Page 118 of Concealed in Death

On a wince, Lonna touched a hand to her heart. “God, that makes her sound awful. You have to understand—”

“I do. She’d been abused, over and over. She learned to survive in a way she thought gave her some control. She was a child who never had a chance to be one.”

“Most of us were.” The first tear slid down Lonna’s cheek.

“Don’t cry, baby.”

“I have to, a little. Shelby never got a chance to be happy, like I did. And Mikki, she was so needy, so angry. But my God, she loved Shelby. Loved her too much, in a way I see now Shelby could never have given back. We followed her, and she gave us direction, she gave us... family. We’d hook up with Sebastian’s club sometimes, for fun, for the company. And because you could learn a lot. He said you weren’t going to hassle me about the things I did back then.”

“I won’t. I understand that, too.” To cover it, she shifted her attention to Derrick, just for a moment. “Nobody’s going to hassle Lonna.”

“First time you do, I show you the door.”

“Fair enough. You brought a girl to Sebastian,” she said to Lonna. “This girl.” And laid Merry Wolcovich’s photo on the table. “Do you remember?”

“I do. I don’t remember her name, and it turned out she was mean as a snake. But I brought her to Sebastian when I came across some boys giving her trouble. She was giving it back, but they had her outnumbered, so I stepped in.”

“You always do.”

She laughed a little at Derrick’s comment. “I was a fighting fool back then. Shelby taught me how to handle myself, so I pushed right into those boys, went after the meanest one—you can always tell. Take him out, I figured, the rest’ll run off. And that’s how it was. Then I took her to Sebastian because she was alone.”

She ran a finger over the edge of the photo. “She’s one of them, too. In the building.”

“Yes. You tried to help her, but she didn’t stay with Sebastian.”

“Mean as a snake,” Lonna repeated. “But she was just a kid. She hung with us a little while—mostly with Shelby—but she left, and I didn’t see her around anymore.”

“Did she leave before or after Shelby?”

“Oh, let me think about that. It must’ve been after. I snuck back to Sebastian’s a couple times, hoping to find Shelby there, but she wasn’t. It seems to me this girl was, then she wasn’t.”

“Okay. How about this girl.”

At Eve’s signal, Peabody put Shashona’s photo on the table.

“Not one of us,” Lonna said slowly. “Maybe I saw her around—she’s sharp-looking, isn’t she? I wonder... did she sing?”

“Yeah.” Connection, Eve thought. “Yeah, she did.”

“That’s it then. Sharp-looking girl, good voice. We sometimes snuck off to Times Square, and I’d sing for the tourists. They’d put money in the box. This girl here, I remember how she came by, sang with me. Just picked up the song—don’t remember which—with the harmony.

“Shelby, Mikki, they couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. T-Bone was okay at it, but he wouldn’t sing out on the street. But this girl stopped—I’d seen her around before, but more up our way, I think. And she’d seen me. I could tell, the way you do.”

“You’d seen her before,” Eve pressed. “Near The Sanctuary?”

“Seems like it. Always with a pack. Girlfriends, laughing, talking, going home or out somewhere. I envied that. She had nice clothes, seems they all did. I hated wearing those hand-me-downs, and I noticed clothes on girls around my age.”

“Then you ran into her in Times Square.”

“That’s right. I was set up with my box, and truth be told Shelby was working the crowd for wallets. Telling the truth, back then it was fun, an adventure. We didn’t have many. But this time, this sharp-looking girl here, she stopped, and we had ourselves a little duet. Then another, before she went off with her friends. I remember because it felt good to sing with somebody, and because I offered her part of the money, and she wouldn’t take it. She said she hadn’t done it for money, but for the song. And damned if she didn’t put five dollars in the box.

“Good, clear voice,” Lonna murmured as she studied the photo. “Gone now, too.”

“She has a grandmother, who raised her, who loved her,” Eve said. “It’s going to mean something to her when we tell her that.”

“Tell her... her girl could sure sing, and she had a kindness to her. Lots of girls that age with nice clothes? They’d look down on someone dressed like I was. She didn’t.”

“I’ll tell her. Tell me a little about The Club. Sebastian’s.”