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Remmi’s heart had frozen. Seneca had bailed? Left her for good? Nervously, she’d licked her lips. She had to come up with a name. Someone. Anyone. Or else she’d have to go through Social Services, or whatever it was called, and be put in foster care with strangers.
“What about your father?”
That again. “I told you, I don’t know who he is. I never have. I know that sounds lame, but it’s the God’s honest truth. My mom never told me. And may—” she swallowed hard and whispered a truth she’d always feared, “Maybe she didn’t know who he was.” Remmi had always suspected that her mother had been eager to please men, and there was a good chance that she’d had more than one lover at a time and so . . .
“Okay,” Davis had said without any sign of emotion or judgment. “How about an aunt or an uncle? Older cousin?”
Remmi had been sweating, and her palms were slick as she’d considered her options. In the end, she chose to go for the truth. “All I know is that Mom’s from somewhere in Missouri. That’s what she said. I don’t know exactly where. She would never say. Like it was some big, bad secret or something, you know, really bad had happened there. I don’t know.” Remmi had thought hard. “But I think she mentioned St. Louis a couple of times, and she maybe grew up on a farm. She knew farm
stuff, y’know. Like ‘bucking’ hay, that’s what she called it, and ‘slopping the pigs,’ stuff like that. The kind of thing you don’t hear in town.”
Davis had nodded, making notes. “Anything else?”
“Just that she was a cheerleader for the high school. I found her old uniform once, a long time ago. Red and white sweater. For a team called the Titans. Her name was Edwina, but the name embroidered on the sweater was ‘Edie.’” She met Davis’s interested gaze. “I never heard anyone call her either of those names. She always went by Didi.”
“Middle name?”
“She never used it, but it was Maria. Edwina Maria Hutchinson . . . but she went by Didi Storm even when she married.”
“What are her husbands’ names?”
“Leo Kasparian, the magician, Kaspar the Great, was her second.” Davis’s eyebrows had elevated at that. “Ned Crenshaw was the first. He moved away. Montana or Colorado. Cowboy. A horse guy. Rancher,” she’d said, and she felt a little bad. She’d always liked Ned. He’d been kind to her, taught her how to ride, about horses, how to appreciate a sunset. Even how to handle and shoot a rifle, a skill he’d told her he’d learned on a ranch in Wyoming. He’d been a firm stepfather, forcing Remmi to do “chores.” He was decent enough, mostly even-tempered, but when he did get mad, it was a slow, smoldering fury that was mainly directed at his flirtatious wife. She’d thought Ned and Didi might actually come to blows once or twice, but they never had, as far as she knew. Remmi remembered him calling Didi “bat-shit crazy,” right before she filed for divorce.
Remmi added, “Mom divorced them both.” Remmi had never much liked Leo, but he had showed her some tricks and sleight of hand that she thought now might come in handy. Leo had always been out for Leo, first and foremost. As Didi had said on more than one occasion, “Leo could as easily slide a knife between your ribs as make love to you. He could probably do both at the same time and not think a thing about it.”
Davis had kept scribbling as Remmi told her the sketchy details she knew about her mother’s life before Didi had landed in Southern California and then Las Vegas.
“Mom called St. Louis, ‘up north,’ so she probably came from south of that, I guess. She never said. It’s like she didn’t want anything to do with her parents after she moved west.” She’d shrugged, trying to remember more.
“You have their names?” she asked again.
“Frank and Willa Maye Hutchinson. And my mother had a sister, Vera, and they had a brother . . . Billy. He’s in or was in the service. Army I think. I overheard my mom telling Seneca a little about him, but I only heard that he was a hunter who had gone to the military just after high school. I never met him, either.”
“You had no contact with any of them?”
“That’s right.”
“Not even a birthday present or a Christmas card?”
Remmi had just stared at the detective.
“Okay,” Davis had said, finally, it seemed, getting it. She’d ripped off the note with the names. “I’m going to contact them and see what we can do. You have to sit tight for a little while longer because,” she’d added a little sadly, “you know that I have to talk to someone at Social Services. You’re a minor.”
Remmi had sunk farther into her chair, and though she wanted to cry, to break down and sob, she didn’t. Her eyes were hot, but dry, her heart heavy, and as she heard Kendrick returning, the scent of his recently smoked cigarette surrounding him, she knew that her life as she’d known it was truly and finally over.
They asked her a million more questions about Didi—what happened in the desert, the twins, Seneca, her job with Harold Rimes at the club—and eventually had shown her a picture of Noah.
Her heart had felt as if it had collapsed in her chest. “Do you know who this is?” Kendrick had asked as she’d stared at the photograph. She’d thought about the short, heated phone conversation with his father, about how Ike Baxter was “gonna give that kid what’s comin’ to him.” But she’d already reacted, so she screwed up her face and shook her head. “He looks kinda familiar. But . . . no, I don’t know him.”
“You sure? Look real hard,” Kendrick pushed, eyes narrowing as if he was attempting to read her mind.
“Who–who is he?”
Davis smiled again, and once more the curve of her lips had seemed forced. “We don’t know, but he was in the desert that night. No ID on him. Taken to the hospital.”
“Is he okay?”
“Hell, no! He’s not ‘okay,’” Kendrick interjected, his lips turning down at the corners. “Shot in the neck and crashed his bike.”
