And Now She's Gone(77)

Everyone on that part of Trail Spring Court knew each other’s names. But the neighbors didn’t know what Natalie and Sean Dixon had been doing before they answered the front door. Or maybe the neighbors had known and decided to keep quiet. Just bring the sandwiches and the bottles of rosé and the jokes and pray secret prayers that Sean wouldn’t kill his wife.

Mayberry: the most dangerous neighborhood in America.

Back over at the white house with the red roof, the front door opened. An older, vibrant-looking black woman with a short gray bob greeted Tea. Blind, she held a white cane and wore dark glasses. With that nicely tailored lilac skirt set and those sensible black shoes, she could have been a high school principal or the wife of a civil rights leader. She spoke, and whatever she said made Tea laugh.

A black Ford F-10 roared up Seventy-Seventh Street and into the driveway of the white house. It was the black Ford F-10, with those wheels and that metal bar and the engine that went bup-bup-bup. The bass boom of that new kind of rap that Gray knew nothing about rumbled from the truck’s speakers. Big Man, aka Bobby the Blood, climbed out from behind the steering wheel, clutching his phone along with two bags from In-N-Out and a large drink.

“Boy, you gon’ make me go deaf,” Coretta Scott King shouted. “Turn that down. I already can’t see for nothing.”

Bobby still wore the red jeans and red Clippers baseball cap from earlier that morning. This man, this Blood, lived with a woman who probably hung good African American art on her walls and knew people who were the first black everything.

He nodded “Wassup” to Tea.

The older woman slipped back into the house while Tea and Bobby stayed on the porch.

An ice cream truck playing “Three Blind Mice” rolled past Gray’s truck and she thought of chasing it down and buying every rocket pop in its freezer. Maybe the cold would numb the pain now sizzling around her navel.

The ice cream truck stopped at the end of the block. Kids poured out from every yard and rushed to the truck’s window.

Three blind mice,

Three blind mice,

See how they run.



And this case had proven that Gray had been as blind as those mice, even though she knew the answer sat inches away. She’d been looking for Isabel Lincoln and Kenny G. for a week now and had gone in circles … unless she’d been going in spirals, which meant she’d be soon coming to some kind of an end.

With the nursery rhyme playing and the whoosh of water from the old man’s garden hose, Gray couldn’t hear a word Tea and Bobby spoke. After three minutes of this, the old man dropped his hose and turned off the water. By now, though, Tea had climbed back into the green Altima and had raced toward the sun.

All of it—the heat, the driving, the noise—had jabbed at Gray’s nerves, and she wanted to pop. Instead, she muttered, “Fuck it,” then grabbed her binder and hopped out of the truck.

Last night, she’d been blonde and green-eyed, and Bobby had been high as hell. Today, she had short brown hair and big brown eyes. A different woman.

She knocked on the dusty screen door.

The clunk of a lock, the twist of a doorknob, and the creak of hinges, and from behind the screen door Bobby said, “You here to pick up Miss Robertson?”

From the house, the older woman shouted, “Is that my car?”

Gray said, “No,” and Bobby shouted, “No, Miss Robertson.”

He looked bigger than last night, more menacing in the shadows. He wouldn’t hurt Gray with Coretta Scott King floating between her journaling space and the altar to her ancestors.

Gray could smell onions and meat, Thousand Island dressing and mustard. And now she craved an In-N-Out Double Double, Animal Style. She showed her identification card. “I’m Gray Sykes and I’m hoping you can help me.”

Bobby took a bite from his burger. “You a cop?”

“No. A private investigator.”

“What’s the difference?”

“I will never be able to shoot you and get away with it.”

He laughed, and burger bits flecked the screen door. “I’m eating. Come back later.”

Ignoring his request, Gray said, “I’m looking for this woman.” She held up Isabel Lincoln’s picture, far from the door.

Bobby pushed open the screen door to peer closer at the photograph. There was a flash of recognition—an eyebrow lifted—but then that flame died and his poker face returned. His knuckles were bruised purple and swollen like sausages.

Had they been this way last night?

Bobby said, “I don’t know her.”

“You sure? Look closer. Take as long as you need.”

He didn’t. “Nope. Never seen her before in my life. Why you asking me, anyway?”

Gray slipped the picture back into the binder. “Someone told me that you were the last person to see her. And now she’s missing. Been missing since late May, early June. And again, according to my source, you saw her last.”

He sucked his teeth. “That’s impossible. I don’t let nobody borrow my truck.”

Blood rushed to her face—she hadn’t said anything about anyone borrowing his truck.

Bobby’s eyes narrowed. “Who told you that? That I drove her somewhere?”

“Can’t say.” Didn’t say.