Murder with Honey Ham Biscuits

by A. L. Herbert

  “To Vera,” I say, raising my glass along with the rest of the gang.... Well, most of the gang—Twyla apparently declined the invitation to stay overnight and went back to her restaurant. Leon and the crew, and their cameras, are nowhere to be seen either. And, I must say, it’s nice to get a break from being filmed. Today has been quite the experience, but I think one stint on television is enough for me.

  “I can’t say I miss the cameras,” I say to Wavonne.

  “Me either.” Wavonne takes a sip from her champagne glass. “My shoulders are sore from trying to hold my girls up all day. I don’t want any viewers at home saying I’ve got saggy bazoombas.”

  “What’s this about saggy bazoombas?” Vera asks, approaching us from the side.

  “Nothing. Wavonne is just... just being Wavonne,” I respond. “How are you holding up? I’m so sorry things didn’t go your way this evening.”

  “I’m fine. You win some. You lose some. And maybe Sherry did sabotage me, but like Russell said, my food is ultimately my responsibility. I had a good run and, if nothing else, hanging in there for eight episodes will be great publicity for my food truck.”

  “You’re bein’ an awfully good sport,” Wavonne says. “If Dorothy Dandridge over there”—Wavonne eyes Sherry—“had messed me up like that, my earrings would’ve been off and someone would’ve had to hold my wig while I gave her a good what for.”

  “I’m sure it was an accident,” I say, even though I guess I’m not really certain it was. It seems extremely unlikely that Sherry would mistakenly use all the cheese and saddle Vera with expired baking powder, but at the same time, I’m not sure Sherry is smart enough to come up with even the simplest of schemes to eliminate her competition. A few minutes ago, I saw her walk into a mirror and then apologize to her reflection for bumping into it. Or at least I’d give her the benefit of the doubt. Sherry’s not the brightest or most focused person I’ve ever met. It’s not inconceivable that she really did forget that she was supposed to share the cheese, and that she didn’t check the expiration date on the baking powder. I mean she . . . um... how to say this politely... her...”

  “Her cornbread is not quite done in the middle?” Wavonne offers. “She left the relaxer on too long, and it seeped into her brain?”

  “While that’s not exactly how I would put it...” I reply, “but, yes, that’s the gist.”

  “Maybe her elevator doesn’t exactly go to the top,” Wavonne says, “but it doesn’t take a criminal mastermind to pretend to forget something or slip Vera some bobo baking powder.”

  “It doesn’t matter at this point,” Vera says. “What’s done is done. So I’ve lost my chance at fifty grand and the job of a lifetime at what will likely be a Michelin-starred restaurant. I have my health... yeah, my health and... and...”

  “And some new friends in me and Wavonne.” I give her a hug.

  “Thank you,” she says. “I’m really not feeling well. I guess I’ll go back to my room and pack up. They’ll want to get some footage of me leaving with my suitcase tomorrow as the sun comes up. If getting eliminated is not bad enough, they have you get up at the crack of dawn to document your humiliation,” she adds with a laugh. “But then again, this is my send-off. Am I supposed to stay until everyone leaves?”

  “I’m not sure. This is my first time at this sort of rodeo.”

  “Oh well. I suspect this little shindig will wrap shortly. They used to get a little crazy at the beginning of the competition when there was a big group and a lot of rabble rousers, but Sherry’s about the only late-nighter left. I tend to turn in early, and Trey does, too—you know, Mr. GQ needs his beauty sleep. Without anyone to party with, I imagine Sherry will call it a night early, too.”

  “Speaking of calling it a night, I think I’m about ready to go find my room.” I turn to Wavonne. “What’s our room number again?”

  Wavonne looks at the little folder our key card came in. “Room two.”

  “That’s just down the hall,” Vera says. “You’re right next to me, on one side anyway. Russell and Cynthia are on your other side in the Presidential Suite.”

  “I guess we are all on the first floor? The manager said they are still working on the other floors.”

  “Yep. Trey is on the other side of me... and Sherry’s room is next to his further down the hall.”

  “Are the rooms off the chain schwanky?” Wavonne asks.

  “They are very nice. Aside from the Presidential Suite, I think all the rooms are the same. They’re quite spacious and comfortable with some great freebee shampoos and soaps in the bathroom. And we all have patios by the yet-to-be-completed pool . . . and nice views of the river.”

  I’m about to excuse myself and retire for the evening when I see Vera tense up as she catches sight of Sherry headed in her direction.

  “Vera,” Sherry says in a soft voice.

  Vera gives Sherry her attention but says nothing.

  “I really am sorry about the mishaps today. I swear on my life that I didn’t—”

  “You didn’t what?” Vera cuts her off. “Mean to slip me expired baking powder? Use up all the cheddar? Not even think about offering some of your cream cheese to me once you used all the cheddar?” Vera lifts her hands and shakes her head. “You know what? It’s fine.” She takes in a long slow breath, clearly trying to not lose her temper. “What’s meant to be is meant to be. Maybe there is some ridiculous chance that all the accidents today really were accidents. But, if they weren’t, it will all just come back around to you one day. Karma’s a bitch,” Vera says, and you just know she wants to add, “And so are you.”

  “They really were,” Sherry says. “Accidents I mean.” She fiddles with the buttons on her chef’s coat. “I really am sorry.” When Vera can’t be bothered to respond, Sherry turns to me and Wavonne. “It was really nice to meet you both and thank you for all your help today.”

  “You’re welcome,” I say as Wavonne looks at her suspiciously.

  “It’s been a long day, and I’m exhausted. So, if you’ll excuse me...” She looks back at Vera, perhaps hoping that Vera will say that she doesn’t blame her for anything or that she forgives her... all’s well that ends well. But Vera continues to offer nothing but silence and a stoic expression.

  “Well, this isn’t awkward at all,” Wavonne says.

  Sherry stands in place, nervously waiting for Vera to say something... anything to her, but if Vera’s talking, it’s only with her eyes.

  After what feels like a lifetime of silence, Sherry simply says, “Okay then,” and turns to leave.

  Vera watches her exit the concierge lounge, and as I look on, I wonder if the karma that Vera was talking about—the karma that Vera called a bitch and said might come back around to Sherry—might show itself sooner rather than later.

  Chapter 20

  “Girl, this place is lit!” Wavonne gives our room a good once over. “Plush linens.” She rubs her hand around on the bed. “Giant screen TV, surround sound, fancy bathrobes...” She opens a little refrigerator next to the desk. “Minibar!” she exclaims. “Russell said it’s all complimentary—I may just have me a five-dollar bag of M&Ms.” She bends over and looks inside. “It’s all computerized and stuff.” Wavonne eyes the red digital numbers underneath each row of tiny twelve-dollar bottles of liquor and six-dollar cans of Pepsi before getting distracted by the sights outside the sliding glass doors. “Look, Halia. We can walk right outside our room to the pool. Shame it’s not ready yet.”

  I join Wavonne by the doors and look out. Straight ahead is the pool with a wooded area behind it and, slightly to the right, a charming view of the river.

  “It really is quite nice,” I say, before looking away from the window at the interior of our room. We have two queen beds, a dresser, a contemporary sofa, a sleek desk covered with all sorts of local magazines and tourist guides, and a table with two leather chairs at each end. “This carpet feels like it has three inches of padding underneath it. I’m not sure
I’m going to be able to stay at a Holiday Inn after first-class lodging like this.” I grab my suitcase from the bed where Mitchell laid it, move it to a luggage rack, and unzip. “I don’t think I’ll bother unpacking since we’re just here for one night.”

  “Me either.” Wavonne sets her suitcase down on the floor, pulls the spread back on the bed closest to the sliding doors, and plops down on the crisp white sheets. She grabs the remote control for the TV and starts pressing buttons. “All this Ritz, and there’s no Netflix on this TV,” she groans, as I walk into the bathroom with a few toiletries and set them on the counter. When I come out Wavonne has found something to watch, but is only half paying attention to it as she rubs lotion on her arms.

  “What’s this?” I ask, looking at the TV.

  “Nappily Ever After. It’s about a sista who shaves off all her hair and finds inner peace or somethin’... I dunno....”

  “Can you turn it down a bit? I’m going to change and then crawl in bed and call it a night.”

  Wavonne lowers the volume on the TV while I grab an oversized T-shirt from my suitcase and return to the bathroom. I change clothes, brush my teeth, and give my face a quick wash before heading back into the room, turning off the overhead lights, and getting into bed.

  “How late are you going to stay up?” I ask, hoping Wavonne will turn the TV off shortly, so I can sleep in peace.

  “It’s not even eleven thirty, Halia. Most nights you’ve barely left the restaurant by now.”

  “True,” I say. “But for some reason, I found today to be particularly exhausting.”

  “I think you’re just gettin’ old, Halia. Maybe you need to get some of those Suzanne Somers creams or vitamins or somethin’.”

  “I’ll get right on that, Wavonne,” I reply. “In the meantime, can you turn that lamp off?”

  Wavonne clicks the little knob on the light fixture, but the TV is so big, its glow still lights up the room. Despite the lack of darkness and low hum of whatever nonsense Wavonne is watching, I close my eyes and, after a few minutes, I can feel myself starting to doze off. I’ve lost awareness of the sound coming from the TV as my body unwinds from a busy day, and my mind starts to dissolve into sleep. Wavonne’s occasional laughs next to me sound low and distant. I’m probably seconds away from full slumber when . . . BANG! An earsplitting sound pierces the air.

  I bound from my near sleep state and look at Wavonne, whose eyes are just as wide as mine, but we don’t have time to say anything or get up from our beds when a second, equally loud boom comes roaring through the room.

  “What the...?” Wavonne hops off the bed.

  “It sounds like... it can’t be...” I quickly jump out of bed as well.

  “Can’t be what? Gunshots?” Wavonne says.

  “I’m sure it’s not gunshots.” I hurriedly slip on my pants and tuck in my nightshirt. “Maybe a pipe burst or a car backfired or something.”

  I walk over to the door, open it just enough to stick out my head, and see Trey emerging from his room. He has some sort of pink paint or cream on his face. Then I hear a door opening to my right and see Cynthia hurry in my direction from the concierge lounge with the attendant following. As they scramble past Wavonne and me, Mitchell appears at the end of the hall and rushes in our direction.

  “The gunshots came from Sherry’s room,” Trey calls down the hall to Mitchell.

  “Shots?” I say to Wavonne as we step into the hallway. “Don’t you think it’s a bit hasty to be talking about gunshots? It could’ve been any number of things,” I say to Trey as we join the group outside Sherry’s door.

  “It was gunshots all right. My bed was nearly shaking from the vibration.”

  “I think you’re overreacting,” Mitchell says, and knocks on Sherry’s door. “It sounded like something popped or burst. This is a brand new building and still under final construction. Something probably just came loose or... or I don’t know....”

  Mitchell knocks again. “Ms. Ashbury? Is everything okay in there?”

  “Nothing is okay in there!” Trey says. “Unless Sherry was lighting firecrackers, there was just gunfire in there.”

  We all look at Trey like he’s hysterical—maybe because the idea of gunshots at an upscale resort just doesn’t seem plausible, or maybe because his face looks like an ad for Mary Kay.

  “What’s all over your face?” Wavonne asks.

  “It’s a Himalayan salt mask. It’s very good for your skin.” He’s distracted and clearly annoyed with the question. “I hadn’t planned on being seen in public the rest of the night, but don’t we have more pressing matters to discuss? Sherry could be dead in there.”

  “Ms. Ashbury?” Mitchell calls again, and really gives the door a good pound. “I’m going to use my master key and enter your room, Ms. Ashbury,” he calls. He waits just another second or two to see if there’s any response. Then he slips a key card in a slot, a little green light comes on, and he pushes the door open. As it swings inwards, an acrid scent enters the hallway. My pulse quickens and I immediately tense up. I have never actually smelled gunfire, but it seems highly likely that the part metallic, part smoky, part just plain rank odor drifting into the hallway is, indeed, from gunfire.

  Chapter 21

  Mitchell pokes his head in the door and gasps. “Oh my God!” he says as he steps inside. I can’t help but follow him into the room, and apparently Trey can’t either as he trails in behind me.

  I gasp in the same way Mitchell did as my eyes take in the sight before me—Sherry, lying dead on the bed with two distinct wounds—one in the chest and one in the stomach.

  “I’m calling from the Willow Oak Inn in Fort Washington,” I hear Mitchell say into his phone. “A guest... a guest has been killed . . . shot.”

  While Mitchell continues to offer details to the dispatcher on the phone, I try to collect myself. This is certainly not the first dead body I have come upon, but that doesn’t mean I’m not seriously rattled by it. The sight of a once lovely young woman with fresh wounds that proved fatal is making me dizzy and nauseated, but I manage to keep it together enough to give Sherry and the room a quick visual inspection.

  Sherry is lying on her back with her eyes closed and, as I didn’t hear her scream prior to the shots being fired, I imagine she was asleep when she was killed. The sliding door to the pool area is slightly ajar, which leads me to believe that the murderer came from the patio leading to the pool.

  I try to get closer to the bed to get a better look when Mitchell, still on the phone, waves me away. “They’re telling me to keep everyone out of the room.” He points to his phone. “I need you guys to leave,” he says to Trey and me.

  We both do as we are told, but as we exit the room, Cynthia, who up until now has been observing from the hallway, steps inside.

  “Mrs. Mellinger. I have to ask you to leave and—”

  “I own this place.” She cuts him off. “I’ll do what I please,” she adds curtly. “Has it occurred to anyone that she might still be alive?”

  Cynthia approaches the bed and places the tips of her fingers to Sherry’s neck. As she checks for a pulse, I hear Russell’s voice from behind. “What’s all the ruckus about?” he calls in a casual tone from down the hall behind us. “What? What happened?” he asks when no one answers his question. “What?!” he says again, clearly getting the idea that something serious has gone down.

  Instead of answering him, Wavonne points toward the threshold dividing the hallway and Sherry’s room. Russell turns away from us to step inside. When he catches sight of Sherry an unrecognizable noise comes from his throat . . . more of a roar than a gasp or a groan. His eyes are narrow and his mouth is hanging open as he approaches Sherry and lifts her hand in his. “Oh my God!” comes from his mouth, his voice cracking as he grasps her limp hand in his. From where I’m standing, with an obstructed view from the hallway into Sherry’s room, I can no longer see Russell’s face, but I can see Cynthia’s, and there is a certain look in her eye
s as Russell quivers over Sherry’s dead body—it’s a look I’ve seen before, at least in varying degrees... on a customer’s face when Wavonne has messed up their order for the third time, on Momma’s face when her car was mistakenly towed from the Sweet Tea parking lot, on Susan Lucci’s face when she lost the daytime Emmy for the eighteenth time. I know that look. It’s a look of pure, seething rage.

  Chapter 22

  “What’s going on?” Vera walks into the concierge lounge. She appears shaken and disoriented. “Sherry’s been killed?” As she asks me this, it only now occurs to me how glaringly absent she was immediately after the shots went off.

  “Come here, sweetie,” I say, and give her a hug. “Yes. I’m afraid so.”

  “I heard the gunshots and immediately went to the tub.”

  “The tub?” Wavonne asks.

  “That’s what we always did when we heard gunshots. I grew up in Harlem, when Harlem was Harlem. Momma always said the safest place when guns were going off was the bathtub.”

  “You’re smarter than any of us,” I say. “The rest of us bozos couldn’t get out of our rooms fast enough to find out what happened. In retrospect, that was a really stupid decision, but we... or at least I didn’t think the noise was gunfire. I figured there had to be another explanation. You don’t expect gunfire in places like this.”

  “I grew up in the hood and when you heard shots, you cowered in the house until the police came... and even then, you stayed inside and tried not to get involved. I only came out of my room because one of the police officers knocked on my door and told me to wait in here with everyone else.”

  “Why don’t you sit down,” I say. “We have some coffee on, and I’m sure something ‘stronger’ from the bar could be arranged if you want a drink to settle your nerves.”

  “Maybe a coffee.”

  I’m about to make my way to the coffeepot when a familiar face enters the lounge.