Penny Legend Read online

  I spun around to face her. Her face was red, further complicating the orange hair, stoplight lipstick, and indigo eyeshadow mayhem. An irrational giggle escaped me—or maybe not exactly a giggle.

  “Did you just snort at me?” she yelled. She looked around at the parents and children who had stopped to watch. The audience emboldened her and she launched her substantial self at me again.

  I was ready that time and I sidestepped while raising my forearm the way a boyfriend with a black belt had taught me once. My arm caught her under her chin and she staggered backwards. I ran.

  I was parked on the street halfway down the block. I had a head start in my shitty little shoes, but she was wearing full-on ho’ shoes and I was considerably less fat so I had a good lead. It got dicey at the end. I had to dig out my key as I was running, but remote entry was in my favor and I managed to get around the car, jump in, and slam the door. I started the car and Tasha reached my bumper as I started to pull out. She pounded the trunk with her fist but I was in gear. The three feet of space between me and the car in front saved me and I screeched off without hitting any children.

  Will was waiting at the apartment. He was leaving the next morning and had planned a nice dinner out. His frown told me I wasn’t looking as composed as I hoped.

  I smiled nervously and shrugged my eyebrows. “I just need a quick shower and I’ll be totally ready. I’m famished.” I gave him a kiss on the cheek and a quick hug and tried to extricate myself to the bathroom.

  “Gloria’s in there,” he said.

  Damn.

  He took my hand and walked me over to the couch. He pulled on my hand as he sat, and I sat too.

  “Tell me about your day,” he said with a direct stare that told me I wasn’t going to dance my way out of it.

  I glanced toward the kitchen. There was wine in there. And beer. And maybe the end of a bottle of gin in the freezer. I looked back at Will. The look on his face made me think he wasn’t going to say “Oh never mind, how about a drink?”

  But sometimes rescues come where you least expect them. Or so I thought for about thirty seconds when my cell phone rang. “Hang on. Sorry. I think it’s about Legend.” I didn’t think I recognized the number but I wasn’t sure.

  “Hi, this is Penny.”

  “You got into a bitch fight with Tasha?” It was Conner. His voice was smirking.

  I glanced at Will. He was sitting too close. My phone volume was too high again. His eyes were enormous and his frown got even frownier.

  Crap.

  “That seems like a really, uh, sexist and exaggerated term.”

  Conner started to laugh. “I don’t think so. Are you gonna tell me what happened?”

  “It sounds like you’ve already formed an opinion about that. I’m in the middle of something here anyway.” I thought I’d better explain to Will before having this conversation with Conner, who was clearly getting way too much pleasure out of it anyway. I wanted to know how he knew, but I didn’t want to give him satisfaction by asking.

  “You need to tell me what happened. You can call back within the hour if you need to.” He chuckled again and disconnected.

  Will was waiting with his eyebrows up and his arms crossed.

  I got up from the couch and sidestepped toward the kitchen. “How about a drink?” I asked.

  “Might not be a bad idea,” he said.

  Gloria had come out of the bathroom and was in the hall between the bathroom and her room. Her bat ears heard that drinks were being offered. “One for me too!” she called.

  I found some gin left from Gloria’s party and poured three glasses. I cut a lime and stuck a wedge in each. We didn’t have any club soda and I didn’t want to degrade the gin with something else, so I poured in a little more gin to make them look better, and returned to the living room.

  Gloria, suitably motivated, had thrown on a dress and emerged ready for her drink. She was oblivious to the tension in the room. She grabbed a glass and plopped down in the armchair. “So what are you guys up to this evening?”

  Hah! More distraction. Maybe by the time I had to tell my story Will would be half crocked on gin.

  “Penny was just about to tell me all about what some guy just referred to as a ‘bitch fight’ she got into today.”

  Gloria nearly spit out her gin. “Damn! I always knew I had timing! Lay it on us, Penn!”

  “It wasn’t a bitch fight,” I said. I thought it was a good start. Play it down, you know? I thought about the slap. I could feel the shock of it all over again. “Which isn’t to say that she isn’t a bitch.”

  “Who?” they chorused.

  “Tasha. A chromatic nightmare. She’s a boyfriend-stealing, maybe drug-dealing health aide.”

  “Is this about Legend or something else?” Will asked.

  “Legend, of course. She didn’t steal my boyfriend, did she?” I liked the idea of shining the spotlight on Will for a minute. “Did she?”

  “Very funny. You need to tell us what happened.”

  No escape, even for the clever. “I went to visit the principal of Legend’s school. A scrawny, stuck-up, and probably racist prick. On my way out I ran into this woman I’d met once with Legend. She was the extra girlfriend of the guy who was Legend’s aunt’s boyfriend, who was murdered.”

  “Wait, Legend’s aunt was murdered?” Gloria asked.

  “No. James, the philandering, drug-dealing boyfriend to legions.”

  “Go on.” Will was getting increasingly impatient.

  “Well, I ran into her—literally—on accident of course.” I took a sip of my drink and assessed Will. Maybe it could be that simple. I ran into her. I was too embarrassed to recount the whole debacle. As a social worker shouldn’t I be skilled at deescalating conflict? Maybe collisions can sometimes appear a little like a scuffle and maybe sometimes detectives blow things all out of proportion. Yep. A little scuffly misunderstanding could really be one way of explaining it.

  Will and Gloria were staring at me. Not letting it go.

  “You know how some people just really overreact. I mean I was pissed about the whole thing with the principal and I wasn’t really looking where I was going so it was totally my fault, but who hasn’t done that?”

  Will lowered his chin and raised his eyebrows. “Were words exchanged?”

  “Yeah, I guess. I’m sure I said like ‘excuse me’ or ‘sorry.’”

  Silence. My tummy hurt a little. I hadn’t really decided about marrying Will, but I definitely loved him and I really didn’t want him to make the decision for me. I knew I wasn’t typical wife material. I knew I could be a little bit much to handle. I didn’t want to show him my worst behavior. If I married him would he rein me in? Would reining me in be good? I wouldn’t tolerate control, but maybe a little taming would help me out somehow?

  “And what else?” Gloria asked. “You said she was a bitch, so I’m guessing it didn’t end there.”

  Dammit. Maybe the tummy ache was hunger! Why should I have to be interrogated like this when I was hungry? I had a hard day. I needed food, not a barrage of questions.

  They were waiting.

  “Okay, there were some other words. But not that many. She asked me if Legend was talking and I told her it was none of her business and I kind of might have asked her if there was something she didn’t want him to say.”

  They looked interested.

  “It’s Detective Conner’s fault,’” I said. “He makes me think everyone is a murderer.”

  The story spilled out from there and while Gloria reveled in the drama, Will squirmed and tutted and clearly didn’t know what to do.

  “Shit,” Gloria said. “If Tasha killed James, and Legend saw the whole thing, he’s in some serious danger! The school has security, but Tasha’s a parent! She has full access!”

  I hadn’t thought of that. It made me itch. I’d already started some stress hives earlier and I imagined them growing.

  I reasoned that Legend was safe for the nigh
t, home with Maggie. I didn’t want to call Conner back, so I put it out of my mind and convinced Will to drop it and take me to dinner. It was our last evening together and I knew I could appeal to his romantic side to get myself off the hot seat about the bitch fight.

  I silenced my phone so Conner couldn’t bug me during dinner.

  Will had an early flight Friday morning because he had to get home to a funeral for someone at work. I was up early making coffee and kissing him goodbye before collapsing back in bed long enough to create a scrambling crisis for myself once I finally did get up. I didn’t see the crazy runner on the way to work so I felt ill prepared to predict what kind of day it would be.

  Conner was waiting in my office. That wasn’t a shock. The shock was that he didn’t start by grilling me. I decided to pretend the kiss had never happened and I hoped that was his plan too.

  “We took her in for questioning,” he said. “The bitch fight gave us just the excuse we needed. She attacked you after all.”

  “Stop calling it that,” I said. “So you have her side of the story now. How the hell did you know about this anyway?”

  “She was under surveillance. We got lucky. We haven’t had someone on her for long, but she was there and heard the whole thing—or most of it anyway.”

  “She was where?”

  “All those parents watching? Our detective was one of the crowd. After you got away she grabbed Tasha and brought her in.”

  He looked like he was stifling a laugh.

  “Where is she now? If she killed James and she has access to Legend’s school…”

  “We didn’t have any reason to keep her in custody, but we are keeping a surveillance detail on her.”

  I let out a big breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

  “Tell me your conversation with her—before the fighting part.” He wasn’t laughing but definitely had an amused smirk.

  “It was nothing. She asked me if Legend was talking, I told her I couldn’t discuss a client. I might have asked her if she had something to hide.”

  He smiled. “And how did she respond to that?”

  “She said she was concerned because she’s a mother and mothers care about kids or some shit.”

  “What else?”

  “I might have said she’s a terrible role model for her daughter—sleeping with a drug dealer who’s cheating on his girlfriend.”

  “Who hit who first?”

  “She slapped me after the role model comment.”

  I explained the rest of the scene from my perspective. “Is she still a serious suspect?”

  “We don’t have any reason to rule her out. I do think it’s interesting that she asked if Legend is talking.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Over the weekend Gloria and I dyed a huge bag of rice purple and scented it with lavender. I took it to work on Monday. The lavender is supposed to be soothing and I’m not sure if there’s some color vibration thing with the purple, but it looked pretty. I picked up a cat litter box to put it in to replicate the more sophisticated sensory tables used in play therapy. The tactile stimulation is supposed to be therapeutic and I didn’t see why a kitty litter box full of purple rice on my office coffee table wouldn’t work as well as a $1,500 specialty table. I set a basket of small toys by the box of rice.

  Legend’s shoulders relaxed a little when I closed the office door behind him. He sat on the couch and looked at the kitty litter box full of rice.

  “It’s to play with,” I said, taking the chair on the other side of the table and sinking my hands into the rice. “It smells good too.”

  He watched me just for a moment and when I took my hands out and leaned back he put his in. He sifted the rice through his fingers, scooped it up and smelled it, mixed it around. His eyes were distant and I thought maybe the lavender really was soothing to him. I took a couple of toys out of the basket and tossed them in.

  “Sometimes it’s fun to have some toys in there too.”

  He glanced at me, then took some more toys from the basket and put them in. He set a family of little dolls in one corner and began driving Matchbox cars through the rice. He was both engaged and disengaged. Psychologists would say disassociated, like he was there but also someplace else at the same time. He dug down to the bottom of the box and cleared an area, then put the man and one of the two androgynous children figures into the clearing and buried them. He continued driving the cars around, carefully avoiding the woman and child figures still sitting in the corner of the box.

  My heart started pounding. I wanted to ask questions but I felt it was best not to interfere, to let him play this out. After some car races around the box he dug up the two buried dolls and carefully wiped all the rice off of them and set them in the corner opposite the woman and child. He took scoopfuls of rice in his hands and rubbed his hands together as if washing them. I looked at the notepad on my desk but I didn’t need to take notes. I knew I wouldn’t forget what I was seeing. The problem was to make sense of it without overreacting.

  My big secret is that I have a love-hate relationship with psychology. Sure, it’s my training and my livelihood, but I think a lot of it is bunk and it’s really easy to think you know what you’re seeing and be wrong. But it can also be easy to know what you’re really seeing and not want to believe it and be wrong that way too. So many ways to be wrong.

  After Legend left I had some time to reflect and decide what to do. As I looked back over my time with him I could identify a string of behaviors which have been said to suggest that a child is a victim of sexual abuse. Not talking was one. The drawing of the figure in a box was one, and disassociation and washing gestures (the dolls, his hands) were others. But it wasn’t wise to jump to conclusions. Those behaviors could happen for other reasons as well.

  There was no question that I had to report this to Vivian and Nathan. The question was how I wanted to present it, what I wanted to recommend as a next step. The priority, of course, was to make sure he was safe from abuse. If something was happening in the foster home we needed to get him out.

  I consulted first with Nathan and then with Vivian about the play therapy session I’d had with Legend. I was restless with worry that something was happening in the foster home. Was Maggie abusing the boys? Was one of the older boys abusing Legend? It wasn’t the kind of thing I could sit on. In fact, I had so many indelicate hives I could barely sit anyway.

  Nathan and Vivian both indicated that I needed to call DCF and talk to them about my concerns. I did. I reached a well-spoken and focused manager named June. She asked me a series of questions, which I knew were on a form, but she asked them without bureaucratic frigidity—a welcome change from the way these procedural things usually go. I appreciated that she wasn’t crabby with me. I was creating an entire tree-worth of paperwork for her as well as for myself, but like me, she didn’t seem to care.

  She instructed me to visit the home right away. She would order an investigation, but it would be a day or so before they could get an investigator scheduled into the home. That enraged me, but at least she understood that someone needed to get over there and try to learn something quickly.

  “Can I take him out if I don’t like what I hear and see?”

  “No, you can’t technically remove him without more cause and a plan for where he’ll go, but if you think he’s in danger you can ask the foster mother if you can take him to dinner or something and you can call me.”

  She gave me her cell number.

  When I hung up with her I called Conner. “Get Desiree out.”

  “What?”

  “I think Legend is being abused in his foster home and there’s a whole process and they might not even be able to prove it and the only way to get him out of there quickly is to be able to return him to his home. Get her out.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “I didn’t say it was simple. I said it has to happen.” I felt my chest give a heave and I tried to breathe more deeply. “A litt
le boy, who has already been traumatized multiple times, is in danger. Can you hear me on this?” My voice was cracking. Well, more than cracking. I was full-on crying, but reassured myself that maybe he didn’t know—insensitive guy and all.

  When he responded his voice was gentle. I hadn’t heard this voice on him before—it was almost nurturing, like a really good daddy. An image flashed in my mind—Conner with a preschooler, kneeling and helping with a skinned knee.

  “Take a minute to pull yourself together and head on over to the foster home like DCF said. I would offer to go with you, but I have something I need to do. Check in with me as soon as you leave there.”

  Gloria had given me some Bach’s Flower Rescue Remedy, a little spray bottle of flower essences that’s supposed to help with stress. I had no idea if it worked but I liked the idea of being rescued by flowers, so I pulled it out of my desk drawer where it had been forgotten for months. I sprayed some in my mouth and waited. I took a few deep breaths. I assessed. I seemed okay. Really, it didn’t matter if I was okay because I was going one way or the other. I tucked the spray into my pocket and left.

  I saw Vivian down the hall at Lynnie’s desk. I took out the spray and did another squirt. I passed them quickly and hit the street headed to Chinatown.

  The movement felt good and I was breathing deeply. I rounded a corner and looked up to see a Donald Trump T-shirt stretched across a giant pair of implants bouncing toward me. I dodged right and took a spray of remedy.

  Farther down the block the stream of pedestrian traffic ahead of me bent to the right and everyone stepped out into the street for a couple of car lengths before stepping back on the sidewalk. I stayed in the flow, stepped into the street, and looked left. A woman with a clipboard was standing on the sidewalk with five feet of personal space and a hopeful look on her face as she walked toward the oncoming pedestrians. Just as I was about to cut back in onto the sidewalk a guy talking on his phone while riding a bike with his dog on a leash clipped me.