by Angela Henry
“What in the world is going on?”
“Dan left her for an intern at the hospital. He’s moved out and has filed for divorce.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I sat back down hard. Rhonda was one of the few women I knew who was still madly in love with her husband. And I’d just assumed he’d still felt that way, too.
“I wish I were.”
“I had no idea. She never said anything.”
“She’s in denial, Kendra. She wants him back. I think she honestly thought it was just some kind of midlife crisis and he’d come to his senses. But he served her with the divorce papers a couple of weeks ago. It’s not a fling. He wants a life with this other woman. He’s also playing hardball by trying to deny her spousal support and he’s going after joint custody of the kids, so he won’t have to pay child support. The only thing he wants to give her is the house, which she’ll be forced to sell because she can’t afford to pay the mortgage on her own. He’s being a real douchebag.”
It all made sense now why she wanted Dorothy’s job so badly. She wouldn’t be able to support herself and her kids on a part-timer’s salary. I knew how brokenhearted she must be. Even though Carl and I hadn’t been married, I had loved him a lot. It wasn’t enough in the end, but it still hurt like hell to have him leave me behind and start a new life without me. But as much as I felt for Rhonda and her situation, that didn’t mean she had the right to throw me under the bus. I didn’t deserve it and I wasn’t going to take that kind of crap from anyone.
“Dorothy, you know I don’t smoke weed, right?”
“I know, Kendra. And even if you did, what you do in your private life is none of anybody’s business. As long as you show up and do your job, I could care less. Besides,” she said, sitting up straighter in her seat and patting her hair. “I’m no prude. I smoked my share of doobies back when I was a student at Antioch.”
“I didn’t know you went to Antioch,” I said with a laugh.
“It was just for a year then my mother insisted I transfer to Kingford. It was the sixties and I was having a little too much fun. But enough about me. Try not to be too hard on Rhonda. She’s really gutted over this. It’s going to take some time and understanding to see her through this.” I nodded my agreement, grabbed my sweater, and got up to go but paused and turned back.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Shoot.”
“Why me?”
“Why you what?”
“Why do you want me to apply for your job and not Rhonda? She’s been here longer than me.”
“Oh, that’s easy. Rhonda’s a great teacher and good with the students but this is just a job to her, a paycheck, and a way to kill time while her kids are at school. I don’t think she’d be happy running this place in the long-term. But you, on the other hand, love this place. You’ve stayed on here even though I’ve been unable to offer you a full-time position. Plus, I don’t know any teachers who’ve helped clear a student suspected of murder, do you?”
“Well, when you put it that way…” My voice trailed off and I grinned at my boss. She didn’t think I was an unambitious slug. Finally, someone who understood me.
I was glad Rhonda was gone by the time I got back to the classroom. We both needed to calm down before we saw each other again. And I had other things on my mind, which I tried to put out of my head while I graded a stack of essays. Instead of focusing on the many ways my students were murdering the English language, the image of Dibb Bentley’s body in Lewis’s trunk kept popping into my head. Mason had been trying to convince me that Lewis could have killed Brenda. The neighbors had heard them arguing, and now the dead body of someone who’d been at odds with him had turned up in his trunk.
When I thought back on it, he had seemed cagey and annoyed when I asked him about going back to his place to pick up his car. He claimed he just started walking and ended up back at his place before he knew it. He was lying. Of that much I was sure. Why would someone who’d been hiding out in my apartment suddenly go for a walk at night seven blocks to his apartment and out in the open where he could be seen? Was it to load Dibb’s dead body into the trunk of his car in order to dump it somewhere?
Then another thought came to me. Estelle’s was on the way to the Pullman building, and Lewis knew I was working Friday night. Could he have been the one that cut my break line? An image of Mr. Seventies in his pimp clothes and his Eldorado flashed before my eyes, and I realized I was being paranoid and silly. My car was used but still less than five years old. Even if Lewis knew about cars, I was betting his knowledge would be limited to thirty year-old hoopties. And he had no reason to want to hurt me anyway. But there was one thing I was certain of. He was lying about why he’d gone back to his apartment. And, since I was involved in this mess whether I wanted to be or not, I needed to know why. Too bad I’d have to wait to get answers.
“What do you mean he’s been arrested?” I asked Detective Blake Mason. I’d called Willow Memorial to check on Lewis and when they told me he wasn’t there, I called Mason.
“Just that, Kendra. Arrested means arrested. I can’t put it any plainer than that.” He sounded tense and on edge. Well, so was I.
“On what charges?”
“Double homicide for the murders of Delbert ‘Dibb’ Bentley and Brenda Howard. It’s all over the news. I’m surprised—”
“Brenda, too?” I said incredulous.
“That’s the way the evidence is pointing,” he said with a sigh.
“And what evidence is that?”
“You know I can’t tell you that.”
“You told me about Dibb being frozen solid and his watch stopping. So why can’t you tell me what evidence you have against Lewis?”
“Yeah, and I’m already regretting that decision.”
“Well, what’s his motive supposed to have been?”
“Why do you care anyway? I thought you said the guy wasn’t a friend of yours.”
“A person doesn’t have to be a friend of mine for me to not want to see them in jail for a crimes they didn’t commit. There’re a lot of things that don’t add up here, Mason. This doesn’t feel right.”
“I can’t do my job based on your feelings and hunches, Kendra. I can only go on the evidence and information I have. I gotta go. Promise you’ll stay out of it and let us do our job.” I wondered if the ‘we’ meant the police in general or him, and his pretty new partner Jess.
“Fine,” I said and hung up. Once I’d flipped my phone closed, it rang in my hand and I was so startled I almost dropped it. And when I answered it I wished I had dropped it. It was Mama and she didn’t sound happy.
“Kendra, what in the devil is going on? Annie Ruth called and told me they found a dead body in your apartment.”
I should have seen this phone call coming a mile away. Mama and my landlady, Annie Ruth Carson, had been best friends since grade school. Mama was probably the first person she’d called after the police had left. I quickly explained what had happened. And realized I had a scapegoat. I played the martyr and blamed everything on Stevie Carson. I’d yet to catch up with his ass and when I did I was going to wring his neck. Mama sighed so heavily I was surprised I couldn’t feel her breath in my ear.
“Stevie’s always been an idiot. But, girl, how do you always manage to get yourself mixed up in everybody’s mess? I can’t even turn my back and you’re trippin’ over another dead body.”
I listened patiently as I always did and let her vent. Then suddenly, mid-rant, she started to giggle. “Stop it, Lennie. I’m on the phone, baby.” I heard my new step grandfather’s low seductive laugh and more giggling from Mama. Eew!
“Uh, I’ll talk to you later, Mama. Say hi to Leonard for me. Love you. Bye.”
The police were long gone by the time I got to my duplex to pick up Queenie’s food bowl and toys. Lewis’s car was gone, as were all of his things. As I cleaned up my apartment, I wondered vaguely how long it would take to thaw Dibb’s body out, th
en quickly pushed the thought from my mind. When I got to the bathroom, I pitched my loofah sponge, and soap, and spent twenty minutes cleaning my tub and toilet with Comet and bleach. The smell was so strong I had to open the bathroom window. I stripped the sheets off my bed and contemplated on what to do with my silk robe and scrunchie, which still had strands of Lewis’s hair stuck in it, when I felt something in the pocket of my robe. I pulled out a small black leather bound address book. It must have been Lewis’s little black book. It was old and the binding was loose. A bunch of pages were missing from the back. There were only four colored alphabet tabs left separating the sections: D, E, P, and R.
I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m nosy as hell. I flipped through it to see if there was anyone in it I knew. Lewis hadn’t bothered to list the names of any of the women. Instead, they were listed by initials and as I flipped through it, I realized the four colored tabs corresponded with four gemstones: white for diamond, green for emerald, grey for pearl, and red for ruby. Under each tabbed section were descriptions such as: loves anal, golden shower; whatever that meant, foot fetish, and Dom and Sub, which I knew were S & M terms. The year written in the front of the book was 1973 and then I noticed something else, dates and dollar amounts. For example, someone with the initials: RFD, with loves anal, written under the listing had a notation of two hundred dollars after it. Every listing in the book had initials, a date, a description, and dollar amount. This wasn’t an address book after all. It was a payment ledger listing payment made for sex acts.
“Damn, Lewis,” I mumbled under my breath. “You’re even freakier than I thought.” I wondered why he still had this after almost thirty years before I remembered the swing above his bed.
It would serve him right if I tossed it in the trash. Instead, I sat it on my dresser and continued cleaning. As I bagged up the trash to take outside, I spied the note Lewis had left me on Friday letting me know he’d taken Queenie for a walk. It was still on my fridge. I glanced at it and froze before snatching it from the fridge and taking a closer look. Then I went and got the leather ledger. Lewis’s handwriting was a barely legible scrawl, while the handwriting in the ledger was small and neat. This couldn’t be Lewis’s ledger. And if it wasn’t Lewis’s, whose was it? And more importantly, why did Lewis have it? And why did I have such a bad feeling that the answer to that question meant I was big fool for believing anything that Lewis had told me?
Lewis sat on the other side of a plexiglass window at the Willow County Jail the next morning. Gone were his pimp clothes, replaced by an orange jumpsuit and slip-on canvas sneakers. He was holding the phone as I sat on one side of the window. His long processed locks were gone; in their place was a short salt and pepper Afro. He badly needed a shave. The greying stubble sprouting from his chin and cheeks aged him a good ten years. I’d had to wait until he’d been formally arraigned before I could see him. Since the crimes had been so vicious, the judge had set the bail sky high. Lewis’s lawyer was trying to get it lowered, but until she was able to do it, Lewis would be a guest of the county until further notice.
“You wear a wig?” I burst out laughing and laughed even harder when I realized the hair dye I saw in his bathroom cabinet was for his facial hair.
“Damn, girl, lower your voice,” he hissed back at me. I looked around to make sure no one was listening. The only other person in the room was an elderly woman visiting a tatted-up guy that I assumed was her son.
“You knew all along what Dibb wanted, didn’t you?’ I said, quickly changing the subject.
“Yeah, I found it about a month after he got sent to prison. I found it inside the dust jacket of my favorite album, Doing It To Death by the JBs. Scratched the hell out of it, too. But I figured it had to be somethin’ important for him to have hid it at my place. I just held on to it.”
“Why didn’t you just give him the damned thing?”
“Are you crazy, Kelly? That ledger is the only thing keepin’ my black ass alive. Do you know how many people are tryin’ to the get their hands on that thing? Ain’t nobody know I even had it ’til Dibb got out of prison.”
“And did one of those people set you up for Dibb and Brenda’s murders?”
“Aw, Kelly, you know ol’ Lewis ain’t no murderer. I knew you really did like me.” He grinned, and I resisted the urge to punch the plexiglass.
“Lewis! Focus! What is that ledger anyway?”
“Somethin’ that could get a whole lotta important people in big trouble if their freaky little secrets got out.”
“How’d Dibb even get a hold of it?”
“How the hell am I supposed to know that, Kelly? All I know is that Dibb was a liar and a cheat! I’m sure he probably knew who all the people in that book was and was gonna blackmail ’em.”
“You’ve been lying to me all along? Do you know you almost got me killed?”
“Sorry ‘bout that, Kelly. I didn’t mean to get you mixed up in this mess, but seein’ as how you already are, can you do me another solid?”
I glared at him. “What?”
“Help me outta this mess,” he wailed. “Ol’ Lewis ain’t cut out for jail. The food is worse than the slop they feed pigs. They won’t give me no razor or hair dye and I can’t be lookin’ like Uncle Remus. I got a rep to live up to. Plus, I don’t like the way some of the cats in here is lookin’ at me, if you get my meaning, which is why I won’t be takin’ a shower no time soon. I can’t stand bein’ funky! I may as well be naked without my Pierre Cardin.” I rolled my eyes.
“How am I supposed to help you when all you’ve done is lie to me?”
“Okay, I promise. No mo’ lies.”
“No more lies, huh?”
“I promise on my Mama’s grave.” Lewis crossed his heart.
“Then why were you really at your apartment on Friday? And don’t give me that BS about how you just ended up there. We both know that’s a lie.” Lewis sighed and lowered his voice, then looked around to make sure no one was listening.
“I heard he was staying at a halfway house, and I walked back to my place to get my car and went lookin’ for him.”
“Why?”
“Payback for Brenda,” he replied, with his jaw jutted out indignantly. “I had a baseball bat and I was gonna bust that mofo’s head wide open.” I hadn’t realized Lewis also thought Dibb had killed Brenda. He hadn’t mentioned it when we’d talked about it in my apartment. But that was impossible. Brenda was killed early Thursday morning and Dibb was already dead by then.
“What happened?”
“I waited outside that halfway house for almost an hour. He never showed up. It was late. Queenie and I was tired. So, I drove back to yo’ place. How was I supposed to know his dead ass was in my trunk all along?”
“Whose ledger is it, Lewis?”
“The Gems.”
“Gems?” I asked. Lewis sighed in exasperation.
“Gems, Kelly. You saw the book, Diamond, Emerald, Pearl, and Ruby. First I thought it referred to the level of services, you know Diamond was top of the line—freaky shit. But the mo’ I studied it, the mo’ I realized they was names, most likely the hos providin’ the services.”
“You mean the prostitutes?”
“Ain’t that what I said?”
“If this is all because of some thirty year-old prostitution ring in Willow, then you need to tell your lawyer everything you just told me and give her the ledger.”
“And that’s another thing,” he said, shaking his head.
“Your lawyer?”
“Yeah.”
“I know Sharon. What’s wrong with her?” Lewis was being represented by Sharon Newcastle. She was the daughter of Charles Newcastle, a local judge. The Newcastle’s were one of the richest families in Willow.
“Besides her request for bail gettin’ denied with a big ass capital D. Her daddy’s one of the people in that book. Mr. Golden Shower himself. Now what you think is gonna happen if I let you hand that book over to her to use in my defense
? How quick you think that damned thing is gonna disappear once she finds out her daddy’s in it?”
“What’s a golden shower?” I asked, ignoring his question.
“Piss,” he replied bluntly.
“Piss?” I repeated in confusion.
“You know? Gettin’ turned on by gettin’ pissed on.”
“Eew! Are you serious?”
“Damn, Kelly, I thought everybody knew that,” he replied and rolled his eyes at the look of shock and disgust on my face.
“Uh, no. Only freaks like you.”
“Well if that’s what you think, imagine what Newcastle’s daughter’s gonna think? I ain’t gettin’ no medal for exposing some shit like that about my own lawyer’s daddy.”
“That's a conflict of interest, Lewis. You can get another lawyer?”
“I ain’t got no money for no lawyer. And if I did, Newcastle’s got a lot a power in this town. I don’t trust nobody. I’m stuck.”
“You’re stuck in more ways than one. My hands are tied, Lewis. I don’t know how I’m supposed to help you.” Just then the guard came in and told us our time was up.
“Please, I’m countin’ on you, Kelly,” he pleaded with the most terrified look I’d ever seen on anyone.
Crap!
I ran into Lewis’s lawyer as I was leaving the jail section of the Willow Police department. Sharon Newcastle had been a friend of Carl’s. But I hadn’t seen her since before Carl and I had split up. When she spotted me, she smiled and made a beeline straight for me, which was a good thing because I needed to talk to her. There had to be a way to get her help without letting her know her freaky daddy was in the ledger.
“Kendra, hi. Long time no see.” Sharon looked very professional in a blue suit with a slim pencil skirt. She was tall and wore her dark hair in a stylish pixie cut. She was about a year younger than me and still a public defender when she could have easily gotten a job with a big law firm someplace like New York. I always wondered why she was still in Willow, just as I imagined people wondered why I was still working two part time jobs.