The Kept Woman (Will Trent 8) (36 page)

The decor gave a nod to LaDonna’s Greek heritage—statues and fountains and lots and lots of Greek keys up and down the walls. Just about everything was plated in gold. The faucets in the sinks were giant swans with wings for hot and cold. The chandeliers down the hallway were gold. Angie looked up at the fixtures. The arms were Rippy’s logo, curled
R
s dripping with crystals that the sun hit like a laser. She had to look away to keep her retinas from burning. By the time the maid showed Angie into the nail salon, she was seeing spots.

‘That you, girl?’ LaDonna waved Angie over. Her fingernails were being painted bright red by a slim Asian woman. Four wives were soaking their feet in bath salts, four more Asian women doing their nails. Usher played on the radio. The TV was muted, tuned to ESPN.

LaDonna offered, ‘Grab a soak. My girl does a great pedicure.’

‘No thanks.’ Angie would rip out her nails before she let a stranger touch her feet. She didn’t understand the lives these women were living. LaDonna wasn’t book smart, but she was smart enough to know that she could be doing more than getting her nails buffed at one in the afternoon. Chantal Gordon had been a professional tennis player before she hung up her racket to have babies. Angelique Jones had been a doctor. Santee Chadwick had been her husband’s private banker, a vice president with Wells Fargo. Tisha Dupree was an idiot. This was the best she would ever do.

LaDonna said, ‘You got some papers for me to sign?’

‘I need to ask you some questions.’

‘This about that bitch in Vegas? That shit’s been handled.’

Angie waited for the laughter to die down. ‘No, it’s something else.’

‘Sit down, girl. You look beat.’

Angie sat down. She let her purse drop to the floor. She
felt
beat. She didn’t know why. Basically all she’d done all day was sit in one place or another. She asked, ‘Why isn’t Fig’s wife here?’

Chantal snorted. ‘Girl got her nose too high in the air to slum with us bitches.’

Tisha said, ‘She’s gonna trip if she doesn’t look down at some point.’

There was the inevitable awkward pause.

Angelique asked, ‘Is Jo in trouble?’

‘I don’t know.’ Angie studied LaDonna. The woman was waiting for something. If she’d been a cat, her tail would’ve been twitching. ‘Jo seems to keep to herself. Kip is worried that something is wrong. He wants her to be happy.’

‘I’ve never had more than two words with her,’ Santee said. ‘She’s too stuck-up for me.’

Angelique said, ‘It’s hard to interpret shyness in other people. They tend to come across as aloof.’

‘She
is
aloof,’ Chantal countered. ‘I asked her for coffee. I asked her to go shopping. Each time she says, “Let me check with Fig and I’ll get back to you.” ’ She shook her head. ‘That was six months ago. I’m still waiting.’

Tisha said, ‘I’ll go shopping with you.’

Chantal studied the job being done on her fingernails.

‘She’s too thin.’ Angelique was a doctor. She noticed these things. ‘I assumed she was stressed out because of the move, putting Anthony into a new school. It’s a lot of responsibility moving a household that size.’

‘Especially when your man won’t lift a finger,’ Chantal said. ‘When Jameel and I moved here, that man packed one suitcase, and all he put in it was his shit. I asked him what I was supposed to do with his kid’s clothes and toys and the kitchen and the bathrooms and he just said, “I’m set, baby. You handle it.” ’

There were noises of sympathy around the room. Angie didn’t see Chantal loading boxes into a rented U-Haul. She had probably paid Jameel back by hiring the most expensive movers she could find.

Santee said, ‘Jo married Fig young.’

‘Who didn’t?’ Chantal countered. ‘I was nineteen. La D was eighteen. Seems to me she married late.’

Angie looked at LaDonna. She was still watching, but she still wasn’t talking.

Santee said, ‘Jo has to be happy that Fig’s doing well. Marcus has really coached him up.’

Chantal said, ‘Jo doesn’t care much about basketball.’

There were not-so-fake gasps around the room.

‘What does she care about?’ Angie asked.

Tisha said, ‘She loves Anthony. Her life revolves around him.’

‘And her mother,’ Angelique said. ‘Unfortunately she’s in the early stages of congestive heart failure.’

‘Maybe that’s why she keeps to herself,’ Tisha said. ‘I lost my mother a few years ago. You don’t get over something like that. It just stays with you.’

Angelique told Angie, ‘Jo and Fig will be at the party Sunday night. La D and Marcus are hosting a blowout before the season starts. I can talk to her then if you want.’

‘I’d appreciate that.’ Angie looked at LaDonna again. Nothing good ever came out of the woman’s silence. Angie told her, ‘I heard you threw a nice party for Jo when she moved here.’

LaDonna blew on her freshly painted nails. She had a glint in her eye.

‘You knew Jo before?’ Angie tried to tread carefully. ‘Back in high school?’

LaDonna waved away the manicurist. ‘We didn’t go to the same school. She lived in the next town.’

Tisha said, ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘How about church?’

‘Yeah, I think she went to my church.’

Tisha opened her mouth, then closed it.

Angie waited. LaDonna never made anything easy. What she didn’t understand was that Angie didn’t care about her future at 110 Sports Management. All she cared about was Jo. She said, ‘Are we going to talk around the fact that Marcus used to date Jo Figaroa, or are you going to get real with me and tell me what’s going on?’

LaDonna’s lips were still pursed from blowing her nails. ‘I wouldn’t call holding hands and talking about Bible class dating.’

‘What would you call it?’

‘None of your God damm business.’

Santee said, ‘You want us to boot, girl?’

‘Nah, we’re gonna take a walk to the pool.’ LaDonna stood up. She shoved her feet into a pair of fuchsia stilettos. ‘Ostrich skin,’ she told Angie. ‘My house heels. Custom-made in Milan.’

‘Take some sunblock,’ Tisha said. ‘The sun’ll burn you up.’

LaDonna pinned the girl with her steely gaze. She told Angie, ‘This way.’

Angie wasn’t the type to follow. She walked shoulder-to-shoulder with LaDonna down the corridor. She looked down at the woman’s Italian shoes. Gold
R
s were embroidered on the tips. Some threads had started to pull away. There was a tiny stain on the toe. The sight of the defects gave Angie the only sense of pleasure she’d had all day. LaDonna had always reminded her of what pimps called the bottom girl, or the mama in charge—an older whore who kept the girls in line through force or manipulation. She would comfort you or cut you, depending on what it took to keep you earning on the street.

LaDonna slipped on a pair of sunglasses. She pushed open the door. Outside was even hotter and brighter than Angie remembered. She took a breath of humid air. The smell from the nail polish was still in her nose.

LaDonna said, ‘Bitch, what’re you up to?’

Angie smiled, but only to piss her off. ‘I told you. Kip is worried about Jo.’

‘She ain’t my man’s type, if that’s what you’re getting at.’ LaDonna shook her head to make her point. ‘Marcus likes a woman with some fight in her. Jo wouldn’t say boo to a ghost.’

‘She’s under Fig’s thumb.’

‘She’s under his fist.’ LaDonna snorted at Angie’s surprise. ‘You think I don’t know what that looks like?’ She laughed. ‘Marcus wouldn’t raise a hand to me, but my daddy, he’d get his belt and whoop the skin off my ass.’ She pointed to Angie. ‘Jo’s got the same look my mama did every time she got beat down. Hell, not even when she was beat. He’d just look at her and she’d . . .’ LaDonna hunched down and threw up her hands, but she didn’t have it in her to look afraid.

Angie asked, ‘Did you talk to Jo about this?’

‘What would I say? “I know your man is hitting you. Why the fuck don’t you leave and take half his money?” Hell, she knows that already. She’s known it for near ’bout ten damn years. And what has she done about it?’ She walked over to a covered barbecue area. She took a bottle of water from the refrigerator. ‘It ain’t like it used to be. One picture, one video from an elevator, she’d get the world on her side.’ LaDonna laughed. ‘Of course, you see how that plays, right? She’ll be all over TV and shit and people will feel sorry for her, and then a week later they’ll all be blaming
her, saying, “Look here in the video where she ain’t yelling,” and “Look here where she punches him in the chest,” and “Why’d she make him mad like that?” and “All she wants is his money.” ’

Angie shook her head. ‘I can’t tell if you’re saying she should get out or if she’s better off staying.’

‘I’m saying the girl ain’t got no backbone.’

‘Backbones come at a price,’ Angie said. ‘Fig would lose his contract if Jo let the world know what he was doing. There wouldn’t be any more money coming in.’

‘Fuck the money.’ She tossed Angie a bottle of water. ‘If Marcus tried that shit on me, ain’t enough gold in Fort Knox would keep me here. I still know how to clean a hotel room. Me and my kids would be living out of a box before I let them see me beat down like a dog.’

Angie wondered if that was true. ‘Why don’t you help her?’

‘Shit, I’m not getting that girl’s stink on me.’ LaDonna drank some water. ‘Besides, I got kids to take care of. A household to run. A husband who needs me. I’m not going to throw away my precious time trying to save somebody who don’t even wanna be saved.’

A sound came out of Angie’s mouth, almost a ‘huh.’ LaDonna might not be running whores, but she had the mama logic down pat.

‘Look at me, sister.’ LaDonna took off her sunglasses. ‘Watch my mouth. Listen to my words. Take it back to Kip. Jo Figaroa likes what she’s got.’

‘She likes being hit?’

‘Why else is she staying with Fig?’ LaDonna added, ‘You ain’t seen the two of them together when he starts to simmer.
She don’t lift a finger to calm him down. Shit, she winds him up. Nags on him. Slaps on him.’ She pointed her finger at Angie. ‘Right here at this pool, I saw it with my own eyes. Team party a few months ago. We’re all lounging, drinking cocktails. Fig tells her something real quiet, like go get me something to drink. Jo don’t want to do it. She says, “Get it your damn self.” Now, Fig, he don’t like that. We can all see him getting riled up. He pushes Jo out of her chair. She still don’t get the drink. She mouths off, punches him in the chest, like she ain’t afraid of him. We all knew what was coming next. Fig ’bout tore out her hair dragging her inside. Don’t know what he did, but she never mouthed off to him again.’

And apparently, none of the collective three thousand pounds of basketball player muscle did anything to keep a one-hundred-pound woman from getting the shit beaten out of her. ‘I’m sure Fig was terrified when Jo hit him.’

‘Right?’ LaDonna said, ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying, girl. You want out? Take a picture of that shit—the bruises and the fat lip and the black eye. Put it up on TMZ. Call a lawyer.’

‘Call a medical examiner,’ Angie said.

‘Maybe.’ LaDonna finished her water. She tossed the bottle into the recycling bin. ‘He’ll put a cap in her ass if she tries to leave him. And don’t even get me started on what Fig would do if she tried to take away his son. That man loves his boy. He’ll blow up the fucking world if Jo even thinks about taking him.’

‘I thought it was easy. Just take a few pictures and get a lawyer.’

She stared down on Angie. ‘Tell me again why you’re so worried about Jo.’

‘It’s my job.’

‘Then why are you bringing this shit to me?’ LaDonna kept staring at her. ‘Why don’t
you
help her?’

Angie shrugged. ‘Tell me what to do.’

‘Don’t tell Kip, ’cause he’ll put Laslo on your ass if you mess with the team.’

Angie put it back on her. ‘So what, then? Wait for Jo’s funeral?’

LaDonna gave it some thought. She took out another bottle of water. She twisted open the top. Finally she shook her head. ‘Doesn’t matter what we do. Even if Jo got away from Fig, she’d just end up back with another asshole doing the same damn thing. That’s what my mama did. She finally leaves my daddy, she meets this man who’s all sweet on her, gonna take care of her, and the minute they get back from the honeymoon, he’s raising his fist to her. That’s how it’s been happening since Jesus lost his sandals. Some men are born to beat and some women are born to take a beating, and they got these magnets inside of them that always pull them together. Like to like.’ She turned to Angie. ‘Some people are born with a hole inside them. They spend their lives trying to fill it. Sometimes it’s pills, sometimes it’s Jesus, and sometimes it’s a fist.’ She threw the bottle cap into the trashcan. ‘We done here?’

Angie knew they were, but she wasn’t going to let the other woman have the last shot. ‘This girl in Vegas. Do I need to get Laslo to clean that up?’

‘It’s taken care of.’

She sounded like a Mafia don. ‘You make her an offer she couldn’t refuse?’

‘I broke her God damm teeth out of her face.’

Angie held LaDonna’s gaze. She wasn’t going to be the one to look away first. ‘I’ll get out of your hair.’

LaDonna looked out at the pool. ‘You do that.’

Angie knew when she was being dismissed. She opened the cold water as she walked back down the corridor. The wives were all atwitter back in the salon, but Angie just grabbed her purse and left. She didn’t need an escort to lead her back to her car. She was backing out of the motor court when she remembered the green phone.

‘Dammit,’ Angie cursed, because of course this was how it had played out.

While she was wasting her time playing patty-cake with LaDonna, Jo had gotten a text. More importantly, she had texted back, downloading the cloning program to her phone.

M
R:
IT
OWN
S
UITES 1HR
.

J
OSEPHINE:
OK.

The time stamp showed the text had been sent ten minutes ago.

Angie woke up the iPad. She pulled up the GPS tracking software. A blue dot beeped on the map, slowly making its way down Cherokee Drive.