Dying in the Dark

by Valerie Wilson Wesley

  With that he took out his reading glasses and picked up a paper from the pile on his desk, gently indicating that it was time for me to go.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Girl, I heard about what happened to you over at that Businessman's Club last Wednesday,” Wyvetta Green said with a sassy wink as I strolled into Jan's Beauty Biscuit on Friday morning. It was a cold, rainy day and I was looking forward to the comfort of the Biscuit. “I guess those stuck-up fools found out they better not mess with Ms. Tamara Hayle, licensed private investigator. She knows how to turn out a party!”

  I cringed as I settled into one of the cerise chairs in the Biscuit's cozy waiting area. Many had been the time this rose-colored room, filled as it was with the smell of herbal shampoo, coconut hair conditioner, and nail polish remover, had been a welcome respite from life's daily woes, but not today. A woman a bit older than me, in jeans and a gray T-shirt with the words “Memorial Hospital” in red lettering, sat next to me. Lucky for me, she was so engrossed in the latest issue of Essence magazine she didn't hear Wyvetta's comment.

  “Well, Ms. Tamara Hayle, just what you got to say for yourself?” Wyvetta was determined not to let it go. I threw her a nasty look, tempted to get her off the subject by mentioning her hair. She had streaked it an odd color of maroon that picked up the shade of her fingernail polish but contrasted starkly with her turquoise eye shadow. Some days, Wyvetta's “look” was successful; this morning wasn't one of them.

  “Please don't say anything about my hair. They must have put the wrong color in the bottle,” Wyvetta muttered, noticing where my gaze had settled.

  “If you don't mention Wednesday, I won't mention your hair,” I said, and got a nod of agreement from Wyvetta as she applied conditioner to her client's head. Wyvetta and I are good friends, but we know not to cross each other. Our truce, however, came too late.

  “The Businessman's Club? My husband is a member of that club. So what happened on Wednesday?” asked her plump client, shooting a critical sidelong glance at Wyvetta. The woman wore bright red lipstick and a green sweater that fit her ample bosom snugly. Her mink coat was casually tossed across the chair next to her and was weighed down by an overstuffed red Coach bag. Wyvetta threw me a helpless look that said things were out of her control, and I slumped farther down into my chair. Wednesday had been bad enough; Thursday was the last straw.

  I'd slunk out of the police station after my meeting with Griffin like a beaten-down hound, too dejected to return to my office. I'd gone home, opened a quart of Cherry Garcia, and watched soaps I hadn't seen in years. Griffin was right, I'd decided. I was taking this whole thing too much to heart. Celia Jones was dead, Cecil Jones was dead, and I should, as the good detective advised me, let the police do their job.

  Celia hadn't appeared in my dreams since I'd taken on her case, which was a good sign. And if she showed up again, I was going to tell the girl to please haunt somebody else. I'd done all I could for her and her child and now it was time for me to look after my own life. Griffin had assured me the cops were certain they knew who killed her son, although he hadn't exactly shared how “fate” had taken a hand in it. Apparently, he and his detectives knew more about both these cases than I did. My “information” about Celia's pregnancy had been embarrassingly false; you sure can't argue with a medical report. I had no idea why Annette Sampson had told me Celia was pregnant or if Celia had lied to her.

  Annette Sampson was the one string left dangling in my involvement with this case that needed to be tied. I'd tried to call her early that morning to cancel our appointment, but she hadn't been home. I'd decided that if I couldn't reach her by three, I'd drop by her house and explain things in person, and that would be that. Her call on Wednesday night still had me worried, so I also wanted to make sure she was okay. And I wanted to ask her why she had lied to me about the pregnancy. Once I spoke to her, I could take the rest of the day off in good faith and prepare myself for my meeting on Monday with my new client.

  It still troubled me that the police suspected Annette Sampson had something to do with Celia's death. I was sure they had it wrong, and that the deaths of Celia and her son were connected. But I didn't have any proof except my “woman's intuition,” as Griffin put it, and in the world of male cops that didn't count for squat. I knew, though, I had to seriously heed his warning about Drew Sampson. Although Griffin didn't admit it to me, I knew he was a good detective, and he had probably grilled Sampson hard about Celia's death. I'd bet that Sampson's “friends in high places” had come down on him and his boss. Griffin was a decorated cop, and if Sampson could put pressure like that on him, no telling what he would do to me. Besides that, Larry Walton was his alibi. There was no disputing that, and for all I really knew, they could be telling the truth.

  Sometimes you simply have to let things go. The sad truth is the bad guys and girls often do get away with it, particularly if they have money and power, and there's not a damn thing you can do. I couldn't afford to ignore the warning Griffin had given me about Drew Sampson. With Jamal headed to college in a few years and this new assignment on the horizon, the last thing I needed was for my license to be suspended.

  In celebration of my newly found freedom and the money that would be coming my way, I'd called Wyvetta Green late last night, and begged her to fit me in for a quick fix-me-up. She called back early this morning and said she had a cancellation, and if I could be at her shop before ten she'd do what she could for me. So Jan's Beauty Biscuit was my first stop this gloomy morning, and all I wanted to do was feel Wyvetta's able hands on my neglected scalp. But I was beginning to wish I'd put beauty on hold for another day.

  “Well, is anybody going to tell me what happened at the Businessman's Club?” the woman asked again. I was tempted to say it was none of her business, that in the interest of peace, Wyvetta and I had agreed to let the thing go, but sharp-eyed Wyvetta, spotting my inclination, discreetly shook her head. Wyvetta doesn't alienate good-paying clients, and I suspected this woman, with her head full of conditioner and appointment first thing on a Friday morning, was a regular for “the works.” She also had that husband in the Business-man's Club, and that mink coat swung over her chair. There were as many beauty shops in town as there were liquor stores and churches, and she could have her pick of beauticians. I was sure Wyvetta regretted the fact she'd referred to the members of her husband's club as “stuck-up fools” earlier in our conversation, and didn't want to stoke further embers of dissatisfaction.

  “Teresa Waterman, this is Tamara Hayle,” Wyvetta said, gracefully bowing out of the conversation with an introduction. ‘And this is Tamara Hayle's tale to tell.”

  The mention of my name caught the interest of the woman in the gray T-shirt sitting next to me. “So you're Tamara Hayle? I've always wondered who you are. You've got that office right above the Biscuit, don't you?”

  I nodded as Wyvetta added, “We been neighbors for as long as I been here, and if you ever need help finding some lost somebody or rescuing some poor soul from disaster, this here is the lady to call. She's one of the best in the business. You can take that firsthand from me, Wyvetta Green, owner of Jan's Beauty Biscuit!” I suspected that Wyvetta was trying to make amends by diverting attention from my “tale” to my profession; it didn't work. Gray T-shirt's curiosity was satisfied, but Teresa Waterman's interest had been piqued. She was like a hungry dog with a day-old stew bone.

  “That club! If I've told my husband once, I've told him a thousand times, they should make more of an effort to get some female members or they're going to find themselves on the receiving end of a nasty little sex discrimination lawsuit. Wyvetta, why aren't you a member? Or you, Ms. Hayle? I hope that's why you made a scene. It's about time somebody raised hell about it, and that's one way to get their attention.” Her eyes eagerly fastened on my face awaiting my response.

  The woman in the gray T-shirt came to my rescue. “Do you have a card, Ms. Hayle? One never knows when one is going to need a good privat
e eye.”

  ‘And Tamara Hayle is a good PI!” Wyvetta Green added.

  “So are they going to make you one of the first female members?” asked Teresa Waterman.

  “I very much doubt it.” I picked up the Star-Ledger and started furiously paging through it.

  She looked puzzled. “Well, why not?”

  “It wasn't exactly what you think,” I muttered.

  “Ooh, Lord, I know who you are!” Teresa sat up full in her seat, her small eyes brimming with curiosity and disgust. Wyvetta grabbed a towel and wiped away the conditioner that had dripped down her neck. “You're that woman who broke into the club yesterday afternoon and terrorized poor Mr. Sampson, aren't you?”

  “Honey, you better lay back down here so I can finish up this head. I got two clients waiting and two more on the way.” Wyvetta tossed me an apologetic glance as she pulled the woman back into her seat and squirted a generous amount of conditioner into her hair.

  “Now, Wyvetta. Don't put too much of that on, I don't like the way it smells.”

  “It's good for your hair, honey,” Wyvetta said, with a subtle roll of her eyes.

  “Good for you!” the woman who was sitting next to me whispered.

  “I think that's just terrible for you to have embarrassed yourself and everybody else by trying to insult Mr. Sampson. My husband told me all about it!” said Teresa.

  “Did you terrorize that horrible man for the obvious reasons or has he done something new?” muttered the woman in the gray T-shirt in a low voice. “By the way, my name is Laura Hunter. I'm an emergency room nurse at Memorial.”

  “But why would you do something like that?” Teresa returned to my “embarrassing” behavior.

  Ignoring her, I turned toward Laura Hunter. “What are the obvious reasons?” I asked, reaching into my bag and pulling out the business card she requested.

  “Well, there was that business with the drugs.”

  “What kind of drugs?”

  “Not the kind you're thinking of,” she said with a chuckle. “Prescription drugs. There was a batch of counterfeit drugs that got on the market, and some of them were traced back to his stores. Nobody could ever get anything on him, and maybe he didn't do anything wrong, but it struck a lot of us as funny, since it was only poor black folks, who are predominantly his customers, who were affected.”

  “So there was never an investigation?”

  “Not much of one. I know of at least one patient, though, a lady fighting breast cancer, who died. Now nobody knows if she died because the drugs weren't what they should have been or if she would have died anyway, but it made a lot of us uncomfortable.”

  “Both my father and my brother are members of the Businessman's Club and physicians over at Memorial, and they both say that Drew Sampson had nothing do with that,” Teresa Waterman said, emphatically defending both the integrity of the club and her kin.

  “I'm sure you're right,” Laura Hunter backed down, turning back to her magazine. But I wasn't about to let her read in peace.

  “So what do you think about Drew Sampson?” I asked her. “What's your impression of him?”

  “I don't really know the gentleman, so I'm not comfortable saying too much about him. There was just that incident with the drugs, but other than that, I can't say anything about him one way or the other,” she said, clearly unwilling to challenge Teresa Waterman and the authority of the local medical establishment.

  “So you haven't heard anything else?” I dug for dirt. To her credit, Laura wasn't about to hand me a shovel.

  “I'm afraid the only thing I should really talk about is my own life or the emergency room where I work,” she said with a slight smile. ‘Ask me about that, and I can tell you anything you want to know. Other than that, I probably shouldn't share what I don't know for a fact.”

  “I didn't know you were a nurse, Laura,” said Wyvetta.

  “Really, Wyvetta. Well, I've been over at Memorial for the last ten years.”

  “Is it anything like that TV show ERY’

  Laura chuckled and shook her head. “Most of the time it's pretty dull, and we sure don't have any young doctors like Eriq LaSalle or George Clooney”

  “If you did, I'd be over there tomorrow!” said Wyvetta.

  “TV does have a way of making things seem more interesting than they are in real life,” Laura said, putting down her magazine, obviously ready to talk if we wanted to listen.

  “I'll give you that,” added Teresa Waterman. “My husband owns a waste management company and everybody thinks he's connected to the mob because of The Sopranos. Especially with this being Jersey and everything. How many black men do you know who are connected to the Mob? One of my best girlfriends is Italian, and she's as mad as a bee about the stereotypes on that show. She talks about The Sopranos the way my mother used to talk about Amos and Andy. It's a shame the lies they spread about ethnic groups on TV”

  Finding something we could all agree upon, the four of us nodded in unison.

  “Well, sometimes my ER does get close to real life, though,” Laura said after a few minutes. “Life in an emergency room can be full of sad ironies, just like on TV Like last summer. I had a terrible thing happen on my shift.”

  We all turned to Laura, eager to hear what she had to say.

  ‘A woman came in with her husband, who died right in the same cubicle that she'd been in a couple of months before. That shook me up, I'll tell you that.”

  “What happened to him?” asked Teresa.

  “Walking pneumonia,” Laura said.

  “Really?” I asked, wondering if she was talking about Rebecca and Clayton Donovan.

  “I had an uncle who died of that. You got to watch that shit, it will take you right out if you're not careful,” Wyvetta said, shaking her head as if trying to dislodge the memory.

  “That was Judge Clayton Donovan, wasn't it?” Teresa said, lifting her head again despite Wyvetta's warning.

  “Yes, I think he must have been a judge or something important like that because when he died, cops were all over the place. It was a shame though, I felt so sorry for his wife.”

  “Rebecca?” I asked, although I knew.

  “Yes, that was her name. My niece is named Rebecca. It's such a pretty, old-fashioned name, that's why I remember it. Do you know her?”

  “We've met. Nice woman.”

  “Yes, very nice. Not more than three months before he died, she came in with terrible pelvic pain. It was diagnosed as pelvic inflammatory disease. I don't know what caused it, but sometimes an IUD will cause an infection like that. We saw a lot of women with that disorder when that horrible Dalkon Shield was on the market.”

  “I remember that thing,” said Wyvetta with a shudder. “My girlfriend had that thing up in her, damn near sterilized her.”

  “Well, it did cause a lot of problems,” Laura said. “When you see pelvic infections, they can be caused by improperly inserted IUDs. But other things can cause them, too. However a woman gets it, though, if she doesn't catch it in time, it can seal her fallopian tubes and make her infertile. Lord, I guess all this information about the judge's wife is supposed to be confidential, isn't it!”

  ‘Anything you say within these walls is confidential,” Wyvetta reminded us, with a warning look at everybody. “My mother, Jan, may she rest in peace, used to say that a beauty parlor is like a church confessional. Ain't nothing said within these walls gets out. So don't you worry, girl. Everything is held in confidence. So what happened to her?”

  Laura paused a moment before she spoke. “The woman was devastated, just devastated because that infection had spread so fast. And one of the nurses told me later that she had lost a child to crib death. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.”

  “Now you know that's a shame,” said Wyvetta.

  We were all silent for a moment, each lost in her thoughts.

  “My first baby died like that. I was twenty-one, just married, and I thought my world had come to an end,” Teresa
said, and for a moment the grief she must have felt that day was written on her face. “But I had my husband with me, and even with all his faults, and he does have some faults, we were able to heal and have three more kids, all grown now. Thank God. You never know what pain a woman carries inside her soul.”

  That was another thing we could all agree upon and we did, each sharing her varied confidences in the warmth and privacy of Wyvetta's shop.

  “So, Tamara, tell me this, exactly what did happen to you at the Businessman's Club last Wednesday?” Teresa asked again, but this time the question was asked with humor and honest curiosity, and we all teased her because she wouldn't let the thing go. But we were friends by then, as close anyway as four women could be on a rainy Friday afternoon in a cozy beauty parlor. So I shared the details of my trip to the sidewalks of Newark by way of two burly brothers, and everyone had a good-natured laugh at my expense.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Even before I heard the kid scream, I knew something terrible had happened. They had blocked off the sidewalk leading to Annette Sampson's house with yellow tape, and cops were walking around with that look of woe that comes when they've confronted tragic death. An officer, who looked closer in age to my son than to me, stopped me before I could get to the door.

  “What business do you have here?”

  “I am a friend of Annette Sampson's, and we have an appointment this afternoon.” I went with the present tense, hoping for the best, even though DeeEss sat on the stairs of the porch, shaking as if he were coming apart. His wails of grief stunned us both.

  “Jesus Christ!” the cop muttered.

  “What happened?”

  “I feel sorry for the kid.”

  “Officer, what happened?” He looked at me as if just remembering I was there.

  “Suicide. That's the husband there.” He nodded toward the house as Drew Sampson ran down the stairs and sat on the curb next to his son. He put his arm around the boy and held him as if he could will away his pain.