James Patterson - Cross Justice

He heard a gasp. His wigged head whipped left.

A chunky, middle-aged black woman in jeans, a dark hoodie, and yellow rubber dishwashing gloves stood in the closet doorway, gaping at him.

“Oh, Jesus, no!” she whispered in a thick accent.

Then she turned and ran.

Coco kicked off the pumps, tore off the wig, and bolted after her.

The woman wasn’t in shape or athletic, and he caught up to her before she reached the bedroom door. Coco grabbed her by the shoulder, spun the woman around, and pushed her up against the wall.

“What the hell are you doing in my house, Francie?” he demanded.

“I... I forget something important, Mr. Mize,” she said, terrified. “I no know you’re here.”

“Obviously,” Mize said. “What could be so important that you broke into my house wearing rubber gloves, Francie?”

She began to cry. “I was looking for... my bank card. The ATM.”

“You figured out you were missing your bank card three months after I fired you?”

Francie nodded wildly. “Yes. Just yesterday. I look everywhere. I say, this one must to be at the Jeffrey Mize’s house. So I come. I call you from outside. I ring doorbell.”

“To make sure I wasn’t home,” Mize said.

“No! You no answer. You no hear?”

“I was busy.”

His former maid’s gaze flickered down to his black panties, garter belt, and hose, and then back to the eyelashes and makeup.

“I so sorry,” she blubbered. “I see this now.”

“My secret life?” he said. “My closet?”

“I no mean to! I just looking for—”

“Something to steal, isn’t that right?”

“No, Mr. Mize,” the maid said, and she made the sign of the cross.

Mize’s mind turned to Coco’s unique perspective again, and he said, “I was wondering why I’d been missing some of mother’s lesser jewelry. Never suspected you, Francie, but that’s my naturally trusting personality.”

The maid got more frightened. “No, that’s not—”

“Sure it is,” Mize said. “You’re dirt-poor, Francie. So you steal. It’s what you do. It’s what I would do if I were you.”

She clamped her jaw shut and tried to struggle away, but he threw her back against the wall. “Please, Mr. Mize,” she whimpered. “Don’t call police. I do anything, but not that!”

Mize thought, said, “You can keep a secret, can’t you, Francie?”

She seemed not to understand for a moment, but then her head bobbled like a toy. “Of course, I no tell anyone you like dress lady-boy, Mr. Mize.”

He laughed. “Lady-boy? Is that what they’d call me in Haiti?”

Francie’s eyes darted around, but her head started bobbling again. “I sorry, Mr. Mize. Is a bad thing? Lady-boy?”

“You tell me.”

“No, Mr. Mize,” she babbled, “I no care your lady-boy secrets.”

“Then I don’t care you’re a thief, Francie.”

She didn’t know what to say, but she nodded in resignation. “ Merci, Mr. Mize. Please, I so sorry.”

“How’d you get in?” Mize asked.

Francie looked down.

“If we’re going to share secrets, we better start by being honest, don’t you think?” Mize said in a more pleasant tone.

Tears dripping down her cheeks, Francie nodded. “I make key last year.”

“Show me?”

The maid pulled off one of her rubber gloves, dug in her back pocket, and came up with the key.

He took it, said, “The alarm code?”

Francie blinked. “You give it to me, Mr. Mize. You no remember?”

That was true. Stupid of me.

“I remember,” Mize said.

“What I do for you?” she ask. “Clean house again? It look like no clean for long time, Mr. Mize.”

“Maybe I’ll take you up on that.”

“Yes, yes,” Francie said. “Anything, Mr. Mize.”

“Who else knew you were coming here to steal?”

“No one! I swear to spirits.”

“Better to work that way, I suppose.”

She nodded again. “No one knows, is better, I think.”

“Makes sense,” Mize said. “What have you stolen from me before?”

Francie looked down again. “Something silver from dining room, and maybe bracelets and necklace in other room.”

“Thin gold bracelets? Little bangles?”

“I so sorry.”

“You were desperate,” he said. “I know what that’s like.”

Francie grabbed his hand and kissed it. “Bless you, Mr. Mize.”

Mize smiled. “Well, then, I know your secrets; would you like to see mine?”

The maid looked torn.

“C’mon, if we’re sharing secrets, we’re friends now,” he said. “Let me show you the closet and all its beauty.”

Francie licked her lips, and then shrugged. “Okay.”

“Real ladies first,” Mize said, and gestured with a flourish toward the open closet door.

Uncertain, she moved past him, crossed the room, and stopped in the closet doorway. She looked around and her eyes widened.

“Magnificent, isn’t it?” Mize asked.

Francie’s voice was filled with genuine wonder. “I never see such things before this now. Maybe in movies.”

“My mother started the collection,” Mize said, taking a white kimono off the door hook and slipping it over his shoulders. “She loved her clothes, and she taught me to love them too.”

The maid’s face tightened. “Is good. I think.”

“It bonded us,” he said. “See the jewelry box on the vanity? It was Mother’s. She was a spendthrift with exquisite taste in jewelry. Have a look. She’d want you to see.”

Francie glanced at him tying the robe. He stopped, smiling. “Go on.”

The maid went to the vanity. The lights around the mirror were glowing. She opened the lid. Her jaw dropped.

“Now, that’s what you were hoping you’d find, wasn’t it?” Mize asked.

He’d slid in behind Francie. In the mirror, she saw not Mize, but Coco, the smile gone cold, the eyes gone vacant.

Before the maid could reply or even change her expression, Coco flipped the robe’s sash over Francie’s head.

He cinched it nice, tight, and brutal around her neck.

Starksville, North Carolina

Judging by the turnout for her wake that Sunday evening, Sydney Fox had been a well-liked person in Starksville. Nana Mama and I went to pay our respects while Naomi finished working on her opening statement and watched the kids, and Bree supported Cece Turnbull as she lurched toward a semblance of sobriety.

“A terrible thing,” Nana Mama said as she held tight to my forearm. “Woman like that, in her prime, gunned down on her own front porch. Bad as it was when I grew up here, there was never violence like that.”

“I’ll take your word for your era,” I said. “And, yes, it’s bad, part of a general badness about this town. Do you feel it?”

“Every day since we’ve been here,” Nana Mama said. “I’ll be happy to go home when the time comes.”

“I’m with you,” I said. “And we’ve only been here since Thursday.”

We followed a grief-stricken couple into the mortuary. There were very few dry eyes among the forty, maybe fifty people who had come to pay their respects. We waited in line to offer condolences to Ethel Fox, who wore an old but cared-for black dress she’d bought when her husband passed.

“I only figured to wear it again when I was dead and gone,” Ethel said. “And now, here I am, and there my baby girl is, all sealed up in a box.”

She hung her head and cried softly. “Just isn’t fair.”

Nana Mama patted her on the shoulder, said, “Anything you need, you call Hattie or Connie or me. And I’ll see you at the church tomorrow.”