Big Daddy Sinatra: Carly's Cry (11 page)

“But what’s their motivation?
 
So they can take over?
 
Is that what you’re saying?”

“Whoever
they
are,” Charles said.
 
“Yes.
 
That’s what I’m saying.”

A worried look crossed Jenay’s
face.
 
She was about to say more, but
Tony walked in.
 
“Hello, parents,” he
said.
 
“Look what the cat drug in?”

Tony was dressed down, in a pair of
faded blue jeans, a sweat shirt, and tennis shoes.
 
A lot of grease spots stained his shirt.
  
“Drug is right,” Jenay said, looking him up
and down.
 
“I know you didn’t go to work
looking like that.”

“I work at a radio station, Jenay,”
Tony pointed out.
 
“Who’s going to see
me?”

“The people who work with you at that
station,” Charles said.

Tony smiled, and plopped down on the
chair beside his father.
 
“No worries,
people.
 
This is my day off.
 
I’ve been working on some of my cars.”

“Don’t tell me you bought another
car,” Charles said.

“Just this magnificent ’66
Studebaker.”

“Anthony!
 
Not another one.”

“But this one isn’t like that other
one.
 
That other one was just a hunk of
junk.
 
This one has potential.”

Charles and Jenay looked at each
other and shook their heads.

“Okay, don’t believe me.
 
But you guys should stop judging me and come
over to my place and take a look.
 
It’s a
classic I’m telling you.
 
And when I get
it restored, man oh man.
 
It’s going to
be a beauty to see.”

“And you won’t sell it, will you?”

“Not for all the tea in China,” Tony
admitted.
 
“But it’ll still be a beauty
to see.”

 
Knocks were heard on Jenay’s door.
 
Marla opened the door.
 
“Excuse me, Mrs. Sinatra.”

“Yes?”

“Carly is here with someone she
wishes to introduce you to.”

“Someone?
 
Who?”

“The new head mistress at Saint
Catherine’s Preparatory Academy.”

Tony smiled.
 
“A woman running Saint Cat’s?
 
And those old biddies over there are going to
let her run it?”
 
He stood up. “This I’ve
got to see.”
 

“Thanks, Marla, I’ll be right out,”
Jenay said.
 
Marla left.

Jenay stood up too.
 
“Wonder what that’s about?” she asked.
 
“I’m with Tony.
 
I can’t imagine that group hiring a woman.”

Charles stood up too.
 
He was just as curious as they were.
 
Saint Catherine’s was one of the oldest, and
most conservative institutions in Jericho.
 
This was rather shocking.

But when Charles, Jenay and Tony made
their way out of the office and into the hotel’s lobby, there was more than
curiosity and shock that met their gaze.
 
Carly was standing in the middle of the lobby talking with the new head
mistress, a tall, African-American woman who appeared to be in her late
twenties.
  
And each one of them, on
seeing her, had their own reactions.

For Charles, it was her remarkable
presence.
 
She was no beauty.
 
She did not have Jenay’s good looks, or even
Makayla’s.
 
And if he was to be plain
about it, she was, in truth, most unattractive.
 
Her face was too long, her eyes were too far apart, and her skin, with
that so-called
high yellow
tone that
was generally thought beautiful, displayed a flush of freckles across her
cheekbones that made it look ruddy.

But there was something about her
that was alluring too.
 
It could have
been her long, wavy hair that dropped along her back in waves of
bounciness.
 
Or it could have been her slender
frame.
 
Jericho men, Charles not
included, tended to have a preference for women with her body type.
 
But Charles doubted if her hair texture and
body type were her saving grace.
 
He
suspected it was her bearing.
 
She stood
straight-backed, and had an elegance about her, as if she was high-bred and
sophisticated and didn’t care if you liked it or not.
 
She wasn’t snooty as some ladies of her class
could be, but he could tell she had confidence in spades.
 
It was a presence that demanded respect, a
commanding presence, that he saw in her.

Jenay saw it too.
 
She saw it the way she carried herself. She
saw it in what she was raised to refer to as
good
hair, although she hated the term.
 
It made it sound as if natural, kinky hair
wasn’t good, when she knew that it was.
 
But that long hair seemed to define her too somehow.
 
And even her freckles set her apart.
 
She was different, and it showed.
 
Or maybe it was just the fact that a place
like Saint Catherine’s would hire a young woman like her was more the
fascination for Jenay.

 
Tony, however, immediately discounted his fascination with her
selection, as Jenay saw it, or even her unattractive looks and her presence, as
his father saw it.
 
Because as soon as
Tony entered that lobby and saw Sharon standing there, a feeling came over him
that was so profusely odd that it stopped him in his tracks.
 
It went as fast as it came, like a quick wind
out of nowhere, and he recovered.
 
But as
he finally followed his parents toward her, and as he realized Carly had
already introduced their parents to her and explained the reason for her visit,
he was still reeling by his initial response.
 
What in the world, he wondered, was that about?

“How do you like Jericho so far?”
Jenay was asking Sharon when Tony approached their circle.

“I haven’t seen an awful lot of it,”
Sharon responded.
 
“But so far so good.”

Sharon felt more relaxed around
Jenay.
 
She would hope it wasn’t simply
because Jenay was black like her, but because Jenay had a sweet spirit about
her that was contagious.
 
She liked
her.
 
Carly, on the other hand, was
smiling just as much as Jenay, and had a sweetness about her too, but Sharon
sensed a foreboding in Carly.
 
A
depression.
 
An inward terror that her
smile could not tamp down.

“This knucklehead right here,”
Charles said when Tony finally arrived in the group, “is my second oldest son,
Anthony.
 
Anthony, meet Sharon Flannigan,
the new principal at Saint Catherine’s.
 
She’s going to be staying here at the Inn for a spell.”

Tony extended his hand.
 
“Nice to meet you,” he said.

“And you,” Sharon responded, shaking
his hand.
 
He was staring at her while
they shook, and even before they shook, which was unusual.
 
It had been her experience that men tended to
view her as nothing special to look at, and she was accustomed to that
reality.
 
What could this son of Sinatra,
a very handsome son at that, possibly find so fascinating?

“Tony’s a radio star,” Carly said
proudly.
 
“At least here in Jericho he
is.”

Sharon smiled.
 
“Really?
 
A star?”

“If you keep in mind that anybody on
the radio in Jericho is a star, then yes, I’m a star.”

Sharon laughed.
 
“What are you starring in on the radio?”

“Therapy sessions.”

“He’s a clinical psychologist who
gives people advice over the radio,” Carly added.

 
“I see,” Sharon said.
 
She also
wondered if Carly was availing herself of his advice.
 
“Perhaps I’ll phone in one day.”

“When those old biddies at Saint
Cat’s get through with you,” Tony said, reclaiming his upbeat personality,
“you’ll call.”

Sharon laughed again, as did Charles,
Jenay and Carly.
 
For a stuffy old head
mistress, Charles thought, she was alright.
 
She so intrigued him that he had to ask her.
 
“Speaking of old biddies,” he said, “how did
a nice girl like you end up in a place like Saint Cat’s?”

“I was asked to come.
 
Or, correction, ordered here.
 
I was the dean of students at Saint
Catherine’s Prep Academy in Baltimore when my bishop asked if I would like to
relocate to Maine.”

“And I’m sure you told him it would
be your pleasure,” Jenay said sarcastically.

“I told him was he on dope?” Sharon
said, and they all laughed.
 
“I told him
no, sir, I would not like to relocate to Maine.”
 
She exhaled.
 
She was still smiling, but Tony could see the disappointment in her big,
hazel eyes.
 
“But he was firm.
 
He needed me here.”

“You could have quit,” Carly said.
 
“He couldn’t force you to relocate.”

“It’s only temporary,” Sharon said
definitively.

Tony had a feeling she was wishfully
thinking.
 
“He told you that?” he asked.

“No, but if I complete my mission, if
I turn things around as was his mandate to me, then I suspect I’ll be back in
Baltimore in no time.”

That’s what you think
, Carly thought, as someone who knew just how dysfunctional the Academy
truly was.
 
But that was for Sharon to
find out for herself.

“Are you married?” Tony asked.
 
“Have any little babies running around?”

“No,” Sharon said, looking at
Tony.
 
“I’ve never been married.”
 
Never been asked either, Tony suspected.
 
“And, of course, I have no children.”

“You speak as if marriage is a
requirement for having children,” Tony said. “It is not, I can tell you.”

“It is for me,” Sharon corrected
him.
 
“I can tell
you
.”

Charles smiled.
 
“The Irish ladies that I’ve known,” he said,
“aren’t so black and white.
 
They have
babies out of wedlock all over the place.
 
And you are Irish, right?”

Carly laughed.
 
“Many black people have Irish surnames,
Dad.
 
That doesn’t make them all Irish.”

“Actually,” Sharon said, “my father’s
father was half-Irish on his paternal side.
 
Thus the name Flannigan.”

“I see,” Charles said, with a nod of
the head.

“But in answer to your comment, I
never base my way of life on how a particular group base theirs.”

“Good answer,” Tony said, and as soon
as he said it, the sound of breaking glass could be heard.

Charles looked beyond Jenay, whose
back was to the room-sized picture window inside the lobby, and saw the window
shatter.
 
He also saw what he thought was
a rifle hanging out of a car stopped at the curb.

“
Get
down
!” he shouted with a thunderous shout and pushed down both his wife and
daughter, diving on top of both of them.
 
Tony instinctively dived too, on top of Sharon, and covered her body
with his.
 
Just as they dived, that lone
shot that shattered the window, took on more urgency and bullets ripped through
the lobby window and hit walls and vases and flower pots and everything else in
sight.
 

Both men covered the ladies as hails
of bullets flew past them like sparks of fire.
 
Marla and Becky, who were still behind the front desk counter when the
gunfire erupted, dropped to the floor to, behind the counter, screaming in
fear.
  
The guests who were in the lobby
dropped down screaming too.
 
It was a
moment of terror that nobody in that room would ever forget.
 
Because of the sounds.
 
Because of the unrelenting sounds of bullets
bouncing off of walls, ricocheting and breaking other glassware, and echoing in
their ears.
 
Until, as Charles suspected
would eventually happen, the gunman ran out of bullets to fire.

When Charles looked up, he could see
the rifle moving back into the car, and the car burning rubber taking off.