Too Far to Say Far Enough: A Novel (13 page)

“I want Officer Kent in here,” I said. “Strictly off the record.”

“I don’t have a record. And I want to keep it that way.”

I didn’t inform her that the minute she ran away from the mother who didn’t wear frumpy clothes, she earned herself a juvenile rap sheet. Instead, I said, “I’m just trying to give you the best possible protection from the chick who tried to take you out.”

And anybody else who might be after her.

Whether that came from God or me, I didn’t take time to figure out. Not with Flannery saying, “Can Desmond be here too?”

I hesitated. Not having him there could be a deal-breaker for her. I would just have to make it clear to him later that this was his final act as Flannery’s caretaker.

“I’ll get him,” I said. “Why don’t you get comfortable in the red chair in the living room? And I suggest you take the ice bag with you.”

The fine white skin over the unpunched brow puckered slightly, but Flannery nodded and let me help her up so she could hobble toward the door. I definitely did not want to know what kind of shape the other girl was in if she really had taken it heavier than this.

Nick Kent was sitting on the railing
with
Desmond when I returned to the side porch. Both of them were turned toward the steps where Chief stood with his eagle gaze piercing Desmond. I got there in time to hear him say, “Desmond, what were you
thinking
?”

That alone was grounds for marrying the man.

“All right, gentlemen,” I said, “Flannery has agreed to an audience.”

“Flannery,” Chief said.

“Foxy just her street name,” Desmond said. “I knew that thing.”

Nick Kent slid off the rail. “What else did you find out, Miss Allison?”

“That she’s ready to talk.”

Desmond pointed to his own chest, the expected question in his eyes.

“Yes,” I said. “This time.”

He bolted for the door, taking out an Adirondack with one big foot. Chief didn’t even have to look at me to know to follow him.

The screen was barely closed after them before Nick Kent said, “She’s underage, isn’t she?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Fifteen?”

“Fourteen.”

He let out a long, slow whistle. I put my hand up.

“I know we can’t approach this the way we do with the women,” I said. “But just so you know, I’m not ready to turn her in to whoever it is I’m supposed to turn her in to until I find out what kind of situation she came from. If that puts you in a bad spot, I understand. Do what you have to do. I just want her protected.”

“I’m off duty.”

“You are a lying sack of cow manure.”

He gave me half of his boyish grin.

“And besides,” I said, “I know not being on duty doesn’t change your responsibility.”

Nick put up both hands. “I just happened on a situation where two youths appeared to be in distress, but a parent arrived and my services were no longer needed.” He pulled his sunglasses down his freckled nose. “Whatever I don’t hear for myself I can’t report. Call me if you need me.”

“You are an angel from heaven.”

“Just promise me you won’t get yourself in trouble.”

“Nick,” I said. “When have you ever known me not to be in trouble?”

The teakettle was steaming on the stove as I passed through the kitchen, probably Chief’s doing. Desmond would have sent out to Sacred Grounds for a triple mocha peanut butter something.

I was actually surprised to find Flannery in the red chair with the ice bag positioned on her eye. Desmond was sitting as close to her as he could manage, and it did
not
surprise me that I had to jerk my head at him twice to get him to move elsewhere. Chief coaxed him by the sleeve into the green striped chair and perched himself on the arm. I pulled an ottoman up next to Flannery and tucked the Harley Davidson throw around her legs, just as I’d done for so many frightened, wounded women before her. Except that my initial instincts about her had been right: she was nothing like any of them. She was in far worse trouble.

PleaseGodpleaseGodpleaseGod.

“Here’s the deal,” I said. “All we’re here to do is find out what happened today. Nobody’s going to be punished—”

“That’s good, Big Al,” Desmond put in, “’cause didn’t nobody do nothin’ wrong. ’Cept that jackal-woman hit Flannery.”

“As your attorney, Desmond,” Chief said, “I advise you to zip it until you’re asked a direct question.”

“He has an attorney?” Flannery said. “Do I need one?”

“Chief’s your attorney, too, as of now,” I said. “Okay?”

She shrugged, but the pucker left her brow.

I tapped the arm of her chair. “Let’s start with you. What made you go out looking for …?”

I waited for her to supply a name but she wasn’t forthcoming. Desmond muttered, “Jackal-woman.”

“All I wanted to do was tell her she needed to get out of town.” Flannery narrowed her good eye at me. “I would have just called her, but nobody has a charger for my phone.”

“So she obviously has a cell phone too,” I said.

“Seriously, who doesn’t?”

Desmond raised his hand. Chief gently lowered it for him.

“And you knew where to find her,” I said.

She turned to Desmond and gave him a warning look that very obviously thrust him into an interior wrestling match. He bugged his eyes at her. Stretched his neck in three directions. Gave the Adam’s apple a complete workout. Finally Chief pressed Desmond’s shoulder with his elbow.

“Now you can talk, Des.”

Desmond still looked at Flannery, his eyes full of apology, before he said, “She didn’t know till I tol’ her where the Hot Spot was.”

“The what?” I said.

“It’s just a place where kids meet,” Flannery said.

“To do what, exactly?”

She went through as many gyrations as Desmond had: eye rolling, nostrils flaring, lip attempting to curl. We all waited, Desmond the least patiently. He screwed up his face as if he were in pain.

“To get hooked up,” she said. “It’s how she makes extra money.” I wasn’t sure just
she
was the right pronoun, but I let that pass for the moment. We could go down so many bunny trails in this conversation we might not find our way out before she and Desmond were both of age.

“So Desmond told you where the Hot Spot is.” I looked at him. “Which you and I will discuss later.”

“We can discuss it right here,” he said, his pitch rising. “I ain’t gon’ let Flannery do this all on her own, now.”

“That’s very noble of you, buddy,” Chief said. “We’ll get back to you.”

“I got the information from Desmond,” Flannery said. “I went down there.”

“Even though you don’t like crowds,” I said.

“I didn’t have any choice. I had to go down there and tell her she needed to get away from here as soon as she had the money—and she accused me of trying to cut in on her business and then she punched me, right in the face, like three times. I wasn’t going to just stand there.”

“So after you hit her, you came back here?”

“One question,” Chief said. “Was she conscious when you left her?”

“Ya think? She was screaming every cuss word in life at me.”

“Was somebody there to help her?” I said.

“When we first started arguing everybody else left. I tried to grab her and make her come back here with me but she just ran.”

I looked at Chief.

A little help here?
I said with my eyes.

You have opened a gigantic can of worms, Classic,
he said with his. But he turned to Flannery.

“What is this girl’s name?”

“Why?”

“Because we have a responsibility to make sure she’s okay. Does she live here in town?”

“No. And I don’t know her real name. We never told each other.”

“How about her street name?”

“Tango. Actually, Tango in Paris. After some old movie or something.”

“So you have no idea where she might have gone?” I said.

“No.”

“Did you tell her where you could be contacted?” Chief said.

Flannery shook her head. “She has my cell phone number, but a lot of good that’s going to do her.”

“Maybe she gon’ go back to the Hot Spot,” Desmond said.

The glare Flannery gave him couldn’t have been more pointed if she’d done it with two eyes.

“Just sayin’,” he muttered.

There was no point in asking her where said Hot Spot was. That was another item I’d have to get out of Desmond later. Along with about seventeen other things.

“So you came back here …” I said.

“I was trying to. I was, like, right at the corner out there when that cop pulled over and asked me if I was all right. I told him yes and just to please leave me alone and I guess my voice got loud because Desmond heard me.”

“Where were you?” Chief said to him.

“I was watchin’ from the bushes ’side the house.”

Chief’s eyebrows twisted. “The bushes?”

“I was gon’ wait on the porch but I knew Miz Vernell would see me. Or Mr. Schatzie maybe.” Desmond straightened in the chair. “I wasn’t bein’ a coward or nothin’. I tol’ Flannery I should go with her but she said she need to do this by herself, and I know not to mess with a woman when she get that look in her eye. You know what I’m sayin’, Mr. Chief.”

“Go on,” Chief said.

“I seen Officer Kent talkin’ to her so I went on down there and tol’ him she one of the Sisters and I could take it from there.” Desmond’s voice teetered upward again. “I got no problem with Officer Kent most of the time, but he jus’ got all up in my grill work, now, and said he had to wait with us till you got there. Then we come up here and he’s all shinin’ that light in Flannery’s eyes and she just took off in here and act like she wanna climb right in the refrigerator.” He thumbed his chest. “
I
got her ice and then I left her alone like she
said
she wanted to be.”

He looked up at Chief as if he expected a high-five. He got an eagle-eyed stare instead.

“My head hurts,” Flannery said.

“I imagine it does,” I said.

It occurred to me that the kettle had been whistling for the last five minutes. I stood up and nodded to Chief.

“Let’s go fix some tea. Desmond, go upstairs, please, and get some more blankets, would you?”

“On it, Big Al.”

“And some Advil.”

He started for the steps.

“And a couple of pillows.”

“Imma be back in—”

“Take your time,” I said.

He gave me a look of innocence that was almost convincing. Almost. I gave him one that said,
I’m not done with you yet.

He took the steps at half speed.

That would still only give me about three minutes to have a conversation with Chief. I found him in the kitchen already pouring me tea so strong it could have poured itself.

I went right to his elbow and talked with a bare minimum of lip movement. “Okay, how bad is it?”

“Not that bad, if you don’t count the part where we’ve been harboring an underage runaway who’s guilty of prostitution and assault of a minor.”

I pressed one hand to my temple and took the cup he offered me with the other. “What are my options?”

“Call Liz Doyle.”

“What are my other options?”

“Call Liz Doyle right now.”

I gave up trying to drink and settled for warming my hands around the mug. It might have been eighty-eight degrees outside, but I was suddenly shivering.

“I can’t bring Liz in on this for the same reason I sent Nick Kent away. We’d be putting her in a really tough place.”

“Meaning?”

“As a social worker, she’d have to report Flannery, wouldn’t she?”

Chief stuck his head into the refrigerator and came out with a carton of half-and-half. “Why don’t we just ask Liz some legal questions? She’d be under no obligation to take action based on that.”

“Except that she would know who and what we were talking about.”

Chief set the carton on the tea tray. “I don’t see that we have another viable plan right now, Classic. And I think we’re going to have a harder time dealing with Desmond than we are with her.”

The word
we
had never had a sweeter sound.

“I’ll call her,” I said. “Okay, that’s him coming down the steps.”

“You go chaperone that action. I’ll call Liz.”

“And call Kade, would you? He was going to come over and babysit tonight while we went out, which now—”

“I’m on it.”

I made my way to the living room with the tray wondering how I was going to deal with a teenage girl. I had spent my entire adult life trying to forget I ever was one, and I had no idea what to do with this one.

Desmond had no such issue. He was spreading a second blanket over a shaking Flannery. I took it from him and finished the job.

“Imma get some snacks to go with that tea,” he said.

“Actually, you need to get ready to go back to school. One of us will take you.”

For the first time, Desmond looked truly cowed. I pressed a cup into Flannery’s hand and steered him into the dining room, where he looked everywhere but at me.

“Whose class are you missing right now?” I said.

“I’m only a little bit late—”

“Desmond.”

“Coach Mosquito.”

“Wonderful. Exquisite, in fact.”

“I missed Miss All-Hair’s, too, only she won’t count it once you tell her I was on a mission.”

“
I’m
not going to tell her anything. Or Coach Iseley.”

Desmond’s Adam’s apple ground into gear. “I hadda be here for Flannery, Big Al—now, you know that thing.”

“No, that’s
my
job.”

“How was you gon’ find out where the Hot Spot was for her?”

“How did
you
know where it was? Not only that, how did you even know about it to
find
that out in the first place?”

He toed the rug. “We been talkin’.”

“You and Flannery.”

“She was about flippin’ all the way out ’cause she couldn’t call that Tango girl, and Flannery said if she jus’ knew where they was a Hot Spot, she could jus’ go talk to her, ’cause she was sure Tango woulda figured it out by now. So I tol’ her I could find out.”

“I’m afraid to ask how you came by that information.”