could tell you more.” Making it sound like official police business. He glanced at Kelly, saw her leafing through her checkbook of all things, pretending not to listen. But he knew she was. He would have, had the situation been reversed.

“I thought maybe you might have checked the repair shops, you know, in case someone brought in an SUV with a damaged fender.”

Had he said he’d do that? “No, I haven’t. It’s been . . . hectic.”

“Well . . . you sound like you’re busy. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

“Not a problem. I don’t blame you for being concerned.”

“I’m less worried now than I was before. I hired a security person.”

“Good.” He held up a finger to let Kelly know he was almost done.

“Did you get a chance to come to the NOCCA concert?”

Bingo. The real reason for the call. “Yes,” he said. “It was terrific. I enjoyed it.” Speaking innocuous words, aware of Kelly’s gaze.

In a crisp voice Belinda said, “I’ll be in Cincinnati next weekend soloing at a Pops concert. Can you call me if you get any leads on the accident?”

“I will. Have a good trip.” He set his cell phone on the bar and turned to Kelly. “I have a love-hate relationship with this thing. Sometimes it’s handy and other times . . .” He waggled his hand.

“Yeah?” She gave him a slow grin. “Depends who’s calling.”