“You know I’m going to stick out like a fat lip,” Don said, starting a to-do list on a piece of poster board.
“I know, that’s why we’ll work out an exit strategy in the morning. There won’t be so many people around.”
“Speaking of exits, how much more do we have to cover tonight? I’m beat,” Don said, stifling a yawn.
Charlie peeked at the clock on the microwave, it read ten o’clock. “Okay, let’s call it a night. I want to get up early to exercise.”
Charlie kept her seat when Don rose to leave through the open door between their rooms. Their affair had ended before they left Homeland Security but had begun on a similar field assignment where they’d spent long days and nights together.
Don didn’t look back when he said over his shoulder: “Okay, give me a wake-up call when you get back from your damn workout.”
Chapter 8
Charlie and Don cruised past the house on 31st Avenue, slowing just a bit so they could verify the address. It was 8:30 a.m. but they didn’t go unnoticed. A couple of guys, loitering in front of the cousin’s house, locked their eyes on the Chrysler. Don drove three blocks past the house, turned right and then right again, squaring the area.
“They start early don’t they?” Charlie said.
“Selling drugs?”
“I don’t know but I don’t think we should drive by the house again,” Don said.
“Agreed. But at least we know what to expect.”
“Did you see the blue Mustang idling down the street?”
“No.”
“I made out a guy smoking in the driver’s seat,” Don said. “There might have been passengers but the windows were tinted. They all seem like sentinels but I don’t know if they’re keeping an eye on our house or maybe the block has drug activity.”
“Could be one and the same.”
They continued south on 26th Street and turned west on Finley Boulevard. They counted six blocks before they saw the Freeman Funeral Home sign. The salmon-colored building and its walled parking area claimed the entire block. It was an oasis in the otherwise neglected space surrounding it. The front walk was covered by a portico and beautifully landscaped with crepe myrtle and caladiums. A path of white pavers meandered off to an iron gate where a garden area was partially visible. A few cars were grouped near the front entrance, and Don parked the Chrysler next to a Mercedes.
“You ever been to a Black mortuary?”
“I worked Detroit’s inner city, remember?” Don said. “I’ve done guard detail at high-profile funerals, attended family visitations and, unfortunately, mourned too many fellow officers in these funeral homes.”
“Okay. Then, here we go.”
The foyer’s tile floor was polished to a high sheen and transitioned into the main room’s hardwood floors. Opposite the entry, several rows of frosted panes inset into a wall of oak paneling framed an alcove and allowed a subdued glow into the semi-dark room. Matching area rugs marked the two seating clusters on the left of the entrance, each with upholstered mahogany arm chairs, a glass coffee table and floor vases with a variety of overflowing plants. On the right, a sliver of light streamed beneath a door marked “office” in art deco-style lettering.
“Yes? May we help you?”
Charlie and Don looked toward the ceiling in search of the source of the female voice. They spotted a security camera and spoke in its direction.
“We’re here to see Mr. Freeman. Mr. Grant Freeman, the third,” Charlie said, referring to the morgue release form.
“What is this regarding?” The woman’s voice had been replaced by a male one.
“Mr. Freeman took possession of a body from the police morgue and we have a couple of questions for him,” Don said, leaving those in the office to assume he and Charlie were cops.
“I’ll be out in just a moment,” the man responded.
Grant Freeman was a young man, maybe in his early thirties. His office was small and neat, matching his own stature and demeanor. His suit jacket was draped across the back of a Herman Miller chair and his striped shirt required cufflinks, amethyst, which closely matched his lavender tie. The subdued lighting and oak décor in the reception room carried over to this office. Two sides of the walls were fully covered in family portraits, their faces so similar one might suspect cloning or intermarriage. Diplomas showing Freeman had earned a Bachelor’s degree from Morehouse as well as a Mortuary Sciences degree were prominently displayed behind a desk which was larger than the room required. In the anteroom a handsome young woman, who had to be his sister, was preparing coffee for their visitors.
“Mr. Freeman, we’d like to ask what you remember about this.” Charlie slid the morgue document across his desk.
Freeman squinted at the form, then leaned back in his chair to allow light from outside to catch the paper.
“Oh yes, Paul. Paul Stringer,” he said dejectedly.
The woman with the coffee had just entered the room, and froze at the mention of Paul’s name. All three noticed her blanching face, and Freeman rose to steady the tray she carried.
“Thanks Grace, I’ll take that,” he said, staring at female version of his own face.
A light behind her eyes seemed to switch on and she released the tray.
“The Anderson family is expected at ten o’clock, just buzz me when they arrive,” Grant said, dismissing his sister and closing the door.
Don and Charlie took turns pouring half and half from a blue ceramic pitcher into their coffee cups and Don clumsily scooped four sugar cubes with a tiny spoon from the matching sugar bowl. Charlie watched Freeman. He perused the morgue form again and then reached into a bottom drawer where he retrieved a file. He was deep in thought and took a sip of black coffee as he flipped pages. He sat upright when he caught Charlie’s eye.
“Do you remember something?” she asked.
“That was a difficult day. I knew Paul,” Freeman said slowly. “I believe he’d only been back in town a month or so when he was . . . when this happened.”
Grant gave Charlie a copy of the funeral program.
“So that’s what he looked like,” Charlie said, staring at a photo of Paul Stringer probably taken a decade ago. She passed the program to Don. For the time being Charlie didn’t want to mention Joyce.
“How were you acquainted with Paul?”
“Well, our families have known each other for a long time. His grandfather and mine started out together, working side by side on construction jobs. They were carpenters and some of their projects were right here in this neighborhood.” Grant aimed a thumb over his shoulder past the window. “I remember my grandfather talking about the day Mr. Stringer fell from a scaffold onto his back. It left him in a wheelchair.”
Grant took another sip of coffee. Charlie followed suit. When Don and Charlie didn’t pose another question, he continued.
“I recall the old man tooling Paul around the neighborhood on the back of his electric wheelchair. Paul would hang onto the handles of the chair like he was a water skier.” He smiled at the memory.
“When was the last time you saw him? Alive, I mean.” Don asked.
“The last time I spoke to him was when he and his mother moved to Detroit.”
“What year was that?”
“The summer of 1980.”
“You must have been just a kid,” Charlie remarked.
“I was ten years old. I remember because a month later we also moved out of the neighborhood.”
“You hadn’t seen him since then?”
“I heard he was back in town, but no, I never saw him.”
“What about his sister, Joyce Stringer?” Don blurted.
“Well, I didn’t really know her. She was a lot older. Sometimes she was around the house when I played with Paul but that was about it.”
“What I meant was, when is the last time you saw her?”
Don was impatient with the trip down memory lane. Charlie cut him a look which he pretended not to see,
so Charlie grabbed the baton.
“Did Joyce arrange for you to pick up Paul’s body?”
“Yes. Well actually no, it was my dad. Paul’s mother called my father and he did everything. He picked Paul up and prepared his body for burial. I spoke with Joyce later but she made all the arrangements with my father. The service was closed casket and held in our Sanctorum Chapel. It was a small service, just the family, but very nice.” Freeman bowed his head in a practiced way when speaking of the dead.
Charlie paused and turned to Don, it was his signal that now he could pick up the questioning. He began a query about the condition of Paul’s body, then moved to the details of the funeral while Charlie mentally mixed the information Freeman provided with the stew of ingredients she already had.
Judy had confirmed that Paul received monthly checks as his grandfather’s beneficiary. That fit. She had also faxed a half-dozen pages of long-distance call activity from the family home on Hendricks Street. Some of the phone logs showed calls to and from the cousin’s house on 31st Street but Charlie was more interested in the calls from the Stringer home to the number listed for Freeman Funeral. Those calls showed up on each page of long-distance activity and were always made early in the morning. The calls ended in May, two months before Paul’s murder.
Charlie reinserted herself into the conversation.
“Before your contact with Joyce about the service, when had you last spoken to her?”
“I hadn’t spoken to her at all . . . well, that’s not totally true. She and Miss Anna, that’s her mother, returned to Birmingham when her grandfather died. That was probably fifteen years ago. I went with my father and sister to the service to pay our respects.”
“Wait, you mean Freeman didn’t handle the grandfather’s funeral?”
“No we didn’t. I thought it was odd at the time, but my father said it had something to do with Mr. Stringer’s will.”
Grant Freeman’s phone buzzed. He rose from his chair and in two strides was holding open the office door.
“Well detectives, I have a family consultation in a few minutes and I need to prepare.” He smiled. “I hope I’ve been helpful and that you find Paul’s killers. It’s such a tragedy. Grace will show you to the door.”
Don and Charlie exchanged handshakes with Grant, neither confessing they were not the police. Grace Freeman took a break from her filing and escorted them through the reception area where an older man and woman were huddled together, speaking in hushed tones. The couple paused to see if it was their turn to be seen, and quickly returned to their conversation when they realized it was not.
“Are you trying to find out who hurt Paulie?” Grace asked when they reached the front door.
“Well, in a manner of speaking,” Charlie said, giving her a look that was equal parts guilt and guile. Happily, Grace didn’t seem to notice one way or the other.
“Paulie was good. But his cousin was bad. I told him not to be with Andrew.”
“Why was Andrew bad?” Don asked.
Grace was shy. She seemed to force herself to make eye contact although she couldn’t hold the gaze. “Andrew sold drugs to people. But Paul didn’t.”
“It sounds like you kept in touch with Paul,” Charlie fished.
“Paul is my boyfriend,” Grace announced. Then her glance darted to the ground. “But it’s a secret.”
“Why is it a secret, Grace?”
“Daddy always says Paul is slow, like me. But Paul is my boyfriend.”
Charlie had an idea. She stepped out the door onto the walkway holding the door open for Don and Grace.
“Don, why don’t you go on to the car, I’ll join you in a minute.”
“Okay. Thank you, Miss,” Don said offering a nod to Grace. “Thank you for the coffee.”
“You’re welcome.” Grace smiled in a way that revealed her childlike quality.
Grace watched Don walk to the car, glanced over Charlie’s shoulder at the small garden and then stared at the pavers. With a start, she looked up at Charlie as if an inner voice had reminded her to do so.
“Do you work for your brother here at the office all the time, Grace?”
“Daddy says my job is to help Grant,” she said.
“You work here every day?”
“I come every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at 7:00 a.m. and turn off the alarm. Then the trash man picks up the dumpster. Then I look at the calendar and I call Grant to tell him who’s coming. Then when Grant comes, I put the files away and make the coffee.”
“Did Paul ever come to see you?”
“Yes. But only when I made the signal.”
“Signal?”
“I turn on the light.”
“What light?”
Grace pointed to the second floor of the building. “Freeman’s Funeral Home” was spelled out in a neon sign but was not illuminated.
“Did Paul come over to visit you the day he got hurt?”
“Daddy says not to talk about Paulie. He yelled at him on the phone.”
“Did you see Paul before . . . before he got hurt?” Charlie repeated.
Grace began to cry. She folded her arms tightly around her narrow torso and rocked back and forth. Tears welled on her tan cheeks. She was pretty, with long brown hair tied into two ponytails, and the spitting image of Grant, with one exception: Her eyes were kind. Charlie thought about reaching out to comfort the girl but resisted.
“Paulie said we could get married. He said I didn’t have to help Grant anymore.”
“I’m sorry to make you cry, Grace, but I have one more question. What did Paul’s sister, Joyce, say about the two of you getting married?”
“She said sometimes two wrongs can be right.”
Don was listening to a radio call-in show about sports when Charlie stepped into the car and clipped the seatbelt over her lap. An angry man was debating the host about the ineptitude of some football coach. Don punched the off button and started the ignition.
“Grace is autistic, isn’t she?” Charlie asked.
“That would be my guess,” Don replied. “But fairly high functioning. She seems like a nice girl.”
“She’s probably in her thirties, Don. But, it’s easy to forget that.”
Don’s eight-year-old son Rudy had been diagnosed with autistic disorder just before his third birthday. Rudy received nearly thirty hours of specialized instruction every week, including music therapy, swimming and language skills. He had progressed from echolalia, where he simply repeated words said to him, to being able to ask for things he wanted and answering short questions. Rudy was a curious boy, with a favorite shirt he was rarely without and a collection of baseball caps, now up to fifty, that he loved. Don and Rita devoted their lives to making sure their son would be able to perform to his fullest capabilities.
“Grace may have seen Paul the day he was killed. Apparently, they’ve talked on a regular basis for years even though they rarely saw each other. I’m thinking Paul might also have had autism.”
“That would explain why his sister was always trying to make things easier for him.”
“Look, let’s head to the mortgage company and then have lunch someplace to compare notes.”
Don backed up the sedan. Charlie noticed the plates on a late model Mercedes that read GFIII. She also spotted Grant Freeman watching them from his office window.
At Haldeman Mortgage, Don tried to finagle, flirt and finesse any intelligence he could about Joyce Stringer. In forty-five minutes he had spoken to the receptionist, the office manager and the President’s executive assistant, but the company trained their staff well; only documents presented by law enforcement could open company files or lips. However, when Don returned to the car, he had the phone number for Elsbeth Carnegie, the receptionist.
“What’s the place like?”
“Corporate, fancy, boring. They take up half of the eleventh floor. There’s a waiting room with hoity-toity furniture and a pretty brunette receptioni
st who doesn’t miss a thing. There are two long hallways leading to the rear of the building with a half-dozen closed office doors on either side.”
“How’d you get this Carnegie’s phone number?”
“My manliness, what else?” Don grinned.
Charlie had to admit, Don was handsome, in a Polish frat boy kind of way. It was hard to tell his age and he could be charming when he had a mind to be. Because of his unassuming looks and dress he appeared to be the kind of guy you could enjoy a beer with or trust with a confidence.
“I invited her for a drink when she gets off work tonight.”
“I see.” Charlie gave Don a raised eyebrow and he feigned an innocent look.
“What? We need information, don’t we?”
“Let’s find someplace to eat,” Charlie said.
Weekday lunchtime in downtown Birmingham seemed to be its finest hour. The mostly empty sidewalks began to fill with office workers, store clerks, students from the nearby University of Alabama campus, homeless men, hospital staff in scrubs, police on bicycles, and clumps of construction workers wearing hard hats. Don and Charlie parked the car and blended easily on foot into the crowd. Like Detroit, Birmingham was racially polarized when it came to schools, neighborhoods and churches, but during business hours, capitalism highlighted the diversity of the area.
They found a “meat ’n three” place that had been recommended by their motel clerk and joined a cafeteria-style line of hungry diners along a display of amazing food. Charlie hated places like this because there was too much to choose from. She felt pressure from the back of the line so she finally settled on baked snapper, creamed corn, turnip greens and a bowl of cherry cobbler. Don ordered a ham steak with cabbage, carrots, a home-made roll and fudge pie. When they settled into one of the high-back booths and looked at their plates, they gave each other smiles of good fortune. Halfway through the meal, Charlie pulled out her notebook and Don followed suit.
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