Nickel City Crossfire by Gary Ross (popular romance novels .txt) 📗

against asking her about her children because I didn’t want her to take it as a subtle threat. “What about Bianca? Think Keisha might have gone to her for help?”

“Bianca and me—we don’t keep in touch much anymore, but I think Keisha still sees her—saw her—from time to time. So, maybe. Yeah, Keisha might’ve got in touch with her. Are you gonna talk to her too?”

“She’s next on my list.”

“Will you tell her I said hi?”

Somewhere outside a car door slammed, hard.

“I will.” I put away my notebook without having opened it. “Thanks for your time, Fatimah. If Keisha does contact you, please give her my number and tell her I’d like to help her. The address for the flowers? It’s a law office. Phoenix Trinidad is a lawyer, a good one. She’s willing to help too. Whatever Keisha’s going through, she doesn’t have to face it alone. If you see her, tell her that.”

Just then there was movement in the back of the shop. A burly brown man with short hair and a close-cut beard stepped into the room. He was clad in khaki work clothes with a Flowers by Fatimah patch on his shirt pocket. Only glancing at me, he moved to the counter and handed Fatimah a small clipboard full of papers. “What’s next?”

“Only six this afternoon,” she said. “Four are ready to go.” She handed him another small clipboard. “I still gotta prep two. But I want you to take extra care with the last one.”

His brow furrowed. “I don’t understand.”

“Mr. Rimes here just ordered flowers for his special lady, and we want him to come back to us when it’s time for the wedding.”

The delivery man looked at me and smiled and stuck out his hand. “Congratulations!”

“Mr. Rimes,” Fatimah said, “I’d like you to meet my husband Isaiah.”

“Ike,” he said as we shook.

9

“If you see Fatimah again, tell her I said hi. But don’t do it if she’s with her husband. Ike Kelly is the reason she won’t have much to do with me these days.”

An imposing copper-skinned woman who wore mocha lipstick and nail polish, a well-tailored blue skirt suit, a platinum necklace, and a diamond-studded white-gold wedding band, Bianca looked every inch the manager of a jewelry store. I had reached the Hunnicutt counter on the first floor of the Walden Galleria and asked for Ms. Dawkins just as she was authorizing the return of a gold locket. She read my card as I explained why I was there. When she saw my eyes go to the ring on her left hand, she reassured me that she did use the name Dawkins and agreed to talk about Keisha if I treated her to lunch. Now she sat across from me at a table in the mall’s second-floor food court, ramrod straight and eating a salad and pita wedges from Souvlaki Brothers. I worked on a calzone from Sbarro.

“Isaiah doesn’t like you?”

“He thinks I’m a bad influence.”

“On Fatimah?”

“And their daughters.” She sipped Diet Pepsi through a straw but that action did nothing to reduce the tightness of her jaw. She leveled her eyes at me as she set down the cup. “He doesn’t like that I’m married to a cop.”

“That’s a bad influence?”

“A white cop.”

“Oh.”

“Named Jennifer.”

“Three strikes with a single swing,” I said. “From his point of view.”

“But a home run from mine. We were together five years before equality and were almost at the front of the line at City Hall afterward.” Then she retreated from the edge of her wistfulness. “Ike told Fatimah it was his Catholic upbringing. But I know better. It’s because I said no to a threesome a long time ago and he begged me not to tell her he asked.”

“You never told her?”

“That her husband is a lesbian fetishist who can’t believe I wouldn’t be interested in what he’s packing?” Bianca shook her head. “I’m an only child. In fact, Fatimah and Keisha are too. It helped us bond. They’re the closest thing I have to sisters. I’d slash a wrist before I hurt either one of them, even if we don’t see each other as often as we used to. Better to be there for Fatimah when she hits the brick wall than to drive her into it myself.”

“Back to Keisha.” I opened my notebook, which lay beside my paper plate. “When was the last time you saw her?”

“About two months ago. We had her and Odell over for dinner and game night.”

“Game night?”

Bianca smiled for the first time, and the tension in her shoulders began to lessen. “Jen is from this big Italian family. Game night started back in the Depression before her great-grandparents could afford a radio. Back then they had cards, checkers, chess, charades, maybe Monopoly.”

“No Scene It or Trivial Pursuit.”

“Or Cards Against Humanity.” She chuckled. “Game night is a lot less frequent today with their family spread all over the country and everybody glued to phones but it still happens. When Jen and I were just close friends, as her parents liked to say, she took me to a couple game nights. I fit right in, thanks to countless winter Saturday afternoons where we played board games with Keisha’s mom. It helped when Jen came out that I was already a fixture in her family and one of the top Scrabble players. They were more accepting of her, and us, than she expected. Of course, I can only imagine what Great-grandpa Spina would have thought of us. He might have preferred Cards Against Humanity.”

Something clicked, and it took me a moment to speak. “Spina? Your wife’s a cop named Spina?”

“Yes.”

“A sergeant. Tall, dark-haired.”

“Yes. Do you know her?”

“About six weeks ago I got shot. She was the one who took my statement in the hospital.”

Bianca’s eyes widened and the last filaments of her uneasiness slipped away. “Jesus Christ! The PI who got kidnapped after he brought in the cop-killer? That was you?”

I nodded.

“Talk about a small world.” She let out a long breath.