Devil's Corner (31 page)

Yippee!
Vicki turned right onto Jefferson and raced toward the house with the red door. She would get this job done without bullies, interference, or illegality. Chucky Cheese didn't sound dangerous. And if Vicki had to defend herself, she had a law degree.

It turned out that Chucky was not only harmless, he was eighty-proof, and he leaned way too close to Vicki as they sat in the front seat of the Intrepid. They had parked behind a CVS three blocks from his house, where Reheema would never find them. Chucky was about sixty-five years old, African-American, and a diminutive five foot three in a thick green parka. He had shrewd brown eyes with a mercantile glint and, as James had suggested, served as the eBay of the hood.

"Ya want information, that'll be twenty bucks," Chucky said, his breath scented with Budweiser.

"
Another
twenty?" Vicki had already spent twenty to get him in the car with her, once she had convinced him she didn't want to "party."

"Money talks, or Mr. Chucky walks." Chucky grinned, showing the gap between his front teeth that had undoubtedly given him his nickname.

"Fine." Vicki reached into her wallet yet again and handed him the twenty. "Okay, so tell me—"

"Ya need a watch, a new watch?"

"I got a watch."

"Classy girl like ye'self, ya gotta wear
Rolex
."

"I don't want a fake Rolex, Chucky."

"Ain't fake!"

"Of course it is." Vicki had already bought from him a fake Vuitton bag, a counterfeit pink-and-black Burberry scarf, and a bootleg copy of
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
. The stuff sat between them on the seat like a barricade of knockoffs. She watched with dismay as Chucky started digging again in the backseat, where he'd insisted on putting his bedsheet, like Santa with his bag of copyright violations.

"Ya
need
a Rolex, Miss Vicki." Chucky plopped back into the passenger seat, holding a fake stainless Rolex. "Ya need ta buy this."

"No, I don't."

"Ya do if you wanna know where I got that cell phone."

"Do you really know where you got it?"

"Yes, I do, swear I do." Chucky nodded, his bald head dotted with tiny gray hairs, covering a veiny brown scalp.

"I don't believe you. I'm guessing you sell a lot of cell phones."

"I do all right with the phones, this time a year."

"So tell me what my phone looked like."

"Little silver one, Samsung, blue daisies, green center in each one."

Vicki couldn't help but be impressed. She liked a fence who knew his inventory.

"Watch is thirty dollars." Chucky handed her a Rolex that gleamed like Reynolds Wrap.

"Thirty dollars for
this
? Come on!"

"'Scuse me, twenty."

"Excuse
me
! Ten!"

"Twenty."

Maybe bribes are deductible
. Vicki handed over another twenty, and Chucky slipped it into his pocket.

"You won't be sorry, Miss Vicki. Lemme show you what I been savin' for you, special for you." Chucky reached for the backseat, rummaging again.

"No, I'm not buying anything else. Now tell me where you got that cell phone."

Chucky sat down and dangled a fake gold chain with a humongous Mercedes symbol. "Like it?"

"No."

"It's real big."

"True, no subtlety there."

"Eighteen karat!"

"I'm sure."

"P. Diddy got one just like it." Chucky swung the necklace back and forth like a cartoon hypnotist. "Yours for twenty bucks."

"No. Absolutely not."

"Come on! Ten bucks! You got ten bucks, girl!"

"No!" Vicki raised a firm, final hand. "Now tell me what I need to know."

Half an hour later, Vicki was steering the Intrepid back onto the main drag. She had dropped Chucky off at his house and picked up Reheema, who had been sitting on his front steps, simmering despite the frigid temperature. Reheema didn't say anything, remaining opaque behind her sunglasses and knit hat. Or maybe she was just thawing out.

"Reheema, you don't have to talk to me, if you don't want to." Vicki slipped on her sunglasses against the sunlight. "Even though I bought you all this nice stuff, including that lovely Mercedes-Benz necklace."

Reheema looked out the window.

"P. Diddy has one, you know. It's twenty-four karat."

Reheema didn't respond.

"Okay, have it your way. I found out where Chucky says he got the cell phone and I'm taking you there, right now. I'm taking you with me this time, because even you will behave yourself in these circumstances."

Reheema stayed turned away.

"I understand why you're angry, and I would be, too. Very angry and very hurt. In pain. But you were way out of line with James, and I couldn't let you do that again. It was wrong."

Reheema didn't budge.

"We're trying to find out who killed your mother and bring him to justice. Maybe it's not technically our job, but we aren't doing anything wrong or illegal." Vicki paused for a response that didn't come. "You crossed the line with James. You can't terrorize someone in the name of justice. If you do, you're worse than the worst criminals. You're shooting kids at Toys ‘R' Us."

Reheema didn't speak, but by this point, Vicki was thinking out loud anyway, and for once not worrying about whether it was a good thing to do or not.

Ten silent minutes later, the Intrepid found Pergola Street and pulled up in front of the house.

THIRTY-SIX

The kitchen was painted a bright white, ringed with refaced white cabinets, and smelled pleasantly of baked chocolate and watered-down Lysol. A white plastic tablecloth with scalloped edges covered the table, topped with a chipped plate of crusty brownies. Vicki and Reheema sat catty-corner in two chairs, opposite Mrs. Bethave. She wore the cheery red-and-white uniform of a waitress at Bennigan's, but her eyes sloped down at the corners with evident fatigue. Next to her sat her son, Albertus, an undersize eight-year-old engulfed by a hooded gray sweatshirt. He sat behind an open math book, a notebook page with a pointy protractor lying on it, and a half-eaten brownie on a pebbled napkin next to a glass of milk.

"I'm Vicki Allegretti, as I said at the door, and this is my friend Reheema Bristow. Thank you so much for letting us in."

"Fine," Mrs. Bethave said coldly. "I don't have a lot of time. Soon as the sitter gets here, I gotta get to work."

"Okay, I'll make this quick. We're here because I just met a man named Chucky, who lives a few blocks away on Jefferson Street. Do you know Chucky?"

"Everybody knows Chucky." Mrs. Bethave half-smiled, but Vicki was watching Albertus for a reaction. The boy had huge brown eyes and a somber milk mustache.

"Chucky said that last weekend, on Sunday afternoon, he paid your son Albertus five dollars for a cell phone that he had."

Albertus blinked, one movement of his baby-camel's eyelashes.

Vicki continued, "I need to know if that's true, and if it is, where Albertus got the cell phone, and when."

"Why do you want to know?"

"It's my cell phone and it was taken from me—"

"Albertus don't steal."

"I didn't mean that. Of course he doesn't. The phone was stolen from me by a woman who was later murdered." Vicki gestured to Reheema. "Her mother, Arissa Bristow."

Mrs. Bethave's eyes shifted to Reheema and back again.

"The cell phone was an unusual one," Vicki said. "It had a cover with blue daisies on it. It was pretty."

Albertus blinked again, his forehead creased with the guileless anxiety of a child. He was afraid he was going to get in trouble.

"I think that whoever stole my cell phone from Mrs. Bris-tow might have information about who killed her."

"Or mighta killed her hisself," Mrs. Bethave shot back, her tone colder.

"Yes, of course, that's possible. We're following the cell phone back in time, to see where it leads." Vicki tensed, now that their cards were on the table, and Mrs. Bethave must have sensed it, too, because she turned to Reheema.

"You wanna know who killed your mama."

"Yes, I do," Reheema said, and Mrs. Bethave turned back to Vicki.

"What about you? Why'd you care?"

Reheema answered for her, "She's my friend."

Wow.

Mrs. Bethave thought a minute, then looked down at Albertus. "Mook, you know what these ladies talkin' 'bout?"

Albertus glanced timidly up at her face, then nodded.

Yes
! Vicki felt like cheering.

"Look at me, son." Mrs. Bethave cupped Albertus's chin and turned his face up to her. "Chucky gave you fi' dollars for the phone?"

Albertus nodded, his chin tight in his mother's hand.

"Where'd you get that phone? You find it somewhere?"

Albertus shook his head, no.

"Then where'd you get it?"

Albertus raised his hands and signed rapidly, his dark fingers flying, and Vicki held her breath for the translation. Chucky had told her that the little boy was deaf and that he read lips.

Albertus finished signing, and Mrs. Bethave's eyes filled with alarm. Her hand dropped from his chin and her lips parted. She jumped to her feet so abruptly, she bumped the three-ring notebook, startling all of them.

"Oh no! No, no, no!" Suddenly panicky, Mrs. Bethave hurried around the table and almost lifted Vicki bodily from her chair. "Go now, out, you two! That's the way it is, you two got to go."

"Mrs. Bethave, please, what did he say?" Vicki rose rather than be thrown out, but Reheema stood her ground.

"I'm not goin' anywhere, lady! Whoever gave him that phone killed my mother! Who gave it to him?"

"I can't, I can't say, you have to go."

"I need to know who!"

"You wanna get my child killed?" Mrs. Bethave shouted back, standing toe-to-toe with Reheema. With a mother's ferocity, Mrs. Bethave more than matched the taller and younger woman. "I'll never tell, no matter what! That man is a killer! He kills for money and he'll kill my boy, sure as we stand!"

He kills for money
? The words broke the standoff, and Vicki and Reheema exchanged looks.

"Go! Don't tell anybody you were here!" A terrified Mrs. Bethave shooed them both out of the kitchen and to the front door. "Please! Jesus!"

"Wait, no!" Reheema shouted, recovering first, but Mrs. Bethave had pulled open the door and was physically pushing them out into the cold.

"Never tell anybody you were here, never!"

Mrs. Bethave slammed the door closed and dead-bolted it with a loud, final
ca-thunk
.

Vicki steered the Intrepid onto the cross street, driving from the Bethave house faster than necessary. She worried for Mrs. Bethave's safety and for Albertus, and it had been all she could do to stop Reheema from breaking down the Bethaves' front door.

"Look, we got our answer, for the present time," Vicki said. "We followed my phone down the line and we know where it ends. And it leads to another question. Why did she say it was someone who kills for money? What did she mean by that?"

Reheema was shaking her head. "I shoulda broken down that door."

"I had assumed it was an opportunistic crime. An addict or someone from the neighborhood." Vicki thought back to that night, to poor Arissa straggling in only her housedress down the cold street. The older woman had been easy prey for anyone, but Vicki didn't need to draw a picture for her grieving daughter. "It doesn't seem likely it was a murder for hire. Maybe that's not what she meant. You think that's what she meant?"

"You can sit here and guess all you want, but Bethave knows who killed my mother."

"And we're not going to get her killed for it, or that little boy. She's protecting her family."

"And I'm protecting mine. I
shoulda
beat it out of her."

"You don't mean that, and she wouldn't have told you anyway." Vicki looked over to double-check, but it was darkening in the car, and Reheema had her sunglasses on. "Look, it's getting late. Let's grab something to eat and go over to Cater."

"I'm not hungry."

"Then let's go over to Cater now and pick up the black van. It's dark, and I feel better."

"I feel worse." Reheema was still shaking her head. "She knows who did it, and we're drivin' away like it's nothin'."

"We'll figure it out, just give me some time." Vicki tried to think of a lawful solution but kept coming up dry. "If we tell the cops, that'll put her in danger, and she'll deny she said anything anyway. At least we know where she lives and we have the information."

"What if she leaves?"

"She won't. She has a job and a kid in school."

"What about witness protection? Don't the feds do that all the time?"

"Only for federal crimes, like racketeering. Murder is a state-law crime."

Reheema scoffed. "Lawyer talk."

"I'm sorry," Vicki said, meaning it. She had been raised with a reverence for her profession, but for the first time, she was beginning to understand what people meant by legalese.

"You talk about making sense, now something else makes sense. I couldn't figure why a killer would give up a cell phone like that. But he gives it to a kid who can't talk."

"Yeah." Vicki nodded. It was why Chucky hadn't known when or where Albertus had gotten the phone. The child hadn't been able to tell him.

"But why not throw the phone away? Why take it at all?"

"Maybe he liked Albertus, was trying to do him a favor."

"A killer with a heart of gold. Stabbed my mother to death. We should go back."

"No."

"Turn around. I want to go back."

"No."

"I'll go back without you. Ditch you like you ditched me."

"Then I won't let you out of my sight. We'll have a sleepover at your house. I'll bring the nail polish. You got popcorn?" Vicki accelerated into light traffic, which had picked up now that people were coming home from work. She switched lanes, then took a right, a left, and another right, and in time, Reheema looked over.

"Where you goin'?"

"Cater Street."

"Then turn around, Harvard," Reheema said, with a soft chuckle, and Vicki knew they were back on track.