Chapter Eight

The rain took the edge off the summer morning heat, and the conversation with Brother Leon had relieved some of the pressure on her mind. Despite her late night excursion, she woke up in time for the Office of Readings prayer on Wednesday morning and accepted Father Bernard’s invitation to eat breakfast with them, since it was the feast of St. Clare, an important holy day for the friars.

She still felt uncomfortable with some of the friars. Father Francis seemed intimidating, and she had a feeling that Brother George, the red-haired brother, didn’t like her very much. She had wondered a few times if it perhaps would be better for her to keep more to herself.

But the novices were friendly, and Brother Herman, the Santa Claus friar, was kind. And this morning, she actually felt very hungry. She settled down to eat her portion.

“Are you in college right now?” Brother Charley asked.

She shook her head. “I took a few nursing courses at the community college, but I’m not sure if I’m going to keep it up.”

“Why not?” Brother Matt asked.

“She’s trying to get an M.R.S. degree,” Leon said in a loud whisper.

Indignant, she raised her eyebrows at him. “My mother did not raise me to be a fisher of men,” she said.

The friars roared with laughter, including Leon, who was slightly embarrassed.

“She’s got you there, Leon,” Brother Charley grinned.

“Okay, okay,” Leon said. “You ready for a big airport adventure this afternoon, Nora?”

“Sure am,” she said, and actually felt more ready than would have seemed possible yesterday.

II

So that afternoon, Leon collected Nora and Matt, obtained the keys for the community’s rusting old white painter’s van, and got his entourage packed up to go to Marisol’s apartment. Leon was in a happy mood. The rain had stopped and the sun was out. Matt had remembered that he had an appointment at four, but Leon expansively assured him that they would be back in time.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Matt muttered dubiously as they got out of the car. Nora had said she would stay and watch the van, which was double-parked.

“We’re an hour early,” Leon argued. “We’ll have time.” The kids were sitting on the stoop waiting for them. “Aay! Wha a gwan?”

“Aay, Fadda Leon!” they ran up to meet them.

“Nah man! Brother Leon!” he corrected them, laughing. “I’m no priest!”

The little boy threw himself at him, wanting to wrestle, and the sister shrieked and jumped into his arms. Swinging one under each arm, he carried them inside. “So your grandmother’s going home? She ready?”

“Nuh yet!” the kids said happily.

They found Marisol and her grandmother packing. “Packing” in the loosest sense of the word—they were piling things into garbage bags. It was very disorganized.

Brother Matt looked at Leon. “We’re going to be late,” he warned.

“We can elp yu?” Brother Leon asked them after exchanging looks with Matt. “Wha a go a di airport?”

“Dis and dis a goes,” Marisol said. And she pointed at two Rottweilers with thick red collars lying down on the threadbare sofa. “And dem a go too.”

“The dogs?” Matt said doubtfully. “You think they’ll let you bring the dogs on the plane? I thought you couldn’t bring animals overseas.”

“A er daag dem,” Marisol said firmly. “Dem haffi go.”

“All right,” Leon said, trying to remain optimistic. He sized up the dogs, which, apparently realizing they were being spoken of, lifted their heads and looked at the new arrivals warily.

“Hey pooches,” Matt said faintly, putting out his hand. “What are we going to carry them in?”

“Yuh ave one crate fi dem?” Leon said uncertainly.

Marisol pointed to a larger-sized cardboard box.

“They’re never going to go in there,” Matt said emphatically. “This is crazy.”

“Maybe they traveled up here in one,” Leon offered hopefully. He approached the dog. “Aay, mongrels, unna want a ride to di airport? Good mongrel...”

He looked at the grandmother, who said, “Prince, Pouff-pouff, go inna di box!” with a voice of some authority.

In answer, both dogs go to their feet and sprinted out of the apartment. Leon leapt and managed to grab the collar of one. Matt grabbed the other, lost his grip, and tumbled to the ground as the dog tore down the steps.

“I got him,” Leon grunted, wrestling with the other thrashing dog. “Matt, help me—“

The grandmother was yelling, “Prince, da no be baad daag!”

With the efforts of Marisol, the grandmother, and the two friars, the dog was thrust into the cardboard box and the flaps were closed.

“He’s not going to stay in there,” Matt warned as the dog jabbed his nose through the crevice between the flaps over and over, barking furiously and skittering his claws on the box floor as he turned around in circles.

Leon was trying to keep the flaps shut and keep his hands out of range of the dog’s teeth at the same time. “We need to get something else.”

“Prince! Shut yuh mout!” the grandmother yelled over the deafening barks.

Marisol pushed a stack of newspapers and unfolded laundry off the card table in the living room, overturned it, and put it on top of the cardboard box, and started piling things on top of it to keep it shut. The box started to bow out slightly, but the dog finally settled down, snarling.

“Right,” Brother Leon said. “Okay, let’s get this other stuff down to the car and then we’ll go look for the other dog.”

III

After returning home for a quick shower and change, Bear and Fish picked up Fish’s car at its garage, and drove, as agreed upon earlier, to the Briers’ house to meet Mrs. Foster. There were no parking spaces on the Briers’ street, so Fish told Bear to get out while he went to park further down. Bear opened the door, glad that the rain had stopped, and hurried up to Blanche’s house.

The large black woman was standing on the stoop, leaning on her closed umbrella, and looking at the Briers’ window boxes, which were lush with red and white roses. She immediately walked down the stairs to meet him on the sidewalk and hugged him.

“See? They let you out, didn’t they, just like I prayed,” she said. “God’s taking care of you, boy.”

“He is,” Bear said, giving the woman a heartfelt squeeze in return. “Thanks for everything you’ve been doing, Mrs. Foster. You’ve been a lifesaver, again.”

“It’s no problem.” Mrs. Foster glanced at the house and took his arm. “Before we go in, let’s talk out here,” she pursed her lips. Bear could tell from her expression that something had happened. His pulse began racing as they walked down the wet sidewalk.

“What is it?” he asked.

She lowered her voice. “I want to tell you this outside so that we don’t speak about it inside. You never know what’s going on with stuff like this these days.” She whispered. “There are drugs in that house.”

Bear started.

She turned around and pulled out the key. “I’ll take you back now and show you what I found.”

They walked up the steps and Mrs. Foster unlocked the door. The street door opened into the entranceway. Bear scanned the blue-and-white tiled floor quickly. A forgotten umbrella, a showering of mail and a rolled-up paper. “Saturday’s mail is what I guess,” Mrs. Foster said, unlocking the second door that led into the house.

Inside, the Brier’s house was full of that sunny stillness, but with a pronounced echo of emptiness. Bear stood, looking around at the comfortably shabby couch, chairs, bookshelves and assorted knickknacks. The living room was straightened and neat. The kitchen was spotless, the teapot, cookie crock, and rows of mason jars gleaming on the laminate countertop in the dim light.

The door to the house opened again, and Fish walked inside, hands in the pockets of his trench coat.

“Looks very neat and clean in here,” he said.

Bear had to smile. The Brier house was generally a touch more disorderly than it was now. “That’s because Blanche was here alone. She’s the tidy one in the family,” he said.

“Ah,” said Fish.

Bear knew Blanche was a highly visual person, and that it bothered her when things were messy. He remembered on many nights when he had come over, he would find Rose lying on the couch with a book and Blanche going back and forth, picking up things in the living room, or scrubbing stains off cabinets and counters in the kitchen. Once Bear had teased her about it, and she had said, “Things just bother me if they’re out of place. I wish I were less aware of things sometimes. But I can’t tune out a mess.”

Bear privately guessed that the other reason was that housecleaning was Blanche’s contribution to holding the family together, since her dad had died. Jean had a full-time job as an emergency room nurse and didn’t have much energy for cleaning. Rose was charming, but not very orderly.

Now the regularity of Blanche’s habits—and surely, in the absence of her family, she would be even more regular in her solitude—was giving him important clues.

“She cleans the house in the evening,” he said aloud.

Fish ran his finger on the coffee table. “Then why’d she miss that dust?”

“She must have left in the afternoon then,” Mrs. Foster said.

“To go to work, where she was last seen on Saturday night,” Bear said slowly. He scanned the room again. Fish walked into the kitchen, looking around. As Bear’s eyes wandered over to the desk, he caught sight of a black and white photograph on it—a photograph of Blanche.

She was wearing a pale dress and was sitting on a chair, her long dark hair falling over her shoulders and down to the smooth white skin of her forearms. She was looking towards the left, and smiling calmly, her eyes, which he knew were blue, serene. It was a striking photograph. He knew he had never seen it before. Possibly from her high school graduation—but no, she had bought that dress just before he left for Rome, the yellow one. If it was the yellow one. It had to be recent.

He fingered the photograph, and turned it over. Longbourne Studios said a black stamp on the back.

Turning it back over, he checked the rest of the items on the desk. There was a neat stack of mail. They were all postmarked before August 7^th, Friday’s date. He tried to visualize this. Friday night she had come home, gathered and sorted the mail, cleaned up the kitchen, gone to bed. Possibly that photo had come in the mail, and she had left it on the desk. To frame it? To give it to her mother? Or to him?

After looking over the other contents of the desk, he turned back to Mrs. Foster and raised his eyebrows. She nodded and said, “Let’s go upstairs.”

They walked up the carpeted steps to the second floor of the town house. Gingerly, Bear pushed the door to the bedroom open. He had never been up here before, and looked around with some melancholic interest. The room Blanche shared with her sister Rose was pristine, the quilts on the bed smooth, the pillows fluffed, the stuffed animals perky and smiling. He surveyed the blue-painted desk—orderly—the scratched wooden dressers—cleaned and arranged. There were a few clothes tossed on a battered antique dining room chair. It looked like a girl’s room.

He glanced at Mrs. Foster again, who pointed to the wooden jewelry box on Blanche’s dresser. He lifted the carved lid. Inside were several compartments, with a few pieces of the simple gold and silver jewelry Blanche liked to wear. There didn’t seem to be anything amiss.

Unconsciously, he put a hand to his neck and fingered the necklace that Blanche had given him, ages ago, it now seemed. A gold chain with a key on it. He was still wearing it.

He looked back at Mrs. Foster, who moved over to the box. Deftly she picked up the edges of one compartment with two thick brown fingers. It came out smoothly.

Below was a little satin-lined compartment. Inside it lay about six pastel pills, pink, green, and white, each stamped with the curlicue M that had been stamped on the pills the DEA had photographed in Bear’s house.

Bear closed his eyes and prayed, feeling the lingering effect of the dark thoughts that had disturbed him in jail.

Mrs. Foster looked at him, her dark eyes sad, and replaced the little compartment. Then she turned to the ivory-painted bed with its carved knobs on each corner. She pulled out one of the knobs, and pointed inside.

Bear looked. Another M pill lay in the little hole.

Mrs. Foster pointed to all the other posts and nodded. Bear shook his head in disgust and bewilderment.

“Let’s go back outside,” he said at last.

Outside, Bear told Fish what Mrs. Foster had found.

“So we’ve got even more to tell the Briers when they come home,” Bear said with a deep sigh.

Fish looked at Mrs. Foster keenly. “You put two and two together faster than I did. How did you know to look?”

She nodded. “When you told me they’d found things in her bags, and then that this had happened to you, I looked around real careful. I figured that whoever was smart enough to get inside your place wasn’t going to have any trouble getting into this little brownstone and put stuff in her room.”

“In the bedposts, too. Clever. How’d you know to check there?” Fish asked her.

She shrugged her broad shoulders. “I guessed. Plus some of the women in my neighborhood have kids on drugs, so I know where some of the usual hiding places are, sorry to say.”

“Pretty sharp, Mrs. Foster.”

Bear mused, “It was the same kind of Adam drug that was in our apartment. The mark on it was even the same. They may have come from the same cache.”

“Yeah, I saw quite a few different kinds when we were doing our undercover work, but I’ve never seen an ‘M’ version.” Fish paused. “Well, it’s pretty clear that someone has been going to great lengths to set up Blanche. Someone must hate her pretty badly.”

“Or someone wants to get her out of the way, just like Father Raymond’s killer wanted us out of the way,” Bear said.

“So how did she acquire a vicious enemy in the space of what—six months?” Fish queried.

“It doesn’t take that long sometimes,” Bear said. “What’s puzzling is—what could Blanche do that would make her an enemy?”

 “Beats me. I’m not a psychologist,” Fish said. He pulled his hat out of his pocket and dropped it on his head. “So now what?”

“We go to the airport to pick up the Briers.”

Fish shook his head with a sigh. “You just got bailed out of jail by the skin of your teeth, and one of the first things you do is run off to the nearest airport. This won’t look good to the DEA, Bear.”

“Too bad,” Bear said.