I shook it, said, “The feeling’s mutual, Sergeant. I hope we see each other again someday.”
He smiled that crooked smile of his, said, “I’d like that.”
The bathroom door opened. Mrs. Striker came out in a beautiful nightgown and a new robe. She held a washcloth to her head.
“Can you help me downstairs?” she asked weakly. “I don’t want to receive visitors in my bedroom.”
“Of course,” I said, coming over and giving her my elbow.
She held on to it. Drummond stepped aside. We walked slowly out into the hallway. At the far end, beyond the stairs, hung a portrait in oil.
I had to hand it to Mize. As Coco, he had captured Pauline Striker at what must have been the pinnacle of her beauty and charm.
Chapter
74
Starksville, North Carolina
In the remodeled kitchen of the house where I grew up, Nana Mama stared at me blankly and said quietly, “Your father lived another two years?”
I nodded and gave her the rest of it, including the suicide, including a description of her son’s small tombstone.
My grandmother held a trembling fist to her mouth. With her other hand, she plucked off her glasses and wiped at tears.
“Why’d he kill himself?” she asked.
“Guilt? Grief? The aloneness?” I said. “I don’t think we’ll ever know.”
“He must have been the one.”
“What one?”
“The caller,” Nana Mama said. “For the first year or two that you lived with me, always around a holiday or, come to think of it, one of you boys’ birthdays, I’d get a call with no one on the other end. At first I thought it was just a mistake, but I’d hear things in the background, a television or music playing. And then the line would click dead.”
“When did that stop?” I asked.
“Around two years after you came to DC?”
The timeline fit, but before I could say so, Jannie rapped on the frame of the kitchen entrance. “We have to go. I want a chance to warm up on my own.”
I checked my watch. We did have to go.
“You all right?” I asked Nana Mama as I stood up from the table.
She hesitated and then said, “I suppose I am. Better than before.”
“He was punished for his sins, and then he died,” I said.
My grandmother said, “There’s balance there. Should we go?”
“You’re up to the ride?”
?
??Wouldn’t miss it,” she said, and she got to her feet. She put her hand on my arm. “Thank you, Alex.”
“For what?”