“Yeah. No. Mostly a place to crash. She was back on the street after the payments from some rich dude ended.”
Mason’s and my eyes met.
Rich dude.
Why was Nancy Pierce getting payments?
Maples waved. “Don’t matter. I saw her in” —he looked my way— “the last five years. I’m sure.”
Mason looked around. “Who besides your daughter and grandchild live here?”
“Ain’t my grandkid; he’s my son. It fucking took a while. Damn girls all over. But finally, I got me a boy.”
Mason’s stare came my way as my stomach rolled.
“Congratulations,” Mason replied. “Who besides your daughter and son are here? Maybe the boy’s mother?”
“That’s her. It’s just them.”
Bile rose higher in my throat.
“Is that everyone?” Mason maintained his persona.
“No, my fucking butler is in the kitchen.”
Maples laughed, looking behind him. From my vantage, what he referred to as the kitchen was overrun with trash and dirty dishes. No longer contained to the counter, there was a path through the debris.
“Just them,” he said.
“What is your daughter’s name?”
“Zella.”
“Could you call her?” Mason asked.
“What about?”
“The contest.”
“Zella,” Maples yelled, “get your ass down here.”
The sound of a crying baby grew louder as footsteps were heard over our head.
“Damn kid cries all the time.”
“Congratulations on a son,” I said.
When Zella appeared, the baby on her hip was stripped to the waist, wearing only a diaper. My nose told me it was now clean. “What, Dad?”
Mason reached into his pocket and pulled out a money clip. “Zella, we need confirmation of your father’s identity to issue his prize. All I need you to do is to go to the bank and get a photocopy of his account information so we can transfer the money.”
“Can’t we do that online?” Maples asked. “Got me an iPad somewhere.”
Of course he does.
Mason’s head tilted. “You know, this contest has been around for so long the rules are archaic.”
Maples looked at Zella. “Take him and go to the bank over by the beauty college. Marcy there will know me.”
“If you have problems,” Mason volunteered, “just call your dad.” He handed her a one-hundred-dollar bill.
“What’s this for?” she asked.
“For you, honey. For your trouble.”
Her eyes opened wide. “Really?”
“Go,” Maples instructed. “And before you walk there, ask Mrs. Stephens to watch little Gordy.”
“Dad, I can—”
His tone was more insistent. “Take him to Mrs. Stephens. Maybe Darrell’s home.”
Tucking her chin, Zella nodded and hurried through the kitchen and out what I assumed was the back door.
Once the door slammed, Mason stood. “Let me introduce myself.”
Reid
“I haven’t seen her,” Maples repeated as Mason’s knife cut another notch in his wrist.
“Next one will be deeper,” Mason said. “Poor Zella, she’s going to find you dead. If she can find anything in this shithole. I wonder if she’ll be more distraught over your death or at not winning the million dollars.”
Maples was now bound to the dining room chair where he’d sat nearly fifteen minutes earlier, his arms tethered to the chair’s arms and his legs secured to the chair’s legs.
“Who is the rich guy?” Mason asked.
“Hernádez, Garcia, Roríguez. Shit, some brown...” His beady eyes came my way. “Not like you, boy. You know...a Mexican. Not sure what we’re supposed to call them or your kind now days.”
As the small hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention, this asshole’s poor choice of vocabulary added fuel to the flames of rage that began when I figured out what he’d done to my wife twenty-five years ago. I worked to keep my expression statuesque though it wasn’t easy to suppress my enthusiasm for what was about to occur.
“Nancy was getting payments from” —Mason hesitated— “a—”
“Mexican,” I said, finishing his sentence using Maples’s words.
Missy was Latina. This had to be the connection. It was the only plausible explanation. “Why was Nancy getting payments from a Mexican?”
“He don’t live there...he lives here. But she made some deal with him. He paid until...well, eighteen.”
Mason’s knife went to Maples’s neck. “What is his name?”
Maples stretched his neck, backing away from the blade. “I can’t—”
Mason pushed the blade against his sagging skin until a crimson drop of blood dribbled to his dirty, worn collar. “Wait. It was Garcia. Yeah, I’m sure.”
Mason pushed the blade deeper. “Tell me what this has to do with my sister.”
Maples’s gray eyes narrowed. “The brown one or the pretty one with red hair?”
My fist landed in his stomach. “What did you do to Lorna?” I asked as his coughs turned to gagging.
Maples spat as blood dripped from his lip. “The payments were for the other one, but oh, that redheaded one was downright sweet. She had the softest little hands. And her lips—”
My next punch connected to his jaw.
He spat more blood and this time a front tooth. “Don’t know why you’re mad. She wanted it. We were friends and she liked my attention. All little girls like to hear they’re special.” He looked at me. “Oh shit. Are you fucking her now? Damn, I wanted that tight pussy. Is it still tight or saggy like her mother’s?”
There was no conscious train of thought. I didn’t consider the ramifications. For once, I wasn’t thinking steps ahead. Taking Mason’s knife from his grasp, I plunged it deep in Maples’s upper arm.
It wouldn’t kill him immediately.
“What did you do to her?” I asked again.
His words sputtered as blood mixed with his oxygen. “Nothing she didn’t want. Just like her momma.”
I looked at the blade in my hand, dripping with deep red blood. “This is for my wife,” I said as I pushed the blade through his ratty shirt, above his belt and sliced laterally, as deep as the blade would go.
Maples’s eyes widened as he watched organs and tissue roll from his wound.
There were moments of consciousness before death. It was his only time to make amends with a superior being or beg for his life, not that we could save it now, but he didn’t. The vile creature stared at both of us.
Mason’s eyes met mine before he took back the knife, and buried the blade into Maples’s upper leg. Blood spouted as his body convulsed. We both stepped back as the asshole bled out before us.
His time for amends had expired.
“I would have been okay with him enjoying more of the experience,” I said. “You know, since he was such a good friend to Lorna.”
Mason took a deep breath before disappearing into the kitchen and returning with two towels. He handed one to me.