They all followed Laneer onto his porch and waited for him to unlock his shiny red front door. Key in hand, he turned to them and said, “Shhh. She’s asleep.”
Laneer pushed open the door to reveal a small living room. It was stuffed with furniture yet still managed to look orderly. There was color everywhere—yellow walls, 1960s turquoise furniture, and pale green curtains—and little Kali lay nestled inside all those brilliant hues, asleep on the couch. She was covered with a patchwork quilt that brought all of Laneer’s love of color together in a single yellow, turquoise, green, red, and purple object.
“I told you she was here all night,” Laneer whispered. “She don’t know nothing. I’m gonna have to tell her what happened to her mama when she wakes up. Can you let her sleep till then? Please?”
McDaniel surprised Faye by whispering, too. “I’ll call you sometime after noon and I’ll be back right after that. Make sure she’s here.”
Faye took a step to follow him, but he put up a hand. “I’m going back to the crime scene. No unauthorized personnel are allowed until we’re done with the forensics. I’ll let you know when I release it so you can start your dig. A couple of days should do it, I’d think.”
As McDaniel walked away without so much as a good-bye, Faye paused on Laneer’s porch, surrounded by the happy colors of his vegetables and his paint. She wasn’t sure how she was supposed to get back to her car. It was a only few minutes’ walk away, if she could walk down the creekside path that McDaniel was blocking with his crime scene, but she couldn’t. She had no idea how to get there any other way. And also, Joe would kill her for walking alone in an area that suffered under the crime rate this one did.
It occurred to her that the attack on Frida was not going to help Joe’s attitude at all.
She reached out a hand to shake Laneer’s, planning to say both “Good-bye,” and “Can you help me figure out where I need to go?”
Before she could speak, Kali rolled over and opened her eyes. Just one word came out of her mouth, and it was “Faye.”
Simultaneously, Sylvia and Laneer said, “Come in and shut the door.”
Chapter Ten
Kali pushed back the quilt and sat up. She was still wearing her clothes from the day before, red knit shorts and a sleeveless black top. When Faye, Laneer, and Sylvia entered the room, she bolted.
The girl crawled over the back of the couch and tumbled to the floor, her legs snarled in the quilt. If Faye had been trapped like that on the floor, with three pursuers just steps away, she would have been just as panicked.
Panicked or not, Kali was quick and she was strong. She grabbed the back of the couch, pulled herself upright, and just ran. The quilt clung to her bare legs for several steps, hobbling her retreat, but it fell away as she reached the closed door.
The door must have been out of square or covered with many coats of sticky paint, because it didn’t open right away. The little girl yanked hard on the cut-glass doorknob as three adults advanced on her. When the door opened suddenly, with a creak, she was thrown off balance, but she was still able to dart through it before they reached her. She slammed the door shut behind her, and it closed with the grinding screech of a slab of painted wood that didn’t quite fit in its frame.
Faye looked from Sylvia to Laneer for guidance on what she could do for this child that, quite frankly, she barely knew.
Sylvia said, “Leave her be.”
Laneer said, “Can’t do that. She’ll go out the window if we leave her alone in that room.”
“Not if we’re standing out in the back yard passing the time of day.” Sylvia moved fast for a woman carrying a few extra pounds around the middle. She was out the side door before Faye or Laneer had time to say, “That sounds like a good idea.”
Laneer’s back yard was too shady for vegetables that made large fruit, like tomatoes and eggplant, but leafy vegetables don’t need much help from the sun to grow. His back porch was lined with green plants growing in flower pots in all shapes and colors. The pots overspilled with herbs, lettuce, and cooking greens.
Faye immediately saw that Kali was at the window, trying to force the latch open. It, too, was probably glued in place by years of paint. When she saw the three of them standing guard outside, her little face fell, then she turned quickly away.
“She’s going to try the front door now, so I believe I’ll go sit on the porch. That’ll stop her,” said Sylvia as she headed to the front of the house. Her steps were light and quick for a woman who had to be well along in her fifties. A cell phone had emerged from one of her apron pockets and she was tapping on it as she spoke. If McDaniel had wanted the details of Frida’s attack to be kept secret, he should probably have made this plain to Sylvia.
Laneer shook his head and gave Faye a gentle smile. “That child ain’t going nowhere today that Sylvia don’t let her go.”
“You called her Kali’s candy lady. What’s that?”
Laneer gave her the same appraising glance she’d been getting all week, first from Jeremiah, then from Kali and Sylvia. Even Detective McDaniel had given her that look. It said, “Can’t quite figure you out. You ain’t white,
