The Devil's Music: A Kilroy Mystery by Stephen Mertz

Author:Stephen Mertz
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Wolfpack Publishing
Published: 2019-01-08T22:00:00+00:00

11

JENNA SAID, “It’s about my niece, Chantel.”

“How old is Chantel?” I asked.

TJ said, wanting to remain part of the conversation, “The child is only sixteen. We’ve been letting her have a room here in the hotel, me and Jenna, ever since the girl’s mama died.”

“Keeping an eye on her,” said Jenna, “and lately we haven’t been doing such a good job of that.”

TJ patted his wife on the arm.

“Now, now, wife. You know we done the best we could.” His eyes engaged mine across the lobby’s front desk. “Chantel, she’s a wild child. Bad friends. High times. Too much, too young.”

Jenna said, “She’ll come home. Poor child never had a chance. But her whole life is ahead of her and I aim to see that it’s a good life.”

I said, “Tell me how I can help.”

Jenna said, “First, I’ve got to tell you about my sister. See, little Chantel, she never had a chance and neither did me or her mama, who was my sister Alida.”

“Was?”

TJ said, “Alida died of a drug overdose two years ago. The Medical Examiner couldn’t determine if it was accidental or suicide.”

“Doesn’t matter what it was,” said Jenna. “Only thing matters, my sister’s gone and the Good Lord chose me to watch over her child. There are those who could say Chantel doesn’t have a chance, looking at the bloodline she’s come from. But I climbed out with the good help of Jesus, my Lord and Savior. I broke the chain. I broke that cycle of being a lost soul and that’s what I’m passing on to my niece. My sister, Alida, I don’t know as to how some of us bring our woes into this world right from the start but she was touched in that way. I’ve only got my own choices to the blame for the way my life has gone. But there’s an old photograph of me and Alida and our sister, Rose when we was all little girls. Our daddy had taken off long ago by then and somebody, likely mama, caught a picture of us three little girls sitting side-by-side on a couch. Me and Rose, she’s a police officer in El Paso now, we were just staring at the camera looking like normal kids. But Alida... her little mouth and her little fists are clenched tight as can be like she’s raging with anger on the inside. And now she’s gone. Gone to where ever we’re all heading sooner or later.”

TJ said quietly, “Your sister’s in heaven, praise the Lord.”

I said, “Where is Chantel?”

“That’s just it, you see,” said Jenna. “Chantel has gone missing.”

“As of when?”

TJ said, “It’s been three days and we are right worried. We’re pretty sure the girl is hitting the crack pipe and the next step after that is smack. The crack keeps them juked all day; I’m going to be the person in Chantel’s life that should have been there for me and they need heroin just to slow down. We found a burnt spoon she left behind, part of her kit.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.