Hot Flash (19 page)

I got up to leave. “I'm hopeful that when you finish your investigation, the findings will change.”

“I hope our findings change, as well. We've never had a problem with arson before, not as long as I've been chief, which will be forty years this August.”

I dug in my bag for a card and handed it to him. “Please let me know what you learn.”

I drove to the Vineyard Haven dock, checked the boat schedule, and rescheduled our reservation for 5:00 p.m. that afternoon. When I returned to the hospital, the nurse stopped me on the way to Nareece's room.

“She's gone.”

I gasped and stumbled forward. She caught my arm.

“Oh no, I'm sorry. Your sister checked out, as in left the building. She went with some fellas who said they were her cousins. She said she was meeting you and would check in with her primary physician on the other side.”

C
HAPTER
17

T
he nurse said she'd overheard one man say they could catch the 3:00 p.m. ferry. A quick look at the time on my cell phone showed I had ten minutes before the ferry left. I dashed out. My adrenaline surged at the slim likelihood of me catching the three o'clock.

A docker was waving the last few cars to the loading ramp when I pulled curbside under a F
OR
D
ROPOFF AND
P
ICKUP
O
NLY
sign. I got out and ran to the pier.

“Slow down, miss,” he told me, then stepped in front of me and held out his hand. “Ticket?”

“No. I mean, I just want to make sure my sister got on. Did you notice a young woman with two men drive on?”

“What kind of car?” He took tickets from a woman with two young boys who were arguing and slapping at each other. The smaller boy cried and called the bigger boy a “dummy,” “stupid,” “crackhead,” and my favorite, “bugga butt.” The mother walked ahead of the two in denial, tuned out, or just plain fed up.

“I'm not sure,” I said.

“Lady, over a hundred cars pulled onto this boat. If you can't tell me the kind of car . . .” He rubbed his chin in thought. “You know, I vaguely remember a young woman who looked kind of sickly, a dark blue Ford Taurus. My brother-in-law has one. Nice car.”

He held up a finger for me to wait and talked with another worker who approached. A driver who was insisting on passage despite not having a reservation leaned out of his car window. He talked with the driver and directed him back to the holding area, as the dockmaster pulled the pins and the ferry chugged back from the dock, the bay doors closing.

I regained his attention. “You said a young woman. I only remember because the car had a big dent in one side. The woman was lying across the backseat. I asked the driver if she was okay.”

“Was she?”

“She didn't look so good, but the guy ignored me and drove on.”

“Thanks for your help. Is there a ferry sooner than five o'clock?”

“Yeah, but I'd bet it's full. Best you keep your five o'clock reservation if you have one.” He gestured to the cars lined up in the holding area. “End up in standby and not get off until tonight.”

“Can you say what the men looked like?”

“They were black, dressed up in suits. Looked like hoodlums, no offense.”

“None taken. Thanks again.”

The realization of the situation bowled me over. I watched the boat back away from the dock and move along the shoreline toward Woods Hole. The waiting area was near empty now. Flustered, I sat on a bench under a canopy where people waited for arrivals and called Laughton—wishful thinking. No answer. Then I called Cap. His administrative assistant said he was gone for the day and his cell phone was off. Then I called Travis. He answered on the first ring.

“Ma, where are you? You got me worried to death not knowing whether you're okay or if something bad happened. Did you find Auntie?”

“I'm fine, Travis. Yeah, I found her. What's going on with you?”

“Lying low is all. I'm at the crib now, but I been hanging at Aunt Dulcey's every night with those crazy twins.” There was a moment of silence. “What's wrong, Ma?”

“Everything's fine, son. I'll be home soon.”

“Everything's not fine. Just please do what you gotta do and get back in one piece. I can't take another episode. You hearing me?”

“I'm hearing you. I can't take another episode, either. See you soon. I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

My next call was to Dulcey. She answered on the first ring, too. Women talking and laughing filled the background.

“Muriel, I've been calling you since early this morning.”

“Muriel”—that was new. Girlfriend called me everything but never Muriel. I hadn't bothered to check my phone since that morning. I'd put the ring on silent while in the hospital and forgot to switch it back to a ringtone.

“How are the girls?”

“Are you all right?” she shot back.

“I'm hanging.”

“The girls are worried but good. They're having a ball helping me in the shop and amusing my customers till they be falling outta the chair and switching their heads every which way. Can't hold me responsible for a lopsided perm or styling job.” She let out a slight laugh, then quieted. The background noise faded. “I'm away from everybody now. What's really going on?”

“Someone tried to burn us up last night. I mean, I think someone set the house on fire. Coulda been electrical or something.”

“Someone tried to kill you all!”

“We're good. Well, we were good until I left the hospital and Reecey to get the car. Dulcey, two men kidnapped Reecey from the hospital. She was sleeping this morning when I left the hospital to get my car and check out the damage to the house. When I got back to the hospital, the nurse said she left with two men who said they were cousins. I think they got on the boat that just left the dock. I know they're some of Boone's henchmen. And there isn't a damn thing I can do until I get off this island.”

“I can't believe what you're telling me. Burn you out? Kidnap Reecey?” I heard her sigh. “You don't know who took her or where they're going to take her or whether she's even alive at this point.”

“I'd guess they're heading to Philly. And she's alive. Whatever it is she did or has, they aren't going to do anything to her until they get it.” My brain said Nareece would die before telling her captors where it was, whatever “it” was, but I didn't want to think too hard about that right now. “I'm going to see Bates first. I'll head back after. I'll call you when I leave Boston.”

I hung up and checked my messages. Dulcey, Travis, and Calvin. I called Calvin, but he didn't answer. I clicked off without leaving a message.

It was 3:05. I had two hours before my reservation. The next boat was in an hour. I decided to get in the standby line in hope of getting off an hour early. Back at my car, a police officer stepped off the curb to check my license plate and write a ticket just as I arrived. She smiled and moved on to the next car.

I got in and drove around to the reservation booth. A man poked his head out of the door. “Lane two,” he said and handed me a receipt and boarding pass. I rolled to a stop, the last car in line for a forty-five-minute wait. If I didn't make the next ferry, I still had a confirmed reservation for the one at five o'clock.

The quiet breeze was in direct contrast to my mood and the day's events. I got out of the car, walked to the water's edge, and sat on a bench facing the ocean. Waves of anxiety belabored my breathing. My emotions climbed to near hysterical and kept climbing. My phone dinged—a text from Travis.
Be safe. lol xxxxoooo
. My anxiety waned.

Travis had Nareece's high forehead and green eyes with a broad toothsome smile. He was soft-spoken like her, but unlike Nareece, if you pushed Travis to the wall, and even through it, he would keep control. That was the opposite from Nareece, who was quick to get enraged if denied her way. Tell that girl “no” and she would go ballistic, especially after Mom and Dad died and I inherited the parent role. She aimed my revolver at me once and pulled the trigger. The almost dying didn't haunt me, but the fact that she was the one who pulled the trigger would scrape my flesh from my bones if I thought about it too long. The gun misfired for no reason that I could find. No reason but God.

“And it's not her time now,” I told myself out loud. I called Bates.

“What's going on, Mabley?” he said. “You lose your sister again?”

I ignored his sarcasm. “As a matter of fact, I did. I found her here on the Island, Martha's Vineyard, then someone tried to kill us by burning our house down, and then two guys kidnapped my sister from the hospital.”

“Now tell me what really happened.” Bates sounded unconvinced.

“I know it sounds crazy. And I'm sorry I wasn't completely up front with you before, but I am being up front now. No bullshit, Bates.” I told him the whole story about Nareece dating Jesse Boone and taking the drugs and the money. When I was done, Bates was quiet for a good while.

“I'm on the Island waiting for the ferry now.”

“Then that seals it. It was Boone's fingerprints on the ChapStick and on the chair the guy, John, was in. We have a warrant out for him now.”

“I'm pretty sure he's back in Philly by now and that's where they're taking Nareece.” I stopped short of telling him the part about where Nareece hid the money. “Look, Bates, I gotta go, but I'll call you when I get back to Philly.”

“Muriel, I know you think this is all about your sister, but I'm telling you to watch your back out there. I did some more deep digging and used up a few favors, top gun favors, and it seems like there is someone in the PPD, someone in the know, who might be feeding Jesse Boone information. We took a computer from your sister's house, and there was a picture of a chick named Lakisha Butler and you on it, in the same frame.”

C
HAPTER
18

A
raucous noise assaulted me, snapping me back to consciousness. The car I was driving swerved over rumble strips along the breakdown lane. I jerked the steering wheel too far to the left, too far to the right, to the left again, to the right again, before finding balance and straightening the ride. Suddenly the decision to hit the road back to Philly at 10:00 p.m. seemed a stupid one.

I pulled into the next rest area on I-91. My knees buckled when I stepped out of the car. My saving grace was that I had hold of the door. I straightened and limped across the lot and into the building to the bathroom, where I splashed cold water on my face. I pulled a paper towel from the wall dispenser and held it to my face. When I took the towel away, my reflection in the mirror shoved me back a step. The devil's fury showed over my face—dark circles framing my eyes, hair standing on end, eyes bloodshot. I stepped forward again, daring the image to say something bad to me. “Emergency services definitely needed now, Dulcey girl.” I wiped at my eyes, patted my hair down, straightened my posture, and moved on.

I stopped at the McDonald's counter and ordered a large coffee on the way out. Resettled in the car, I chugged down half a cup before my eyes opened and my nerves hardened a bit.

An old man, bent and unsteady, with a woman of the same stature on his arm, passed in front of my car. Next to me, a beat-up Chevy Bel Air had four children in the back, slumped right, each one's head anchored on the other's shoulder except for the last kid, whose head hung back, mouth gaping. A woman driver leaned forward, her head resting on the steering wheel. Three cars down to the left and across the lane a dark SUV was parked. The burn of a cigarette signaled an occupant.

My full attention on the SUV, I sipped more coffee and attempted to set the cup in the holder between the driver and passenger seats, but missed and dumped the contents in my lap. I pushed the car door open. It banged back and caught my foot. “Shit!” The coffee cup whipped from my hand and washed coffee over the passenger seat, door, and dashboard, then settled on the floor on the passenger side.

I leaned forward, removed my shoe, and jammed my shoulder on the steering wheel on the way up. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” I kneaded the pained spot in my shoulder with one hand and coddled my injured foot with the other. A second attempt to get out succeeded. I got a roll of paper towels from the backseat, dabbed at my lap, and wiped my hands, then moved around to the passenger side and did the same to the seat and carpet, though the paper towels were hardly the solution for the stains. I got back in the car and started the engine. I checked out the SUV again and did not notice anyone inside—at least no more smoking was going on.

My phone rang, but stopped before I clicked to answer. The lit screen showed 1:25 a.m. and Laughton as the missed caller. I pushed the button to call back, and after five rings was about to click off, when he answered.

“Why didn't you pick up?” Laughton shouted.

“You can't say, ‘hi, how are you?' I've been driving.” I pulled out of the rest stop and back onto the Jersey Turnpike. “What do you mean, why didn't I pick up? Why haven't
you
answered any of
my
calls?” I waited for a response. We challenged each other's silence, two minutes, three maybe.

He broke it. “Where are you?”

“I'm about two hours out.”

“Meet me. Please.”

“Laughton, Reece has been kidnapped, and I know it's Jesse Boone.”

“Muriel, meet me,” he demanded and spouted off an address.

“Laughton, did you hear me?”

He clicked off. I was rattled. What did he have to do with what was going on with Nareece? I hoped the answer would lead me to her.

I stayed wired for the rest of the two-hour ride. The car clock flashed 3:38 when I turned right down a dead-end street in the affluent residential neighborhood of Chestnut Hill in Northwest Philly. I pulled in the driveway of a sprawling white colonial nestled on a secluded property at the end of the street and double-checked the address, 740 Thomas Road. It was the right one.

Laughton answered the door dressed in tan slacks and a seafoam-green shirt topped with a tan and green jacket. I checked him out with an exaggerated look from head to toe. He had slick Italian leather loafers on and no socks. Laughton never wore socks, another of his quirks. I decided not to comment on his look, which I found alluring. Instead, I entered and turned my attention to the surroundings.

“Pretty ritzy,” I said.

“Thanks,” he answered.

I glanced at him sideways. “Yours?”

“A little pleasure I picked up along the way.”

“You'll have to school me so I can pick one up, too.”

“Not a problem.” He closed the door and gestured toward the left. “Please, after you, Mademoiselle.”

“I'll ‘mademoiselle' you.”

The entryway opened to a large living room with a bar at the far end and a manteled fireplace at the halfway point. At the other end was a large taupe couch shaped into a half circle, with two cushy burgundy chairs set in the room's center.

Laughton rushed past me to the bar. “Drink?”

“At three thirty in the morning?” I said. He stood by the bar waiting for my answer. “No thanks.” I plopped down and sank into the couch cushions, feigning a nonchalant attitude but singed with curiosity. He poured a Scotch, sipped, added ice, and stirred before gulping it to empty. He poured more, then set it down and slid out a long-stemmed wineglass from an overhead rack.

“I said no.”

He continued what he'd started, then brought both drinks to the couch and sat down next to me, handing me the wine.

“Are you deaf? I said, ‘No thank you.'” I set the drink on the coffee table and slid back so I could see him better. “Okay, I'm here. What's going on?”

He shook his head. “I should have figured you wouldn't listen to me. I told you to back off. I told you I'd handle everything. I just needed a few days.” I held his glare even after he continued. His voice caused a prickly sensation up my arm. “Now John's dead and Jesse's got Carmella.” He slugged back his drink and went for another.

“Carmella? Wha . . . What the hell do you know about Carmella?”

“I knew, know, Carmella when she was Carmella, not now, not as Nareece or whatever the hell her name is now. I didn't know she was your sister until recently.”

Now it was my turn. I gulped the wine.

“The situation is off the hook now.”

“What ‘situation', Laughton? I can't believe you've been running with this and didn't tell me what's been going on and the danger my sister was in. That you even know I have a sister and didn't tell me before now.”

Laughton finished his drink and went for another.

“You might as well spill it, Laughton. I'm not going anywhere until you do. And nothing is going to happen from here on without me.”

Laughton took his time making another drink. He dropped one, two, three ice cubes into the glass, a squeeze of lime, the Scotch: two fingers, no, three. I resisted the urge to voice my irritation with his drinking, compounded by the heat building deep inside me. He lifted his glass and strolled to the window. Then he just stood there, looking out. I was about done when he said, “Jesse Boone is my brother.”

Only my eyes worked. They kept Laughton in range and watched him fall from grace, slamming his beautiful face into the pavement.
He's waiting for a response
, I thought. Then I saw my reflection splashed against the nighttime backdrop of the picture window. My mouth was gaped open, eyes wide, face frozen. Anger quickly blew the shock away, anger that carved a path from my heart to my brain, blowing through my nose, ringing in my ears, burning my eyes, drying my mouth to desert status, and ramming my stomach. I stayed anchored to the couch.

Laughton turned from the window to look at me. His face was drawn, accentuated by dark bags under his now-hollowed eyes. Silence perched on the now-stagnated air between us.

“What are you saying, Laughton? How can Jesse be your brother? You can't be part of Jesse Boone. You're not . . .” I ditched his eyes, taking it in. I was reeling.

He came to the couch, sat down, and in the same motion grabbed my shoulders and twisted me around to look at him. I let him, still in disbelief.

“Muriel, I'm telling you because Jesse's crazy and he has Carmella or Nareece, whatever you call her, and we can't get her back alive if I don't square up.”

“The only reason you're telling me this now is because you think Jesse will kill Reecey and you don't want that on your conscience?” It came out all screechy.

I pulled away from him and rested my head on the couch, willing my stomach to settle. Gold specks in the ceiling twinkled and danced from side to side depending on which eye I kept open.

“Listen to me. My father is . . . was . . . a big deal back in the days when the Black Mafia had Philly bagged. He was a real sick fuck. He killed people, made people beg for their lives and killed them anyway. Pistol-whipped them 'til their bones broke through flesh. He only cared about two things: power and money.”

I jumped up off the couch and shouted, “Stop! I don't need a breakdown of your family history, Laughton. What I do need to know is where's Jesse holding Nareece?”

“You need to hear this now, M. You have to let me tell you.”

“I don't have to let you tell me a damn thing.”

Laughton snagged my arm and yanked me back down on the couch. “My father was third in command with the Black Mafia running with guys like Sam Christian and Ron Harvey, all deadly. For as far back as I can remember, guys with guns watched while people cried, begged, pleaded, and bowed down to my father like he was the Black Godfather. He'd be soft as a baby's butt one minute, and mess you up in the last five seconds before the minute was up, then he'd walk away settled and composed, going on with his day like nothing had happened, leaving the mess for his soldiers to sterilize.” He hesitated, then leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, holding his glass with both hands. When he spoke again, his voice was light and easy in an insane way.

“But I loved him. He was my father. All I could see was how great I thought he was, how powerful, how people came to him with everything and he fixed everything.” The light and easy tone faded quickly. “One night we were at the dinner table—Mom, Jesse, me, and Pop. Jesse and I were talking about something, I can't remember what now, and my father reached over and started choking Mom at the dinner table while Jesse and I watched, too fucked up to stop him. I was seventeen and Jesse was only twenty-one—we weren't about nothing. When he let her go, her head dropped like a brick onto her plate and broke it.” Laughton deepened his voice. “C'mon, boys, it's your time to shine now.' On the way out, he said to his soldiers, ‘Clean up in there.'” He gestured with his arms as though her body was nearby. “I thought I didn't care. She wasn't my real mother. Jesse and I have different mothers. But she was the mother I really remember, the mother who had raised me. He threw my real mother out when I was five, and I never saw her again until I found her seven years ago.”

In a hushed tone, I said, “Where's your real mother now?”

“In a nursing home outside the city. She has Alzheimer's. Man, she has some fierce nightmares and talks really crazy about some scary shit. I'd bet it was some real shit, too.

“Anyway, I left. I disappeared a year later, after he killed Harriet, Jesse's mom. Jesse stayed and became much like my father. Got involved in the heroin and cocaine trade, prostitution, numbers, and whatever else made money and hurt good people.

“About a year and a half after I'd left, Jesse came looking. He found me down in Baltimore and had some pros work me over good. He was there for the finale. They beat me, broke my legs, and bashed my teeth in. He kicked my face 'til there wasn't anything left: no face, just raw flesh. He left me for dead. I always wondered if my father gave the order.” Laughton set his drink down, got shakily to his feet, and shuffled back to the window. “A lot of plastic surgery, a new identity, then a few tours overseas, special ops. When I got out, I joined the force.”

“How'd you get in the department?”

“I got folks on the force who helped me. I'm nothing like Jesse or my father.”

“You mean, you got people you bought? You hate what your father and Jesse stand for, but you like the benefits.” I spread my arms and gestured to the surroundings.

He went back to the bar for another drink.