Concealed in Death (In Death #38)(93)

“Best friends ever. Shelby, Mikki, T-Bone. I think I’d have faded away like air without them. Shelby and Mikki, they’re dead, aren’t they? Sebastian didn’t say, not right out, but I knew when we heard about . . . about what they found in The Sanctuary, I knew. I thought they just left me, and it broke my heart.”

“They didn’t just leave you.”

“It’s worse. So much worse knowing that. But it helps, the knowing.”

“You were going to have your own place, your own club—like Sebastian’s—in The Sanctuary.”

“How’d you know that?” Surprised, she stared at Eve when Derrick brought over a tray with tall glasses of water sparkling like the ceiling stars. “It’s all we talked about for days and days when we found out we were moving out. I was so scared, but I couldn’t admit it. Scared at the thought of being on our own, but excited, too. Best friends ever,” she murmured, and sipped her water when Derrick sat beside her.

“Who helped her get the forged documents, the paperwork to get out?”

“You know about that, too? I don’t know, not for certain. Shelby didn’t always tell us everything. She was the captain. She had power, but she had responsibilities. She said things like that.”

“She developed a relationship with Montclair Jones. The younger brother. Sexual?”

On a sigh, Lonna tipped her head to Derrick’s shoulder. “She didn’t see it as sex. She saw it as bartering, as currency. It took me a while to see it as different.” She smiled over at Derrick. “It took some doing for Shelby to draw Monty out. He was a little scared of her, and awful shy, but he was fascinated, too. And he wasn’t smart and straight like Mr. Jones or Ms. Jones. He didn’t seem all that much older than us, though I guess he was. Shelby gave him his first blow job, and was proud of that.”

On a wince, Lonna touched a hand to her heart. “God, that makes her sound awful. You have to understand—”

“I do. She’d been abused, over and over. She learned to survive in a way she thought gave her some control. She was a child who never had a chance to be one.”

“Most of us were.” The first tear slid down Lonna’s cheek.

“Don’t cry, baby.”

“I have to, a little. Shelby never got a chance to be happy, like I did. And Mikki, she was so needy, so angry. But my God, she loved Shelby. Loved her too much, in a way I see now Shelby could never have given back. We followed her, and she gave us direction, she gave us . . . family. We’d hook up with Sebastian’s club sometimes, for fun, for the company. And because you could learn a lot. He said you weren’t going to hassle me about the things I did back then.”

“I won’t. I understand that, too.” To cover it, she shifted her attention to Derrick, just for a moment. “Nobody’s going to hassle Lonna.”

“First time you do, I show you the door.”

“Fair enough. You brought a girl to Sebastian,” she said to Lonna. “This girl.” And laid Merry Wolcovich’s photo on the table. “Do you remember?”

“I do. I don’t remember her name, and it turned out she was mean as a snake. But I brought her to Sebastian when I came across some boys giving her trouble. She was giving it back, but they had her outnumbered, so I stepped in.”

“You always do.”

She laughed a little at Derrick’s comment. “I was a fighting fool back then. Shelby taught me how to handle myself, so I pushed right into those boys, went after the meanest one—you can always tell. Take him out, I figured, the rest’ll run off. And that’s how it was. Then I took her to Sebastian because she was alone.”

She ran a finger over the edge of the photo. “She’s one of them, too. In the building.”

“Yes. You tried to help her, but she didn’t stay with Sebastian.”

“Mean as a snake,” Lonna repeated. “But she was just a kid. She hung with us a little while—mostly with Shelby—but she left, and I didn’t see her around anymore.”

“Did she leave before or after Shelby?”

“Oh, let me think about that. It must’ve been after. I snuck back to Sebastian’s a couple times, hoping to find Shelby there, but she wasn’t. It seems to me this girl was, then she wasn’t.”

“Okay. How about this girl.”

At Eve’s signal, Peabody put Shashona’s photo on the table.

“Not one of us,” Lonna said slowly. “Maybe I saw her around—she’s sharp-looking, isn’t she? I wonder . . . did she sing?”

“Yeah.” Connection, Eve thought. “Yeah, she did.”

“That’s it then. Sharp-looking girl, good voice. We sometimes snuck off to Times Square, and I’d sing for the tourists. They’d put money in the box. This girl here, I remember how she came by, sang with me. Just picked up the song—don’t remember which—with the harmony.

“Shelby, Mikki, they couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. T-Bone was okay at it, but he wouldn’t sing out on the street. But this girl stopped—I’d seen her around before, but more up our way, I think. And she’d seen me. I could tell, the way you do.”

“You’d seen her before,” Eve pressed. “Near The Sanctuary?”