Mischief 24/7 (24 page)

“Not so good, Miss Sunshine,” he said, pulling half-a-dozen tissues from the box and rubbing at his eyes and nose again. “I’m sorry. It’s like it was before I told Teddy. You know, all bottled up inside, tying me up in knots? Then I told him and it was a little better for a couple of minutes. Except then… and then it all came back and it was even worse, because now he wasn’t here to help me.”

“Then let me help you, Jermayne, let us all help you,” Jade said softly, taking his large hand in both of hers. “You went to Teddy and told him what happened that night, didn’t you? The night Teddy died? Why don’t we start with that? Tell me what happened, Jermayne. Let me help you.”

Jermayne’s huge frame shuddered as he sighed yet again. For a moment Jade was afraid he’d break down again, but then he said, “He was going to leave us, you know? Go away, be the big star. What if he forgot us? What if he never came back to get us like he kept saying he would? He said we were going to have a swimming pool and a big house, but why would he want a kid in that big house? And he was so mad at me. He told me I was already in trouble once, and this time they’d take me away from Gran and put me somewhere and when was I gonna learn.”

“I don’t understand. Maybe you can help me out, Jermayne. Why was Terrell so mad at you?”

“The gun,” Jermayne said. “Terrell was mad about the gun.”

Jade’s stomach turned to stone in her belly. She glanced up at Court, who was slowly shaking his head.

“What about the gun, Jermayne?”

“They gave it to me, like before. I got caught the first time, with the drugs, you know? But they said if I was smart that wouldn’t happen again. All I had to do was hold it for them until they asked for it. They don’t do nothing to kids who hold stuff for the gangs, not bad stuff, anyway.” He sniffed, blew his nose. “It was a big gun, really big.”

He looked at Jade. “Teddy always thought I knew who’d done it, who’d shot Terrell. He moved Gran and me away, to show me, see, you’re safe now, Jermayne, you can tell me now, Jermayne, tell me who shot your brother. That I wouldn’t feel really safe, or really good again, until I told him.

But how could I tell him what I did? How was that going to make anything
right
again? Gran would hate me, and so would Teddy, and they’d put me somewhere, put me in some jail. I couldn’t tell anyone, they told me I couldn’t tell anyone. Even after Teddy moved us out, I knew I couldn’t tell or else they’d come after Gran and me both. Besides, I’m the one who killed him.”

“Tell us how it happened, Jermayne,” Court said, pulling one of the leather side chairs over and sitting down next to Jade. “It was an accident, right? You didn’t mean to shoot him.”

Jermayne hung his head. “He was so mad when I showed him the gun. He told me again that he was doing everything for me, me and Gran, working hard at school, playing basketball. So he could get us out, you know? And now look what I was doing. He said…he said maybe he should just go and not come back, not if his own brother was going to run with gangs and throw his life down a toilet.”

He lifted his head, his eyes so huge and sorrowful Jade had to bite her bottom lip to keep from crying out. “He didn’t mean that. Terrell loved me. He was just trying to scare me. So I…I scared him back. I picked up the gun and I said maybe I should just shoot him and then he couldn’t leave.

He yelled at me, told me to give him the goddamn gun… and it went off.”

“Jesus,” Court breathed quietly.

“The…uh…the next thing I remember was how I was lying on my back on the court, all the wind knocked out of me, I guess, and Terrell was lying there, too, all this blood spreading under his head. I called to him, but he didn’t move, he didn’t get up. But I didn’t believe it. He’d get up. He was mad at me, sure, trying to scare me, but he’d get up if I left. I picked up the gun because I knew the gang would want it back, and I ran all the way home and hid in the closet in my room. I kept waiting for Terrell to come home, because I didn’t believe it had really happened, you know?”

“But Terrell didn’t come home.”

“No, he didn’t come home. There was this loud knock on the door and I heard voices, and then Gran started to scream and scream and scream. I got up and went into the living room and she was kneeling on the floor, just screaming, while these two cops just stood there looking at her and all the neighbors were trying to see in the doorway, and then they all started screaming, too. Gran kept screaming that Terrell was dead, her baby was dead, and that the person who’d done this would never sleep easy, not while she was alive. She swore it, she swore that on her knees every day after that. She made me get down on my knees next to her and help her pray that they caught the devil who’d killed her Terrell. Every day we’d pray that the one who done it would not rest easy for a moment while she was still alive. Gran’s dead now, in the cemetery next to Terrell, so I can’t tell her she was wrong. I still don’t sleep.”

He got to his feet and looked around the room. “I need a bathroom, please. I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Come with me,” Court said, and Jade watched them leave the room before she slowly got to her feet, moving like an old woman, like Jermayne’s grandmother, who’d spent so many years on her knees, praying for the truth.
Thank God she never knew.

“He’s going to be okay,” Court said, coming back into the room. “Now, how about you?”

“I’ve been better,” she said, wrapping her arms around him and holding him close. “He told Teddy, Court. He told him the night Teddy died.”

“I know, sweetheart. And it explains why Teddy was drunk. He had to have taken the news hard.”

She looked at him. If he, if anybody, only knew how often Teddy had been drunk in the past almost two years. But that was her secret, hers and

Teddy’s. She’d tell Court one day, because he deserved to know the full truth of why she had come back to Philly so often during their marriage, but not right now. “So now you’re back to thinking it was suicide. Jermayne told Teddy what had really happened, Teddy got drunk and felt like he couldn’t live with what he knew?”

“It’s a theory.”

“Yes, but not for long, not once the cops get hold of it,” Jade said, sitting down on the couch once more. “Let me run this one by you. Jermayne tells Teddy everything, but then almost immediately regrets it. He leaves, Teddy gets drunk, Jermayne comes back, sees the gun case on the desk. Teddy tells him he has to go to the police, has to tell them the truth about Terrell. There’s struggle for the gun. A short one, with Teddy drunk and Jermayne being as big as he is. The gun goes off—that shot into the floor—and the second shot goes into Teddy.”

“It didn’t happen like that,” Jermayne said.

Jade closed her eyes for a moment, wishing she’d learn to keep her mouth shut. “No, I’m sure it didn’t, Jermayne,” she said, getting to her feet again. “Why don’t you tell us what did happen? From the beginning. You went to see Teddy. The night he died.”

Jermayne seemed to have himself under control now, as if telling his story again had somehow given him a measure of peace. He perched himself on the front of Sam’s desk, his hands braced on either side of him.

“Teddy was on me and on me, about going to school, you know? Ever since I graduated high school last month. He’d call me, he’d show up at my work like you did, ragging at me about how did I want to spend the rest of my life washing somebody’s else car, is that what Terrell had wanted for me—like that. Drunk sometimes, I think, but he was okay. Sad, but okay, I thought. I guess I was really upsetting him by saying I didn’t want to take any more money from him, that I didn’t want to go to that trade school he signed me up for. I disappointed him, just like I disappointed Terrell, just like I always disappointed Gran.”

Jade shot a quick look at Court, whose expression didn’t give anything away. But he’d heard what Jermayne had said about Teddy, about Teddy’s drinking.

“Anyway. He wouldn’t leave me alone. And all the time still asking me what else I remembered about when Terrell died. I couldn’t take it no more, he wasn’t going to stop. So I went to his house that night, late, around maybe ten o’clock? And I told him.”

“Teddy was seen on the security camera at Melodie Brainard’s house around nine,” Jade said. “Okay, that fits. How was he when you saw him, Jermayne? Was… was the gun case on his desk?”

Jermayne nodded. “Yeah. I saw a box on his desk. Big wooden one? I didn’t know what was in it, so it could have been a gun. He had a bottle on the desk, a funny-looking one, sort of short and fancy.”

“Teddy’s Crown Royal,” Jade said, nodding. “He saved that for special times, good or bad. Anything else?”

“Anything else? I don’t think… Yeah. Yeah, you’re right, there was something else,” Jermayne said, looking at her again, this time looking a little confused. “He had one of those clear plastic bags on the desk? You know, like for putting food in? Except there wasn’t any food in it. Just a hairbrush. I asked him about it, and he said it was a present from a lady and it was going to break something wide open.”

“There was no bag or hairbrush on his desk when I found him,” Jade said, looking at Court. She felt her excitement building once more. Teddy had been to visit Melodie Brainard again. Had he convinced her of Joshua’s guilt? Had she given Teddy her husband’s hairbrush so he could get Brainard’s DNA? Exactly what had Teddy known that made him go home and pull out the Crown Royal to celebrate—and his service revolver? Because he thought there might be trouble? They were close, so close. And soon it would all be over. “I guess that finishes any more theories on suicide for any reason.”

Court nodded, but then went back to the night Jermayne had visited Teddy. “Jermayne, when you told Teddy what had happened all those years ago, what did he say to you?”

“He… he said it was all right. He said it wasn’t my fault, that it was an accident. But he said we had to tell. I was crying, like just before, and Teddy, he was crying, too. But we had to tell or else things would never be right. He said I’d never be right with myself if I didn’t tell the truth and that… that I’d been carrying a burden for a mistake that should have been put down long ago. He said he carried some mistakes, some burdens, you know, of his own, and he didn’t want to see me ending up like him. He told me to go home and pack up my clothes and come back, stay with him until this priest friend of his got home from some vacation he was on somewhere. The priest would talk to me and help me, and then we’d all go down to the station house together and I’d start to feel better about myself.”

“Canada. Father Muskie was in Canada. We couldn’t even reach him in time for the funeral.”

“Right, that was it. Teddy and Father Muskie, they were gonna go with me when I told about Terrell. I still have to do that, don’t I?”

“Yeah, Jermayne,” Jade said carefully. “You still have to do that. I can arrange a meeting. I know Father Muskie will go with you.”

“And you?” he asked, looking scared again. “You’ll come with?”

“Sure,” Jade said, giving him a quick hug. “I’ll come with.”

“We both will,” Court said. “Along with whatever lawyer Sam recommends. It’s going to be all right, Terrell, we promise.”

“That’s what Teddy promised. That’s the last thing he ever said to me. That I wasn’t to worry, that he’d take care of everything. I went home to get my stuff and come back, like he said I should. I was feeling pretty good, you know. Lighter? But when I got back to the block, there were all these cop cars and flashing lights. I saw you, Miss Sunshine, standing outside all by yourself, watching them take Teddy away inside that black bag. I didn’t know what to do so I just left and went back home. And then the next morning it was on the news that Teddy had killed that lady and then shot hisself. I knew they were wrong. He didn’t kill no lady, not Teddy. But maybe he shot hisself because of me, because of what I told him. Maybe it was my fault all over again.”

“Teddy was murdered, Jermayne,” Jade assured him. “If we weren’t already completely sure of that, you telling us about that bag with the hairbrush in it proves it without a doubt. Terrell’s death was an accident, and you never made Teddy anything but proud of you. Please remember that.”

“I agree,” Court said. “But now, unfortunately, Miss Sunshine and I have to leave.”

“Not yet,” Jade told him. “I had Sam call Brainard’s office to reschedule our meeting for after his speech. Back at his house. And Father Muskie is on his way. I don’t want to leave Jermayne alone, and Father Muskie will take care of him while we’re gone.” She looked at Jermayne. “Is that all right with you? You’ll talk to Father Muskie?”

“Teddy wanted me to talk to him. Sure, okay.”

“Terrific. He’s a very nice man. And will you wait for us to get back? Will you stay here tonight?”

“I suppose so, sure. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank us just yet—I’m also going to hand you off to Ernesto. He’ll make sure you get something to eat, and after Father Muskie leaves, he’ll talk to you until your ears fall off. But he’s a good kid. Jade? I’m guessing we have to go talk to Sam and Jolie now, fill them in on what’s going on.”

“I know,” Jade said, reluctant to leave Jermayne, maybe even more reluctant knowing she now had to tell Jolie about Jermayne. Jolie would cry, and then Jade would probably cry with her. And they’d have to go through that all over again when they told Jessica. Jade hated to cry.

Father Muskie arrived twenty minutes later and he and Jermayne closed themselves up in Sam’s study for a good long talk, while Court explained to Ernesto that they had a guest about his own age and maybe Ernesto could find something for the two of them do.

“Sure, no problem,” Ernesto assured them. “You think he plays Internet video games? Mr. B has a bitchin’ setup in that room of his.”

“You’re kidding. Sam plays video games?” Court smiled at Jolie, who only shrugged.

“Yes, Sam plays video games,” Sam said as he joined them all in the foyer. “Sam is very good at video games. You got a problem with that, cousin?”

“No, I’m just trying to form a mental picture. Okay, got it. It isn’t pretty, by the way,” he said, winking at Jolie.