And Now She's Gone(104)

“Grayson Sykes. I’m a private investigator and I’m looking for your cousin.” And then Gray told a story about Isabel, Ian, Kenny G., and a check that sat in a safe waiting to be cashed.

Alicia said, “Isabel.”

“But that’s not her birth name, is it?”

The woman shook her head. “So, she’s alive?”

“Depends on what you consider ‘alive.’”

Alicia rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Want a drink? Lemonade, soda, water? I’m thinking something with rum is required.”

Gray liked Alicia. And as Alicia whipped up a pitcher of hurricanes, Gray wandered the small living room, taking in the prints from Kara Walker’s The Emancipation Approximation, with those silhouettes of black women being attacked by white swans.

In the kitchen, Alicia talked to someone on the phone. “Auntie, you won’t believe this … A woman found me on the internet.… Yeah, I know, but hey … Guess who’s alive?”



* * *



Isabel Lincoln had been born in Oakland as Deanna Kelly, on November 1, 1972. She was now forty-six years old.

“We were really close,” Alicia recalled. “Up until middle school, we were like sisters.” She pulled a photo album from a credenza. The pages smelled of old glue and wood smoke.

There was Deanna and Alicia splashing in a wading pool, wearing matching kiddie bikinis, sun reflecting off their squinting faces.

There was Deanna and Alicia in matching majorette uniforms, white boots with green-and-black pom-poms bouncing on the laces.

There was Deanna and Alicia wearing stonewashed jeans, posing on the Golden Gate Bridge. Fake Gucci bags. Blow Pops. Frosted hair. Bamboo earrings.

“And then,” Alicia said, “she lost her mind. Like something in her just—” She snapped her fingers. “She started running with these badass kids in the eighth grade. Called themselves the Five-Point-Oh Crew cuz they loved that five-liter Mustang? They used to rob us, jump us on the way home from school … Bunch of thugs.

“The leader—his name was Xavier Vargas—he was gorgeous. Green eyes. Wavy hair. Everybody thought he was gonna make it to the NBA, but then he raped some girl over in Richmond. He got away with it, though, cuz he played ball.

“Anyway, him and the rest of Five-Point-Oh became Dee’s new friends. She started dealing drugs and carrying guns, calling herself the female Scarface and shit like that. Of course, she got nabbed a few times, giving my aunt Carol a fit. So she was in and out of California Youth Authority. And then Dee left and never came back.”

Alicia squinted as she sipped her cocktail. “Honestly? The family was kind of glad, cuz we could start breathing and living without her crazy bullshit. I hate to say it, but I wanted her to stay gone.” Alicia stared into her glass. “Guess she’s still trying to be the female Scarface?”

Before Gray could respond, the doorbell rang.

The woman standing on Alicia’s porch was slender and had long silver hair. Her flushed skin was butter yellow and her bloodshot eyes were the color of wheat. As she and Gray exchanged names, Gray heard the lilt in Carol Kelly’s voice. She’d heard that same lilt down in Alabama. Those cheekbones, that broad forehead … the distressed older woman had the same face as the younger one Gray had hoped to find since July 11.

Alicia brought Carol a glass of 7-Up, along with a plate of pound cake for the room.

“I had no clue where my daughter went.” Carol had finally stopped crying and now dried her eyes with a napkin. “I reported her missing the December after she’d graduated from high school. The police told us that, since she was eighteen, I couldn’t force her to come home.”

“We still searched for her,” Alicia added, “even after we realized she wasn’t gonna come back. No one’s seen her or has heard from her since.”

“Tell me,” Carol said, squinting at Gray, “who did she become?”

“First, Elyse Miller,” Gray said, “and then Isabel Lincoln. She was working at UCLA before she disappeared.”

Carol canted her head. “You said Isabel Lincoln? We knew an Isabel…” She turned to Alicia. “Youth Ministries … The pen pal…”

Alicia squinted. “Oh … Yeah. I remember her.”

Gray sat up. “What? Who is she?”

“There was a moment,” Carol said, “that Dee was in and out of juvenile detention, and as part of rehabilitation, there was this pen pal program with a church. Dee’s pen pal lived down in Los Angeles. She was only ten or eleven back then … Oh, what was the church’s name?”

“Mount Gethsemane?” Gray asked, thinking of the church near Dulan’s, the soul food joint.

Carol made a face and shrugged. “Anyway, Dee would receive these letters, and eventually she got out of CYA and the letters would come to the house. Dee eventually disappeared, but the letters kept coming. I opened a few, hoping that there was some clue to where she’d gone. But no, nothing. The pen pal, her name was Isabel and she lived—”

“In Inglewood,” Gray said, face numb.

“And she wanted to go to UCLA, and in one of the letters she was upset cuz her auntie was going blind and she had to take care of her.”

“And then,” Carol said, “the letters stopped.”