I refocus my eyes on the wall ahead of me. Eventually I get up. I open each dresser drawer and work my way through. It feels intrusive, pawing through someone’s piles of clothes. Having the family in the same room doesn’t help. I keep my movements brisk and my attention focused. It’s hard enough to do this once; I don’t want to have to repeat.
I don’t stumble upon any hidden notes, photos, diaries. I feel out each drawer for false bottoms, then peek behind the dresser itself. There are routine places, contraband 101. Items tucked under floorboards, taped beneath shelves. Under this object, behind this piece of furniture.
I take down the framed photo of Angelique’s mom and, with my back to the kitchen, delicately dismantle it. My efforts are rewarded by the discovery of a scrap of thick white paper. It’s covered by a child’s crayon drawing of a heart and flowers. Written across the top in large, looping script are the words Mwen renmen ou.
I don’t have to know Kreyòl to guess it reads I love you.
I return the note to its place behind the photo, feeling even more intrusive. I wander the bookshelves, the makeshift altar, the riot of green houseplants. I worked a missing persons case once where a thumb drive of illicit photos was slipped inside the pot of a fake ficus tree. These plants involve moist loamy soil, however. And none appear recently disturbed.
I move to the bathroom, where I check the medicine cabinet and beauty products littering the shelves above the toilet. I shake aerosol cans for fake bottoms. Open up makeup containers just in case. There is nothing in the handle of the hairbrush, taped inside the toilet tank, or bolted to the underside of the sink.
I account for the wooden baseboards, then check the doorframe, before emptying out the contents beneath the sink. Lot of cleaners, toilet paper, and feminine hygiene products. Given that a classic travel hack is to hide cash inside sanitary pads or tampon wrappers, I pull out every item in the boxes. When I look up, Detective Lotham has returned and is shaking his head at me. I shrug, get back to it.
Other classic hiding spots. Inside the freezer. Inside the door of the freezer. Tucked between wall cabinets, or behind crown molding. I once found a stash of dope inside a vacuum cleaner. Turned out to belong to the mother’s boyfriend and had nothing to do with her son’s disappearance, but he was pissed at me for months. And yes, my relationship with the entire family went downhill from there.
I eventually discovered the body of the nine-year-old locked in the trunk of an abandoned car on his grandfather’s property. The murder trial is due to start sometime next year.
I return to the living area, confront the couch. I take it apart cushion by cushion. Fortunately, it doesn’t include a sofa bed, so I don’t have to rearrange the entire room.
Then I return to my perch at the end of the sofa, and resume thinking like a fifteen-year-old girl. This is where I watch TV, surf my phone, hang with my family. This is where I stay up late, tuck into bed, confront each morning. In this entire apartment, this corner of the couch, this nightstand, that bureau, are mine alone. Slivers of privacy in an arrangement where my younger brother is also living, sleeping, waking right beside me.
And maybe I don’t mind. I protected my baby brother from our father. I led him from our collapsing house. Even now, I have promised us both a better future.
But maybe I met someone? Or someone found me?
Maybe, for a moment, I wanted my own dream, my own secret, my own life. But how? In a place this small, in an apartment this crowded, where even my computer is shared . . .
I leave the photos and inspect the row of books. I take down each one, reading the title, fluffing the pages. A few are in French, but most are English. None of them are books that I understand. Apparently Angelique liked to read everything from bios on Madame Curie to Elizabeth Blackwell. I flip through an anatomy book where I discover inserted sheets from Angelique’s sketch pad, incredibly realistic renderings of skeletal systems and muscle groups. She was clearly a gifted artist, at least to my untrained eye.
I give up on that mission and return to the couch. It’s already been more than an hour. The chicken is done and currently warming in the oven. If I wasn’t intruding before, I am now. Guerline has joined her nephew at the table, both of them clearly anxious. I should leave them so they can finally collapse in peace.
One last try. I’m fifteen. I’ve met a female friend . . . boyfriend . . . exciting stranger . . . I am . . .
I don’t know what Angelique was into, that’s the whole problem. But I know one thing she had—a second phone. Which she would’ve had to hide from her aunt and brother. But would want to check frequently . . .
I twist around. There’s nothing tucked in the sofa cushions. Nor taped beneath the coffee table, nor under the sofa.
I lean closer to the nightstand, snapping on the brightly colored lamp, and then—just like that—I know. Her spot on the sofa. The way she sat, not leaning forward or slouching down, but angling toward the wall.
Better light to read by, I’d thought. But maybe, it was just plain better light.
Now I reach up and snap off the bulb. Then I pick up the entire lamp, with its large ceramic base covered in checks of red, purples, and turquoise. When I shake it, there’s no rattling sound or sense of movement. But the weight of it, so solid, so heavy. I feel beneath it until my fingers close around the large bolt that holds the whole thing together. I don’t need a tool. The bolt is already loose, waiting.
I twist the nut. I slowly pull off the base. And just like that, banded rolls of bills go thumping out on to the floor. One two three four five six. Not hundreds of dollars, but thousands in tightly bundled cash.
A screech at the kitchen table as Emmanuel shoves back his chair. A terrible gasp from Guerline, hand flying to her mouth.
Detective Lotham appears in the doorway.
I shake out three more rolls. We all watch them roll across the rug. Thousands and thousands of dollars in cold, hard cash. Way more money than any teenager could have accrued by legal means.
Guerline places her head in her hands and starts to cry.
CHAPTER 14
The happy hour crowd is firmly entrenched by the time I return to Stoney’s pub. I grab an apron, wash my hands, and get straight to work banging out beer and running plates of food.
My mind keeps returning to the rolls of cash hidden in Angelique’s lamp. When I left, Detective Lotham was bagging the evidence. The fact that Guerline and Emmanuel weren’t protesting his removal of large sums of money from their humble apartment confirmed that the money wasn’t theirs and the implications troubling.
Not being an official investigator type, I can only guess what kind of forensic tests will be conducted on the cash. Fingerprinting, for sure. My understanding is that new bills can often yield useful prints. Anything in circulation too long, however, has been touched by too many greasy hands, leaving behind a mess of smudged partials.