“But Aunt Winnie could,” I said.
“Paris, will you let the lady finish?” Fearless chided.
“Yeah. Go on.”
“Well, you know most of it. I mean, you may have heard about Brown but you don’t know him. He’s the most amazing man I’ve ever met. He’s funny and smarter than anybody I ever knew at Hampton, even among the professors. He’s great with his hands. . . . He was in the asylum for a year and a half. I worked full-time to pay the expenses. I only got to see Son once a month or so, I was working so much. Finally we heard about a juju woman down in Louisiana. We were told by a white doctor that he had seen great improvement in a Negro patient who went down to her.
“We went and she treated him with herbs and the like, and there was enough of a change that we could start our life over again. I went to Aunt Winifred then, but she refused to give Son back. She said that Brown was crazy and violent and that she wouldn’t put her nephew into harm’s way like that. Here he’s my son and she had the nerve to question me bringing him to harm.”
“Why didn’t you and Brown just go get him?” Fearless asked.
“I told Brown to stay back in Illinois,” Leora said. “He’s better . . . but even a sane man might come to violence if someone tried to keep him from his son. I thought he was still back home until you just said —”
“So Winifred refused to let Son go back to you,” I said. “Then what?”
“She said that she was going to raise him. I tried to reason with her and she went to a lawyer, Lewis Martini. He’s the one that put my mother’s wealth into Winifred’s hands.”
“Winnie got the power of attorney on Rose?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Damn. She got you comin’ and goin’. Use your own family’s money to keep everybody in line.”
“She thinks that she knows best so there’s no arguing about it.”
“In steps Bartholomew Perry, son of the dear departed Ethel Fine Perry,” I said.
“Yes. Esau had my cousin BB working at the car lot and he didn’t like the work. So he told me that he’d take Son out of there for ten thousand dollars. Once I got him I could go back to Illinois, and Winnie would have a lot of trouble trying to take a child from his mother and father across state lines.”
“I thought you were broke?” I asked.
“He said that I could pay over time,” she said. There was a slight catch in her throat, though. The lie couldn’t make it out of her mouth unscathed.
“I bet he did. So then BB hires Kit to get in there as a gardener,” I said. “Kit takes Son and brings him to BB. How does Maestro Wexler get in with it?”
“You know about that?”
“When Paris digs his claws into a problem he find out everything,” Fearless said. “I told you that.”
“BB was going out with Minna at the time. He told her about what he was doing, because he didn’t realize that she had any interest in his aunt.”
“So it’s just coincidence that she’s in his bed when he plans a kidnapping from the woman her father wants to get the reins on?”
“Yes,” Leora said, and I’m sure she believed it. Why would she think that she was the perfect pawn for the machinations of the white siblings?
“And how does Kit know BB?”
“BB sold some trucks to Kit.”
“So Kit knew BB from the used car business?” I asked.
“BB moved stolen cars,” Leora said. “That’s how he made money on the side.”
“But not no ten thousand dollars,” I said. “And surely not no fifty grand.”
Fearless spread a blanket out over the distraught woman.
“Maybe we should let her sleep,” he suggested.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “But lemme ask you just two more questions.”
“Yes?”
“Did Kit bring Son to you after he took him out from your aunt’s house?”
“No, it was like you said before. Kit brought Son to BB and BB turned him over to me. I was so happy to see him. All he wanted was to go see his father.”
“Then why you wanna go and ask Fearless to look for Kit? You already had what you wanted. You had your son. And why would somebody wanna kill the Wexlers?”
Leora turned on her back and stared at the ceiling. Maybe she had hoped that the question wouldn’t come, that we’d overlook the obvious. I wanted to press Leora but I didn’t think that Fearless would stand for it. He was a gentleman and would never allow a lady to be tormented except in the most extreme circumstances.
“Son wasn’t all Kit took out of Aunt Winnie’s house.”
“No? What else he take?” I knew she was going to mention the pendant, and I was ready to argue about the worth of the stone and the fact that Winnie didn’t seem that worried about it.
