Inherit the Dead

get without bleach and I’m on your doorstep uninvited,” he said. “I figure, one more strike, I’m outta here, probably on the toe of your boot. How could you turn down that opportunity?”
    There was an infinitesimal relaxation in the muscles around her eyes. She didn’t ask him in, but at least she hadn’t slammed the door in his face, and he took that for assent. “My name is Perry Christo, and I’m a private detective. You Athena Williams?”
    “Her mama send you?”
    There wasn’t any point in acting surprised and even less in denial. “Yes, Mrs. Drusilla says her daughter has been missing for more than two weeks. She’s concerned—”
    He stopped abruptly when Athena Williams’s expression shifted beneath the black, polished skin. There was no bullshitting this woman. “Her daughter stands to inherit a lot of money, but only if she shows up to sign for it, and time is running out.”
    Athena Williams’s eyes narrowed. “How much does Ms. Julia get?” The “Ms.” was heavily accented, and not out of respect.
    “I’m not at liberty to say.”
    Athena Williams snorted. “And I’m not saying anything at all.”
    “But you worked for them?”
    “I was Angel’s nanny, if that’s what you’re asking.”
    “Have you seen Ms. Loki recently?” he said.
    “No,” she said.
    He didn’t believe her, but then she wasn’t trying to convince him all that hard. “Ms. Williams—”
    “Mr. Christo,” she said, “I haven’t seen Angel, and I wouldn’t tell you if I had. Now, is there anything else? My mama raised me not to slam doors in people’s faces, but I’m always willing to make at least one exception to every rule.”
    “You sound like you graduated from Bryn Mawr,” he said unwisely.
    “Black folks ain’t supposed to talk English right?” she asked.
    He sighed. “Ma’am,” he said, “all I’m trying to do is find Angelina Loki.”
    “And if she doesn’t want to be found?”
    He looked at her for a moment. “Yesterday, the East Hampton police found Angelina Loki’s car abandoned on a deserted road.” He paused. She didn’t twitch so much as an eyebrow. “The only good news—if you can call it good news—is that she wasn’t in it.”
    “Plenty of public transportation,” she said.
    “I didn’t know anyone from the Hamptons ever had to learn how to walk,” he said.
    She almost smiled.
    He waited.
    After a long moment, she stepped back, holding the door wide. “Come in, then, if you won’t go away when you’re told to.”
    The living room was comfortably furnished with a dark blue overstuffed couch and matching chairs. There was a thirty-two-inch flat-screen television mounted on one wall, and the area rug had not been bought at Home Depot. Nannying must pay better than he’d thought.
    She went so far as to bring him coffee on a tray with cream and sugar. It was a hell of a lot better than the industrial-strength cleaner Henry Watson had served up that morning, and he drank gratefully and felt the better for it.
    He set his cup down and looked across at her. She sat with a straight back, her knees and ankles together and her hands loosely clasped in her lap, but she looked a lot more approachable than she had seemed at the door. “Why are you looking for Angel, Mr. Christo?” she asked.
    Her voice was a little louder than it had been on the doorstep. He wondered if someone else was in the house, also waiting to hear his answer. Who it was could determine his answer, which might or might not be a long way from the truth.
    There was a collection of photos on the wall, all children, all white. Three of them were snapshots with Athena Williams, swinging, building a sand castle, riding a merry-go-round. The fourth was an eleven-by-fourteen studio portrait in what looked like a solid gold frame. Even at, what, thirteen—fourteen at most—Angelina Loki’s sheer physical presence made itself felt. She stood barefoot on a wooden parquet floor, looking directly into the camera, unsmiling. A mass of tousled hair the color of a Saint-Gauden’s double eagle, wide blue eyes, a full ripe mouth, skin like cream velvet.
    Most people would have stopped at the personification of rich white privilege, but if you looked a little longer, the photographer had caught an air of vulnerability about the eyes, a hint of desperately held control in the line of the mouth, a chin more defiant than determined. Perry looked a little longer, and then he looked at Athena Williams,