Kendra Clayton Mystery Box Set

by Angela Henry

  At that moment, all of my Good Samaritan intentions left me. I fled the house. I sank down on the step and breathed in great gulps of fresh air that smelled of rain-soaked dirt and somebody’s recently cut grass. Did I really think that I could walk into this house and step over a dead body for any reason? Lord only knew what I would have found if I’d looked through the rest of the house. Who the hell did I think I was, Christy Love, or maybe one of Charlie’s Angels? Or more likely a female Barney Fife, only this wasn’t funny. Bernie was right. This was a matter for the police.

  Almost as if on cue, I heard the sound of approaching sirens. I got up to walk around to the front of the house when I caught a glimpse of something white lying in the grass between the step and the overgrown shrubbery. I stooped to pick it up. It was a soggy wet envelope. Before I could look at it more closely, I heard the sound of voices. Without thinking, I stuffed the envelope in the pocket of my blazer.

  The voices were coming from inside the house. Bernie had let the police in the front door. I walked around to see what was going on. I didn’t care if I ever saw the inside of that house again.

  Bernie and I gave our statements to a rumpled-looking detective named Charles Mercer who looked more like a department store Santa Claus than a police detective. I guessed his large stomach and ruddy complexion must be indications of a fondness for rich foods and alcohol, with an emphasis on the latter. But, despite the lateness of the hour and the fact that he’d been roused from a sound sleep, he was very kind and patient with us. Especially with Bernie who, upon seeing Jordan’s body being wheeled out in a body bag and taken away by the coroner’s wagon, became hysterical.

  As for Vanessa, I needn’t have bothered. She wasn’t in the house or anywhere to be found for that matter. The police searched the house from top to bottom with no luck. Vanessa had disappeared, leaving an unspoken question on everyone’s mind as to her role in all of this. Was she a victim, too, or the killer?

  The night air had become very cool, and I pulled my blazer around me. By this time, many of the neighbors had come outside to watch from across the street. I watched them whispering among themselves and shaking their heads in disgust. Some were already turning to return to their houses. No doubt they were horrified that the violence that they saw daily on television and read about in the papers had now come to their neighborhood.

  I looked around for Bernie and saw her standing by her car talking to Detective Mercer’s partner, Trish Harmon. I could tell from where I was standing that the conversation was not a friendly one. Bernie kept looking from her car to Detective Harmon and back again. If looks could kill, there would have been another homicide on Archer Street. I started to walk over to see what was going on when a hand touched my shoulder. It was Detective Mercer.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Clayton, but I’ll have to ask that you and Ms. Gibson stick around just a little longer until our forensic tech arrives. You’ll both need to be fingerprinted.” He noticed my shocked expression and continued before I could raise an objection.

  “It’s just a routine procedure so we can identify and eliminate any fingerprints we find in the house.” I remembered how careful I’d been about not touching anything when I entered the house. But in my haste to get out, who knows what I’d touched. I imagined that Bernie’s prints would be all over the place.

  “Do you know how much longer it’ll be?” I asked. “I’d like to get home, and I know my friend would too. It was horrible for her finding Jordan the way she did.” I looked over and saw that Bernie was still talking to Detective Harmon and was still looking pissed. What were they talking about?

  “Miss Clayton, do you know of any reason why Mr. Wallace would have been at this house?”

  Why was he asking me? I wondered. Bernie and I had given our statements separately, and I assumed she’d have told him about Jordan and Vanessa.

  “I couldn’t say, Detective Mercer,” I began and hoped I didn’t look and sound as untruthful as I was about to be. “I remember Bernie mentioning that Jordan had done some repairs for Mrs. Brumfield, but other than that, I don’t know,” I said innocently. Technically speaking, he did ask me if I knew of any reason. I gave him a reason, just not the right one.

  “Do you know Vanessa Brumfield?” he asked.

  “We were in the same graduating class in high school but we weren’t friends.” That was putting it mildly. Vanessa Cox, as she’d been in high school, and I hadn’t exactly hung with the same crowd. She’d been homecoming queen. I’d been in the library club.

  “And you dropped Ms. Gibson off here at the house so she could get her car, is that correct?”

  “Yes, that’s right.” I was feeling uneasy. What had Bernie told him?

  “Did you think it was strange that Ms. Gibson called you before she called the police?” The thought had crossed my mind, but who’s to say what I’d have done in her shoes.

  “I guess she just panicked and didn’t know what else to do. It’s not every day you find a dead body.”

  He gave me an odd look and started to ask another question when a uniformed officer came over and whispered something in his ear.

  “Thanks,” he said to the officer and then turned his attention back to me. “Well, Miss Clayton, our forensic tech just arrived. It shouldn’t take too long and then you and Ms. Gibson will be free to go home.”

  “And then what happens?” I asked, knowing that this couldn’t be all there was to it.

  “I’ll need for you and Ms. Gibson to come to the station sometime tomorrow and go over your statements and sign them.”

  Great! I’m scheduled to work tomorrow morning at the restaurant, and now I’d have to find someone to cover for me for who knew how long.

  “Now, if you’ll just follow Officer Howard, he’ll take you on over.” Detective Mercer gave me a curt nod and headed back toward the house.

  I followed the stocky blond officer over to the curb where a white van was parked. Inside sat a very angry Bernie, who was having her fingertips cleaned with a cotton ball by a tired-looking bald man with glasses and a wrinkled shirt. Detective Mercer wasn’t the only one who’d been dragged out of bed.

  “I was told we could go home after this, Bernie.”

  “I’ll have to trouble you for a ride home again. That detective’s little sidekick told me they’re impounding my car for evidence! Said she could have a police car run me home. Now that’s all I need is for my neighbors to see me brought home in a police car!”

  Bernie’s mother, Althea Gibson, had been the first black realtor in Willow. When she couldn’t get a job with the white-owned real estate companies in town, she’d started her own company, Gibson Realty, and had been very successful. She had also been the first black person to build a house in the affluent, all-white area of Willow known as Pine Knoll. Bernie had never felt completely comfortable living in Pine Knoll and was always worried about what the neighbors thought.

  “Of course I’ll give you a ride home,” I assured her. But my assurance didn’t wipe the anger from her face, and I knew from experience that I was about to get another earful.

  “It isn’t their keeping my car that pisses me off,” she started and then glanced at the bald man in front of her, thought better of it, and didn’t say any more. Instead she lapsed into a stony silence.

  I knew I’d be getting the lowdown in the car on the way home, so I didn’t press her for any more details.

  Once again I found myself driving Bernie home. It was well after midnight and, except for an occasional person here and there, the streets were deserted. Bernie was rattling on about her encounter with Detective Harmon, which was good because her voice was the only thing keeping me awake.

  “I just don’t like the way she talked to me,” Bernie said again. I didn’t miss my cue and dutifully asked what Detective Harmon had said.

  “It’s not just what she said, it’s what she implied. When I asked why they had to keep my car, she acted like I was hiding something. Then she starte
d asking me questions about Jordan’s family. When I told her I didn’t know anything about them, she acted like she didn’t believe me. Said she thought it was strange that we’d been living together for almost a year and I didn’t know anything about his family.”

  I thought it was strange myself but didn’t comment. “I thought you said he was from Columbus.”

  “He is... I mean was,” she said sadly as if she had momentarily forgotten Jordan was dead.

  The neighborhoods were becoming more expensive and the houses bigger with each passing street. Pine Knoll is located on what used to be—you guessed it—a pine forest. The streets have names like Pine Cone Drive and Pine Forest Lane. Bernie lives on Conifer Circle. In the twenty-odd years since the Gibsons had moved to Pine Knoll, there were only three other black families living there now, one of whom is Bernie’s late brother Ben’s family who lives three blocks away on Blue Spruce Trail.

  “You know she killed him, don’t you?” Bernie asked as matter-of-factly as if she’d said, “you know it’s raining, don’t you?”

  “Who, Detective Harmon?”

  “No, I mean Vanessa,” she said slowly through gritted teeth as if she were speaking to an idiot. “She’d probably just done it when I let myself into the house. She must have panicked and ran out the back door!”

  I couldn’t help but wonder if Bernie was right. But the timing was wrong. “When was the last time you saw Jordan?”

  “Around eight o’clock this morning, why?”

  “Because his blood was dried, meaning he had to have been dead a while. He couldn’t have been killed right before you walked in.”

  “Well, then she killed him in the morning and is probably long gone by now!” she said irritably, which told me she didn’t like me poking holes in her theory.

  “If you feel this way, then why didn’t you tell Detective Mercer about what was going on between Jordan and Vanessa? He asked me if I knew why Jordan would have been at the house.”

  “And what did you say?” she said in a shrill voice that set my teeth on edge. I could hear her panic, and it bothered me a lot.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, glancing over at her. She was so tense she looked like she would shoot right through the roof of my car if anyone said boo to her. “I told him I didn’t know. I figure it’s your place to tell him.”

  “Like hell it is! If I told him, it would point everything right back to me. He would automatically think I did it because I was jealous. You can forget it, Kendra. I’m not saying a damn thing!”

  “Bernie, it’s not like they aren’t going to find out.” I may as well have been talking to a wall. Bernie had turned away from me and was staring out the window.

  I pulled into the circular driveway in front of Bernie’s house. The house never ceased to amaze me every time I came here. It’s an exact replica of the antebellum home where Bernie’s mother’s relatives had been slaves down South. I’d heard that Althea Gibson had loved to tell anyone who’d listen how she’d painstakingly traced her family tree. She’d been led all the way back to a plantation in Louisiana where her great-great-great-grandmother had been born and had died a slave. She’d had a smaller replica of the house built when she’d been able to afford it. It had given her great pleasure to be able to say that she was the master of this house.

  In the process, many people in the black community resented Althea for building a house in Pine Knoll—or the Knoll, as it’s known throughout town. They felt she had made her money off her community and then had taken it to the white side of town. But in true Althea fashion, she had said to hell with her critics and went on about her business. Bernie had told me that no one would ever know how hurt her mother had been when people she’d known for years had stopped speaking to her.

  I turned off the ignition and looked over at her. “Are you going to be all right?” She turned toward me, and I could see that she’d been crying.

  “Kendra, please stay with me tonight. I don’t want to be here alone.”

  She looked so utterly lost and upset that I couldn’t say no. And I really wasn’t up for the drive back home. I followed Bernie up the wide front steps and stood there waiting for her to get her keys out. Her fingers shook as she nervously hunted through her big leather purse. “Damn it,” she muttered and walked over to one of the wicker chairs on the porch and dumped the contents of her purse out. I heard the jingle of keys and saw the relief on her face as she picked them out of the clutter of gum wrappers, used tissues, and wadded-up paper along with the normal contents of a woman’s purse. It’s a wonder she could find anything in that mess. When she saw me watching her, she hurriedly stuffed everything back inside and quickly unlocked the door. Once in the house, she promptly reset the security code on the panel of buttons by the door.

  “The guest bedroom is at the top of the stairs,” Bernie said, gesturing toward the staircase. “You can go on up while I get you something to sleep in.”

  The inside of the house was very ornate and in sync with the exterior Greek revival architecture with its columns and veranda. The house was decorated in shades of cream and gold. The cream marble on the floor of the large foyer had swirls of gold in it. The railings that ran along either side of the marble staircase were gold and richly ornamented with cherubs and grape leaves entwined between the rails. Although the house was worthy of the cover of any House Beautiful magazine, it lacked warmth. It was all that cold marble that was everywhere, and it must have cost a small fortune.

  I wearily made my way up the steps and walked straight into the first room at the top. I switched on the lights. The room was a mess. The bed was unmade and clothes were piled high on a chair next to it. A man’s robe was lying on the floor, as were a pair of boxer shorts and a bath towel. The room had the musty smell of stale cologne and unwashed clothes.

  I turned to leave and almost jumped out of my skin. Bernie was standing behind me holding a nightgown in her hand. Her expression was unreadable.

  “Well I guess I can finally clean this room now,” she said in a flat voice. She handed me the gown and opened the door to the room across the hall. “Jordan had been sleeping in there for the past couple of weeks. He’d get furious whenever I tried to go in there. Can you believe that, Kendra? He was living in my house, not paying a dime, and was telling me I couldn’t go in that room. And I put up with it because I was afraid he’d leave me.”

  I didn’t know what to say to her. She shook her head and walked back downstairs to her bedroom suite on the first floor. I went inside the room and shut the door, flipped on the lights, and hurriedly changed into the gown. It fit but was a little too short. I turned off the lights, slid between the cool sheets of the queen-size bed, and lay there looking at the ceiling. I shut my eyes but kept seeing visions of Jordan’s smashed and bloodied head. In all the activity of the previous hours, I hadn’t stopped to think about one simple question—why?

  Who hated Jordan enough to kill him? I’d be the first to admit I disliked the man intensely. I’d even go so far as to guess that I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. But murder? What had he done that had made murdering him the only option? Where the hell was Vanessa? If she had killed him, leaving his body in the house and taking off on foot wasn’t the smartest thing she could have done. And if she had killed him, why? I thought of Bernie’s troubled face as we sat in the car and she begged me to stay with her. It suddenly occurred to me that she was scared to death. I guess in her shoes I’d feel the same way. But surely whoever killed Jordan wouldn’t come after Bernie.

  THREE

  I woke to sunlight peeking through the slats of the window blinds and casting striped shadows across the bed. The events of the previous night came rushing back to me and had the same effect as someone splashing cold water in my face. I sat up and looked at the clock on the nightstand. It was eight fifteen in the morning. I got up and was immediately hit with a throbbing pain in the small of my back. I remembered bumping into the serving cart after seeing Jordan’s
body. I slowly made my way over to the window and looked out.

  To the rest of the world it was a typical Saturday morning, and the people I saw were engaged in typical Saturday-morning activities. There was an elderly couple out for a morning walk. A teenage boy was cutting grass in the yard across the street. A woman was walking her dog—or rather the dog was walking her. I watched her trying without success to slow the dog down as it dragged her up the street.

  I went into the bathroom adjoining the bedroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked whipped. My face was greasy and my hair was sticking up in curly tufts all over my head. My eyes had that puffy look I always get when I haven’t had enough sleep, plus I had sheet wrinkles all over my body. “It’s a good thing you don’t have a man,” I said to my reflection. Mornings are not my thing. Had this been a normal Saturday morning, I’d be rolling out of bed closer to the noon hour, much to the dismay of my grandmother, who thinks it’s a sin not to be up at dawn.

  I found, to my relief, that the bathroom was stocked with toothpaste, a new toothbrush, soap, fresh towels, and washcloths, all ready and waiting for whatever guest might appear. There was a full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. I stood naked with my back to the mirror and turned to see if there was a bruise. Bingo. There it was, a purplish bruise about the size of a half dollar. I also noticed how wide my behind was getting. I’d have to work on that.

  I showered, letting the hot water hit my bruise in the hope of relieving the pain, then put my clothes on from the night before. Although I had tried to lay them neatly across a chair, they were wrinkled all the same. I walked out of the room and was met with the aroma of brewing coffee. There was a stairway at the end of the hallway that led down into the kitchen. I followed the smell.