Doing It To Death

by Angela Henry

  “Marvelous. So, is there anything I can help you with?”

  “Actually, I needed to speak to her about a mutual acquaintance of ours.” I didn’t know how much I should tell Joyce Kirkland’s husband. I didn’t want to cause a problem for her, when I wasn’t sure how much he knew. As it turned out, he knew plenty.

  “I assume you’re referring to Mr. Watts?” he replied dryly, his flirtatiousness vanishing as he sat back and crossed his arms. I guess Lewis hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said Paul Kirkland didn’t like his ass.

  “Yes, it’s my understanding that they’ve known each other for decades?”

  “He’s an old friend of my wife’s from as they say, ‘back in the day.’” He made air quotes around the last part and spoke in an exaggerated black dialect. I just stared at him and he cleared his throat and looked away.

  “Maybe I should just wait and speak to your wife.” I started to get up to go and he stopped me.

  “I’m sorry, Kendra. Please, don’t leave. I hope I didn’t offend you. It’s just,” he said, sounding frustrated, “I’ve never pretended to understand how they became such good friends.”

  “I know he’s a bit…well…eccentric.” I was trying to be kind because of the whole he saved my life thing, but Lewis was a bit of an oddball. And apparently Paul Kirkland’s wife must not have told him about how she and Lewis bonded over shared blame surrounding Otis Patterson’s murder. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to hear it from me.

  “Eccentric is an understatement,” he concluded. “But, hey, nowhere it is written that I have to like all of my wife’s friends. Because she definitely doesn’t care for all of mine.”

  His eyes slid over to a grouping of photographs sitting on table against the wall. There were about a dozen of them and I couldn’t tell which one he’d been looking at. But one in particular caught my eye. It was a black-and-white photograph of a teenage Paul Kirkland in a suit with a teenage black girl wearing a light-colored sleeveless dress with sleek dark hair that was flipped up at the ends and cat eyed glasses. In between the two of them stood an older, tall man. I could tell by the resemblance he must have been a relative of Paul’s. He had his arms draped around their shoulders. It looked like it had been taken in the 60’s. Was this his father and if so, who was the girl? He noticed me looking and smiled.

  “That was me on my high school graduation day with my father and, Ria, the daughter of our housekeeper.”

  Now why was I getting the impression that Ria had been more than the housekeeper’s daughter? I gave a small smile as the old saying Once you black you never go back filled my head.

  “I should probably let you get back to your work, Dr. Kirkland. I’ve taken up enough of your time.”

  “Nonsense. I’m sure you came here to talk to my wife about the lawyer she hired Mr. Watts, am I right?”

  “You know about that?”

  “Of course, I know. I’m actually the one who insisted she bail him out and get him a good lawyer.”

  “Really? Why? I thought you didn’t like the man.” This was the last thing I’d expected to hear.

  “It was either let her bail him out and hire him a lawyer to fight the charges against him or watch her fret and worry herself to death over the thought of him going to prison. Besides, as annoying and uncouth as I find him, I truly don’t think he killed anyone, do you?”

  “No. And now that someone has tried to kill him, too. I’m absolutely convinced of that fact.”

  “Yes, I heard about that. Damned shame. As a matter of fact, I suspect that she probably cancelled her classes to go be by his side,” he said in a flat voice.

  I guess I couldn’t blame Paul Kirkland for being jealous of her friendship with Lewis. I’d certainly had my own issues on the subject, such as a certain police detective and his partner. I quickly pushed that thought out of my head. Surely, there was nothing romantic going on between them except for unrequited feelings on Lewis’s part. The buzzer on Kirkland’s phone buzzed and he pushed a button.

  “Dr. Kirkland, your 12:30 appointment is here,” said the voice of Kirkland’s administrative assistant. I got up to go. He stood up, too.

  “Maybe we can have longer visit next time, Kendra. I didn’t get to ask you any questions. And I’d love to get to know you better.” He come out from behind and put a hand on the small of my back and guided me towards the door. The flirty Dr. Kirkland was back.

  “I know,” I began with exaggerated enthusiasm. “How about when Lewis gets out of the hospital, the four of us can get together for dinner sometime? Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

  “Loads,” he replied sourly, as he ever so gently shoved me out the door.

  Fifteen

  Sims and Bridges still hadn’t tracked me down and neither they nor Mason had tried calling me all morning. Although I could have chalked up Mason not calling to being a result of what had happened last night. Was he embarrassed? Because I certainly was. But I also had to admit that I had enjoyed what had almost happened as much as if I’d been locked in a fully stocked and piping hot Amish buffet overnight. Good lord, that man was yummy. And I was starving, figuratively and literally. I hadn’t had anything to eat all day, and that was just not the normal order of things in my world. But I needed to catch Joyce Kirkland before she left the hospital. Food would have to wait.

  I arrived at Lewis’s room at Willow Memorial to find Joyce Kirkland in tears and Lewis looking stone-faced. He was sitting up in bed. Someone had given him his wig back, although he still wasn’t looking much like his old self. His face was still covered in salt and pepper stubble (more salt than pepper) and it looked weird with his jet-black wig. I couldn’t believe that I would have rather seen him in his pumpkin-colored pimp suit than the blue cotton hospital gown he was wearing.

  “How’s it going, Lewis? Hey, Dr. Kirkland.” The tension in the room was so think it was making me itch.

  “Hey, Kelly,” replied Lewis purposefully not looking at Joyce, who in turn was looking at him like an irate mother dealing with a naughty child who wouldn’t listen to her no matter how many toys she threatened to take away.

  “Would you please talk some sense into this man, Kendra? I hired him a lawyer with more experience with criminal law and an excellent record of acquittals, and he insists on being represented by a public defender. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you want to spend the rest of your life in prison,” she hissed at him. I realized her tears weren’t from hurt or anger but pure, exasperated frustration.

  “You might want to listen to your friend, Lewis. I’ve got some bad news about Sharon Newcastle.” I told them about Sharon being out of commission for the foreseeable future but stopped short of telling them it had been a suicide attempt. They were both stunned.

  “Dammit, Kelly! Don’t you ever have any good news?” Lewis had twisted around in his hospital bed to glare at me. Suddenly the color drained out of his face, and he clutched his chest where his bullet wound was and fell backward. Fresh blood stained his hospital gown. Sweat beaded his brow and he began to moan. I rushed out into the hall and called for a nurse.

  Fifteen minutes later, Lewis had been sedated. He’d not heeded the orders of his doctor and the nurses to relax and lie still and had ripped open one of his sutures. After his wound was cleaned and re-sutured, a nurse told Joyce and me we had to leave. Visiting hours were over for Lewis for the day. We were both looking pretty sheepish as we headed to the entrance. Joyce especially was looking guilty and out of sorts.

  “I’m sorry if I upset him. But I just don’t understand that man!” She said once we’d gotten onto the elevator. “Who turns down a criminal defense attorney to be represented by a public defender?”

  “How about we talk about it over lunch? I’m starving. And I’m betting you’ve been too busy arguing with that hardheaded friend of yours to have lunch. Am I right?” I wanted to grill her about why she’d lied about knowing Brenda Howard and about that picture I’d found. But just ho
w did I ask a distinguished, well-respected college professor and member of the Board of Education if she used to be a ho, back in the day, as her ignorant husband had put it.

  “No, I haven’t. I took the day off to be with a friend in need because I know he doesn’t have anyone else. But all we did was argue. I made him hurt himself.”

  “Actually, that was me. But I think that would have been his reaction no matter who’d told him something he didn’t want to hear. It doesn’t make any sense to me, either. And it’s probably not supposed to. But knowing how he is, I’m surprised you don’t realize why he’s being this way.”

  “Why.” She looked completely baffled.

  “I’ll tell you over lunch.”

  Ten minutes later, we were seated in the hospital’s cafeteria, me with a burger and fries and Joyce Kirkland with a chef salad that I could tell she wasn’t going to eat. I thought back to the night before and Mason praising my hearty appetite. Had he been serious or had that simply been foreplay? Regardless, I wasn’t letting any of the food on my plate go to waste and took a big bite of my burger.

  “So why is he acting like this?” she asked, getting straight to the point.

  “He’s in love with you,” I replied after taking a sip of my Coke.

  “What?” She looked genuinely taken aback.

  “Are you seriously telling me you didn’t know?”

  “But…we’ve only ever been good friends.”

  “I’m sure he’s happy to take whatever he can get from you. And it’s the reason why he won’t accept your help. He wants to protect you.”

  “Protect me from what?”

  “From whatever happened the night Otis Patterson died that Dibb Bentley was blackmailing you over,” I said, bluntly. Her eyes got big and she looked down at her salad.

  “I don’t need Lewis’s protection.”

  “But Dibb was blackmailing you, right?”

  “Yes,” she finally admitted with mirthless laugh. “Everyone tried to warn me about that man, but I wouldn’t listen.”

  “Why?”

  “He wrote to me when he was in prison, sounding so pitiful and remorseful that I felt sorry for him and started writing him back. Paul and I had an on-again off-again relationship for a few years before we finally got together for good and got married. I was writing to Dibb during one of our off periods. I was sad and lonely. He was telling me what I wanted to hear. And some of the letters were a bit…graphic.” She wouldn’t meet my eyes. And who could blame her? I refused to think about Dibb Bentley and sex in the same thought while I was still eating.

  “He was blackmailing you over the letters?”

  “Threatening to show them to Paul unless I put money on his prison books.”

  “And you did?”

  “Of course I did,” she replied, looking indignant. “Paul would have walked away from me in a second if he’d known. I had stopped writing to Dibb after I got engaged. His letters kept coming for a few months, then stopped. I thought I was finally rid of him. Then after Paul and I got married, they started up again. He’d found out I’d gotten married and threatened to send copies of the letters to Paul. So, I had to start putting money on his books again.”

  “Did you finance his entire stay in prison?”

  “Pretty much. But I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. The man had almost thirty years to think up new ways to squeeze money out of people.”

  “What happened when he got out?”

  “Well, what do you think happened? He wanted even more money. That’s when I finally had to come clean to Paul. I wasn’t paying that dirty bastard another dime. My husband wasn’t thrilled that I’d been keeping it from him all those years, but at least I got to tell Dibb to go fuck himself the last time he asked me for more money.” We were silent for a few awkward minutes. I took another sip of my Coke while I contemplated just how to bring up the subject of her being a hooker.

  “I have a bone to pick with you, lady,” I finally said to lighten the mood before what I had to ask her made her defensive and uncommunicative.

  “What?” She looked slightly amused.

  “You told me not to worry about that audit that was ordered on the Literacy Center. But guess what? We’re being audited—both me and my boss, Dorothy Burgess, are freaking out. I’m told if we have to pay back the state, I could lose my job.”

  `I didn’t get into how Dorothy had been fudging our graduation numbers. She didn’t need to know all that. I just wanted some advice on how to stop the audit. But to my surprise she threw back her head and laughed until tears ran down her cheeks. I could lose my job and this woman thought it was funny, hilariously funny since tears we’re still streaming down her face.

  “I’m sorry, Kendra. I promise I’m not laughing at you.” But it sure felt like she was laughing at my plight.

  “Really? Because coming from Dorothy this sounds pretty damned serious.”

  “Oh, Kendra. I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but I promise you that you, your boss, and the Clark Literacy Center have nothing to worry from that audit.”

  “How can you be so sure?” And why was she still laughing like a lunatic?

  “All I’ll say is this,” she began, as she wiped her streaming eyes with her napkin. “To be on the safe side, once the auditors arrive and are all set up in whatever room they’ll be conducting their audit, wait about a half an hour and check on them to see if there’s anything they need, water, coffee, or any other refreshments. Trust me. They’ll really appreciate the gesture.” She dissolved into more giggling.

  “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” she said, with a wicked glint in her eye. “Just do what I said, and you guys will be golden.” She dug into her salad like she suddenly remembered she was hungry.

  Curiosity about our pending audit was killing me, but I had more pressing matters to broach. I hated to ruin the mood when I got the feeling she didn’t get a ton of opportunities to laugh the way she just had. Oh, well. There was nothing to it but to do it.

  “I didn’t realize you were Pinky Buford’s niece.” Her head shot up and her salad laden fork froze on its way into her mouth.

  “You know my uncle Pinky?”

  “Yes, I met him when I went to sign Brenda Howard’s memorial book at the nursing home. I saw your signature in the book as well. I thought you said you didn’t know her?”

  “I didn’t. I just happened to be there visiting Uncle Pinky the day of the memorial service and decided to pay my respects.”

  “Oh, really?” I tossed the picture from Brenda Howard’s locker onto the table and Joyce Kirkland put her fork down and put her elbows on the table and sighed, burying her head in her hands.

  “Where did you get this?” She looked at the picture and absently traced the tip of her index finger over her younger self’s face. I could tell it had been a very long time since she’d seen the picture.

  “It was in Brenda’s locker at the nursing home. That’s you with Brenda and her sister Betty, right?” She simply nodded and pushed the photo back across the table towards me. Whatever nostalgic spell it had over her had quickly broken.

  “Why are you so interested in whether I knew Brenda Howard? Why is this your business?

  “It’s my business because our mutual friend has been charged with two murders we both know he didn’t commit, and the odds are stacked against him. And this whole thing started in 1973, the night Otis Patterson died. Lewis saved my life, and I’d like to return the favor.” Yes, I know my motives in helping Lewis hadn’t been very honorable in the beginning. I hadn’t wanted to help him at all. But shit had gotten very real and now I owed him big time.

  “No, it started way before that, Kendra,” said Joyce quietly.

  “It did?”

  “Otis’s death was the end of it, not the beginning. And you really need to leave this alone. Dibb went poking into the past and look what happened to him.”

  “And what about
Brenda? Was she poking into the past, too?”

  “Brenda never left the past. She was stuck there.”

  “Was that because of what happened to her sister, Betty?”

  “That and a lot of other stuff, too. Do you want to know why I told you I didn’t know her?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t know her anymore. She was a completely different person thirty years ago, shy, quiet but quick with a smile and ready to give anybody the shirt off her back. Fast forward to the present and the weed-smoking, beer-guzzling, mistrustful, gold-digging hot mess she ended up. I tried with Brenda. I really did. I tried to be there for her. Tried to help her take care of her sister when she was sick. But she pushed us all away. Wouldn’t see any of us and after Betty died, that’s all she wrote. I’d see her at the grocery or out somewhere in town and try and talk to her and she’d look right through me like I didn’t exist. So I gave her what she wanted and left her alone.”

  “And why was that? Why’d she push you and the other Gems away?” It was a calculated move mentioning the Gems. But it worked.

  “She blamed—” Joyce began, then she realized what I’d said. Her eyes got big. She stood up so abruptly she knocked over her iced tea. I jumped up, too, as the flood of cold brown liquid came dangerously close to spilling into my lap.

  “Dr. Kirkland? Are you okay?”

  “Who told…I mean… how do you know about that?” It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her about the ledger Dibb hid in Lewis’s house, and that he’d planned on using it to blackmail the people in it when he got out of prison. But I never got the chance.

  “There you are. I thought you’d be here,” said Joyce’s husband. Paul walked up to us with a tight smile on his face. We both ignored him.

  “Look, you need to read my dissertation, Kendra. I donated a copy to the Kingford library. What those women were doing was strictly for the purpose of research. They were simply business women taking control of their sexuality and earning good money in the process. They had nothing to be ashamed of,” she told me, glancing sideways at her husband. Those women? Her husband apparently had no clue that she and her three friends were the subject of her dissertation.