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Lips thin, he tugged a tiny bag from his pocket and slapped it down on the dresser. Angela lunged toward it, but he gripped her shoulder. “Not so fast. First, you listen, because you’re working for me today. And if you don’t do a good job, you won’t be getting another sniff, baby. Understand?”
“I’ll do whatever you want,” she promised. She couldn’t keep her eyes on him, though. She kept darting looks at the stuff on the dresser. “You know I will, Vin, I always do.”
He nodded and let go of her. “You’re going to clean this mess up, fast. Then I want you to take a shower. Put on some of the clothes I bought you. Something nice, so you don’t look like a ten-dollar whore. Fix up your hair. Slap some makeup over the circles under your eyes. I want you to look respectable. You got it?”
By then she’d already had a hit. She straightened, sniffing and rubbing a knuckle over her nostrils. “Got it.” She bent again, but he grabbed her straw out of her hand before she could do anymore.
“You’ve had enough.”
“Can I just put it in my purse for later?”
He shook his head firmly. “No way. I say when and I say how much. Get used to it, Ang.”
“Okay, Vinnie.” She watched him pocket the cocaine.
“I’m gonna get us some lunch. Have this mess cleaned up by the time I get back.”
“I will.”
“Don’t answer the phone and don’t go out. Don’t talk to anybody, you got that?”
She nodded and leaned back against the dresser. “You gonna tell me where you were this morning?”
“Doin’ some research, sugar. You’re gonna get to see your boy today. So you make sure you do yourself up extra pretty for him.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ll be back in a half hour. Lock up behind me.”
She nodded and he left. When he opened the door, she noticed the Do Not Disturb sign hanging from the knob on the outside. He must have put it there before he left. She locked the door as he’d told her. She didn’t think about the rest of the day, about seeing her son for the first time in more than four years. Part of her sort of hoped things would get in the way, that it would never happen. Something would come up, and Vinnie would get called back to Chicago. Or maybe Jim would pack Tyler up and head somewhere else.
She kind of hoped so. She’d gotten used to being without her son. It stopped hurting after a while. At least, it stopped hurting when she was high, and she was high most of the time. Her life was just fine without a kid cluttering it up. She didn’t need that kind of responsibility again.
* * *
VIDALIA WAS ADDING mulch to the more delicate plants in her flower bed to protect them during the winter months, when they would lie dormant. Selene had taken one of her so-called weed walks through the meadows out back. She would no doubt return with a basket of stalks, roots and snips. She would know all their folk names and medicinal uses and she would brew teas that tasted remarkably good and actually seemed to work.
Vi didn’t mind Selene using nature’s gifts for easing bouts of sinus or nervous energy or a bad stomach. But the other things the girl did with those weeds didn’t sit well with her. In fact, she was downright worried about her youngest daughter. She had stuffed a pair of pillows with some wild herb or other and given them to the twins to keep away nightmares and ensure they had only sweet, happy dreams. Then there was the time she’d stuffed flowers into a tiny drawstring bag and told Mel it was for protection.
And there was more. Tarot cards, crystals all over her bedroom and all those books she was always reading about folk magic and shamanism.
It was worrisome, that’s what it was. The girl was meddling in places she ought not to be, and Vidalia felt more and more certain she needed to step in and do something about it. Lordy, while the rest of them talked about Christmas, Selene referred to the holiday as the Winter Solstice and insisted doing so wasn’t the least bit disrespectful to the Lord.
She was worried about Kara, too, what with Jimmy Corona back in town with that precious boy of his. Oh, that child could tug every one of Kara’s heartstrings. The girl was a pushover for any child, much less one with troubles of the kind that boy had. A motherless baby with braces on his legs. Wouldn’t have mattered if his daddy had looked like a billy goat, much less the handsome devil he was. Lord God Himself couldn’t have sent anyone more likely to make her Kara fall head over heels.
The question was, was this Corona fellow worthy of her? Would he treat her the way she needed to be treated? Or would he break her heart? Of all the girls, Kara was the most sensitive, the most tender-hearted, the most easily wounded. She was also the most selfless, giving and caring of the bunch. It would take a special man to make her happy, and Vidalia Brand intended to see to it she got one.
And if this Jimmy Corona jerked her girl around, he was going to find out he’d woken up a sleeping mama tiger. With big, sharp claws.
She yanked a weed harder than she’d intended, pulling up a good-size hunk of topsoil with it, and told herself to calm down.
“Excuse me?”
Vidalia looked over her shoulder, irritated at the intrusion, and saw a woman’s head perched atop a broomstick body. Hell, even that yellow, lifeless hair kept the broomstick image intact. Her face looked older than Vi’s own, dry, drawn, unsmiling. The woman needed twenty pounds to qualify as skinny.
Vi stood slowly, brushing the soil from her hands and forcing a friendly smile. “Can I help you with something?”
“I’m... looking for Mrs. Brand,” the woman said.
“Well, you’ve found her.” Vi extended a hand. “You can call me Vidalia.”
The woman shook her hand, her grip cold, damp and weak.
