The Deadly Sister (7 page)

I
mapped the address on my phone as I drove. I would be heading to a downtown apartment complex just around the corner from Medusa’s Den. I realized as I approached that it actually
was
Medusa’s Den: the building had entrances on two streets. I bypassed the humming halogen storefront and walked up to a bent tin door, countless layers of paint over countless layers of graffiti. When I rapped my knuckles against it, the door eased open.

A guy was shooting up in the stairwell. He was older, sinewy, someone you’d expect to see in an apron smoking at the back door of a restaurant. I wasn’t shocked as much as embarrassed that I’d intruded on a private moment. I said, “Oh, I’m so sorry,” and backed out the door, then wondered at myself as I stood paralyzed on the stoop. I’d apologized for invading a junkie’s personal space. How unequipped was I for the directions my life was heading?

“Hey, are you okay?” a woman’s voice said. I turned and saw the most handsome woman I’d ever seen. Not handsome, like they call the women men overlook in Jane Austen novels, but a really cute guy wrapped into a woman. Tank top, triceps popping from the strain of carrying a canvas
grocery bag, biceps tattooed with barbed wire. Long blonde hair yanked into a ponytail.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I mumbled.

She nodded and pushed open the door, then saw the junkie. There was a stream of curses and protests in Spanish as she hurled the guy out on the street. I had to press myself against the railing to avoid him.

The woman stood next to me on the stoop and watched the guy hobble away. “Never again,” she yelled after him. “
Never again,
do you hear? You’re shut off!” She turned to me. “I’m sorry, did he bump you on the way out?” Something about how she’d phrased her own question pleased her, and she smiled.

I shook my head. She looked at me quizzically. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say that someone probably sent you to me.”

I shook my head again. My heart raced—she was about to ask what I was doing there, and I hadn’t prepared a reason.

She looked into me, frank and disbelieving. “Okay, yeah,” I lied. “Maya sent me.”

She nodded sharply and started upstairs. “Come on up, then.”

I stepped over the used needle in the stairwell and followed her up to the fourth floor. As she opened the door and ushered me in, I hesitated. It seemed like a really dumb thing to do, to enter some drug den as cheerfully as
Goldilocks. Especially when I hadn’t really settled on my lie for being there. But if I didn’t go in, I couldn’t get to the bottom of this woman’s connection to Maya.

The whole place looked familiar. Walls white and shiny. Furniture obscured by clothes and magazines. Crowded, just so extremely
inhabited,
almost pleasant in its chaos. The total opposite of my home. “Do you want a drink or something?” the woman asked.

“No, thanks,” I said, placing myself on the edge of the couch as she unloaded groceries. We were in Keith’s apartment; we’d entered on the opposite side.

“How’s Keith?” I asked.

She paused, a jar of grape jelly in her hand. “I didn’t know you’d met Keith.”

I shrugged, just the way I thought Maya would have. “Well, you know.”

“So, why did Maya send you?” she asked. “She got the note I had a runner stick in her locker, I guess?”

“You know, it’s not the easiest time for her.” I was worried—how much longer could I stay evasive? But I wasn’t sure exactly what to say yet.

“What do you mean?” she asked, studiously putting away groceries.

I shrugged again. “You know.”

“I’m sorry,
who
are you, exactly?” she asked.

Keith could be here, somewhere, or he’d come home and he’d recognize me. I couldn’t lie. “Abby. Maya’s sister.”

I watched her debate whether to introduce herself. Then she did. “I’m Blake. So Maya sent her
sister
to deliver? Or did Jefferson send you directly?”

Oh my god. She thought Jefferson was still alive. I was in over my head—and I knew way too little about what Blake knew to play it off.

“Neither of them sent me, actually,” I said. “Maya’s in trouble.”

“No kidding,” Blake said. “Yeah, she is.” She eyed the doorway. As in, what she’d be booting me out through in a split second. But then she barreled on. “She was in trouble the minute she got involved with that guy. He’s the softest starter with the hardest endgame, you know what I mean? Lure ’em in and then squeeze.”

I wasn’t sure what she was talking about. That Jefferson got Maya infatuated and then dropped her? That made sense, but Blake’s tone was too severe to be talking about romance.

“You realize you girls’ little boyfriend owes me about fifteen thousand?”

I remembered the packet of drugs in Maya’s bedroom. The implication was clearer, now. Jefferson was some heavy dealer and had gotten Maya involved. Blake was their supplier. And Jefferson hadn’t been holding up his end of the deal.

“I get why Maya sent you,” Blake said. “She’s afraid to show her face—she thinks I won’t be hard on you, since you haven’t been involved. And I guess she’s right, for
now. Look, all I really want is my money. Whatever it takes. And I like Maya, I really do. But she needs to understand…you need to
make her
understand that just because this little problem’s got Jefferson at its root doesn’t mean that he’s the only one in trouble. She’s been getting her cut, which means that she can take a fall, too. Whether or not she devotes every minute of the rest of her life to avoiding me. You get that?”

“My sister doesn’t owe you anything.” It came out before I knew what I was saying.

“What the hell are you talking about? How can you be sure of that? Because I’m telling you, there seems to be a whole lot that you don’t know. Why exactly are you here?”

“Jefferson Andrews is dead,” I said.

“He sure is,” Blake said, eyes shining.

“No. He’s really dead. Somebody killed him.”

Blake dropped the grocery bag to the floor and sat on the arm of the couch. I could see stray wisps of hair fallen out of her elastic, sun damage around her eyes. She smelled like leather and dandelions, some hip men’s cologne. “You’re not kidding, are you?”

I shook my head, soaking in Blake’s reaction. Her shock looked genuine—but she was a drug dealer, after all; I had no idea how crafty someone like that might be. Treating Jefferson as if he were alive could have been some wily ploy to keep me off guard. Though for what purpose, I couldn’t imagine. I took a deep breath. These waters were cold.
“You’re not going to get any money from Jefferson, because he’s gone. Here are the facts: You’ve got a chain of guilt connecting back to you. If the police don’t figure it out on their own, they could always be given a nudge. I’m not threatening you,” I continued, seeing Blake’s darkening expression, “I just want you to know the facts. Obviously, I’m not accusing you of killing Jefferson. But I will do anything to protect my sister. And to do that I need to figure out who really killed him.”

I could tell Blake got what I was saying. She was a drug dealer, but she also seemed fair, somehow. Honor among thieves. “He’s definitely been killed, nothing ambiguous about it?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Then I hate to say it, but the top of your suspect list should be your sister. He was screwing with her mind, screwing
her,
getting her hooked on all sorts of stuff and then upping his rates, forcing her to deal to pay for what he’d already given her. He was a user, you know what I mean? In, like, a profound way. And of all the people he used, she was the one who was most wrapped up in it all.”

“My sister didn’t do it,” I said. “That’s out of the question.”

“Look, you can be blind, if you want. But what you’d best do is keep her under the radar. It doesn’t look good at all for her.”

“You’re afraid of what she’ll say about you if she talks to the police.”

“Why are you being such a little hawk?” Blake asked. “I think I’m being pretty helpful to you, given the circumstances.”

“You just seem like someone with plenty to hide,” I said.

“And you? You’ve got absolutely nothing to hide?”

I laughed. “Me? What are you trying to say?”

“Don’t think that your sister wouldn’t turn on you in a second,” Blake said. “If it’s in her best interest for you to be toast, you’re toast.”

It was beyond Maya’s capabilities to hurt me like that. No, Blake was just trying to get me to give up. I had it in me to press for more, but I sensed I wasn’t going to get any further with her today.

A key made a sound in the lock and Keith walked in from the tattoo parlor side. “What a day,” he said. “I—Abby! Didn’t expect to see you here again.”

“Hi,” I said. Keith reached out a hand, and I shook it. He gave Blake’s shoulders a tender rub, and she reached back and placed her elegant fingertips over his. If he was surprised to find me there, he covered it up pretty quickly.

“How’s Maya holding up?” he asked me.

Blake wheeled on him. “You knew about the Jefferson situation, too?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Maya spent the night here after she left him. Got her Jefferson tattoo covered up earlier that evening.”
He glanced in the wastepaper basket. “Oh, it’s gone. She must have emptied the trash before she left. Uncharacteristically thoughtful of her.”

“She had a Jefferson
tattoo
?” I asked, deflating.

“Not anymore, apparently,” Blake said. “Were you going to tell me about all of this?” she asked Keith. “That Jefferson’s
dead
?”

“It seemed like something to keep quiet,” he said, kissing the top of Blake’s head. “I know, I know,” he said on top of her sputter, “let’s talk it out later, okay?”

“Later is now,” Blake said. “Abby was about to leave.”

I stood up. “Apparently, I was about to leave.”

“Look,” Blake said, rubbing her forehead, “I’d say stop getting involved, but it’s too late for that. So the best you can do now is to help us before we have to
force
you to help us. You know what I mean?”

Not exactly, but I certainly got the gist.

“Give the girl a break,” Keith said warningly.

“I’m not saying anything,” Blake said. “I merely want Abby to know that she should call us if she has any sort of contact with her sister.”

“You really should get going, Abby,” Keith said, looking nervously at Blake and opening the front door.

“You have one of our numbers?” Blake said.

I shook my head. Keith’s number had been in Maya’s phone.

Blake said her number. “You going to remember that?”

The way she’d said it, I’d have to work damn hard if I ever wanted to forget it.

But there was something more I had no intention of forgetting whatsoever:

Why hadn’t Keith told Blake that Jefferson was dead?

A
pparently, Mr. Duarte had called my parents to tell them I’d left. I told my dad that I’d skipped one class to be with my friends and talk things through. Dad, being Dad, insisted on escorting me to school on his way to work the next day. His official story was that he didn’t want me to be by myself, but I knew he suspected I was going to skip again. I don’t know how he does it, but he always seems to know everything about everything.

I’d have expected him to look all drawn and tired from worrying about Maya, but he seemed his usual self: whole, hardy, and fortressed. Maybe it was a front so I wouldn’t get too worried. Or maybe even Maya’s continued absence, like most everything else in his life, hadn’t especially moved him. “Any word from your sister?” he asked as he drove. He’d asked me the exact same thing a few minutes earlier, but I did him the courtesy of checking my cell phone and saying no.

For once, I wasn’t lying. There hadn’t been any word from her. And I hadn’t been able to get any more info out of Veronica. Luckily, the police didn’t seem to be connecting Maya to the crime yet—not in a way obvious enough for any of us to realize, at least.

“Hey,” my dad said as I got out of the car, “this is all going to be okay. You know that, right, honey?”

“I know, Dad,” I said as I stepped onto the pavement of the bus circle. I let him watch me walk into the school…and then, as soon as he was gone, I came right back out.

I convinced myself that I’d take only an hour to myself and then start the day with second period. I’d just make a quick gas station run—the gas station being the only business within walking distance. It was brand-new and oversize, with a dozen widely spaced pumps and broad bays of halogen lights that made you feel like you were at some super-secret military base. Ernie the senile manager hadn’t caught on to the stream of Missouri driver’s licenses in the hands of high schoolers all born on the same day, so it was a favorite hanging-out ground for anyone cutting school and hoping for beer. I for one would usually get my gas, greet Ernie, and do my best to avoid the fattening chips and leering losers.

“Hi, Ernie, how’s business?” I said this time as I paid for two of the largest bags of Twizzlers ever to exist. He adored me, maybe because I was the only high schooler who ever talked to him. He threw in a free lighter—I guess he figured all teens smoked—and I thanked him. “Yep, see ya later, Abby darlin’,” he mumbled after me as I stepped outside.

The late bell rang in the distance. I watched a car pull up at the circle and a boy get out. Rather than entering the school, he headed toward me and Ernie and the space-age
gas station. He walked right by me, went inside, and came back out, tapping a pack of gum against his wrist like it was cigarettes. It was Brian, Jefferson’s little brother. I was struck all over again by his gawkiness. I saw his skull and not his head.

Brian wasn’t the type to skip school, either. We were two good kids way out of our usual element. Instead of heading to class, I waved at him. I could use some tortured company.

“Hi,” I said, in that heavy way of people in tragedies, tired beyond niceties but obligated to use them. “How are you holding up?”

Brian squinted back from beneath a weight. I’d never been friendly to him before. Few people had. “Not great,” he said, fingers clenched around a backpack strap.

“I’m surprised to find you near school at all,” I said.

He scuffed one shoe against the other.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in counseling or something?” Did I really just say that? “Sorry, that was weird. Do you want to hang out with me for a while?”

I’m not sure he did want to, but it was beyond him to say no to me. His bag tumbled beside him as we sat on the pavement next to the used gas canisters. “I like your pins,” I said, pointing to one at random, some pewter claw. I didn’t like his pins. They just called for commenting.

“Thanks.”

“Are your parents making you come to school?” I asked, with the called-for levels of frustration and disgust.

“Nope,” he said. “I had to really fight to get to come. Actually, technically they said I couldn’t. But they’ve shipped me off to my grandmother’s for a couple days while they deal with everything, and I talked her into bringing me. I’d rather not be alone, know what I mean? Even though I’m totally ticked that you can’t move in my parents’ house without bumping into relatives asking how you’re doing.”

“You want to have company. But you don’t want to be with anyone else, either,” I said, nodding in the direction of the school.

“Yeah.”

“I get that,” I said, lying against a rusty canister and placing my hands over my face. I sure did get it—it was exactly how I was feeling those days. I could sense Brian shift position next to me—I felt him silently acknowledge that I was skipping school, too, and that it was unusual.

“Were you close to him?” Brian asked.

I started to nod, then thought about it and shook my head.

“Want to get out of here?”

This time I nodded enthusiastically.