Roses Are Red

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Two

A couple of nights later, I was home playing the piano on the sun porch at around eleven-thirty. The rest of the house was silent, nice and peaceful, the way I like it sometimes. I had just gone up, checked on the boy, and found him sleeping like a precious little angel in his crib. I was playing Gershwin, one of my favorites, "Rhapsody in Blue."

I was thinking about my family, about our old house on Fifth Street, and how much I loved it here in spite of everything that was wrong with the neighborhood. I was starting to get my head on straight again. Maybe all that screeching and crying in the Baptist church had helped. Or maybe it was the Gershwin.

The phone rang and I hurried to the kitchen to get it before it woke everyone up, especially little Alex, or AJ, as Jannie and Damon had started to call him.

It was Kyle Craig on the line.

Kyle almost never called the house and never this late. This was how everything had started on the Mastermind case with Kyle.

"Kyle," I said, 'why are you calling me here? What's wrong? I can't start on another case."

"It's bad, Alex. I don't even know how to tell you this," he said in the softest, quietest voice. "Oh shit, Alex… Betsey Cavalierre is dead. I'm at her place now. You should come here. Just come."

I hung up the phone a minute or so later. I must have because it was back on its hook. My legs and arms had turned to jelly. I was biting the inside of my cheek and I tasted blood. I was reeling. Kyle hadn't told me everything, just that I should come to Betsey's house. Someone had broken in there and killed her. Who had killed her? Jesus. Why?

I was throwing on some clothes to go and meet Kyle when the phone rang a second time. I snatched it up. It had to be somebody else with the bad news. Probably Sampson, or maybe Rakeem Powell.

I heard a voice on the line. It froze everything inside of me.

"I just wanted to congratulate you. You did wonderful work. You caught and punished all my little minions, as I thought you might. Actually, they were put there for that very purpose."

"Who is this?" I asked. But I thought I knew who it was.

"You know who it is, Doctor Detective Cross. You're a smart enough fellow. You knew that catching the good Doctor Francis was a little too convenient. Also my detective friends in New York Mr. Brian Macdougall and his crew. And of course there's still the matter of all that missing money. I'm the one you call Mastermind. That's a name I can live with. It fits. I am that good.

"Goodnight for now. I'll see you soon. Oh, and have a nice time over at Betsey Cavalierre's. I certainly did."