Her Perfect Gift (9 page)

LACEY WAS BEING STUBBORN. Another two weeks had passed since Suro moved into her apartment, and she still hadn’t given in. She not only ignored him in bed—the fact that she slept on the tiniest sliver of the mattress her only acknowledgement of his presence—but she also refused to share any more meals with him. She said no when he offered to make her eggs and toast to go along with his own Japanese breakfast, choosing instead to pour herself a bowl of cereal, which she ate standing at the kitchen counter while he read the
Chicago Tribune
at the table. And though he sometimes noticed her eyeing his meal of rice, salted salmon, sour plum, and miso soup with curiosity, she didn’t say one word.

Though his professional counterparts called him The Silence, it seemed within the confines of her apartment, she was making a bid for the title. Two days after he moved in, she not only ate at the kitchen counter again, but she also made herself a huge vat of jambalaya, portions of which she ate at her desk as opposed to coming upstairs for dinner after her shift.

In yet another effort to take back control, Suro started eating the jambalaya himself for three days straight, effectively limiting her ability to live off of it for too long. In truth, it wasn’t a hardship. He’d been to New Orleans often on business, but Lacey made the best jambalaya he had ever tasted. The flavors popped in his mouth in a rambunctious symphony of tomatoes, chicken, rice, sausage, and spices, not all of which he could name.

It tasted so down home and authentic, he wondered if she wasn’t from New Orleans. So far, Dexter hadn’t been able to track down any more information on Lacey’s real identity other than the fact that she definitely wasn’t Lacey Winters. The real Lacey had been a retail clerk and had died with a gold tooth in her mouth, which had later been used to identify her body along with that of her two-year old daughter, Sparkle.

He’d spent enough time with Lacey to figure out she wasn’t the kind of woman who would wear a gold tooth. And he’d often wondered at her choice of the name Sparkle for her daughter—it seemed unusual and not in character for a woman who was obviously doing everything in her power to lay low. But most of what he knew about her remained in his gut. He’d done a thorough search of her humble apartment while she was at work and the most interesting things he’d found were a suitcase, packed and ready to go, seemingly at a moment’s notice, in the closet, and a small vibrator in her nightstand drawer. To his frustration, Lacey wasn’t only cagey about her real identity, she was also very thorough. There was nothing in the apartment to indicate she was anyone other than who she said she was.

After a week of fruitless searching, he decided to break into her office the next Sunday and search there. Meanwhile, he found himself frequently cleaning his guns, which he’d hidden in the living room closet, whenever Lacey wasn’t in the apartment. Not just to give himself something to do while he waited for his next assignment, but also to keep himself from going crazy with growing lust.

When he’d been scoping out his target in Europe, a war criminal who had made off with a treasured painting belonging to his client’s mother, he had thought of little else but finishing the job, retrieving the painting, and getting back to Lacey. In truth, he had taken a few chances he shouldn’t have in order to wrap things up in less than two weeks so he could return to Chicago.

At the time, moving into her apartment without her consent had seemed like a good idea. He hadn’t wanted to waste any more time away from her and had hoped she might finally tell him the truth, if only to get rid of him. But instead, she had decided to take a different approach: withdrawing and refusing to deal with him, and this made him feel worse than when she had railed at him, calling him an insane stalker.

In fact, when she discovered the jambalaya was gone, she simply got her big cast iron skillet and made red beans and rice, a relatively simple dish that made Suro rock back in his seat, it was so good. He told her as much that night, but she just shook her head at him.

“So you’re the one whose been eating the food I made for myself,” she said, like he was some sort of vermin who had been stealing food behind her back.

The situation was becoming untenable. Not only was he beginning to feel like the creep she had painted him as, but he was also even more sexually frustrated than he’d been while in Europe on assignment. And then there was that fact that he’d managed to get exactly zero answers to the question of Lacey’s real identity.

But two Sundays after he moved in, he had major break through in the case. Lacey had left early in the morning. Where? He didn’t know, since it was her day off. He’d been tempted to follow her, but decided to use the opportunity to search her office instead.

The good thing about trying to get under someone’s skin was that he didn’t have to bother being discreet.

He moved papers and furniture, looking for clues, making it so Lacey would definitely know he’d been snooping around.

Lacey had shown Dexter and him the contents of the safe in her office while giving them the tour. It consisted of stacks of the money she’d referred to as “miscellaneous funds” but was no doubt money being laundered through the club. And there was nothing of note on her computer.

However, there was a locked drawer.

Suro easily picked it and slid open the drawer to reveal nothing except a stapler, some rubber bands, and other office supplies. He slammed it closed in frustration, but then allowed his usual calm to steal over him.

Why would someone lock up office supplies?

He opened the drawer again, this time pulling it all the way out and looking underneath. He tapped its bottom and his mouth quirked up when the wood emitted a hollow sound. The bottom was false.

He made quick work of getting into the hidden space and finding its contents: a solitary safety deposit box key. It was a small thing, but Suro had the feeling it held more importance to Lacey than its size conveyed.

He slipped the key into the pocket of his jacket. He’d just hold on to it, he decided, and see what happened next.

CHAPTER 11

“I’M
eighteen now, Daddy, you can’t tell me what to do!” she screamed at her father. They were having yet another argument about Hector.

“Maybe, but I still get to decide who I serve up in my shop. Don’t you bring that boy around here again!”

“You embarrassed me so bad. I can’t believe you kicked him out!”

“I’m going to do more than that if he ever show his face around here again. Now lower your voice. We don’t need the customers all up in our business. I’m already embarrassed about you bringing that hoodlum here,”

They were in the backroom of the restaurant, but her father’s place was small. It’d be easy for the customers to hear their argument if she didn’t do as he said.

But she rolled her eyes. Her father acted like his business wasn’t located on Hermitage Avenue, one of the most notorious areas in West Trenton. “You mean unlike all these upstanding gangstas you get coming through here?” she asked, only slightly lowering voice. “And he’s not a hoodlum. He got into Rutgers, just like me, and he’s made the Dean’s List every year he’s been there.”

“Just cuz he dress nice and talk like a white boy don’t mean he ain’t a hoodlum.” Her father folded his beefy arms across his chest.

She let out a strangled sound of frustration. It was like talking to a brick wall!

“You can’t judge him on who his father is,” she said. “Hector
junior
is a good person, an upstanding student, and he loves me! The rest of it doesn’t matter.”

Her father shook his head at her. “This is my fault. I let you read all them romance novels when you was a kid, and now you gone and lost your damn mind. That boy’s father is the head of the Dominican mafia, Tasha. I got to pay him protection money just to keep his gangstas from busting the place up.”

“Hector said he’d talk to his father about that. You won’t have to pay anymore.”

“So now you think I should be grateful you seeing that little good-for-nothing, because I might not have to pay money I shouldn’t been paying in the first place?”

“No, you’re putting words in my mouth,” she smoothed a hand over her relaxed hair, which was pulled into a ponytail. “I’m saying Hector is kind and thoughtful and nothing like his father.”

Her own father picked up his mixing spoon and pointed it at her. “Apples don’t fall far from the tree,
cher
. Especially when that tree be rotten to the core. You listen to me on that now.”

Lacey awoke with a gasp, her heart beating rapidly in her chest. Memory dreams were the worst, especially this particular one involving her father. She always woke up from them feeling both sad he was no longer alive and guilty she hadn’t had the good sense to listen to him.

She looked over to the other half of the bed, which was now empty. At least she didn’t have to deal with Suro. He was already up doing his morning exercises.

She got out of bed and gathered up her clothes for the shower. She was still kicking herself, because it hadn’t occurred to her until the night before, while once again having trouble falling asleep across from a naked Suro, that she could go stay with Tony.

Tony had a two-bedroom condo in Edison Park, and he probably wouldn’t mind the company. One thing was for certain, something had to give. As much as she’d tried not to show it, the sudden return of recurrent memory-dreams proved it. Living with Suro was driving her crazy.

It wasn’t just his insisting on coming to bed naked, or that he was always there, which meant she hadn’t had sex with anything human or mechanical for almost two weeks, but she was also getting used to having him around.

She hadn’t realized how lonely she’d been living by herself until Suro came along and somehow filled up the apartment with his mostly silent presence. To her surprise, she’d easily gotten used to seeing his grooming products in their mostly black and grey bottles next to her pastel-colored ones on the bathroom sink and in the shower caddy. She’d also gotten used to having company while she watched television to unwind at night and had even started picking programs she thought they might both enjoy, even though Suro never said anything either way. And though she acted like she was put out by the fact that he ate everything she made with great gusto, it secretly gave her a thrill.

Sparkle didn’t like any kind of spicy food, so it was good to see someone else appreciating her father’s recipes. He’d raised her on traditional New Orleans cuisine, and cooking it helped alleviate some of her guilt that his recipes hadn’t died with him. Now somebody other than her knew what a great cook he had been.

She found herself wondering what her father would have thought of Suro, who came from the other side of the world but had the same quiet steadiness he did. Then she pushed those thoughts away.

Suro, whether he knew it or not, was wearing her down, and that more than anything struck her as dangerous. So on Sunday morning, she got up, pretended to ignore Suro doing his morning exercises, and made a special trip to Tony’s favorite donut shop.

She showed up at his condo with coffee and a half dozen chocolate glazed, only to have a surprised young man in a t-shirt and pajama bottoms answer Tony’s door.

“Hi,” she said, non-plussed. “I’m here to see Tony. Are you his nephew or something?”

“No, I’m his tenant,” the guy answered with a big, yawning stretch. “Moved in about a week ago.”

Lacey frowned. “But where’s Tony then?”

The guy shrugged. “No idea. I met him a couple of times, but now he’s using a management company to run the place, and that’s who I’m paying rent to.”

Lacey shook her head, both disappointed and confused. “Well, I guess you can have these then.”

She handed him the coffee and donuts, and the guy’s tired face lit up. “Coffee and donuts?” He took a sip of the coffee. “Sweet! Thanks!”

“You’re welcome,” she said, and turned to go, still wondering why Tony would move without telling her and what he had done with the money she’d given him for her and Sparkle’s new identities.

But then the guy called out behind her, “Hey, you’re not Lacey are you?”

She turned back around. “Yes, I’m Lacey.”

“Oh, sorry. Tony said this girl name Lacey from his old strip club might stop by, and he left a letter for you. But I thought you’d look like, you know, a stripper. No offense.”

“None taken,” she said.

“Hold on.” He crammed a donut in his mouth before disappearing back into the apartment.

A few minutes later she was sitting on the stoop of Tony’s old building reading the letter he had left behind. She had to squint hard at his chicken scratch writing to decipher it.

Sorry, kid. I know it’s not nice to disappear like I did, but I never been a goodbye kind of guy and I didn’t want it to get too touchy-feely. I left the materials we was talking about and some extra money for you and Sparkle in the box. Once I figure out where I’m going to be staying, I’ll try to send you a postcard or something.

Your friend,

Tony

It was a simple letter, but Lacey found herself raising her hand to her mouth and crying after she read it. She had just lost the only other man on earth she cared about and she hadn’t even known he’d left the city.

Thoughts of her real father, the other man she had lost, filled her head on the El ride home. She could still see him now, kissing her and his granddaughter, who Lacey had originally named Darla, goodbye before they left for her first under-the-table job as a daycare worker in West Philadelphia.

She should have returned home around six that evening. But just as she was about to unlock the apartment door—Darla balanced carefully on one hip—she remembered she’d left some important documents in the car…documents she was supposed to return to Lacey Winters, the retail clerk who lived across the hall with her two-year-old daughter, Sparkle. Lacey, who had dreams of getting into college but didn’t want to bother with GED classes, had paid her a thousand dollars to take the GED test for her the previous day, giving her two forms of ID to pull the fraud off.