Sweet Arrest (14 page)

"Ohhh, back to being dumb.” Selena laughed.

A'isha pounded on the table and stood. She ran a hand over her lip to find blood on her fingers. Her teeth had cut her mouth. Jill slipped out of the room and then hurried back with tissue. A'isha took it with a mouthed thanks and held it to her lips. She wracked her mind for what to say next to Selena. She seemed unwilling to offer anything. A'isha needed to figure out the truth.

"You sound familiar. I thought it before when you called. Have I met you before in person?” she asked.

Selena hummed.

A'isha paced from the front door to the opening into kitchen and back again. Tears of frustration filled her eyes. She wanted to slam the phone down, and pretend none of this was happening. Only now that she had been chatting for a few minutes did she wonder if somehow they should have gotten the police to trace the call. Something had to give. She needed this over.

She swallowed with her eyes closed and then spoke into the phone. “You've thrown slurs on my mother's character as if she wasn't as good a person as I think. So let's say you're right. Let's say she never told me about any papers. After all, had she told me that would mean she also told me about you. I think we've established before now that I've never heard of you beyond discovering your name on a cookbook."

Selena's humming stopped. The line was so silent, A'isha wondered if she was there.

"Hello?” she called.

Without warning, the line went dead. A'isha clicked the Off button and set the phone down. What she said had upset Selena, but A'isha knew the woman believed her, and it pissed her off all the more.

She glanced up at Jill. “I need to find those papers. Up for going back to my house with me?"

Jill hesitated. “Are you sure that's the best course right now? From what you've told me, this woman is dangerous, and she's already killed for what she wants."

"I don't see where I have a choice. She won't stop until she's caught or I give her what she wants. I didn't say, but she's threatened to hurt Connor. I can't bear the thought of him being hurt. I've caused him to lose so much already. That would be too much."

"Okay, let's do it.” Jill stood. “I've spent too long separated from my brother to let some maniac take him away from me."

After leaving Connor a note at his house and a voicemail on his phone, A'isha and Jill left with the policeman following them in his car over to A'isha's house. The officer did a quick sweep of the interior, and then stayed outside. A'isha led Jill to the second floor.

"I've only ever seen the few papers my mother left, which were more bills than anything else. I don't remember seeing the name Selena, but then I wasn't looking for it either.” She tugged a shoebox down from the top of the closet in her mother's room. “You look through here, while I search her room for any secret cubbies"

She headed for the door, but Jill stopped her. “I thought you were going to search your mother's room. Isn't this it?” Jill gestured to the outdated furniture, the rocking chair in the corner, the shawl tossed across the bottom rail of the bed like her mother would come in and wrap it around her shoulders at any moment. A'isha swallowed and blinked moist eyes at the memories it produced, especially a vision of her mother wrapping her in that shawl and sitting her on her lap on the front porch. Her mother had enjoyed chatting with the nearest neighbor over the porch railing in the evenings. A'isha had never felt safer back then.

"No, this was my room before my mother passed. After she did, I moved her things over here, every stitch and took the larger room.” She ran a hand over the shawl. “I didn't do it lightly though. It took me awhile, but her room had always been too cool for her, and mine had always been too hot. I switched for comfort, and told myself I would be closer to her anyway where she spent many hours writing out recipes at her desk. I did leave the desk in the other room."

Jill nodded. “I guess that does make sense. If she had a hidey hole in the closet or the wall or floor, then it would be there not here."

A'isha thought about it. “Yeah, and that might be why when Selena broke in here, she didn't find anything."

With renewed hope, A'isha slipped into the room across the hall. This mess could be over within the next hour if she was lucky.

Three hours later, A'isha was ready to cuss lady luck out. She'd banged on every square inch of her bedroom's walls and stomped everywhere on the floor. She'd even dragged the dresser out into the hallway finding nothing. Glancing up, she found Jill in the doorway wiping sweat from her forehead. A'isha laughed. “You are that overexerted from looking through papers?"

Jill laughed. “No, of course not. I found a recipe scribbled on a napkin ... Actually your mom did that a lot. But they all have personal notes, like where she was when she thought up her combinations, or what she was thinking, who she was talking to. Anyway, one in particular said something about an attic. Part of it was torn off. I've been bungling around looking for it."

A'isha tossed her a pitying look. “Poor thing. None of the houses around here have attics. I don't know what my mother was referring to, but—"

Jill's eyes widened. “What? I see wheels turning in your head."

"It was the red hair and two braids that did it,” A'isha told her.

"Come again?"

A'isha pointed to Jill's flyaway red hair, parted down the center and braided. She had wrapped bright pink holders around the ends, which A'isha knew had been on her mother's dresser. She'd left them there after removing her Halloween costume from last year. Jill probably thought they were cute.

"Your hair like that reminds me of this old dollhouse I used to have. My mother brought it as a lark about five years ago, because I had always wanted one as a child. She stuffed it with these cheesy dolls, and I remember telling her that they were no Barbie doll. They were cheap, and one of them has hair in the same style and color as yours."

Jill frowned, but didn't look insulted. “Thanks a lot. You just told me I look like a cheap doll."

A'isha laughed. “No, the house has an attic, and my mother used to say it was the only one she ever liked, because she thought houses with attics were creepy. She always set that particular doll up there in the attic in a rocking chair that matched the one in her room. I think she got more fun out of that house than I did. I had grown out of the desire to play with dolls as an adult.” She stood up from the floor. “Anyway, it's in the basement. Come on."

They all but tumbled down the stairs to the first floor and then on down to the basement. A'isha had to shuffle through junk from years ago to get to the back of the closet where she could just see the house. They dragged out boxes of Christmas decorations and old clothes, boxes of books she just had to keep.

She rolled her eyes. “I should be embarrassed that you see what a pack rat I am."

Jill waved her hand. “Please, I have a lot myself. I will have to hire a company to transport it all, because I know I won't throw any of it out."

A'isha paused. “So you'll move back here?"

The pain in her new friend's face was plain. “I don't see that I have any other choice. A bit of advice. No matter how hard it is, face the truth. Don't fool yourself, because when it forces itself on you—and it will—it will hurt all the more for your lost time and your lost self-respect, because you should have known better."

A'isha squeezed her hand. “I hear you. I knew from the get go that I was a terrible business woman. It just wasn't my area. I can bake. Maybe not as good as my mother was, but I am really good. But I should have hired someone to handle the business side. Now I have to face the fact that I screwed up and lost the shop. I will pick myself up somehow. I know it."

Jill hugged her. “Good. I think you'll be good with Connor, too."

"That remains to be seen. I hear relationships that start out like this, don't last.” A'isha reached the house and dragged it out. In the middle of the floor, with their fingers mentally crossed, A'isha opened the house and peered inside the attic area.

At first she thought there was nothing there, but then, she saw it. An envelope, rather thick, was placed beneath a tiny area rug her mother had knitted. Yeah, her mother had loved the house more than she did.

A'isha slipped the envelope out and held it between trembling fingers. “This has to be it, Jill. We found the papers Selena's been looking for."

"Finally,” a voice said behind them. “Now the truth can be known."

Her throat dry and knowing what she would see, A'isha spun to face Selena with a gun pointed at her chest.

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Selena waved the gun at her. “Open the envelope. Now!"

With trembling fingers, A'isha tore the seal open and pulled the papers from inside. A picture slipped from the pile and feel in her lap. The choked sound from Selena's mouth caused her to look up. The woman's eyes were riveted to the picture. A'isha almost didn't want to see what it was. A million and one thoughts fought for dominance in her head. Theories, suspicion that she knew what was going on, fear and disappointment.

She held the picture by the corners and lifted it closer to examine. A young woman lay in a bed holding an infant in her arms. A'isha recognized the woman. She's seen countless pictures of her mother when she was around twenty-three. One was her favorite, her mother in a red plaid coat with black fur color. A'isha had always thought her mother looked like a movie star with her silky black curls perfectly styled about her head.

In this picture, her mother didn't look so well. Her face was somewhat bloated, and her hair was all over head like she'd just had a rough time of it. A'isha flipped the picture over, and all the blood seemed to rush from her head so she felt like she would faint. She read it aloud for Jill's benefit. “Selena and Mom at the hospital.” She read the year over and over, sure it must be a mistake. This was years before either she or her brother was even thought of. That was impossible.

"This can't be right,” she whispered.

"Oh, it's right, bitch. It's right,” Selena snapped. “Open the papers."

A'isha obeyed, now having a pretty good idea what she would find. This was why Selena looked familiar. She had the family resemblance, and her tone of voice was a close match to A'isha's mothers. How could she not pick that up right away?

One of the papers was just what she had suspected. Selena's birth certificate. She pressed a hand to her forehead. “Oh, goodness. I can't believe this. I—"

"Would never think your whoring, lying mother would abandon me? Well she did! And she never told you she had a child, did she? No, she just let me rot in that hospital for nineteen years. Two fucking decades! And you! You thought she was so perfect, so wholesome! Bah!"

She marched forward and jerked A'isha up off the floor by her collar. She pressed the gun into her cheek. Jill screamed. A'isha was too terrified to do more than hang from A'isha's hold. “Selena, I'm sorry. I never knew, just like you said."

"You should have!” she screamed. “I should kill you now!"

"Freeze!"

All three of them spun to look toward the stairs. Both Carl and Connor stood there with their guns trained on Selena. Not to be intimidated by the police, she dragged A'isha in front of her and pressed the gun to her temple. A'isha stared at Connor. The blood drained from his face, and his lips tightened. He held his gun more firmly. She wondered if he would do something crazy, because he was so afraid for her.

"This is my time now,” Selena yelled, still worked up. “You're not taking that away from me. She took everything."

"Who, Selena,” Connor asked her, one of his hands extended palm down as if that would calm her. Oddly, it seemed to work. A'isha felt her hold loosen, and she could drag in a breath.

"Her mother—my mother."

A'isha looked at the two officers. Neither seemed surprised by that admission. They must have found out that much from the hospital. If they hospital knew, why hadn't they warned her when Selena escaped. The jerks had probably been trying to cover their own butts for letting her escape in the first place.

Selena went on. “She abandoned me. And now I'm making sure her favored daughter pays for it."

Carl tugged a sheet of paper out of his jacket and flipped it open. “Selena, your mother didn't know that—"

"She did know! She fucking knew about me. She visited the hospital."

A'isha had jumped at the outburst, and stayed quiet with everyone else to see what Selena would add. She desperately wanted to know what was really happening. Did her mother abandon her infant and have her locked away in a hospital all these years? But why? And why wouldn't she tell anyone?

Selena sniffed, and A'isha knew she was crying. “Six months before she died, she came to see me. Used the name Ida, because she wanted to hide who she was, was still ashamed of me. She would come visit for a little while, every other weekend."

A'isha's stomach tightened. She remembered that time. Her mother and she were very close, and she had kept from A'isha where she was going on those weekend visits. A'isha had respected her privacy, but always when she would return, she'd be so ill, so pale, and A'isha remembered thinking her mother looked like guilt was weighing her down. But she had dismissed the thought thinking it impossible. Now she knew differently.

"I begged her to take me out of there,” Selena cried. “I begged her, but she wouldn't."

Selena sunk to the floor, dragging A'isha along with her. They landed in a tangle of arms and legs. Someone jerked Selena's arms while she was distracted. Someone else yanked at A'isha, but Selena recovered enough to fire. Jill screamed, and one of the men grunted. A'isha's head whirled.

When Selena wrapped a steel band like arm around her waist and hauled her backward, A'isha saw the blood staining the ugly green linoleum her mother had installed in the basement. It came from Connor. He lay face down on the floor.

"No!” She lost all sense of self-preservation. She just wanted Selena dead. She kicked at her unwanted sister and scratched her hands, dragging her nails along the skin that matched hers until she drew blood. Selena punched her and tried to raise the gun toward her.