Charlie picked up a copy of the MAX transit schedule in the motel office and returned to her room to change into her bus-riding attire. It was a hot day, a lot hotter than Detroit was in late August. She hadn’t packed capris, so jeans, a pair of sneakers and a polo shirt would have to do. To blend in, she carried a shopping bag instead of a purse. She tucked her ID, cash, phone and keys into her jeans and put a tube of pepper spray and a sweatshirt in her bag. At five minutes of two, Don dropped her off at a bus stop on 26th Street. According to their maps, it was just a couple of blocks from the return address on Paul’s letter. A bus was due in ten minutes so Charlie sat on the narrow, metal bench and scanned the street. There was a lot of vehicle traffic on the four-lane thoroughfare but only a few pedestrians. The area was rundown. Houses with boarded windows hinted at discarded domesticity and the overgrown lots that surrounded them had become the dumping grounds for their unwanted furnishings and other debris. Directly behind the bus stop was what Detroiters called a party store, you could buy staples like milk and bread but also beer and wine, cigarettes and lottery tickets. From its open door, cool air poured onto the sidewalk. On the opposite side of the street was a liquor store, a laundromat, a barber shop and a fast-food chicken restaurant. A couple of men came out of the liquor store carrying white plastic bags marked with a yellow smiley face. From Charlie’s vantage point she counted a half dozen of the empty bags snagged by lamp posts, sewer grates and car tires. One was trapped in a tree limb just above the bus bench.
Charlie stood and stepped off the curb to look in the direction the bus would come. Seeing none, she dashed into the party store to buy chewing gum and pick up a copy of the Defender, Birmingham’s weekly newspaper targeted to the African-American community. It was advertised on a cardboard sign propped against the store window. The first thing Charlie noticed when she entered the store was a bakery case filled with a variety of Lebanese pastries.
“Are those homemade?”
“Yes, baked fresh this morning,” the store clerk said.
Charlie stared into the case wondering if she’d be allowed to eat one of the goodies on the bus.
“You know this food?” the clerk perked up as he watched Charlie drooling in front of the case.
“Yes. I’m from Detroit.” The baked goods made her forget she was trying to blend in. “I used to work at a community center in Dearborn and I ate a lot of Lebanese food.”
The clerk looked at her with interest and identified himself as the owner’s nephew. He was pleased to report he had several cousins who lived in Dearborn.
“I want one of these but I’m waiting for the bus.”
“Oh, it’s always late. Here, try this one, you can eat it right now and I’ll throw in a free cup of coffee.”
Charlie savored the almond pastry and hot coffee and the two chatted for a while. Charlie lied, telling the young man she was in Birmingham to visit a sick aunt. Twenty minutes later she boarded the 40 Fairmont bus heading south toward downtown. She made her way down the aisle looking briefly at each of her fellow riders and a few smiled when she made eye contact. She took an empty window seat near the middle of the bus with a view of the east side of the street.
Birmingham was situated within the foothills of the Appalachian Mountain range and the Red Mountains loomed in the distance. At the turn of the twentieth century, Birmingham was known as the Magic City but like Detroit, in the last few decades it had seen declining residents, revenues and reputation. The bus passed numerous red brick buildings, a lot of stray dogs and the steel carcasses of a half-dozen burned cars. The scenery improved as the bus neared the downtown corridor. Colorful banners hung on street posts near the Birmingham Museum, a group of laughing school children picnicked in a beautifully landscaped park, and several gleaming high-rises reflected the energy of commerce.
At the end of the line, Charlie waited until all the other passengers had disembarked to ask the driver a couple of questions.
“What bus should I take to go back uptown?”
“You riding back to where you got on?” the driver asked with curiosity.
“Yeah, later this afternoon.”
“Well, you should probably take the 23 bus. It’ll be a safer ride for a single lady.”
“So you have a lot of crime here, huh?”
“Where you from?”
“Detroit.”
“Well then, you know all cities have crime. You just have to know where not to go to avoid it.”
“Where would I go to find it?”
The driver squinted at Charlie. He was portly with a freckled face and reddish sideburns which extended well below his cap.
“As a matter of fact, you can find a whole lot of it, and any kind you want, right where I picked you up.”
Charlie walked a four-block square around the city’s downtown area. Birmingham had a Woodward Avenue like Detroit but the sidewalks had more tree boxes and green space than Detroit’s downtown. She passed the typical government and office buildings associated with a city’s business district but there was notably little pedestrian traffic. She’d dutifully studied the city maps Judy provided and she should be near the main library. That’s where she’d spend the next couple of hours.
The library was an elegant building, modern with an abundance of natural light. Just past the main floor information desk was a periodicals reading room with one section reserved for the public’s access to the internet. That area was filled with a diverse group of men, some of whom wore suits and ties, some casual clothes and others bearing the disheveled clothing common to the homeless. All were so intent on their screens they barely looked up as Charlie searched for an empty computer terminal, with no luck. Her task was to scan back issues of the Birmingham News looking for either Joyce or Paul Stringer’s name in crime reports, real estate transactions or legal notices. Finally she asked for help, and a librarian directed her to a work station on the second floor. After two hours and the perusal of six weeks of archives, she got a hit. Charlie looked at her watch, it was now four-thirty. The library closed in a half hour and she needed to be back at the motel by six. She flipped opened her phone and called Don using her library whisper to ask his whereabouts.
“I’m still at police headquarters,” Don said. “Where are you?”
“I’m at the central library on Park Place. Can you pick me up? Are you almost done?”
“Yeah and I’ve got some news.”
“So do I.”
It turned out they had the same news: Paul Stringer was dead. He, and the cousin who sent the letter, had been murdered in early July.
“The detective I spoke to said it appeared to be a professional job. Hands tied at the back, feet bound and both shot in the face. They still had their cash and personal belongings, so it wasn’t a robbery.”
“Don, what’s going on here? I thought Paul was just a chronic loser who couldn’t hold a job and needed his sister to rescue him from time to time. Apparently, he was into something bigger.”
“The police don’t have a clue about motive. But, here’s something else, they have seen Joyce.”
“What?”
“Joyce was listed as next of kin on Paul’s employee records at the beverage company. The police reached her on the number listed and she came to the morgue to make the ID.” Don checked his notes. “A couple of days later the owner of the Freeman Funeral Home, with a signed affidavit from Joyce, arrived at the morgue to claim the body.”
“Do they know where she is now?”
“Nope. And the phone number they had for her is disconnected.”
“What about the cousin?”
“His name is Andrew Meadows. He had a sheet, but only petty stuff. They had the same address as the one we have from the letter. I tried pushing for more but it’s still an active case and the detectives got a little squirrelly when I kept asking questions. I did assure the lead detective that if we found out anything that might be helpful, we’d pass it on.”
Charlie thoug
ht about it for a moment. Of course, they’d cooperate with the Birmingham police, but she wasn’t forgetting her promise to Abrams to notify him before they turned Joyce in to the authorities.
“I guess the first order of business is to go to the cousin’s house,” Don said, merging into the heavy flow of traffic leading away from Birmingham’s central core.
“Let’s do that tomorrow, Don. From what I’ve seen and heard that neighborhood is dangerous and we should probably visit in daylight.”
“I have my gun.”
“You were right to bring it,” Charlie conceded. “Karate and mace are no matches for professional killers. But we should tread carefully. The fact that Paul has been murdered puts a whole new spin on things. Let’s get some food, take it back to the motel and get a plan for tomorrow.”
Don mastered Birmingham’s rush hour, showing the locals what Detroit drivers were made of, while Charlie checked in with the office. She activated her phone’s speaker function and Judy immediately put Gil on the line.
“I spoke with a clerk at the Haldeman Mortgage Company who was unwilling to provide any information about the company’s relationship with Joyce Stringer except to admit they had one,” Gil said. “So, I followed up with a search in a legal database. I found a couple of real estate transactions on behalf of a Joyce Stringer but they’re listed as private so I have to go another route. Don’t worry. I’ll get the information. No real estate transaction is really private when there are title companies and taxes to be paid.”
Don shouted a directive: “Acosta, see if you can find out who owns the house where the cousin lives.”
“That’s a good idea,” Charlie said. “The return address is on the envelope in the case file. And while you’re checking real estate records, would you see if the family home in Detroit has been sold?”
“Okay, will do,” Gil said. “Here’s Judy, again.”
“How’s Birmingham?”
“From what I’ve seen, I’ll take Detroit.”
“I guess it’s like that song about home from The Wiz: ‘I wish I was back there with the things I’ve been knowing,’” Judy said.
Charlie laughed. “Right. That fits.”
Gil tolerated Judy and Charlie’s show-tunes game but Don thought the habit was odd, bordering on ridiculous.
“Judy, I know it’s late but will you follow up on those phone logs? Will you fax them to the motel office when you have them?” Charlie asked.
“Sure. Should I take the case file home?”
“Yep, and please give Gil a copy of the cousin’s letter.”
For the second time that day, Don and Charlie lined up at the Wendy’s drive-thru. They ordered burgers, stuffed potatoes and a couple of Frosty’s. Charlie also ordered a garden salad to counter the salt and fat. They ate hunkered over the coffee table in Charlie’s motel room while watching the local and national news. The newscasts were filled with reports of mayhem near and far. Don went to his adjoining room to call his wife and Charlie checked in on Ernestine.
“How was your trip, honey?” her mother asked.
“We had a delay but we arrived safe and sound. We’re staying in a motel north of downtown. It’s nice and we’re just starting to get a little breeze. You were right, It’s almost twenty degrees warmer here.”
“Yes, it can be really hot all the way up to October.”
There was a pause in the conversation.
“Did you have a good day, Mom?”
“Oh, yes, nothing eventful to report,” Ernestine said tersely. Charlie waited. Her mother was unusually quiet, that meant she had something to say. Charlie girded herself with a stiff pull on the straw in her Frosty.
“Are you and Don sharing a room?”
She’d introduced Don to Ernestine two and a half years ago during a reception for Immigration and Customs Enforcement graduates. He was thirty-five, married, just under six feet tall and built solid through the middle, some might even say stocky, with thinning brown hair and intense blue eyes. Although he could be a son of a bitch, he was smart and you always knew where you stood with him. With a mother’s instincts, Ernestine immediately knew there was something between them.
“We have separate rooms. But we’re using my room as a makeshift office,” Charlie added.
There was a longer pause. Ernestine was a social liberal who claimed to have no prejudice against interracial relationships but neither did she condone them. She was also religious enough to count adultery as a major sin. She had made her views on both issues very clear to Charlie.
“Well, just be careful, dear.”
Her tone was loaded with admonition despite the accompanying endearment. Charlie sighed audibly.
“I know you’re annoyed, Charlene, but as long as I can think straight, I’ll worry about you,” Ernestine said.
They said their goodbyes and disconnected. Despite her irritation, Charlie preferred her mother’s criticism to the dementia threatening to envelop her.
After the phone rang three times, Charlie was thinking about what message to leave when Mandy answered with a breathless “hello.”
“Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“No. I was just doing laundry. Somehow my phone ended up at the bottom of the hamper. How are you?”
“Things are good. I’m just calling to say goodnight.”
“I was hoping you would. The news is almost over.”
“Anything going on in Detroit I should know about?”
“Just the normal big city stuff—blaming, gaming and maiming. Everything good in the new South?”
“Birmingham is an interesting city. Some of it reminds me of Detroit, but you can see mountains. Today, I had a Lebanese pastry and that made me feel at home.”
“Well, that’s fun. What’s on the agenda for tomorrow?”
“We got some new info on our case so Don and I are going to snoop a bit. We’ll split up like we did this afternoon.”
“How is Don? You two sharing a room?”
“Now you sound like my mother.”
“I’m not your mother, Charlie.”
“I know.”
“But what am I to you?”
The question hung in the air.
“I’ve been giving that some serious thought lately. You’ve become very important to me.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Is this conversation uncomfortable for you, Charlie?”
“No. Just different. For me.”
“You get anxious when you’re not completely in control,” Mandy stated.
“Maybe. And you’re anxious about ambiguity,” Charlie countered.
“I’ve always thought the measure of character is how we respond to situations we don’t orchestrate. Like your mom’s Alzheimer’s, or my getting shot in my rookie year or, us falling in love.”
“Aren’t you the philosophical one tonight, Ms. Porter.”
“Correct, Ms. Mack, and the next big question for the night is how much fabric softener to put in my final load of wash.”
When Don returned to Charlie’s room, he was showered and in a change of clothes. Don dressed out of necessity. Regardless of the temperature or season, he wore short-sleeved cotton dress shirts, and either khakis or brown corduroys—he’d never been seen in jeans. Tonight, he wore a yellow cotton shirt, corduroys and slippers, and looked like a freshly scrubbed kid.
“How’s Rita?” Charlie asked.
“She’s fine. She was just about to put Rudy to bed. I forgot about the time difference, Detroit’s an hour ahead of us. I promised him I’d bring back an Alabama baseball cap for his collection,” he said, smiling.
Don was unabashedly proud of his eight-year-old son, and Charlie was envious of his happy home life. His wife, Rita was beautiful, practical and patient; she had to be, married to a man like Don and raising a special-needs son. Charlie still held residual guilt about the six-month tryst with Don, which had threatened his family bliss.
The tw
o settled into the chairs around the table in the room’s kitchenette. They laid out notes, maps and files, and Charlie focused on the photograph she held. Joyce was a striking woman with dark brown, flowing hair and hazel eyes. It was not surprising she’d done very well in sales with that face. The picture was a group shot of Abrams’ administrative and sales staff. Joyce and Leonard stood side by side, smiling warmly, and Charlie recognized Rona Dietrich and Owen Owens.
“Did the Birmingham police have an address for Joyce?”
“No, they said she used the funeral home address.”
“Okay, we’ll need to go to the funeral home tomorrow as well as to the Haldeman office. Maybe we can get more from the mortgage company if it’s a face-to-face query.”
“Okay, let’s map out the locations,” Don said.
Judy had placed a Post-It on the county map saying they should avoid rush hour especially in downtown. They should have heeded that advice that afternoon, because it had taken nearly forty-five minutes to pass through the so-called “malfunction junction” where I-59 and I-65 intersected. Jefferson County was a hundred square miles in the center of Alabama, encompassing the city of Birmingham, with its quarter-million people. Highways crisscrossed the area, including interstates 20, 22, 59, 65 and 459. In the city, the streets were north-south thoroughfares and the avenues east-west.
“Okay, here’s the mortgage office. It’s downtown on 19th Street North,” Don said circling the location.
“I must have walked right past it today,” Charlie said.
“And the mortuary is on the way into town, so we can drop in there first,” Don said. “It looks pretty close to the cousin’s address.”
“Uh-huh, right, they’re both in North Birmingham. We could check out the main streets in the neighborhood, then take a look at the cousin’s house on the way to Freeman mortuary. But let’s save the actual visit to the house until later in the day.”
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