The Queen of Cool (24 page)

Manny shook his head.

“
We’re stuck with him?” Lo
asked.

“
I’ve never seen anything
like this,” Manny said. “I know how strongly you feel. I threatened
to quit. You know what my Captain said?”

Lo shook her head.

“
If you’re any kind of
friend to Lorraine Downs, you’ll see this thing all the way to the
end,” Manny shook his head. “He was freaked out. He thinks you’re
in danger.”

“
Who’s threatening Lo?”
Mutt asked from over her shoulder.

Shrugging, Manny shook his head.

“
What does it mean?” Lo
asked.

“
It means you’re in more
trouble than you ever imagined,” Mrs. Williams said. Surprised, Lo
and Manny turned to look at her. “They killed your daddy. Then they
killed your mammy. Now they killed your Don. You’ve got to ask
yourself why.”

“
What do you know about any
of that?” Manny asked.

“
I know this,” Mrs.
Williams’s eyebrows went up and her deep-set eyes appeared huge
through her glasses. “I saw Lo’s mammy not fifteen minutes before
they say she hanged herself. She brought me cookies. She was
laughing and talking with me on my porch when some men came
up.”

Mrs. Williams nodded.

“
Then they tell me she
killed herself?” Mrs. Williams’s head continued moving up and down.
“They lie.”

“
Did you tell the police at
the time?” Manny asked.

“
No disrespect, Manrod,”
Mrs. Williams smiled. “But no one asked me nothing. I was just the
poor dumb black woman who lived next door. I tried to get them to
stop harassing the kids, but they insisted that only the kids could
find what they were looking for. Poor kids. Couldn’t think
straight. What was they looking for?”

“
Her suicide note,” Lo
shrugged. “We never found anything.”

Mrs. Williams nodded. She pulled her bottom
lip over her front dentures as if she was screwing her mouth
closed.

“
What is it?” Lo
asked.

“
I always wondered why you
didn’t figure it out, Lorraine.”

“
Figure what out, Mrs.
Williams?” Lo asked.

“
Your mammy told me that
she just got off the phone with you,” Mrs. Williams said. “You
really think people who are going to kill themselves make cookies?
Come on, Lorraine. I’m going to make a couple dozen cookies, chat
with my daughter, and go kill myself. No one does that. It’s more
like ‘Woe is me. I can’t think straight. I’m going to die’ or some
fool thing. Not ‘My babies are coming for cookies; I better go hang
myself before they get here.’”

Lo gawked at the woman.

“
Never thought of it, did
you?” Mrs. Williams asked.

“
There was so
much going on,” Lo said. “Don, the girls; Mom’s poor body; planning
the funeral; Larry was deployed right after the funeral; Lisa moved
in; all that crap at
school
. I never
thought about it that way.”

“
You’re going to have to
figure this out, Lorraine.”

“
It’s a police matter,”
Manny said. “We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“
Pfft,” Mrs. Williams said.
“No disrespect young man but at least one of those men who came to
‘talk’ to Lo’s mammy was the police.”

“
Figures,” Mutt
said.

“
Are you certain?” Manny
asked.

“
No, Manrod, I made it up,”
Mrs. Williams shook her head and chuckled as though Manny was an
idiot.

“
I don’t mean any
disrespect,” Manny said.

“
I know you don’t young
man,” Mrs. Williams said. “But the bodies are piling up. Lo’s mammy
and daddy, her daddy’s friend from the base, and who knows who
else? Now you’ve got good old Donny Downs. Where’s it going to
end?”

Mrs. Williams’s words were like shots fired
straight through Lo. As they hit, she felt intense pain. And as
they left, she felt only relief. She knew deep in her belly that
Mrs. Williams was speaking the truth. She was the only one who
could figure this out.

“
They’re going to kill her
whether she figures it out or not,” Mrs. Williams waved her hand in
Manny’s face. “Me too.”

“
She’s right,” Mutt said.
“You know it, Manrod.”

With his hands on his belt, Manny looked
from Mutt to Mrs. Williams. Shaking his head, he looked at Lo.

“
You’re not seriously
considering this,” Manny said.

“
My husband is dead,
Manny,” Lo said. “My mother…My father…”

“
Your mother and father
what?” Larry asked as he came up. “What are you doing over here
with my sister? Hi, Mrs. Williams.”

“
How are you child?” Mrs.
Williams asked. Larry shrugged.

“
I’m not doing anything
over here with your sister,” Manny said. “We were talking
when…”

“
I told her that her
parents were killed by the police,” Mrs. Williams said. “Sorry
Larry. I know you work there.”

“
I resigned today,” Larry
said.

“
What?” Lo asked.
“Why?”

“
Detective
William
Wallace,” Larry said. “That’s the why part. The what part is that
we’ve been trying to decide whether or not to have Mom’s body
exhumed. Lo and Lisa wanted me to ask the Medical Examiner a few
questions about what would happen to Mom.
Detective
William
Wallace found out. That little prick told me that if I wanted to
keep my job, I needed to make sure Mom’s body stayed in the
ground.”

Fury seeped from Larry’s pores.

“
I told my Captain,” Larry
said. “He told me Detective Wallace’s advice sounded wise. So I
quit. Ruth Ann threw me out when she heard.”

Lo gave Larry a tight hug.

“
I’m so sorry, Lo,” Larry
said. “I really fucked up.”

“
Don’t say that word,” Lisa
said from over their shoulder.

“
It diminishes you,” Lo and
Lisa said together. Lisa hugged Larry.

“
I feel pretty diminished,”
Larry said.

“
So what are you going to
do?” Mrs. Williams pushed Manny’s shoulder with the back of her
hand.

“
I’m going to find out who
killed Don Downs,” Manny said.

“
And?” Mutt
asked.

“
I have a friend who works
at the FBI,” Manny said. “You remember him, Lo. He was my best
friend in Junior High. They moved back East right before high
school.”

“
Terrell?” Lo
asked.

“
I used to call
him…”

“
Big T,” Lo and Manny said
together and smiled.

“
He’s with the FBI now,”
Manny said. “I’ll call him from home tonight to see if he’ll help.
What are you going to do, Larry?”

“
Can I stay with you?”
Larry looked from Lisa to Lo.

“
You can have your old room
on the first floor,” Lisa said. “We kinda thought you might need
it.”

Larry nodded.

“
Terrell who?” Mutt
asked.

“
You’ll check him out for
me?” Manny moved his hands as though he was casting a magic
spell.

“
Actually,” Mutt smiled. “I
have a couple of cousins who work there. But yeah, I’m going to
check out your friend before we trust him.”

“
We?” Manny
asked.

“
We,” Lo said. Manny, Larry
and Mutt turned to look at Lo. Mrs. Williams gave a little cheer.
Lisa started biting her thumbnail. “Mrs. Williams is right. They
will kill us whether we figure out what they’re up to or not. Look
at what happened to Don?”

“
But Lo, Don could have…”
Lisa started.

“
No way,” Lo said. “There’s
no way Don knew something of this magnitude and didn’t tell me or
Mutt. No way.”

“
Honey, you didn’t know
about this place,” Lisa said.

“
I knew he came here,” Lo
said. “I knew when I was training that he worked on this house and
our house. I remember him talking about wanting to build a garage
here. I have a vague notion of him talking about getting it built.
But…”

Lo shook her head.

“
I knew where he was and
when,” Lo said. “I just didn’t know the specifics of what exactly
he was doing. I’m telling you. If he’d thought my parents were
killed, I’d know. If I didn’t know, Mutt would. We don’t have a
clue.”

“
Jean-Jean said he knew
what was killing him,” Manny said.

“
I remember,” Lo said. “Don
wanted a baby more than anything. He’d never have risked his life
if there was even the smallest chance that we might have a baby on
the way. And there was a good chance of me conceiving soon. No, if
Don found something odd or off track, he would have taken it to the
police and not thought another thing about it.”

Unwilling to continue, Lo shook her head.
Her words rested on the group like a wet blanket.

“
No, Don Downs didn’t know
anything about this stuff,” Lo said. “That I know for
sure.”

She turned to look at Mutt. She looked at
Larry, Lisa and Manny before her eyes rested on Mrs. Williams.

“
You’re right,” Lo said. “I
need to figure this out – sooner rather than later. Manny? Will you
tell Mutt about Terrell so that he can check him out?”

“
Sure,” Manny
said.

“
We start there,” Lo
said.

“
We cannot tell anyone,”
Mutt said.

“
Everyone we tell, we put
at risk,” Lo said.

“
No one,” Larry
said.

“
No one,” Mrs. Williams
said.

Lisa’s thumb returned to her mouth but she
nodded.

“
We need partners,” Manny
said. “People to check things out for us or follow
through.”

“
That’s kind of different
from telling them what we’re doing,” Mutt said.

“
Get help as we need it,”
Lo said. “Otherwise we risk everyone we love…”

She looked out at the laughing party.

“
We tell no one,” Lisa
said.

Lo looked from nodding head to nodding head.
Whatever the cost to her, she would find out what happened to Don
so that her child could live with that certainty.

She just hoped it wouldn’t cost them their
lives.

Q

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Two weeks later

Saturday, early morning—3:25 a.m.

Fairmount Historic District, Fort Worth

Days: 56

Lo rolled over in bed. Almost two months
after his death, she still reached for Don in the night. And he
still wasn’t there. Not quite awake, she got up to use the
bathroom. She took a long drink of water. She listened for Mandy or
Alisha before remembering they were gone. Alisha was with Rick at
their apartment and Amanda had stayed overnight in Waco to pack her
belongings. Even Truman, their dog, was sleeping with Mutt tonight.
Everyone was safe. All was well.

And Lo was alone. She’d gone from being a
middle child nested in the middle of her family to being tucked
into her marriage with Don. Somehow, some way, she was going to
have to get used to being alone. Sighing, Lo fell into a dream.

She was standing at the fringes of a large,
formal party at McDaniel’s Studio in the Bass Performance Hall
complex. Feeling something, she touched her face. She was wearing a
mask. Her eyes flitted around the room. Everyone was dressed in
brightly colored Elizabethan costumes with masks over their eyes.
The women wore all the splendor of Cinderella, and the men were
dressed in matching velvet knee pants. Couples waltzed on the dance
floor. There was an outburst of laughter, and her eyes scanned
across the tables where richly costumed adults talked and laughed.
Servers dressed in black were clearing away dinner to make ready
for coffee and cake. To her right, she saw a man dressed in a white
jacket and knee pants making his way toward her.

She took in the splendor and the joy. Even
in her dream, she felt the hollow echo of the place where her joy
had once lived. She watched Sy Monquist dance with his wife Renee.
As if Lo was the matron of this ball, they smiled and nodded to
her.

Wearing deep maroon, Alisha and Rick danced
near the center of the ballroom. Amanda’s laugh brought Lo’s eyes
to a table full of Amanda’s friends. Her eyes continued their tour.
She recognized most of the couples in the room. Some of them were
Don’s friends and colleagues. A few couples were Lo’s clients. A
table erupted into laughter, and Lo watched her friend Mary Bess
laugh. The room itself seemed to burst with joy.

“
There you are,” the man
stood next to Lo.

“
Don,” Lo’s voice came as
almost a whisper.

“
I’ve been looking for you
for a very long time,” Don said.

Lo scanned his face for some mistake, some
trick. Was this her husband? He wore a mask that matched her dress.
She couldn’t be sure this was her Don. Their eyes locked.

“
Don,” Lo said again before
throwing her arms around his neck.

“
What’s all this?” Don
laughed. “You should use the facilities more often.”

“
I’m so happy to see you,”
Lo said.