Chapter 2 - The Toy Mountain with a Door Behind It
The emergency-room nurse spoke gently, but Imani couldn’t stop watching the fetal monitor.
“Your baby’s heartbeat is reassuring,” the nurse said. “We’re going to keep checking you. Tell us immediately if the pain changes.”
Imani nodded. Gideon stood near the hospital window holding Zora’s torn drawing as if it were a legal document. Zora had fallen asleep in a chair with her head against his arm. He had bought her hot chocolate from the vending machine, then gone back for water when she said the chocolate made her tummy hurt.
“What did you see?” Imani asked him quietly.
“A painted door. Fresh paint. Clint looked at it when Zora spoke.”
“Daddy is dead, Gideon.”
“I know what they told us.”
“You helped me choose the music for his service.” Her voice shook. “Please don’t give her hope because somebody borrowed a pair of gloves.”
Gideon looked down at his sleeping granddaughter. “I won’t. But I’m not going to pretend I didn’t see Clint’s face.”
Imani rubbed the place where Clint’s fingers had pressed into her arm. Earlier that day, she had ironed Zora’s green cardigan between shifts because the child wanted to look nice in a room full of wealthy people. Zora had asked whether the club might hang her picture near the tree. Imani promised they could ask. She had not warned her daughter that someone might decide a Black family belonged on a charity poster but not beside the donors who paid for it.
“I should’ve taken her home when he told us to use the kitchen entrance,” Imani murmured.
Gideon pulled a chair closer. “You brought her to a Christmas party she was invited to. That wasn’t a mistake.”
“She saw every one of those people laughing.”
“Then we’ll make sure she sees somebody stand up, too.”
He unfolded a tissue and wiped the dried paint dust from the back of Zora’s drawing. He had repaired plenty of broken things in his life, but the small piece of paper frightened him. There was no wrench for what a child learned when adults found her pain entertaining.
A woman in a navy coat appeared at the curtain. Maya Turner had grown up two doors from the Bells and now worked as an attorney at the county legal-aid office. She took one look at Imani’s bruising upper arm and set her briefcase on the chair.
“Tell me what happened. Start before the drawing.”
Imani explained the invitation, the promised coats, the missing checks, and Clint’s accusation that Andre had stolen club money before the fire. She described Briggs striking the table with the tire iron. She did not minimize Clint’s shove.
“Did anybody record it?” Maya asked.
“Everybody had a phone,” Gideon said. “Nobody wanted to be seen holding one.”
“Then we ask for the venue cameras before anyone can erase them. You can also make a report about the assault.”
Imani turned toward the monitor. “And tomorrow? When Clint says I’m a liar and the police believe him?”
“Then there will be a medical record, your account, and my name attached to the request for the footage. We make people put their decisions in writing.”
Zora stirred. “Did they find my other Christmas boot?”
Gideon bent to adjust the boot that had slipped from her foot. “Both right here.”
She touched the drawing. “Grandpa, that door had a bell on it. I heard it ring.”
“Like the bell on the front counter at your daddy’s garage?”
“No. Like the bell at church, only tiny.” She made a little sound with her tongue, then drew a square in the air. “The man put boxes in a room. They had names on them.”
“What names?”
“Mrs. Carter. Mr. Johnson. Some of the apartment people.”
Imani closed her eyes. Those were families who had spent weeks waiting for relief checks. She had packed lunches for their children after school because two of the families had been living in a motel without a kitchen.
Maya’s phone rang. She listened without speaking, then stepped away from the bed.
“The venue says its cameras were offline tonight,” she reported. “Maintenance issue.”
Gideon gave a humorless smile. “Funny how everything breaks when somebody needs the truth.”
“But someone else called me,” Maya continued. “A clubhouse employee named Nell Price. She says there’s a storage room behind the toys, and she wants to talk away from the hall.”
They met Nell at a twenty-four-hour diner after Imani was discharged with instructions to rest and return if symptoms worsened. Gideon brought Zora to Imani’s sister’s house before joining them. He was not taking the child back near that building.
Nell, a Black woman in her fifties who had cleaned the clubhouse for eleven years, arrived carrying a paper bag of biscuits she had baked for the banquet. She sat without removing her coat.
“They told me the gifts were going to displaced families,” she said. “But I watched Briggs carry donation boxes through a door he had painted over last week. Then he told me I was no longer allowed to clean that hallway.”
“Why tell us?” Imani asked.
Nell’s mouth tightened. “Because the toy boxes had children’s names on them. My grandson’s was one.”
She slid an envelope across the table. Inside lay an inventory sheet. Four hundred winter coats had been received. The distribution column listed forty. A payment line showed $186,000 transferred to Northstar Renewal LLC for “family relocation.”
“My signature is at the bottom,” Imani said.
Maya examined it. “Is it yours?”
“No. They even got my middle initial wrong.”
Nell’s phone vibrated. She stared at the screen, then turned it toward them. A text from an unknown number read: TELL THE BELL WOMAN TO STOP DIGGING. THE NEXT ACCIDENT WON’T BE IN A GARAGE.
At that moment two police cruisers pulled up outside the diner. A uniformed officer entered, looked directly at Imani, and asked whether she was Imani Rose Bell.
“Yes.”
“We need to speak with you about a warrant involving the Christmas relief fund.”
Maya stood. “I’m her lawyer. What warrant?”
May you like
The officer held up a photograph of a check bearing Imani’s forged signature.
“Fraud,” he said. “One hundred and eighty-six thousand dollars.”
