“Huh?”
She turned to me and opened her eyes. They were the palest gray, almost like dust on a pane of glass. “I know why you’re here, Detective. I may be old, but I ain’t dumb. Just tell me straight. Do they think she killed him?”
I said, “No, Mrs. Duffy, it’s nothing like that.”
For a moment she just stared, perfectly still, and then when she finally looked away I could see tears seeping into the wrinkles around her eyes.
“And I’m not a detective, I’m just a … a friend, sort of. Mona asked me to talk to you because she was scared to do it herself.”
She dabbed the edge of her sleeve at the corners of her eyes. “I know she’s scared. I can see it. And what with her past and all, I just thought…”
I said, “No, I promise you it’s nothing as bad as that.”
“Then what is it?”
“Mrs. Duffy, Mona told me about your … situation, and your illness. And she knows you’re worried about her, about what will happen to her when you can’t take care of her anymore. She didn’t want you to think she’d be all alone, so she lied to you … about Levi.”
She turned to me. “That they ain’t engaged? Is that what you come here to tell me?”
“You knew…?”
She nodded. “I known it right away. It ain’t the first time she lied, and I’m sure it ain’t the last, either. And besides, what would a boy like that want with a girl like Mona?”
I sat back. I couldn’t deny I’d had similar thoughts myself, but I wasn’t sure how to respond. It sounded horribly cold coming from Mona’s own grandmother.
She shrugged her bony shoulders and looked down at her frail hands. “Sounds mean, don’t it? But you know I’m right. That poor child fell in love with Levi the moment he moved in. A handsome boy like that, who could blame her? From the minute she told me they was gettin’ married, I went along with it, because I knew Mona thought it would give me some peace. And she told me Levi’s daddy was rich and they was gonna live in a mansion and all.” She shook her head and sighed. “That boy was just using her. Believe me, her life ain’t been easy. I wish it was true just as bad as she does.”
I shook my head. “She told me all about the sacrifices you’ve made, how you took her in after her parents ran off.”
“That’s what she told you, huh?”
I decided to ignore the tone in her voice. I couldn’t exactly blame her for being so fatalistic about Mona’s lot in life—especially considering the lousy hand she’d been dealt herself—but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know more. Instead, I nodded matter-of-factly and tried to figure out a way to politely say my good-byes. I’d fulfilled my promise to Mona, and now I just wanted to get on with my day.
Mrs. Duffy was quiet for a moment. She was staring at the portrait of the old woman on the wall. Finally she turned to me, her eyes narrowed. “I don’t know who you are. You say you ain’t a cop, but if you really is Mona’s friend, you oughta know. Her folks didn’t run off. They was taken.”
“Taken?”
She nodded. “See that bedside table? I keep a gun in that drawer there. Saturday Night Special. Loaded. That’s for the day they come back.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Now I was one hundred percent certain I didn’t want to know more, but I was beginning to think it was too late.
“Her folks is both down at Florida State Prison in Bradford. They was supposed to get locked up for life, but I ain’t takin’ any chances. They’re bad.”
I felt my heart begin to quicken. I said, “What do you mean, bad?”
“It was Christmas morning. Fifteen years ago now. My daughter, Mona’s mother … she never liked me much. And that boyfriend of hers, he hated me. It was goin’ on three years they wouldn’t let me see Mona—my own granddaughter. That ain’t right. This is America. I got a right to see my own grandchild. So I got the neighbor boy to drive me over there. They only lived twenty minutes away, down Tamiami Trail the other side of Nokomis. I had a little Mickey Mouse toy all wrapped up nice with a bow and all. I just wanted to see her with my own eyes, but they said no. They said Mona was at a birthday party … a birthday party, mind you, on Christmas. They wouldn’t let me in.”
The sun had dipped lower in the sky. It was streaming through the lace curtains in the window and sending little shimmering flecks of gold all over the room. I could almost see them moving in slow motion across the dark blue bedspread.
“I made the boy drive me around the block. I got out and called from the pay phone at the Shop Mart. Then we went back and watched.” Her voice had dropped to a whisper. “It was a lot of cops that come, and it took a while, but they finally found Mona.”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to know, but I knew I had to ask. I said, “Where was she?”
She closed her eyes and her mouth fell slightly open, almost as if she could see it all in front of her now.
“She was down in the crawl space under the kitchen … in a cage.”
* * *
While I’d been inside Mona’s trailer, three towering clouds had appeared in the distance over the Gulf, a trio of lumbering giants as wide and tall as a range of mountains, pitch-black against the brilliant blue sky. Where they floated just above the horizon were vertical bands of undulating color—violet, silver, cerise, charcoal—and even though the sun was still sending long yellow streaks of light across the sky, the air smelled of rain.
It felt like a dream.
What Mrs. Duffy had told me … I couldn’t even begin to fathom what kind of world Mona had grown up in. My own childhood, at least on paper, was a tragedy. My father died in the line of duty fighting a fire when I was nine years old, my alcoholic mother abandoned Michael and me barely two years later, and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen her since. As I started up the Bronco and headed for Tamiami Trail, I realized that, surprisingly, Mona and I had a lot in common. No wonder I’d felt such a strange and sudden sympathy for her.
Except … in reality, my childhood had been very different. For one, I always had Michael by my side watching over me, and our grandparents gave us everything we could ever have wanted and more. Never, not for one second, did I ever doubt I was loved.
My afternoon rounds were a blur. I know I stopped by the Piker sisters’ place, and considering the fact they have nine cats, you’d think I would have at least remembered something from that visit but I didn’t. At Joyce Metzger’s, I’m sure I took her miniature dachshund, Henry the VIII, for his regular walk around Glebe Park, but I couldn’t remember a single thing about it.
All I could think about was the moment I’d first met Mona, outside Levi’s trailer, how utterly nasty and angry she’d been. It was as if she moved through the world like a shark, always on the attack, always out for blood … and now I understood why. When I told her I was sorry she was so tortured, I had no idea the depth of the troubled waters I was wading into. She was indeed tortured, and from a very early age, and now her self-mutilation took on a whole new meaning: it was all she had ever known.
Now, as silly and potentially dangerous as it was, no matter what Ethan or Detective McKenzie or anybody else might have thought, I was happy I had helped her, even with something as simple as talking to her grandmother. She needed to know that the world isn’t a shark tank and that she didn’t need to be on the attack all the time.
At some point—it may have been when I was checking on the cats at the Silverthorn mansion—Ethan had called, and later I reminded myself I needed to listen to my voice mail. Then, after I crossed the bridge at Stickney Point and headed up Tamiami Trail, he called again, but he didn’t leave a message that time.
I felt bad for not picking up, but I told myself I just had too much on my mind. Plus, I was driving. And I knew I wouldn’t be able to give him my full attention. And I had to get a move on or I’d be late for my meeting at the Paxton Gallery. And …