“He liked Star Wars a lot,” Bree said sympathetically.
Cece rubbed at her nose, sniffed, and curled the corners of her lips up in the direction of a smile. “He’d watch those movies over and over again. Like they were new every time. Sometimes we’d watch them together. He knew all the lines. I mean, all of them. Who can do that?”
“A very smart boy,” I said.
“He was that,” she said, putting out her cigarette. She scratched her arm and looked longingly at the pipes and the drugs.
“Tell us about Stefan Tate,” I said.
Cece hardened, said, “He’s a sadist and a cold-blooded killer.”
“Did you think he was a sadist before Rashawn died?”
“Who broadcasts they’re a sadist?” she asked.
“Good point,” I said. “But you had no warning?”
“If I’d had a warning, he wouldn’t have spent a second with my boy,” Cece said, going around the couch and almost reaching for one of the pipes. Then she seemed to realize the drugs were sitting there in the open and pushed the baggie under a teddy bear.
She lit another cigarette. We asked her about Rashawn and Stefan, and she corroborated what my cousin had told us: that they’d met at school and took an instant liking to each other, that Stefan had become a big brother/father figure to the boy, and that something had happened in the days before Rashawn’s death that made him want to sever his relationship with my cousin.
“Stefan says he doesn’t know what was behind it,” I said.
Cece took a drag, nodded to the urn, and said bitterly, “He came on to Rashawn, and Rashawn rejected him.”
“Rashawn told you that?” I asked.
“I’m just reading into the way Rashawn acted the last time I saw him.”
“Which was like what?” Bree asked.
“Like he’d seen something to be scared about,” Cece said, looking at the screen where Luke Skywalker was preparing to fight his father. “I’ve asked myself a million times since why I didn’t push Rashawn to tell me that morning. But I was late for an AA meeting. And trying to stay sober. And trying to do the right thing.”
She paused, and then a shudder went through her, and she choked and wept. “My last memory of my little boy is him staring into his cereal bowl like he was seeing things in the milk. Oh God!”
Cece snatched up the pipe, dug out the baggie, and with shaking hands tried to load whatever it was she meant to smoke. Bree came around to her and put her hand on her arm. She said in a soothing tone, “That’s not gonna help.”
Rashawn’s mother yanked her arm away, turned her back on Bree, protecting the pipe, and sneered, “It’s the only thing that does.”
I said, “Are you planning to go to the courthouse tomorrow?”
Cece snatched up the small butane torch and backed away to the other side of the table, glaring at us.
“You not going to start in on that, are you?” she demanded. “I already heard an earful on that today.”
She lit the torch and stared greedily at the pipe bowl as she sucked and laid the flame. She took a whole lungful, held it, then rocked her head back and exhaled long and slow. I thought she was going to black out, but she just blinked stupidly at us a few times and then set the pipe down.
“Someone talked to you about being in court tomorrow?” I asked quietly.
The anger had left her, replaced by scorn.
“Harold and Virginia, dear Moms and Pops,” she said, plopping into a chair with a broken seat. She began doing imitations of a proper Southern belle and a deep-voiced man. “‘Straighten up for the trial, Cece. You wouldn’t want to be seen like this.’ ‘You’ve got to do it in honor of your dear Rashawn, Cynthia Claire.’”
She leaned over, grabbed the vodka bottle, took a belt, and went off on a tirade. “The fucking hypocrites. All caring and such, now that he’s dead. Alive, they were ashamed of his blood!”
Cece hugged her knees and shook her head violently. “They still don’t give a shit. Only things those two are concerned about is their money and their precious image in the community.”
Deepening her voice, she said, “‘Don’t want to have Cece do any more damage than has already been done. We must do everything we can to minimize our association with the little dead mulatto. With God’s blessing, none of our posh friends down on Hilton Head will hear a word of it.’”
She took another swig of vodka and stewed there as if she were alone for almost a minute before hanging her head and saying, “I don’t go to court tomorrow, it’s like I’m ashamed of him, ashamed to be his mother, isn’t it?”
Bree said, “If you don’t go, you’re saying you’ve given up on him, that he doesn’t matter to you anymore.”
“But he does matter.” Cece sobbed. “Rashawn was everything to me. The one good and decent thing I ever did in my whole life. And look what happened to him! My God, look what happened to him!”
Bree went over and put her arms around the woman’s heaving shoulders. “I know it seems impossible, but you’ve got to be strong now.”
“I don’t have that kind of strength.” Cece moaned. “I never have. It’s the story of my life.”
“Until today,” Bree said, rubbing her back. “The new story of your life is that you hit rock bottom today, Cece. You hit rock bottom, and from the depths of your despair, you asked for help. And when you did, Rashawn’s spirit reached out, took your hand, and gave you the strength to go into that courtroom tomorrow morning clear-eyed and sober, because only you can be his representative at the trial. Only his mother can stand there for him and make sure justice prevails.”
Head still down, straw hair still hanging, Cece tensed up as if to fight again. Then she shuddered long and slow. And as it died out, something seemed to fall away inside the dead boy’s mother. Cece sagged against Bree, and slept.
Bree glanced over, whispered, “I’ll stay with her. All night if I have to.”
Raw emotion welled in my throat.
“You okay with it?” she asked.
I smiled, said hoarsely, “More than okay.”
“Then why are you upset?”
“I’m not. What you did there with her was…just…”
“What?”
“I have never been more proud to call you my wife, Bree Stone.”
Chapter
36
Palm Beach, Florida
The mansion had been modeled after a villa on the Amalfi Coast and it had once been a grand place. Now it was showing its age. The grounds weren’t as well tended as they had been. The front gate and door needed paint. Much of the brickwork required pointing. And who knew when the windows had last gotten a proper cleaning?
Coco knew all about the house’s many deficiencies and needs. He just had to look around the bedroom he was in to get upset. The silk wallpaper was separated at the seams in many places and curling back yellow. Scratches and dings showed on almost all the furniture. And the Oriental rugs were starting to look dingy.
Coco refused to dwell on any of it. He chose to ignore what had to be done to the house, just as he had chosen to ignore the Palm Beach Post’s story on Ruth Abrams’s death.
Instead, he accessorized the three outfits laid out on a king-size bed. He loved to accessorize. It calmed him as much as cross-dressing did.
For the past hour, ever since he’d read that the police were calling Ruth’s death a homicide, Coco had been adjusting the look of each ensemble using items from a large box of estate jewelry.
Wasn’t it fascinating, how the effect changed so radically with such small modifications? Mother always said image is in the detail, and she was right—
The house phone rang.
Coco ignored it. People were always calling, always hounding, wanting this and that, and he just needed a break from reality for a little while longer.
Is that too much to ask? No. Not at all.
Coco had narrowed the three outfits down to two when the doorbell rang.
They’re coming to my front door now?
He forced himself to swallow his outrage. Nothing was going to interrupt his interlude. Not today. Let them all wait. A party isn’t a party until the life of it arrives. Am I right, Mother?
Coco decided on an ensemble composed of a black taffeta skirt from Argentina, a lavender chiffon blouse with a daring neckline, sheer black hose, and black pumps. He went to a closet door, fished a key off the top of the jamb, and turned the dead bolt.
He pulled open the door. Several bathrobes and kimonos on hooks on the inner side of it fluttered and settled. The walk-in closet was huge and filled with all manner of women’s high fashion beneath clear plastic covers. Much of it went back decades, and he had to go well beyond the vanity and makeup mirror to find space for these new additions.
He hung the Tangerine Dream outfit first, and then the indigo Elie Saab dress. Both of them were definite repeats at some point down the road, he was sure. He placed the gladiator-strap stilettos and the orange sling-back heels on the floor beneath the ensembles and then retrieved the jewelry box.
Coco set it on a shelf beside the vanity and got to work. He taped his gender back, laid on Lancôme foundation, and glued his fake lashes into place. Feeling slightly breathless as he always did when the transformation was fully under way, he set his makeup aside for the moment.
He found a pair of naughty black thong panties left over from a trip to Paris a few years back and slipped them on. Then he put on the garter belt and hose, loving the thick black stripe up the back.
How pulpy!
Now Coco knew who he’d be for the evening, and he looked to a higher shelf filled with old wig boxes. His attention went to a blue one and he retrieved it. He wouldn’t tape the wig in place until he was almost fully clothed, but he couldn’t resist trying it on.
The hair was jet black and pulled back severely into a tight bun. Coco set it on his smooth head, adjusted it, and then eased into the black pumps.
He stepped in front of the mirror and pursed his lips in satisfaction.
Tonight you shall be the Black Dahlia, Coco thought. A sultry Latina with a hint of dominatrix and—
He heard a gasp. His wigged head whipped left.
A chunky, middle-aged black woman in jeans, a dark hoodie, and yellow rubber dishwashing gloves stood in the closet doorway, gaping at him.
“Oh, Jesus, no!” she whispered in a thick accent.
Then she turned and ran.
Chapter
37
Coco kicked off the pumps, tore off the wig, and bolted after her.
The woman wasn’t in shape or athletic, and he caught up to her before she reached the bedroom door. Coco grabbed her by the shoulder, spun the woman around, and pushed her up against the wall.
“What the hell are you doing in my house, Francie?” he demanded.
“I…I forget something important, Mr. Mize,” she said, terrified. “I no know you’re here.”
“Obviously,” Mize said. “What could be so important that you broke into my house wearing rubber gloves, Francie?”
She began to cry. “I was looking for…my bank card. The ATM.”
“You figured out you were missing your bank card three months after I fired you?”
Francie nodded wildly. “Yes. Just yesterday. I look everywhere. I say, this one must to be at the Jeffrey Mize’s house. So I come. I call you from outside. I ring doorbell.”
“To make sure I wasn’t home,” Mize said.
“No! You no answer. You no hear?”
“I was busy.”
His former maid’s gaze flickered down to his black panties, garter belt, and hose, and then back to the eyelashes and makeup.
“I so sorry,” she blubbered. “I see this now.”
“My secret life?” he said. “My closet?”
“I no mean to! I just looking for—”
“Something to steal, isn’t that right?”
“No, Mr. Mize,” the maid said, and she made the sign of the cross.
Mize’s mind turned to Coco’s unique perspective again, and he said, “I was wondering why I’d been missing some of mother’s lesser jewelry. Never suspected you, Francie, but that’s my naturally trusting personality.”
The maid got more frightened. “No, that’s not—”
“Sure it is,” Mize said. “You’re dirt-poor, Francie. So you steal. It’s what you do. It’s what I would do if I were you.”
She clamped her jaw shut and tried to struggle away, but he threw her back against the wall. “Please, Mr. Mize,” she whimpered. “Don’t call police. I do anything, but not that!”
Mize thought, said, “You can keep a secret, can’t you, Francie?”
She seemed not to understand for a moment, but then her head bobbled like a toy. “Of course, I no tell anyone you like dress lady-boy, Mr. Mize.”
He laughed. “Lady-boy? Is that what they’d call me in Haiti?”
Francie’s eyes darted around, but her head started bobbling again. “I sorry, Mr. Mize. Is a bad thing? Lady-boy?”
“You tell me.”
“No, Mr. Mize,” she babbled, “I no care your lady-boy secrets.”
“Then I don’t care you’re a thief, Francie.”
She didn’t know what to say, but she nodded in resignation. “Merci, Mr. Mize. Please, I so sorry.”
“How’d you get in?” Mize asked.
Francie looked down.
“If we’re going to share secrets, we better start by being honest, don’t you think?” Mize said in a more pleasant tone.
Tears dripping down her cheeks, Francie nodded. “I make key last year.”
“Show me?”
The maid pulled off one of her rubber gloves, dug in her back pocket, and came up with the key.
He took it, said, “The alarm code?”
Francie blinked. “You give it to me, Mr. Mize. You no remember?”
That was true. Stupid of me.
“I remember,” Mize said.
“What I do for you?” she ask. “Clean house again? It look like no clean for long time, Mr. Mize.”
“Maybe I’ll take you up on that.”
“Yes, yes,” Francie said. “Anything, Mr. Mize.”
“Who else knew you were coming here to steal?”
“No one! I swear to spirits.”
“Better to work that way, I suppose.”
She nodded again. “No one knows, is better, I think.”
“Makes sense,” Mize said. “What have you stolen from me before?”
Francie looked down again. “Something silver from dining room, and maybe bracelets and necklace in other room.”
“Thin gold bracelets? Little bangles?”
“I so sorry.”
“You were desperate,” he said. “I know what that’s like.”
Francie grabbed his hand and kissed it. “Bless you, Mr. Mize.”
Mize smiled. “Well, then, I know your secrets; would you like to see mine?”
The maid looked torn.
“C’mon, if we’re sharing secrets, we’re friends now,” he said. “Let me show you the closet and all its beauty.”
Francie licked her lips, and then shrugged. “Okay.”
“Real ladies first,” Mize said, and gestured with a flourish toward the open closet door.
Uncertain, she moved past him, crossed the room, and stopped in the closet doorway. She looked around and her eyes widened.
“Magnificent, isn’t it?” Mize asked.
Francie’s voice was filled with genuine wonder. “I never see such things before this now. Maybe in movies.”
“My mother started the collection,” Mize said, taking a white kimono off the door hook and slipping it over his shoulders. “She loved her clothes, and she taught me to love them too.”
The maid’s face tightened. “Is good. I think.”
“It bonded us,” he said. “See the jewelry box on the vanity? It was Mother’s. She was a spendthrift with exquisite
taste in jewelry. Have a look. She’d want you to see.”
Francie glanced at him tying the robe. He stopped, smiling. “Go on.”
The maid went to the vanity. The lights around the mirror were glowing. She opened the lid. Her jaw dropped.
“Now, that’s what you were hoping you’d find, wasn’t it?” Mize asked.
He’d slid in behind Francie. In the mirror, she saw not Mize, but Coco, the smile gone cold, the eyes gone vacant.
Before the maid could reply or even change her expression, Coco flipped the robe’s sash over Francie’s head.
He cinched it nice, tight, and brutal around her neck.
Chapter
38
Starksville, North Carolina
Judging by the turnout for her wake that Sunday evening, Sydney Fox had been a well-liked person in Starksville. Nana Mama and I went to pay our respects while Naomi finished working on her opening statement and watched the kids, and Bree supported Cece Turnbull as she lurched toward a semblance of sobriety.
“A terrible thing,” Nana Mama said as she held tight to my forearm. “Woman like that, in her prime, gunned down on her own front porch. Bad as it was when I grew up here, there was never violence like that.”
“I’ll take your word for your era,” I said. “And, yes, it’s bad, part of a general badness about this town. Do you feel it?”
“Every day since we’ve been here,” Nana Mama said. “I’ll be happy to go home when the time comes.”
“I’m with you,” I said. “And we’ve only been here since Thursday.”
We followed a grief-stricken couple into the mortuary. There were very few dry eyes among the forty, maybe fifty people who had come to pay their respects. We waited in line to offer condolences to Ethel Fox, who wore an old but cared-for black dress she’d bought when her husband passed.
“I only figured to wear it again when I was dead and gone,” Ethel said. “And now, here I am, and there my baby girl is, all sealed up in a box.”