“You can’t trust these house helps, Jerry,” she would say. “Let me handle her food. It’s my duty.”
He looked at the boy again, searching for a lie. But he did not see a kid looking for a payday. He saw the eyes of someone who had seen something evil and could not unsee it.
“Why would you say that?” Jerry asked, his voice shaking. “Do you know who I am? Do you know what I can do to you for saying things like that about my family?”
The boy just nodded.
“I know you’re Chief Williams. I clean the high windows at the back of your house in Banana Island. The security guys let me do it for a little change. I see things because rich people never look down.”
Jerry’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the bench. He knew those windows. They looked right into the kitchen.
“What did you see?” Jerry whispered, terrified of the answer.
The boy looked at his feet, then back up.
“I saw her, Madam Victoria. When the sun goes down, she sends everyone out of the kitchen. Then she opens a small silver locket around her neck and drops a white powder into the girl’s soup. I saw her do it yesterday and the week before that.”
A cold, sick feeling washed over Jerry. It was not the heat. It was the feeling of being stabbed in the back by the person you are supposed to trust most.
