by Angela Henry
“You were bad, huh?”
“Hell, I was born bad, honey. Ain’t nothing changed just because I’m older than dirt.”
“What did you do?”
“Old Maud Pritchard was singing the Star Spangled Banner during the talent show this afternoon, sounding just like a wounded moose. I was just trying to help her out with a little accompaniment.”
“You play an instrument?” Why did I feel like I’d just asked a question I was going to regret?
“Nope. Just my ass.”
“What?”
“And it was all their fault for serving soup beans for lunch. See, Maud’s singing’s ’bout like your dancing. I was just trying to help her out. I rooted and tooted my way through her song. She should have thanked me, but she got all mad and offended. When they told me to apologize to her, I wouldn’t. And here I am!” Pinky’s toothless grin was wide. I knew I’d be sorry I asked but couldn’t help laughing anyway.
“If that’s the case, I bet you spend a lot of time in this room.”
“And I bet this isn’t a social call, either. You wanna grill me some more about that idiot Dibb Bentley and that dumbass Otis Patterson, am I right?”
I was there to kill time until the coast was clear, and I could sneak out. But if the old man wanted to talk, I was all ears.
“You were the one who told me to come back and you’d tell me what really happened, remember?” I pointed out. He grinned.
“Of course, I remember. I may have sugar diabetes, arthritis, hip replacement, lost all my teeth and am hard of hearing in one ear, but ain’t nothing wrong with my memory.”
“I’m glad to hear that, Mr. Buford.”
“Pinky,” he insisted.
“Fine, Pinky. So, what happened that night? And did it have something to do with a robbery?” The old man pulled up the lever on the side of his recliner and lowered the footrest, then leaned forward, putting his hands on his bony knees in anticipation.
“Robberies,” he corrected. “More than one over the space of the summer of 1973. All rich folk out in Pine Ridge.” Pine Ridge was the affluent area of Willow.
“Dibb and Otis?” I asked. He simply nodded. “Were they the ones who tried to rob Charles Newcastle and killed his wife?”
“You know about that, huh?” He looked taken aback, although I couldn’t see why, since he was the one who’d first mentioned thieves.
“You were talking about no honor among thieves. I went to the library and looked up robberies that happened that summer and found the article about her murder.”
“Connie Newcastle was a sweetheart. It was a damned shame what happened to her. She had her issues. But she wouldn’t have hurt a fly.” He shook his head sadly.
“Dibb and Otis were the ones who broke in that night, weren’t they?”
“Yes, ma’am. They did it, all right.”
“But, why? I saw a picture of the house in the article. They were living on Maple Drive. It’s a nice neighborhood but they were hardly living large.”
Pinky sat back in his recliner and just stared at me like he was trying to decide on whether to let me in on a secret. “Tell me something, honey. When you was doing all that research of yours at the library, did you read about all them other robberies that summer?”
I thought about and realized with a shock that I hadn’t read about a rash of robberies in Pine Ridge the summer of 1973. There had been one where some kids had stolen an elderly woman’s garden gnome and another man had his lawn mower stolen after leaving his garage door up overnight. But I hadn’t read anything about robberies occurring after a break-in.
“No. There weren’t any that I remember seeing, which doesn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t the people who got robbed have reported it to the police?”
“I wouldn’t have called the police, either, honey, if I was up to no good myself. Would you?”
“They all had something to hide?”
“Every last one. And it was the same something.” His eyes were gleaming now. I could tell he was enjoying this just a little too much.
“What?” The feeling of exasperation I’d felt last time I’d been here reared its ugly head. I wanted to pull the words out of his mouth.
“Now let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Because before I answer that question I need to tell you a little story.” He chuckled when he saw the annoyed look flash across my face.
“Okay, I’m all ears.” I’d resigned myself to the fact that this was a man who was not to be rushed. He’d tell me what I wanted to know, but in his own sweet time.
“Once upon a time there were two girls, five years apart in age. Cousins. Their mothers were sisters and the two girls were as close as sisters themselves. The younger cousin adored her older cousin and thought of her as her big sister. Wanted to be just like her. Dressed like her and followed her around everywhere. They were as tight as two people could be. Then they grew up and something happened to change it all forever.”
“And what was that?”
“They both fell in love,” he said, eyes still twinkling. “with the same man,” he added quickly before I could ask why falling in love was a bad thing.
“Wow. That would suck.” I’d always been relieved that my best friend Lynette and I had never had the same taste in men.
“You ain’t lyin’. Didn’t help much when the younger girl went after her cousin’s man.”
“Was he seeing both of them?”
“Not immediately. The older cousin became his wife. And he really did love her. But she had some problems that strained the marriage. Her cousin took advantage of the sad sorry situation and went after him, seduced him and made him feel like a man when the problem with his wife got outta hand.”
“That is messed up. Did the wife know?”
“I don’t think so. She got sick and it was all she could do to take care of herself, her baby and the household.” Suddenly what Rhonda had said about doing everything for her husband and family and putting everybody before her came to mind.
“What was wrong with her?”
“Some kinda mental issue. Not sure exactly what was wrong with her, because back then we didn’t talk about that kinda stuff. If a black person was having a problem we just handled it on our own, or drank, or did drugs, or we went to church to pray it away.”
“Well, not a lot has changed since then, Mr…uh, Pinky,” I said, and he just looked at me and nodded absently, impatient to get on with his story.
“Even though these women had once been so close, they were really as different as night and day. Both cousins came from a middle class, two-parent household. Both grew up in the church. Both went to college and had nice clothes and were popular. But the girl who became the wife was happy and satisfied with her life and what she had. But the other, younger, cousin always wanted more. More nice things. More money. More friends. And she wasn’t too particular about how she got it.”
“Meaning?” I leaned forward in anticipation.
“Men.”
“Men as in…?”
“As in she was a beautiful girl and lots of men were willing to pay for her company.”
“You mean she was a —” Before I could even get the word prostitute out, the door to Pinky’s room opened and a short, squat nurse with a tray of medication appeared.
“Time for your meds, Mr. Buford.”
“Dang it, woman!” Pinky snarled. “How many times I got to tell you not to come in my room without knocking?”
This was the first time I’d seen the easy-going old charmer pissed off and I could easily see him running an after-hours bootleg joint back in the day. The nurse, whose name badge said Tina, just gave him a sour look and handed him a plastic cup full of water and a small paper cup with two white pills in it. Pinky snatched the cup of pills, tossed them into his mouth, and chased them with a big gulp of water—all without taking his eyes off the nurse.
“Looks like I’m gonna have to report you again,” he told her.
“And looks like I’m going to have to report you again for having visitors in your room while you’re on medical restriction, Mr. Buford,” Tina replied, looking completely unfazed. “And if I find your niece in here again,” she began before Pinky cut her off.
“My niece?” he sputtered. “How the hell can this be my niece when she’s a good thirty years younger, several inches shorter and don’t look nothing like Joyce? Either you need glasses, or you need your butt beat for being a racist cow! We don’t all look alike!”
“I know that’s right.” I cosigned, indignantly, though I thought it was ironic to be mistaken for his niece, when I’d told my babysitters I was visiting my uncle. Tina gave us both a withering look.
“Well, whoever she is, she needs to go. Your restriction will be over tomorrow. But until then—” She walked over and held the door open for me. “Have a nice day, miss.”
I got up and walked over and grasped one of Pinky’s gnarled hands. “It’s okay. I’ll come back tomorrow.” But Pinky barely acknowledged me. He was too busy glaring at Tina. Once outside the room, I headed back towards the lobby and the front desk only to see the two cops assigned to me talking to Florence, who was babbling and gesticulating. I ducked behind a couch in the waiting area.
“Officers, I’m so glad you’re here. We just got a call from the temp agency and they said our new temp was running late and that he’s a man. I’m not sure who this young woman is, but she’s clearly not who she claims to be.” Florence gestured for the cops to follow her and they gave each other a resigned look and shook their heads as they trailed after her to the file room.
I took the opportunity to dart down the hall and out the door and was sitting in the back of their sedan, chowing down on the last doughnut, when I suddenly remembered the photo from Brenda’s locker. I pulled it out of my pocket.
Three beautiful black women stared back at me. One was tall and curvaceous, with a bright smile and a wild curly mane of hair she still sported to this day. She wore a cherry red jumpsuit with a scoop neck and short puffy sleeves and stood between the other two shorter women who I instantly recognized as Brenda Howard and her twin sister Betty. I couldn’t tell the two women apart. They both wore matching denim maxi skirts, but the color of their shirts was different. One twin wore a purple satin halter top and her sister wore a white one. Both women wore their hair straight and parted on the side, falling to their shoulders and flipped up at the ends. All of them wore clunky-looking platform sandals.
Then I noticed an extra disembodied arm snaking around the twin on the left’s waist and noticed the jagged edge down that side of the photo. There had been a fourth woman in the photo. And Brenda had ripped whoever it was out like they’d never been there. Who was she and why did Brenda rip her out of the picture? Then I noticed something else. The wrist of the disembodied arm had a bracelet encircling it. I squinted and thought it looked like a gold cuff bracelet with a large diamond on the front. The other three wore jewelry, too. Joyce Kirkland wore a large emerald ring, and the twins both wore necklaces, one that I recognized. One twin, that I now realized was Brenda, wore a ruby pendant on a gold chain. It was the same one I’d seen her wearing in Lewis’s apartment. Her twin, Betty, wore a strand of pearls.
Diamond, Ruby, Emerald, and Pearl—I’d found the women from the ledger. But who was Diamond? And what did this all have to do with the murders of Constance Newcastle, Dibb Bentley, Otis Patterson, Brenda Howard and the robberies in Pine Ridge in 1973?
“Everything okay, Miss Clayton?” asked the female cop named Bridges after she and her partner Sims got back into the car. Sims noticed the empty doughnut box and his lips pressed into a hard line. He’d obviously had plans for that last doughnut. Too bad. I needed it more than he did.
“I’m fine. Just looking at this old picture my uncle gave me.” I waved said picture at her and she nodded.
“Our orders are to drop you back at Detective Mason’s place when we leave here and wait for him to arrive. Is there anywhere else you need to go first?”
I just stared at her and tried hard not to look too annoyed. Seriously? I had places to go and people to see. I didn’t have time for this, meaning I was going to have to do something I didn’t want to do.
“I need a few things at the grocery,” I told them, hoping my plan would work.
Fourteen
“You want to do what?” asked Mason over dinner that evening. I’d broiled some steaks and made baked potatoes and steamed some asparagus to go with it. There was even cherry cobbler and ice cream for dessert because Mason had a sweet tooth the size of Willow. I needed Sam Pierson aka Dwayne Roper caught so I could be free to get on with clearing Lewis’s name and move on with my life. As grateful as I was to him, Lewis Watts wasn’t anyone I wanted to owe a favor that big. Keeping him out of prison should more than make us even. But I didn’t like the half-amused smirk Mason had on his face ever since I’d told him about meeting my stalker on an online dating website.
“I didn’t stutter.” I put my fork down and glared at him. “You heard exactly what I said.”
“Let me get this straight. You want to contact Roper and tell him you made a mistake and you want the two of you to try again?”
“Pretty much.”
“What makes you think he’ll even want to see you again? Thought you said it was a mutual decision. He’s probably moved on to his next victim by now.”
“Well, since you still have Crockett and Tubbs watching me, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you must think he’s still a danger. Otherwise, I’d be eating takeout on my couch snuggled up with Queenie.” Queenie heard her name and trotted in from the living room to stand by my chair. I cut piece of my steak and fed it to her. I’d felt guilty about leaving her all alone at Mama’s last night and wanted to make it up to her.
“Personally, I think the guy’s in the wind. It’s just a matter of time before we catch him.”
“Look, Mason. I’ve got a life to live, a job to work, and my grandmother’s house to take care of. I don’t have time to be in protective custody not able to go wherever and do whatever I want.”
“And where have you not been able to go and what haven’t you been able to do?” His cop stare made my face flush and I picked up my fork and shoved some baked potato into my mouth.
“Have you got any leads on where he might be?”
“The investigation is ongoing,” he replied around a mouthful of steak.
“That’s cop speak for you have no idea, right?”
“Actually, we think he’s planning to leave the area.”
“And why do you think that?”
“A man using the same alias he used when he was dating you, Sam Pierson, purchased a one-way plane ticket to Vancouver two nights ago. His flight is booked for 9:45 tomorrow night. All you have to do is hang tight until then. Once we pick him up, you’ll be free to go back to your normal life, which better not include poking your nose in the Bentley/Howard case.”
“You have no clue where he might be until then?” I asked to change the subject because that was exactly what I planned on doing.
“If I had to guess, I’d say he met some other more amenable woman on that Ring of Love site and is staying with her.”
“It was Web of Love,” I corrected. “And how do you know it’s the same Sam Pierson?”
“Because the real Sam Pierson, who lives in Indianapolis, reported his credit card stolen when he was passing through Willow on his way to New York two months ago. The last time he remembered having it was when he stopped at a gas station outside of Willow where Dwayne Roper was the attendant.”
“Gas station attendant? He told me he was a petroleum engineer!” Mason almost choked on his asparagus and I fumed. Not because I was mad at being lied to by a man whose whole life was a lie, but because he’d been the latest in a long line of people to talk smack about me not having a full time job.
“Damn, you have a college degree and have been out of college for how
many years and you still don’t have a full time job?” He’d had the nerve to say to me on our first date. I’d let a con man who’d been in and out of prison his whole life, make me feel bad about my job choices. Of course, I hadn’t known that at the time. But it still made me want to shoot him out of a cannon into a brick wall.
“Don’t worry, Kendra. You’re just one person in a long line of people who’ve been sorry they crossed paths with that dude. No need to feel bad about it.”
“I don’t feel bad,” I lied. “And just how did Mr. Gas Station manage to still use Sam Pierson’s credit card to buy a plane ticket after he’d reported it stolen? Wouldn’t he have had that card cancelled?”
“He did. But Roper called the credit card company and told them he’d moved so they’d send him the new card. But he didn’t activate it. When the real Sam Pierson contacted the credit card company to let them know he never got his new card, they resent it to the old address. We think Roper may have known someone who worked for the credit card company who was helping him.”
“And what happens if he doesn’t show up for his flight tomorrow night or he takes a different flight?”
“If that happens, we’ve contacted the authorities in Vancouver and they’re going to have officers ready and waiting to pick him up.”
“I hope you’re right.” I got up to clear the table and Mason took the dishes from my hands.
“You’re my guest, remember? Plus, you cooked. So, I’ll clean up.”
While Mason rinsed the dinner dishes and put them in the dishwasher, I pulled bowls out of his cabinet and fixed us generous helpings of cobbler and ice cream. We ate dessert in the living room. I sat in the corner of the couch crossed legged with my face practically buried in the bowl. Queenie had followed me from the kitchen and gave a frustrated little yip when I wouldn’t give her any of my dessert. She’d just have to whine because all the decadent, creamy, sugary goodness in that bowl belonged to me and me alone. I wasn’t sharing. Mason’s soft laughter finally made me look up.