Doing It To Death
Page 10
I went home to Mama’s and took Queenie for her walk but felt restless and unsettled. There was a message on Mama’s voicemail from Frank Z’s Auto Body Repair shop that my car would be ready by the end of the week. Sharon had already written me a check for a couple hundred dollars. But I needed more than that. I had to dig up some useful info for her in exchange for another check. Once I’d fed the dog, I locked up and headed back out.
I knew Lewis’s apartment was a crime scene; even though I still had his key, I didn’t want to get caught in his apartment when I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for. But Brenda’s place was another matter. Too bad I had no idea where she lived. Sharon had said there was speculation that she had another lover and I wondered if it were true and how I could find out. Then I remembered what Lewis had told me about where he and his deceased lady friend had met and headed over to The Spot, aka, The Spotlight Bar and Grill, where I had recently made a friend.
If there was one place in Willow that could boast having never been remodeled since it opened in the 50’s, it was The Spot. The tiny bar had had only three owners in the 40 plus years it had been in operation, and none of them had seen fit to replace the faded yellow linoleum flooring and the cracked faux leather barstools. The round wooden tables were scarred with cigarette burns and rings left behind by glasses. Many of the metal chairs were lopsided and sported dented legs; the blades of the ancient ceiling fan twirling overhead were often grime-encrusted, though it was hard to tell since the place was always dark. The jukebox only had about a dozen songs, all from the 60s and 70s. But then again, no one came to The Spot for the ambiance. They came for the cheap drinks and to see and be seen.
It was almost five when I walked in and the place was starting to fill with the after-work crowd of mostly factory workers. A few of them glanced my way before staring back into their drinks. One older guy in particular gave me a second glance and let out a low wolf whistle. I ignored him and headed straight to the end of the bar to the only available seat. The bartender, a short sixtyish man with muscular forearms was polishing a glass but looked up when I sat down. He broke out into a big grin when he saw me.
“Miss Kendra,” he said, setting the glass down and coming over to me. He clasped both my hands in his slightly moist ones. “You are a sight for sore eyes. How the heck are you, girl?”
“I’m fine, Mr. Wallace. How are you?” I’d met Ray Wallace last fall on one of my—as Sharon Newcastle had called them—escapades, in which I’d thought for a split second he was the culprit. As it turned out, the only thing he’d been guilty of was having loved a woman who didn’t deserve his love.
“And I thought I told you to call me, Ray.” He took the glass he’d been polishing and filled it with ice followed by Coke and then a squirt of cherry syrup. He put a maraschino cherry on top and set the glass in front of me.
“Thanks, Ray.” I was flattered he remembered what I’d had to drink the last time I’d come in.
“What brings you in here—because I know this ain’t your kinda place and I won’t flatter myself by thinkin’ you came just to say hi to me.” We both laughed and I took a quick sip of my drink before answering.
“Brenda Howard,” I said. His eyes widened in shock.
“The Brenda Howard that got herself stabbed?”
“That’d be her.”
“Damn,” he swore softly. “What you wanna know about her for? She hardly seems like she’d have been a friend of yours?”
“She wasn’t, but I need whatever info I can find about her so I can help the person accused of killing her, who is also not my friend.”
“Lewis Watts.” He let out a loud laugh. “Yeah, I heard he got hemmed up for her murder and big dumb Dibb Bentley. I swear that cat has the worst luck. How’d you get caught up in his mess?”
“You don’t think he killed them?” I purposefully ignored his question, as explaining how I came to be mixed up with Lewis Watts would require a stronger drink than a cherry Coke, and I was driving.
“Dibb, maybe. There was bad blood between them that goes back decades. But, Brenda? Never. He’s loud, obnoxious and annoying as hell, but he’d have never hurt a woman. Loved ’em too much.” I could have told him that woman-loving Lewis had tripped me in this very bar not so long ago, causing me to fall flat on my face. But I kept it to myself.
“Well, I heard Brenda had another man besides Lewis, and that’s why he killed her. You have any idea who it could have been?” I asked. Ray shrugged.
“Only man I know of who’d actually call Brenda his woman, let alone take her anywhere or spend any money on her, was Lewis. And long as he was keeping her supplied with liquor and weed, she wouldn’t have gone anywhere. She’d have ridden that gravy train until the wheels fell off.”
“Well, I’d say the wheels fell off in a major way. That still doesn’t mean that there couldn’t have been another man, right?”
“Now, I’m not saying there couldn’t have been. But if she did have someone on the side, I have no idea who it was. I only ever saw her in here, and she was either alone or with Lewis.”
“No female friends?”
“Not that I ever saw. She was a loner—besides, women seemed to steer clear of her.”
“Why? Was she a trouble maker?” Ray looked a bit uncomfortable and glanced down the bar to make sure no one was listening before leaning in close and lowering his voice. No one was paying us any attention.
“There were always rumors ’bout Brenda from back in the day.”
“What kind of rumors?” I leaned in closer.
“Well, it was a long time ago before I started working here. Back when I was still in the military. People always said she was a…you know…working girl.” He said the last two words so softly I almost didn’t catch it.
It took me a few seconds to realize he didn’t mean working girl as in Melanie Griffith with big teased hair working as a secretary in that movie from the ’80s. He’d meant working girl as in the oldest profession on earth. Brenda had been a prostitute, which instantly made me think of the ledger. Was Brenda one of the jewels listed in the ledger? Had she been peeing on men for money? The thought made me shudder and I took a big gulp of my drink.
“You said it was just a rumor though, right? Why did people think that?”
“Men talk, Kendra. And when a bunch of drunk fools come in here running their big mouths about how they paid Brenda Howard to go to some No Tell Motel with them to do the nasty, people listen, then they talk, then the story spreads like wildfire. I’m not saying she was flaggin’ cars down on the corner like a common streetwalker. But it’s been said that back in the day Brenda was the go-to girl if you had money to spend and wanted a good time. Would you want to be friends with a woman who your man may have paid for sex? Hell, men might’ve thought any friend of hers was a hooker, too, just because they hung out with Brenda.”
“Wow,” I said softly. “But you said ‘back in the day,’ meaning she must not be hooking anymore. Where’s she been working?”
“Couldn’t say if she’s still on the game these days. But her obit said she worked as a nurse’s aide at some nursing home.
This information shined a whole new light on things while also generating a hell of a lot more questions. Brenda could be in the ledger. And if she was, then that meant two people associated with the damned thing had been murdered and a third person framed for it. If Dibb had wanted to get his hands on it so badly, then he already knew who was in it. And how did he know? There were no names of the prostitutes and only initials of their customers. But the bigger question was how did Lewis know?
“Kendra?” Ray Wallace snapped his fingers in my face. I jumped. “Sorry,” he said, chuckling softly. “You zoned out on a brother. You want another drink?”
“No problem, Ray. And thanks for all the info, but I’ve got to be going.” I pulled some bills from my purse and set them on the bar. He folded them and pressed them back into my palm.
“Your money’s n
o good here, sweetie. And you be careful out there, you hear me? What happened to Brenda and Lewis is sad and unfortunate. But don’t you be risking your life because of those fools. They made their choices.”
I got a tuna melt to go from Denny’s and sat eating it in my car in the parking lot of Ellis Hall. Around 7:35 students began trickling out of the building, so I assumed it had to be Dr. Kirkland’s class letting out. I popped a mint in my mouth and headed into the building. The administrative assistant had told me that Dr. Kirkland’s Feminism in the 21st Century class met on the fourth floor in lecture hall 415. The elevator was broken and by the time I arrived, winded and slightly sweaty from climbing four flights of stairs, Dr. Kirkland was packing her lecture notes in a brown leather messenger bag. She looked up and smiled inquisitively; I could tell she didn’t immediately remember me from the board meeting.
“Dr. Kirkland, I’m Kendra Clayton. We met the other day at the board meeting.” I held out my hand, and she shook it as recognition finally dawned on her face.
“Oh, of course, I remember,” she exclaimed, giving me a big smile. “You have to excuse me—I’m not as good with names as I used to be.”
“It’s okay. We only met once so I’d have been surprised if you’d remembered my name.” She was wearing faded jeans, ankle books, and an oversized red sweater. Her mass of wild curly hair was pulled into a messy topknot with tendrils hanging loose around her face. I noticed for the first time she wore a simple gold wedding band.
“Are you taking classes, Kendra?”
“No. I’m actually here to ask you a couple of questions about a mutual acquaintance of ours, Lewis Watts.”
“Lewis? Is this about his case?” She looked genuinely concerned.
“Yes.”
“Do you mind if we talk in my office?”
“Not at all.”
“Great.” She slung her bag across her torso and headed towards the door. I followed her back down to the third floor and into a large room that had been divided into four cubicles. Dr. Kirkland’s was along the back wall with a window that overlooked the college green. The cubicle was neat but crowded with multiple piles of books on the floor stacked next to the desk and along the right wall. A large corkboard with multiple pictures, note cards, postcards, and posters tacked onto it occupied the wall on the left.
“You’ll have to excuse all the books. I just moved into this cubicle and I’m still waiting for maintenance to move my bookshelves up from my old office.”
“Oh, really. Where was your old office?”
“The basement.” She gestured for me to sit in a purple upholstered chair next to the bookless side of her desk and plopped down into a high-backed leather swivel chair.
“They stuck you down in the basement?”
“Actually, I wanted to be in the basement. There was a suite of offices down there that nobody used. They were spacious, it was better than sharing, and it was quiet down there.”
“So why are you up here?”
“Flooding. I mean I knew the basement got wet during heavy rains but over the years it got worse. Between the damp and the mold and mildew, they closed off the basement until they can waterproof it and moved the few faculty who had offices there up here. Of course, they made it sound temporary, but I know that waterproofing the basement of a building this big and old is expensive and not exactly a priority. I’m preparing for a nice long stay up here.”
“Could be worse,” I pointed out.
“How so?”
“They could have put you in a closet.” We both laughed. But I noticed her quick sidelong glance at the small crystal clock on her desk and realized I needed to get to the point. But she beat me to the punch.
“The board meeting wasn’t the first place I saw you, was it, Kendra?” She asked, swiveling around in her chair to give me her full attention. “You were at the jail visiting Lewis the other day.”
“Yes, we passed each other in the hall on my way out.”
“You and Lewis are friends?”
“Hardly.”
“Okay,” she said, looking more than a little confused. “Then why were you visiting him? You’re a teacher, not a lawyer, and not a friend.”
“My relationship with Lewis, if you could even call it a relationship, is that of a reluctant acquaintance. Our paths have crossed on more than one occasion in the past and as a result I’ve been unintentionally drawn into his current predicament through no fault of my own.” I left out the part about being paid by his attorney to dig up information for his case, because I couldn’t figure out a way to make it not sound as self-serving as it was.
“Ah,” she said, leaning back. “He tried to hit on you, didn’t he?” Her eyes shone with warmth, understanding and amusement, and I realized I really liked this woman. I filled her in on my history with Lewis including our one and only date, which had led to Dibb Bentley mistakenly thinking I was his woman and knocking on my door looking for him. Joyce Kirkland listened patiently with the occasional outburst of laughter and it was only when I mentioned Dibb’s name that her smile faltered and she looked away.
“Can I assume you knew Dibb Bentley as well?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding. “I met Lewis in junior high school. He’s had a crush on me ever since. And, Dibb and I dated briefly back in the seventies.”
I was stunned. She was the girlfriend of Dibb’s that Lewis had told me about, the one Dibb had killed a man over. I could tell she hadn’t wanted to tell me; who could blame her? How in the world could this beautiful, intelligent and accomplished woman have hooked up with the likes of Dibb Bentley? I wasn’t going to ask, but my shocked look must have spoken volumes.
“He wasn’t as bad as people thought he was,” she said softly. “He was always very kind and protective of me, though a little too protective as it turned out.”
“You’re talking about the man he killed, Otis…?”
“Patterson,” she supplied. “Otis was a limo driver for a wealthy family in town. I’d see him out occasionally at the after-hours joints in town back when I was a doctoral candidate here at Kingford and loved to party. I didn’t know him very well. He was quiet and kept to himself. Had an amazing singing voice. I was so surprised when he grabbed me and tried to get me to leave with him. He was quite drunk, and Dibb had had a few too many as well. Things got out of hand quickly and... turned into a nightmare.” She gave me a half smile. But her bottom lip trembled. “I will never forget that horrible night as long as I live.”
“It went on even longer for Lewis. Dibb held him hostage in his home for a week, right?” She nodded slowly.
“I actually went to Lewis’s house a couple of times that week to see if he was okay, but he never answered the door. I just assumed he was at his girlfriend’s house.”
“Does he ever not have a girlfriend?”
“Lewis is serial monogamist. He’s rarely, if ever, not in a relationship,” she replied dryly.
“Did you know his latest girlfriend, Brenda Howard, the one that got killed a week ago?”
“You mean the one they think he murdered? No. I didn’t know her, and I don’t believe even for a minute that Lewis killed her or Dibb. He’s a sweet man and wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
It took everything in me not to roll my eyes. And while Joyce’s loyalty to Lewis felt genuine, something about the way her eyes shifted when she said she didn’t know Brenda Howard gave me pause. She was lying. But why? Even if what Ray Wallace told me was true and Brenda was a prostitute, it was a million years ago. She’d had a respectable job at the time of her death.
“It’s not looking good for Lewis. You know that, right?”
“I know,” she admitted with a sigh. “I offered to pay for him to get a better lawyer. He turned me down. Said it would be beneath his dignity as man to have a woman paying for anything for him. I even told him it could be a loan and he’d have to pay me back, but he still refused. That damned chivalry was probably what got him into this mess.”
Beneath his dignity as a man? Why wasn’t it beneath his dignity as a man to beg me to help his sorry ass or to camp out in my apartment hiding from Dibb? What was I? Oh, yeah, I remember now. I was Boo Boo, the fool because, yet again, I’d believed him about being stuck with Sharon Newcastle and not being able to afford another lawyer. If I didn’t need the money I’d have walked away and left him in jail with a bullseye on his big behind.
“What do you mean his chivalry probably got him in this mess?”
“When I visited him in jail the other day, he told me he and Brenda had only dated for a week before she moved in because they were fumigating her apartment for roaches. She’d only been there a few days and they were already fighting like cats and dogs. And of course, the neighbors overhead their loud arguing and told the police after Brenda was murdered. He jumps into every relationship not thinking about the bigger picture and without knowing these women for more than five minutes. It was only a matter of time before it bit him in the ass.”
“You sound a little jealous.” I pointed out. She let out a mirthless laugh.
“Not jealous,” she said, correcting me. “Protective. Lewis is like a brother to me. We helped each other through a rough time after Dibb got sent to prison. The people accusing him of being a snitch were the same ones blaming me for getting Otis killed. It was rough and we were there for each other. I know he’s a bit...eccentric. But he’s got a good heart and I consider him a dear friend.”
“He’s lucky to have a friend like you.”
“Thank you, Kendra. But I’ve just got to ask. How do you think you can help him, and why are you helping him? You didn’t really answer my question.” Apparently, she hadn’t been at all impressed with my tap dancing routine.
“I’m getting paid by his lawyer,” I said bluntly. No use sugar coating it. The truth was the truth. Why did her opinion matter to me anyway?
“You’re a private eye?”
“Uh, not exactly. More like a consultant. I’ve helped with some other cases in the past.” I didn’t bother to mention the help had been unwanted and unasked for.