Soft Hearts, page 24
I was nervous. If Wo was going to react so dramatically to each and every one of the paintings, I wasn’t sure those of us watching could endure it. Mercifully, she quickly scanned several of the sculptures and ended at the room’s far end where the exhibit’s most complex work, Jazz, held court.
Looked at from one angle, it was a celebration. Regarded another way, it seemed gruesome, like a cadaver. The effect was similar to when I first saw Michelangelo’s David in person in the great Duomo in Florence, Italy. From a distance, the shepherd boy appeared brave and noble; up close, he looked absolutely terrified. To me it was what embodied the best of all art: an ability to capture complexity within a startling unity.
Wo slowly opened her arms, as if to receive the imagined sound of Jazz. She turned slowly, as if showering in the work’s aura, her face rapturous. She finished by lowering herself into a lotus position directly facing the piece.
The rest of us went back to the pieces we had already viewed, making sure we hadn’t missed something the first time around.
At some point Wo began revisiting all of the works, pressing very close to each of the pieces’ object labels—though it was unclear exactly what she was doing. Was she missing her glasses and needing to read them up close?
Having completed her enigmatic task, Wo walked over to Otis, bowed, and said, “Thank you, sir. ’Tis a marvelous show.”
“You’re very welcome, Child.”
Wo handed Augusta a sheet of paper and disappeared through the black drapes in as dramatic a manner as she’d arrived. Wash rushed to catch up with her.
The whole time Wo was in the room, Augusta had maintained a skeptical expression. I went up to her. “What did that crazy girl hand you?”
Augusta looked at the paper in her hands. “Pricing stickers, looks like.” Otis’s niece stepped forward to examine the object label for Birth. Confused, she stepped over to the next piece, then reported back. “Ghost Girl placed a zero near each of the price tags. Just what is she up to?”
I checked the next two paintings and confirmed it. Wo had placed a tiny zero sticker above each of their $1,000 price tags. Was a zero her “Zorro” mark, and she was somehow claiming these paintings for herself? That would be unusual, if not downright insulting.
Jasmine, who had been following our investigation, rushed to the far end of the hall, checked something else, then rushed back. “She placed two zeroes on the label for the largest painting.”
Confused myself, I looked at Augusta—and was surprised to catch her smiling. “I see what that girl did. Pops,” August said, grabbing her grandfather’s shoulder, “she’s saying you should charge ten thousand for most of the pieces, but a hundred thousand for Jazz. Are you gonna be alright with that? You won’t take my advice, so will you take the advice of another ar-TEEST?”
Otis took his time thinking about it.
“I guess so,” Otis finally said.
“Praise Jesus!” cried Augusta, acting like she’d won her first argument ever with her grandfather. “Then that’s what we’re going to do! Where’s my man Ricky?”
Freddy’s assistant stepped out of the shadows.
“Ricky, we need to update the pricing on these paintings right away.”
The young man looked to Freddy, who nodded assent. “I’ll get right on it,” Ricky said.
The others congratulated Otis on his show before returning to their jobs at Needless Necessities. While Ricky tended to the pricing, Freddy and I lingered to talk.
“Wow,” I said, “now the whole lot is priced at over $200,000.”
“I guess the bake sale won’t be necessary now?” Freddy said.
“Knowing Sally, she’ll still have it. But, if even just one these paintings sells, it might start a new sustainable trend at Needless Necessities.”
Freddy said, “Let’s just hope the public shows up—and appreciates the level of genius that’s on display here.”
“And if they don’t…” I let out the mock sound of a baby’s wail.
Augusta was waiting for me outside the pre-show area, looking troubled.
“I just got off the phone with Trent,” she said. “He’s starting to feel hopeless. I’m beginning to worry about his mental health. He acts tough, but he’s just a kid.”
“Are you still convinced that he has nothing to do with this crime?”
“In my bones,” she said. “Some trick-or-treater saying they saw someone dressed like a dragon? Something that lame could get my cousin charged with murder? And some people wonder why Black people run from the police.”
I had a thought. “If only I could get in touch with those trick-or-treaters again; I’d like to ask them some more questions. Maybe they saw something they didn’t think was important. Or maybe they were too scared to tell the police everything they saw.”
Augusta asked me to describe the group of children and what names I remembered. She got on the phone with a family friend, shared the same information—and then gave the grapevine time to do its work.
About a half hour later Augusta found me in the paints section.
“You still want to meet with those kids?”
“I do. Do they live far?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll leave my car here and ride with you.”
Along the way we were forced to stop at a light. KayLeigh Rider: “Your Real Estate Friend” stared down at me from her billboard perch.
“Bitch won’t stop following me,” I muttered.
Augusta’s gaze snapped to her rearview mirror. “Who’s following us?”
“No, the girl on the billboard,” I said. “She happens to be my husband’s mistress.”
Augusta hunched down so she could see.
“I can already tell I would not like her,” she said.
“Why not? She’s very pretty, very charming. And, any day now, very wealthy.”
“Home Girl wants to take the vacation without the baggage. She wants to look Black, but she’s no better than those bronze-faced, plumped-lipped influencers.”
“I would never have thought of her as Black,” I said, surprised. “Do you really think she is?”
“No. She’s just using that Egyptian Queen look to her advantage. See, Miss Exotica can shed that when she wants, but it gets the rest of us arrested.”
The houses in the children’s neighborhood were strikingly small, 1970s era, back when people’s ambitions weren’t so grandiose and the mortgage interest rates were ten times higher. These were the types of homes all but gone from the wealthier parts of town, torn down to make way for the sort of garish monstrosities KayLeigh and Allan preferred. I knew better than most, because for years I’d rented the wrecking ball.
We parked in front of one of the houses. Shauna’s aunt, the woman I’d last seen holding a pink tutu, was waiting for us on the front porch.
“Hello again,” I said nervously. “I’m Harriet, but you can call me Rett.”
“I’m Tameka. But you can call me Meka.”
That released some of the tension as we both chuckled.
“Come in,” Meka said. “The boys are playing. Tameisha’s not here. She’s at a friend’s.”
“What about the little one, your niece?” I said. “Is she here?”
“Shauna’s here. But she’s scared. She didn’t like talking to the police.”
“I’m not the police,” I said. “I hope she knows that.”
We stepped inside the home’s foyer. The house was loud with children running and yelling. A Nerf Gun battle was in play.
Meka led us into the den, where Shauna, the five-year-old, was sitting on a sofa with a number of dolls and stuffed animals. She was cute as pie. Pretty brown eyes. Pudgy cheeks. Her hair had been made into several pigtail braids with colorful beads.
“Hi, Shauna,” I said. “I almost didn’t recognize you without your cute ballerina costume.” She remained still and looked at me askance. “My name’s Rett. How are you today?”
“Good,” she said softly.
“She’s usually pretty quiet,” Meka said. “Let me get them boys so you can talk to them, too. Isaiah! Curtis! Come on in here!”
Their play only got louder.
“Y’all stop the horseplay and come sit down! This nice lady wants to ask you some questions.”
The play noise sputtered and the boys ran into the den, racing to get the prime chair—the leather recliner. When they both couldn’t fit, they decided to share the loveseat instead.
I sat in a chair across from Shauna and the boys. Augusta took the recliner, while Meka continued to stand sentinel.
“So,” I said, “I don’t know if you all remember me, but we met Halloween night when you came to my friend’s front door for candy. Do you remember? I think it was one of the last houses you might have been to. We talked about why the police were in the neighborhood.”
“I remember,” said Isaiah, the slightly older of the two boys, the Pee Wee football player on Halloween.
“I remember, too,” said Curtis, the former pirate. “A lady was stabbed!”
“Yes, that’s right,” I said, “though I didn’t tell you that. You must have learned that on your own.”
“People was talking about it,” Curtis said.
“The next day,” clarified Isaiah.
“I just wanted to ask you about that night. What do you remember seeing? Go back in your head to that afternoon, to the moment you entered the neighborhood. What do you remember?”
Isaiah: “There was a party.”
Curtis: “Yeah, there was a party.”
Isaiah: “We wanted to go to it, but Tameisha wouldn’t let us. Said it was for white folks, not us.”
I wanted to point out that not everyone at the party was white. But most of them were, so it probably would have looked like an all-white party to the children.
“Start at the beginning,” I said.
Curtis said, “Mama dropped us off, and we kind of, you know, went down that little street behind the houses. But there weren’t any front doors.”
“Just back doors,” Isaiah said.
“You were in the alley,” I said. “Did you stop at any of the back doors?”
“No,” said Isaiah. “Well, we stopped once, because Shauna was laggin’ way behind. She was always laggin’ behind while we trick-or-treated.”
“I wasn’t laggin’!” Shauna jumped in.
“Yes, you were,” Isaiah argued.
Meka entered the fray. “Isaiah, enough. Go on, Rett. Keep asking questions. Augusta said that you might find out something to clear that boy, Trent Jones. His grandmama is a friend of my mama’s. They go way back.”
I asked the boys, “When you stopped, or even before that, did you see anybody?”
“No,” Isaiah said. “I guess everybody was having fun at the party.”
Curtis: “Might of been nice to go to that party.”
“I’ll make a deal with you three, and with Tameisha, too,” I said. “Next year when Halloween rolls around, all four of you are going to be my guests at that block party, okay?”
They looked at their mother. Curtis pleaded, “Can we go? Can we go?”
“We’ll see,” Meka said. “That’s a year away. You’ll forget all about it by then.”
“No, we won’t!”
“We won’t!”
“Now,” I said. “Think. Who, if anyone, did you see in that alley way?”
The boys looked at one another, scratching their heads.
Curtis asked sweetly, “If we didn’t see anybody, can we still come to the party?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Good,” Curtis said, “because I didn’t see nobody.”
“Me either,” said his brother.
“I saw him,” said the little girl slowly, softly.
Everyone in the room turned to face her.
“Who, Shauna?” I asked. “Who did you see?”
The girl was taking her time, milking it. With two rowdy older cousins, when did she ever get this kind of attention?
“Cluck,” she said, soft as silk.
“‘Cluck?’” I repeated. Now here was something I didn’t expect. Had I stepped into a knock-knock joke? “Who is ‘Cluck’?”
The little girl’s eyes started to wander to her right until her head turned and she was glancing over her shoulder at a bookshelf where also a number of several family photos were lined.
“Is the person’s picture in this room?” I asked.
She looked at me and nodded her head.
I cast a glance at Augusta. What if the girl was about to implicate a relative? Were we ready for such a development?
Augusta shook her head slightly, her expression a tense mixture of hope and skepticism.
I asked, “Will you show us who you saw, Shauna? Please?”
The little girl looked at her aunt.
“It’s okay,” Meka said soberly. “You can show her.”
The girl stood, slowly and deliberately, and approached the bookcase. I expected her to reach for one of the family photographs. Instead, she pulled down a large book and walked it back to her original seat among her dolls and animals.
The book took up her entire lap. Augusta and I leaned forward so we could read its title: Civil Rights in the South, 1945 to 1969.
We exchanged confused looks, then watched as Shauna opened the book and began turning the pages, slowly, as she watched our eyes.
“Do you know anything about this book?” Augusta whispered to Meka.
“That’s her Paw-Paw’s book. He looks at it sometimes.”
“Did your Paw-Paw show you this book?” Augusta asked Shauna.
“Yes.” She was still turning pages but looking at us, as if we might stop her at any point, like a human Ouija board. When she finally stopped turning pages, we looked where she landed.
We were staring at a full-page photo of a group of Ku Klux Klansmen, all wearing white hoods and robes. One of the men’s garb seemed more important than the others. It was this particular hooded figure, the one on the far left, that the little girl finally pointed to the photo’s cutline identifying him as the “Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, 1955.” In wizened hands, the man held a staff of some sort.
“There he is,” she said in the softest whisper. “Cluck…the Dragon!”
Augusta was the first to say it aloud, “Dang! That looks nothing like a real dragon. If anything, that Klansman looks like a ghost!”
Meka said, “Her Paw-Paw calls them old racist white folk the ‘Klu Kluck.’”
And this ‘Cluck’ was a clue. I pointed to the photo of the man and asked Shauna, “Is this definitely the sort of person you saw? Someone with a sheet like this?”
She nodded.
I looked at the picture again. The only visible skin, the only sign that it was a human being at all, were the Grand Dragon’s hands.
“By any chance did you see his hands?” I asked.
She nodded.
“What color were they?”
“Brown,” she said.
In the old photo, the hands were shadowed, dark. I wondered if Shauna was aware that the men under those sheets were white men who believed themselves superior to Black people in every way.
“Where exactly did you see him?” I asked.
“Behind the garbage can,” she whispered.
“What color was the garbage can?”
“Brown,” she said again.
Which could have been Skip and Stuart’s big rusty can; the city receptacles were green and blue.
I asked Shauna: “What did you do when you saw Cluck the Dragon?”
“Ran,” she said.
“That must have been a scary moment. Did Cluck try to hurt you?”
She shook her head.
“Did he say anything to you?”
Again, she shook her head.
“So, you just ran and joined your cousins?”
Shauna nodded.
“And that’s when we found the front doors with candy,” Isaiah cut in.
“Yeah,” said Curtis. “So it all worked out!”
“My, my,” I said to Augusta a few minutes later, once we’d spoken our thanks to Meka and walked to the car. “This means that the police have a lot less reason to suspect Trent. Heck, they wouldn’t have even found him if they had interviewed the little girl properly in the first place.”
“You got that right,” Augusta said.
I called Darryl on the way home to tell him what we’d discovered, that the littlest had seen someone who reminded her of a figure she’d seen in a book her grandfather had shown her—a Grand Dragon in the Ku Klux Klan, someone in a white sheet. Not a dragon dragon, but a KKK dragon.
“‘Klux’ sounds like ‘Cluck’ to a little girl,” I said. “That picture must have sure made an impression.”
Darryl was silent for an agonizingly long time.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
“I don’t know what to think,” he said. “Something doesn’t add up.”
“Exactly. You shouldn’t have been looking for someone in a dragon costume at all. You should still be looking for someone in a full ghost costume. Good luck with that. Could a Halloween costume get any more generic?”
“We know Trent’s been in that house, because his prints are there. He ran. There is the matter of the pills. And no reliable alibi.”
“All circumstantial. Like you said, nothing to tie him to the crime scene.”
It reminded me of people who held on to the stock of companies that were doomed for bankruptcy. They just couldn’t bear to sell at a loss.
Release Trent now, Darryl, and take the loss.
Darryl said, “I will keep the child’s new testimony in mind, I really will. Look, no one is going to go to prison for murder unless we can prove beyond a doubt that they committed it.”
“Wrongful convictions never happen?”
“I didn’t say that. They just don’t happen in my cases. Please trust me here. I’m not a bad guy who prosecutes innocent teenagers. And neither is our D.A.,” he added, though not as confidently as I would have liked.
