Authors: Margaret Fenton
I parked in front of Ashley’s apartment.
Several other cars were there, including Ashley’s beat-up old Saturn. Another
was being worked on by a middle-aged black man. He was changing the oil.
Ashley’s doorknob still hung loosely on the cheap door, and the gang sign was
still on the wall.
I readied the key to unlock the door but
stopped when I heard voices. From inside the apartment. I pressed my ear to the
door.
“Tom, you are only ten questions away
from becoming a millionaire. We’ll be right back.” Music. A game show. Then a
commercial. Why was Ashley’s TV on?
Instead of using the key, I knocked, and
a man opened the door.
Chapter Fourteen
I was expecting Jimmy, or maybe Dee or Al,
but not the guy who opened the door. Sandy blond hair, curly, cut short. An
Eddie Bauer logo, unobtrusive, on his tee pocket. Diesel jeans. Not a cheap
dresser, this guy. His body hadn’t yet broadened in the back and shoulders. A
spray of freckles across his nose only added to his youthful appearance. And I
knew him, from somewhere.
“Hello!” He greeted me cheerfully. “Are
you a friend of Ashley’s? ’Cause she’s locked up.” His eyes were greenish-blue.
Something about his eyes nagged at me.
“I know. I was her social worker. Who
are you?”
“Oh, you’re Claire. C’mon in.” He swept
an arm wide in invitation. I entered the apartment, which was a mess.
Definitely not the way Ashley left it. Empty beer cans, cigarette butts, and
snack bags covered the coffee table. A dirty shirt lay wadded on the floor and
a tangled blanket was on the couch. He threw himself onto the sofa, shoved the
blanket aside and said, “Have a seat.” He muted the game show.
“No, thanks.” I examined the room. Dishes
were piled up in the kitchen beyond. I spotted the collage of pictures hanging
over the television, and realized where I’d seen him before. He was one of the
three guys sitting on the couch in the picture. “Who are you?” I repeated.
“I’m Zander. I’m a friend of Ashley’s.”
“I would hope so, since you’re in her
apartment.”
He laughed, loudly. “Yeah. I’m gonna
house-sit for a while until she gets out.”
“That may be a long time.”
“Yeah, I know. A year. You got any
cigarettes?”
“Don’t smoke.”
“Damn, I gotta go get some.”
“Zander, huh? What’s your last name?” I
asked, facing him.
He licked his lips once, then again.
“Why?”
“What’s your last name?” I gave him my
best I’m-not-playing tone. It usually worked on kids.
“Madison.”
Zander Madison. Zander . . . Alex . . .
Zander . . . Alexander Madison. Holy crap.
He’d been watching me while I put the
name together. “You wouldn’t be a junior, by any chance?”
He giggled. “Good guess.”
“As in The Madison Group?” One of
Birmingham’s largest business conglomerates.
“Yep.”
“And the Madison Center?” The newly
renovated skyscraper downtown.
“Yep.”
“And the Madison Sports Complex?”
Brand-new acres of soccer, football, and baseball fields in a nearby suburb.
“Yep.” He giggled again. “Do y’suppose
if they named a street after my dad it’d be Madison Avenue?” He flopped around
and guffawed like it was the most hilarious thing anyone had ever said. “Or
maybe they’ll give him a Square Garden. Ha!”
Life is too good when you laugh that
hard at your own jokes. It dawned on me what had bothered me about his eyes.
They were dilated. I looked around for whatever he’d been using, my gaze
searching until it rested on the end of a small glass tube sticking out from
underneath the couch. It was charred with residue. He was as high as a kite in a
hurricane.
I nodded to it. “That your pipe?”
“Yeah, you wanna hit it?”
“No, that’s okay.”
He shrugged, still smiling. “More for
me.”
There was something else. The eyes. I
sucked in a deep breath as it hit me. Those same eyes, in a picture I saw this
morning. They were Michael’s.
“You were Michael’s father.” Michael
Alexander Hennessy. So Ashley had given him his daddy’s name after all. And his
grandfather’s.
He sat up, suddenly serious. “What makes
you say that?”
“He had your eyes.” And hair color, come
to think of it. And the curls, too.
The compulsive lip-licking started
again. No doubt dry mouth, or a tic, from the drugs. “I’m going to miss that
little guy.”
“Wait a minute. You knew him?”
“Sure.”
I looked at the pipe again,
flabbergasted. He picked it up and stroked it like it was something precious.
“Don’t worry. Ashley had strict rules when it came to visiting Michael. She
wouldn’t let me near him if I was on anything. She could always tell. I wasn’t
allowed to go anywhere with him, and she watched me like a hawk when I was
here. So he was safe.”
Apparently not, because he was dead.
“Were you here the night he died? Last Monday?”
“I came by for a bit, yeah. Right when
they got home.”
“You’re aware of how he died, right?”
“Yeah. GHB. Totally blew me away.”
“Was it your G?”
“No way! I told you, Ashley would never
let me bring anything around here. She was real serious about staying clean. It
just about killed her when you took Michael away the first time.”
“You think the G was hers?”
“I don’t know. Ashley and me, we were
never into G much.”
“So what do you think happened?”
“Ashley was a popular girl. She had lots
of friends. Any one of them could have mixed the stuff and left it here.”
“To kill them?”
“What do you mean?”
“The police have said that there was
enough GHB in the pitcher to kill both of them.”
“So some idiot mixed too much.”
“What do you think happened, Zander?”
“I don’t know.”
I wasn’t buying it. I wondered if he was
the self-proclaimed idiot who brought the GHB here. Zander dug around for cigarettes,
finally finding an open pack under a large bag of M&M’s on the coffee
table. He lit up.
“How did you and Ashley meet?” This
romance between the son of one of Birmingham’s richest and most well-known
businessmen and an abused country girl from Adger didn’t make sense.
“I was partying with this dude and we
went to some house in Irondale. He said he knew this guy that had some really
good rock. She was there, and we hooked up.”
Hooked up in this case meant got high
and had sex, I was sure. “And then she got pregnant?”
“Yeah, a few weeks later.” He dragged on
the cigarette.
“Where were you when Michael was taken
away?”
“Around. I mean, it’s not like me and
Ashley were ever really a couple, you know. We just hooked up every now and
then.”
“You know Flash?”
“I know who he is, and that Ashley got
drugs and shit from him.” He tapped the end of his cigarette into the
overflowing ashtray on the coffee table.
“You know how she did that?”
“I know she had sex with him, to get
stuff. Ashley and I, we don’t judge each other. That’s what makes our
relationship so special.”
Ashley had sex with far more men than
just Flash and Zander. Luckily her HIV test had been negative two years ago. I
wondered if Zander’s would be.
“Do your — did your parents know about
Michael?”
He licked his lips again and sucked on
the cigarette. “Oh, hell no. Well, I take that back. They know I got a girl
pregnant. My father gave some money to,” he made quotation marks with his
fingers, ashes falling onto the sofa that Ashley had saved so carefully to buy,
“have it taken care of.”
“And?”
“And Ashley and I bought some really
good shit with that money.”
“So he has no idea his grandson just
died?”
He shrugged and crushed out the smoke.
“Does he know about your drug habit?”
“Oh, yeah. He thinks —” He giggled
again. “He thinks I’m in rehab right now. In Ar-i-zona.” Whatever he was on —
crack, I suspected — was taking full effect. His eyes were glazed and his words
were starting to slur.
I was silent, taking it all in. Ashley
lied to me about not knowing who Michael’s father was. And she allowed him
access to Michael. What else was she lying about?
I started toward the door. “I gotta head
back to work. Take care of yourself, Zander.”
He was sinking lower onto the couch.
“Why don’ ya stay ’while. Hang out.”
“No, thanks. I have to go to work.”
“Work sucks. My parents want me to work.
Want me to go into finance. Crunchin’ numbers. Can you ’magine? How fuckin’
borin’. ”
“I’ll see you around, Zander.” I locked
the door behind me as he unmuted the TV. The unlucky contestant had not won the
million dollars.
It was starting to drizzle as I went back
to the office. When I got there, Mac had left a case file on my desk, an
emergency that had to be investigated immediately. Because of the level of
injuries, I wound up having to take the boy and his brother into custody and
spent the rest of the day and most of Tuesday night finding them a foster home.
I didn’t make it home until almost midnight. When I got there, a vase of
gorgeous pink roses was sitting on my front stoop. The rain hadn’t smeared
Grant’s handwritten note, thanking me for a great time and hoping to see me
soon. I unlocked the door, put the roses on the coffee table, found his card,
and called his cell phone.
“ ’ello?” His voice was throaty.
I’d woken him up.
“Hey, it’s Claire. Sorry. I woke you,
didn’t I?” I could hear a narrator’s drone in the background on the TV.
“ ’s okay. I fell asleep on the
couch.” The TV went silent. “How’re you?” he asked through a yawn.
“I’m fine, just got home from work. I
was calling to thank you for the flowers. Pink roses are my favorite.” Their
aroma was filling my living room.
“Glad you like them. Long day, huh?”
“Yeah, I had an emergency to deal with.”
“You free Saturday night?”
“Sure.”
“How about a movie? And dinner?”
“Sounds good.” We chatted a bit before saying
goodnight.
Wednesday was another busy day, dealing
with the remnants of yesterday’s emergency, the shelter care hearing at court,
and the rest of the stuff I’d left on my desk. It was Thursday before I had
half a second to think about Ashley and Michael. And Zander Madison.
Royanne and I were meeting for our usual
lunch date, although it was a little early to accommodate my twelve thirty
intervention meeting. It was my turn to drive, and at ten fifty I pulled up to
the front of the towering headquarters of Birmingham Financial Bank. BFB’s
building was all silver, the mirrored glass reflecting the other skyscrapers
around it. Royanne was waiting in the expansive lobby and quickly jumped in the
car.
“Gawd Almighty I’m so sick of summer
already.” She fastened the seat belt across her ample bosom and adjusted the
vents to blow on her full blast. Her big blonde hair didn’t move.
“Amen.” I slid into the traffic and
headed south. Our early arrival at Los Compadres meant we avoided the crowd,
and we were seated immediately. Pablo brought our drinks without being asked.
We ordered and when we were alone Royanne asked how I was doing.
“Okay. I went to Michael’s funeral on
Tuesday.”
“Oh, God. How awful.”
“Yeah, it was sad.”
“I can’t imagine. I don’t want to imagine.
If it were one of mine
—”
“I know.” I gave her a quick rundown of
the memorial service, then moved on to other gossip. Royanne insisted on
hearing every single detail about my evening with Grant. I admitted that I
hadn’t had a bad time with him, and actually found him kind of attractive. That
confession invited merciless teasing until Pablo brought my chicken tacos and
her burrito. Halfway through my first taco, I asked, “You know anything about
The Madison Group?”
She swallowed a bite of refried beans.
“Sure, why?”
“I was just wondering what they did.”
“Lots of stuff. There’s MAS, Madison
Accounting Services. They do corporate accounting. That’s the largest company
in the group. Then there’s Madison Investments. And Madison Realty, they do
corporate real estate. And, of course, the Madison Foundation that does a lot
of local charity work. They sponsor that huge golf tournament every year. Why?”
“Just wondering.”
“Nuh-uh.” Royanne met my gaze. “You
never just wonder. What’s up?”
“You know anything about the Madisons?”