“Who are you? What are you doing here?” she asks. “Askari!”
At his name, the dog stops barking but hovers near his mistress, hackles still up.
I hold my breath. Her face looks familiar. She might be the girl from the photo but her expression is so different that I can’t be sure.
“Uh, hello,” Michael says, recovering first, but keeping his eye on the gun. “I’m Michael, and these are my friends Christina and Boyboy. We came up from town.”
“Yes, and?”
“We, ah, well, we were hoping to speak with you.”
The girl who was hanging laundry is now galloping over the grass toward us, another big dog at her side.
The woman looks at each of us in turn, suspicion furrowing her brow. “About?”
There’s no sense in beating around the bush. I step forward. “Are you Catherine?” When I get no response, I go on, “It’s about my mother, Anju. I think you knew her?”
The woman just stares at me as if I were speaking Chinese, but then her look changes, like I’ve thrown mud at her face. “Anju? Anju Yvette?”
The girl has reached us and stands hovering just outside of our circle, staring. She is all knees and elbows, maybe about Kiki’s age. The woman holds a hand up at her, telling her to stay back.
“Yes, that’s her,” I say, and take a hopeful step forward. “May we come—”
“No,” Catherine says, and her voice is low and dangerous. The gun at her hip comes up, and she uses it to motion us back in the direction from which we’ve come. “I never want to hear that woman’s name again as long as I live.”
Then she spits on the ground.
Spits.
“Now get off my farm and don’t ever come back.”
? ? ?
We have no choice but to turn around and leave. Michael had tried to protest but was met only by a hiss, which seemed to be the signal for the dogs to attack. They started barking and leaping at us, and between that and the gun, there wasn’t much more to say. We beat a quick path back down the trail.
“What the hell did your mom do to her?” Boyboy asks, in between glances over his shoulder.
“I don’t know,” I say, swatting at a bush that hangs over the path. “I thought they were friends.”
I was not prepared for Catherine’s response. I thought she would be glad to talk about Mama, and the shock of our violent dismissal stings. I stop, bringing the boys up short behind me.
“We can’t just leave. We have to talk to her,” I say.
Michael looks dubious. I know he’s wondering just what exactly Catherine has to do with my mother’s murder, but I’m not about to try and explain. I feel like I need to talk to her. She might be the only person in the world who can tell me what happened to her and Mama that led to my birth. She was my mother’s friend and they must have suffered through it together. My urge to talk to her goes beyond figuring out who killed Mama. It’s deeper than that, personal.
So why will she not talk to me?
Boyboy puts his hands on his hips. “I’m not going back up there. Lady’s got a Rambo complex. Who has guns like that unless they’re part of a militia?” Just then Boyboy’s phone buzzes. He pulls it out of his pocket and grunts at what he sees. “Voice mail. Finally.”
“What did you have to pay this guy at First Solutions to talk to you?” Michael asks.
“Nothing.” Boyboy puts the phone up to his ear. “But you paid him plenty. Well, technically your trust fund did, but it was for a good cause.”
“What? How did you—”
“What’s he say?” I ask Boyboy, shushing Michael.
Boyboy frowns, concentrating on the message. He puts a finger up to tell us to wait.
While he’s busy, I turn back to Michael. “We have to talk to Catherine. She was Mama’s friend. She knows . . . stuff.”
Michael is still giving Boyboy a disgruntled look, but sighs and says, “Maybe we can get Sister Dorothy to talk to her.” He frowns. “What is it?” he asks Boyboy.
When I turn around, I don’t like the expression on Boyboy’s face. He takes the phone away from his ear. “Bad news,” he says. “Mwika’s dead.”
? ? ?
Boyboy’s contact didn’t leave a lot of details, just that Mwika got knifed in a bar fight about two years ago near a diamond mine in Katanga where he was working.
“But he left me Mwika’s email address. I’ll hack it,” Boyboy says, putting a hand on my arm. “There may be something there.”
Michael nods. “We shouldn’t give up yet.”
“How could you not have known he was dead?” I ask Michael. Two years ago was when Mr. Greyhill made payments to Mwika. There’s got to be some connection to his death. “Did you know?”
“No!” Michael says, stepping toward me. “Of course not!”
I lurch back from him, trying to read the truth in his face. He looks as genuinely shocked as Boyboy, but if I know anything, it’s that the Greyhills are good liars. “I can’t believe I trusted you,” I say. Without waiting for him to respond, I turn around and start walking down the path.