Black as Night: A Fairy Tale Retold (18 page)

“She cleans the house in the evening,” he said aloud.

Fish ran his finger on the coffee table. “Then why’d she miss that dust?”

“She must have left in the afternoon then,” Mrs. Foster said.

“To go to work, where she was last seen on Saturday night,” Bear said slowly. He scanned the room again. Fish walked into the kitchen, looking around. As Bear’s eyes wandered over to the desk, he caught sight of a black and white photograph on it—a photograph of Blanche.

She was wearing a pale dress and was sitting on a chair, her long dark hair falling over her shoulders and down to the smooth white skin of her forearms. She was looking towards the left, and smiling calmly, her eyes, which he knew were blue, serene. It was a striking photograph. He knew he had never seen it before. Possibly from her high school graduation—but no, she had bought that dress just before he left for Rome, the yellow one. If it was the yellow one. It had to be recent.

He fingered the photograph, and turned it over.
Longbourne Studios
said a black stamp on the back.

Turning it back over, he checked the rest of the items on the desk. There was a neat stack of mail. They were all postmarked before August 7
^th
, Friday’s date. He tried to visualize this. Friday night she had come home, gathered and sorted the mail, cleaned up the kitchen, gone to bed. Possibly that photo had come in the mail, and she had left it on the desk. To frame it? To give it to her mother? Or to him?

After looking over the other contents of the desk, he turned back to Mrs. Foster and raised his eyebrows. She nodded and said, “Let’s go upstairs.”

They walked up the carpeted steps to the second floor of the town house. Gingerly, Bear pushed the door to the bedroom open. He had never been up here before, and looked around with some melancholic interest. The room Blanche shared with her sister Rose was pristine, the quilts on the bed smooth, the pillows fluffed, the stuffed animals perky and smiling. He surveyed the blue-painted desk—orderly—the scratched wooden dressers—cleaned and arranged. There were a few clothes tossed on a battered antique dining room chair. It looked like a girl’s room.

He glanced at Mrs. Foster again, who pointed to the wooden jewelry box on Blanche’s dresser. He lifted the carved lid. Inside were several compartments, with a few pieces of the simple gold and silver jewelry Blanche liked to wear. There didn’t seem to be anything amiss.

Unconsciously, he put a hand to his neck and fingered the necklace that Blanche had given him, ages ago, it now seemed. A gold chain with a key on it. He was still wearing it.

He looked back at Mrs. Foster, who moved over to the box. Deftly she picked up the edges of one compartment with two thick brown fingers. It came out smoothly.

Below was a little satin-lined compartment. Inside it lay about six pastel pills, pink, green, and white, each stamped with the curlicue M that had been stamped on the pills the DEA had photographed in Bear’s house.

Bear closed his eyes and prayed, feeling the lingering effect of the dark thoughts that had disturbed him in jail.

Mrs. Foster looked at him, her dark eyes sad, and replaced the little compartment. Then she turned to the ivory-painted bed with its carved knobs on each corner. She pulled out one of the knobs, and pointed inside.

Bear looked. Another M pill lay in the little hole.

Mrs. Foster pointed to all the other posts and nodded. Bear shook his head in disgust and bewilderment.

“Let’s go back outside,” he said at last.

Outside, Bear told Fish what Mrs. Foster had found.

“So we’ve got even more to tell the Briers when they come home,” Bear said with a deep sigh.

Fish looked at Mrs. Foster keenly. “You put two and two together faster than I did. How did you know to look?”

She nodded. “When you told me they’d found things in her bags, and then that this had happened to you, I looked around real careful. I figured that whoever was smart enough to get inside your place wasn’t going to have any trouble getting into this little brownstone and put stuff in her room.”

“In the bedposts, too. Clever. How’d you know to check there?” Fish asked her.

She shrugged her broad shoulders. “I guessed. Plus some of the women in my neighborhood have kids on drugs, so I know where some of the usual hiding places are, sorry to say.”

“Pretty sharp, Mrs. Foster.”

Bear mused, “It was the same kind of Adam drug that was in our apartment. The mark on it was even the same. They may have come from the same cache.”

“Yeah, I saw quite a few different kinds when we were doing our undercover work, but I’ve never seen an ‘M’ version.” Fish paused. “Well, it’s pretty clear that someone has been going to great lengths to set up Blanche. Someone must hate her pretty badly.”

“Or someone wants to get her out of the way, just like Father Raymond’s killer wanted us out of the way,” Bear said.

“So how did she acquire a vicious enemy in the space of what—six months?” Fish queried.

“It doesn’t take that long sometimes,” Bear said. “What’s puzzling is—what could Blanche do that would make her an enemy?”

 “Beats me. I’m not a psychologist,” Fish said. He pulled his hat out of his pocket and dropped it on his head. “So now what?”

“We go to the airport to pick up the Briers.”

Fish shook his head with a sigh. “You just got bailed out of jail by the skin of your teeth, and one of the first things you do is run off to the nearest airport. This won’t look good to the DEA, Bear.”

“Too bad,” Bear said.

Chapter Nine

The girl had remained in the van at her post, looking up and down the streets a bit nervously.
I wish I could calm down,
she told herself.
Brother Leon is right. I need to trust God more, and start…at least giving Him the benefit of the doubt.

She glanced at herself in the cracked rear-view mirror of the van, and felt the pall creeping over her mood. She fingered the blunt edges of her hair, feeling shaven of all her riches.
Not a princess…
Biting her lip, she pulled off the red kerchief she had been wearing, tightened its knot, and put it on again, trying again to feel less despondent.

Suddenly, the familiar feeling of being watched came over her, and she turned quickly. But it was only the little Jamaican girl, leaning against the door to the van with a winsome smile.

“
Aay,
” the child said, her black eyes crinkling into a smile. She couldn’t be older than three.

“Aay,” the girl repeated, unsure. Normally she felt shy around children.

“
Yuh look suh nice
,” the child said.

The girl couldn’t resist smiling back at the child’s unconscious frankness. “Thank you,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Jacky.
Mi waan sit wid yuh
.” Jacky settled herself on the girl’s lap, looked at her with a half smile, and then cupped her small hands around the girl’s cheeks. “
Yuh skin suh white.
”

The girl guessed what she was saying. “So white?”

“
Yeh,
” Jacky smiled. “
Yuh face pretty.
”

The girl touched the child’s smooth dark brown cheek. “
Yuh face pretty,”
she said with deep sincerity.

Jacky giggled uncontrollably. “
Mi waan sit wid yuh
when we go
,” she said decisively.

Just then the girl’s attention was diverted by a streak of brown as a dog raced out of the door of the apartment building and down the street. The little boy ran after him, shouting. “Pouff-Pouff
run weh
! Pouff-Pouff,
cum ya!
”

“Is that your dog?” the girl asked.

Jacky nodded. “
Is mi Granada daag.
”

A few minutes later, the two novice friars came breathlessly down the stairs.

“Did you see a dog—?” Leon panted.

Both Jacky and the girl pointed. “That way.”

“Right. It’s coming with us to the airport,” Leon said. “Come on, Matt.”

Thinking she should help, Blanche took her new little friend’s hand and they followed them.

II

For the next twenty minutes, they searched up and down the streets and through alleys for the missing Rottweiler. “We are not making that two o’clock flight,” Matt warned. “And those dogs are never going in that box.”

“Hey,” Leon said, as they passed a string of stores. “Let’s check behind the grocery store. If we’re lucky, we might find some wood packing crates.”

“That sounds hopeful,” Nora said, pushing her kerchief back, and Matt murmured that they might as well try.

So the two friars took turns jumping into dumpsters, and managed, wonder of wonders, to find two large packing crates. One had loose boards, but Matt found a hammer in the back of the van and banged them back in place.

Dragging the crates behind them, they returned to the apartment to find Marisol barely holding the returned Pouff-Pouff by the collar. Together, she and Leon managed to force the frantic dog into the crate and Matt banged another board over the top to keep him in. Nora and Leon wrestled the other crate upstairs. The dog started barking again as they returned.

“Okay,” Leon said breathlessly, and called down behind him, “If you can give us a hand, Matt…”

But just at that moment, the cardboard box gave out and caved inwards, toppling the card table and the things on top of it and sending them crashing to the floor. The dog howled and emerged from the disaster, tore around the apartment frantically and swerved out the door and down to the street, knocking Matt over again.

The two friars and the women took off after the dog, but when they reached the street, there was no sign of him.

“
Prince! My poor daag run weh!
” the grandmother moaned in distress.

“
Mek im move and gweh!
” Marisol muttered blackly, and Leon was inclined to agree with her.

“Okay, let’s get everything in the van and maybe we can drive around and see if we can find him,” Leon attempted to be cheerful.

It was a good thing that the van happened to be mostly empty, because by the time they were done, it was packed full, what with the dog, the empty crate, and “luggage.” Neighbors came from every direction to say goodbye and to watch the fun. Finally Leon and Matt got the grandmother into the car. The kids insisted on coming too. “All right, you can,” Leon said wearily, and the little girl clambered happily onto Nora’s lap.

“
Mi can sit wid Princess
,” she said, and Nora blushed.

The little boy commandeered Matt’s lap, since there was no seating space left. To cries of “Goodbye!
Ave a good trip!
” they finally pulled out.

“What are we going to do about the other dog?” Matt asked from the back.

Suddenly the grandmother pointed. “
See im deh
!”

And there he was, trotting down a street, panting. Almost as though he had heard them, he looked in their direction, snarled, and took off down a street.

“Get him!” the kids yelled, and Brother Leon swerved the van around and followed him down the street.

“This is ridiculous! We’re going to get killed!” Matt shouted.

“I’m gaining on him!” Leon said, swerving around a double-parked car in his lane.

“Go! Go!” the kids were shrieking.

“Saint Francis, lover of all animals, get this
stupid mongrel fi
to stop!” Leon breathed a prayer.

Panting, his tongue lolling out of his mouth, the dog skidded to a stop beside a trash bin blocking an alley, and Leon, tires screeching, double-parked and tumbled out of the truck with Matt groaning behind him. Valiantly, they pelted after the dog, which had taken off again, but this time, they managed to grab him by the collar. At last he was brought back, whining and growling, and was settled in the crate as the kids cheered.