Sweet Violet and a Time for Love (15 page)

“And a hundred times more beautiful.” Leon's lips curled. “It's been a bumpy first year, we both know that, but I could not imagine us not being together. I waited a long time to get you, Sienna St. James. I've got you now, and I ain't letting go.”

He slid the cake pan to the side, moved the candle over, and reached his palm to my face. “About the only thing sweeter than this cake here is that we made it through our first year, and we made a baby. I don't know what the future holds, Sienna, but I know we're in it together. I'm one hundred percent committed to you and our family.”

I closed my eyes as he stroked my cheeks, breathed a little heavier as he moved his chair closer to mine. His lips brushed over my face, landed on my neck.

“I love you, Sienna.” His whisper sent warm chills over my body.

Intoxicated.

That's what his love, his touch made me feel.

I turned my chair to more fully feel his kisses, to add mine to the moment.

And then there was a loud rap on the glass storefront window.

I jumped in my seat, but Leon's body remained loose, relaxed; his kisses, his warm, massaging hands, didn't stop what they were doing.

The pounding sounded again. I sat upright in my seat, while his hand fingered my hair.

“Someone's out there.”

“They can see the closed sign.” He came back in for another kiss, landed it near my mouth.

The rapping sounded for a third time. The blinds were down. There was no way to see who was knocking. A chill of a different kind wiggled through my stomach and tapped on my spine.

“What if it's someone up to no good? Didn't you say there were some break-ins at a few stores down the street?” My entire body had tensed up again. “I'm going to peek out the window.”

“No, Sienna.” Leon blew out a loud sigh, let his hand swing down away from my body before using it to rub his forehead. “No. Let it go. Nothing is going to happen. I just want to enjoy you, enjoy our time together. You realize this is the first time in a while nobody has known where we are? It's been a terrible day in many ways. I just want to make the most of this moment and enjoy what we've got together. I don't know when we are going on our trip. Let's enjoy this moment. Please stop worrying, Sienna.” He reached out his hand to my hair again, pleaded with his eyes for my lips.

But then the sound of shattering glass echoed through the room. A medium-sized smooth white rock slid across the floor.

“Get down.” Leon pushed me under the table, stood, and pulled out a gun, all in one motion. “Crawl back to the kitchen,” he demanded as he neared the front door. I was too frozen to move. A short scream escaped from my lips as I watched him move closer to the door from my perch under the table.

The gun was cocked, outstretched in his hands as he stood to the side of the blinds. He used nimble fingers to gently pry a single slat slightly open.

I watched as his shoulders dropped down, he sighed, lowered the gun. He walked to the front door, unlocked it again, and opened it.

“No one's out there. Probably some punk kids.”

I looked up at the wall clock that hung over the register area of the bakery.

5:11. The big and little hands of the painted chef on the clock face were unmistakable.

“You're shaking,” Leon whispered.

My teeth clattered together as I tried to make sense of this twist in our evening. And then I saw a beam of red light that suddenly appeared just to the left of Leon's head.

All eight-months pregnant of me jumped from under the table as everything on top smashed down to the floor.

“Leon, watch out!”

I'd gotten rid of the bag with the dirty housecoat and the old black purse on New Year's Day, three weeks before my fortieth birthday.

I found Sweet Violet.

Or rather she found me.

After the horror of our first Christmas, I was determined to salvage some kind of holiday spirit for me and Leon. The first two murders, Ms. Marta and Amber, had not yet made any ripples in the news, their cases still unsolved at that point. The time Leon and I had together had not yet been interrupted by the coming chaos.

His bakery by the Harbor was still holding on, but barely.

He wanted to keep his shop open for late night revelers. I wanted to watch the fireworks at the Harbor.

It was a win-win for both of us.

We sat in a booth by the front window, confetti-inspired cupcakes in front of us and in front of the many customers who filled his shop that night.

His staff had started dwindling even back then. While a socially conscious and respectable thing to do, hiring late teens and young adults who had been kicked out of schools and programs but who were looking for a second chance had proven too risky.

The call of the streets and fast money was too loud and impossible to ignore for many of them.

Some of them did make it. I heard later that one of the young ladies had enrolled in a culinary arts program and another young man applied and was accepted to college.

But that night, he was understaffed with several of his employees calling off at the last minute. He needed an extra hand to help pass out his mini cupcake samples just outside the front door. With tens of trays filled with cherry, vanilla, and blueberry cupcakes and a heavy investment in postcard-sized coupons, I didn't wait for him to ask for help after we finished our own cupcakes. I just grabbed a tray of the mini cakes, a stack of the coupons and stood outside the doorway while he went back to taking and fulfilling orders, checking on the ovens, and redirecting the staff that had come in.

I saw her in the crowd, a long wool coat draped around her thin frame.

She stood out to me, a quiet, unmoving figure in the sea of walkers filling the streets and sidewalks as the fireworks had just ended. She was maybe a hundred feet away, her face still pointed upward as her eyes searched the skies, perhaps waiting to see if another firework would go off. She was smiling.

I watched as she pulled out a large bottle of liquor from deep in her coat. She toasted it with a sapling struggling to stand in a patch of dirt and litter. Instead of then taking a swig of the dark liquid, she poured it onto the ground where the small tree was planted.

“Here.” I pushed the tray I was holding into the free hand of one of Leon's young workers who'd just come outside to join me. She held a thick stack of the postcard coupons in her other hand and frowned at me as I stepped away.

“They got me doing everything in this shop. Double time ain't enough. I better be getting triple time for all this trouble I'm going through standing out here on a holiday,” the girl hissed as I stepped away. I ignored her expressed discontent, determined to catch up with the elderly woman.

Her things were still in the trunk of my car.

The New Year's crowd thickened as spectators headed back to their cars and bus stops. Surrounded by whines and cries from children and slurred words and loud laughter from adults, I became dizzy, hot, and nauseous as I pushed my way to where I had first spotted the long wool coat.

I reached the tree.

She wasn't there. I squinted my eyes, searching the dense area lit by streetlights. No sight of a black coat or wild gray hair.

“Can you please walk or get out of the way?” a woman pushing a stroller shouted from behind me.

“Sorry.” I stepped aside, but not before peering down into the stroller where a baby wrapped in a pink crocheted blanket lay sleeping.

I was having one of those. The shock of my midlife pregnancy still new, I rubbed my stomach, forgetting for a moment what I was doing out there, who I was looking for.

Out of the main walkway, I scanned the streets again. No sight of her.

Oh, well.

Leon needed help back at his shop, I conceded, knowing that he needed to get the attention of as many potential customers as possible. His desserts were great. People just needed to taste them, to know about him.

I was about to head back when I realized that I was standing next to the tree that the woman had toasted. I looked down in the dirt, noting a tall bottle of Old Grand-Dad, still full with whiskey, sat upright in the pile of trash and litter that surrounded the base of the small sapling. Meant to beautify the city street with a manicured plot of greenery, the small patch of dirt and the tree standing in it looked worn out already from the New Year. I shook my head, started to turn away, but something else caught my eye.

Next to the whiskey bottle was a single flower planted in the dry dirt. I thought back to the purple bloom that had been planted in the greenery outside of the shelter the morning Ms. Marta died.

Here was a bright red rose.

I stopped to look down at it. A single red rose sprung up from the ground, its green leaves a sharp contrast from a couple piles of dirty slush left over from a brief snow that had fallen days before.

“A rose in the middle of winter?” I whispered to myself. I bent down farther to investigate, but a voice from behind me made me jump.

“Flowers can't tell lies. If you keep the sun off of them, dry up their waterbeds, and throw in weeds to choke 'em out, ain't no way or reason for them to bloom.”

The stench that rose from her breath, the odor of her coat, reached my pregnant-sensitive nose and made me gag. She seemed oblivious to my nasal suffering as she continued, her eyes glued to the flower below us.

“If a rose is in full bloom when you know it's only been kept in darkness, and the ground it's planted in is cracked and cold, don't stop to smell that rose. There's a trap somewhere in those tempting dark red petals. There's deceit. Maybe even death. Run from that flowerbed. You don't want to get buried in that soil.”

“Sweet Violet,” I called her, noticing that her hair looked more unruly than it had in the emergency room, her skin dry and cracked, her eyes more worn.

She looked up from the misplaced rose, narrowed her eyes at me. “Who told you that was my name?”

“You did.”

She frowned, pulled on a chin hair, and then clasped her hands together. “Yes, I remember you.”

“The hospital. I gave you a ride back to a shelter where you were staying,” I reminded her.

She kept smiling, said nothing.

“And you left your things in my car. Your housecoat, slippers. And I have your purse.”

Her smile dropped and her eyes began darting around. There was a wide space around us as if the smell served as an invisible shield keeping passersby at bay.

“I'll go grab your things from my car, if you can wait here for a moment.”

Her smile did not return as she stared at me in silence.

“Um, so you'll be here for a moment? I'll get your things, okay?”

She studied me some more and then smiled. “Roses don't bloom in winter. That's why I had to give it a toast.” She leaned her head toward me. “Shhhh. I planted it there on Christmas, and it rebelled long enough to stay alive for me to toast it. What type of flower are you in the winter?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Not sure that I know what you mean. I'm going to get your things. Can I help you with anything else? Do you have any family or friends I can contact for you, Sweet Violet?”

Her smile dropped again. “Who told you that was my name?” She began backing up.

“Wait, Frankie Jean?” I tried the name that Ms. Marta had used to identify her.

Her eyes widened again and she turned away from me, scuttling away.

“Sweet Violet? Frankie Jean?” I called after her. “Do you want your purse? The pretty watch inside?”

She froze then turned back around. “You can keep it. You keep it. Keep it!” she shrieked, took a turn, and headed toward a darkened alleyway. Disappeared.

“Sienna, what are you doing out here? Are you okay?” Leon approached me from the opposite side, his eyes scanning the immediate area as I stood blinking, confused. “Did something happen? You don't look well.”

“I . . . I just ran into that old, homeless woman whose stuff I've been wanting to return.”

“Wait a minute. You still have that bag? I thought we were done with that.”

“I was. I am.” I shrugged my shoulders. “She didn't want it. I guess that watch meant nothing to her after all.”

“Melanie just quit,” he spoke flatly, referring to the young girl who I'd given the tray of samples to hold. Clearly his attention and time didn't allow for one more word about Sweet Violet, or whoever she was. No point in even talking to him about the confusion around her name, her anger at being identified either way.

“I'll be right in to help. Just have to do one thing.”

He shook his head, headed back to his shop. I went to my car parked at a meter around the corner from the bakery. I popped the trunk and waited for a group of spectators heading to the car behind me to leave so I could open it with without hitting anyone. That woman said she didn't want her bag, but I didn't either. It seemed fitting to leave the bag with the housecoat, slippers, and purse with the pocket watch hidden in its seams at the rose she'd planted. I walked back to the sapling, spotted the bottle of whiskey, quickened my step to leave the bag there with the flower and be done with it and her once and for all.

But the rose was gone, an upturned tiny pile of dirt now left in its place. I looked around me, moved my head to try to peer down the alleyway where I'd seen her disappear.

Nothing and nobody but groups of families, couples, and rowdy teenagers were within my view.

I left the bag there anyway, settled it next to the upright bottle of whisky in the dirt surrounding the sapling.

I had no use for it, as far as I was concerned. Nothing else for me to do but keep moving. I'd tried to help. She didn't want it. I had to get back to Leon who I knew wanted my assistance.

I was steps away from his entrance when a sharp clap and a collective gasp sounded near me. Parts of the crowd scattered away down the block, the opposite direction from where I'd attempted to engage Sweet Violet.

I looked all around me, searching to see what had brought the late night New Year's revelers to a standstill.

Victim three.

I saw the black loafers lying on the ground before I saw the rest of the body sprawled across the pavement.

The crowd's gasps turned to screams as recognition of the victim grew.

Julian Morgan.

Councilman. Philanthropist. Actor. Activist. TV personality. A man who was both a Baltimore legend and a national treasure due to his varied and storied career path that intersected the arts, politics, and entertainment. At nearly eighty-five years old and a pillar of the community, his death hit a deep low in the bass notes of Baltimore.

The weeping began immediately as the crowds that had come out to bring in the New Year realized that a man so tied to the Baltimore landscape and the metropolitan scene had been viciously murdered, shot down in what appeared to be an accident.

He had not been the intended target, the investigators would later conclude.

Surveillance video would reveal a scuffle between two other men. A gun was drawn and a shot fired and the bullet landed by chance in the chest of Julian Morgan. Those details would come out later. What was immediately observed that night, at least what I observed, was a young man in a black jacket and a black hat running off to a dark car and speeding off toward President Street. The only thing that had been missing from that baby-faced man was a cigarette. I recognized the probable shooter and killer of the famed Julian Morgan as the young man who I'd spoken to the morning Ms. Marta had been killed.

Are you a cop?
The question he'd had for me.

What I wasn't 100 percent certain of was whether he was the same man lurking by the front entrance of the emergency room at Metro Community the night I assisted Sweet Violet, or whether that was him and the same black car parked near the shelter when I dropped her off.

I wasn't sure though my gut wanted to believe so.

“Sienna, they caught the man you saw and have tied him to all three murders. You've shared what you know for sure, so the other details are not necessary,” Leon pleaded with me when I shared my concerns later, after filling the police in with what I'd observed for certain. I'd been able to place Delmon Frank at two of the crime scenes, Ms. Marta's and Julian Morgan's. No one ever was able to identify or capture the other young man he was arguing with the night the stray bullet landed in Morgan's chest.

“I am proud of you for doing your civic duty, but I don't want you involved more than necessary. They have enough information. They have the man. Leave it at that, and leave that woman you're so worried about out of it. Don't complicate matters,” Leon continually told me.

A grand jury found that there was enough evidence to indict Frank based on the New Year's downtown surveillance video and my testimony, which linked him to the first crime scene. The bullets and other key forensic evidence at Ms. Marta's and Morgan's scenes matched. Once Frank was tied to Ms. Marta's murder, shelter residents identified him as Amber's boyfriend. Though it was too late to look for any of her bite marks on his body, his DNA was in her fingernail scrapings, tests would prove. It all fit together neatly, soundly, allowing prosecutors to go after him quickly.