Dying in the Dark

by Valerie Wilson Wesley

  “I loved her,” she said after a moment or two with no change of expression. ‘And it was a complete surprise to me to fall in love with another woman. I don't think I'm a lesbian or anything. I mean, up until my affair with Celia, I always liked men, but I fell in love with her spirit, the thing that made her Celia, and that went beyond gender.”

  ‘And what made her Celia?” I asked because I had begun to wonder myself. Although Larry Walton said he hadn't been in love with Celia, his feelings ran deep. I wondered how the wild, young Celia I'd known could evoke such strong emotions from two such different people—and from the person who had shot her womb full of holes.

  Annette shifted her attention to a drawing that hung on the wall, and my eyes followed hers. It was a drawing of Celia, but it was unfocused and vague. I wondered if this dreamy rendition represented her fantasy of Celia, or a lack of skill.

  “Celia gave me everything I needed,” she said quietly, as if she'd forgotten I was there. “I loved her because she made me aware of parts of myself that I didn't know I had. Knowing her made me more aware of myself. She gave me a sense of who I could be, what I could do. She was the light of my life.”

  As she spoke, memories of what Celia Jones had meant to me came back. Celia had always been the daring one, the one who called the shots, made everything seem simple and possible. Her impish, dare-you-to-try-it grin never failed to convince me to do forbidden, dangerous things, but it also prodded me to take risks I never would have taken on my own, and those risks often paid off. When we were girls, Celia's reckless spirit took root in my own and eventually gave me the strength to become the woman I am. Even though we'd parted ways, it was Celia's courage, coupled with the memory of my brother, that led me to become a cop, leave DeWayne Curtis, and start my own detective agency. Recalling Celia's passion for life made me smile, but that smile was shadowed by sorrow. How could my old friend have ended up like she had?

  “I married young. My life basically belonged to my husband and son, and if you've met my husband, you know what that was like. I was a cliche, stay-at-home mom, rich husband, nothing in my life,” Annette continued, drawing my attention back to her.

  ‘A lot of women would envy that.” My long hours and low finances often made me fantasize about some Prince Charming swooping down and taking care of me. What I'd seen of Drew Sampson, though, hinted that her “champagne and roses” life had been more like tap water and dandelions.

  “What about your husband? Was he involved with somebody during your marriage or is he now?”

  “Drew? Have you met him? All he cares about is his business.”

  “He must have been pretty angry when he found out about you and Celia?”

  She laughed and rolled her eyes. “Pretty angry is putting it mildly. I've never known him to be so mad. He is still very bitter about it.”

  “Is there any chance—”

  “That he killed Celia?” she said, not letting me finish. “Believe me, I've thought about it, and it scares the hell out of me. What people don't know about the great Drew Sampson is that he has an evil, violent temper that very few people see. I sure saw enough of it, though. He never hit me, but there was always the threat of it in his voice. He loves his son, I'll give him that, and he would do anything to protect him. I know he would never hurt Drew Junior. But I wouldn't put killing Celia or anybody else who he finds threatening beyond him.”

  “So you think he could have killed Celia?”

  “Yeah. He could have done it.”

  I took her answer with a grain of salt. Ask half a dozen women that question about their ex-husbands, and they'd say the bastard is capable of anything. Yet I couldn't entirely dismiss her feelings. I wondered what Larry Walton would say if he heard them.

  “So when Celia came into your life everything changed?”

  “Not at first. I wasn't sure how I felt about her. She was kind of vulgar and crude. Not at all the kind of woman my mama would approve of.”

  I smiled to myself. Even as a kid, Celia had a sewer mouth and a collection of dirty jokes that could make my brother blush.

  “How long were you and Celia together?”

  “We had this, I guess you could say, flirtation about a year before we actually got together. I left my husband and Celia moved in here about a year ago. We broke up four months before she was killed.”

  “So how did you meet her?”

  “Rebecca Donovan.”

  Now that surprised me. I took a sip of my drink and nibbled meditatively on a piece of cheese before I asked for more. “Mrs. Donovan mentioned that she was involved in a shelter for abused women. So you worked in the same shelter?”

  “No, not at the shelter. Rebecca has always had a bit of the social worker about her.”

  I smiled to myself, remembering how Larry Walton had used nearly the same words to describe Annette's attitude toward Celia.

  “I was in a show.” She picked up the puzzled look on my face and gestured to the drawing of Celia I'd noticed earlier. “I like to draw. I'm an artist,” she added with a defiant shrug as if daring me to contradict her, and I realized that this self-definition was probably one that she had only recently begun to use. “I haven't studied art formally or anything, but I've always loved to draw. My husband calls my efforts amateurish, and maybe they are, but I love to do it, and I know I'll improve. I'm determined to get better.”

  “Good for you,” I said, and meant it. She spoke with a pride and self-assurance that reminded me of those times I'd defied all odds to accomplish what I wanted. Maybe Celia had given her that spirit, too.

  “So you and Rebecca Donovan are good friends?”

  “Yeah, after all these years. As a matter of fact, we still get together, usually at the beginning of the month. An early breakfast usually. We always see each other on holidays, too, like Thanksgiving or Christmas, or we call from wherever we are. Always early, when everybody else is in bed. It's an old tradition. We were kind of like sisters when we were young because we were both only children. When we were kids we had to get up to go to sunrise service. And they meant sunrise.”

  “Sunrise!” My voice betrayed my penchant for late mornings.

  Annette laughed. “Yeah, sunrise! Becky and I go back, way back. Our parents belonged to the same church.” She gave an exaggerated shiver and picked up the drink she'd sworn off a few moments earlier.

  “I take it you're no longer a member.”

  “You don't miss a trick, do you, Ms. Hayle?” she said with a grin. “That place, and a couple of other things, probably drove me to drink. I doubt if Becky is still a member, but she is always so rigid, maybe she still is. Becky took everything much more to heart than I did. I used to call her the little nun, because she had such a firm notion of good and evil and that people should always get their just deserts.”

  “Just desserts? That means peach cobbler to me.”

  “I'm with you, but Becky was serious about justice. Maybe that's why she married a judge.”

  “So what was your church like?”

  “When I think back about it, it was more a cult than a church. Services three and four times a week. All day in church and meetings afterward. Maybe it had more of an influence on both of us than we realize. Negative on me, maybe that was why I ended up in a ‘sinful’ relationship with Celia. God knows, I would have ended up in hell for that one. But all the good works that Becky did may have come from that, too. She was always doing something good for somebody, which is why she got involved in Celia's life in the first place, and how I met her.

  “She came to the show because she wanted to support me in my art, and brought Celia to expose her to the quote better things in life.”

  “You said you didn't like her at first.”

  Annette glanced at the drawing of Celia, then twisted her mouth into a half smile that broke into a full grin. “Maybe that's too harsh. It wasn't so much that she was vulgar, but she said exactly what was on her mind. She didn't like any of the art in the sho
w and made no bones about it, rather loudly I might add. She was like, what the hell is this shit?”

  “But she liked your work?”

  “No, not particularly. She liked me. I think she was more drawn to me than I was to her, and she made it her business to get to know me better.”

  “So what did Mrs. Donovan, the little nun, I think you called her, think about that?”

  “I think it surprised her, but Rebecca has one of those faces that never gives anything away. It's impossible to know what she really feels or even if she's happy or sad.”

  “What do you mean?”

  ‘A couple of years back, Becky lost a child, only a few weeks old. Crib death, I think it was. She really wanted kids, and it was the saddest thing in the world, but she wouldn't let anyone share her grief. I'm sure that she and the judge mourned the death of their child in private, but never in front of anybody else.”

  Annette's sigh evoked a similar one from me. We were both mothers so we knew how deep this woman's pain must have been. I couldn't imagine my life without my son; I didn't want to imagine it.

  ‘And her husband died before they could have another child?” I asked, my attention leaving Annette for a moment to focus on what had happened to her friend.

  “There must have been some kind of a problem because she couldn't conceive again. But if you saw her to talk to you'd never know it.” She grunted in disgust. “That was part of our church's teaching, too. The Lord has His reasons, so you can't question His ways. To show sorrow was to doubt His will and challenge His wisdom. Beats the hell out of me, too,” she said irreverently, acknowledging my confusion. “How Rebecca ended up with Clay Donovan is one of the great mysteries of life.”

  “I hear he was a wild one,” I said with a salacious grin, hoping to dig up more dirt on the judge, but if she knew anything she wasn't about to share it. She simply gave a devil-may-care shrug and gulped more of her drink, the water apparently abandoned.

  “So who is Aaron Dawson?” I had saved the best for last.

  “The man Celia left me for.” If she felt any bitterness she didn't show it.

  ‘And you weren't angry about it?”

  “Of course I was angry, and I told someone I love some very hurtful, very destructive things that I shouldn't have shared because of what happened and what she did to me. But I got over it.”

  “What did you tell?”

  “It's done now. It's over. I don't want to repeat it.”

  But she took in her breath suddenly, as if she had just remembered something, and then she glanced once at the drawing on the wall and then away from me. I wondered what had come into her mind.

  “So why did Celia leave?”

  “Because she was pregnant.”

  Through her womb, the center of a woman's being.

  I was the one concealing my feelings now, and it took some serious willpower to do it.

  “Celia was a stupid cunt when it came to men.” The use of the “c” word casually spilling out of the mouth of this supposedly wellbred woman sent a shiver of disgust through me, but I hid my feelings as she continued her rant.

  “Half the time she screwed them and didn't use a rubber. Liked it raw, she used to say. Can you imagine that! That's the kind of thing some low-life man says to a woman, not the other way around! She could have caught anything, brought it back home to me, anything at all. She could be a dumb little cunt when she felt like it. A real dumb bitch.” The anger poured out in her voice, in the tight line her lips formed, and the fury in her eyes. Celia had been dead for nearly four months, but the rage was still there, and it had finally broken through.

  “What a terrible betrayal! Celia could definitely be a bitch.” I hid my feelings and threw in my two cents’ worth as I remembered the dust from that midnight blue Lincoln the last time I saw her. “So she was pregnant when she was murdered?” I wondered why Morgan hadn't bothered to mention it. Perhaps old-fashioned tact had kept his lips sealed; “Bury the secrets of the dead with them” had always been his motto.

  “I don't know.” Annette shrugged as if she didn't give a damn one way or the other.

  “Is Aaron Dawson the kind of man who would kill a woman over having—or not having—his baby?”

  “Why don't you ask him,” she said sharply. She began to collect the things that were on the coffee table, the tray, pitcher, and glasses, and headed into the kitchen with them, her not-so-subtle way of indicating that our interview was over.

  But I wasn't ready to go, and I followed her, notebook in hand.

  “Do you know where he lives or how I can get in touch with him? The numbers I have are disconnected.”

  She made me wait while she carefully washed and dried her pretty crystal glasses and climbed on a footstool to place them next to each other on the top shelf.

  “Cecil knew his number. After Celia died he stayed with him for a while, but Cecil is dead now, too, so I guess you're out of luck.” Her caustic tone surprised me because it came from nowhere. But I didn't have a chance to respond. Our attention was drawn to the sound of a key turning in the kitchen door lock.

  “Drew?” Annette called out climbing down from the footstool.

  “Yeah.”

  “Drew, where have you been?”

  “Don't ask me that, and I told you what my name is! My name is DeeEss. Call me that or nothing. I came to get the keys.” He held his small body tight, his shoulders scrunched up close to his neck. He lifted a set of car keys off a hook near the kitchen door and jiggled them defiantly.

  There was a snicker behind him as Pik, dressed in the usual gangsta regalia, sauntered into the room. The young woman I had seen at Morgan's stood behind him, as if she were afraid to enter. She held her baby, who started to giggle, adding an odd note of levity to a tense situation. The girl kissed the child's forehead and cheek.

  Pik picked an apple up from a wooden bowl on the table, took a bite, then tossed the remainder into a nearby trash can as if shooting for a basket. I glanced at Annette, who was clearly afraid of him. I was tempted to call him on his manners, but was caught between instinct and common sense. Scolding a strange kid these days can earn you a bullet through the head as quickly as a tongue stuck out behind your back. But this boy irked me. He had this woman cowering in her own kitchen, and I didn't like it.

  “I'm Ms. Tamara Hayle,” I said, looking the kid in the eye. “I saw you at my godson's funeral.” The godson business was a stretch, but in different circumstances it might have been so. I stuck out my hand toward Pik in a gesture of friendliness. He stared at it for a few moments then shoved his into his pockets. I was lucky he didn't spit in it.

  The baby started to giggle again, and I turned to the girl.

  “Cristal, isn't it?”

  “Yes, ma'am,” she said, and her politeness surprised me.

  “That's a beautiful baby. Can I hold her?”

  “Him. He a boy,” said Pik, and both of us glanced at him. I reached toward the baby and Pik moved in front of her, preventing me from taking him.

  “Cecil didn't have no godmother,” he said.

  “Goes to show you, Pik, there's a lot of stuff about Cecil Jones you don't know.”

  He gave me what he thought was a scary look, but I've taken on scarier thugs than him, so I didn't flinch.

  “I'm DeeEss,” said Annette's son, who apparently had enough regard for his mother to try to keep a bad scene from exploding in her kitchen.

  “Tamara Hayle.” I shook his hand, which was as soft and delicate as a girl's. I thought again about what Larry Walton had said about Annette and her son, and how selfish she had been to drag her son into her new life. She had gambled everything on Celia Jones and lost, big-time.

  ‘Are you Jamal's mother? I think he might have been in my homeroom in fifth grade. I think I remember you.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “How's Jamal doing?”

  “Fine. He's doing just fine. I'll tell him you asked about him,” I said, which was a li
e.

  But for a moment, I glimpsed DeeEss as he must have been before Celia and her child entered his life. He was a kid who had been a friend of my son's, and my heart broke for him and his mother. Pik caught a glimpse of that boy, too, and didn't like what he saw.

  “Let's hat, man,” he gestured toward the door, and without a word to either me or Annette, the three of them left. I heard somebody gunning the engine of Annette's car before they pulled away.

  Annette fell down on her knees. “Oh Lord, please, Lord, don't let what happened to Celia's boy happen to mine. Please, Lord, please please,” she cried into her folded hands, praying like she must have at those sunrise services her parents dragged her to.

  “I'm certain he'll be fine,” I said, reassuring her, but I wasn't so sure. Trouble usually finds boys like hers like lint finds black velvet. “If you need me or think of anything else, please call me,” I said, placing my card with my cell phone number into her folded hands. When I left I closed the door behind me, but I don't think she heard a thing.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The homes of the two old friends couldn't have been more different. Rebecca Donovan's house, with its well-tended yard and beautiful exterior, was a candidate for a spread in Better Homes and Gardens. She didn't live in the Heights, but in a stately neighborhood in Newark, where out of loyalty and love for the city, many professionals and politicians chose to reside. In the old days, homes like these, with their wide porches and stately cupolas, could be found in many Newark neighborhoods. But they'd fallen on hard times; most now were stuffed with too many families.

  As I drove down Rebecca Donovan's street, I was proud of how beautifully the neighborhood had been preserved and pleased to claim it for my city. It was like those streets I remembered driving down with my father when I was a kid. On Sundays, my father would take us picnicking on the lake in Weequahic Park, and we'd end up at the Dairy Queen on Ferry Street for cherry vanilla ice cream cones. Come spring, we'd stroll through Branch Brook Park, where the homegrown cherry blossoms challenged—and whipped—those in DC. Weequahic, Chancellor Avenue. Lyons Avenue. I could still hear the names of those grand old places rolling off my father's lips. Someday they would be back to what they were; I hoped I'd be around to see it.