It's Not a Pretty Sight Read online

  “That wasn’t what I said. What I said was I don’t know of anyone else who could have. But you—you’re a different story. You knew Nina’s friends, her enemies …”

  Nina’s mother shook her head. “That child didn’t have any enemies. Only enemy she ever had in this world was Michael. Nobody else ever even looked at Nina sideways. Nobody.”

  “You’re sure about that.”

  “Of course I’m sure. You just don’t know Michael, that’s all. You don’t know how he beat on Nina, and cheated on her, and lied to her …”

  “I don’t think he was lying about this.”

  “Why? Why don’t you think he was lying?”

  “Because it didn’t sound like a lie to me when he said it. That’s why. I know that sounds silly to you, but …” He shrugged. “I can’t explain it any other way. I’ve been in this business almost twenty years, and I still don’t always know a lie when I hear one. But the truth—sometimes the truth makes a sound all its own.”

  “And you think he was telling you the truth. About his being with this other woman when Nina was killed.”

  “Yes. I do. Just like I believe the woman was telling me the truth when she told me where and when they’d spent the night together. My instincts aren’t much, Momma Hillman, I’d be the first to admit that. But they’re all I’ve got. And what they’re telling me now is that Michael’s not the man the police really want. Someone else is.”

  “Someone like who? Everybody else loved Nina!”

  “I’m sure it appeared that way to you. Nina was an easy person to love, after all. But people don’t always show you their true feelings. Sometimes all the hugs and kisses and kind words are just for show.”

  Mimi shook her head again, said, “I don’t believe that. Nina’s friends are good people.”

  “I’m not saying they aren’t. I’m just saying I’d like to talk to a few of them to find out for myself what kind of people they are. That’s all.”

  “But why? Why? If the police are satisfied that Michael killed Nina—”

  “We’re not talking about the police. We’re talking about me. And I don’t want to wake up some morning five, ten, fifteen years down the road to learn that somebody other than Michael killed Nina and walked. Do you understand? The time to see that justice is done for Nina is now, Momma Hillman. Not later. Later might be too late.”

  “Seeing that justice is done for Nina is not your job, Aaron. It’s God’s job. Let God and the police handle justice.”

  “I am letting them handle it. I’m just giving them a little help, that’s all.”

  “Aaron—”

  “Look. I don’t want to argue with you. That’s not what I came here for. If you’re satisfied that Michael killed Nina, fine. I envy you that. The information I’d hoped to get from you today I can get somewhere else, no problem. But I’m going to do this. One way or another. Whether you think I have the right to get so personally involved or not.”

  He moved to kiss her good-bye.

  “Aaron, don’t. Don’t leave,” Mimi pleaded with him.

  “I have to. I’m sorry. I’ll call you tomorrow.” He started for the door.

  “Sisterhood House,” Mimi said, all but blurting the words out.

  He looked back at her. “What?”

  “She was staying at Sisterhood House. It’s a home for battered women. That’s where her friends were. At least, all the ones I knew.”

  He walked back into the living room but didn’t sit down. “Where would I find this Sisterhood House?”

  “It’s up on Sugar Hill. Or what people used to call Sugar Hill. On Adams Boulevard between Crenshaw and Normandie. It’s one of those old, mansionlike homes up on the hill there.”

  “When was Nina there?”

  “She was there just last month. She’d been there since September sometime. The child had only been home three weeks.”

  “Did Michael know she was staying there?”

  Mimi shook her head. “Not at first. But he found out eventually. Nina called him right after serving him with the divorce papers, and I think she told him then. I told her not to, but she did.”

  “When was this?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe five or six weeks ago. I’m not sure.”

  “She told him where she was?”

  “Yes. The security at the House made her feel very safe, she had no fear of him getting to her there.”

  “By ‘security,’ you’re talking about what, exactly?”

  “I mean there’s a gate out front. An electronic gate. And if you don’t have a pass, they don’t let you through. They won’t buzz you in. That’s why she was there, instead of here with me. The security. Michael might have reached her here, but he couldn’t reach her there.”

  “She was there for what? About five months, you said?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why so long?”

  Mimi just looked at him, not following the question.

  “I mean, isn’t the normal stay in a home of that kind usually a month or two? How is it she was allowed to stay there for almost half a year?”

  “Oh. Well, I don’t know anything about the normal length of stay. But Nina was there that long because she was working there too. She wasn’t just a resident.”

  “Working there? In what capacity?”

  “I couldn’t really tell you. Nina was never very clear about that. She was an aide to the director, is all I know.”

  Gunner finally produced a notebook and a pen, asked, “Would you happen to know this director’s name?”

  “Her name is Wendy Singer. She’s a white woman. I met her a couple of times. Very attractive, very smart. But nobody to mess with. I can tell you that.”

  “What about Nina’s friends? You said she had friends there.”

  “I only know of two. Trim Serrano and Angela Glass.”

  Gunner asked her to spell Serrano’s name for him, then asked her to tell him what she knew about either woman.

  “I only met Angela once. And I never met Trini at all. Angela I liked, though I was surprised Nina was so fond of her. Because they aren’t—I mean, they weren’t—anything alike. Angela is very outgoing and animated, where Nina was never like that at all. Angela kind of buzzes around you like a bee, laughing and talking, laughing and talking. She’s like a child who’s had too much sugar.” Mimi had to laugh, just thinking about her.

  “And Trini?”

  “Trini I never met, like I said. All I know about Trini is that Nina loved her work, and that she’d given Nina a camera and was teaching her to take pictures with it. That’s one of Trini’s photos up on the mantel there. The black-and-white one of Nina, over on the right side there, next to her wedding picture.”

  Gunner hadn’t noticed it earlier, but there was a new photograph hidden among all of Mimi’s old ones: a five-by-seven head shot of Nina in a simple black plastic frame. There was a power to black-and-white photography that could often make even the most inept photographer appear ingenious, but this particular photograph was magical. Dark, yet illuminating; beautiful, yet disturbing. A study of Nina that seemed both worshipful and resentful of her at the same time.

  Gunner found himself having a hard time putting it down.

  “Would you mind very much if I borrowed this?” he asked Mimi. “Just for a day or two? I won’t let anything happen to it, I promise.”

  Mimi appeared to find the request unreasonable, but all she did was shrug and say, “If you need it, no. I don’t mind. But—”

  “It might help to have a recent photograph of her I can show people, that’s all. If you’d prefer “I took another one …”

  “No, no, that’s fine. You can have that one. Long as I get it back, I don’t mind.”

  Gunner nodded, already slipping the photograph out of its frame. He was putting the empty frame back on the mantel when he noticed the inscription written on the photograph’s back. It read:

  For Nina—

  You are much stronger an
d more beautiful than you know.

  Peace and Love

  Trini

  “Did Nina give you this?” Gunner asked.

  “The photograph? Yes, of course. Why do you ask?”

  The investigator shook his head. “No reason.”

  He didn’t want to tell her he found it a little strange, Nina giving something away that one would have thought would hold some sentimental value to her.

  “Is that it for friends?” he asked. “Just Trini and Angela?”

  “Those are the only ones I ever met. Or that Nina ever really talked about.”

  “What about friends at work? She did have a job, didn’t she?”

  “You mean, besides the one at the House?”

  “Yes.”

  “She used to have a job, yes. She was working as a secretary at a law firm downtown. Bowers, Bain and Lyle, I think the name was. But that was some time ago, Aaron. She left that job at the middle of last year, maybe even before that.”

  “How was she getting by? If Michael wasn’t helping her …”

  “I was helping her. And she was getting unemployment for a while. It wasn’t easy, but she was making out okay.”

  “If she was getting unemployment, that means she didn’t leave her job at the law firm voluntarily.”

  “Voluntarily? No. She didn’t leave voluntarily. That child was fired from that job.”

  “Fired? Nina? On what grounds?”

  Mimi took a long time to answer. “They said she was hard to get along with.”

  “And that meant …?”

  “I really don’t like to talk about it, Aaron. No more than Nina ever did. Let’s just say it had to do with a personality conflict, and leave it at that. Okay? The whole subject is very disturbing to me.”

  “Was it a racial thing? Just tell me that, yes or no.”

  Again, Mimi took an inordinate amount of time to answer, and then said simply, “Yes.” Using the word as an exclamation point to her demand that he let the matter drop.

  He did.

  “One more question and I’ll leave you alone,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve left this one for last, Momma Hillman, because, well … you’re probably not going to care for it much.”

  “What is it?”

  “It has to do with men.”

  “Men? What about men?”

  “I need to know if Nina had any male friends that you were aware of. Intimate, or otherwise. I’ve heard about all the women in her life, but other than Michael—”

  “Nina didn’t have any other men in her life,” Mimi said sharply, cutting him off. “Michael was enough. He was one too many, in fact.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Did she have any male friends? Of course she did. What woman doesn’t? But that was all they were, friends. Nothing more, and nothing less. And anybody who tells you any different is a liar. You remember that, Aaron, hear? Anybody who tells you any different is a liar.”

  It was another touchy subject for her; two, back to back. He had known she would find his suggestion that Nina might have had a lover insulting, but he had not expected her to suggest in turn that he might hear testimony to that effect from other sources.

  “Nobody’s told me anything like that yet,” Gunner said. “But it sounds like you’re telling me somebody might, eventually. Is that right?”

  Mimi started to answer, reconsidered, then said, “All I’m saying is, don’t believe everything you hear. All right? Especially from Michael. Michael was always accusing her of playing around on him, nobody could tell him she wasn’t, so anything he says, you can’t rely on. I just want to make sure you understand that.”

  It was an admirable job of cleaning up something Gunner was sure she hadn’t meant to bring up.

  “Okay. A deal’s a deal,” he said, putting his pen and notebook away. “I promised to ask only one more question, and that was it. Unless yes-or-no’s count.”

  “Yes-or-no’s?”

  “I need to know if you have a set of keys to Nina’s house. And if you do, if I can borrow them for a couple of days, too.”

  “The keys to Nina’s house? What do you want with those?”

  “I’d like to go over there, take a quick look around. I won’t disturb anything, I promise. I presume that’s where all her things are?”

  “The police have that house all locked up, Aaron.”

  “I know, I know. But it’ll be okay. Trust me.”

  She eyed him suspiciously, said, “I don’t want you getting in any trouble, now.”

  “Who, me? Not a chance.” He grinned to put her mind to rest, surprising himself with the ease with which he could lie to her.

  Mimi finally stood up and went to the back of the house, then returned a few moments later, a small slip of paper and a trio of keys on a chrome-plated key ring in her right hand. “Those are the keys, and the address and phone number you wanted. For Sisterhood House.”

  “Thanks, Momma,” Gunner said, leaning over to kiss her good-bye again.

  “Is that all you needed?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Unless you’d like to do me one more tiny favor.”

  “If I can.”

  “You think you could call ahead for me later, tell that director—what was her name?”

  “Director? Oh. You mean Ms. Singer. Wendy Singer.”

  “Yeah, Ms. Singer. You think you could call and tell Ms. Singer I might be coming out there to see her, either later today or sometime early tomorrow? Just so she’ll know I really am a friend of the family?”

  “Sure, baby. I can do that.” Mimi smiled.

  It was good to see that she still had a few smiles left.

  eight

  GUNNER TOOK ONE LOOK AT NINA’S HOUSE AND DECIDED against breaking in.

  The yellow police tape was still wrapped all around the porch, and the front door was sealed and plastered over with huge signs that promised nothing but trouble to anyone who might be foolish enough to force the door open and go inside. None of the signs had Gunner’s name on them, but even when viewed from across the street, they seemed to be speaking directly to him. Nobody else, just him.

  The voice of Matthew Poole in print.

  But Gunner didn’t just pack up his bags and go home. He canvassed the neighborhood, talking to every neighbor of Nina’s he could, asking if anyone had seen or heard anything of interest the night she died. He worked both sides of the street, twenty-one houses in all.

  Eight people weren’t home; five claimed total ignorance of Nina and/or her murder; two were vaguely aware of same; five recalled Nina fondly, cursed her husband, Michael, openly, and had little else to add; and one teenage boy said he’d seen a man loitering around Nina’s house about two hours before she died, he couldn’t tell who.

  Twenty-one neighbors, one witness. Sort of.

  “You didn’t see the man’s face?” Gunner asked the kid.

  “No. I didn’t see his face.”

  He’d been mowing the lawn when Gunner found him, six houses down and across the street from Nina’s place; sixteen, seventeen years old, tall and lanky and covered with sweat.

  “But you know it was a man.”

  “Yeah. It was a man.”

  “Did it look like her husband?”

  “It looked like him a little.” He shrugged.

  He’d been taking out the trash around nine, ten that evening when he saw the guy walk around the side of Nina’s house to the back. End of story. A five-, six-second glimpse of a moving figure, that was it. Standing now less than a few feet from where the kid said he’d been standing at the time, Gunner figured he couldn’t have seen much in the way of physical details even in broad daylight. That late at night, from this distance, he would have been lucky to see anything at all.

  But at least he thought he’d seen something. None of Nina’s other neighbors could—or would—say even that much.

  Everyone else Gunner spoke to, of those who admitted having known the murdere
d woman, could only bend his ear with words of admiration for her, and condemnation for the louse she’d been married to.

  “That was the sweetest child on earth,” one woman said. A middle-aged, overweight, and gregarious woman named Florence Gatewood, who lived across the street and three doors down from the Pearson home, “I couldn’t believe it when I heard what that animal done to her. I just seen her the day before, she come over here to bring me some mail they left over her place by mistake, an’ she was just smilin’ an’ laughin’. Like she always was. If I’da known what was gonna happen to her …” She shook her head, not knowing what else to say.

  “I know,” Gunner said.

  Not knowing what else to say either.

  “Errol Flynn used to party here,” Wendy Singer said.

  “Is that right?”

  “It was back in the mid-forties, of course. When the house was owned by Malcolm Lund. Are you familiar with Malcolm Lund?”

  “I can’t say that I am, no,” Gunner said.

  “He was a very prolific producer at the time. He didn’t make any great pictures, but he made a lot of good ones. A lot of good ones. And a few bad ones, too, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  She was still escorting him into the house.

  They had buzzed him in right away, fully expecting his visit. The building was a huge, two-story French Colonial affair that time had dealt an unfair hand; what once had been majestic was now only unwieldy. Like many of the homes that populated this mile-and-a-half segment of Adams Boulevard, once but no longer commonly referred to as Fremont Park, it was a palatial shadow of greatness past, a monument to money that had long ago departed the premises. The wealthy white men who had once lived here had fled the scene generations ago, seeking the higher ground of Bel Air and Beverly Hills, leaving no trace of their power and influence but the giant walls behind which they had exercised them. Today, those walls housed mostly black people, and for the most part, they were as clean and freshly painted as they had been at birth. But they were the walls of ghosts all the same.

  Tall, proud, circular, carported ghosts.

  Singer, on the other hand, was very much among the living. She seemed to be aging gracefully, even if the house in which she worked was not. Were it not for the liberal sprinkling of gray in her sandy brown hair, and a fullness to her hips that was almost imperceptibly excessive, she could have easily passed for a woman in her late twenties or early thirties. She had the smooth, cherubic face of a Girl Scout troop leader, and bright blue eyes that shone and flickered like candles on a birthday cake. Unlike the formal black attire Gunner now remembered seeing her in at Nina’s funeral three days ago, her dress today was casual—khaki pants, tennis shoes, and a large, green pullover sweater—but her manner was strictly professional. Mimi had said she was no one to mess with, and Gunner could see now what she’d meant. The Sisterhood House director was hospitable enough, as her story about the House’s origins clearly indicated, but she was about as warm and charming as a parole officer.