Thread of deceit, p.2
Thread of Deceit, page 2
“Sec,” the youth muttered, peering into the screen as if he could see through it to the inner workings. Ana gingerly took a place on an old red vinyl restaurant booth that served as seating.
The office was a wreck—motivational posters peeling off the walls like dried onion skins, balls of every type scattered on the floor, damp white towels piled high in a corner, a desk covered with broken trophies. Bowling? Archery? The old statuettes had names and dates engraved on the front, and several bore the ignominy of missing arms or broken tennis racquets. What good was a beat-up tennis trophy in a place like this?
“Rats!” the boy said suddenly, slamming his palms down on the card table and pushing away his chair. He rolled backward five feet, his fingers knotted in his curls. “Rats and double rats! This computer is a piece of junk!”
“What kind is it?” Ana asked. She had taken out her reporter’s notebook and was testing her pen.
“An old geezer. Take a look at the size of that screen. Have you ever seen one so small?”
Ana stood and leaned toward the grimy tan computer. “Were you even born when this thing came out?”
“No way. But I can fix it. It’s just going to take some time.”
“You have a lot of confidence. I guess that’s par around here.”
He looked at her for the first time. “Oh, I’m not from here. I’m a summer volunteer. My church sent seven of us from our youth group to work in the inner city for two months. I’m setting up Haven’s computer system.”
“With that old thing?”
He shrugged. “You use what gets donated. My name is Caleb.”
She shook his hand. “Ana Burns. Nice to meet you, Caleb. Any idea where I can find the club’s director?”
“They’re both out with the kids. Uncle Sam and T-Rex—that’s who you need.” He glanced up at a clock with a cracked face cover. “It’s almost time for activity change. One or the other should be in soon.”
“Activity change?”
“Yeah, the place runs like a military camp. Organization, discipline, respect, all that. Everything on the minute. Spit and polish. It’s awesome.”
Ana nodded, unconvinced. “So, are there a lot of volunteers?”
“Not enough locals. Our group came all the way from New Mexico. My friend Billy is working construction upstairs with another guy who knows wiring. They run groups of kids through the rooms they’re rehabbing and teach them about electricity, plumbing, patching cracks and stuff like that. You couldn’t spend more than a couple weeks at Haven without learning something new. Sam’s goal is to give everybody a job skill by the time they’re an adult.”
“Uncle Sam?”
“Better not use that name in vain.”
The voice behind her drew Ana’s attention. She turned to find a broad-shouldered man silhouetted in the doorway. Well over six feet tall, he wore the usual white T-shirt—this one transparent with sweat. As he stepped under the fluorescent light, she noted that he had short brown hair, deep-set blue eyes and a grin that carved a pair of parentheses into the corners of his mouth.
“Sam Hawke.” He stuck out his hand. “What can I do for you, ma’am?”
Ana stepped forward and met his hard grip with one of her own. “Ana Burns with the Post-Dispatch. I understand the health department has contacted you about a problem with lead paint.”
The grin vanished. “We’re working on it.”
“Would you mind if I asked you a few questions, Mr. Hawke?”
“I just told you everything you need to know.” He stepped around her, his damp shoulder brushing against hers. “How’s the computer, Caleb?”
“The motherboard may be fried.”
“You’ll fix it.” He opened a narrow door Ana hadn’t noticed, stepped through it and shut it firmly behind him.
Caleb’s dark brows lifted. “I guess that’s all he has to say about lead paint.”
“I don’t think so.” She tried the door handle and found it locked. This was getting a little more interesting. Was the guy hiding something? She knocked.
“That’s…uh…the bathroom,” Caleb told her.
Blushing, Ana stepped back. “It ought to have a sign.”
“Well, it’s private, you know. For staff and volunteers. Sam’s office is down that short hall, if you want to wait for him there. He usually stops in and checks the schedule during activity changes.”
Ana folded her arms. “I’ll wait right here.”
Caleb shrugged. “You might not want to mess with Sam. Maybe you could get something out of Terell.”
“I’ll mess with Sam first.”
He gave a low whistle and rolled back to his computer. The bathroom door opened and Sam emerged, ducking his head to avoid the top of the frame.
“Still here?” he mumbled, shouldering past her again. He walked to a row of gray lockers that must have come from an old high school gym, jerked one open, stripped off his T-shirt and grabbed a towel. After blotting his face and chest and applying stick deodorant, he tugged a dry T-shirt over his head. Finally, he tossed his dirty laundry onto the massive pile in the corner and turned those blue eyes on Ana.
“Ma’am, Haven is all about respect, and I’d be glad to talk to you if I had anything to say.” He glanced at his watch, then looked around her to check the clock in the gym. “I told you all there is. We’re working on the paint.”
“Mr. Hawke, I have only two weeks to complete this story, and my editor assured me you’d cooperate. In fact, Haven is at the top of my list of sources. I believe our publisher serves on your board of directors.”
He paused a moment. “Davidson’s a good man. We appreciate his dedication.”
“So, are you planning to remove the lead paint or seal it?” she asked.
“Whatever it takes.”
“Exactly where is the paint?”
“It’s around.”
She flipped open her notebook. “How many rooms at Haven have lead paint?”
“A few.” He reached out and pinched the notebook between his thumb and forefinger, slid it from her hand and folded it shut. “We’re dealing with it. That’s all. No story.”
Returning the notebook to her, he smiled. The parentheses were absent. “Thanks for dropping by Haven, ma’am. Now if you’ll excuse me, we’re in the middle of activity change, and I need to check on my crocheters.”
“Did you say crochet?”
She followed him out of the office, scrambling to reopen her notebook and get the cap off her blue ink pen. He lifted a hand as a new group of youngsters took to the makeshift basketball court. Several waved back, some shouting, “Hey, Uncle Sam!”
He strode toward a row of doors that Ana suspected had once led to offices. Stopping at the first in line, he peered inside the small room. “Hey, Terell, how’s finger painting?”
“Good. We got six today.” A large man looked up from a table spread with newspapers. Like Sam, he had a military haircut and arms sculpted with muscle. His long legs, bare and ebony hued, ended in white socks and a pair of the largest sneakers Ana had ever seen. A half-dozen children clustered around him, their fingers and faces smeared with blue, red and yellow tempera paint.
“You showing around a new volunteer?” Terell asked.
Sam glanced over his shoulder at Ana. “Didn’t know you were still here.”
“I’m taking the tour.”
He turned away, the big shoulder in her face, and addressed the children. “She’s a newspaper reporter. Her name is Miss Burg.”
“Burns.”
“Terell Roberts is my partner,” Sam told her. “T-Rex, who’ve you got there?”
Ana shifted her focus to the little girl on Terell’s lap. Fairy-tale princess golden curls crowned her head, but there the image ended. Thin and dirty, the child wore a small white T-shirt and a pair of badly stained purple shorts. Her feet were jammed into sandals at least two sizes too small, crowding her tiny pink toes. Nestled close to Terell, she leaned her head against his broad chest. His arm circled her as she turned sad blue eyes on Ana. Noting that one cheek appeared swollen and tinged with hot pink, Ana’s instinctive alarm system went off. Someone had slapped the child—and not long ago.
“This is Brandy,” Terell said. He bounced her on his knee. “She’s not feeling too happy today. But we’re gonna fix that, huh, sugar-pie? Do some painting, maybe eat a bowl of popcorn.”
The child stretched up and planted a kiss on the man’s cheek. Ana felt queasy.
“Who hit her?” she demanded.
Terell’s head shot up, his eyes suddenly hooded. “Ma’am, I’m taking care of that,” he said in a low voice. “You all get on with your tour now.”
“See you at the next activity change,” Sam told his partner as he shut the door. Before Ana could speak again, he marched on to another room.
“Hey, Lulu,” he said, leaning through the open door. “What are we up to this afternoon?”
Ana peered around his shoulder. A woman with light brown skin perched on a green plastic chair that sagged precariously under her weight. Eight children sat cross-legged at her feet on the concrete floor. “We’re reading Peter and the Wolf,” she announced, holding up a large book. “Then we’ll listen to the music.”
“You kids be good for Lulu,” Sam said, stepping away from the room.
“Hey, did you see that child’s face—back in the other room?” Ana demanded, hurrying to keep pace with him. “The little girl named Brandy? Someone had slapped her.”
“Listen, Miss Burns.” He swung on her. “I appreciate your interest in Haven and our children. If you want to write an article about lead paint, I can’t stop you. But I have nothing more to say.”
Ana pursed her lips as she followed him to another room. She knew she had not imagined that bruise on Brandy’s face. And the way Terell Roberts had been holding the child unsettled her. Vulnerable children hidden away with grown men inside small rooms did not paint a pretty picture in her mind.
Her heart hammering, Ana paused at the third in the line of classrooms. A young man sat with a group of older children at a round table littered with hammers, nails, blocks of wood screwdrivers and various lengths of wire. Spotting Sam, he shrugged and threw up his hands.
“Same bunch,” he said. “Granny didn’t send hers over at activity change, so I kept these I already had. It’s no big deal, sir.”
“That’s a great attitude, Abdul, but everybody gets a turn at crocheting, just like everybody gets a turn at tools.” Sam gave a thumbs-up. “Let me check on Granny for you.”
“Thanks, sir.”
Sam walked to the last room and poked his head through the open doorway. “Well, hello there, Granny. Looks like your crew is busy.”
An elderly woman with snowy curls and a black velvet pillbox hat peered at him through oversize glasses. “What’s that you say, Mr. Hawke?” she asked loudly.
“I said you look busy here.” He raised his voice. “Nice work!”
Ana studied the center’s director as he stepped into the room and crouched down with the children. On first analysis, Sam Hawke seemed like a decent enough man. She appreciated the stringent rules and the emphasis on respect at the center. The volunteers clearly enjoyed their work, and most of the kids who dropped in appeared happy.
But her introduction to Terell Roberts still bothered her. What had been going on in that small room? Sam Hawke’s presence in such a place also raised questions. What had motivated an educated male in the prime of his life to take on the job of managing a run-down inner-city operation constantly threatened with closing? If the man enjoyed sports, he ought to be coaching a team, or working at a country club somewhere. It didn’t make sense.
What kind of future could Sam Hawke or Terell Roberts have here at Haven? If the recreation center had a large budget and generous donors, the lead paint might not be a problem. But Carl had called Haven a shoestring operation, and the place obviously didn’t generate enough financial support to pay two adults a decent salary. Sam and Terell would be living hand to mouth…unless they were using the building as a front to make money another way.
Ana’s blood raced at the possibility that she might uncover a real story at Haven. Oblivious to her thoughts, Sam hunkered down on the floor and picked up a length of pale blue yarn and a crochet hook. A girl—about ten, Ana guessed—leaned against his shoulder as she tried to show him how to loop the yarn onto the hook. He gritted his teeth, the muscles in his jaw rippling as he thumbed the delicate yarn.
Why this fascination with children? Prickles of alarm shot through Ana like thin, sharp needles at the memory of the way Terell’s hand had rested on little Brandy’s leg. The unhappiness in the girl’s blue eyes was palpable. She had kissed him, but had he slapped her only moments before?
“Tenisha, you’ve got me beat on this one,” Sam said, handing her the crochet hook and a tangle of yarn.
“Aw, you can do it, Uncle Sam.” She looked up at him. “You just have to try.”
“Tell you what, young lady. You play some basketball with me this afternoon—”
“No, I—”
“Now, don’t interrupt, Tenisha.” He held up a big index finger. “Remember the rules? Here’s a proposal for you. Try basketball this afternoon, and tomorrow I’ll come back and let you and Granny help me get started on crochet.”
“But I can’t play basketball, Uncle Sam. I can’t run hardly at all, y’know.”
“Well, how would I know that? I haven’t seen you ever try.”
She gazed down in her lap for a moment, her face glum.
“Do we have a deal?” he asked.
“Okay,” she said in a tiny voice.
“Great.” He gave her a solid pat on the back, and she brightened. Then he raised his voice to the other adult in the room. “Now, Granny, it’s time for activity change. These kids need to go try the tools.”
“What you talkin’ ’bout, boy?” The elderly woman squinted at him over the top of her glasses. “Fry the rules?”
“Tools!” he shouted, then muttered, “We’ve got to get you a hearing aid, Granny.”
As the youngsters scampered to their feet, Ana watched Tenisha lose her balance and stumble into a boy’s path. He barked in anger and gave her a shove. At that, Sam reached down and lifted the boy off his feet.
“Ladies first, Gerald,” he said as he held the youth high, giving Tenisha time to pick her way toward the door. Her unsteady gait revealed cerebral palsy, Ana surmised. So why had Sam Hawke urged the girl to attempt a sport that would only cause further embarrassment? Again, she felt the twinge of alarm and distrust.
Waiting for the group to file toward the toolroom, Ana noticed a figure seated in a shadowy corner at the end of the row of doors. She took a couple of steps closer and discerned a pair of skinny legs emerging from a green skirt. The girl wore the requisite white T-shirt and a pair of pink plastic sandals. Her hair, pulled back into a long braid, gleamed like black silk. She blinked at Ana, her large brown eyes wide.
“Hi.” Ana tried giving a little wave. She’d never been much good with children.
The girl looked away.
Well, that’s that.
Turning back, Ana nibbled a fingernail as she waited for Sam to complete the activity change. If Haven was as positive a place as it proclaimed, an article on the center’s activities might make a good feature for the Everyday section. She would suggest it to the editor.
Her own focus had to be the lead paint problem. Carl had wanted her to use Haven in the story, and she couldn’t very well turn it in without a single decent quote or even a pertinent fact or two about the place. She had to find out which parts of the building still contained the old paint, whether these children were at risk, how Sam intended to fix the problem, and where he would get the money to pay for it.
If the other sources on her list proved as uncooperative as this one, she would be hard-pressed to finish the series in two weeks. The memory of her editor’s promised reaction to such a failure chilled her. She tried to put it out of her mind. Why think the unthinkable?
As Sam stood at the door watching the new bunch of children settle in with Granny and her crocheting, Ana ventured another glance at the girl in the corner. Gazing back at the tall visitor, the child wore an expression of such emptiness, such sad hollowness, that Ana caught her breath. At the look on the girl’s face, a painful ache stirred to life inside Ana, and despite her best effort, she couldn’t immediately suppress it.
“Don’t you want to crochet?” Ana blurted out. She pointed to Granny’s room. “They’ve started a new group.”
The girl turned away in silence, her profile lovely and delicately haunting. Ana swallowed, wanting to go to the girl, to touch her somehow.
“Got the room switch taken care of.” Sam Hawke’s voice at her ear startled Ana. “Miss Burns, I need to ask you to leave now. We don’t allow anyone but volunteers and kids in the building unless they have a good reason.”
“I have a great reason,” she replied. “I want to interview you about your lead paint problem.”
His blue eyes fastened on her, and she knew exactly how an ant must feel as someone’s heel bore down on it.
“I’m not giving you an interview on Haven’s lead paint problem.” He enunciated each word as though she had as great a hearing loss as Granny. “Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.”
“I’ve been assigned this story,” she said as he turned his back on her and started toward the offices. She strode after him. “Haven will benefit from it. It’s obvious you serve needy kids here. Like that girl in the corner—”
“What girl?” He swung around.
“Tut-tut. No interrupting, sir.” She gave him a mock salute, then gestured behind her. “Back there. In the shadows. Who is she?”
He peered over Ana’s shoulder. “I haven’t been able to get her name. She showed up here a couple of weeks ago, but we can’t coax her out of the corner. She doesn’t speak English.”
“Now see? If Haven had to shut down because of the lead paint, that child might not have a place to go.”
“Haven is not going to shut down.”
