Retirement Plan (11 page)

Lois’s expression softened. “Look. Forty years ago, in South Vietnam, I brought that child into a world that didn’t want another hungry brown baby. The only thing I could do was bring her home and try to raise her myself, so I did. I lied to immigration. I learned to change diapers, and I walked the floor with her when she had a fever. I built my life around that kid. When I met you, I made sure you understood we were a package deal.”

Sophie waited. She’d heard this speech before. Ruby had run away at the age of fifteen and come home six months later swollen with pregnancy. They had mourned their little girl all those months she’d been missing—the two of them thinking she might be dead. Then they found out she’d been living in a cockroach-infested apartment with her crack-dealing, twenty-year-old boyfriend.

Enraged, Lois told Ruby the baby would be the son of a black bastard and an Asian whore. But when Matt was born, she loved him immediately and fiercely. The day they brought Ruby and Matt home from the hospital, Lois said the cocoa-colored baby with the almond-shaped eyes made their family into a mini-United Nations. He was three weeks old when Ruby left again. That was the first time Sophie heard the speech—but far from the last.

Lois was winding down.

Sophie met her eyes. Today, behind her dark-rimmed glasses, they were cornflower-blue.

Finished with the usual lament, Lois said, “I just wonder how long and how much I have to pay for not letting that baby die with her mother.”

Sophie covered her ears. “Get over it, Lois. I refuse to listen to this today. This is my home too. I raised that child and she is my daughter as much as yours. She will come home, and I will do what I can to help her.”

The wooden chair scraped on the floor as Lois stood and flung her paper napkin over her half-eaten breakfast. “Why are we talking about this if you’ve made up your mind?” Not waiting for an answer, she strode across the kitchen, opened the door to the mudroom, and grabbed her coat.

“Wait,” Sophie called.

Lois stopped and turned. Through the open door, cold air penetrated the warmth of the kitchen. Lois had her coat and was pulling it on. “I love you,” she said in a tone that didn’t sound loving. “And you know I’ll do what I can to make you happy—even this business with Ruby. But you haven’t considered some things. What about our new business? How does Ruby fit into any of that? Don’t you think the parole board would have a problem with her living with hired assassins?”

Before Sophie could answer, Lois pulled the kitchen door shut and the back door slammed. They both knew she wasn’t going anywhere. She would cross the backyard and check on Daisy. She might play with the dog or walk her. When she was ready to come back inside her anger would have abated. Sophie had won the argument before it started. What Lois had said was true; if Sophie wanted something, she got it. But Lois had certainly brought up something to consider.

How would they go on contract-killing with a newly paroled daughter living in their home? A daughter who would be under close scrutiny—visits from a parole officer.

Sophie gathered the breakfast dishes. She’d make a plate of leftovers for the dog. That would please Lois.

*

Now I’m absolutely alone, Morgan thought. Without Henry, work would be a lonely place. Visits to her mother were already sordid and draining. As she got out of her car, she noticed the first evening star in the cold sky. Wind scattered snowflakes across the small parking lot that Big and Beautiful shared with a tax-consulting business next door. Piles of snow were like white waves of a white sea. She had to maneuver a drift before she could climb the three steps that led to the door. When she walked inside, she hit a wall of heat.

Two very tall, thickset men stood between the dress aisles arguing over what looked like a large purple bridesmaid’s dress. A woman sat near the register, a book laid open on the counter in front of her. She wasn’t pretty in an ordinary sense, with her flat gray eyes and shoulder-length dark hair. Looking up, she met Morgan’s gaze and blinked as if a bright light had been switched on. “May I help you?”

“Is Sandy here?”

“Naw. There’s a show tonight at Tallulah’s. I’m covering his shift for him.”

“Oh.”

“If you tell me what you’re looking for, I can help you.”

She wanted Sandy, damn it to hell. She said, “He took me in back and found some clothes my size.”

The woman gave her a rather beguiling smile, came from behind the counter, and motioned for Morgan to follow her. She called to her customers, “I’ll be in the back room.”

Morgan followed her through the door and shrugged out of her coat. Turning to the woman, Morgan said, “I need some dress pants and jeans.” In this store, she was small, which delighted her.

“There’s a stack of jeans over there.” The woman pointed to the opposite side of the room. “Take a look.”

Morgan started digging. Some of the jeans’ sizes weren’t marked. “May I try them on? I suspect my size has changed.”

“Bathroom’s over there.”

Morgan sat on the lid to the stool and pulled off her wet boots. The back of the door was covered with a full-length mirror she couldn’t avoid. She stood, stepped out of her pants, and looked at her reflection. Good grief, she thought, I could lose five pounds by shaving my legs. Quickly wiggling into a promising pair of jeans, she pulled them up over her hips and tried to fasten them. The set-in waist refused to close. She tried the second pair, which was so new the tags hadn’t even been removed. She liked the boot-cut legs and the length was just right. She faced the mirror and sucked in her gut. The jeans fastened.

A knock at the door. “How are you doing in there?”

“Okay.”

“Can I get you something else?”

“I have one pair that’s a good fit.”

A few minutes later, Morgan heard a man’s voice. She hurriedly fastened the pants she’d come in with and opened the door.

One of the men from out front was waiting with the purple dress. “Miss Minnie,” said the woman, “wants to try on a dress.”

“Excuse me.” Morgan brushed passed him or her. She wasn’t sure of the decorum.

When the bathroom door was shut, the sales clerk snorted. “These queens. They love it here because we have formal wear in big sizes.”

 Morgan brushed damp hair off the back of her neck.

“It
is
warm in here, isn’t it? Damn steam radiators. There’s no temperature control. They’re either on or off.”

“It’s all right,” Morgan said. “If it were forty degrees in here, I’d still be sweating. It’s what I do.”

The woman laughed. “Want to try another stack of jeans?”

“No, thanks. Just this one pair.” Morgan was hungry. Ever since she couldn’t close the waistband on the first pair of jeans, she’d been craving chocolate.

Suddenly Miss Minnie was in the room with them. She twirled and said, “What do you think? Can you see this with my red sequined pumps?” Miss Minnie had tattoos all over her shoulders and one on her hairy chest that disappeared into the bodice of the dress.

The clerk said, “Looks like it was made for you.”

“That’s what I tried to tell Daphne.”

Smiling, Morgan followed the woman to the cash register, wondering if she was a lesbian. It wasn’t as easy to tell as with the baby-butch trash collector or Miss Minnie and Daphne. Of course, even if she was a lesbian, she might not be single, or if she was lesbian and single, she might not be looking. Morgan wasn’t even sure that she, herself, was looking. She didn’t have time for a relationship anyway, given her mother and the new partner at work. Best to let sleeping dogs lie.

The young woman rang up the sale and put the jeans in a bag. She met Morgan’s eyes and said, “My name is Chelsea Brown. I usually work Friday afternoons and weekends.” When she said her name the room got warmer.

“Morgan Holiday.”

“Are you a friend of Sandy’s?”

“He just waited on me last time I was here.”

Chelsea pulled a ring of keys from the register. “Well. I hope we see you again.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll lock the door behind you. We close at eight.” Chelsea held the door as Morgan went out.

“Thanks for your help.”

“No problem.” Chelsea’s breath turned to smoke in the cold air. Then the door was closed and locked.

Morgan stepped off the porch. Why did she have to meet another Chelsea now? The name brought up as much pain as those jeans that wouldn’t fasten.

Freezing light fell from the moon, making ghostly shadows on the icy crust of the snow. At home she made a large glass of chocolate milk and finished a half-empty bag of Oreos. That night sleep jumped beyond her like Alice’s rabbit.

Chapter Eight

Celia Morning had first seen the girl at the corner house a couple of evenings after Smallwood disappeared. Days had been growing shorter, so by seven the shadows were long and night was setting in. Celia watched from her kitchen window as the girl tried the front door, then the back. After that she’d left a kitchen-sized trash bag on Smallwood’s front porch and walked around the house trying the basement windows, with no luck.

Celia hadn’t called the police and reported the trespasser because she was counting on Smallwood not being missed for a few weeks—longer, if possible. If she reported the kid, the authorities might connect Smallwood to Woods, the dead man in Carpenter Park. Considering the child’s size, Celia thought she might be eleven or twelve, a little older than her ten-year-old daughter, Merris. Thin and scrappy-looking, the child wore faded jeans and a denim jacket far too thin for the November evening.

The girl lit a cigarette and glanced around. Celia stepped back from her kitchen window. By the time she peeked around the curtain again, the girl and her trash bag were gone. Something about the kid, she wasn’t sure what, made Celia uneasy.

By winter, Celia had seen the girl often enough to know she’d moved into the house next door. From time to time, late at night, Celia saw a dim light over there.  Sometimes she caught the faint smell of cigarette smoke when she was coming and going from her own home.

Newspapers piled up on the porch and finally stopped. The mailbox was emptied daily, as if the kid knew that postal carriers called the police when something on their route appeared suspicious.

Late in January, Celia noticed a man in a business suit and coat get out of a car that said First Trust Bank on its door. He walked around the house, looking in the windows, then left and came back with boards and nailed a broken basement window shut. In mid-February the bank put a sign in the yard that announced an upcoming auction of the property. One bright sunny day when the temperatures were single-digit, Celia watched as men on a truck disconnected the power. Did the bank know it was off? Maybe the water pipes had heat tapes. Did those require electricity?

That night, after her own children were in bed, Celia went over to Smallwood’s house and tapped on the front door, then circled the house to the back door. She called, “If you’re in there, I want you to know that I have heat in my house. Any time you need to get warm come and knock on my back door. I’ll let you in.”

Celia put her ear to the door and listened. Nothing. She knocked again and shouted, “No questions asked. No police. Just one neighbor helping another.”

By this time Celia had decided the girl could have been one of Smallwood’s victims or a runaway. He might have abducted her. Either the child was waiting for him to come home or she was aware the house was empty because she knew he was dead.

The next morning after Celia had taken her kids to school, she walked over to the corner house again. This time she took a claw hammer and the jack handle from her car. She wouldn’t break in the front. Someone would discover that much sooner. She went to the back door and rattled the handle. A quarter panel of glass had been knocked out of the kitchen door. Celia laid the jack handle and the hammer on the back steps, reached in, and unfastened the deadbolt lock. As she opened the door she yelled, “Are you here?”

The stench of rotting garbage was the first thing she noticed. The trash was stacked in and around the can. Dirty dishes seemed to be stacked in layers on the table and in the sink. Cabinet doors hung open and the shelves inside them were practically bare. Only some spices and a couple of cans of spinach and kidney beans remained. The room seemed alive, and as Celia’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw thousands of cockroaches, circling madly, crawling in every direction. The last thing she wanted was to carry bugs home.

Shivering with disgust Celia stepped over the trash toward the living room. The coffee table contained an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts and burnt-down candles stuck upright to the tabletop in cooled puddles of wax. A thick film of dust covered everything. Empty soda cans were scattered around the couch, which was covered with several blankets and a couple of pillows. The kid had been sleeping in here and had probably been using the candles for a little heat.

Celia searched the house, checking closets and both bedrooms. In the larger bedroom she found hundreds of pictures tacked up on one wall. Some had been pulled off and ripped up—their pieces lay scattered on the floor. Celia searched the room, then returned to the makeshift gallery. They were pictures of children. Some dressed, others not. She picked up torn pieces from the floor and tried to fit them together. She was successful with one of them, which was a nude photo of a little girl. She might be the child who was staying in the house. The photo looked a little like her—except the girl in these photos couldn’t have been over seven years old.

Sick to her stomach, Celia laid the bits of paper on the dresser and was ready to leave when a photo on the edge of the display caught her eye. She moved closer. It looked like—yes, it was, Merris. Taken last summer in the park. Trembling, Celia snatched the photo from the wall and left the room.

In the kitchen, on the counter next to the back door, she saw a pile of unopened mail. Laid out in stacks were several windowed envelopes, a couple of them opened. There were late notices and shut-off notices for all the utilities. Several pieces of mail were from the bank.