by Tracy Clark
“Did you ever hear anything from Allen?”
“Never did,” Mrs. Adkins said. “We didn’t get so much as a bereavement card. I didn’t think it was right, and I just couldn’t let it go. I called up there. I asked for her, but they gave me somebody else, who was real cold over the phone. She said she didn’t know anything about Dontell being killed, acted surprised to hear about it. That was the end of it. I couldn’t do any more.”
That had to be Chandler. There had been only three of them working at the time—Allen, Dontell, and Chandler. Reesa had quit by then and had relocated down South. No condolences?
“Could I see the police report and his things?”
Neither answered. I was afraid I’d gone too far, asked for too much.
“Where are your people from?” Mrs. Adkins asked.
The question caught me off guard. It was one I wasn’t usually asked. “My mother’s side comes from Louisiana, Baton Rouge and small towns around there. My father’s family . . .” I had to take a moment to recall. “Michigan, I think?”
“You think?” she said.
“We aren’t close.” I could tell by the look on her face that this wasn’t going to cut it. “We’re working on it. Slow process.”
“He’s your Daddy, isn’t he? What do you mean, you ain’t close?”
I could feel sweat trickling down my back, my collar hot. Why was my mouth so dry? “Um.”
“Marva, let the woman alone. I knew some folks from Baton Rouge. Babineaux. You know any Babineauxs?”
I shook my head. “I don’t, but my grandfather might have.”
Mrs. Adkins said, “You ain’t close to him, either?”
“I was. He died several years ago. My grandmother, too. I lost my mother when I was a kid.” There it was. We’d found our commonality—loss. Mrs. Adkins settled back; her gaze softened. I’d broken through. The three of us sat for a moment without talking. I was thinking about the people I’d lost, and the Adkins were likely doing the same.
She stood up, straightened her apron. “I put his things in his closet. I’ll let you look, but I want everything put back just how you found it. Every scrap of paper, you understand?”
I stood, having just been given a gift. “Yes, ma’am.”
* * *
I called Allen’s office and asked for Chandler, and Pamela transferred me to Kendrick. Apparently, Allen was working from home, which meant Chandler was also working there.
“Does she have any events on her schedule for tonight?”
“She’s got lunch at noon at the Drake,” Kendrick said.
“Perfect. Thanks.”
I hung up and drove to Allen’s condo, and walked into the lobby to find the lobby desk manned by a thin black man with glasses and a green blazer. We had a polite discussion. I wanted to go up to Allen’s, but my name wasn’t on the approved list of visitors. He pointed me to the courtesy phone, which sat on a table in an alcove off to the side. If I called up and Allen agreed to see me, he’d let me up. Meanwhile, residents, one-percenters all, glided blithely past me, flaunting their access to the elevators, tacitly rubbing my working-class nose in it.
“Ms. Allen is not receiving visitors at this time,” her housekeeper, Isabella, told me in stilted English.
I peeked around the corner at the guy at the desk. He hadn’t forgotten about me. I had a sinking feeling that this was as close to Allen as I was going to get without SWAT backup.
“Tell her it’s important that I speak with her.”
There was a brief hesitation. She was likely consulting somebody. “No visitors. Would you like to leave, por favor, a message for the señora?”
I gritted my teeth. “Tell her it’s about Dontell Adkins and David Grissom.”
Another pause, more consultation. Nothing I could do about it. I was trapped in the lobby, after all, with floor upon floor of living space separating us. Allen didn’t have to talk to me. She didn’t even have to talk to the police unless she felt like it. All she really had to do, when you thought about it, was hang up the—
The line went dead. “Hello?”
I bit my lip, peeked around the corner again. Still there. I hung the phone up. There was nothing else I could do.
I passed the lobby desk on my way out. “Next time I’ll bring her chocolates,” I said to the desk guy.
He winked at me. “You’d do better bringing them for me.”
There was more than one way to skin a cat. Allen had lunch plans at the Drake at noon. It was about eleven thirty now. I’d wait. I trotted around the building to the garage entrance, slid in and spotted Allen’s limo idling right in front of the private elevator that led to the residences. I approached cautiously and rapped gently on the driver’s window.
Elliott slid the window down. “Ms. Raines.”
“Elliott. Waiting for your boss?”
He nodded.
“I’m going to stand here until she comes down. Just wanted you to know so there won’t be any misunderstanding.”
“She’ll have a guard with her. Big guy. And Chandler, of course.”
“Is the guard armed?”
“Afraid so.”
“Twitchy?”
He frowned. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Never mind. I got it.” I glanced over at the elevator door. Nothing yet. “Thanks for letting me know.”
I backed away, stood patiently between the car and the elevator. This was a gambit. It might not work. Allen’s security might be as impenetrable as their company name suggested. Titan Security. Get over yourself. I waited fifteen minutes; then the door opened, and Chandler, Allen, and a white guy as wide as a frigging bull moose stepped off the elevator and made for the car. They all saw me at about the same time. The bull moose switched to high alert, Chandler looked like she’d swallowed her tongue, and Allen looked at me like she wanted to skin me alive. Elliott got out of the car, came around the side, and stood at the passenger door, but Allen stopped to give me the business before she got in.
“You have a nerve. I should have you arrested for harassment.” She cocked her head toward the Titan guy. “Norman.”
Norman? I looked at him, grinned, but let it go. Naming this guy Norman was like naming a Chihuahua Hercules. It just didn’t go together. I kept my hands visible. Chandler stood off to the side, her mouth clamped shut. If anything went down, she was not going to be any help to me whatsoever. I looked over at the guard. He was watching me pretty closely.
“I only need one minute,” I said.
Allen sneered at me. “There’s nothing we need to talk about, is there? You made yourself quite clear the other night. We’re done here.”
“I spoke with David Grissom. He teaches now. Looks good for a man his age. Well put together. He had a lot to say about your time together back in college.” He hadn’t really. I was still trying to figure out that lion and meat thing, but maybe the lie would prompt Allen to cough something up if she thought I already knew most of it. That was my play, anyway. “I see now why you wanted to keep everything quiet.”
To borrow Whit’s term, Allen went ghosty. Then meanness fought back and took it from there. “Who do you think you are? Do you have any idea who I am? What I can do to you?”
“Cut the crap, Benita. Did it ever occur to you that I’m actually trying to help you? You can burn the letters, shred them, cut them up and eat them, but that’s not going to stop what’s going on. Two people have been killed. Two people directly connected to you and your magazine.”
Her head had jerked back at the mention of her real name, but the shock lasted only a couple of seconds. Meanness roared back again. Her entire body coiled like a heavyweight spring. “I’d be careful if I . . .”
I went on as if she’d said nothing. “I also found Dontell Adkins. Remember him?” I turned to Chandler. “You said you had no idea where he was. Hadn’t seen him since the day he quit. He’s buried in the cemetery. Run down, interestingly enough, not too far from where you g
uys started out all those years ago. His grandparents seem to think he’d just come from seeing the two of you. But you knew he was dead, because his grandmother said she called the office and spoke to you personally. Funny, you don’t remember that.” Chandler looked stricken. I turned back to Allen, checked on Norman. All good there. “I’m going to find out what’s going on. That’s a promise. However that shakes out for you is just how it shakes out.”
“Out of my way. Elliott! The door.” Allen brushed past me, signaling Norman to ramp it up with the guarding business.
Elliott opened the limo door and stepped aside to let Allen through. Norman stepped forward. I took the hint and backed way up.
“I’m gone. Don’t want to impede Ms. Allen in any way. Besides, I’ve got an appointment with a couple of cop friends to discuss the latest developments, so I have to run.” I had no meeting set but let her go on and worry about it. “We’ll talk again soon. Till then, have a nice lunch. You, too, Norman.” I turned and left, not bothering to look back to watch the limo pull away.
Chapter 25
John Coltrane blew smooth and easy through my stereo speakers as I sat cross-legged and barefoot on my living-room rug, a glass of red wine within reach on the coffee table, Dontell’s box, a footlocker-size plastic tub, gray-green, with matching lid, like oversize Tupperware, sitting in front of me. Mrs. Adkins had been reluctant to let me walk out of her house with it, until I swore an oath to return the box and all its contents to her the very moment I found out what happened to Dontell. Inside, things were stacked neatly—files, books, papers—and on top was a battered laptop, several generations old, and a scuffed cell phone with a cracked screen. I checked them both. They were long dead. It’d been four years since Dontell used them last. No power cords in the box. But I remembered I had a few spare ones in my junk drawer in the other room, left behinds from countless old phones and computers owned over the years. Maybe something would fit.
I dug through the drawer, batting aside old batteries, brittle rubber bands, rusted screws whose rightful place I had long forgotten. I pulled out a handful of old cords just as my bell rang, and I rushed to answer it.
“Who is it?”
“Me.” Eli. I buzzed him up and left the door open before going back to what I was doing.
He came in with a pizza box flooding the apartment with the aroma of hot cheese and spicy sausage. The first cord didn’t fit Dontell’s laptop. I looked up at Eli, smiled, tried a second.
“Hey. Pizza,” I said.
He walked over, leaned down to give me a kiss. “I figured you hadn’t stopped to eat, so . . . yep, pizza.” He sat the pizza box on the coffee table next to me, then eyed my wineglass. “Which’ll go good with that. What’s all this?”
“Dontell Adkins’s personal effects.” The second cord didn’t fit, either. I tossed it aside, tried another. “He was a kid who worked for Allen. Killed in a hit-and-run. Strangely, the second hit-and-run connected to her. The first involved a father and son who sued her for stealing the whole idea for her magazine.” I looked up at him. “Something starting to smell rotten to you?”
He eased down on the couch across from me after putting the pizza on the table between us. “Not necessarily. Hit-and-runs do happen. You thinking she ran them over?”
“I’m just saying it’s odd.” The third cord fit the laptop. “Hold on.” I moved over to the outlet, plugged in the laptop, and opened it. No cracks. The keys worked. I pressed the power button, and it began to boot up. “Ha!”
Eli joined me and peered over my shoulder as the computer slowly came to life.
“Now fingers crossed it’s not password protected . . .” But it was. I screeched, shoving the computer away from me in frustration. I had one more cord. If it fit the phone . . .
Eli picked up the computer. “Password might be something simple.”
I plugged the last cord into the phone. It fit. “Don’t move. Do not breathe.” I held my own breath, then plugged in the adapter. The phone lit up. “Please, no password.” The home screen popped up, so no password needed. I was in, and it felt as though I’d just won the lottery.
Eli was still fiddling with the laptop. “See if he put the password to this in there.”
I scrolled through Dontell’s contacts. “Eli, c’mon, nobody puts the password to their computer in another computer. That’d just be . . .” But there it was. Under lap pass. “What just happened?” Eli and I looked at each other. “Password. NEWYORKER3. All caps. Try it.”
Eli typed it in. It worked. Dontell’s laptop was open. “Why password protect the laptop but not the phone?”
I grabbed the laptop, snatched a slice of pizza from the box. “I don’t care. I’m just glad he did.”
“What do you think you’re going to find?”
I took a bite of pizza, sat the slice back in the box, and got to work. “I’ll let you know when I find it.”
* * *
There were video journal entries on the laptop, dozens of them. It looked like Dontell had documented every minute of his time with Strive, from his first day there to the day he told Allen to take her job and shove it, which was less than a week before his death. Each entry was date stamped; each one, archived. Dontell and Angela Dotson-Hughes would have gotten along like a house afire. Reesa Loudon was right. It looked like Dontell had planned on writing about his experiences at Strive. That wouldn’t have played well for Allen or Chandler, not with a new publication starting up, not following their lawsuit with the Peetses. A hit-and-run, the Peetses run off the road into a ditch. Both things an answer to Allen’s problem.
Eli slid in beside me, took a sip from my wineglass. “Okay then. Let’s see what this guy was about.”
The first file was dated October 19, 2017. Dontell, young, intense looking, squinting into the camera mounted in front of him, what looked like a bedroom as his backdrop.
“I’m on my way! Somebody’s actually going to pay me to write! Strive’s new, unproven, but I think it could really be something.” He pumped his fists. “And I’m in on the ground floor, baby.”
I closed the file. “God, were we ever that young and unjaded?”
Eli scoffed. “I wasn’t. You maybe.”
The next few files were more of the same. Dontell was over the moon, until January 3, 2018.
“We had to work sixteen hours today, but we don’t get overtime pay or time back. Is that even legal? What happened to labor laws? I have to look that up. Ms. Allen says we have to make sacrifices, but it’s only me and Reesa making them. We were in the office past midnight yesterday. Allen and Chandler left at six for some swanky gala. Why are we the only ones putting in the time?” Dontell looked haggard, less enthusiastic, and no wonder. He was being worked to near exhaustion.
I skimmed through the next few files, more of the same, before jumping forward to the last two videos he shot.
October 24, 2018. “I quit today! Allen didn’t like it, especially since Reesa quit last week. Can you believe she called me ungrateful? We’ll see about that. I got it all locked and loaded, people. I’m a slave set free from the yoke! Dues paid, son. I didn’t even wait for them to walk me out. Strolled out easy. Victory!”
The last file, October 28. The day he died. Dontell shot it while walking into Allen’s office, the shaky camera panning to catch the magazine’s name on the door, Dontell’s voice in the background. “Last time I step foot in this place. Picking up the letter today. I gave them no option. The pen is mightier than the sword for real. Next stop, revelation. Let’s see Vonda Allen handle what I’m about to throw down. Later.”
I closed the video folder, looked around on the laptop for more, but found nothing else about Strive or Allen. I logged off, checked the phone. The numbers in his contacts meant nothing to me. I stopped scrolling at the name Eric Mason. No service on Dontell’s phone, so I used mine to dial the number, but it was out of service. I tossed the phone down, stood to pace some.
“What’s this kid Adkins go
t to do with anything?”
“He could be a part of a pattern of deaths. He was in a position to damage Allen and her business, and now he’s dead. Sewell, Hewitt, thorns in her side, dead. Eric Mason is a long shot. Eric’s a common name. No guarantee he’s the guy we confronted the other night. But what if this Eric’s the same one in Dontell’s phone? What if he somehow holds Allen responsible for what happened to Dontell? That could play.”
Eli looked skeptical. “A bit of a reach. Besides, it’s been four years. That takes slow burn to a new level, don’t you think?” He reached into the pizza box and handed me another slice. “Take a break? Come back at it in the morning?”
“I should swing by the hospital. Check on things.” I read his look. “What?”
“It’s after eleven.”
I’d been at the box for hours without noticing it. “Oh.”
I thought of Dontell, so full of promise. A box of things was a poor accounting of a life barely lived. I thought of the Adkinses, too. Sad, old, alone. Everything was a word not nearly big enough to describe the enormity of what they’d lost.
I stared at the box of Dontell’s things. There was still stuff at the bottom of it that I hadn’t gotten to yet. “Another half hour.”
Chapter 26
I found Dontell’s acceptance letter to Southern Illinois University still folded inside the envelope it had come in, now brown at the edges, as well as the framed graduation photograph of him in his maroon cap and gown, his arms around his proud grandparents, everyone happy.
There was a mangled messenger bag with a broken strap; inside it, a copy of Dontell’s résumé, dirtied, creased, as if it’d been trodden upon and manhandled; and a copy of James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain. Underneath sat a sealed plastic bag, the kind hospitals tossed your things in when you were brought in. I turned it slowly over in my hands, almost reverently, aware of its significance, a little sad, even though I’d never met Dontell. This was the tangible sum of his young life? Stuff, bits of paper, so important to the living, worthless to the dead. Eli watched as I shook what was inside onto my lap.