Cross Current - Kling Christine - Страница 44

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As I helped Solange unbuckle her seat belt, the porch light went on upstairs, and Jeannie appeared on the landing. “Hey, you. What took you so long? I’ve been trying to entertain Mr. Wonderful up here for a couple of hours now, and he’s been getting more and more charming by the minute. Get yourself and that kid up here.”

Damn. My chance to cover up the evidence had just evaporated. “Okay, we’re coming.”

Rusty came through the door just as we reached the top of the landing. I saw something in the way his face lit up when he saw me that told me he hadn’t come only on business. I was sorry that I was going to disappoint him.

In his green work uniform, with its patches and badges, leather belt and gun, he looked more intimidating than he had in his shorts. This was not a man to play around with.

He looked at Solange. “What the hell happened to this child?” he asked.

She was walking on her own, awake and alert, but in the bright glare of Jeannie’s porch light, it was clear her white dress had red polka dots.

“Calm down,” I said, and as I said it, I couldn’t help but think that those were the exact words Racine had told me less than an hour earlier. “Look at her.” Solange smiled up at me. “See?” I pointed to her smile. “It worked, so don’t gripe.” I smoothed her loose clean hair back from her brow, tucked it into her white headscarf. “And as far as I know, they’re going to eat the chicken.” Rusty’s jaw dropped.

Jeannie pushed Rusty out of the doorway and stood on the landing with her hands on her hips. “What chicken?”

I ignored her, tried to act like it was perfectly normal to come home after ten o’clock at night with a ten-year-old covered in chicken blood. “It’s not really that different from your going to Winn Dixie, when you think about it, except when you buy the chicken there, you don’t risk getting the blood on you.” Rusty hadn’t moved, he just continued to stare at me. Finally he said, “You took this child to some kind of animal sacrifice?”

“Well—”

Jeannie shook her head, took the girl’s hand, and said, “I’ll go wash her up and get her into some clean pajamas.” She fixed me with a stare over the top of Solange’s head and said in a soft voice, “You and I will discuss this later.”

“You didn’t answer me, Miss Sullivan,” Rusty said when Jeannie had disappeared through the door and down the hall. “Did you or did you not take that child to a place where they were engaged in animal sacrifice?”

“Oh Rusty, yes. Yes, I did. Okay? This is South Florida, though. Come on. You’d have a right to be that shocked in Omaha or Wisconsin or somewhere, but not here.”

“She’s got blood on her!” he yelled.

“And she’s Haitian,” I yelled back. “For Pete’s sake, man, down in Miami they’ve got a guy at the courthouse whose job it is to go out and pick the dead chickens up off the sidewalk every morning. Family members leave them when the prisoners are transferred from jail to court. Wake up, man. You’re not in Kansas anymore.”

He crossed his arms, his lips stretched thin. He stared at me for several seconds, letting the silence stretch out. “Are you finished?”

“Yeah, for now.” I stepped around him and walked into Jeannie’s living room.

Rusty followed me. “Seychelle, you don’t seem to understand that I am stretching the regulations very thin even to allow this child to stay in this home.” He reached out and put his hand on my shoulder. “What were you thinking?”

“You are so out of your element on this one, Rusty. Hell, we both are.” I spun away, out of range of his touch. “I’m not sure you and I have an explanation for what happened to her at the hospital the other night or out at Mambo Racine’s tonight. But didn’t you hear what I said? It worked. She’s talking again. And one thing I do know is that those people were not faking it. What I saw tonight—” I paused, not knowing how to explain it to him, how to give it the reality and the dignity I had seen. “Rusty, they believed completely. I’m not sure I'm ready to believe they were possessed by spirits, but it sure as hell was every bit as real as what your cousins up in the Georgia mountains do when they handle snakes and speak in tongues.” I crossed the living room and plopped down on the couch, leaned back, and closed my eyes. “Man, am I tired.” My stomach gurgled, and I pulled my arm across my belly to try to muffle the sound. “And starving. Haven’t eaten anything since about noon.”

Rusty walked over to the front door, crossed his arms again, leaned against the doorjamb, and stared out into the yard.

Jeannie had one of those couches with tons of throw pillows and cushions, and the cushions seemed to be pulling me down, relaxing me. I’d just about nodded off when I heard Rusty say something.

“What?”

“They’ll still be serving over at the Downtowner. Do you want to go over and grab a bite? I’ll buy if you’ll stop yelling at me and tell me what’s really going on with this kid.”

I opened one eye and looked up at him. I wasn’t thrilled about being seen with him in that uniform. Could scare off some of my clients who sometimes tread lightly on the wrong side of the law. But I was starving. “Conch fritters and fries?”

He lifted his cell phone off his belt and dialed a number. “Hi, it’s Rusty. Think you could pick me up at Cooley’s Landing in about ten?... Thanks.” He put away the cell phone, then reached for my hand to pull me up off the deep couch. “Let’s go. The Water Taxi’ll pick us up at the marina.”

I took his hand but let my body remain a dead weight. He had to strain to lift me up from those deep cushions.

“Man, you are heavy, Sullivan.”

“Wimp,” I said, and smiled as he pulled me to my feet, and I bumped into his left side, where the cold steel of his gun brushed against my arm. “Seeing as you are wearing a gun, however, I guess it’s Mr. Wimp.”

“Damn right.”

I stopped briefly to tuck Solange in like my mother used to do for me and wondered, as I kissed her forehead, why I was flirting with Rusty. As I passed by the master bedroom, I told Jeannie we’d be gone for about an hour.

Rusty came down the hall and motioned to me with a “let’s go” signal. I turned back to Jeannie.

“Thanks again, Jeannie. I know she’s better off with you than anywhere he wants to send her.” I cocked my head in Rusty’s direction.

“So I’m the bad guy, eh?” Rusty said over my shoulder.

“Yes,” Jeannie said. “Get over it.”

“Jeannie,” I said, “I’ve got a connection to the Miss Agnes from my visit to Pompano tonight. I’ll tell you all about it in the morning.”

“Sounds good. Animal sacrifice, Voodoo, secret meetings. I can’t wait.” She winked.

The walk to Cooley’s Landing Marina was only about three blocks, but being tired, I began to wish we’d taken the car. The Downtowner was on the other side of the river, and they had a large parking lot, so the car would have been easy. I feared we’d have a long wait for a Water Taxi.

Rusty sensed that I was not in a talkative mood. The streets were dark under the heavy canopy of old trees that covered most of Sailboat Bend.

“Over there,” Rusty said when we reached the marina parking lot, and he pointed to the boat idling at the dock next to the launch ramp. There were no other passengers aboard. “Hey, Carlos,” he said to the captain, a kid about twenty years old. “Thanks for the lift. This is Seychelle Sullivan.”

“Sullivan Towing? Gorda?"

I nodded.

“Thought I recognized you. Seen you go by on your boat a lot.”

“Carlos’s dad works with me at the Border Patrol.” He clapped his hand on the young man’s back. “We’ve been fishing together since this guy was in diapers.”

I leaned back and watched the lights of the parks and businesses downtown as we motored downriver. Too often lately, the river became just the place where I worked. It was pleasant being a passenger for a change, enjoying the view without worrying about bridges or currents or traffic.

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