Murder with Fried Chicken and Waffles (Mahalia Watkins Soul Food Mystery)

by Herbert, A. L.

  “Régine?” he asks. “I don’t remember the exact time.” His tone is friendlier now that I’m not asking questions about him. “But I do remember she left very shortly after you did.”

  “Would you say five or ten minutes after Wavonne and I left?”

  “Probably fifteen minutes. She said she had a headache and was bored with our business talk.”

  “How long after that did you leave?”

  “I thought you just had a few questions.”

  “That’s my last one, I promise.”

  “I stayed maybe twenty minutes longer. Heather and Josh left before I did. Jacqueline was the only one with Marcus when I left.”

  “Thank you, Charles. You’ve been very helpful.”

  “If you have any further questions, Halia, I suggest you talk to the police.”

  “I will. You have a good afternoon.”

  I toss the phone onto the passenger seat and start the van. As I drive to Sweet Tea, I make some calculations in my head. I know it was about eleven forty-five when Wavonne and I left the restaurant on that fateful night. So if Régine left fifteen minutes after us, that put her departure at about midnight. Now I need to make the drive from Sweet Tea to the Madison, see how long it takes to get there, and determine if I can get my hands on the building’s security camera footage. I don’t know if Régine had a motive to kill Marcus, but Wavonne did say she thought Marcus was cheating on her. Women have certainly killed men for lesser reasons.

  When I get back to the restaurant, it’s almost time to open for the day. I say hi to my staff in the front of the house and make my way back to the kitchen. I had gotten Tacy started on our lunch special for the day, chicken potpies, before I left to get my hair cut. The crusts have been prepared, and he’s now pouring the filling into the individual casserole dishes, laying the crusts on top, and letting it fall over the edges. He tops the whole thing with a small piece of dough in the shape of chicken (we use a cookie cutter).

  “They look lovely, Tacy. Nice work,” I compliment. “Isn’t Wavonne supposed to be helping you?”

  Before Tacy has a chance to say anything, I hear Momma’s voice. “Good Lord, Halia! What happened to your hair? You’re far too old to be trying those weird, trendy hairdos.”

  “I’m not trying a new, trendy hairdo. Is it that bad?”

  “Oh my,” Momma says instead of answering my question. “Stan is here with some deliveries. He just went back out to the truck. You can’t let him see you like this.”

  Momma grabs me by the arm and drags me into the break room, where we find Wavonne seated at the table, thumbing the keys on her phone.

  “You stay here until he’s gone,” Momma says.

  “Fine, Momma. I need to talk to Wavonne anyway.”

  “Maybe she’ll loan you one of her wigs. Lord knows, she has more than that busty girl who used to be on The View.”

  Wavonne doesn’t respond as Momma goes back into the kitchen, and that’s when I realize she has her headphones in. Rather than say anything, I decide to just stand there and wait for her to notice me. When she finally looks up, I expect her to start going on about how she’s getting back to work right this minute, and just needed to return a quick text, but, instead, she narrows her eyebrows and lets her jaw drop.

  “Halia! Why your hair all jacked up?”

  “Don’t you worry about my hair. I need you to run an errand with me.”

  “I ain’t doin’ nothin’ ’til you tell me what alley cat your hair got in a fight with.”

  “I went to see Régine. I thought I—”

  “Régine?! You let Régine cut your hair? Have you lost your mind?”

  “I was trying to get some information out of her.”

  “Well, I hope you got it now that you have to walk around lookin’ like a swamp rat,” she says before softening her demeanor and looking at me with a concerned expression on her face. “Ooh, girl, you okay? I can loan you a wig or some of my snap-and-go extensions. What do you say we go to Red Lobster and get you some crab legs? Make you feel better.”

  “I’ll go see Latasha as soon as I get a chance. She can clean it up and even it out. Enough about my hair already. I need you go to the Madison, Régine’s building, with me.”

  “What for?”

  “I may need your . . . your powers of persuasion.”

  “Really? You’ve got me curious now, Halia. What’s this about?”

  “I’ll explain on the way. We need to get over there and back quickly. Laura and the gang can handle the place until things really pick up at noon.”

  “Fine. But just so you know, my powers of persuasion may cost you time and a half.”

  CHAPTER 28

  I look at my watch after we get in the van and buckle up. I make a mental note of the time. I know where the Madison is. I have a friend who lived there years ago. It’s not a total dump, but it’s an older high-rise . . . maybe twelve stories with a worn lobby and creaky, slow elevators. I figure we can get there in roughly twenty minutes, but I want to clock it to be sure.

  “What’s goin’ down at the Madison?”

  “Nothing is going down at the Madison. I just want to see how long it takes to get there from here, so we know how much time Régine had on her hands when she left the restaurant the night Marcus was killed.”

  “Why?”

  “Régine said her building had security cameras at the entrance. She told the cops to check them if they didn’t believe she was home safe and sound on the night in question. I figure if Régine left Sweet Tea about midnight, and she went straight home, she would have gotten there about twelve twenty, which means she was probably home before Charles and Jacqueline even left the restaurant. If that’s the case, I can cross her off my suspect list.

  “How do you know she didn’t sneak back out later?”

  “Another reason I want to pay the Madison a visit. There must be back or side exits. We need to know if those are monitored on camera, as well.”

  “Even if they are monitored, how you plan on gettin’ the camera footage?”

  “I thought you might help me with that.”

  “How so?”

  “You tell me, Wavonne. If there’s one thing I know about you, it’s that if you want something bad enough, you’ll find a way to get it.”

  We continue the drive, and it takes us exactly nineteen minutes to reach the Madison. As I pull into the parking lot, I begin to circle the building looking for entryways and exits. I see the main entrance covered by a torn gray awning, and there are metal doors on each end of the front side of the building that likely lead to stairwells. There are two similar doors on the rear side of the building. I have Wavonne hop out and check each of the metal doors. All four of them are locked—clearly they are for exiting the building only. If Régine wanted to enter the building through one of these doors, she’d need to leave it ajar with something, and hope no one disturbed it until she got back . . . or have an accomplice let her in. But as Wavonne is checking to see if the side doors are locked, I notice that they are monitored by cameras just like the main entrance, so Régine would have been seen on camera entering or leaving via those doors, as well.

  Following our drive around the perimeter of the building, I park the car. Then Wavonne and I make our way to the main entrance. We press a buzzer, and a very bored-looking young fellow sitting at the reception desk lets us in. He’s tall and lanky and probably only a year or two out of high school. His dress shirt is two sizes too big for him, and his tie has a stain on it.

  Once we’re in the building, I linger by the door for a moment trying think of what I’m going to say to him and attempt to come up with an excuse to get him to show me some security camera footage. I’m contemplating making up a story about looking for a lost loved one or even posing as a police detective when Wavonne unfastens a few buttons on her top and scoots ahead of me toward the clerk.

  “Hi, Jeffrey,” she says, reading his nameplate on the counter.

  “Hell
o.”

  “Aren’t you a handsome thing . . . all dapper in your dress shirt and tie,” she adds, plunking her voluptuous breasts on the counter like she’s setting two mugs of coffee on a table at the local diner.

  Jeffrey grins and looks at Wavonne with wide eyes as I step closer to them.

  “May I help you?” he asks, clearly struggling to keep his eyes off the cleavage displayed before him.

  “Oh honey, a strappin’ man like you, you could help me with all sortsa things.”

  Jeffrey lets out a nervous laugh.

  “You probably work a lot of hours here, don’t you?”

  “Eight hours a day. Five days a week.”

  “You poor thing. I bet those tight executive types who own this joint don’t pay you near what you’re worth.”

  The poor kid doesn’t know what to make of Wavonne and just lifts his eyebrows and shrugs his shoulders at us.

  “How’d you like to make a little extra money, Jeffrey?”

  “I’d love to.”

  “I’m Kadesha, and this here is my mother, Sinclair.”

  Mother?! I’m going to get her for that one.

  “You see, it’s all very complicated. I’d love to explain, but we’re in a hurry. The bones of it, Jeffrey, is that we need to see your security camera footage from Saturday night.” As she’s talking, Wavonne pulls my purse off my arm, lays it on the counter, and takes out my wallet.

  “Let’s see. How much do we have here? Twenty, forty, sixty . . . eighty dollars,” she says, counting the bills she pulled from my wallet. “That’s all we have. What do you say, Jeffrey? For a quick eighty bucks, can we get a peek at the tapes?”

  Jeffrey takes a quick look around and then snatches the money out of Wavonne’s hand. He then gestures for us to come behind the counter and follow him into the back room.

  “The cops have already viewed all the footage. This is about that guy that was found in Wellington Lake, right?”

  Wavonne looks at me, unsure how to respond.

  “Yes,” I say. “Wav . . . Kadesha and I are doing a little investigating of our own. Trying to make sure the cops didn’t miss anything. What exactly did you show the cops?”

  “My boss, Mr. Maxell, worked with them, but I was here when they came. They wanted to see footage from the same night. They were looking for Ms. Alva in apartment 431. They wanted to see what time she came in to the building, and then they wanted to see hours of footage from every door to see if she left again before morning. They made copies of everything. You looking for Ms. Alva, too?”

  “Yes. Régine Alva.”

  “Here, look,” he says, sitting down in front of the computer screen and putting his hand on the mouse. “This is from that Saturday.”

  “There she is,” Wavonne says. The film is in black and white and a bit grainy but, indeed, that is Régine coming through the front door. We get a quick look at her opening the front door and entering the lobby. She’s got her phone out, and she’s texting or surfing on the Internet while she’s walking.

  “That’s the time at the bottom of the screen?”

  “Yes. She came in at twelve twenty-one.”

  “And you said the cops already reviewed the camera footage from the exits. She never left the building that night?”

  “Nope. They viewed the feed from every camera at every entrance and exit, and she wasn’t seen leaving until nine a.m. the next morning.”

  “We ain’t gonna sit here and watch hours of tape from all the exits, are we? ’Cause that’s gonna cost a hell of a lot more than time and a half.”

  Jeffrey looks at us curiously, probably wondering why my daughter is expecting me to pay her.

  “No. I’m sure the cops reviewed the tapes thoroughly, and we really have to get back. Thank you very much, Jeffrey,” I say.

  “Don’t mention it,” he says and puts his hand in his pocket as if he’s making sure the eighty dollars is still there.

  “So I guess you can cross Régine off your list, Sherlock,” Wavonne says as we walk across the parking lot.

  “I guess,” I say, putting my key in the door of my van. “Oh, and by the way? Your mother?! You’ll pay for that one.”

  Wavonne laughs.

  “And Kadesha and Sinclair? Really? Someone has been watching too many Living Single reruns on TVONE.”

  “I had to come up with some names quickly. And, after all, we were there looking for information about Régine.”

  On the way back to the restaurant, Wavonne reaches for my purse, which I’ve set on the floor next to me.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  She digs for my wallet and pulls it out. “You know you had like two or three hundred dollars in here. I only pulled out eighty, and told Jeffrey that’s all we had. So I figure I saved you more than a hundred bucks. I’m just takin’ my commission for services rendered.”

  I divert my eyes from the road for a moment toward Wavonne. “Twenty dollars, Wavonne. You can take twenty dollars. The rest of your commission will be staying out of jail for stealing someone’s wallet.”

  “You stop talkin’ about me stealin’. He was dead, Halia. It ain’t stealin’ if he was dead.”

  “Let’s hope we never have to find out if a jury agrees with you.”

  “I ain’t goin’ before no jury. The police will find out who offed Marcus.” She gives me a long look. “If you don’t beat ’em to it.”

  CHAPTER 29

  I’m sitting next to Wavonne about twelve rows back from the front of the church. I have on a gray skirt and white blouse. I even put on some sheer black hose, but I’m still feeling underdressed. Compared to the other women around me, I look decidedly out of place. I should have known better. I try to avoid funerals as much as possible, but I’ve been to enough of them to know that some of the women only came today to show off their latest designer threads in black or navy blue. All around me are women in dark dresses and suits. Most of them have on hats. Some of their hats even have those ridiculous birdcage veils. They look like they cut up some fishnet panty hose and have them hanging in front of their faces.

  “I wish they’d get this show on the road,” Wavonne whispers to me. She’s wearing a tight black dress with a wide red belt and red pumps. And she has a ridiculous red bow attached to her wig. I told her the red accents were not appropriate for a funeral, but much like many things I tell her, my words went in one ear and out the other.

  It’s warm in the church, which sometimes I suspect is on purpose, so these ladies have a chance to use their fans. I don’t know what it is about women at funerals and their fans, but it gets a hair over sixty-eight degrees in the building, and you’d think the service was being held in a sauna by the looks of all the women fanning themselves—of course, only with fans that coordinate well with their outfits.

  I look around the room and only see a few familiar faces. There’s Jacqueline up front with Marcus’s mother. Jacqueline is dressed . . . well, like Jacqueline always dresses . . . in a tailored dark green pantsuit. No gaudy hats for her. She probably thinks funeral hats are “so PG County.” Marcus’s mother appears to be about seventy. I can see a resemblance to Marcus, but she has a sweeter look about her than her son. Perhaps he got that little trace of malevolence you could always see in his eyes from his father, whom I believe died several years ago. Mrs. Rand has a tissue in her hand, but no tears are being shed at the moment. She is talking quietly with Jacqueline, who also seems to be free of any obvious emotion.

  My eyes retreat from Jacqueline and her mother and start to roam the church. It’s a large church, and I guess there’s a decent turnout, but for someone as dynamic and “connected” as Marcus was, I would have expected a larger crowd. I only vaguely recognize a few other people, probably folks who have been in to Sweet Tea with Marcus.

  A few more minutes pass and, as Wavonne removes a file from her purse and starts doing her nails (where she found a bright pink nail file, I have no idea), I notice a change in the energy in the ch
urch. People stop their whispered conversations and nudge each other to discreetly turn around. I turn my head and see Régine walking into the church alone. She’s not dressed as flashy as usual, but she still wouldn’t be out of place leaning against a lamppost swinging her purse around. Everyone watches as she makes her way up the center aisle and sits down a few pews back from where Jacqueline and Mrs. Rand are seated. I’m guessing there is no love lost between Régine and the Rands, or she would be seated next to them. After all, she was Marcus’s girlfriend even if they only had been dating for a few months.

  While Régine gets settled into the pew, I notice people looking at her and then shifting their eyes to another young woman on the other side of the aisle and then back to Régine.

  “Who’s that?” Wavonne asks her friend Melva, who’s sitting on the other side of her.

  “That’s Jennie Becks, Marcus’s girlfriend before Régine.”

  “Really?” I say, surprised I’ve never met Jennie. She and Marcus must not have dated very long if he never brought her to one of his dinners at Sweet Tea.

  “Rumor has it she was hell-bent on becoming Mrs. Marcus Rand and moving into his mansion in Mitchellville. She was mad as hell when Régine got her claws into him.”

  I listen to Wavonne and Melva talk and my antennas go up. I’m picturing my suspect list in my head, and the name Jennie Becks being added to it when I see the minister walk over to Jacqueline and Mrs. Rand. He says a few words to them before motioning to the vocalist, who has climbed up on the steps in front of the altar. She breaks into a hymn that I have not heard before. She does have a lovely voice, and I see a few attendees dabbing at their eyes, careful not to smudge their makeup, as she sings. When the vocalist reaches the end of the hymn, she takes a seat, and the minister walks to the pulpit and says a few words. He keeps his address pretty generic, probably because he doesn’t . . . didn’t know Marcus very well. When he speaks about the sanctity of life and how Marcus’s death “is not the end for Marcus, but a new beginning with the Lord,” I can’t help but wonder if I’m the only one thinking that it might not be the Lord that Marcus is having a new beginning with. For his sake . . . for all of our sakes really, I hope our Creator actually is a merciful God.