The Best of Sisters in Crime (37 page)

Brigitte’s
nostrils flared. “I should send her to reform school. Show her what discipline
is really like.”

“Why in hell do
you even want custody over Corinne if all you can think about is revenge?” I
interrupted.

She stopped
swirling around her living room and turned to frown at me. “Why, I love her, of
course. She is my sister, you know.”

“Concentrate on
that. Keep saying it to yourself. She’s not a cat that you can breed and mold
to suit your fancy.”

“I just want her
to be happy when she’s older. She won’t be if she can’t learn to control
herself. Look at what happened when she started hanging around trash like that
Lily Hellman. She would never have let Lady Iva breed with an alley cat if she
hadn’t made that kind of friend.”

I ground my
teeth. “Just because Lily lives in five rooms over a store doesn’t make her
trash. Look, Brigitte. You wanted to lead your own life. I expect your parents
tried keeping you on a short leash. Hell, maybe they even threatened you with
reform school. So you started fucking every hulk you could get your hands on.
Are you so angry about that that you have to treat Corinne the same way?”

She gaped at me.
Her jaw worked but she couldn’t find any words. Finally she went over to a
burled oak cabinet that concealed a bar. She pulled out a chilled bottle of
Sancerre and poured herself a glass. When she’d gulped it down she sat at her
desk.

“Is it that
obvious? Why I went after Jade and B. B. and all those boys?”

I hunched a
shoulder. “It was just a guess, Brigitte. A guess based on what I’ve learned
about you and your sister and Jade the last two clays. He’s not such an awful
guy, you know, but he clearly was an awful guy for you. And Corinne’s lonely
and miserable and needs someone to love her. She figures her horse for the job.”

“And me?” Her
cobalt eyes glittered again. “What do I need? The embraces of my cat?”

“To shed some of
those porcupine quills so someone can love you, too. You could’ve offered me a
glass of wine, for example.”

She started an
ugly retort, then went over to the liquor cabinet and got out a glass for me. “So
I bring Flitcraft up to Chicago and stable her. I put Corinne into the filthy
public high school. And then we’ll all live happily ever after.”

“She might
graduate.” I swallowed some of the wine. It was cold and crisp and eased some
of the tension the Le-Blancs and Pierces were putting into my throat. “And in
another year she won’t run away to Lily’s, but she’ll go off to Mobile or hit
the streets. Now’s your chance.”

“Oh, all right,”
she snapped. “You’re some kind of saint, I know, who never said a bad word to
anyone. You can tell Corinne I’ll cut a deal with her. But if it goes wrong you
can be the one to stay up at night worrying about her.”

I rubbed my
head. “Send her back to Mobile, Brigitte. There must be a grandmother or aunt
or nanny or someone who really cares about her. With your attitude, life with
Corinne is just going to be a bomb waiting for the fuse to blow.”

“You can say
that again, detective.” It was Jade, his bulk filling the double doors to the
living room.

Behind him we
could hear the housekeeper without being able to see her. “I tried to keep him
out, Brigitte, but Corinne let him in. You want me to call the cops, get them to
exercise that peace bond?”

“I have a right
to ask whoever I want into my own house,” came Corinne’s muffled shriek.

Squawking and
yowling, Casper broke from Joel Sirop’s hold. He hurtled himself at the doorway
and stuffed his body through the gap between Jade’s feet. On the other side of
the barricade we could hear Lady Iva’s answering yodel and a scream from
Corinne—presumably she’d been clawed.

“Why don’t you
move, Jade, so we can see the action?” I suggested.

He lumbered into
the living room and perched his bulk on the edge of a pale grey sofa. Corinne
stumbled in behind him and sat next to him. Her muddy skin and lank hair looked
worse against the sleek modern lines of Brigitte’s furniture than they had in
Mrs. Hellman’s crowded sitting room.

Brigitte watched
the blood drip from Corinne’s right hand to the rug and jerked her head at the
housekeeper hovering in the doorway. “Can you clean that up for me, Grace?”

When the
housekeeper left, she turned to her sister. “Next time you’re that angry at me
take it out on me, not the cat. Did you really have to let her breed in a back
alley?”

“It’s all one to
Iva,” Corinne muttered sulkily. “Just as long as she’s getting some she don’t
care who’s giving it to her. Just like you.”

Brigitte marched
to the couch. Jade caught her hand as she was preparing to smack Corinne.

“Now look here,
Brigitte,” he said. “You two girls don’t belong together. You know that as well
as I do. Maybe you think you owe it to your public image to be a mamma to
Corinne, but you’re not the mamma type. Never have been. Why should you try
now?”

Brigitte glared
at him. “And you’re Mister Wonderful who can sit in judgment on everyone else?”

He shook his
massive jade dome. “Nope. I won’t claim that. But maybe Corinne here would like
to come live with me.” He held up a massive palm as Brigitte started to
protest. “Not in Uptown. I can get me a place close to here. Corinne can have
her horse and see you when you feel calm enough. And when your pure little old
cat has her half-breed kittens they can come live with us.”

“On Corinne’s
money,” Brigitte spat.

Jade nodded. “She’d
have to put up the stake. But I know some guys who’d back me to get started in
somethin’. Commodities, somethin’ like that.”

“You’d be drunk
or doped up all the time. And then you’d rape her—” She broke off as he did his
ugly-black-slit number with his eyes.

“You’d better
not say anything else, Brigitte LeBlanc. Damned well better not say anything.
You want me to get up in the congregation and yell that I never touched a piece
of ass that shoved itself in my nose, I ain’t going to. But you know better’n
anyone that I never in my life laid hands on a girl to hurt her. As for the
rest . . .” His eyes returned to normal and he put a redwood branch around
Corinne’s shoulders. “First time I’m drunk or shooting somethin’ Corinne comes
right back here. We can try it for six months, Brigitte. Just a trial. Rookie
camp, you know how it goes.”

The football
analogy brought her own mean look to Brigitte’s face. Before she could say
anything Joel bleated in the background, “It sounds like a good idea to me,
Brigitte. Really. You ought to give it a try. Lady Iva’s nerves will never be
stable with the fighting that goes on around her when Corinne is here.”

“No one asked
you,” Brigitte snapped.

“And no one
asked me, either,” Corinne said. “If you don’t agree, I—I’m going to take Lady
Iva and run away to New York. And send you pictures of her with litter after
litter of alley cats.”

The threat,
uttered with all the venom she could muster, made me choke with laughter. I swallowed
some Sancerre to try to control myself, but I couldn’t stop laughing. Jade’s
mountain rumbled and shook as he joined in. Joel gasped in horror. Only the two
LeBlanc women remained unmoved, glaring at each other.

“What I ought to
do, I ought to send you to reform school, Corinne Alton LeBlanc.”

“What you ought
to do is cool out,” I advised, putting my glass down on a chrome table. “It’s a
good offer. Take it. If you don’t, she’ll only run away.”

Brigitte
tightened her mouth in a narrow line. “I didn’t hire you to have you turn on
me, you know.”

“Yeah, well, you
hired me. You didn’t buy me. My job is to help you resolve a difficult problem.
And this looks like the best solution you’re going to be offered.”

“Oh, very well,”
she snapped pettishly, pouring herself another drink. “For six months. And if
her grades start slipping, or I hear she’s drinking or doping or anything like
that, she comes back here.”

I got up to go.
Corinne followed me to the door.

“I’m sorry I was
rude to you over at Lily’s,” she muttered shyly. “When the kittens are born you
can have the one you like best.”

I gulped and
tried to smile. “That’s very generous of you, Corinne. But I don’t think my dog
would take too well to a kitten.”

“Don’t you like
cats?” The big brown eyes stared at me poignantly. “Really, cats and dogs get
along very well unless their owners expect them not to.”

“Like LeBlancs
and Pierces, huh?”

She bit her lip
and turned her head, then said in a startled voice, “You’re teasing me, aren’t
you?”

“Just teasing
you, Corinne. You take it easy. Things are going to work out for you. And if
they don’t, give me a call before you do anything too rash, okay?”

“And you will
take a kitten?”

Just say no,
Vic, just say no, I chanted to myself. “Let me think about it. I’ve got to run
now.” I fled the house before she could break my resolve any further.

Back to table of
contents

Wendy Hornsby has been
hailed as writing in the tradition of Ross MacDonald and Charlotte Armstrong
and praised for
her “.
. .
skillful sleight-of-hand that borders on witchcraft.”
After two books featuring homicide detective Roger Tejeda and history professor
Kate Byrd
(No Harm, Half a Mind),
Wendy introduced filmmaker sleuth Maggie MacGowen in
Telling Lies.
Maggie and her supporting cast
appear in
Midnight Baby, Bad Intent,
77th
Street Requiem,
and most recently in
A Hard Light.

In “Nine Sons,” which has
been reprinted at least thirty times in eight languages and received an Edgar
Allen Poe award, a Mystery Scene Magazine Reader award, and Orange Coast
Fiction award, and an Anthony nomination, the Depression and the American
Midwest come to life in this startling and moving story.

I saw Janos Bonachek’s
name in the paper this morning.
There was a nice
article about his twenty-five years on the federal bench, his plans for
retirement. The Boy Wonder, they called him, but the accompanying photograph
showed him to be nearly bald, a wispy white fringe over his ears the only
remains of his once remarkable head of yellow hair.

For just a
moment, I was tempted to write him, or call him, to put to rest forever
questions I had about the death that was both a link and a wedge between us. In
the end I didn’t. What was the point after all these years? Perhaps Janos’s
long and fine career in the law was sufficient atonement, for us all, for
events that happened so long ago.

It occurred on
an otherwise ordinary day. It was April, but spring was still only a tease. If
anything stood out among the endless acres of black mud and gray slush, it was
two bright dabs of color: first the blue crocus pushing through a patch of
dirty snow, then the bright yellow head of Janos Bonachek as he ran along the
line of horizon toward his parents’ farm after school. Small marvels maybe, the
spring crocus and young Janos, but in that frozen place, and during those hard
times, surely they were miracles.

The year was
1934, the depths of the Great Depression. Times were bad, but in the small farm
town where I had been posted by the school board, hardship was an old
acquaintance.

I had arrived
the previous September, fresh from teachers’ college, with a new red scarf in
my bag and the last piece of my birthday cake. At twenty, I wasn’t much older
than my high-school-age pupils.

Janos was ten
when the term began, and exactly the height of ripe wheat. His hair was so
nearly the same gold as the bearded grain that he could run through the uncut
fields and be no more noticeable than the ripples made by a prairie breeze. The
wheat had to be mown before Janos could be seen at all.

On the northern
plains, the season for growing is short, a quick breath of summer between the
spring thaw and the first frost of fall. Below the surface of the soil, and
within the people who forced a living from it, there seemed to be a layer that
never had time to warm all the way through. I believe to this day that if the
winter hadn’t been so long, the chilling of the soul so complete, we would not
have been forced to bury Janos Bonachek’s baby sister.

Janos came from
a large family, nine sons. Only one of them, Janos, was released from chores to
attend school. Even then, he brought work with him in the form of his younger
brother, Boya. Little Boya was then four or five. He wasn’t as brilliant as
Janos, but he tried hard. Tutored and cajoled by Janos, Boya managed to skip to
the second-grade reader that year.