Deadly Charm

by Claudia Mair Burney

  “What makes you think so, Columbo?”

  “That’s girl Columbo. You saw. She wouldn’t let me talk to those kids, allegedly because she was protecting them, but they sat there huddled in grief and she didn’t so much as touch them.”

  “Anything else, Bell?”

  “She’s skanky. While she was still a teenager, she lured Ezekiel Thunder away from his wife. After Mrs. Thunder had gone out of her way to help the little ingrate. Then Nikki conveniently became Mrs. Thunder, probably before the woman’s body was cold—not that being Mrs. Ezekiel Thunder is a peak experience in life. Now she’s on the make for my man before her son’s rigor mortis has set in.”

  Jazz leaned over and kissed my pouting lips. I couldn’t help smiling—the man did something to me.

  “What was that for?”

  “You remember the rules? A kiss for a good insight when we brainstorm.”

  “So you agree that Nikki is the most likely suspect?”

  “I didn’t say you had the insight.”

  I hit him with my mud-cloth pillow, eliciting another round of laughter from him.

  “Best to look at all the facts. Everybody in that house, including the kids, may have a motive. Everybody is a suspect. Quick judgments only worked for Columbo, baby.”

  “He was never wrong.”

  “He was a television character. Writers made sure he always got it right. Real police work ain’t so neat.”

  “Does this mean you’ll keep looking into this case?”

  “It’s not a case at this point. It could be an accident.”

  I sighed. “Jazz, you know what I mean. Are you going to consult for me?”

  “We’ll see what the coroner says and what the Ann Arbor police do. I will continue to look at things for you, though. Will you do something for me?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You just have to give me a hard time, don’t you?”

  “That’s what wives are for.”

  “Wives are for a lot of things, baby.”

  I had to go straight Ma Brown on him. “Don’t start no stuff, and it won’t be none.”

  “You brought it up.”

  “Drop it. This is about business. What’s your consulting fee, Jazz?”

  His gazed flickered over my body. “I’ll think of something. You just make sure you’re willing to pay when the time comes.”

  I tried to ignore the tingling his gaze caused. “I can pay.”

  “I know you can, but I want you to let me do the work here. I’m the cop. You’re Jane.”

  I sighed. My husband was a very naughty man. Nothing got by him.

  He didn’t waste any time asking. “May I spend the night?” He said it without the mischievous gleam in his eyes that appears when he teases me.

  I was about to go to the bathroom for the fifth time that night. When he asked, I stopped in the hall like a deer in headlights, my eyes blinking wildly in confusion.

  “You want to spend the night?”

  “It’s late. I’ve had too much to drink. I shouldn’t drive.”

  “I could take you home.”

  “You’re tired. You have to pee a lot. It’s easier if I spend the night.”

  “I’m not too tired to take you,” I lied. “Or I could give you cab fare.”

  “I have money, Bell. I don’t want to catch a cab to Detroit.”

  I decided to get to the brass tacks. “Your alcohol consumption shouldn’t impose on me.”

  “Is my being here that big of an imposition?”

  “Where will you sleep?”

  And then the gleam was in the eyes. “I’ll find someplace.” This he followed with that brilliant smile of his. He didn’t have a shirt on. The combination made me much more willing to share my space with him.

  I stood in the hall deliberating.

  Jazz kept grinning. “What could happen?”

  “Nothing.” I hoped. Or not.

  “There you have it,” he said, as if he didn’t know how much he tempted me.

  “Okay,” I said, resigned. “Do you need something?”

  “I believe I have both a toothbrush and a change of clothing here.”

  “What will you sleep in, Jazz?”

  “I don’t think you really want to know that, Bell. It might overstimulate you.”

  Was he kidding? The thought of him overstimulated me. “Do you need a blanket?”

  “Your great-grandmother’s quilt will be fine, if you don’t mind sharing it with me.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I’ll get it myself,” he said. “Why don’t you go on to the bathroom.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  In an instant he was in my face. Swooped me into a passionate kiss. “Good night, baby.”

  “Okay,” I said again, like an automaton. But I doubted if I’d get any sleep, and that could be for a number of reasons, none of which I wanted to think about. I glanced at his sexy face again.

  He winked at me.

  “Okay,” I repeated, though things didn’t feel okay. Jazz Brown was a total threat to a sistah’s chastity belt, even if we were married. And he knew it. Probably liked it that way.

  I knew I shouldn’t have let him stay. His being there only made things more difficult for both of us. We seemed to be perpetually on a collision course, slamming into each other, causing all kinds of damage to each other in every crash.

  I lay in my bed ashamed of how my body burned for him. I think by force of my desire I willed him to knock on my door. Or maybe his own desire drove him. I couldn’t tell. It felt too big to bear, this burden of lust we had for each other.

  Just a few raps on the door, and once again, I became his Shulamite. Hearing the beloved. As undecided as she must have been a few millennia ago about whether to let him in. I lay there thinking of all the reasons we shouldn’t be together tonight and knowing how much I needed him just the same.

  Just go for it, Bell. Nobody will get hurt.

  A lie and I knew it. I didn’t care.

  I threw off the covers and hopped over to the door to unlock and open it.

  Jazz had obviously spent the last hour drinking. He staggered into my bedroom.

  “Can I watch the news?” he slurred. He still had the bottle in his hand, and for a moment, I really, truly hated him. Revulsion rose up like bile in my throat. But I let him in. I loved him. I had become my mother in the worst time of her life, with an alcoholic husband.

  We sat on the bed, him watching the news, both of us with grim expressions frozen on our faces. Images of Rocky’s house and descriptions of the Thunder tragedy flickered across the screen. Jazz kept chugging liquor, growing more moody and morose. When I nagged him about it, he offered, “I’m Irish.”

  “You’re on your way to becoming an alcoholic, if you aren’t one already.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if I was Bono sitting here drinking. You’d probably join me.”

  “You’re not Bono. If you were I’d make you sing ‘All Because of You’ instead of sitting here embalming yourself.”

  He sighed. “Just leave me alone. You’re a psychologist. You know all that twelve-step stuff. My drinking is my problem. Which means it’s not a problem.”

  “Jazz, when your family and friends start being affected…”

  “You worry too much. All of you.”

  “And you’re drinking on the job.”

  “I’m at home now.”

  “This is my home, Jazz. Not yours.”

  He ignored that. “I got dealt with at work. Okay? I don’t make a habit outta getting twisted at my house.” The anger surging in his voice prevented me from pressing him to admit he had a problem.

  I’d seen my mother try to reason with my father too many times. “You can’t talk to a drunk,” she’d say and give up. Her words burned into me and guided me in this moment.

  I’ve said to several children of alcoholics I’ve counseled that if they were put in a room full of people, they’d gravitate, unwittin
gly, toward an alcoholic. I’d proved this true with Adam. A few others after him. My only non-alcohol-or-drug-abusing boyfriend was Rocky. And he was the one I let go of. Now here I was with the finest man I knew, and he was a drunken mess.

  He clumsily put the cap back on the bottle. “Why can’t you just love me?”

  He didn’t wait for me to answer, or he would have found out that I did love him, enough to have him in my bed when I knew better. We were courting the very thing I’d told God I didn’t want.

  Jazz lunged at me. Not violently; awkwardly. His hands got busy with my waist and hips. He tried to kiss me. Missed. Swore. I’d noticed before how alcohol seemed to bring out his aggression and how he had to fight against the haze of booze slowing his reflexes.

  “Stop it, Jazz.”

  “I wanna kiss you, baby.”

  “You stink. I don’t want to kiss you.” My mother’s words. Her exact words.

  “Come on, baby. I love you.” My father’s words.

  I clamped my arms around his neck as hard as I could.

  “Ow. Baby, that’s too tight.”

  “Shut up.” I whispered in his ear. “I don’t have the energy to wrestle you all night. And nothing, and I do mean nothing, is going to happen between us.” I tightened my grip again.

  “Ow, Bell.”

  “You go to sleep, Jazz Brown. I’m going to hold you until you go to sleep. And that’s all the lovin’ you’ll get from me tonight.”

  “Bell,” he whispered into my neck.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry.” His voice cracked and my big, tough cop husband began to sob in my arms.

  I loosened my grip, but I didn’t let him go. “Me too, baby.”

  I let his hot tears fall on me, and I rocked my baby—my poor sweet, confused baby—until both of us cried ourselves to sleep.

  chapter twelve

  I FELT SOMEONE KICKING ME. Fortunately I remembered that I had a houseguest—one who was drunk last night and was most likely hungover this morning. And he still reeked of liquor. Another nudge with his foot.

  “Leave me alone, Jazz.”

  “Wake up, you need to see this.” Another kick.

  I tried to rub the sleep out of my uncooperative eyes.

  “See what?” I asked. “And stop kicking me.”

  “It’s headline news.”

  “You woke me up to—”

  “Shush.” He pointed at my thirteen-inch television. “It’s about to air again.”

  “What is this about?”

  “Thunder Ministries.”

  That perked me up. We stared at the television, and I tried my best to stay focused on CNN rather than wondering if Jazz still had on underwear. The underwear question definitely held my attention more, that is, until the reporter started in on Thunder Ministries and the recent tragic death of two-year-old Ezekiel Thunder IV. My heart ached seeing his picture on the screen, and then the focal point of the segment shifted to Thunder’s “controversial” ministry.

  Jazz nudged me in the ribs. “Watch this. It’s my favorite part.”

  Suddenly Amanda Bell Brown was on the screen. And Sister Lou. And the caption “Woman Gets Demon Cast Out.” Then the crowning moment when I spewed vomit across the room.

  I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe. I sank down in bed and covered my head with the quilt.

  Jazz laughed like a loon.

  “I’m finished,” I moaned. “My life is over.”

  “How did you get that puke to go, what, twelve feet?” Another burst of laughter exploded out of him.

  “I hate you, Jazz.”

  The man laughed so hard, tears streamed down his face. Meanwhile, the world as I knew it turned upside down, leaving me dangling precariously on the edge.

  I squeaked out, “How many viewers does CNN have?”

  “Probably not that many,” he lied, cracking up. Several minutes later, when he could catch his breath, he said, “All this time I thought you were still pining for Rocky. Turns out you were riddled with adultery demons. It wasn’t your fault, you poor little demoniac.”

  My cell phone rang right before I could curse generations of his future offspring. He tried unsuccessfully to straighten up. “That’s your mother.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I called her and told her to watch.”

  I would do karate on him. He’d think I was Ralph Macchio by the time I finished with him. I answered the phone.

  “Hi, Ma.”

  “I’m having a heart attack,” she wailed. “Don’t call nine-one-one, just let me die.”

  “Ma, you’re not having a heart attack. I am.”

  “You’ve finally killed me.”

  “You’re not dead, Ma.”

  “I’m cutting you out of my will, Amanda Bell. I will never speak with you again. From now on you have one parent. He won’t care that you were exorcised on national television.”

  “Okay. Bye, Ma.”

  “I told you not to speak to me. And don’t call me Ma!”

  Gladly! I snapped my phone shut, effectively implementing her suggestion.

  I glared at Jazz. My looking at him inspired another round of the giggles. I had just the cure. I took my pillow and began to clobber him, which only made him laugh harder despite his hungover state. He didn’t even seem to mind that I had violated his no-hitting rule.

  It was going to be a long day.

  After I hung up with my mother, my cell phone, landline, and pager chirped, rang, and chimed as if it were the end of the world. Carly screamed at me because she thought I should have dressed nicer for television. Kalaya called to make sure I didn’t have any urges to harm myself. Addie called to console me and to let me know that lots of really great people were possessed at some time in their life, and Jack got on the phone and laughed so hard he couldn’t speak. The fruit indeed does not fall far from the tree.

  Now that I’d made my husband’s day, and he’d filled his laugh quota for the next two years, I decided to torment him by stepping my scantily clad body out of bed, allowing him to have a bit of eye candy. My ankle felt significantly better, so I got sassy and moved with style and a healthy swing of my hips.

  He stopped laughing. Looked a little disoriented by my perfect beauty. Okay, who am I kidding? Beauty must have been far down on his list of my best attributes. The Chihuahuas and my backside held him captive.

  “Good morning, lovely wife,” he said, and honestly, the way he looked at me made me think it might be good after all. “Nice view.”

  “I’m glad you’re enjoying it. Don’t you have to go to work this morning?”

  “Nope. I’m all yours today.”

  “Then we have work to do, drunken master.”

  “I see you don’t want to play nice today. Have it your way, Bell.” Jazz stepped out of bed wearing only a wicked smile. I saw the fullness of his glory.

  Another notch on my chastity belt slid loose.

  God, I’m not sure what Jazz and I are doing, but can we speed up the process so whatever it is gets done really soon?

  I hoped my heavenly Father was listening, because if I kept seeing Jazz in his undiluted, natural, red-blooded fineness, a sistah was gonna get herself in trouble.

  My great-grandmother used to say, “You make a hard bed, you turn over more often.” If ever there was a time in my life when I needed a soft bed—just for sleeping—it was now.

  Completely clothed—though, oh, the memories that remained, at least for me—we took the Love Bug straight to the Rock House. Jazz had on the wonderful cashmere turtleneck sweater he left at my place weeks ago and the jeans that fit like they’d been tailor-made for him. The man looked delicious in anything. Or nothing. And he’d showered, so his scent had improved dramatically.

  I’d pulled on an artsy little number that reminded me of a dashiki shirt, only it was a little less seventies inspired and cuter. I wore my “fat” jeans, which were now my “getting too tight jeans” and sat there berating mysel
f for my lack of discipline. My waistline continued to expand despite my best efforts to watch what I ate. As it was, I had almost no appetite for anything except ice cream and turkey—real turkey, not luncheon meat. Nothing in between. Lately I’d felt like I had a prolonged bout of the flu, only the symptoms were so low-grade they were more flu-like than full-blown flu. And then there was the tumor.

  I’d progressed to considering the merits of Slim-Fast versus those of Jenny Craig when Jazz interrupted my thoughts.

  “So who is this woman we’re going to see?”

  “Sister Lou. She was the one who performed the exorcism on CNN.”

  Jazz tried to choke back another round of laughter.

  “Can you please let me try to forget that millions of people worldwide have seen me projectile vomit?”

  “Not just any old vomiting. You were gettin’ the devil cast out of you!”

  I cleared my throat so he would cease and desist. “Warning, Pentecostalphobe. She’s kind of a nutjob.”

  He smirked. “What would give you that idea, Bell?”

  “Hmmm. Maybe because she cast imaginary demons out of me, and she almost cracked my skull open by her sudden laying on of hands. Doesn’t the Bible say something about not doing that?”

  “You wouldn’t know it by the way some of you Pentecostals act.”

  “We’re not all the same. Some of us have tempered our excesses with age and wisdom.”

  “And others have not.”

  “She’s a strange woman, and Joy says she’s in cahoots with Nikki.”

  “I thought you were under the impression that Nikki Thunder alone is the mastermind behind Zeekie’s death.”

  “I think she is, but what if she got her evil, obsessed henchwoman to do her bidding?” I thought about that. At the crusade Sister Lou was glued to Ezekiel Thunder’s side. But after the drowning, she hovered around the children. Unlike Nikki, she actually touched them. Seemed protective of them. Then again, could she have been hiding what really happened by using the kids as a distraction?

  Jazz scratched his head. “Sounds far-fetched to me.”

  “Being possessed by an interracial-dating-and-adultery demon sounds far-fetched to me.”

  “No, that was believable, baby.”