Brad-the-assimilated was cooperative, he just didn’t know anything.
“I remember Henry, sure. I ran him off from the pumps at least once a month. But I didn’t see him with any girl that day. Or any day, for that matter. Girls liked him, he was shy, kinda good-looking. Henry didn’t care. He was interested in only one thing, getting high.”
“Maybe she came in on her own.” Tess showed him the sketch police had used a year before, probably shown to Brad at some point. It wasn’t great, but it was preferable to the corpse photo. “Forget about Henry. Did you ever see her?”
Brad shook his head. “Not that I noticed. Sorry.”
“I saw her.”
The voice, very high and sweet, came from the rear of the store, where there was a magazine stand. Tess glanced toward the sound and found herself staring at the cover of a fashion magazine, one promising failproof tips for thicker hair, thinner thighs and better orgasms. The magazine lowered, and the gaunt, painted, pouting model fell like a mask to reveal a pretty, moon-faced teenager. She looked young not to be in school. All the eyeliner in the world-and it appeared this girl had used all the eyeliner in the world-couldn’t age this baby face.
“Don’t fib, Sukey,” the manager scolded her. “This woman is doing serious work. She doesn’t need to hear your stories.”
“It’s not a story,” the girl insisted, cheeks flushing. “I did see her. Not with Henry, but in Latrobe Park, earlier that week. She had a fuzzy coat, with a fur collar. She was waiting for someone. Someone was supposed to meet her, but the person never came.”
The detail about the coat was dead-on. It also was on the posters the police had distributed, so Tess wasn’t too impressed.
“Why didn’t you tell the police this a year ago, when they were trying to identify her?”
Sukey rolled her eyes. “Because I didn’t know her name, which was the point, right? You asked if anyone saw her, and I did. I even talked to her a couple of times.”
“You talked to her, but she didn’t tell you her name.”
“We’re talking, and we haven’t exchanged names, have we?”
“Sukey.”
She tossed her head. “You only know my name ’cause Brad used it.”
“Tess Monaghan.” She held out her hand.
Sukey put down the magazine and came out from behind the aisle of canned goods that had hidden her body from Tess’s view. She was plump, even by South Baltimore standards, so her age was hard to ascertain. Packed into jeans, a tee-shirt, and a Starter jacket, she was full of jiggling curves. Early adolescence, Tess thought. Or a steady diet of Mounds bars.
“Sukey Brewer.” She took Tess’s hand tentatively, shaking more at the fingertips than at the palms. “Are you really a private detective?”
“It’s not something you lie about,” Tess said. “Unless you’re really twisted. How come you’re not in school, Sukey Brewer? You don’t look old enough to be a dropout.”
“Field trip day. My class went to the Smithsonian. My mom forgot to fill out the permission slip on time, so I’m hanging out here. I’m sure as shit not going to go to school if no one else is there.”
“She’s a good kid,” Brad volunteered. “She helps me out here, sometimes, doing inventory. I told her she can have a real job here when she turns sixteen next year, and has a work permit. But don’t believe a damn thing she says.”
“That’s not fair, Brad,” Sukey said. “Most of my stories are true. I just don’t get all the details right, sometimes. Like the newspaper, you know?”
“Tell the lady about the bank robbery you saw on your way over here this morning, even though there’s no bank between here and your house.”
“You weren’t listening. It was an armored truck, one of those red-and-black ones,” Sukey said. “Money was flying through the air, and people were grabbing it, then running away. It was wild.”
“Wild,” Brad repeated dryly, giving the word its Baltimore pronunciation: Wahhhhld.
Tess was not interested in that day’s robberies, real or imagined. “So, a year ago, you noticed this girl in the park. A girl in a fuzzy coat with a fur collar. What time was this?”
“About two or three.”
“She was dead by then.”
“The day before, I mean. I saw her the day before.”
“Why weren’t you in school that day?”
“Half day, teachers’ conference. I had a book I wanted to read-I read a lot.”
Brad nodded. “She does, she reads a lot. Which is why her head is so filled with nonsense.”
“I like to read on the swings. If there are mothers there, with the little kids, it’s…” Her voice trailed off. Tess, taking in Sukey’s round figure and guileless face, could imagine why she might want to be in sight of someone’s mother. She wished she knew a way to tell the girl that everyone’s adolescence was horrible, that no one was spared. But people had tried to tell her the same thing fifteen years ago, and she hadn’t believed them.
“You said you talked.”
“We did, kinda. I mean, I said ‘Nice day,’ and she said she’d seen better. I showed her the book I was reading and she said it looked pretty good.”
Sukey looked at Tess expectantly, as if hoping for praise. Tess tried to smile and nod, although the girl hadn’t told her anything helpful.
“Was that all you said? Did you see her leave?”
“I left first. My mom calls at three-thirty, I’m supposed to be home by then. But the girl-this was funny, I remember it almost word for word-she said: ‘Tell me what you think you’ll be when you grow up.’ And I said, ‘I dunno. I’ll probably just work at the Sugar House after I graduate from Southern. Get married, have some babies.’”
A modest goal, but at least she was trying to do it in the right order. So many local girls omitted the getting married part.
“And she must not be from here, ’cause she said ‘The Sugar House? What’s that?’ So I told her about Domino’s and she smiled, in a kind of weird way and said: ‘That’s funny, because I worked at a place with a name almost like Domino’s, and it could have been called the Sugar House. Then again, maybe the Sugar House is where I lived before, although I always thought of it as the Gingerbread House. You know, Hansel and Gretel, the witch in the oven. Other people said it was a cake, but I never saw that. It was the Gingerbread House, and I never could get that witch in the oven. In the end, every place you go is the Sugar House.’ She asked me if I knew what she meant, and I said, yeah, I did.” Sukey looked mystified. “Actually, I thought she might be a little crazy.”
Brad rolled his eyes. “All lies, I’m betting. When Sukey tells a story in so much detail, it’s always lies. Why do you make things up, Sukey? What book did you get that from?”
Sukey’s eyes seemed on the verge of tearing up, but this was a girl with plenty of experience at stemming her own tears. She took a deep breath, opened her eyes very wide, and the film of tears receded. “I’m telling the truth this time. I do sometimes, you know. She said more stuff, too, stuff I wasn’t supposed to tell. She said she was a runaway. She had lived in a big mansion and gone to boarding schools. She said her father was the richest man in the world, and he was going to miss her like crazy.”
Even Tess could tell this part of the story wasn’t true. But she held up a hand before Brad started to berate Sukey again. “If I learn one new thing about a case, I’m doing well. You saw the woman I’m trying to identify, the two of you spoke. As far as I’m concerned, I owe you. Could I buy you that magazine you were reading, or one of the paperbacks in the rack? My way of saying thank you.”
Sukey sucked on her plump lower lip. “Can I have both?”
Brad looked ready to scold the girl again, but Tess’s laugh kept him from saying anything.