"The police said she was shot "cause of you," Ethel Fox said in a flat, grieving tone.
Patty"s hands flew to her mouth and she choked out, "I wish it had been me. I swear to you, I never ... I loved your daughter. She was my best friend here. My only friend."
Ethel Fox got up slowly, staring hard at Patty, and for a second I thought she might strike her. Instead, she opened her arms and embraced Stefan"s fiancee, who wept on her shoulder.
"I know you loved her too," Ethel Fox said, rubbing Patty"s back. "I know you loved her too."
"You don"t blame me? And Stefan?"
The old woman pushed away from Patty and shook her head. "Sydney believed he was innocent as much as you do. We talked about it just the other day. She said Stefan didn"t have the kind of heart to do something that dark to anyone, much less to a boy he cared so much about."
Aunt Hattie fought not to break down.
Aunt Connie wiped her own tears on her forearm, said, "Ethel, you hear me now. Our nephew Alex here is gonna find Sydney"s killer, just like he"s gonna find Rashawn"s. You mark my words, he"s gonna make them pay. Isn"t that right, Alex?"
Every eye in the room was on me. In the short s.p.a.ce of time I"d been in Starksville, the town had revealed dimensions more ominous than I remembered. Deep inside, I wondered whether I was up to the task of figuring out who killed the Turnbull boy and, now, Sydney Fox. But they were all looking at me with such hope that I said, "I promise you, someone will pay."
Aunt Connie broke into her toothy grin and then poured the beaten eggs into a black frying pan with a hiss. "Sit down now, I"ll finish up."
"Sydney was right," Aunt Hattie said. "Whoever killed that boy had a dark heart, and my Stefan does not."
I realized she was directing the comment at me. Had Naomi told her what I"d said earlier in the day, about owing my allegiance to the victims?
Before I could respond delicately, Ethel Fox said, "You ask me, there"s only one heart black enough around here to kill a boy like that. You ask me, that Marvin Bell"s involved somehow."
The name sounded familiar, but I couldn"t place it.
My aunts evidently could, though.
Hattie got a stricken look and turned her head away.
Connie rapped hard on the edge of the skillet with the wooden spoon, glanced at me, saw my confusion, and then looked to Sydney"s mother and warned quietly, "Ethel, you know you don"t want to be accusing that Marvin Bell of nothing unless you got fifty G.o.d-fearing Christians behind you saying they saw it too, in broad daylight and with their own two eyes."
"Who"s Marvin Bell?" Bree asked.
My aunts said nothing.
"He"s slippery, that one, always in the shadows, never showing hisself," Ethel Fox said. Then she pointed a bony finger at me. "And you know why your aunts ain"t saying nothing to you "bout him?"
My aunts wouldn"t look at me. I shook my head.
"Marvin Bell?" Ethel Fox said. "Once upon a time, before he went all proper, he owned your daddy. Your daddy was one of his n.i.g.g.e.rs."
CHAPTER 20.
THE WORD SILENCED the room, and Bree"s face turned hard. So did Patty"s and Naomi"s.
You heard the word used every day on the streets of DC, one person of color to another. But hearing it from the lips of an old white Southern woman in reference to my dead father, I felt like she"d slapped me across the face with something unspeakable.
Her daughter was dead. She was distraught. She didn"t mean it. Those were my immediate responses. Then I noticed that my aunts weren"t as shocked as the rest of us.
"Aunt Hattie?" I said.
Aunt Hattie wouldn"t look at me, but she said, "Ethel didn"t mean to shame your father"s name or yours, Alex. She"s just telling it like it was."
Pained, Aunt Connie said, "Back then, your father was Marvin Bell"s slave. Bell owned him. Your mother too. They"d do anything he asked."
""Cause of the drugs," Ethel Fox said.
I suddenly felt so hungry, I was light-headed.
"You don"t remember Bell coming to your house when you was a boy to bring your mama or papa something?" Aunt Connie asked, spooning the eggs onto a plate. "Tall white guy, sharp face, slippery, like Ethel said?"
Hattie added, "All nice one second, meaner than a crazy dog the next?"
Something blurry, troubling, and long ago flitted through my mind, but I said, "No, I don"t remember him."
"What about-" Aunt Hattie began, and then stopped.
Aunt Connie had fetched plates of potato pancakes, crispy maple bacon, and a mound of toast from the warming oven, and she set them and the freshly made scrambled eggs on the table. Naomi and I attacked the food. Stefan"s fiancee pushed at her eggs and bacon and worried a piece of toast.
I stayed quiet as I ate. But Bree asked all sorts of questions about Marvin Bell, and by the time I set my fork on my plate, stuffed to the gills and feeling a lot less light-headed and achy, there was a thumbnail biography of him developing slowly in my mind, some of it fact, but most of it opinion, rumor, conjecture, and supposition.
Slippery described Bell perfectly.
No one at that table could peg exactly when Marvin Bell took control of my parents" life. They said he"d slid into Starksville like a silent cancer when my mom turned twenty. He came bearing heroin and cocaine, and he gave out free samples. He got my mother and a dozen young women just like her strung out and desperate. He hooked my father too, but not just on the drugs.
"Your father needed money for you boys," Aunt Connie said. "Selling and moving for Bell made him that money. And like Ethel was saying, Bell had his hooks into them so hard, they were just like his slaves."
Ethel Fox said, "Once, Bell even ran your daddy out of your house, tied him with a rope to the back of his car, and dragged him down the street. No one moved to stop him."
Flashing on that memory of the boys being dragged on a rope line the day before, I gaped at her, horrified.
"You don"t remember, Alex?" Aunt Hattie asked softly. "You were there."
"No," I said instantly and unequivocally. "I don"t remember that. I"d ... remember that."
The very idea of it made my head start to pound, and I just wanted to go somewhere in the darkness and sleep. Both my aunts and Sydney Fox"s mother looked at me in concern.
"What?" I said. "I just don"t remember it ever getting that bad."
Aunt Connie said sadly, "Alex, it got so bad, the only way your mom and dad could escape was by dying."
Hearing that after so long a day, I hung my head in sorrow.
Bree rubbed my back and neck, said, "Is Bell still a dealer?"
They argued about whether he was. Aunt Hattie said that soon after my father died, Bell took his profits and went twenty miles north, where he built a big house on Pleasant Lake. He bought up local businesses and gave every appearance of a guy who"d straightened out his life.
"I don"t believe that for a second," Ethel Fox snapped. "You don"t change your spots just like that, not when there"s easy money to be made. You ask me, he runs the underworld of this town and the towns all around us. Maybe even over to Raleigh."
I raised my head. "He"s never been investigated?"
"Oh, I"m sure someone has investigated him," Connie said.
"But Marvin Bell"s never been arrested for anything, far as I know," Hattie said. "You see him around Starksville from time to time, and it"s like he"s looking right through you."
"What do you mean by that?" Bree asked.
Hattie shifted in her chair. "He makes you uncomfortable just by being near, like he"s an instant threat, even if he"s smiling at you."
"So he knows who you are? What you"ve seen?" Bree asked.
"Oh, I expect he knows," Connie said. "He just don"t care. In Bell"s kingdom, we"re nothing. Just like Alex"s parents were nothing to him."
"Any evidence linking Bell to Rashawn Turnbull?" Bree said.
Naomi shook her head.
Patty Converse seemed lost in thought.
I asked her, "Stefan ever mention him?"
My cousin"s fiancee startled when she realized I was talking to her, said, "Honest to G.o.d, I"ve never heard of Marvin Bell."
CHAPTER 21.
I AWOKE THE next morning to find my daughter, Jannie, at the side of my bed, shaking my shoulder. She had on her blue tracksuit and was carrying a workout bag.
"Six a.m.," she whispered. "We have to go."
I nodded blearily and eased out of bed, not wanting to wake Bree. I grabbed some shorts, running shoes, a Georgetown Hoyas T-shirt, and a Johns Hopkins hoodie, and went into the bathroom.
I splashed cold water on my face and then dressed, willing myself not to think about the day before and Marvin Bell and what my aunts said he"d done to my parents. Did Nana Mama know? I pushed that question and more aside. For a few hours, at least, I wanted to focus on my daughter and her dreams.
Nana Mama was already up. "Coffee with chicory," she said, handing me a go cup and a small soft cooler. "Bananas, water, and her protein shakes are in there. There"s some of those poppy-seed m.u.f.fins you like too."
"Fattening me up?"
"Putting some meat on your bones," she said, and she laughed.
I laughed too, said, "I remember that."
When I was a teenager, about Jannie"s age, I"d gotten my height but weighed about one hundred and sixty dripping wet. I had dreams of playing college football and basketball. So for two years, Nana Mama cooked extra for me, putting some meat on my bones. When I graduated high school, I weighed close to two hundred.
"Dad!" Jannie whined.
"Tell Bree we should be back before ten," I said, and I hurried out of the house with my daughter.
Jannie was quiet on the ride over to Starksville High School. It didn"t surprise me. She is incredibly compet.i.tive and intense when it comes to running. Sometimes she"s irritable before facing a challenge on the track. Other times, like that morning, she"s quiet, deep inside herself.
"This coach is supposed to be strong," I said.
She nodded. "Duke a.s.sistant."
I could see the wheels turning in her head. One of Duke University"s a.s.sistant track coaches ran the AAU team out of Raleigh during the summer. Some of her athletes would no doubt be on the track. Jannie was out to impress them all.
I pulled into a mostly empty parking lot next to the high school. At a quarter past six on a Sat.u.r.day morning, there were only a handful of vehicles there, including two white pa.s.senger vans. Beyond them and a chain-link fence and bleachers, people were jogging, warming up.
"You"re here to train, right?" I said as Jannie unbuckled her seat belt.
She shook her head, smiled, and said, "No, Daddy, I"m here to run."
We went through a gate, under the stands, and over to the track. There were fifteen, maybe twenty athletes there already, some stretching in the cool air, some just starting their warm-up laps.
"Jannie Cross?" A woman wearing shorts, running shoes, and a bright turquoise windbreaker jogged over to us. She carried a clipboard and grinned broadly when she stuck out her hand and said, "Melanie Greene."
"Pleased to meet you, Coach Greene," I said, shaking her hand and sensing her genuine enthusiasm.
"The pleasure is all mine, Dr. Cross," the coach said.
Then she turned the charm on Jannie and said, "And you, young lady, are causing quite the stir."
Jannie smiled and bowed her head. "You saw the tape of the invitational?"
"Along with every other Division One coach in the country," she said. "And here you are, walking onto my track."
"Yes, ma"am," Jannie said.
"Just for the record, you"ll only be a soph.o.m.ore in the fall?"
"Yes, ma"am."