DEBREAUX AND WILLIAMS gathered in the conference room with Kevin. “Alright, so what are we looking like?” she asked.
“Well, she’s being truthful about her lack of involvement in the crime. The results show no deception.”
“Hmm. Okay, what about everything else?”
Kevin spoke up. “Guys, we’ve discussed this. We don’t mix issues. I can do an exam on the murder or I can do it on the memory loss or the infidelity. I can’t do them all at the same time. But the way I see it, the murder was the most important issue. You can clear her.”
“I already did,” Williams said.
Kevin nodded. “If at any time you decide you wanna bring her back in, you know where to find me.”
Debreaux cleared her throat. “Let’s say her memory loss is legit. How might that affect the results of the exam?”
Kevin rolled his eyes. “It wouldn’t.”
“Yeah but lie detectors don’t detect lies, they measure the body’s response to questions. If someone doesn’t remember committing a murder, then wouldn’t their body have a normal physiological response?”
“Are you asking me if you wasted my time today? Because if so, the answer is yes. You’ve wasted my time.”
Debreaux smiled. “So I’ll take that as a yes. Thanks, Kev,” she said before slapping him on the back. Williams shook his head as Debreaux left the room.
“She’s a pain in the ass,” he said.
Kevin chuckled. “All I can tell you is that she showed no deception on the relevant questions.”
Williams nodded. It was good enough for him. He was ready to move on.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL day to visit a cemetery. Gianna crossed the vivid green lawn, flowers in hand, and came to a stop in front of a freshly dug grave. Tremaine was just behind her. He took his place by her side and nodded. She bowed her head, saying a prayer for Justin’s peaceful slumber.
She felt guilty that it had taken her so long to come pay her respects, but oddly enough, it was the polygraph exam that had freed her. She hadn’t realized it at the time, but ever since she learned that the police suspected her, she wondered if there was a possibility they were right. But now she knew; she was a lot of things, but she was no murderer. The block was gone.
A solitary tear rolled down her cheek, inching its way around the bottom of her dark sunglasses. She could scarcely believe this was her life. She was alone now. A widow. A single mother. A single woman. The gravity of those designations was not lost on her.
Tremaine rubbed her back gently and she was grateful for his presence. Cemeteries had always scared her, and even now, she was feeling uneasy. But she would stay a bit longer. She owed Justin that much, at least.
She said one more prayer for Kaya before setting the flowers in front of the headstone. Say what you want about Cathy but she definitely wanted only the best for her baby boy and it showed. Even in his death.
The walk back to the car was long and silent.
“Is there anywhere else you wanna go?” Tremaine asked her.
“How about a bar?”
He stared at her. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah. I need to talk to you. And I need a drink.”
THEY PASSED AN APPLEBEE’S, two TGIFridays, and a Red Lobster—Gianna said their drinks were too weak—before settling on Busby’s, a dive near the old shopping plaza on Knowell Street.
Tamara ordered a gin martini and Tremaine asked for Hennessey. Once the bartender left, she looked down at the table. “Why is this table so nasty?”
Tremaine chuckled. “It’s a dive bar.”
Gianna frowned and he stopped laughing. “I don’t know why I brought you here. You’ve always been kinda bougie.”
She glared at him. “I’m bougie because I don’t wanna sit at a filthy table?”
Tremaine’s smile faded. “No, I...it was...I was just joking. Sorry.”
Gianna’s face relaxed. “Sorry for snapping at you. I’m just feeling a lot of things right now. I’m sorry.”
The waiter brought their drinks and left without a word. Gianna looked around. “It’s actually a cool little spot. I like the music. How did you find it?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been a few times when I was out this way.”
“What were you doing out this way? Don’t you live in Alpharetta?”
“Alpharetta? Nah, I live in Atlantic Station. And somebody told me about it. I can’t remember who. They have live jazz on the weekends.”
“I love live jazz.”
Tremaine nodded and took a long pull before speaking. “We’ll have to come back sometime. So what did you wanna talk to me about?”
Gianna’s mind was elsewhere. “My grandmother got me into jazz. You know what she told me once? That if a dick could sing, it would sound like a saxophone.”
Tremaine choked on his Hennessey. “Your grandmother be wildin’, don’t she?”
Gianna took a sip. “She does.” Another long sip. “So you live in Atlantic Station. That’s still too far north for me. How can you feel comfortable up there?”
“I don’t think about it, really. But I can’t lie, I miss places like this. You know I grew up in the hood.”
“I didn’t know that. I’m just one generation out. Most of us are, I think.”
“Yeah. I miss my people sometimes. The community. I like where I live because I have access to everything I want but there are times when I don’t really feel like myself.”
“Why do you think that is?” She was finally beginning to relax.
“I don’t know. It’s like...okay, I’ll give you an example. I was walking the other day and passed this older white lady. She smiled and said hello and it kinda threw me. Ol’ girl wasn’t scared of me at all.”
Gianna raised her eyebrows. “And that’s a bad thing?”
“Nah, it’s just...I was throwed because I lost my edge. I already have a baby face and now little old white ladies don’t even see me as a threat anymore. I’m soft, G.”
Gianna laughed. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m so serious.”
“I can’t imagine you fared well in the hood. Not with that pretty boy baby face. You ever been in a fight?”
“Yeah, I stayed fighting. The dudes in my neighborhood banged on me hard when we first moved in but they had to, I guess. I had a secret weapon, though.”
“What was it?”
“My brother. He was bigger than everybody out there. He kept me from getting hurt too bad.”
“Are y’all still close?”
Tremaine’s face fell. “We were real close before he died. He’s been dead almost fifteen years.”
“Oh. I’m so sorry.”
Tremaine shrugged. “He got caught up in some shit. It is what it is.”
Gianna took a few more swallows of her drink and took a deep breath. “Were you aware of any secrets Justin might have been keeping? I know you said he wasn’t cheating but I’m talking about other things he wasn’t telling me.”
Tremaine frowned. “Where is this coming from?”
She took another sip and told him everything. The separate but nearly empty bank accounts, the credit card debt, the safe deposit box, and the fact that he hadn’t sold a house in almost a year.
“Shit.” He took a drink. “That’s a lot.”
“That’s why I’m drinking.”
He eyed her empty glass. “Lemme grab you another one then.”
Perhaps it was the martini goggles, or maybe even her emotionally unstable state, but as she watched Tremaine walk over to the bar, she felt something. He seemed different. Tall and sleek and handsome and sexy and tall and fine. The two older women sitting at the bar to his left seemed to think so, too.
He swaggered back to the table, her drink in hand, and she had to work hard not to stare. What the hell is happening right now? she thought through her gin-haze.
“Here you go.” He watched her down half of it. “Slow down, girl.”
Gianna slammed her glass on the table. “My life is so fucked up right now.”
Tremaine dropped his head and stared at something on the table. “I’m sorry.”
“What was he hiding?”
Tremaine sighed. “Okay. There might be something you didn’t know.”
She sat up and leaned closer. “What? Tell me.”
“He quit Fuller Johnson a while ago. The credit cards were probably him trying to keep the bills paid.”
“He wasn’t paying bills with those cards. He was buying me and Kaya stuff and taking us out to eat. I think he was paying bills out of his savings.”
Tremaine said nothing. She finished off her drink and stared at him. “Why would he quit?” she asked, pleading for him to make sense of the disturbing details of her husband’s apparent secret life.
Tremaine sat back in his seat. “As long as I’ve known him, he’s always wanted to be Kyle Barker.”
“Kyle Barker? Who the hell is Kyle Barker?”
“You know, from the TV show. The stockbroker?”
“Ohhhhh, I remember.” She chuckled. “I wanted to be Max.”
Tremaine smiled. “Max was fine as hell. But yeah, that was his dream. To work on Wall Street.”
“Yeah, but what does that have to do with anything?”
“All I know is that he was taking finance classes and at one point he was studying for his series six.”
Gianna frowned and tried to keep her emotions under control. She could feel herself spiraling. “Why the hell would he keep that from me?”
Tremaine shrugged, far less invested in this than she was. She peered at him and felt her anger bubbling up. “And you knew and never said anything?”
“Wasn’t my place.”
“So he told you to keep it a secret from me but didn’t say why?”
“He didn’t tell me not to tell you. I didn’t tell you because I was closer to him than you. Would you want Arilyn telling me your secrets?”
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“Maybe he thought you wouldn’t support him or something, I don’t know.”
So that was it. Gianna scoffed. “I can’t believe this. Not supportive? I’m very supportive!”
“From the stories he told me, it didn’t seem like you would have been down for him changing careers.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “Stories? What stories? Y’all were talking about me?”
“Not like that, just...sometimes he asked me for advice.”
Advice? From a single man? On marriage? No, he wasn’t asking for advice. Bullshit. He was telling their business. Gianna saw red. “You know what? Fuck him and fuck you, too.”
As she stomped off to the car, stumbling a little along the way, her gin-addled mind couldn’t figure out who she was more upset with: Justin, for going behind her back or Tremaine for keeping it from her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
SHE COULDN’T SHAKE the feeling that Tremaine had betrayed her, an idea that made no sense at face value. After all, he had been Justin’s best friend, not hers. But she was bothered. So bothered that she ignored Tremaine’s four phone calls. He must have gotten the hint because he finally stopped calling.
For three days after their bar spat, life went on. Gianna finally settled on a return date, although she would only work half days shadowing her sub for a little while until she found her footing.
Kaya continued to have ups and downs. One moment she would be giggling on the phone with her girlfriends and the next minute, she would be crying on Gianna’s shoulder. Emmy came by when she could but there was still a profound, palpable emptiness in that house. Still, life went on and that emptiness, that hollow feeling, became part of their new normal.
Until day four.
It was Gianna who checked the mail this time, and as soon as she laid eyes on the strange off-white envelope, she knew. Her hands shook as she tossed the other mail onto the hallway table in a haphazard pile. She tore into the envelope and stared at the four words in terror: I’M COMING FOR YOU.
Her knees buckled first, and then her stomach flipped violently. She tried her breathing exercises and only succeeded in making herself hyperventilate. And that is how Emmy found her: on the floor in the hallway, gasping for air.
“Gianna, what’s wrong? What is it?”
Unable to speak, Gianna shoved the letter in Emmy’s face. “What is this? What does it mean?”
After she calmed down, Gianna explained it all to Emmy. “I’m scared. The police were no help the first time. They just told us to set up cameras.” Her eyes widened. “The cameras!”
“LOOK, I’M SORRY FOR how I acted towards you the other day. I’m dealing with a lot of emotions right now and I guess I took out my frustration with Justin on you,” Gianna said.
Tremaine nodded. “Yeah, I get it.” They were sitting in the office, Tremaine at the desk and Gianna in the chair facing him. She seemed to be sitting opposite quite a few desks lately. The police, her doctors, the bank. She wasn’t sure what it meant. Maybe it meant nothing at all.
“You’ve been such a big help for me and...it was hard. Without you here.”
He smiled. “Well—”
“And I don’t want you to feel like I only call you when I need something. I really do like having you around.”
He nodded. “I like being around.”
He glanced up from the laptop screen and stared at her with those warm brown eyes. She broke the gaze immediately. Something was in there, something deep down in there that was trying to draw her in. She was afraid. She changed the subject.
“So I’m going back to work in a couple of days. Just half days initially.”
“What about ol’ boy?”
“I don’t think there will be an issue. Detective Williams said they cleared him and that he didn’t write the letter.”
He didn’t look convinced. “If you have any problems, you need to let me know.”
Gianna chuckled. “Why, what are you gonna do?”
The dimples popped out. “Fly in with my cape and save you.” Those eyes again, beckoning to her. She wondered if it was her imagination.
“Okay,” he said, his eyes back on the screen, “I’m not seeing anything just yet.”
Emmy walked into the office and sat in the chair next to Gianna. “Did you find anything?”
“Not yet.”
Emmy stared at him and Gianna wondered what she was thinking. “Do you work in IT?” she asked.
“No, ma’am. I’m tech savvy but I actually work in Finance.”
“Don’t you have a certificate?” Gianna said.
Tremaine looked up, surprise on his face.
“You remembered that?”
Gianna shrugged. “Justin must have told me.”
“And what do you do, exactly?” Emmy said, and Gianna felt her stomach drop. Emmy’s talk was never small, and her questions were never innocent.
“I work in stock hypothecation.”
“Oh my, that sounds interesting. What does that entail?”
Gianna was actually curious, herself.
“Basically, we make loans to executives of corporations that haven’t gone public yet. For example, Regiscorp. They’re still privately owned so the stock issued to the execs and managers can’t be sold on the open market. We loan them money using their stock as collateral.”
“Fascinating!” Emmy said. “How did you get into that?”
Tremaine continued scanning through the videos. “I was always interested in lending but I kind of lucked into the department I’m in right now.”
“And where are you living?”
“I have a condo in Atlantic Station.”
Emmy looked at Gianna, clearly impressed. “Very nice. So your job must pay you pretty well if you can live up there on your own.”
“I do okay. Alright. I think I have something.”
Gianna jumped up and ran around the desk. Tremaine pressed play and there appeared a figure a
pproaching the mailbox. The picture wasn’t clear but Gianna knew that shuffle anywhere.
“Oh,” Gianna said, disappointed. “That’s my mom. She brought the mail in yesterday.”
“Ah, okay.”
“Why’s it so blurry?”
“It’s not,” Tremaine said. “See now my feelings are hurt.”
“Whatever,” Gianna said, slapping his shoulder. She stayed put, scanning along with Tremaine as he sped through the footage. There was one block of time—from 8 pm to around 4 am—where the camera was blocked by the neighbor’s minivan, which was parked right in the camera’s line of sight.
“He probably came while the camera was blocked. Damn.” Tremaine looked at Emmy. “Excuse my language.”
“It’s fine,” she said. “So what now? You need to tell the police, Gianna.”
“Yeah. I’ll scan it and send it to Detective Williams. Ugh, this is a nightmare.” Gianna was starting to get a headache. She sat on the chair and put her face in her hands. Tremaine got up and walked over to her, placing his hand on her shoulder.
“Hey,” he said, “you don’t have anything to worry about as long as I’m here. Okay?”
She looked up and smiled. “Okay.”
He smiled back and the whole thing was rather sweet. The only sour spot was Emmy, who watched it all with a frown on her face.
GIANNA ACTUALLY SLEPT through the night for the first time in a while. She slept so well that she completely missed her alarm. By the time she made it downstairs, she had just missed seeing Kaya. She found Tremaine in the kitchen trying to work the coffee maker.
“Hey! Did she get on the bus okay?” she asked him.
“Yeah, she was fine. I walked her outside.”
“Thank you, Tre. I really appreciate everything you’re doing for us.”
“It’s nothing.”
“What time do you have to be at work?”
He glanced at the clock on the microwave. “I need to leave here in 30 minutes.”
Gianna opened the refrigerator and took stock of its contents. “Well let me make you some breakfast, at least.”
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