Of Blood and Sorrow (11 page)

But if Thelma had witnessed a murder like she said, especially if the victim was Turk, then they’d want to know what she’d seen. But if Turk was dead, then who had murdered Lilah Love? I glanced at her hands again. They were big enough to go through somebody’s throat, somebody as small as Lilah. But she wouldn’t murder her own sister.

“I’m tired of sitting here in the dark. There are some lightbulbs in the closet upstairs. I’m going to go up and get them. When I come back, I want to know everything that happened, you understand me?”

She nodded that she did, and I went upstairs for the lightbulbs, stopping in my room for my .38, which I strapped in an ankle band holster under my pants leg. She was still sitting on the stairs, head hung low, when I came back down. I screwed in the bulbs, then put the kettle on for some tea. She came into the kitchen and sat down at the table.

“My Aunt Edna used to have a table like this when I was a little girl,” she said. “When my mama would come home Sunday mornings, we’d sit and have tea and cookies, just like real little ladies, my mama used to say. Just like real little ladies.”

She ran her hand across the table’s surface as if stroking a cat and closed her eyes as if remembering. It was a nice piece of furniture, I had to agree with her on that. It was oak and heavy, better suited perhaps to a fancy dining room than my dowdy kitchen, but it gave my space an elegance that it badly needed. I’d bought it the year I left DeWayne Curtis, my first purchase without him, my celebration of independence. Jamal had been a little boy then, and the salesman told me he’d be a grandfather with grandchildren before it wore out. It was a splendid old table that I could easily imagine in Sweet Thing’s grand old house.

“I’ve had this table a long time, probably longer than you’ve been alive,” I said, and she grinned. She had a pretty smile, with gapped teeth that gave her an elfin look.

“That’s like my aunt’s old house. She says old things have memories, and you should never sell them.”

“I think she’s right. Are you hungry?” My fish sandwich was cold, so I put it in the refrigerator; there wasn’t enough for two anyway.

“I went out this morning and got some chocolate donuts from that Dunkin’ Donuts down the street, and I had McDonald’s Tuesday night before…well, before you know what. I had two burgers, and Turk had a Big Mac. That Big Mac was Turk’s last meal. Do you think that’s right, that a Big Mac should be a man’s last meal on earth?”

I glanced at the girl and shook my head. “Honey, I don’t know,” I said, but I was struck by the fact that she’d gone out for Dunkin’ Donuts the morning after seeing a man brutally murdered. What was really going on with her?

“He must have liked them because he was always eating them.”

“Well, I guess that must have been his favorite meal, and a man should have his favorite meal before he dies,” I said, not sure what else to say. She nodded, then wiped the tears off her face with her hand. I gave her a napkin, and she blew her nose.

I made some tuna fish sandwiches, light on the mayonnaise, and brewed some tea. She gobbled down two sandwiches, loaded her tea with four teaspoons of sugar, slurped it down, and burped.

“So where is Turk now?” I asked when she was finished. “His body, I mean.”

“I left him over there, in that old motel off the turnpike.” I sipped my tea without comment. That rathole of a place had been a notorious spot for live-in whores, thieves, and general lowlifes for the last twenty-five years. I knew of at least four unsolved murders that had been committed there. That must have been the “shit hole” where Treyman Barnes said she’d told him to meet her with the baby. But I wasn’t ready to mention Barnes yet or anything she’d supposedly told him. I wanted to see how well their stories meshed.

“Why did you and Turk go there?” I kept any hint of judgment out of my voice.

“That’s where my mama died, and I always go there to be with her spirit.”

“When did she die?”

“When I was a baby. Somebody put a knife straight through her heart. Right through it.”

Her words sent a chill through me, but I tried not to show it.

“How do you know she died there?”

“I found the police report in my Aunt Edna’s room a couple of years back, so I know the exact place. Room 311. That’s the exact room. They ain’t hardly even changed anything about the room. And I’m happy about that. That room is a secret I keep with my mama, and she ain’t telling nobody. And don’t you tell nobody either. Hardly anybody knows I go there, except Aunt Edna, the lady at my school, and a couple of the guys who work there. They’re real nice.”

“And your aunt doesn’t object?”

“The lady at school, my guidance counselor, told my aunt not to let me go there no more. She said it didn’t do me no good, that it might end up making me crazy, but that was a while ago. I told my aunt it would make me crazy if I didn’t go there, and she said it was okay, if it made me feel closer to my mama. That’s the only place I go when I’m not home.”

“Do you go back to that room often?”

“Sometimes, if nobody’s in it. I feel like they should make it a shrine or something, even though my mama died a long time ago, but I guess they won’t. Maybe I will someday—get rich enough to buy that nasty old place, burn it down, and turn it into a garden for my mama, and fill it with roses and pink flowers.”

“If somebody’s there, where do you go?”

“The same room on another floor—211 or 411. Sometimes I just sit in the lobby. They don’t say nothing to me. They don’t care much. Men try to pick me up, but I know what I am, and I’m not that.”

I felt my eyes well with tears, so I got up to put more water in the kettle so she wouldn’t see them. I knew now what her mama had been, how she probably died, and what that had done to this child. I spent more time than I needed running water and filling the kettle.

“Do you think the spirits of killed people stay where they die?”

“I don’t know, honey. The dead have their secrets same as the living.”

“If they do, then Turk must be right up there with Mama, in that same room. But I hope he’s not. I don’t think she’d like him much.”

“I don’t think she’d like him much either,” I said, and sat down across from her. “So your aunt brought you up?”

“Aunt Edna raised me up when Mama got killed. She was Mama’s big sister. Aunt Edna raised Mama up, too, when they came up from Mississippi.”

“How old was your mama?” Aunt Sweet Thing must be younger than I thought.

“Mama was in her thirties when she died. Aunt Edna was twenty years older.”

“How old is your aunt now?” I’ve never been good at math, especially doing it in my head; I have trouble making change at the corner store. Thelma must have noticed my confusion.

“Seventy-something. She was fifty-eight when my mama died. I was just a little baby. Lily was twelve. Lily got Mama’s name. At least she could carry that around with her. But then she went and changed it to
Lilah,
like she changed
Sweets
to
Love
because it was prettier, but I don’t think there’s nothing prettier than your mama’s name. Mama called me Thelma Lee, after her mama. Thelma Lee Sweets.”

I thought back to my first visit with Sweet Thing and Jimson Weed. The dead Lily they’d mentioned had been Thelma Lee’s mother. Sweet Thing’s baby sister.

“And Jimson Weed? How does he come into this?”

Thelma Lee’s face darkened. “He started hanging around Aunt Edna right after my mama died, at least that’s what Lily said. She said he was like some old vulture hanging around my aunt. Trying to pick her clean.”

“Sounds like you don’t like him too much.”

“He acts like he owns my Aunt Edna or something, that she belongs to his crazy behind. That’s why Lily left four years after Mama died, because of the way he treated Aunt Edna. Like he’s the only one who cares about what happens to her.”

She drank what was left in her cup, and I asked if she wanted some more. She nodded, and I put the kettle back on. Neither of us spoke until it whistled and I’d fixed her another cup. She sipped it slowly, gaze fastened on the cup. After she finished drinking, she placed it back on the table, carefully, as if it took everything she had to put it down. She shook her bracelet and smiled.

“Did your aunt give you this?” I asked.

“My aunt gave it to me when I turned twelve. It used to belong to my mama. She had two. Aunt Edna gave one to Lily, too, right after Mama died, then she gave one to me. It’s supposed to protect me like Mama would if she were alive. Didn’t much protect Lily or my mama, did it?” She took it off and laid it across the table, and the bells tinkled as they had on Lilah’s anklet. I realized it was a charm bracelet, as Lilah’s must have been. I hadn’t gotten close enough to see how it was made. There was a small locket between the bells.

“You want to see somebody special? Here.” She opened up the locket and showed me a tiny cutout of a woman’s face. I realized it must be her mother. Her skin was pale beige, but her hair was Thelma’s, and Miss Edna Sweets’s; it fell long and loose around her pretty face.

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

“Just like her daughter.”

“She looks just like my Aunt Edna, except she looks white.”

“Not really. Black women come in all kinds of different colors. That’s what makes us so unique,” I said.

She shook the bracelet gently.

“Aunt Edna says it’s like they say in that movie, that whenever a bell rings, an angel gets her wings. Jimson Weed says there ain’t no angels in this world, only devils.”

“What does Jimson Weed know about angels or devils?” I said, and she gave me an impish grin.

“I guess you want to know what happened, don’t you?” she said after a few minutes.

“Yeah, it’s time you told me.”

We sat there for another minute or so, then I said, “So you took Turk to the room where your mother died.”

She looked away from me, talking to the table. “I did a very bad thing, Miss Hayle, and that’s probably what the Lord was punishing me for, because I did a very bad thing.”

“Taking Turk to your special place?”

“No. Something else.”

“What?”

“I took Lily’s baby. Lily didn’t really want her, and she was so cute and everything, and Lily didn’t really want to be a mother. When she came back in town, she was always leaving her with me anyway, so one day I just wouldn’t give her back. Aunt Edna and I decided we’d keep her to teach Lily a lesson.”

“But it was her child.”

“But she didn’t deserve her.”

I sighed and let it go. At this point, it was water gone under the bridge and turned to mud.

“Then I talked to you that night, on Monday, and said I’d give her to Mr. Barnes, and then he called and I was supposed to bring her to his office, and then—”

“So you’re saying that you called me, then spoke to Barnes, and you were going to take Baby Dal to his office, right?” She nodded. So Barnes had been telling the truth, or some of it anyway.

“Well, Mr. Barnes said he would give me some money, and my aunt really needs money for the house because it’s old and coming apart, so I took the baby and was going to meet him like I said, and then I got scared and—”

“Why did you get scared?”

“Because of all the bad stuff folks say about him, how he’s a crook and a murderer, and my Aunt Edna said once she thought he had something to do with Mama’s death, and so I changed my mind, and I was scared to come home, because I knew you’d be there and would give her to him anyway.

“So I called my aunt and told her I wanted to take the baby to the place where Mama died, and maybe she’d tell me what to do. It’s my mama’s grandchild because it’s Lily’s, and that’s how I ended up at the motel where Turk died.”

I let her rest a minute, then turned in a different direction.

“How did you meet Turk?”

“He came by with Lily one of those times when she dropped off the baby. It was the first time I saw him, and he seemed real nice. When she went to the bathroom, he gave me his cell and said I should call him if I ever needed anything.”

“Anything like what?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess he kind of liked me, and, well, I thought he was kind of cute, and he was older and stuff, and—”

“So what did Lilah, Lily, have to say about that? You flirting with her man?”

“I wasn’t flirting with him. He was flirting with me!”

“Him flirting with you, then.”

“Nothing, ’cause she didn’t see it. But when they left, he winked at me.”

“Winked at you?”

“Yeah.”

I rolled my eyes. My guess was that she had been attracted to the jerk like young girls sometimes are to men like that. But I was hardly the one to criticize her taste in men. “So you called him that Tuesday when you decided to get money from Barnes because you figured you needed protection,” I said.

“Something like that.”

“And then he met you at that motel, and he told you to call Barnes back because he figured out how the two of you could get more money from Barnes and still keep the baby, right?”

She nodded that I was right.

“And why did you want to keep the baby?”

“Because it belonged to my sister, and it was part of her.”

“It never occurred to you that he could have something to do with her death?”

“You sound like a cop!”

“I used to be one. Answer the question.”

“Why would it? He was nice to me. He was nice to the baby, at first.”

All I could do was shake my head.

“So who killed Turk?”

“I don’t know! He had me call Mr. Barnes back and tell him to come at midnight, just to be contrary and show him who was boss, and he said he would, and he told me to ask Mr. Barnes for a lot of money, and Mr. Barnes said he’d bring it, and so we started to wait.

“It was going on ten by then, and Baby Dal started crying, and Turk said if she didn’t stop, he was going to hit her across the mouth. So I took her with me to get her something to eat, and he told us to be back in an hour, and I was.”

“So you came back and he was dead?”

Her voice dropped to a whisper. “There was blood all over the room, Miss Hayle. On the floor, on the bed, in the bathroom—everywhere I looked, there was blood—and I tried to see if he was alive, but he wasn’t, and I got blood all over me, so I grabbed the baby, slammed the door tight, and ran out as fast as I could.”