Just Wanna Testify (9 page)

“I heard of them. Everybody in Reserve know about the Mayflowers.”

Reserve was Louie’s tiny hometown, located right outside New Orleans.

The question is
, Abbie thought,
what did they know?
“One of them came to see Blue this morning.”

“In Atlanta?”

Abbie nodded.

“Came to see him about what?”

She looked at Louie for a minute and then did what she always did: went straight to the heart of the matter. “It’s true, isn’t it?”

Louie sighed and smoothed his hands over the spotless expanse of his apron. A few Christmases ago, he had given his friends black aprons that said,
Don’t make me have to poison your food
, but this one was just plain.

“Miss Abbie, this is not something to be discussed in the middle of preparations for the Friday night dinner rush,” he said gently. “But is it true?”

“What did Blue say?”

“He’s the one who wanted me to ask you about the Mayflowers.”

“Then I’ll tell you what I know, but not now. Tomorrow, after I pick the fish.”

As serious as the topic under discussion was, Abbie had to smile. First and foremost, Louie Baptiste was a chef. Sweet Abbie’s prided
itself on serving the freshest seafood on the island. No way was Louie going to let some vampires get in the way of that hard-won distinction.

Abbie had no choice but to wait. The first seating for dinner was in three hours, and the kitchen was already coming alive around them as Louie’s small staff moved about efficiently, communicating with a minimum of verbal exchanges, as longtime coworkers often do. They all knew what Friday nights were like, and that by six thirty a line of happy, hungry people would be halfway down the block. The best way to survive it with your sanity and your tips intact was to do your job and stay loose. Abbie knew the rules and she respected them.

“You’re right,” she said, standing up to leave him to his work. “I’ll wait for Peachy out front. This is no time to talk.”

“Tomorrow morning will be time enough,” Louie said, standing up, too, and sounding relieved. She was his friend, but she was also the boss’s wife and attention must be paid. “Nothing’s going to happen between now and then.”

“Like what?” Abbie said.

“Like nothing,” he said, hoping he sounded reassuring as he walked her to the door. “The Mayflowers aren’t dangerous anymore. If they were, don’t you think Blue would have said so?”

“I know he would have,” she said. She watched the sous chef carefully stirring a red sauce in a deep iron pot. The spicy smell of tomatoes and garlic made her stomach growl and she realized she was hungry after all.

“Then stop worrying,” Louie said gently, opening the door slowly so she wouldn’t think he was being rude. “Everything is fine.”

Abbie stopped in the doorway and raised her eyebrows. “Is that why you’re giving me the bum’s rush?”

“Dinner rush, Miss Abbie.
Dinner rush.
”

“Just checking,” she said, and heard her stomach growl again, this time so loudly that Louie heard it, too. He grinned.

“I know you’re not hungry, but how about I send you out a cold
chicken sandwich anyway? You can just pick at it until your man gets back.”

“Bless you.” Abbie laughed, heading down the short hallway to the restaurant’s main dining room as Louie’s assistant approached holding out a cellphone and looking concerned. “If things get crazy later, I’ll just see you in the morning.”

“I’ll be there,” he said as the door swung closed and he was gone.

Abbie liked being in the empty restaurant before it opened for dinner. It was like sitting in a church sanctuary before Sunday service. Peaceful, but in a nice, anticipatory kind of way. She stopped right inside the front door at the main entrance and there was the picture Louie had been teasing her about. It was a beautiful color portrait of Abbie by the ocean on a perfectly cloudless day. She looked happy and sexy and exactly like the kind of woman you’d want to have a nice long dinner with.

At Peachy’s request, Aretha, who took the picture, had framed it in a heavy, old-fashioned gilt frame, like the kind that hangs over the bar in all those old Hollywood Westerns. Whenever she came to the restaurant, people got very excited and asked her to pose with them in front of it. She always agreed, smiling pleasantly as they embraced her shoulders awkwardly or pointed up at the portrait, as if anyone could somehow miss the fact that it was her smiling down at them.

She liked that picture. Aretha had taken it only a few weeks after Abbie realized she was falling in love with Peachy. The idea that he liked it so much that he stood before it, feeling such longing that his suffering was visible to the naked eye, filled her with deep pleasure. Louie was right. There was enough time tomorrow to figure out the Mayflowers. She hadn’t seen Peachy in almost two weeks and she missed him like crazy.

Tonight
, she thought, smiling back at her own image,
all you need is love. And maybe a nice cold chicken sandwich
.

It had been a very busy day. Since he first arrived at eight o’clock and found Serena Mayflower waiting in his office to the last phone call from his friend Noel in Trinidad that had just ended a few minutes before seven, Blue Hamilton had been wearing with equal aplomb the many hats required of him in the course of an average twenty-four-hour day.

Blue had made his artistic reputation as a singer, but he had made his fortune in real estate. Although he was known for his extensive commercial and residential properties throughout West End, Blue’s holdings went far beyond the boundaries of the small southwest Atlanta community where he had chosen to live and work. Recent developments in world markets had tripled the value of his partnership with a Trinidadian songwriter turned oilman who had a line to Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. Blue’s friend also held the distinction of having penned more number one hits than
anyone else in the history of Carnival, including the collaboration that rocked the island several years earlier when Blue came briefly out of retirement to lend his unique vocals to the project and render the song an instant classic.

Noel was begging Blue to come back and do it one more time, but so far there were no real plans to make it happen. Blue and Regina had spent almost a year in Trinidad when Sweetie was just learning to walk. Going back was a dream they often whispered about, lying in each other’s arms, remembering how sweet it had been to make love listening to the sound of the ocean outside their window.

“Soon come,” Blue always said, in the island patois that meant twenty minutes or twenty years, depending on whom you asked. “Soon come.”

He couldn’t deny that there had been something very appealing about stepping back from all of his West End responsibilities. His financial holdings were easily managed electronically, with minimal face-to-face contact required, but his actual presence in and around this neighborhood was an absolute necessity. Blue’s ability to hold things together was based in part on his well-known willingness to do whatever needed to be done to maintain the overall peace, but it was also the result of his undeniable personal charisma. As a singer, the power of that charisma had made grown women weak in the knees. In his current role, it sometimes did the same to grown men.

Blue had thought once that the neighborhoods that bordered West End on every side would be transformed by their proximity to the twenty or so square blocks where he was in charge. He had hoped, and he had worked and he had waited, but not only had there been no positive change, many of the neighborhoods were actually getting worse. Unemployment was rampant. Drug addiction was epidemic. And maybe most surprising to Blue was that the election of a young black president who wanted to change the world and needed all the help he could get seemed to make little lasting impact among the young brown men he saw every day who wore their pants
below their butts and had no larger vision than controlling the sale of crack cocaine in a half-block radius. It also made no difference at all to the young brown women whose children’s lives were already set in motion before their first birthdays to repeat every negative pattern. After years of sustained effort, Blue was beginning to suspect that there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about any of it beyond this tiny community where he had drawn a line that didn’t move.

Through the smoked glass, Blue saw Henry coming down the hall. He stopped and spoke a few words to Jake and then tapped on Blue’s door twice like he did every night at precisely seven fifteen.

“Come ahead,” Blue said.

Henry stepped into the room, graceful for a man his size, and closed the door behind him.

The two men sat together for a few minutes every evening to review the events of the day and get ready for the next one. To describe Henry as Blue’s right-hand man was to not recognize the multifaceted nature of his role. Each man trusted the other with his life, and constant, truthful communication was a necessity.

Blue nodded slightly. “Want a drink?”

“Absolutely,” Henry said.

Neither man loosened a tie or removed a jacket.

“Why don’t you do the honors?”

Henry poured them each a generous splash of cognac and carefully replaced the cork. He walked back to his seat and handed Blue a snifter before taking his usual seat across from Blue.

“Anything happening I need to know about?” Blue said.

“Everything is everything,” Henry said, sounding like an old-school jazz musician. “I took care of that thing we talked about this afternoon and the team we sent over to Morehouse said they’re done for the day. Five of the models went back to their hotel and the one who was here earlier went over to Brandi’s with Aretha Hargrove. They’re having drinks right now. Your wife picked up your daughter and Joyce Ann Hargrove and took them both to your house.”

“Any problems over there today?”

Henry shook his head. “None at all. Was there anything specific you were expecting?”

“No,” Blue said, wondering when
was
the right time to warn your closest associates that there were vampires in their midst. “But we never want to be careless.”

Henry took a swallow of his drink and set it down slowly on the table in front of him. “I’m not exactly sure how I should say this.”

Blue looked at Henry, his eyes giving off no light and his expression neutral.

“Just say it,” Blue said. “What’s on your mind?”

“That woman who came by this morning?”

“Ms. Mayflower?”

“Yes, Ms. Mayflower. I was just wondering if you noticed anything
strange
about her.”

“Other than the fact that she’s probably the tallest, thinnest woman either one of us has ever seen?” Blue smiled, waiting for the next question.

“You got that right,” Henry said, and Blue could see him relax a little. “But that’s not what I meant entirely.”

Blue knew that it was time to tell Henry.
Past
time. How could he expect the man to protect him if he didn’t even know what the danger was?

“I know what you mean,” Blue said. “There is something very strange about Serena Mayflower and I want your solemn vow that when I tell you what it is, that information will not leave this room.”

Henry leaned forward and clasped his big hands on the table. They looked even bigger against the starched white cloth. “Mr. Hamilton, you have my word.”

“Good. And do me a favor?”

“Yes?”

“Call me Blue.”

Regina didn’t know who was more excited. Aretha making her way down I-20 to share the good news or the two little girls upstairs, wriggling into their princess outfits for a trip to the mall for ice cream. It was probably a tie, although she doubted that Aretha could compete when it came to high-pitched squealing. The truth was Regina was excited, too. The rest of the first day’s shoot had gone so well, it was almost as if the morning face-off between Scylla and Aretha had never happened.

After the models had lunch, or whatever they did in place of eating, they reported back to Aretha with a new set of outfits—again having no resemblance to the wardrobe of any college professor who had ever earned a living on planet Earth—and a willingness to pose all over the campus without complaint. Everywhere they went, they attracted adoring groups of students who always got in the shoot if
they were invited, but otherwise hung back at a respectful distance, content to say they had been in the presence of a phenomenon without actually having to engage with it.