I let out a sharp breath. There was nothing I hated more about being in the spotlight than always having to worry about what a motherfucka thought about me.
“Working to pass the time is the way I grieve. Call me once you hear something.”
Without giving him a chance to respond, I hung up the line and grabbed my things. I had a long day ahead of me with more than my normal load of clients to take care of.
Walking at a fast pace with the hood of my jacket pulled over my head, I made my way through the parking garage towards the back door to my shop. I unlocked the door and had to kick boxes and mailed packages out of the way before I could get in. With everything going on, Elshire was having a service do a security check on all of my mail before it could be opened.
Indie had already opened up, prepped my station and, from the conversation I heard once I walked in, she had let my client in, too.
“I’ve wanted to get Ink to do a piece for me for a while now. I never had the chance to come and get it. But with everything I keep hearing, I couldn’t wait to schedule an appointment to show my support. Ink is a really good man and anyone who pays any attention to him knows it.”
“Yeah, he is,” Indie was saying, but something about her tone seemed like she had more to say behind that statement.
“Aye, what’s up?” I walked in from the back, nodded my head at Indie and then looked over to my client, an older white woman who looked like she could be well into her 70s. Definitely not my normal type.
“You ready?” I asked. I was unable to hide the half-smile on my lips.
“You bet I am,” the woman replied and, with Indie’s help, stood to her feet. “I’ve been wanting to get a tattoo for a long time but never did. I’ve been watching the news since the beginning and wanted to let you know that people like me support you.”
The old lady had my heart already.
“What you tryin’ to get?”
“My husband’s name. Over my heart.” She paused to slide her thick bifocal glasses off her face, wiped them and then continued. “I told him that I would get it when he got mine. He put my name here.” She pointed to her neck. “But I didn’t. I guess I was scared. Then last year, he died and... I guess I felt guilty that I had waited so long and now he would never see it. But I think it’s the right time now.”
I nodded my head. “This is the perfect time. Let’s get started.”
* * *
Ten minutes later, I had the sketch done and was about to add ink when she began to talk about her former life again.
“You need to marry her while y’all are both young. If you don’t, and you lose her, you’ll be like me. Full of regrets.”
I lifted my eyes and looked at her from under a raised brow. “Marry who?”
I hoped she wasn’t one of those people trying to get me to speak on personal things.
“The young lady up front. Indie.” She smiled brightly. “I can see how you are around her. She’s so nice and helpful, too.”
“That is true. And she’s also not my girl.”
“Oh?” Her brows bent. “Well, I can tell that she likes you a lot. You should give her a chance.”
The sound of my phone ringing saved me from having to respond.
“Just a minute. Let me take this right quick.”
“You do what you gotta do, honey,” she told me with a wink.
I stepped into the back to take the call. It was Sage and she normally didn’t hit me while I was at work so it must’ve been something important.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Ink! The police are here. They said they have a search warrant!”
My thoughts merged and for a minute, I felt like I couldn’t possibly have heard her right.
“The fuck? Why did you open the door? Don’t let them in!”
“I didn’t!” she screamed, sounding near tears. “They broke down the door and came in. They gave me some paper from a judge and…”
Her words faded out. I could tell she was panicked and even though I was still trying to wrap my head around why the police were in my house, I tried to calm her down.
“Aye, I need you to stay calm. Find somewhere to sit and stay there until I get back. I need to call Elshire.”
She whimpered something that sounded like agreement and I ended the call so I could get my lawyer on the line. The bloody clothes were long gone. I’d burned that shit the first chance I got but I couldn’t get over the feeling that something still wasn’t right.
“Yo, El—”
“I’m already on the way. I got the notice about the search warrant. Is there anything there that you think they will find?”
I stopped dead in my tracks. Until that moment, I didn’t even realize that I had been pacing. To be honest, I didn’t know what they would find. There was a whole night that I couldn’t remember.
“I got some guns there that I shouldn’t have but I think that’s it.”
“You think? What do you mean, you think?”
I couldn’t answer that question, so I didn’t say anything.
“I’m pulling up at your house. When you get here, we need to talk.”
Elshire didn’t wait for me to answer before he hung up the line. I felt someone else’s presence in the room and when I looked up, Indie was standing at my office door. Her eyes were clouded with tears and her bottom lip was trembling.
“I saw it on the news... the police at your house. They are saying that you could be arrested today.”
There was a sharp pain in my chest. Without saying anything right away, I walked forward and wrapped my arms around her. She laid her head on my chest.
“Dav got in a fight the other day. Some boys at school were saying you were a murderer and deserved to be in prison. I know you didn’t do this but, Ink... I’m so scared for you.”
I buried my nose in Indie’s hair and rubbed her back as she held onto me sobbing quietly.
“Mr. Ink?”
It was my client, calling for me from down the hall.
“I’m here,” I told her.
“I wanted to say that I’ll be back another day for the tattoo. I know now isn’t a good time. I’ll make an appointment for when you come back.” She walked up so that I could see her and gave me a pointed look. “And you will come back.”
After giving me another warm smile, she took a minute to admire the sight of me standing there with Indie in my arms. Her smile widened further and then she gave me a kind wink.
“Remember what I told you. No regrets,” she said before walking away to let herself out. My mind was too much of a wreck to even give her words much thought.
“I gotta get to the house. El is there and so is Sage, but—”
Indie snatched away from me and frowned. “Sage? Sage is at your house? She’s the one who let the police in?”
Her sudden anger as she asked the question wasn’t at all what I expected.
“Yeah, she’s there. Is that a problem?”
Her eyes narrowed. “I guess not. I would think your girl would know not to let them search your crib without you. Someone from the streets would have known better.”
Now wasn’t the time for that fight.
“Not if she knows I ain’t got shit to hide.”
I was more aggressive than I should’ve been, but it was the stress of the moment, combined with the fact that she was copping an attitude with me over some jealous shit.
“I find it funny that you are all caught up in her so fast. You don’t even answer texts anymore, but you have time to be around that bitch. Every time I call, you send me straight to voicemail. You don’t even come and hang out with Dav anymore. Kale’s right... you’ve changed.”
“I’ve changed?”
Taking a step forward, I jabbed a finger into the center of my chest.
“I haven’t changed shit! You’re the motherfucka who is changing around here. I’m going through all this bullshit and you’re more worried about what female that I stick my dick in
than anything else. You talking about Kale being right about me, but maybe he’s right about you, too! Maybe you’re so worried about who I’m with because it ain’t you.”
Her body jerked back as if my words had physically hit her and, once again, her eyes filled with tears. I was dead wrong for what I was saying because since moving to the A, Indie was someone who had always looked out for me. She was like a sister, but she could have been my girl. I was always attracted to her, but my track record with women at the time was fucked up. I made up my mind not to take it further with her because I valued her as a friend.
“You’re an asshole,” she said as a tear slid down her cheek. She quickly brushed it off and sniffed the rest away.
“You’ll realize that you’re making a mistake, but I hope by then you’ll be able to change it. I hope it won’t be too late. Now have a good life.”
She turned around to leave and I didn’t stop her or walk her out like I normally did. She was in her feelings, but I had to deal with that later. My freedom was on the line.
27
Sage
* * *
“Atlanta tattoo artist and owner of Official Ink, Dom Richardson, has been arrested and charged with the murder of his late wife, Tami Richardson. Earlier today, the Atlanta Police Department conducted a search on his home where they found evidence linking him to the murder weapon found on the scene. Toxicology reports have also confirmed that semen found on a dress in a motel belonging to the deceased belonged to him, further connecting him to the scene of the crime. Now, we have received updates on this story.”
On the television, the head of the Atlanta Police Department, Captain Short, stood at a podium. Behind him were several other officers and in front of him was a crowd of reporters and people hidden behind flashing camera lenses. Reaching in front of me, I grabbed a half-empty glass of wine and held it firmly in my hands as I listened with all attention on the screen.
“At the moment, we are confident that we have more than enough evidence to substantiate our belief that Dom Richardson is responsible for his wife’s murder. Multiple witnesses have stated that they were present when the suspect threatened the victim’s life, assaulted her, and we have witnesses who also state they saw a man, who appeared to look like the suspect, leaving her motel room shortly after the time that our experts have stated the victim was killed. Our investigation is still in progress and we hope to bring justice for Mrs. Richardson and her family very soon.”
My phone rang for the hundredth time and I reached out to silence it, but stopped when I saw who was calling. Reluctantly, I grabbed it and answered on the second ring.
“I already know what you’re about to say.”
The sound of Lola exhaling heavily came through on the other line and I closed my eyes tight. I wasn’t ready to have the conversation. As it was, my phone was already ringing back to back and when it wasn’t, I was getting hit with text after text.
Even my stepmother had called. After not hearing from her since my dad’s death, I was curious of what she had to say and checked the voicemail.
“Sage, I know we haven’t spoken in a while and I don’t really like to insert myself into your personal life but, for the sake of your father’s business, you need to distance yourself from that man. He’s a murderer. I can read people very well. Trust what I’m telling you.”
I scoffed and quickly erased the message as soon as it ended. My father had been having an affair with my mother for years before she found out. She never suspected a thing until I was left outside their home. And she said she could read people? Yeah, right.
“Sage, you can’t still believe that Ink didn’t do this,” Lola said in a way that made me feel stupid for what I was about to say next.
“Yes, I actually do believe that.”
Lola clicked her teeth in that way that women do when they are trying to seem empathetic but really want to say, “You’re one stupid-ass bitch.”
“How can you say that? Like, how can you possibly say that? You barely even know him.”
Letting her words hang in the air, I fell back onto my bed and held the phone to my ear. There was a secret that I had held every day of my life.
“Because I know when a man is lying. I can tell when someone is saying something they don’t mean and I know when they aren’t.”
Sometime when I was in middle school, I found a letter from my mother saying that she regretted giving me away and was going to fight to get me back. It was buried in one of my father’s things and I’d only found it because I had been snooping. My birthday was in a few days and I wanted to see what he had bought me. For so long, I had wondered about my mother and what had become of her life. I wondered if she had missed me, or had even thought about me after giving me away. Now I knew for a fact that she had.
Also with the letter was another piece of paper, a news article. The article said that a woman, with the same name as the one who had written the letter, had been killed in a hit and run. The date on the article was less than a week after the one on the letter.
I remember feeling a chilling sensation traveling up my spine when I read the line saying that witnesses had stated a black Lincoln Town Car had run her over before speeding away.
They said the windows were too tinted for them to make out who was behind the wheel, but I had an idea. My stepmother had a car just like it but she had recently gotten rid of it for something newer. I thought back to the day when she had texted me a picture of her new ride. I’d been taking final exams so it had to have been in May. Right around the time my mother was killed.
When I brought the papers to my father, I raised all natural hell. For the first time in my life I screamed at him about the hateful woman that he had in his life and how I always knew she never liked me. I told him that she was a murderer and when she walked in on me shouting at him, I pointed my finger in her face and told her, too.
The problem was, when I looked in her eyes, the shock that I saw there silenced me. She looked down and plucked the papers from my hand, her eyes tearing up with emotion as she read every line.
That’s when it dawned on me. She hadn’t seen the letter from my mother. I had assumed that my father had shared it with her, but he hadn’t. As my stepmother broke down into sobs behind me, I trembled and stepped towards my father and looked him straight in the eyes.
“Tell me you didn’t do this,” I’d asked him. “Was it you? Did you have anything to do with this?”
With his head lifted, shoulders squared and his jawline tight, he looked right back at me and lied.
“No,” he said. “I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
When he saw my doubt, his face crumbled under the pressure and I could see the guilt in his eyes.
“I swear, Sage. I didn’t,” he lied some more.
Although I was the victim, I was still born as a result of the ultimate betrayal a man could inflict on his wife. So my pain from knowing my mother was dead came second to my stepmother’s pain of being reminded of the woman who had been behind the worst moments of her life. All through the night, my stepmother cried, howled and carried on to the point that my father spent the rest of the night consoling her until she fell asleep.
“I saw the way that Ink looked at his daughter when he had to tell her that her mommy was never coming home. He was broken. He held her in his arms as she cried and didn’t leave her side until she was asleep. There was nothing he would do to bring her that kind of pain. If he had caused it, he wouldn’t have been able to stand seeing her like that.”
After I found out about what my father had done, he sent me away to spend the rest of the summer at a prestigious camp before going back to school. My entire birthday was wasted at the airport, on the plane, and then with me unpacking my things at a camp full of people I didn’t know.
I’d asked him about going to the camp before school ended for the summer, but it was full and he told me that he’d rather I was home. Then, all of a sudden, a spot opened up
the day after I found the papers in his shoebox. Of course, my daddy told me that he had to pull favors to get it for me so I had to leave immediately. He made it seem like he was only sending me away because it was what I wanted, but that wasn’t true. When he told me goodbye, he couldn’t even look at me.
It was a long time before I was able to come back home after that. I noticed that every time I spoke to him in a way that made him have to face his guilt about what he’d done, the more he would find excuses as to why I shouldn’t come home over breaks. When I finally gave up, buried the thoughts in the back of my mind, and tried to move on, he once again began to request for me to come home. Eventually, we went on like it never happened.
“Sage, you know that I love you and I will always support you but—”
“Then do it,” I said, cutting her off. “If you’re going to love me and support me always, then you can start now.”
“But, Sage, I…” She sighed. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Ink would never hurt me. He would never hurt anyone that he loves. I’ll call you a little later.”
Before she could respond, I hung up the phone.
The next day, I was sitting at my desk, trying to work although my mind was too distracted, when I saw the headline pop up in my phone notifications. Ink’s bond was denied by the judge.
“What?”
My lips mouthed the words as I quickly scanned through the article. It was the first time I realized how strongly other people felt about his guilt. There was no reason that he shouldn’t have been released; no one else with his background, ties to the community and celebrity would have been. Even with his prior record, it didn’t add up.
“Sherelle, please get Dyano on the line, please,” I said, holding the button to the intercom.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m on it now.”
Dyano, my father’s attorney, was also his best friend and I suspected that he was the one to help him cover up his crime. It took a little digging, but I eventually found out that how my father even got my mother’s letter was because of him. Since we no longer lived at the same address where she’d left me, she contacted Dyano for my address. He didn’t give it and told her that he would pass the letter to me himself, but he never did.
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