Time for Pretend Sadie.
I stopped by one of the chairs in front of Lee’s desk and I felt Hector close behind me. I took a deep breath, did a group scan, playing it safe, beginning the game and allowing myself a small, friendly smile.
Then I looked at Lee and announced, “I’ve changed my mind.”
Lee’s brows went up.
I continued, “See, I figure you won’t let me pay you and that isn’t fair. You and Hector and everyone are doing so much for me, I can’t ask you to do more.”
Lee smiled and I found myself momentarily taken out of my role and staring (he really had a nice smile).
Then he started talking. “Sadie, the Rock Chicks are a permanent red line item on my budget. They have been for months. We’re used to takin’ this kind of hit.”
I had to admit, I hadn’t prepared for that either, especially his assumption that I was a Rock Chick.
His assumption gave me one of those weird, happy glows, the kind I couldn’t allow myself to feel or all would be lost.
Oh well, I had to power through.
“Even so, I think I’d prefer to hire someone else. This is making me uncomfortable,” I replied what I thought was nicely but firmly. “So, if you have a recommendation for another PI, I’ll give them a call.”
Immediately I saw that my nice but firm didn’t work.
Instead, Lee shook his head (still smiling) and Hector’s hands came to my shoulders.
“Sadie, sit down,” Hector said softly in my ear.
I twisted to look at him. “No, really, I –”
“Sit,” he interrupted.
Sweet, Pretend, Guarding-Her-Heart Sadie slipped and I glared at him.
My glare deflected off his Cool, Collected, Macho Man Shields and pinged around the room, unnoticed by anyone.
“Sadie, honey,” Tom said, I turned to him and saw he had his hand held out to me. “Come and sit.”
Not wanting to be a bitch because Pretend Sadie was not a bitch and anyway, he’d called me “honey” and that was so nice, the weird, happy glow I was trying to ignore came back against my will, I walked to him, put my hand in his and we both sat, facing each other.
“I need to tell you something,” Tom informed me, keeping hold of my hand.
The weird, happy glow vanished.
Oh no.
I didn’t like the look on his face and I didn’t like that he felt he needed to keep holding my hand.
Furthermore, Pretend Sadie didn’t like the vibe in the room at all and she wanted to run.
However, Ice Princess Sadie never ran. Ice Princess locked firm hands on Pretend Sadie’s arms and held her in place.
With Ice Princess in control, I felt it safe to say to Tom, “Okay.”
He squeezed my hand then he took a deep breath and launched in.
“Eighteen years ago, your Mom came to me,” Tom started.
I blinked and then stilled, knowing intuitively (from years of practice) that this innocuous statement was going to get worse.
Way worse.
I wasn’t wrong.
Tom continued, “Lizzie knew what your father did and she didn’t like it. She didn’t want you growing up in that life. She also saw your future and she didn’t like that either. She wanted to get you, and herself, out. She told me the only way to do that was to put your father in jail. She told me that she couldn’t run, taking you with her because he’d never let either of you go. She knew this because she tried on several occasions but he always found you both and brought you back.”
I pulled in my lips and I felt myself starting to breathe heavier, my heart beginning to hammer in my chest, something hot and hard forming there.
My Mom had tried to escape.
She’d tried to escape!
And she wanted to take me with her!
Oh my God!
I couldn’t believe it!
Tom went on, cutting into my fevered thoughts, “She wanted to inform on your Dad, to give me what I needed to take him down. I tried to talk her out of it. Your father wasn’t as powerful then as he was when Hector got him. But he’d done well, he was top man for Luther Diggs and what she wanted to do was dangerous.”
I couldn’t believe this either.
My sweet, quiet Mom an informant?
Impossible!
And I remembered Luther; he’d been around a lot back then. I also remembered never liking Luther, as in never. Luther was my first lesson in how to spot bad people because, in Luther’s case, he was very bad people. He reeked of it. Luther had always scared me.
I was glad when Luther went away about a year after my Mom disappeared. What I wasn’t glad about was knowing, even at twelve, that my father had assumed Luther’s elevated place in the crime world.
Tom kept talking, “She wouldn’t be swayed, even Kitty Sue tried to talk her out of it but Lizzie was determined. She said if she didn’t work with me, she’d go to someone else. I thought, if she had to do it, it was better if she worked with me. I thought that I could keep her safe –”
He stopped talking, his eyes closed tight and he looked away but not before I caught the pain that slashed through his gaze.
My heart was in my throat, clogging it, that hot, hard thing in my chest started burning.
I knew where this was going and I didn’t like it.
Not one bit.
But, for some reason, I still squeezed his hand and kept squeezing it until his eyes opened and came to me again.
“Go on,” I encouraged softly.
He stared at me a second then took in another deep breath. “At first, she couldn’t get me anything I could use. When she saw it wasn’t working, she started taking risks.”
I felt the tears hit the backs of my eyes at the thought of my Mom doing the same thing I did with Hector. I knew how scary it was and I knew the consequences and knowing now that she took the same risks, felt the same fear, all of it for me, made the burning in my chest intensify.
I found I was still squeezing Tom’s hand, this time not to encourage him to go on but because I had to.
Tom reached out and took my other hand, holding both of our hands between us.
“She started to get some good stuff, found someone in Diggs’s network that didn’t like your father, didn’t like Diggs. They started to work together not just to take down your father but also to take down Diggs. She never told me who it was, I asked but she wouldn’t give. Then, one day, she was supposed to meet me, she said she had something for me, something she thought was big, important, but she never showed.” He hesitated, I clenched my teeth, waiting for it, knowing it was coming then he went on, “I never saw her again.”
There it was.
“Please, no,” I whispered before I could stop myself.
Tom gave me a hand squeeze.
“I looked for her, Malcolm and I did it together. We had to do it on our own time, your father never filed a missing person report, he told everyone she left you. I knew she didn’t, I knew she’d never leave you. Never Sadie. Never.” He shook my hands so I knew he meant what he said and I nodded, biting my lips, knowing he thought this might make me feel better at the same time knowing it didn’t make me feel better, not even a little bit. He went on, “Malcolm knew that too, so we looked for her.”
“What did you find?” I asked but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
“Leads, lots of leads, all of them dead ends. We searched for over a year, but, Sadie, we found nothing, the leads dried up and with nothing to go on, I’m sorry, honey, so, so sorry, but we had no choice but to stop.”
I nodded.
I didn’t blame him, he tried. He tried to protect my Mom and he tried to find her when she disappeared. He was a good person, I knew that. I had no doubt he did the best he could.
But what he was saying meant that someone made my Mom “disappear”, just like Uncle Vito wanted to make Ricky disappear. And that meant my Mom had been scared and alone. That meant my Mom was never coming back. That meant
that someone had taken her away from me.
And that someone might be my fucking, fucking father.
On that thought, something in my brain exploded, pain sliced through my temples, I tore my hands out of Tom’s and shot out of my chair.
“Sadie –” Tom stood with me but I whirled.
“I’ve got to go,” I muttered, no friendly smiles now, no alternate Sadies to help me deal. It was just me and I needed to get out of there, go somewhere, I didn’t know where, I didn’t care where, it could be anywhere but I had to go there and scream at… the… top… of… my… lungs.
If I didn’t let out the hard, hot knot of pain that was in my chest, I knew it was going to burst and it was so ugly, so huge, if it burst, it would kill me.
In my blind escape, I ran smack into Hector’s solid body and his arms closed around me.
I looked up at him.
“I’ve got to go,” I told him, sounding desperate and not caring.
I was desperate.
At that point, I forgot about all my father’s lessons never to let any weakness show. I didn’t care that everyone in that room knew I was desperate.
I didn’t care about anything but getting out of there.
“Hang on, preciosa,” Hector murmured.
“I’ve got to go!” I screamed in his face and watched him wince and his head jerked like the raw emotion in my voice was a physical thing, a hard, sharp, painful slap.
I struggled.
His arms went tight.
I pushed against his chest, putting my body weight into my hands while staring at them, willing my efforts to work, fighting the pain in my chest, feeling my heart beating in my throat, all the while begging, “Please. Please. Please.”
“Sadie, listen to me.” Hector’s arms separated, one stayed tight at my waist, pulling my lower body to his heat, one went up my back and into my hair, giving it a gentle tug so my head tilted back to look at him. When I caught sight of his face, I noted he was no longer annoyed and moody, his face was soft, his eyes were warm and intense but this didn’t help either. “Vance is a tracker, he’s good. Tom and Malcolm kept notes on everything they did. Vance is going to pick up the –”
I shook my head and started laughing.
He stopped talking because the sound of my laughter was far from amused, instead it was harsh and bitter and so ugly it scratched my own ears.
“I’m not stupid, Hector. It was eighteen years ago, there’s nothing to pick up and if there is, I don’t want to know what he’s going to find.”
“Mamita, you don’t know. Give it a chance,” Hector encouraged softly but I shook my head and then twisted my neck to look at Tom.
“You knew her; you said she’d never leave me, right?” I asked Tom.
Tom was watching me, looking pale and concerned but he nodded.
“So, if she felt she had to leave anyway, she’d have come back. Or she’d have found a way to talk to me. She could have used you or Kitty Sue or anyone,” I went on.
“Honey –” Tom started but I interrupted him and, with a forceful tug, I yanked out of Hector’s arms and twirled to face Tom.
“And now he’s gone, he’s been in prison for ages, and she hasn’t come back. If she could come back, she would. Wouldn’t she?” I demanded then repeated on a shout, “Wouldn’t she?”
“Sadie, come here,” Tom replied softly, his arms coming up and out toward me.
“He killed her,” I announced in a flat voice, ignoring Toms arms, feeling nothing but that hot, hard thing burning in my chest, my body went ramrod straight, my hands clenched in fists at my sides. “My father found out what she was doing and he fucking killed her!”
“Hector, get her,” Eddie warned but I took off, not to escape but pacing swiftly around the room, agitated and unable to stand still, thoughts thundering in my head, pain pounding in my temples, striking there like jackhammers.
“This is unbelievable,” I got out, taking a half a dozen steps before Hector caught me and pulled me to him again. I stopped, looked up at him and cried, “Unbelievable!”
“Mi corazón, calm down,” Hector muttered.
“Calm down?” I snapped, eyes narrowing on him. “This is my father, Hector, his blood flows through my veins and he’s a killer! My grandmother died when I was practically a baby, did he kill her too? And his parents, he kept them from me but I knew they died when I was nineteen, within a year of each other. Did he kill them too?”
I was on a roll, ranting in front of an audience, unconcerned about what they might think, who they might see, what I exposed by the words that came out of my mouth. The only thing I knew was the more I talked, the less that thing in my chest hurt and I had to get it out before it destroyed me so I kept right on going.
“And my boyfriends, I knew he warned them off but I’ve never seen them again, never ran into them at, say, a movie or the mall. How bizarre is that? You always run into people, especially your exes, exactly when you don’t want to see them. Did he whack them for daring to touch me?” I asked then my mind flew in another direction. “And Greg! The guy who worked for him who flirted with me, my fucking father saw it and I never saw Greg again. Did he off him too? Poor Greg, daring to flirt with Sadie Townsend. That was a mistake. King Death strikes again!” I shouted, totally hysterical now then I demanded to know, “When’s it going to end? When? What’s next? Am I going to find out my fucking father ran over my cat, Cleopatra, when I was eight? He said it was a neighbor who did it, it was probably him!”
“I’m sure your father didn’t run over your cat,” Hector told me gently.
“You’re sure? Well I’m not. He probably drove around neighborhoods in his spare time, aiming for cats, just for kicks!” I snapped back.
Hector gave me a gentle shake. “Mamita, you got to calm down.”
I looked up at him and all of a sudden I remembered where I was, who I was with, what I was saying and I pulled in my breath.
He was right. He was so right.
I had to calm down.
So, I had filth running through my veins instead of blood.
So what?
I knew that, I’d always known it.
This just proved it irrevocably.
It proved I had no business standing here with these good people.
It proved I was exactly the kind of girl Hector could conquer then throw away without looking back.
It proved that wasn’t only true but I deserved it.
I had to get out of there, pronto.
“I need to go,” I told Hector. “I need to get back to the gallery. I have work to do.”
“I’m thinkin’ that’s not a good idea,” Hector replied.
“What do you suggest I do instead? Sit in a dark room and reflect on my pitiful life, my mother who probably died trying to protect me, my squished cat?”
“Sadie –”
I shook my head and lifted my hands to pull my hair away from the sides of my face, leaving them there. “No, I need to do something normal. I need to be around pretty things in my gallery. I need Ralphie. I need Buddy. I need to go back to the brownstone and play with YoYo. I need Veronica Mars. I need to do everything I can do to forget all that is my fucking hideous life.”
Something flashed across his face, something so strong it penetrated my hysteria. I wasn’t certain sure, he hid it as quickly as it came but I could swear it was disappointment.
I realized then that of all the things I told him I needed, he wasn’t one of them.
I’d inadvertently scored a direct hit and I should have been glad but I was absolutely not.
I sallied forth, there was nothing else I could do. In my life, sallying forth was my only option and it always had been.
I dropped my hair and put my hands on his biceps.
“Please, Hector, take me back to the gallery.”
Finally, his arms dropped, he stepped back and I lost his heat.
And I saw that I also lost him. I could see it in his face closing
down and his eyes going blank. And I knew it because he didn’t touch me, he didn’t slide his hand in my hair and he didn’t stay close.
And this hurt. It hurt so much I felt that hot, hard thing in my chest grow and spread, up my throat and down to my belly until I found it difficult to breathe and I was certain sure it was going to suffocate me.
Even though I lost him, he still quietly replied, “All right, Sadie, I’ll take you back to the gallery.”
I let out a breath and found that didn’t help at all.
* * * * *
Eddie
Eddie Chavez watched the door close behind his brother and Sadie and something about both of them made him feel unsettled.
Then Tom spoke and Eddie’s eyes moved to him.
“Seth Townsend is a piece of shit,” Tom announced. “But he loved Lizzie. It was an obsessive, smothering love but he loved her. He didn’t kill her.”
Lee leaned against his desk.
“You sure about that?” he asked.
Tom nodded. “None of the leads took us close to Seth. I don’t even think he knew she was talking to me. Malcolm and I figured Diggs found out what Lizzie was up to and ordered the hit.”
“Any chance she’s still alive?” Eddie asked, crossing his arms on his chest.
This time, Tom shook his head. “Sadie’s right. Lizzie would have found a way to keep in contact with her or she would have come back. Furthermore, Lizzie was loaded, still is. She had a trust, she was an only child and she inherited everything when her mother died and they had a large estate. The money is still sitting in her accounts. She never touched it. Seth never went after it either, didn’t try to have her declared dead so he could get his hands on it, never claimed desertion so he could get it for Sadie. Nothing. I’m not even certain Sadie knows it exists. If Lizzie found a safe place, she could have taken the money and she and Sadie could have lived their lives without ever lifting a finger. Eighteen years ago, Malc and I talked to Aaron Lockhart, Lizzie’s family accountant, and we told him our suspicions. His loyalty was to Lizzie and Sadie and he watched that money like a hawk and he would have done what he could to see Lizzie and Sadie safe. I called Aaron this morning to check and not a penny of that money moved, not in eighteen years. If Lizzie was alive, there would have been a time when she needed it. It never moved.”