Jubilee's Journey (The Wyattsville Series) (28 page)

“Possibly,” Mahoney answered. “But we won’t know anything until we hear Paul’s version of the incident. That’s not going to happen until he remembers who he is.”

“What about Mister Klaussner? What does he say?”

“Unfortunately, Sid is in a medically-induced coma. And the prognosis is iffy.” The last of Mahoney’s words hung in the air weighted with an ominous unspoken question mark.

Olivia thought back to the beginning of their conversation. “Earlier on you started to say secondly. What was that secondly?”

Mahoney rubbed the back of his hand across his chin pensively. “I was gonna say if Paul does get his memory back, maybe he can also tell us where to find the aunt.”

Olivia nodded knowingly.

The coffee was gone, and the cups had grown cold before she spoke again. “I don’t believe in forcing a child to needlessly face the terrible truth of reality, but neither do I want to make a decision that could change her life. I know Jubilee is only seven, but she’s sensible enough. I think we should explain this to her and ask how she feels.”

“That’s a wise decision,” Mahoney said. “A very wise decision.”

After going through what would or wouldn’t be said, Olivia called Jubilee into the kitchen. Ethan Allen was right behind her.

“You don’t really need to be here,” Olivia told him.

“Yeah, I do,” he said. “I promised to stay by her.” Before he sat, Ethan scooted his chair to where it was bumping up against Jubilee’s. Once everyone was settled, Jack Mahoney began to speak. His words were wrapped in a softness only parents are capable of.

“Jubilee, I know you love your brother, and he loves you too. When Paul told you to wait for him I’m sure he had every intention of coming back, but sometimes things happen and we can’t do what we’ve promised.”

As he spoke, an odd sense of knowing settled on Jubilee’s face. There was no frown, no smile, just an empty look of resignation. Before Mahoney finished the speech he was working through, she asked point blank, “Did you find my brother?”

“Yes, Jubilee, I think I did.”

“Did he say he’s not coming back to get me?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Then he’ll be back,” she answered flatly.  A thin shell of resolve crusted over the outside of who she was. Inside there were a million broken pieces, fragments of things taken from her life—a mother, a father, a brother, a place to call home, friends, familiar roads, a garden—the shell kept all those things from spilling out like handfuls of Cheerios.

“What makes you so sure?” Mahoney asked.

“Because he
promised
.”

Mahoney saw the certainty in her face. She trusted Paul would be true to his word. There was no maybe or extenuating circumstance, it would happen. She believed in someone bigger than herself. Someone for whom even the impossible was possible. This tiny little girl had a faith that most grownups prayed for.

With a heavy heart Mahoney said, “Sometimes bad things happen and no matter how much you love someone, you can’t keep the promise you made.”

The look on Jubilee’s face was one of wariness. “What kind of bad things?”

Mahoney explained how Paul had been hurt in an accident and was now in the hospital. As Olivia had insisted, there was no mention of the robbery. He said, “Your brother doesn’t remember anything, not even you. He’s sad and scared, but he might start remembering if he could see you.”

“He’ll remember,” Jubilee answered. “I know he will.” Coming from her mouth the words had a ring of surety, but if you looked closely you could see the tears welling in her eyes.

Ethan Allen

J
ubie is scared. Not scared like when you scream on a roller coaster. Scared like when you have a bad dream and can’t get woke up. People ain’t really scared on a roller coaster, they just scream ‘cause it’s fun-scared and they know it’s gonna end soon. Jubie don’t know if her being alone is ever gonna end.

I can tell when she’s most scared, ‘cause she curls up like a snail and sticks her thumb in her mouth. When Jubie does that, I say,
Let’s play poker,
and let her win a few hands. It makes her happy, and she forgets how scared she was feeling. Winning makes a body feel happy; I know ‘cause when I play with Grandma I win most every time. But it’s not ‘cause she lets me; Grandma’s just not real good at poker.

Yesterday I asked Grandma if maybe Jubie could live here with us and she rolled her eyes like it was the most dumb-ass thing she ever heard. “No, she can’t,” Grandma said. “She has a family and needs to be with them.”

I was gonna remind Grandma that right now she ain’t got nobody and it ain’t looking none too promising, but she’d already said to get on outta there and quit bothering her.

After Detective Mahoney told Jubie Paul didn’t remember nothing, she got curled up and didn’t even wanna talk about playing. “Don’tcha get it?” she said. “If Paul don’t remember me, I got nobody!”

You got me,
I said, and I meant it. If Grandma ain’t gonna do something to help Jubie, I’m gonna do it myself. I ain’t too sure of what it’ll be, but I’ll think of something.

Leastwise, I hope I will. 

According to Bertha

W
hen Mahoney left the Doyle apartment he called Captain Rogers, reported his finding, and tried to get clearance for bringing Jubilee Jones to the hospital.

“I’m okay with you working the case,” Rogers said, “so long as it doesn’t turn into a pissing match between you and Gomez. Work with him, or step back.”

Mahoney agreed to share what he had with Gomez, but as he hung up the telephone he muttered, “When I’ve got time.”

He turned the car around and headed toward Norfolk and the address Frances Margaret Jones had written on a scrap of paper.

Bertha Kaminski was no longer at that address. A frazzled mother carrying a baby who wouldn’t stop crying answered the door. “We bought the house a year ago,” she said. “They didn’t leave a forwarding address.”

“Do you know if they were staying in town?”

She shifted the crying baby to her other shoulder. “No idea,” she said and pushed the door shut using her foot.

Mahoney’s next stop was the post office.

After going through two different clerks, he was able to speak to the shift supervisor who dug through the files and came up with a change of address for Benjamin Kaminski.

“You’re lucky we still got it,” she said. “Generally we only keep these six months.” She wrote the address on a note paper and handed it Mahoney.

He looked at the address, a bad section of Norfolk on the far side of town. Before heading over, he checked the telephone listings—nothing. He got back into the car and started toward the side of town where people seldom went unless they had to.

The address was a tenement building with a whiskey bottle leaning against the rail and cement steps broken on both sides. The windows of the ground floor apartment were covered with different-colored bed sheets, too dirty to see through. He climbed the steps and entered the vestibule. Several broken mailboxes hung halfway open.

Apartment 5A was tagged B. Kaminski. Could be Bertha, could be Benjamin, or could be both. Mahoney started up the dark narrow staircase.

When he rapped on the door a male voice called back, “Whaddya want?”

“I’m looking for Bertha Kaminski,” Mahoney answered.

The voice yelled, “Hey, Butterball, it’s for you.”

For a long minute there was nothing more; then heavy footsteps thumped across the floor and the door swung open.

The woman looked nothing like Frances Margaret, or Myrtle, as the case might be. She was round and nearly as wide as she was tall. “Yeah?” she said looking square into his face.

“Bertha Kaminski?”

She nodded.

“You owned the house on Kilmer Street in Norfolk?”

“If this is about the basement flooding, I don’t want to hear it. We sold that house as is, and we told them—”

“It’s not about the basement,” Mahoney said. “When you lived there, did you rent an upstairs flat to a couple by the name of Bartholomew and Ruth Jones?”

“Good Lord, that was twenty years ago. I don’t see how they could have a complaint after all this time.”

“There’s no complaint. They’re both deceased.”

“Lord have mercy,” Bertha murmured. “Young folks like that dying already.” She gave a weary shake of her head.

“Do you remember a woman named Anita visiting them? Anita Walker or maybe Jones?”

“Shoot, yeah, I remember Anita. You don’t forget one like her.”

“Is her last name Walker or Jones?”

“Was. It was Walker, but it ain’t no more.”

This was the first solid lead Mahoney had and he jumped on it. “When did she change her name?”

“Sixteen, maybe seventeen years back, when she married Freddie Meyers.” She gave a sorrowful shrug. “Poor Freddie. If Ben would’ve known how she was gonna treat Freddie, he would’ve never matched them up.”

“Ben, he’s your husband?”

“Sort of,” Bertha answered. “We never really got around to the official marrying part.”

“Oh.” Mahoney gave a nod, unsure of whether to say “sorry,” “good,” or nothing. He opted for nothing and moved on. “You got an address for this Freddie Meyers?”

Bertha turned her head and screamed, “Hey, Ben, you got Freddie’s address?”

“Not the new one,” Ben hollered back.

Bertha turned to Mahoney. “Ben said—”

“I heard him.”

“It’s someplace out on the Eastern Shore,” she said. “Franklin, Federal, something sounds like that.”

“Fairlawn Bay?”

“Yeah, I think that’s it.”

“Thanks.” Mahoney turned to leave.

Before he’d taken a step, Bertha said, “But if you’re looking for Anita, finding Freddie ain’t gonna do you no good.”

“Oh?”

“They got divorced five, maybe six, years ago.”

“Did Anita go back to using her maiden name, or did she stay Meyers?”

“No idea.”

“So you didn’t keep up with her? Get her new address?”

“Hell, no. That woman ain’t one you wanna be friends with.” She went on to itemize Anita’s multitude of shortcomings, which included that she was lazy as sin, mean-tempered, and cheap to a fault. “Don’t never ask her to pick you up a quart of milk from the store,” Bertha said, “’cause she’d charge you double!”

It was close to five when Mahoney thanked Bertha for her help and returned to the car. The hour gave him justification for not stopping by the Wyattsville station. Tomorrow he’d report his findings to Gomez. Tomorrow, after he finished taking Jubilee to see her brother. Better that way, he figured. Less intimidating. Gomez had been hammering the boy with questions for three days, and it stood to reason that by now the boy had built up a wall of resistance. If it was just him and Jubilee, Paul would be more likely to respond.  In the meantime he could look into finding Freddie Meyers.

He turned onto the causeway and headed back to the ferry.

Mahoney had planned to have a quick dinner, then head back to the station house and see if he could find anything on a Freddie Meyers, but when he arrived home the dining room table was set for seven. “Hurry and get changed,” Christine said. “Lynn and Henry will be here in fifteen minutes.”