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

by Herbert, A. L.

  Régine looks at the bag next to her and instinctively grabs the handles.

  “You can thank Wavonne for noticing that it’s from last year. Last year—meaning Marcus couldn’t have bought it for you. You had only been dating Marcus for a few months before he died. You didn’t even know Marcus last year. So, if he didn’t buy it for you, someone else did . . . or maybe you bought it yourself. But where would an incompetent hairdresser get the money for a two-thousand-dollar purse? That didn’t make sense either unless it was from, say, a former life when you weren’t a hairdresser—perhaps you bought it back when you were gainfully employed in a more lucrative profession. . . say, a hedge fund manager?”

  With my last comment, there is a discernible change in the expression on Régine’s face. I see a look in her eyes that says, How the hell did you know that?

  “Yeah, I didn’t figure that one out until later. When you were cutting my hair, you said Marcus’s work was over your head. But, at the same time, you were spouting off words like commodities, exchange traded funds, and margin calls—not words used very often by hairdressers . . . or by anyone for that matter. . . anyone not schooled in the workings of the financial investment world, that is.

  “You see, Régine, things about you were just not making sense. Two plus two did not equal four. But you had a rock-solid alibi—you were filmed coming into your apartment building before Marcus was killed, and you didn’t leave until long after he was dead, so I let my suspicions about you go. Until recently, nothing I learned about you proved you killed Marcus anyway.

  “Maybe I’m a little slow on the uptake, but I was having trouble putting it all together until . . . until I ran into you and Cherise at Starbucks. When I was chatting with the two of you, I suddenly remembered where I saw Cherise before, and it wasn’t at Sweet Tea. Actually, I remembered where I saw both of you, together, before.”

  “And where was that?” Cherise asks.

  “In the family photos on display at the home of a Mrs. Audrey Whitlock in Hyattsville. You,” I say in Régine’s direction, “didn’t have the heavy makeup or the flashy clothes on, but it was you . . . you and Cherise posing with your mother, the woman Marcus scammed out of her home of forty years. A home that maybe you could have helped her keep, Régine, if the world of high finance hadn’t collapsed, but no such luck after your layoff.”

  Régine’s eyes continue to widen, and her jaw drops.

  “Don’t look so surprised,” I say. “I probably would have figured out you’re sisters anyway. The resemblance is uncanny. And it just took a few Internet searches to uncover your real identity once I concluded your last name is really Whitlock. It wasn’t long before I found your real first name, Denise.” I pause. “Denise Whitlock, a former big shot at a hedge fund firm who was laid off last year.”

  “None of that proves anything,” Régine, who is unmistakably shaken, responds.

  “No, it doesn’t. But this does.” I lift Wavonne’s wig from the seat next to me.

  “What’s that?” Cherise asks.

  “Funny you should ask, Cherise. Would you mind putting it on for me?”

  Perplexed, Cherise stares blankly at me for a moment before responding. “Yes. I would mind.”

  I’m not sure what to do. I can’t very well force a wig on her head.

  Cherise continues to look at me. All is quiet and no one moves until Wavonne speaks. “I gave up my wig, and I’m sittin’ here with my nappy hair hidden under a dinner napkin, so, mind or no mind, you’re puttin’ that damn wig on your head.”

  Wavonne grabs the wig from my hand, gets up from the table, and gruffly places it on Cherise’s head. As Heather learned earlier in the week, Wavonne can be intimidating when she wants to be. Cherise knows better than to resist.

  “Now, look at that,” I say to Cherise. “With that wig on, you and Régine almost look like twins. Yep, with that wig on you could have easily passed for Régine on grainy security camera footage as you walked into her building at twelve twenty-one a.m. the night Marcus was killed.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Cherise says, pulling the wig from her head before getting up from the table. Régine is about to join her when Detective Hutchins rises himself. “I suggest you two ladies return to your seats,” he says sternly.

  “It’s okay, Cherise,” Régine says to her, gesturing for Cherise to sit back down. “None of this means anything. You looking like me with a wig on proves nothing. No jury in the world is going to reach a verdict that all black women look alike.”

  “Maybe so,” I say. “So what if Marcus scammed your elderly mother out of her home. So what if Cherise looks remarkably similar to you in the right wig . . . at least similar enough to pass for you on low-quality black-and-white security camera video. Those things alone don’t prove anything.”

  “Those things alone?” Detective Hutchins asks.

  “You said it yourself,” Régine says before I can respond to Detective Hutchins’s question. “Even if it was Cherise, and I’m not saying it was, who appears on the video, no one will be able to tell for sure that it wasn’t me—particularly not anyone on a jury. So I guess we’re done here.”

  “That would be true, Régine, or should I call you Denise?” I ask, even though I don’t expect or get an answer. “If it wasn’t for one small hiccup in your plan.”

  “Hiccup?” Wavonne asks.

  “When you were entering your apartment building,” I say to Régine, doing the air quotes thing with my fingers as I say the words you and your. “Perhaps you, and by you I mean Cherise, were texting or just surfing the Internet on your phone for the weather for all we know. My guess is you planned to have Cherise doing something on her phone as she walked in, so she had an excuse to keep her head down, making it even harder to discern that it wasn’t actually you.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  I don’t answer her question. Instead I ask, “Would you do something for me? That tea I poured you earlier—it’s unsweetened. How about you add some sweetener to it.” I hand her a little pink packet.

  Régine eyes me cautiously. “I prefer the yellow,” she says with attitude, declines my offer, and grabs another packet from the ceramic container on the table. She rips it open, pours the contents in her glass, and stirs the tea with her spoon.

  “Funny how, just like when I saw you sign your credit card slip at Starbucks earlier today, you used your left hand to stir your tea, but when you were walking into your apartment building the night Marcus was killed . . . and I didn’t notice this until I viewed the security footage a second time, you were typing on your phone with your right hand, the same hand Cherise used at Starbucks to stir her coffee.”

  “Oooh, girl, put a fork in you, ’cause you is done!” Wavonne says from across the table.

  Régine’s eyes go blank and her face freezes up. The rest of us are silent as sweat begins to form on her brow. She looks intently at me and then down at the table. Then her gaze seems to go off past all of us toward . . . toward nothing in particular.

  “We never intended to kill him,” she says, still not looking at any of us.

  “Denise, no!” Cherise says.

  “No. We are not the bad guys here, Cherise!” Régine says, raising her voice. “We never planned to kill him. We only wanted to get enough money out of him to keep our mother in her house. I did a little research on him and figured out what sort of girl he was attracted to. It wasn’t hard to transition myself into his type. All I needed were some tight flashy clothes, too much makeup, and a good push-up bra. I became Régine Alves and quickly formulated a plan to meet Marcus. I dated that monster for months, and all I managed to get out of him was some clothes and cheap jewelry that were barely worth a few hundred bucks.”

  “Not enough to pay off a mortgage,” I say.

  “Certainly not. We needed to think bigger. We needed access to bank accounts and brokerage funds . . . and we needed to search his house and see if there was anything of real val
ue to take . . . real jewelry or stashes of cash. I tried to do it while he was asleep on a few occasions, but he would notice me get out of bed, and that sister of his is often up half the night milling about.”

  “So you and Cherise decided to do your search the night you were here with Marcus and the others?”

  “Marcus and I didn’t normally spend Saturday nights together, so I knew I could duck out early and have some time to search the house before he or Jacqueline got home. I knew Marcus would be the last to leave, and Jacqueline would stay at least as long as business was being discussed.”

  “You have a key to Marcus’s place?”

  “No. I unlocked the basement door when I was there the night before, and I’ve watched Marcus disarm the alarm. I know the code.”

  “Why not just send Cherise to the house while you were here with Marcus?”

  “If I happened to get caught . . . if Marcus or Jacqueline came home while I was still there, I could have made something up to explain it—that I was there to surprise Marcus or something. Cherise would have just been a burglar to them. Besides, I knew the layout of the house and could be in and out quickly. But, if I did find anything to steal, I needed Cherise to pose as me on the security cameras at my building, so I wouldn’t be a robbery suspect.

  “Like I said, all we wanted to do was get access to his accounts and see if he had any stashes of cash or expensive jewelry. . . anything that would help our mother keep her home.”

  “And you found?”

  “What she found was that Marcus was one broke-assed mother—”

  “Shut it, Wavonne!” I say before Régine continues.

  “Wavonne’s right. There was nothing to take. All I found were statements about overdrawn accounts and past due bills. From what I could tell, he was on the verge of losing his own house, which would have served him right. I was furious! All the planning and time it took to assume a new identity and enmesh myself into Marcus’s life was for nothing. Nothing! In a frenzy I drove back to the restaurant. I might not have been able to get any money out of Marcus, but I was going to give him a piece of my mind.”

  There is an overall sense of relief emoting from Régine. It’s as if she’s being freed by telling her story. There’s a way about her as she speaks that shows she really doesn’t think she did anything wrong.

  “I got back here and found Marcus in the kitchen by himself. Everyone else had gone. He said he was going to pack up some of your fried chicken to take to his mother. I just looked at him with rage as he talked about how things went well over dinner and how he thought he and Charles had calmed Heather and Josh down for the time being. Then he noticed I was unsettled and asked what was wrong. All I could say was, ‘You rat bastard. Do you have any idea who I am?’ He just looked at me like I was crazy. ‘Do you?!’ I screamed at him.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He asked me what I was talking about. That’s when I asked, ‘Does the name Audrey Whitlock ring any bells?’ Do you know what he said when I asked him that?”

  No one answers, and while we sit quietly and wait for her to tell us, I see Detective Hutchins discreetly press some buttons on his cell phone.

  “He said, ‘Audrey Whitlock? That silly old bag out in Hyattsville ?’ That’s what he said about my mother. He called her an old bag as if she were nothing. Nothing! He wasn’t even looking at me when he said it. He was bending over to get a takeout container. I was livid. The woman who raised me and my sister, nursed my father on his deathbed, and sometimes worked two jobs to make ends meet was nothing but an old bag to him. As he began to straighten himself up, I grabbed the first thing I could find, a cast-iron frying pan sitting on the counter. I completely lost it and walloped him over the head with it. Before I realized what I’d done, he’d dropped like a sack of flour. From there it’s all a blur. I vaguely remember dropping the frying pan, running back to my car, and calling Cherise in a panic. Honestly, I didn’t know if he was dead or alive.”

  “But you were covered if he was dead because you had already arranged for Cherise to pose as you and ensure that your whereabouts were accounted for.” As I say this, I see two uniformed policemen come through the front door of Sweet Tea. Régine and Cherise have their backs to the door and do not see them. Well, I’ll be, I think to myself. Detective Hutchins took me seriously when I told him to bring backup.

  Régine nods. “I drove around for a long time, and Cherise and I talked. We decided I’d try to get some sleep in the car, and Cherise would leave the building posing as me the next morning as planned.”

  “What about the frying pan?” Wavonne asks. “Weren’t you afraid it had your fingerprints on it?”

  “I was wearing gloves while I searched Marcus’s house. I was in such a state. I never thought to take them off before I got here.”

  “If you ask me, he deserved it . . . evil snake,” Cherise says. “Régine did the world a favor.”

  “That may be,” Detective Hutchins pipes in. “But you’ll have to sell that to a jury. I’m placing both of you under arrest. We have two squad cars outside—one in the front and one in the back. We can make this easy or hard. It’s up to the two of you.” He stands up and gestures for the women to follow. The girls do as they’re instructed, and he motions for them to turn around and gently but firmly reaches for Régine’s hands and places them in cuffs behind her back. The restaurant falls silent and everyone stares as he does the same with Cherise. He then directs the two uniformed officers to read them their rights and walk them out to the cruiser.

  “Oooh, child, that is a hot mess,” Wavonne says as we watch Régine and Cherise be escorted out of Sweet Tea.

  “It sure is, Wavonne.”

  “We should have known it was Régine. Anyone who jacks up a hairdo like she did yours surely had to be up to no good.”

  I don’t respond as I’m not really paying attention to Wavonne. I’m too upset over the whole situation, and it breaks my heart to see the two girls who cared so much about their mother . . . who could have had bright futures . . . be led off to a police car.

  “You okay, Halia?” Wavonne asks.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Are you sure? You don’t look good. What do you say we go to Red Lobster for some crab legs, make you feel better?”

  RECIPE FROM HALIA’S KITCHEN

  Halia’s House Cocktail

  Ingredients

  1 12-ounce package frozen unsweetened mixed berries

  ¼ cup sugar

  ½ cup water

  1 cup fresh lemon juice

  1½ liters Sprite

  1½ cups grapefruit-flavored vodka (more, if Wavonne is coming

  to your party)

  ¾ cup triple sec

  1 orange (sliced)

  • Combine berries, sugar, and water in saucepan. Cook on medium heat.

  • When sugar dissolves, bring liquid to a boil for three minutes, stirring continuously.

  • Strain mixture and discard solids.

  • Combine berry syrup with lemon juice, Sprite, vodka, and triple sec in large pitcher.

  • Serve over ice in tall glasses.

  • Garnish with an orange slice.

  Eight Servings

  EPILOGUE

  It’s been almost a week since Denise and Cherise were arrested at Sweet Tea, and my entire being is decidedly more relaxed than it was this time last week as I sit at a table in the dining room proofreading our list of specials for the day. It took a few days for me to finally drop my guard and start to feel like myself again now that I know Wavonne is no longer a murder suspect, but things are finally starting to get back to normal. I feel like I can return to focusing on running Sweet Tea rather than trying to track down a killer.

  I look at the clock and see that it’s ten thirty. We’ll be opening in a half hour, so I figure I’d better get this list of specials on the copier. I’m about to get up from my chair when I see Laura approach.

  “Have you seen the morning paper?” she
says as she hands today’s edition to me before going back into the kitchen.

  I scan the front page and see a headline in the lower left corner: “Local Man Charged in $18 Million Mortgage Fraud Scheme.”

  I call over to Wavonne, who is filling ketchup bottles a few tables over. “Wavonne, listen to this.” I begin reciting from the article: “Charles Pritchett, age fifty-six, of Washington, D.C, along with other Reverie Home leaders, was arrested today for participation in a mortgage fraud scheme that promised to pay off the mortgages of home owners, many of them local D.C. area residents. According to evidence that led to the arrest of Mr. Pritchett, he and his colleagues convinced several area residents to participate in what was called the Reverie Homes Program. In exchange for a minimum thirty-thousand-dollar initial investment, Mr. Pritchett agreed to make the investors’ future monthly mortgage payments and pay off their mortgages within seven years. Reverie encouraged home owners to refinance existing mortgages on their homes and use any equity to fund their initial investment in the program.

  “Investors were told that their initial payment would be used to fund investments in in-store ATMs, phone card kiosks, DVD rental machines, and other automated business ventures. They were led to believe these ventures generated enough revenue to provide generous mortgage payment assistance. To instill confidence in the Reverie Homes Program, executive management spent thousands of dollars conducting seminars at luxury hotels such as the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland.

  “According to records obtained by this newspaper, Mr. Pritchett and other Reverie executives never advised participating home owners that the company’s ATMs, phone card kiosks, and DVD rental machines generated no significant income. Instead Reverie Home leaders used money from the program’s later investors to fund the mortgages of the program’s earlier investors. Records also show that home owner investments were used to fund the personal indulgences of Reverie executives, including salaries of up to three hundred thousand dollars per year, luxury company cars, and even an all-expenses-paid trip to the Super Bowl.