Sunset Beach(43)

“I ain’t got time for this,” the woman said. “And what good will it do anyway?”

“It might not do any good at all,” Drue heard herself say. “But I’d like to try, if you’d just let me come out and talk to you.”

“I don’t know,” Yvonne said. “Every time I get myself all worked up over this thing, I just get slapped in the face. I’m home from work right now, because Aliyah’s been sick.”

“I could come after I get off work,” Drue said eagerly. “Would six o’clock be all right?”

“Be fine,” Yvonne said.



* * *



The Lyft driver gave Drue a dubious look over her shoulder. “Hon? You sure this is where you wanted me to take you?”

They were in a neighborhood full of boarded-up abandoned homes and shabby duplexes. Yvonne Howington’s home was a single-story yellow stucco bunker bedecked with stout burglar bars. The yard was weed-choked with a single huge jacaranda tree, whose arching branches with purple blossoms nearly brushed the ground.

Drue looked at the address she’d typed into the Lyft app. “Yes, this is it.”

“Okay,” the driver said. “But I’m not sure this is a real safe neighborhood.”

She nodded toward a group of teenagers loitering on the corner, passing around a joint.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Drue said, climbing out of the backseat.



* * *



A set of frazzled exposed wires were the only sign of a doorbell. Drue was about to knock when she heard a deadbolt being slid open. The door opened three inches and Yvonne Howington peered out from behind a chain lock.

“Shh,” she said, opening the door and nodding toward a sofa where Aliyah was curled up under a pink blanket, dozing. “She had a bad night. Come on in the kitchen.”

A window air-conditioning unit blasted cold air into the living room, but the tiny kitchen was oppressively hot. A standing fan directed warm air at the dinette set where Yvonne directed her to sit.

“Okay,” she said, folding her hands on the table. “What do you want to know? I already talked to two other lawyers and ain’t none of them say they can do anything about what happened to my baby girl. Say their hands are tied.”

Looking at Yvonne Howington, Drue was struck by how beaten down she seemed. Her skin, coated in a fine sheen of perspiration, had an unhealthy ashy cast, there were large bags under her eyes and her mouth was bracketed by sagging cheeks. Only forty-eight, she looked twenty years older.

“Tell me everything you know about the night Jazmin was killed,” Drue said.

Yvonne gave Drue a curious look. “Does your daddy know you’re here?”

“No,” Drue said. “In fact, he told me to stay completely away from this case.”

Yvonne got up and went to the refrigerator, reached in and pulled out a can of orange Shasta. “You want something to drink?”

“Maybe just a glass of water,” Drue said.

Yvonne poured tap water into a glass and cracked three ice cubes into it. “Water’s better for you, but I got to have my orange soda,” she said, returning back to the table.

“Okay. So the day it happened. Jazmin called to tell me her car broke down on the way to work, guess that was around two-fifteen. She was supposed to be at the hotel at two. She left the car and called a cab to get there. And that’s the last time I talked to her.”

Yvonne grasped her soda can with both hands. “I fussed at her, told her she needed to save up and get her a good reliable car, and she just told me, ‘Mama, don’t worry about me. I got plans, and pretty soon me and Aliyah are gonna have a new car and a house of our own.’”

“What do you think she meant by that?” Drue asked, scribbling notes.

“Don’t know. That girl was always dreaming big dreams.”

“She didn’t have a boyfriend? Maybe someone to help her out financially?” Drue asked.

“She was going out with somebody, but she wouldn’t tell me his name or anything else. Said it was too early. But she’d get herself all fixed up on her night off, when they were going to meet. And she didn’t come home ’til way late those nights.”

“No idea who he was?” Drue asked, intrigued.

“No.”

“Okay, let’s go back to that night, September fifteenth. You said before that Jazmin complained about some man at work bothering her. What did she mean by that?”

“She said this man came around when she was by herself. Like, if she was cleaning a room, he’d come in there and close the door, and say things to her.”

“What kind of things?”

Yvonne took a swig of soda and looked away. “At first she said he just told her how nice she looked that day. She said it made her feel funny. And then he started saying, well, sex stuff to her. Things he wanted to do to her. Or have her do to him.”

“Did she ever report that to management?”

“She said she told one of the bosses,” Yvonne said.

“Which boss? In housekeeping, or personnel, somebody like that?”

Yvonne scrunched up her face as she thought. “Maybe personnel? Doesn’t matter, because whoever it was told her she should quit dressing so sexy at work. Sexy! She wore jeans and a top the hotel gave all the housekeepers. You tell me what’s sexy about that.”