Myron was not sure what to say. To protest his innocence would do little to assuage her fears. He decided to switch tracks and head in a completely different direction. “What can you tell me about Brenda’s mother?”
Mabel Edwards stiffened. She dropped the knitting into her lap, the half-moon glasses falling back to her bosom. “Why on earth would you ask about that?”
“A few minutes ago I told you that somebody broke into your brother’s apartment.”
“I remember.”
“Brenda’s letters from her mother were missing. And Brenda has been receiving threatening phone calls. One of them told her to call her mother.”
Mabel Edwards’s face went slack. Her eyes began to glisten.
After some time had passed, Myron tried again. “Do you remember when she ran away?”
Her eyes regained focus. “You don’t forget the day your brother dies.” Her voice was barely a whisper. She shook her head. “I can’t see how any of this matters. Anita’s been gone for twenty years.”
“Please, Mrs. Edwards, tell me what you remember.”
“Not much to tell,” Mabel said. “She left my brother a note and ran away.”
“Do you remember what the note said?”
“Something about how she didn’t love him anymore, how she wanted a new life.” Mabel Edwards stopped, waved her hand as though making space for herself. She took a handkerchief out of her bag and just held it in a tight ball.
“Could you tell me what she was like?”
“Anita?” She smiled now, but the handkerchief remained at the ready. “I introduced them, you know. Anita and I worked together.”
“Where?”
“The Bradford estate. We were maids. We were young girls then, barely in our twenties. I only worked there for six months. But Anita, she stayed on for six years, slaving for those people.”
“When you say the Bradford estate—”
“I mean, the Bradfords. Anita was a servant really. For the old lady mostly. That woman must be eighty by now. But they all lived there. Children, grandchildren, brothers, sisters. Like on Dallas. I don’t think that’s healthy, do you?”
Myron had no comment on that.
“Anyway, when I met Anita, I thought she was a fine young woman except”—she looked in the air as though searching for the right words, then shook her head because they weren’t there—“well, she was just too beautiful. I don’t know how else to say it. Beauty like that warps a man’s brain, Myron. Now Brenda, she’s attractive, I guess. Exotic, I think they call it. But Anita … hold on. I’ll find you a picture.”
She stood fluidly and semiglided out of the room. Despite her size, Mabel moved with the unlabored grace of a natural athlete. Horace too moved like that, blending bulk with finesse in an almost poetic way. She was gone for less than a minute, and when she returned, she handed him a photograph. Myron looked down.
A knockout. A pure, undiluted, knee-knocking, breath-stealing knockout. Myron understood the power a woman like that had over a man. Jessica had that kind of beauty. It was intoxicating and more than a little scary.
He studied the photograph. A young Brenda—no more than four or five years old—held her mother’s hand and smiled brightly. Myron tried to imagine Brenda smiling like that now, but the image would not form. There was a resemblance between mother and daughter, but as Mabel had pointed out, Anita Slaughter was certainly more beautiful—at least in the conventional sense—her features sharper and more defined where Brenda’s seemed large and almost mismatched.
“Anita put a dagger through Horace when she ran off,” Mabel Edwards continued. “He never recovered. Brenda neither. She was only a little girl when her mama left. She cried every night for three years. Even when she was in high school, Horace said she’d call out for her mama in her sleep.”
Myron finally looked up from the picture. “Maybe she didn’t run away,” he said.
Mabel’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe she met up with foul play.”
A sad smile crossed Mabel Edwards’s face. “I understand,” she said gently. “You look at that picture and you can’t accept it. You can’t believe a mother would abandon that sweet little child. I know. It’s hard. But she did it.”
“The note could have been a forgery,” Myron tried. “To throw Horace off the track.”
She shook her head. “No.”
“You can’t be sure—”
“Anita calls me.”
Myron froze. “What?”
“Not often. Maybe once every two years. She’d ask about Brenda. I’d beg her to come back. She’d hang up.”
“Do you have any idea where she was calling from?”
Mabel shook her head. “In the beginning it sounded like long distance. There’d be static. I always figured she was overseas.”
“When was the last time she called you?”
There was no hesitation. “Three years ago. I told her about Brenda getting accepted to medical school.”
“Nothing since?”
“Not a word.”
“And you’re sure it was her?” Myron realized that he was reaching.
“Yes,” she said. “It was Anita.”
“Did Horace know about the calls?”
“At first I told him. But it was like ripping at a wound that wasn’t closing anyhow. So I stopped. But I think maybe she called him too.”
“What makes you say that?”
“He said something about it once when he had too much to drink. When I asked him about it later, he denied it, and I didn’t push him. You have to understand, Myron. We never talked about Anita. But she was always right there. In the room with us. You know what I’m saying?”
The silence moved in like a cloud covering. Myron waited for it to disperse, but it hung there, thick and heavy.
“I’m very tired, Myron. Can we talk more about this another time?”
“Of course.” He rose. “If your brother calls again—”
“He won’t. He thinks maybe they bugged the phone. I haven’t heard from him in almost a week.”
“Do you know where he is, Mrs. Edwards?”
“No. Horace said it’d be safer that way.”
Myron took a business card and a pen. He jotted down the number of his cellular phone. “I can be reached at this number twenty-four hours a day.”