by Angela Henry
“And no one suspected?” I was feeling more and more panicked with each passing second.
“Ina Graham was an old black biddy who had Alzheimer’s. She was in her eighties. As far as anyone was concerned, it was natural causes. There was no autopsy. We flew out to Las Vegas the next week and got married. He even cheated me out of my honeymoon. He spent all of his time in the casinos. I spent all my time crying in the hotel room.
“Then he told me to go home to Macon and he would come get me. He never came. I went back to Columbus looking for him. The house had been sold and he was long gone. But there was one thing he forgot about. Ina had all of her jewelry in a safe-deposit box at the bank. I had the key because she would have me go down to the bank and put certain pieces in and take others out. I went down to the bank and took everything out. I sold most of it. I was broke. I kept a few pieces. I couldn’t bear to go back to Macon, so I hopped a bus and ended up here. I got a job as a receptionist at Gibson Realty where I met Ben Gibson, the only man who ever really loved me. But you already know that, don’t you?”
“So you killed Jordan and set up Bernie, killing two birds with one stone? That must have taken some planning.”
“It was easy actually. I got the idea when I found a note to Trevor from his skanky girlfriend in our mailbox. I used it to lure Jordan over to Vanessa’s. I knew she’d be at work. Everyone knew he was screwing her; everyone except Bernie, that is. I sent Bernie an anonymous letter telling her about it. Then I dressed up as that crazy bag lady who’s always roaming all over town looking for cans. I’d stolen Bernie’s extra set of keys and had them copied and put them back in her purse before she even knew they were gone. All I had to do was sneak in the back way and wait for him to show up. He surprised me, though. I thought I’d have to unlock the door for him, but he had his own key and let himself right in. I was on him as soon as he walked into the dining room. He never saw it coming.”
“Did Joy Owens see you? Is that why you ran her down?”
She snapped out of her trance and looked genuinely confused. “Oh, her. I saw Jordan talking to her a couple of times and wondered if she was in the plot too. I called her up pretending to be interested in buying some of her artwork and arranged a phony meeting to get her out of her apartment. I sent Raymond’s drunk worthless ass over there to look for that marriage license Jordan was holding over my head. I thought she might have it. Raymond ended up falling asleep in the apartment and almost got caught. She got run down, did she? I don’t know anything about that.” I watched her reach over and turn on the hot water in the bathtub. Then she pushed in the stopper and sprinkled in some bath salts, all the while keeping the gun trained on me.
“I can see the suspense is killing you,” she said, smiling serenely. She then reached down beside her and picked up the bottle of Darvocet that I’d gotten from Lynette for my back. I watched her read the label.
“It’s such a shame when people take medicine prescribed for someone else, mix it with alcohol, pass out, and drown in the bathtub, don’t you think?”
I couldn’t say anything—my mouth was too dry. It was obvious what she was planning to do. I just had to figure out how to distract her.
“Look, Diane, if you’re afraid I’ll tell on you, it would be your word against mine. Come on, this is crazy.” I was aware that I was becoming hysterical. “Besides, if you kill me, you’ll never know where the evidence is that implicates you.”
“It can’t be too hard to find. I’ll have plenty of time to look for it while you’re in the tub. Now, here, take these.” She was holding out a handful of pills and motioned for me to wash them down with a half a bottle of wine I recognized from my fridge. “Don’t be afraid, Kendra. It’ll be quick.”
I did as I was told, figuring I’d have a better chance against pills than a gun. Even with wine, I gagged on the pills and ended up spitting up most of them down the front of my blouse. But not before I swallowed a good many of them. Diane did not look pleased. She held the gun to my head until I finished the rest of the wine.
“Diane, how can you do this? Haven’t you killed enough people? Don’t you know you broke your mother’s heart?” Her face twisted in rage, and she slapped me so hard I felt my teeth rattle. She got right in my face and pressed the gun hard against my temple. Spittle flew in my face.
“You want to know about broken hearts, bitch? My mother used food to manipulate me all my life. When I was bad, she withheld it; when I was good, she rewarded me with it. I couldn’t go out to play until I cleaned my plate. She loved to see me eat. She encouraged me. So when I hit puberty with a weight problem, whose fault was it? Hers? Hell no, it was mine. When I couldn’t get a boyfriend and had no social life, it was, ‘Dee Dee, why you so fat? If you weren’t so fat you’d have a boyfriend. Dee Dee, why can’t you be slim like your sister Carol?’ For years she teased and berated me in front of family and the few friends I had. I’d try to diet and what would she do? Bake a cake or my favorite cookies. Then yell at me when I ate it. I hated that woman! That’s why it was so easy for me to kill Ina Graham. She reminded me of my mother. Now, enough is enough. Take off your clothes and get into that tub!”
I was crying now as I unbuttoned my blouse.
“No one is going to believe I mixed pills and alcohol, Diane. I already told Bernie about you.”
“I don’t give a damn what you told Bernie. Without proof, it’s just a guess. Yeah, I’ll be at your funeral alongside Bernie and your stuck-up grandmother, shaking my head and saying what a shame it is. Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of Carl.”
Any other time I’d be really pissed about anyone talking badly about Mama. However, in my current situation, with a gun practically up my nose and pills and alcohol in my system, she could have said my grandma wears combat boots and I would have heartily agreed, plus supplied the size and color. But what was that she said about Carl? The bathroom was becoming steamy from the scalding- hot bathwater. At this point, drowning was the least of my worries. I’d boil like a lobster if I got into the tub.
“What did you mean about Carl?” The pills were starting to take effect and my words came out in a slur.
“I mean when I’m rid of you, I’ll have my man back. How do you think I felt when I went over there last night with a housewarming gift and saw the two of you through the window? You had your hands all over my damn man. Mine! See, that was Jordan’s fatal mistake. After Ben died and I fell in love with Carl, Jordan found out and threatened to tell him we were still married. He tried to take away my second chance at happiness. Well, he found out the hard way that I wasn’t going to let him take anything else away from me. And if I’d known you were trying to steal my man, I wouldn’t have bothered with that bottle; I’d have stuck that knife in you just like I did Raymond. Now get in that tub!”
So this had been about Carl all along!
In her anger, she backed into the stand against my bathroom wall and knocked over a glass jar of cotton balls, sending it crashing to the floor. She glanced at the broken glass, and I took that instant and gathered what little strength and nerve I had left to shove her with all my might against the wall. As she hit it with a thud, her hand flew up and the gun went off in an explosive blast. I felt the bullet graze my right ear and heard more shattering glass as the bullet hit the bathroom mirror behind me.
I managed to knock the gun out of her hand and watched it skitter across the bathroom floor. Diane dove after it, and I dove after Diane, grabbing her legs in a vain attempt to pull her out of reach. I felt the burning sting of broken glass as it bit into my knees. I could hear a voice calling my name from down below and a pounding noise. I was in a fog but realized it was Mrs. Carson pounding on her ceiling with her cane and calling me. Diane half turned onto her back. I still had one of her legs. She kicked out with her free leg and caught me hard, right in the head. She grabbed the gun and aimed it at me. Mrs. Carson’s loud voice called from down below, “Kendra! What’s goin’ on up there? Answer me! Are you a
ll right? I’m comin’ up there!”
Diane gave me one last dark look and then sprinted off down my hallway and out the door. I laid my head on the bathroom floor, and before I lost consciousness I heard three sounds that I’ll never forget—a woman’s scream, the yowl of an angry cat, and the crack of splitting wood.
EPILOGUE
It’s been almost a month since this all happened, and I still can’t believe it. Diane’s dead. In her haste to get away, she’d tripped over Mahalia, who was lying across my top step. She fell headlong down my steep steps, and as she tried to catch herself by grabbing the wooden railing, it gave way, sending her crashing to the ground below. The railing had been weakened when I’d fallen against it the month before. Diane had broken her neck and died instantly.
I was taken to the hospital and had my stomach pumped, a disgusting experience, and was again kept overnight with another concussion. I decided to stay with Mama for a while after I was released. I just couldn’t bring myself to go back to my apartment. I know I’ll go back eventually, but I can’t say when that will be. Maybe after the nightmares are over. I’ll never know why Diane didn’t shoot me when she had the chance. But it’s not anything I’m questioning too hard. I’ve been offering up extra prayers of thanks every night before I go to sleep.
The charges against Bernie were dropped. Now she’s agonizing over whether to have her brother and mother’s bodies exhumed to see if they, too, were victims of Diane.
Trevor is of course in denial and is telling anyone who’ll listen that his mother was innocent. He had even contemplated suing Mrs. Carson and me over the steps his mother fell down. I hear Vonnie talked him out of it. She’s pregnant and doesn’t want the father of her unborn child caught up in litigation.
Vanessa’s father died two days after my near-fatal encounter with Diane. Vanessa had promptly taken the insurance money and bought a luxury condo in Pine Knoll. Her doctor boyfriend dumped her soon afterward. From what I heard, he found Vanessa’s credit card statement with a charge to an abortion clinic on it. Being a staunch pro-life advocate and not knowing if it had been his child Vanessa had aborted, he broke off his relationship with her. Vanessa didn’t let any grass grow under her feet though. Lynette and I went to the Red Dragon for lunch one day, and who did we see cuddling in a booth together? Vanessa and my blind date, Drew Carver. Some people deserve each other.
As for Carl and me, well, what can I say? We’ve been seeing each other on weekends and talking almost daily on the phone. He’s been very supportive and understanding when I need my space, and I’ve been able to convince him that what Diane did as a result of her obsession with him was not his fault. So far, so good.
Things are slowly getting back to normal. The summer session is in full swing at the literacy center. But there was still one thing that was bothering me, which is why I found myself knocking on the door of Joy Owens’s apartment. Cory answered the door. She looked tired and wary upon seeing me.
“Joy’s asleep,” she said by way of greeting. “I’ll tell her you stopped by.” She started to close the door when I stopped her. “How’s she doing?” She closed the door behind her and leaned wearily against it.
“She has her good and bad days. She gets the cast off her leg next week. She’s not her old self yet. Her memory is still bad. It’ll take some time for her to be one hundred percent again.”
“Cory, you’re the one who ran Joy down that night, aren’t you?” I asked as gently as possible.
Cory looked as if she was about to cuss me out; then she buried her face in her hands and slid into a heap on the floor.
“I didn’t mean to, I swear. It was an accident,” she said, sobbing.
“What happened?”
“I followed her that night. I didn’t believe that story about meeting a buyer for her paintings. She’s cheated on me before, and I wanted to see who she was meeting. She spotted me following her, and we got into a big fight right in the middle of the road. She said some terrible, nasty things to me. I was so mad I got into my car and instead of putting it into drive, I accidentally threw it into reverse and backed right over her. I didn’t mean to. I love Joy.” She was crying so hard her thin shoulders were heaving.
“So you left her in the middle of the road?”
“I knew I’d hit something. I thought it was her bike. I never even looked back. I just went home. I didn’t know what I’d done until the next day. God, if I have to take care of her the rest of her life, I will.”
I didn’t know if I believed her. Before I could say any more, Joy called out from inside the apartment. “Cory, where are you?” Cory gave me a pleading look.
“Go pull yourself together. I’ll go sit with Joy. I promise I won’t say anything.”
She reluctantly left and I went inside. Joy was propped up on the couch. The huge cast on her leg was the only testament to her accident.
“Cory went to get some fresh air. How are you doing, Joy?”
“Fine. I heard you almost got your ass killed. Didn’t you hear that curiosity killed the cat?” I looked at her closely. She sure sounded like the old Joy. She laughed spitefully.
“That’s right. There’s nothing wrong with me. I remember everything and have for a long time now. I just want to teach Cory a lesson. I’m going to work her ass into the ground. Running over me and leaving me for dead isn’t anything I’m likely to forget anytime soon. In a few weeks, I’ll miraculously get my memory back. I can’t keep this idiot act up much longer. Then she’ll really have hell to pay.”
“She said it was an accident, Joy. She loves you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Whatever.” She was definitely back.
“Well, since you remember everything, were you the one sending Jordan the notes calling him a murderer, and did you vandalize his car?”
“Hell yes. I wanted to make that bastard’s life as miserable as possible. I didn’t think any of those other wimpy bitches he screwed over would ever do anything to him. I was wrong though, huh? Who’d have thought Diane Gibson had the balls.”
“Why were you snooping around Bernie’s house after Jordan’s funeral?”
“I wanted to make sure that motherfucker was really gone. I saw his body in that house that night. I used to go over there and peek through the window while he was screwing that Vanessa chick. Sometimes he’d see me and chase me down the alley. That night I went over there and the back door was standing open, so I walked in and there he was, dead on the floor in his own blood. It was over. All those years of hating him for what he did to my mother, and it was over. I looked through that big mansion. I wanted to make sure I couldn’t find a trace of his ass anywhere.”
“You were the one Bernie heard in the house the night she found his body. Why didn’t you come forward? It could have saved us all a lot of trouble.”
For a second, she looked as close to being sorry as I was ever going to see her look. In an instant, however, the look was gone.
“Damn! I was scared, okay. I ain’t never seen no dead body before. I didn’t want the police thinking I killed him! It all turned out right in the end, didn’t it?” she said defiantly. And it had, just barely though.
“And for the record, you were the one who told the police about what happened between me and Jordan in the parking lot that night, weren’t you?”
“You need to unknot those panties, girlfriend, ‘cause you’d have told on my ass if it had been the other way ‘round, and you know it. I had to do my civic duty, didn’t I?” She smiled sweetly.
I shook my head in disgust and wondered how much bad karma I’d incur if I bitch-slapped an invalid.
Cory slipped back into the apartment and gave Joy a loving look. Joy’s face instantly became slack and her eyes glazed over as she fell back into her act. I desperately wanted to tell Joy that she was playing a dangerous game. I wanted to tell her about the pitfalls of playing with people’s emotions and stretching the limits of their love and devotion. I’d witnessed the outcome firs
thand. But I knew she’d never listen to me. It was a lesson she’d have to learn, needed to learn, on her own. I got up, said my good-byes, and without a backward glance, I left.
TANGLED ROOTS
A Kendra Clayton Mystery
ANGELA HENRY
Copyright © 2015 Angela Henry
All Rights Reserved.
PROLOGUE
Inez Rollins lifted her heavy mass of braids with one hand and fanned her sweaty neck with the other. She spied a piece of hair she’d missed on the floor and aimed her broom underneath the stretch of counter. Soon she’d have her own shop and she’d pay someone else to do this mess, she thought. The cleaners her boss, Bruce Robins, employed to clean the shop only came every other night. When she had her own shop she wouldn’t be working this late at night, either. People would have to make their appointments around her schedule and not the other way around. Bruce and the other stylists were nice enough but she’d been working in someone else’s shop since she graduated from cosmetology school. It was high time she had her own place.
She’d sat down with a calculator during her lunch break and figured she only needed a few hundred dollars more to put a down payment on that little building over on Sinclair
Street that used to be a candy store. She’d have had the money by now if Renita Franklin hadn’t been stealing her supplies. She had to shell out extra money reordering supplies that she knew damn well Renita had taken and hidden in her station. So what if Renita had written her name on the stuff? Inez wasn’t stupid; she knew that stuff belonged to her. It was a good thing Bruce had fired her before there was an even bigger problem.