Mama Cracks a Mask of Innocence (18 page)

“Let’s find Stone to see if his class ring is missing a diamond,” she said introspectively.

I stopped at a gas station and filled my tank. Our trip was on the other side of the county, a few miles from Masonville, not far from where Brenda’s body was found.

Mama opened her purse and began digging into it again.

“What are you looking for this time?” I asked.

“That picture that fell out of Brenda’s books when Dolly gave them to us. It was a picture of Stone and two other boys in the Hot Chocolate Café.” Once she had the small photo, she looked at it, then back at me. “Let’s check this place out first,” she told me. “Maybe we can catch up with Stone without having to go to his house.”

We headed for the Hot Chocolate Café, a place where Mama told me most of the teenagers hung out. On one side of the columns was a large empty space. I imagined that was where the kids danced. On the other side was a pool table, and a few tables and chairs. Two or three signs stated No Alcohol Served. I don’t know whether my mother heard me snicker as I thought of my own high school experience. A teenager could get a shot of whiskey at
places like this if she said the right words to the right person.

Several boys were playing cards at two of the tables. They were laughing, and having a lot of fun.

A woman in her early fifties was sweeping the floor.

Mama addressed the woman. “Hello, Gladys.”

“Hi you, Candi?”

“Very well, thank you. Gladys, I’m looking for Stone Washington. Have you seen him today? I’d like to talk to him.”

The boys at the table stopped laughing and looked up, then, in a more quiet and serious mood, they went back to their game.

“You didn’t pass him? He left two minutes ago,” Gladys told Mama.

Mama shook her head. “Did he say where he was going?”

“Any of you boys remember where Stone say he was heading?” Gladys yelled.

“Home,” one of the boys said, without bothering to look up at us again.

We went back to my Honda and headed in the direction Mama told me Stone lived. This section of town was owned by one of Otis’s well-to-do citizens who, in the past few years, decided to build small wood-framed houses and then rent them out. Stone and his mother lived near the junction that cuts off into a two-lane highway toward Columbia. When
we pulled into his front yard, the smell of pork chops scented the air.

I sat in the car and left the engine idling while Mama knocked on the door. A woman in her forties with dark eyes, shoulder-length unpermed hair that she wore in a ponytail, a pair of black-rimmed glasses, and an orange dress answered the door. “Miss Candi,” the woman greeted my mother.

“It’s good to see you, Lizzie.”

“This is sure a surprise. What brings you here?”

By this time I’d joined Mama on Lizzie’s front porch. Before Mama had a chance to tell her what she wanted, the phone rang.

Lizzie beckoned us inside. “Come on in.” She ducked back into the house. We eased in the front door into a neatly furnished living room and sat on the couch. Directly opposite the couch was an open door that showed us a small bedroom. The bedroom wasn’t very big, maybe twelve feet by ten. The bed was unmade. A large TV sat on a stand. You’d think a tornado had touched down in the room, the way the clothes were thrown around. I couldn’t help but think of Naomi and how glad I was when I put her on the plane back to Kansas City.

“Now, that’s a typical teenager’s room,” I told Mama.

“It’s quite different from Brenda’s room, isn’t it?” she said.

“Tootsie told us she cleaned the room, remember?”

Mama nodded, a thoughtful look in her eyes.

When Lizzie came back into the room, a sour expression was on her face. “My old man is too sickening sometimes. Wants me to run over there just ’cause he’s got a headache. Mind you, I can have pain from my head to my toe and he doesn’t think much of it. But let him hurt in one spot and I’m supposed to drop everything and go see about him.”

“We’re not going to stay long,” Mama assured her.

“Don’t matter how long you stay, ’cause I ain’t going over there until I get good and ready.”

“We were looking for your son.”

“Stone ain’t done nothing to you, has he?”

“No, no. I just wanted to talk to him.”

“He ain’t much for conversation of late. I ain’t had two words out of that boy for the past few weeks.”

“Do you have any idea where I might find him now?”

“At his old lady’s house,” Lizzie said.

“Stone has a girlfriend?”

Lizzie had a wary look in her eyes, like she wasn’t quite sure how she should tell us what was on her mind. “I’m Stone’s mother and I tried to raise him right. Ask anybody around town, and they’d tell you I tried to teach him right from wrong. But when a boy gets a certain age, he won’t let his mother tell
him what to do no more. That’s when his manhood starts calling, and that’s a dangerous time—he’s apt to get caught up in things that might not be fitting.”

Mama nodded, like she understood perfectly.

“I wanted Stone to go with girls his own age,” Lizzie continued. “Girls like him who don’t know much about life. He said they were too young, they couldn’t teach him anything.

“Candi, you mean to tell me that you hadn’t heard that Stone’s been going with Sonny Boy’s wife for over a year now?”

The shock on Mama’s face was clear; she shook her head mutely.

“I guess that’s because people were thinking he was hanging around that place because he was seeing Tootsie’s daughter. Tootsie buys him high-priced clothes, gold jewelry. Come over here and take a look in his room, you’ll see what I’m talking about.”

We followed Lizzie into the cluttered bedroom. Sure enough, the clothes we’d seen from where we were sitting on the couch weren’t cheap. We saw gold chains and bracelets. More important, we saw a class ring. It was conspicuously placed on top of the night-stand, its oval diamond no longer in its setting. Alongside the ring were also a few twenty-dollar bills. Sticking out from under the bed was a shoe box full of little plastic bags with the word “viper” written on them.

Mama and I threw each other a look.

“I don’t know where Tootsie gets so much money
from,” Lizzie continued, “but she doesn’t mind giving it to Stone. She even bought him a high-priced car and lets him keep it locked up in her garage.” Lizzie gave us a nasty little grin. “I’ve told my old man more than once that whatever my boy is doing for that old woman, she sure feels like it’s worth a lot of money.”

“I really need to talk to Stone,” Mama said, ignoring Lizzie’s remark.

Lizzie rubbed her forehead wearily. “Stone used to come home sometimes but since Tootsie’s daughter got killed, I hardly see him. If you want to get ahold of my boy, Tootsie is the woman to go see.”

T
ootsie Long was a pretty woman, I’ve already told you that. But her beauty was that of a woman, a full-grown woman. Nothing in her manner would’ve made you suspect that she had a thing for a teenage boy.

The idea of a grown woman sleeping with a teenager brought back the memory of a situation I’d known. One of the boys in my high school class, Kenny Press, was sleeping with a grown woman and she controlled his every move. She wouldn’t let poor Kenny go to any of the events that we went to because she was scared that he’d start talking to a girl his own age. When Kenny’s teenage niece came to visit his family, the woman made him stay at her house. She claimed the girl was really Kenny’s girlfriend. The whole thing got so out of hand that his family sent
Kenny away to another state just to break the hold this woman had on the poor boy.

We were back in my Honda, trying to get a fix on the situation. I looked at Mama, who stared out of the window toward the house. “I was suspicious of Tootsie the night she and Hattie came to the house,” she muttered. “Something struck me as odd about the relationship she had with her daughter.”

“Now that we know what’s going on between her and Stone, don’t you think it’s time to call in the cavalry—time to give Abe and Lew everything we’ve learned?”

A flash of irritation crossed her face. “No,” she answered quickly, “not yet!”

I didn’t understand Mama’s reluctance. “We know that only two students had the class ring with a diamond setting. We know Brenda’s ring is intact because we saw it, and we know that Stone’s ring is missing its stone, a stone you
shouldn’t
have picked up from Kitty Sharp’s living room. That’s enough for Abe and Lew to work through the details of the murders,” I told her. “What more is there for us to do?”

Mama’s manner was
very
brisk. “Simone, listen. I’ve already told you that something was stirring in the back of my mind, my instinct was prodding me.” Mama shifted impatiently. “That same instinct is screaming that with a little more effort we can get evidence that will put both a killer and a drug dealer behind bars for a long, long time. This time, I’m going to listen to it!”

“Stone Washington is the killer,” I said.

“But we don’t know who supplies him with the drugs.”

“Tootsie Long,” I contended.

“We can’t prove that.”

“Abe is now in charge of the case,” I continued. “Let’s talk it over with him.”

“No. We can’t be sure he won’t let Lew Hunter take things over again.”

I was unconvinced and Mama knew it but her eyes were focused on mine and I could see that her mental gears were working.

I took a deep breath. “Let’s talk this out.”

She cleared her throat and slipped her little notebook from her purse. “Okay, we’ve learned that Tootsie and Stone are lovers.”

“That may be why Tootsie was so evasive when we asked about Brenda’s friends.”

“And why she was anxious to learn whether or not Lew Hunter was looking for a black Jaguar.”

“The expensive car that had been hidden in her garage, the one Stone’s mother told us Tootsie Long had bought for her son.”

“What irritates me,” she said, “is that I should have known, from the look of Tootsie’s house with its stylish furniture, that she had a pretty good income.”

“An income without a job should have been a red flag,” I added.

“And then there was what Sabrina Miley had told
us. I should have paid more attention to her comment that she had a friend who’d seen Tootsie with a lot of money.”

“Questionable money,” I said.

After that, Mama was quiet for a moment. Finally, I glanced at my watch. The afternoon had turned into early evening. I understood what she wanted. It was more than turning Stone over to Abe and Lew. Mama wanted to nail Tootsie Long, the woman who while wearing a mask of innocence was ravaging Otis’s young people with drugs. “What happens now?” I asked.

Mama closed her notebook and slipped it back into her purse. “Let’s go to Tootsie’s house. Stone doesn’t know that we’re on to him but if we drop the right hints to Tootsie, she’ll let him know and he’ll no doubt get in touch with us. I’ll make sure Tootsie understands that we need to talk to Stone about both Brenda’s death and the drugs that are being sold on the school campus. That should get us some action. If this plan doesn’t work, I’ll call Lew and Abe first thing tomorrow morning and tell them everything we’ve learned. They can handle it after that.”

The look in my eyes must have told Mama that I wasn’t so sure our next move was a wise one because she reached over and patted my hands. “We’ll be all right,” she assured me. “I don’t think Stone or Tootsie would be so brazen as to try to kill us tonight.”

Mama, who is usually right, was totally wrong on this assessment.