“She did,” he said.
“She did something bad, or she left you?”
“Both.”
“What did she do?” Rocky asked.
“Do I need to tell all of my business?” Jazz said, looking exasperated.
“You asked me all about Bell, and I told you all of her business,” Carly said.
Oddly, the thought of that now both pleased and horrified me.
“What happened to your wife?” Rocky asked.
“She fell in love with my partner.”
Rocky got quiet. My sister did not. “Which partner?”
“Chris.”
“She fell in love with Chris?”
“Yes. They live together now, somewhere in Royal Oak. Happily ever after.”
Carly started laughing.
Jazz frowned. “It’s not funny.”
I now had two cups of briskly stirred hot chocolate, complete with peppermint sticks for the guys. “Can we take this roasting back to the dinette?” Honestly, they kept following me around like rats following the Pied Piper.
The gang followed me to the dinette table. I sat, waiting for Carly’s coffee to brew. She hadn’t finished snickering about Chris.
“I don’t think his wife’s affair with another man is funny,” I said.
“Chris is not a man,” Jazz said.
“Pardon me?” I said, politely.
“Chris is short for Christine. She’s a woman.”
“Whoa,” Rocky said. “And now you and Bell are in love, but you’re not trusting your heart to anyone.” He nodded, his puppy eyes filled with compassion.
“Who said we’re in love?” I said, hoping I wouldn’t have to admit it.
“You did, in your office.”
“I never said I was in love.”
“But you are. Aren’t you?” Carly said. No doubt the truth showed all over my face.
“What is this—some kind of Bell’s Pathetic Love Life small-group study?”
My humble pastor said, “If it were a small group—like the ones we have at church—you wouldn’t be here.”
Ouch. Did I say I always won arguments with Rocky? I stand corrected.
“So she divorced you?” Carly asked.
“No,” Jazz said, his jaw tightening like it does when he gets irritated. “I divorced her. Fast. I know you people might find this hard to believe, but sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing.” He pressed his hands on the table and looked at each of us in turn. “Don’t even think about asking me to elaborate, because I think people’s values and beliefs are personal. The bottom line is this: I ain’t getting married again, and I don’t date.”
“Wow,” Rocky said. “Since we’re all disclosing so much—”
Rocky’s accurate assessment of my lack of small-group attendance still stung. I cut him off. “What exactly have you or Carly disclosed this morning?” I accused, hoping that would silence them.
No chance.
Carly jumped right in with her sharing. “My ex-husband died under mysterious circumstances, but I was cleared, and no charges were brought against me.”
Jazz laughed. “There’s still speculation about that.”
“I didn’t kill him,” Carly protested. “I know how,” she added with a wink, “but that doesn’t mean I did it. Your turn, Rocky.”
“Okay. I’m still in love with Bell, but she won’t marry me because she thinks I’m too young for her, and because she can’t give me lots of babies.”
“Are you sure it isn’t because you’re white and goofy?” Carly asked.
“Bell is goofy, and isn’t Jazz white?”
The room went silent as a tomb, and not because Rocky said I was goofy. Silent, that is, until Carly started laughing so hard she almost hyperventilated. “I’m not white,” Jazz said.
I needed to educate my poor pastor. “That was a bit of a faux pas, Rock.”
Rocky looked across the table at Jazz. “You look—”
“Good in that black suit you’re wearing today,” I said quickly.
Rocky shrugged. “So what if you’re white and Bell is black. Can’t we all just get along?”
“Hey, Rodney King,” Jazz said. “I’m all for racial unity, but I’m not white. My father is.”
I thought I’d interject a thoughtful, penetrating profile of Jazz and said, “He’s probably had to struggle all his life for racial identity. Because of his family’s makeup, and where and how he was raised, he naturally identifies himself as a black person, and in truth he is, but he could clearly pass for white.”
“No, I can’t,” he lied.
“He’s defensive because he has to constantly prove himself as a black person. Consider, for example, his use of the black vernacular when he’s working. It’s a compensation defense mechanism.”
“I grew up in the hood. I speak a little slang now and then at work. It’s not like I’m in the station house basement making gangsta rap CDs,” Jazz said, looking frustrated.
“She did that to me when we dated,” Rocky said to him.
Now they were bonding.
“The last thing I need is my woman profiling me,” Jazz said.
“So,” Rocky said, “you are having a fling with Bell?”
“What fling? We’re just working together.”
“You said ‘the last thing I need is my woman profiling me,’” Rocky said.
“I meant a woman.”
“You had one of those Freudian slips,” Carly said.
Jazz glared at her. “What is it with you and Freud, Carly? And what is it with you people and the word ‘fling’? We’re not having a fling.”
I made yet another attempt to clear my good name. Jazz could clear his own. “We’re simply working on the Vogel-Crawford case,” I said.
Carly jumped in with, “Oh, yeah, Jazz, did I mention what their stomach contents were?”
He sighed in a very tired-detective way. “What were they?”
I braced myself for a yucky vision.
“Grape juice and bread—and strychnine, of course.”
“That sounds like a freaky Last Supper,” Rocky said.
The three of us looked at him. Score one for Rock. “Last Supper” as in “Communion.”
“Did you find grape juice and bread in the house?” I asked.
“I found a lot of popcorn and ramen noodles. No grape juice, or anything else, laced with strychnine. I don’t remember seeing any bread, but we can check for that.” Jazz stroked a bit of stubble on his chin. “I need to find out who this guy Gabriel is, and fast.”
Rocky laid his elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands. “That’s some bold communion.” He looked forlorn.
I watched him to see if he’d try to play catatonic again. Carly distracted me by touching Jazz’s shoulder.
“Don’t worry. You’re a super cop, Jazzy, even if you can’t keep wives,” she said. “And Bell has faith in you, don’t you, Bell?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said. “How many Mrs. Jazzes have there been?”
“One. And that was too many.”
I don’t think I convinced him of the faith in him Carly had proclaimed, but he recovered quickly.
“On that note,” he said, “can you please get dressed and come to the crime scene with me, Dr. Brown? I’d like to work fast so you can get back to my catatonic witness.”
“You want to go back to the crime scene?” I asked, somewhat loudly and bordering on hysteria.
Jazz answered with one of those megawatt smiles and a look that said, “I’m challenging you.”
I returned his look with one that said, “I know you are, but I’m a diva.” I squared my shoulders and stuffed down the fear that rose in my throat. Ma Brown used to say, “It ain’t courage if you ain’t scared.” I said, Thank you, Jesus, for an opportunity to be courageous.
“Give me fifteen minutes, Lieutenant.”
“I’ll give you ten,” he said, like he just had to win.
We left ten minut
es later.
Chapter
Fourteen
WE STOOD ON THE PORCH of the home where Jonathan Vogel Junior had died. Worry wove around me until I felt Jazz place his hand at my elbow—a kind, supportive touch. I felt reassurance in it. “They’re not in there anymore.”
“It’s not Vogel and Crawford I’m worried about.”
“What are you worried about?”
“My memories.”
“Come on. I’ve got your back.” He paused, gave me a little squeeze and a gentle smile. “That just means I’ll protect you. It’s not an attempt to use the black vernacular to compensate for my fair skin.”
“If you say so,” I teased.
“You’re a trip, Bell.”
“There you go with the slang again. And don’t call me Bell.”
He shook his head to dismiss my protest. “Let’s start here at the door.”
We didn’t head right in. I think he was giving me time to pull my frayed nerves back together. “Who found the bodies?”
“The father, Vogel Senior.”
“Why wasn’t he here when we arrived?”
“A rookie cop got to the scene first. Vogel Senior proved he was the victim’s father, and Daniels let him go because he looked pretty shaken up. Daniels called me on my cell phone and gave me the full story. He figured I’d check him out later anyway.”
“Did Vogel Senior report how he ended up finding them?”
“He called his kid on the phone and didn’t get a return call. Tried his job and found out he was a no-show.”
“And you interviewed the father for this information?”
“Of course.”
“And?”
“His wife was out at the time the murders took place. He claims he was home alone. He’s a suspect until he’s cleared, as is the leader, Gabriel or Michael or whatever his name is, and now so is Susan, your client.”
“She’s not my client. Why do you suspect the father did this?”
“He was first on the scene and he’s family. Too many homicides are committed by someone the vic knows: family, friend, associate. He also had beef with his kid over the cult thing.” Jazz blew air from his lungs. “With a homicide, anything can happen.” He took my hand. “You like to play make-believe?”
“Depends on who I’m playing with.”
“You are spicy, Dr. Brown.”
“I have my moments. Are you touching my hand?”
He let go.
“You wanna play cop or robber?” he asked.
“I’ll let you play the good guy.”
“I am the good guy, baby.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay, maybe the killer…”
“That’s you,” he said.
“Maybe I had a key.”
He nodded and moved the yellow crime-scene tape, used a key to open the door. “Let’s go inside, profiler.” He escorted me inside.
The house looked exactly the same except for some telltale signs of the investigation. The crime-scene unit had removed a swatch of the terrible green shag carpet. One or two of the floor pillows and a cushion from the couch were missing—no doubt taken to the crime lab for bodily fluid and fiber collection. Everything else was surprisingly the same. I saw the same shabby sofa on which Damon Crawford had lain dead just days ago and the rest of the floor pillows and the basket table near where Jonathan had died.
“Let’s see those skills Carly told me you learned by being an avid consumer of crime shows.”
Never mind those eight years I went to college. I made a mental note to rough Carly up a bit when I got her alone. Forget crime television shows, I understood cults and criminology, so I took another deep breath and said a silent prayer that the Holy Spirit would use this as a chance to bring whatever was needed to my remembrance.
The house still stank. Jazz must have seen me hesitate.
“You wanna pray?”
“Would you mind?”
“You already know how I feel about your praying-slash-theologian-slash-crime-scene-analyst work.”
“You said it’s interesting.” I gave him a nudge.
He lifted a manly eyebrow. “Oh, so it’s okay for you to touch.”
“You touch in a different way.”
He opened his mouth to say something but decided against it.
“No comment?” I raised my own perfectly arched—because my mother and Maggie speak ill of me if I don’t groom them into submission—eyebrows.
“I’m trying to be a good boy today.”
“Be an unavailable boy. That will keep you out of trouble.”
He stopped for a moment. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe I’m unsure about the whole divorce and remarriage thing? Theologically speaking.”
I stopped, too. Turned to gaze at him. His expression was serious. I didn’t want to sound like I was mocking him just because I was chronically defensive when it came to his love choices. “‘Theologically speaking’?”
Jazz lifted an arm like he was about to cross it over his chest, putting on his protective-body-language armor, but he must have thought I was watching him too intently. He dropped it to his side again. Shoved his hand into the pocket of his suit jacket. “I mean, what if I get married and cause her to sin?”
“Honey, she’s already sinning. Trust me on that one.” I sounded mocking anyway.
“You know what I mean.”
I looked into his face. He had the needy, approval-seeking expression of a little boy. What a mess Jazz was. What a pair we made. My compassion grew exponentially for him in that moment. At least he cared about what God thought. He even cared about his ex.
I softened my salty tone. “Did it ever occur to you that God doesn’t expect you to be a theologian? And frankly, theologians don’t even agree on those issues. I think you’re scared. Period. That’s a whole different theological issue, one God stands ready to make haste to help you with. Best not to get them confused.”
He nodded. I think he could see that I was being straight up with him.
“Now you’re looking way too gorgeous, miserable, and fixable. I need to focus on the fact that you’re U-N-A-V-A-I-L-AB-L-E.”
He grinned at me. “You won’t let me forget it.”
“You might want to consider that it’s me I’m reminding.” I took a deep breath. “Let’s pray, if that’s what we’re going to do.”
He took my hands, and I wished he hadn’t. The last thing I needed was the laying on of Jazz’s hands; but as touching goes, this was pretty benign. After a moment I was able to settle into the prayer, and honestly, he didn’t say a lot of lofty words, but what he did say got straight to the point. He finished with “Lord, give us wisdom and help us catch a killer. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
“And in Jesus’ name,” I said.
“You’re such a Protestant.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Amen. Now, back to murder.”
I’ll admit it. That “back to murder” transition didn’t work, but I just wanted to get us back to business. I tried to hold up my end of things and place myself in the mind of a killer. “I get in the door without using force. And find myself here in the living room.”
“What do we know happened?” Jazz asked.
Easy so far. “Strychnine poisoning.”
“Did you bring it or find it here and take it with you when you left?”
“I think I came packing the poison.”
“How did you get it here?” He was really getting into this.
“I brought it in something nondescript. A regular shopping bag.”
“Good girl. A bag full of plastic bags was resting on the countertop,” he said. “They went to the lab to be processed. All we found were prints for Vogel and Crawford and a few unidentified ones that are likely from baggers or cashiers at the grocery store.”
I continue with our game. “I take out the bread and juice and bring it into the living room.” At that I lead him to the spot where the bodies we
re found. “No glasses were left in here, so they drank right out of the bottle.”
“Tell me about the bread.”
“Probably cheap sliced white bread if the food in the cabinets is any indication. I yank a piece out of the bag.”
“Souldier found a twist tie like the kind from a bread bag in the living room. So, what now?”
“I like Souldier with an S-O-U-L.”
“Don’t like him too much, okay? He said you’re pretty.”
“He did?”
Jazz ignored that.
“Sweet Communion?” Jazz said, redirecting the conversation.
“Or Last Supper.”
We both get on our knees near the basket table.
“Vogel is found here, on the floor. Why?” Jazz asked.
“He’s the notetaker. He’s more devoted.”
“Less scared?”
“Not particularly, but he’d want to impress the man he believes is his spiritual father: Michael Wright.”
“If we’re talking about Wright.”
“I have no doubt that we are.” I tried to forget about the fact that we were kneeling where a dead man had been. The stink made me feel a little woozy.
“The notebooks have two names, Bell. Michael and, later, Gabriel. Jonathan didn’t mention a name change.”
“I still think they’re one and the same.” I tried to hold my breath a little bit.
He frowned at me. “Don’t do that; you’ll get sick.”
I tried to suck it up. “Did the notebooks indicate they got a new spiritual leader?”
“No warning or explanation.” Jazz motioned for me to continue. “So, what happens here on the floor?”
I close my eyes, but it’s not Michael Wright or Jonathan Vogel I see.
He asks me to kneel before him, and I do. I love him. He has taught me that, as a wife, I must submit. I want to have a marriage ceremony, but he says I am not worthy yet. I keep thinking if we just have a ceremony, even if it’s merely a private exchange of vows between the two of us and the other wives, God will understand.
I want to correct the mistakes I’ve made.
I’m having his baby; therefore, this must be where Yahweh wants me, I tell myself, hoping it’s true.
Murder, Mayhem & a Fine Man Page 10