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“You want more money,” Winifred Fine said.
“A white man says his name is Theodore Timmerman open fire on me and Fearless two mornings ago. All we did was call his name. He was willing to kill us and all he wanted to know was your identity.”
“Me?”
“Yes ma’am,” I said.
“And he was shooting at you?”
“Like it was the Fourth of July,” Fearless said.
I glanced at my friend then. It was an unspoken rule we had that he would stay quiet when I was asking questions. He never understood the verbal nuances of complex discussions. I wondered why he wanted to be a part of our talk.
“What did he want with me?” Winifred asked.
“Milo sent him out lookin’ for the man BB was workin’ with. You know—Kit Mitchell. Somewhere out there he found out that he could make more money on his own. It’s my bet that he figured the money would come from you but he didn’t know your name. Fearless and me was just crows in the road.”
“I, I, I’m sorry,” she said.
“Sorry’s all good and well,” I replied. “But what I would like to know is what’s goin’ on?”
Miss Fine stood up. She walked toward a large rosebush until her face was in among the leaves.
She said something that only the flowers heard.
“What?” I asked.
“It was just a piece of colored crystal,” she said, turning back to us. “Green. An emerald surrounded by white sapphires. Have you ever seen a white sapphire, Mr. Minton?”
“I can’t say that I have.”
“They look like diamonds only the glow is softer. They’re beautiful. In the old days they used to give them for weddings. It meant good fortune and a happy life. My father got me a necklace with a single emerald surrounded by those sapphires.”
“He must’a been rich as you,” Fearless said.
“No. Not really. He had a farm. It was pretty large. But he sold a quarter of his acreage when he saw that pendant in a New Orleans jewelry store window.” Winifred was far away in a dream of days gone by. “He loved me and he was superstitious too. He believed that if he made a sacrifice and gave me that gift that I would have a blessed life. He never saw that the real blessing was his love.”
“So BB stole your father’s dowry?”
“He got Oscar to hire this Kit Mitchell. Mr. Mitchell worked for three weeks and then he left—at our request. A few days after that, Oscar realized that the pendant was missing.”
“And so,” I said, “they intended to use that to make you give up on the property.”
“I can’t see how,” she said. “I loved my father, not that piece of crystal. It’s worth no more than ten or twelve thousand dollars. Maybe because BB knew the story he thought that I would be swayed. But I can assure you that nothing would make me give up on my Compton properties.”
“Do you know a man named Brown?” I asked then.
“What is his first name?”
“I don’t know. He calls himself Brown, and when he wanted someone to call him he gave out Oscar’s number.”
“Maybe he worked here,” she said. “I wouldn’t know.”
“How about Oscar? Would he know?”
“Ask him.”
“Why are you looking for your nephew?” It was my last attempt to decipher this straight-faced woman.
“When I found out that Bartholomew had suggested this Kit Mitchell for the job, I assumed that he would know where to find my necklace. That’s why I need to talk to Bartholomew, to tell him to have my property returned.”
“How would BB know where you kept the necklace?”
“He and my niece, Leora, used to play with it when they were children. They both knew where all my jewelry was.”
“So what you want is the necklace and not your nephew at all.”
“That’s right. But I want to speak to Bartholomew, to tell him that I no longer consider him a member of our family.”
“Uh-huh. So if me and Fearless get the necklace and make it so you have your chat with BB, then we’re clear?”
“Certainly, Mr. Minton.”
“BB seemed to think that you would be willing to commit violence against him if he didn’t return your property,” I said as a primer for further discussion.
“That is ridiculous,” Winifred L. Fine said. “Violence is the last resort of the desperate.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let us go out there and see what we can see.”
I touched Fearless’s arm to indicate that it was time for our departure.
“One more thing,” Winifred Fine said. “What about the man who shot at you? Is he still after me?”
“Don’t you worry about him, ma’am,” Fearless said. “He came down with a chest cold and now he’s laid up for the season.”
30
FEARLESS DROVE US DOWN the dirt road toward the street.
“Where to now, Paris?” he asked me.
“I don’t know. We could wait for BB to call us and then ask him how a twelve-thousand-dollar piece of jewelry’s gonna be fifty thousand, or maybe what the Wexler kids had to do with it.”
“You think he’d tell us that?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe if we threatened to drag him out here if he didn’t.”
We were approaching Baloona Creek when a woman dressed in a long formal gown and carrying a small brown bag ran in front of Ambrosia’s car. Fearless hit the brakes and swerved to miss her. When she came up to the window I couldn’t speak for a moment because of the shock of almost running Rose Fine down.
“You okay?” Fearless asked.
“Yeah,” I said before realizing that he was talking to the crazy woman.
“Help me get away from here,” she cried desperately.
“Hop in,” Fearless said.
He jumped out and ushered her in through the rear door. Then he got back in the driver’s seat and drove off as if he were a chauffeur and I was his assistant.
“Fearless?”
“Yeah, Paris?”
“What are we doin’?”
“I don’t know. Where you wanna go, Miss Fine?”
“Anyplace not near that house, young man,” she said. “Anywhere I can get away from them crazy people.”
Fearless nodded slightly and continued on. I guess he figured that no matter which way he drove he’d be meeting her request.
“Miss Fine,” I said.
“Yes, young man.”
“I’m Paris. And I’d like to know why you want to run away from your own home.”
“Because it’s all gonna come out now. All of it. Winifred won’t be able to stop the walls of Jericho. No she won’t. But she’s just willful enough to believe that she can.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“Everything we have will be squandered, stolen, and burned in hell,” she said. “Too many secrets, too many lies.”
“What kind of secrets?” I asked.
“I was a prisoner in there. No money and no car. And now not even no love.”
I had very little confidence in the mad-eyed woman’s ability to understand or communicate the truth. I had no idea what Fearless planned to do with her. But there we were, so I played the game as if I were privy to the rules.
“Who was Bartholomew’s mother?” I asked.
“That would be Ethel,” Rose said. She was staring out of the window, smiling at the passing strawberry farms as if they were strange new sights in a distant land.
“She’s the one that started the beauty business?”
“No,” Rose said, turning her cracked grin on me. “Our mother started the beauty product company. She named it after Ethel because Ethel was her firstborn and her favored girl. Ethel was the oldest, then came me, and then Winnie.”
“And so you all owned the business equally?”
“Oh yes,” Rose said. “Mama made sure that we were always equal. She had her favorites, but blood is blood.”
“And Ethel was the favorite child?”
“Oh no,” Rose assured me. “It’s always a boy that has his mother’s heart.”
“You have a brother?”
“Of course we do. I thought you knew. Oscar is our brother.”
“The butler?” Fearless asked.
“It’s his own fault,” she said, reciting a well-rehearsed speech. “When he was a young man he insisted to be paid for his part of the beauty supply company. We bought him out and he lost it all inside of three years. Winnie told him if he wanted to come back he had to work for us.”
“She made him a butler?”
“That was his idea,” Rose said. “Yes sir. He didn’t want to have anything else to do with the outside world. No business, no meetin’s, no bein’ in charge’a anything responsible. All he wanted was to work at home and hide away from how stupid he was. We didn’t want him to be our servant, but Winnie said that he had to work if he wanted to eat our food.”
“I know that,” Fearless intoned.
“Why did you run away?” I asked, hoping the question would catch her by surprise.
“Because you had a car and kind eyes.”
“You mean you’ve been waiting for a chance to get out of there?”
“Oscar thinks he’s slick,” Rose answered, “with all his sneakin’ and overhearin’. But if you have a hidey-hole or a spare phone in the nook, then the spy might just be spied on. Yes sir.”
“What did Oscar say to make you want to run away?”
“I’ll never tell.”
“What about a man named Brown?” I asked, switching tracks as fast as she.
“What about him?” Rose had no love lost there.
“Is he some other relation?”
“Oh no. No no no no. Brown is somethin’ else altogether.”
“And what is that, Miss Fine?”
The elder woman in the fine evening gown sat back and sighed. “I don’t think I want to answer any more questions, young man.”
“That’s okay, ma’am,” Fearless said. “You just sit back and I’ll take you someplace where you can figure out what you want to do now that you’re looking for a new home.”
That stopped any more inquiries for a while. But I didn’t mind. Fearless was probably right. Rose Fine didn’t have a strong grip on reality, and too many questions might have pushed her out of orbit completely.
The elder Fine sister stretched out on the backseat and was snoring quicker than Fearless Jones.
I DIDN’T WANT TO TALK on the drive because I worried that Rose Fine might have just been pretending to sleep. Fearless, I was sure, remained silent to let her catch up on her rest.
“Must be hard livin’ someplace you hate,” he whispered after quite a while. “That’s why I’m never jealous’a what another man got.”
“Where are you plannin’ to go, Fearless?”
“I figure out to Mama’s,” he said. “You know Milo might be some help askin’ Miss Fine questions.”
“I can ask questions with the best of ’em, Fearless. We don’t need Milo.”
“You ask okay but you don’t have the kinda manners that refined women like Winifred and Rose is used to,” Fearless informed me. “Your questions sound like sandpaper but Milo feel like shammy cloth up in their ears.”
I didn’t argue. If Fearless and I worked for a corporation I would have been his boss’s boss’s boss. But in the world of hearts and minds I was more like his dog.
“TRISTAN,” HIS MOTHER SQUEALED. We had come to her little home on Elm off Paulsen. “And Paris. Oh, baby, it’s so good to see you.”
Gina Jones was almost as tall as her son and twice his girth. She wrapped me in an embrace that was somewhat like the ocean—she rocked back and forth and buoyed me up on soft strength that could crush stone, given time.
“Hi, Mama Jones,” I said.
Fearless kissed his mother and said, “This here is Rose Fine, Mama. She had to leave her home and we didn’t know where to take her so we brought her here.”
“Isn’t that a beautiful gown?” Gina said.
Rose grinned broadly and clasped her gloved hands together.
Fearless carried her tiny suitcase.
“Come in, everybody,” Gina said.
She led us into a small parlor that had been set up to make the most possible out of the space she had. Against adjoining walls were two coral-colored sofas that came together at a right angle, with an extremely small walnut table set where they met. There were two wooden chairs near the door to the kitchen and an overhead light with a blue-and-yellow shade instead of a lamp that might take up table or floor space.
Milo Sweet—fully dressed in tan suit, blue vest, and red tie—was seated in one of the chairs holding a small china cup in one hand and an equally delicate saucer in the other. He stood up, put the cup and saucer on the chair, and then approached us.
“Paris, Fearless,” he said. Then he laid eyes upon our Victorian charge.
“Miss Fine,” she said. “Rose Fine.”
She held out the back of her hand and Milo actually kissed the glove.
“Milo,” Fearless said.
“We have things to talk about,” I added.
“Not until you all come into the kitchen and sit for something to drink and eat,” Gina Jones said.
She was from another era, a time in the country when people traveled by foot or horse-drawn buggy. Whenever anyone showed up at the door, it had to be after a long and dusty journey.
I felt like I had been a long way. A drink and some lunch sounded like just the right thing.
31
THE KITCHEN WAS A BIG SQUARE ROOM with a small stove and an icebox set in the corner next to a big-basin sink. The rest of the room was dominated by a large square table with a yellow linoleum top. There were more than enough chrome chairs with red vinyl cushions for Gina’s guests. After hefty meatloaf sandwiches she served us lemonade and pound cake with marmalade and strawberry preserves.
Milo brought out a flask of vodka for the men to lace their drinks. Rose and Gina spoke for a long time about things like silver thread and salad spoons, rhubarb pie and quilting circles. Every time Milo or I tried to bring up business we were gently shushed by Fearless’s mother.
After forty-five minutes or so Rose asked if she could take a short nap. Gina led the millionaire off to her bedroom and stayed with her for a while.
“What you boys got?” Milo said as soon as they were gone.
I told him almost everything except about the money we’d been paid already. Milo hadn’t really hired us and so I didn’t see why he should be cut in on our gain.
“So all you got to do is get the pendant and Miss Fine will be happy,” Milo said, finishing our story with his own happy ending.
“Milo,” I said. “People are dead here. Big-time people. People who don’t give a shit about some Negro farmer’s treasure. It don’t make sense.”
“Who cares?” he said. “We didn’t kill anybody. We weren’t anywhere near it. All we got to worry about is keepin’ Winifred Fine happy.”
“That’s all you got to care about, man,” I said. “I’m worried about sleepin’ in my bed without somebody waitin’ outside in the street with a pistol in his hand.”
“Don’t be a fool, Paris. Nobody cares about some niggah own a used-book bookstore. They worried about property and money. White-people money, not your little change.”
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