Mahogany's Dream Read online

  “What do you mean?”

  Again he spoke into the air. “Oasis, change scheme to sad.”

  At once the lights dimmed, the tint increased on all the windows, the walls became a darker color and the fog screen images were replaced by new, more melancholy depictions. The Lovers became Boy with Tire by Lee Smith.

  Janaya’s head spun. “Your house adapts to your moods?”

  He said something about argon gas in the windows and smart paint, but all she could think was: His house is alive.

  After she adjusted to the marvels all around her, they talked and listened to music into the wee hours of the morning. They fell asleep on the couch.

  Before dawn, she whispered into his ear. “Dyson?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you remember the day we met, when I asked you if you were going to guess what color my panties were?”

  “Like it was yesterday.”

  “Well, now you don’t have to guess.”

  Their bodies heated so quickly that Oasis couldn’t cool the air fast enough.

  CHAPTER

  33

  “Dyson, slow down,” Janaya pleaded. He was pulling her by the hand through the lobby of a decrepit, mildewed hotel in Kourou, French Guiana. She had no idea what they were doing there, or why they were running. He never slowed down.

  __________

  When Dyson was completing his doctoral dissertation, he met a French post doc named Marcel Ranoux. Ranoux had once been an astrophysicist at CNES, the French Space Agency. CNES launches all of its satellites from a spaceport ideally situated just five degrees north of the Equator in French Guiana.

  Ranoux insisted that the true reason France had opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq was to pacify an Iraqi engineer who was critical to the French space program. Dyson found this notion highly dubious, though he had nothing but respect for Ranoux.

  Ranoux bet Dyson that if he came to French Guiana with him, he could prove his contention about the Iraqi engineer. Dyson agreed to the bet, more out of his love of travel than a burning desire to know the truth. The next semester break he took an Air France flight to the tiny South America republic. The bet was never settled, but while he was there, Dyson consumed some great wine, enjoyed the fruits of several Guyanese women and discovered something else.

  __________

  Two days earlier, on Thursday, Dyson had asked Janaya to take a long weekend. On Friday morning, without explanation, he had asked her to bring her birth certificate and meet him at the Fountain Restaurant for breakfast. After breakfast, with no luggage, they took a cab to Philly International. On the plane, Dyson was evasive, telling her only that they were headed someplace special. The spontaneity of the trip was exciting, so Janaya played along.

  But when they landed at the small airport in Rochambeau, Janaya became slightly confused. The climate was tropical, but French Guiana certainly didn’t look anything like the exotic locale she had been expecting.

  It was late in the afternoon by the time they cleared customs.

  From the airport they jumped into the first cab they could find. Dyson offered the driver a hundred Euros to get them to their hotel in Kourou before dusk. The driver pushed the little Renault so hard that Janaya thought the doors might fly off at any time. Many of the roads were muddy and the small taxi fishtailed often, brusquely tossing them from side to side.

  Janaya’s patience was beginning to fade by the time they reached Kourou. It didn’t help that the hotel looked like a rundown boarding house.

  As soon as he paid the driver, Dyson grabbed her hand. They dashed through the lobby without bothering to check-in. People eyed them inquisitively, but no one seemed particularly bothered by their behavior.

  Janaya’s mind began to race along with her body. For a fleeting second, she thought Dyson might’ve just been incredibly horny. But that didn’t make much sense, as there had been plenty of opportunities during their trip to satisfy that hunger. Then she wondered if perhaps he was ill.

  They bounded up two flights of stairs then ran along a grated catwalk. The sun was setting and their bodies cast long shadows as they ran.

  She had a few seconds to catch her breath when they reached the door to their room. Literally a few seconds. Dyson quickly produced a key, unlocked the door and pulled her inside.

  The room was hideous. Big brown water stains marred the ceiling, the linens on the bed had cigarette burns, and the paisley armchair in the corner had a huge rip right across its seat cushion. A repulsive staleness hung in the air. She had no intention of even sitting down in such a pigsty.

  But Dyson didn’t want her to sit.

  He led her out onto the room’s patio balcony, where she finally put her foot down. “Dyson!” she yelled. “You’re scaring me. Why are you rushing around like a chicken with its head cut off? What are we doing in this nasty place?”

  He grabbed her by the arms and spun her around, where she had a direct view of a gigantic fiery globe quickly descending below the horizon.

  Sunset at the Equator.

  It was awesome, magnificent. Dancing convection waves filled her entire field of vision. The disquieting majesty of it brought tears to her eyes.

  And then, like a thief in the night, it was gone. Equatorial sunsets are short but sweet.

  She put her face in her hands and cried, though she wasn’t sure why.

  “That was something right?” Dyson said from behind her.

  She twirled on her heels and faced him. “Are you real?”

  “The question is,” he said, wiping her tears, “are you?”

  She gathered all the passion in her body and kissed him. They remain embraced on that balcony a long time. Janaya was afraid that if she let go, their moment of ecstasy would follow the sun over the horizon and be gone forever.

  The trip to their real hotel in Cayenne was saner.

  “I wasn’t sure we were going to make it,” Dyson said as they rode in the back of a much slower moving Peugeot.

  “I’m glad we did,” she said. Then she elbowed him. “Hey, what are you doing with a room key to the Dirty Goat Inn anyway?”

  When she said that, their driver gave her an Ugly Americans glance in the rearview mirror.

  But Dyson thought her misnomer was comical. “If you can believe it, all the rooms on the top floor are condos.”

  That was about the most hilarious thing she’d ever heard. “Stop playing,” she said.

  “I’m serious. I bought it a few years ago.”

  “And you actually sleep there?”

  “I wouldn’t make my worst enemy sleep there,” he said. “I just keep it for the view. I usually stay at the Novotel over in Cayenne.”

  That’s exactly where the taxi delivered them.

  In their suite, Janaya thankfully found a hot shower and three suitcases full of new clothes that Dyson had preordered for them.

  The next morning they flew to Tortola in the British Virgin Islands. From there they took a short boat ride to a tiny sliver of paradise called Guana Island.

  The next two days were heaven on Earth.

  The small tropical island was idyllic and picturesque, like a lush daydream she had willed into existence. There were only fifteen guest rooms on the whole of it, and Dyson had rented every one of them to ensure their privacy. The island boasts seven pristine beaches and they made love on six of them. On the last one, a scorpion chased Dyson around while was he was naked and Janaya laughed too hard to get cozy again before dinner.

  On Sunday morning, Dyson got up early and went hiking to the top of Liao Wei Ping Trail so he could snap some new pictures for Mahogany to draw.

  Janaya slept in late and then woke up to a Swedish massage. After her massage session, she sat on the hilltop terrace outside their bungalow gazing out at the endless expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. A hummingbird landed in a nearby Tabebuia tree. She asked the bird exactly when it was that she had fallen in love with Dyson Conwell.

  The bird didn’t know, or wasn’t
saying.

  CHAPTER

  34

  Maris still felt the same about Blake, but things had been different since Norma’s death. A guilty conscience that once whispered to her now shouted.

  Their affair had started a little less than a year ago, right after Blake told her that Norma had stopped having sex with him. She never envisioned herself as anyone’s mistress, but the combination of reaching her mid forties and the Academy becoming the center of her social life had resulted in some unexpected predilections.

  She taught social studies at the Academy by day and served as the live-in supervisor of its residential dormitory by night. She sometimes went entire weeks without setting foot off the campus.

  When Norma had first offered the position to Maris six years ago, it was a win-win situation. She would get paid to be a teacher while living rent-free in the dormitory. The arrangement worked out marvelously for the first few years.

  But then Norma coaxed Dyson Conwell into joining the Board and things began to change. Conwell’s money transformed the Academy from a cozy little boarding school into a bustling institution she no longer recognized. The Academy’s mission didn’t change, but its scale exploded.

  The first thing Norma had her new benefactor do was purchase the old hospital building next to the Academy, which made room for ten new suites in the dormitory. After the renovations, Maris found that she was responsible for supervising thirty additional residents, with no additional help. She’d often considered asking Norma to hire a second residence monitor, but being a squeaky wheel was not her style. And she felt guilty about the fabulous new apartment they had built for her in the expanded dorm.

  The gleaming new dormitory was just the beginning. Norma expanded the teaching staff, built new classrooms and knocked out walls to make room for eight new tables in the cafeteria. To utilize this new capacity, student enrollment tripled. Maris never imagined that Philadelphia even had so many underprivileged orphans.

  Norma called these changes growth, but Maris viewed them as mutation. A fourth of the school’s students now commuted in from various orphanages around the city. What kind of a boarding school has commuting students? And that wasn’t all. Every month there seemed to be a new face in the teacher’s lounge. There were even rumors that not all of the students were orphans. The Academy’s high test scores, gourmet lunch menu and personal computers for every student had tempted more than one parent to try and sneak their child in through one of the Academy’s feeder orphanages. When Norma learned of this practice, she put safeguards in place to prevent it from happening in the future, but decided not to audit the current student body for ringers. Norma said that if any such students were already enrolled, it would be unfair to expel them. Maris was silently outraged by this decision. In her opinion, even one parented child taking a spot from a needy orphan undermined the whole mission of the Academy.

  But Norma had never asked Maris for her opinion.

  But Blake did. Maris had come to know Norma’s husband through her work on the Academy’s Fundraising Committee, which Blake headed when he was Chairman of the Academy’s board. Before Dyson Conwell came along, the Committee worked hard to raise the funds the Academy needed to operate. Norma never had the patience for such minutiae. She wanted to spend every moment with the children. But someone had to do it. Blake always complemented Maris’ work when it was good, and offered constructive criticism when it was not. Ironically, she enjoyed the criticisms more than the praise, because they proved that he paid attention. He often told her that she was too talented for the Academy and would make far more as a fundraising consultant. This meant a lot coming from the CEO of her bank. At every committee meeting, he asked for her opinion at least once. He made her feel valued.

  Maris respected the fact that Blake was honorable enough to stay on the committee even after Dyson Conwell became Chairman of the Board. And he didn’t just preside; he stayed until the work was done.

  One night, when the two of them were reviewing a grant application that was due the next day, Blake confessed that he felt the committee was pointless now that Conwell had come into the picture. Maris admitted that she agreed. From there the conversation gradually drifted to a discussion of how Norma didn’t support either of their careers.

  Their conversation never ended and she became Blake’s paramour.

  For convenience, they would always rendezvous at Maris’ apartment in the dormitory. Blake said that he told Norma that he was out checking on the night crew at the construction site. Maris didn’t know if that were true, or, if it were, if Norma believed it. Norma never gave any indication that she suspected something, and at some point, Maris ceased to care. Blake made her feel valued.

  But Maris had abruptly stopped seeing Blake after Norma was killed. She still cared for him deeply, but she just couldn’t do it anymore.

  She had only called him over tonight to tell him something that he needed to know.

  __________

  When Blake got the call from Maris, he’d thought it meant that she wanted to pick up where they had left off. That’s why he was in a chipper mood when he walked through the door. He was disappointed to find Maris fully clothed, but that didn’t stop him from pursuing his goal.

  “Blake,” she said softly, “please don’t. That’s not why I called.”

  “What else could be so important,” he said, glancing at his watch, “at eleven thirty at night?”

  “You once told me that I could call you at anytime for anything.”

  That was just what you wanted to hear, he felt like saying. Instead, he said, “Maris, what is this about? This is a bad time to be a tease.”

  “Someone told me a vulgar joke today,” she said.

  Now he was getting annoyed. “So?”

  “It was a policeman, a detective actually. I think his name was Mancin, or maybe Mancini.”

  Blake lost his erection. “What did he want?”

  “He wanted to set up an appointment with me and a few of the students. He said he was in the process of interviewing everyone Norma had come in contact with in the two weeks before her…” Her voice trailed off.

  That didn’t sound so bad to Blake. “I guess he’s just doing his job. He’s already talked to me. I don’t think it’s anything to fret about. It’s not like you killed her.”

  But she felt like she had. Norma would never have been on night rounds had it not been for Maris’ complaining.

  “If he wanted to speak with just me, I wouldn’t be concerned. Like you said, I don’t know anything about what happened. But he asked to speak with some of the students too.”

  “Big deal,” Blake said. “They didn’t kill her either. And I doubt if they know who did.”

  She wished he would stop using the word kill.

  She said, “Do you remember the little girl who was screaming when you came by to collect Norma’s things?”

  “Yes.”

  “Her name is Mahogany Burrows. She was one of Norma’s favorites. She’s one of the students the Detective wants to see.”

  “Spit it out, Maris. What are you trying to tell me?”

  Maris folded her arms, almost like she was bracing herself.

  “Mahogany swears you had something to do with what happened to Norma. She says she had some kind of dream where you were pulling the puppet strings of a monster that ate Norma.” Maris turned away. “It sounds ridiculous, I know.”

  Blake’s heart was almost beating through his chest. He had had that exact dream two weeks ago. “When did she tell you this?”

  “Two weeks ago, on a Tuesday. She woke up screaming in the middle of the night. She never went back to sleep. I had to stay with her all night.”

  “It sounds like this little girl needs some mental help. Or maybe that’s just her way of dealing with what happened to Norma.”

  “I thought about that,” Maris said. “She’s not the only student having problems coping with Norma’s absence. And that certainly wasn’t Mahogany’
s first nightmare.”

  “Well maybe you can get her some professional help.”

  “We will. It’s just…”

  “It’s just what?” he asked suspiciously.

  “It’s just that she called you Blake. She kept saying, ‘Blake did it!’ ‘Blake’s monster hurt Dr. Hawthorn!’”

  “So what does that mean?”

  Maris looked him in the face. “How would she know your first name?”

  “Who knows?” he said. “I can think of a million ways she could’ve known it.”

  “I can’t,” Maris said flatly. “Norma was a stickler about that. We weren’t even allowed to use our first names around the children. She was fanatical about the children learning to use proper salutations. Whenever your name came up, it was strictly ‘Mr. Hawthorn’.”

  Blake moved closer to her. “What are you saying?” He reached out to touch her, but she flinched away. She was shaking. “You’re not telling me that you believe any of this nonsense?”

  She didn’t answer.

  He said, “Maris, I’ll say this once: I had nothing whatsoever to do with Norma’s death. I can’t believe that you, of all people, would doubt that. I thought you really knew me.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m not sure what to tell the police about us.”

  Blake’s eyes grew wide. “Are you out of your mind? Don’t tell them anything!”

  “If you didn’t have anything to do with it, then what difference will it make?”

  “The difference is that they’ll make our lives a living hell until they catch the real killer. Telling them about us will sound like a motive.”

  Her eyes become watery. “I’m scared, Blake. I’m scared to lie to the police.”

  “When will Mancini be here?”