by Angela Henry
“We know from past experience how loyal you are to your friends, Miss Clayton. But you’re not doing Timmy or yourself any favors by helping him. You need to encourage him to turn himself in,” said Mercer.
“I’d like you to leave now,” I said quietly. I walked over and opened the door.
“One more thing, Miss Clayton,” Harmon said before she walked out. “I wouldn’t go around talking about your little conspiracy theory. Vaughn Castle is violent and very dangerous. He’s the last person you want to mess with, which is why your story about him setting up Timmy Milton just doesn’t wash.”
“Why is that?” I asked, suddenly uneasy.
“Because he wouldn’t go to the trouble of setting anyone up. The last guy he had a beef with ended up hacked to pieces with his body parts spread out over several counties. We still haven’t found all of him.”
Oh, crap!
After they left, I sat on my couch trying to decide if I should convince Timmy to turn himself in. I desperately needed to talk to him about what the detectives had told me. Shanda hadn’t said anything about planting a crack vial in Timmy’s car, which meant he’d lied to me about using again. Was helping him worth risking my life? I thought about Shanda’s bruises. Somebody had to stop Vaughn Castle. I just hoped I could do it discreetly without him knowing about it. I really like having all of my body parts together as a whole. I tried calling Aretha Marshall at the beauty shop to have her come to my apartment instead. But she’d already left for the day and they wouldn’t give me her home phone number.
I finally headed for the Spot after cutting the infamous blue halter dress to knee length and donning a pair of strappy silver sandals. I probably should have dressed less conspicuously but figured skulking around in dowdy clothes would attract even more attention. It was still early so I didn’t have any trouble finding an empty table near the bar. After five minutes, my eyes were starting to itch from the mushroom cloud of smoke that always seemed to be hanging in the air.
This was only my third visit to the Spotlight Bar and Grill and I sincerely hoped it would be my last. I could already feel the eyes of several aging players on me, no doubt trying to decide if buying me a drink would be worth their time, money, and skill. The Spot has been an institution in Willow since before I was born. It’s a tiny place not much bigger than my apartment and it attracts a very diverse crowd of people looking for everything from a simple drink after work to everlasting love.
I sipped my rum and Coke slowly while I waited for Aretha. Heat Wave’s “Always and Forever” played on the ancient jukebox in the corner. I was trying not to make eye contact with anyone when someone asked to buy me a drink. I turned and saw a chubby, vertically challenged, older black man with processed hair dressed in almost head-to-toe red: red suit, red-and-white dress shoes, white shirt, and a red bowler hat cocked to the side of his fat head. He looked like the end product of someone putting Santa Claus, a leprechaun, and a pimp in a blender. I took a sip of my drink to keep from laughing.
His name was Lewis Watts. I’d met Lewis at the Spot several months before when I’d been here with my friend Bernie, who’d just buried her murdered fiancé. Lewis had bought us numerous drinks and extolled his many imagined virtues in an effort to impress Bernie out of her clothes. However, his efforts were thwarted when I got sick and Bernie rushed me home. Lewis hadn’t been pleased. I was very surprised he was giving me the time of day, much less offering to buy me a drink.
“Well, can I get you that drink, or what?” Lewis asked, smiling confidently and waiting for my response. Could it be he didn’t recognize me? I hoped not.
“No thanks, I’m cool,” I replied, gesturing to my still-full glass.
“It’s Kelly, right? Is your friend coming tonight, sweetheart?” he asked, looking around hopefully. He apparently hadn’t forgotten his near-conquest of Bernie.
“Actually, it’s Kendra. And no, she’s out of town,” I replied, hoping the finality in my voice would send him elsewhere in his search of a bedmate. No such luck.
“I guess it’s just you and me then,” he said with a smile. I watched in horror as he plopped down in the seat opposite me. He looked around smugly, like he was Don Juan, and winked at two of his cronies seated at the bar.
“Ah, I’m waiting for a friend,” I said. I looked towards the door, hoping to see Aretha walk in. She was already fifteen minutes late.
“Good! ‘The more the merrier’ is my motto, baby doll. Maybe we can all have a good time together, if you get my meaning.” He nudged me and laughed loudly.
I could smell the liquor on his breath. I wanted to crawl under the table. Where the hell was Aretha?
After ten minutes of listening to Lewis brag and make not-so-subtle references to his sexual prowess, and alluding to how his male endowment rivaled that of a horse (a Clydesdale, no less), I’d had enough.
“Do you really think talking to me like this is impressing me?” I asked him.
Lewis looked around like I must have been talking to someone behind him.
“Yeah, I’m talking to you. I didn’t ask you to sit down. I told you I’m waiting for someone. Does being hung like a horse cause you to be hard of hearing?” I could hear his friends at the bar cracking up with laughter. Lewis looked from them to me and I knew he had to somehow save face.
“You a snotty little heifer, ain’t you? I could tell that the last time you was in here,” he said, his eyes narrowing to slits.
“Then why did you come over here?”
“I was just trying to make your day.”
“Go make someone else’s day,” I hissed.
“I ain’t going no place. This table don’t have your name written on it. I been coming here since before your stuck-up ass was in diapers.”
“Then that would make you old enough to be my daddy. You sorry cradle-robbing troll!” Lewis’s friends at the bar howled with laughter. I turned away from Lewis, who continued to mumble under his breath about how I should be glad he wasn’t my daddy.
Aretha finally arrived a few minutes later. White must be her favorite color, as she was dressed in a tight white satin pantsuit, and white, four-inch sling-back pumps. The Labor Day rule apparently meant nothing to her. She tossed her white clutch purse on the scarred wooden table and sat down, looking amused.
“Sorry I’m late. I had an emergency weave to do. Some sister accidentally caught her hair on fire when she and her man were doing the nasty too close to the campfire when they were camping. The back of that poor woman’s head looked like a baboon’s ass!” She threw her head back and laughed until tears ran down her face. Then she noticed Lewis and stopped laughing immediately.
“Lewis, what the hell are you doing over here? Is the Don Juan of disability bothering you, Kendra?”
“Yes,” I replied, stifling a laugh. I had forgotten that Lewis had told Bernie and me that he was on disability for a supposed bad back when we first met him.
“Goodbye,” Aretha said, waving her hand in Lewis’s face.
“Well you two hincty broads are missin’ out on a good thing. I just cashed my disability check and I was gonna spend it on ya. You can forget about it now,” he said, heading off to the bar with his hand tucked inside his suit jacket like a ghetto Napoleon.
“You know, I had a friend who got tore up one night and went home with that fool. She said he’s hung low but he fucks like a rabbit.” We both laughed.
“How ’bout that drink? I’ll have a white Russian,” she said, taking off her suit jacket to reveal a white lace bustier. I got up to get us both drinks. Lewis and his friends kept looking at me and laughing.
It was starting to get crowded and I wanted to get this over with so I could leave.
“I don’t mean to rush you, but I really need to know about Inez and Vaughn,” I said.
“Okay, okay, I can tell this ain’t your type of scene. That’s a bangin’ dress, though, girl,” she said with a smile. I thanked her and waited patiently as she drained her d
rink and lit a cigarette. “So, how much of my conversation did you hear at the funeral?”
“I heard you say something about Inez finding out the hard way about what Vaughn was really into.”
“Yeah, that was some ugly shit. I was there when it happened,” she said, shaking her head. “We had this stylist at the shop named Renita Franklin, real young chick, probably around nineteen, and just graduated from cosmetology school. Anyway, she was working at the shop for about a month when we all started noticing our supplies were comin’ up short. We all order our own stuff, you know, relaxers, shampoo, and such. Now, we all borrow stuff from each other but we ask permission and we always replace anything we borrow. We all had to reorder missing supplies, everyone except Renita, that is. She always seemed to have supplies but we were noticing she wasn’t ordering shit. Inez was trying to save money to open her own shop but having to constantly reorder supplies was cuttin’ into her money big-time.” Aretha stopped talking long enough to take a long drag on her cigarette before continuing on.
“We were also noticing that Renita was acting real strange. She would be late for appointments or either show up long enough to do a couple of heads then would leave and not come back until the next day. Some days she wouldn’t show up at all and we would all have to take her pissed-off customers and divide them up between us. When she would bother to show up you could tell she hadn’t bathed and her breath stank. She looked all spaced out and glassy-eyed —”
“She was on drugs?” I asked, interrupting her.
“Yeah,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “Her man got her hooked on that shit. She was stealing our supplies so she could use her money to buy crack for her and her man.”
“Vaughn was her dealer, right? Is that how Inez found out?”
Aretha nodded. “One day when me and Inez were closing up, Renita showed up and Inez caught her stealing from her station. Inez went off and started calling Renita names. Called her a crack ho and all sorts of stuff. That’s when Renita dropped a bomb on her. She told Inez that yeah, she smoked crack, and she was buying it from Vaughn. Plus, all the times that Vaughn had come to see Inez at the shop while she was working, he was really there to sell Renita drugs. So, not only was her man a drug dealer, he was selling that shit at her job!”
I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and looked around briefly. I was getting the strangest feeling that we were being watched. I looked around and saw that Lewis was busy bothering some other woman. A young guy in a black do-rag was sitting slouched at the bar nearest to us, staring at Aretha and me intently. I didn’t recognize him and figured he was about to try and hit on us, so I looked away.
“Is something wrong?” asked Aretha, looking concerned.
“No,” I replied, turning my attention back to her. “How did Inez take the news?”
“Not well. She broke down, poor baby. She really loved that idiot. I could have told her he was into something illegal. But it wasn’t any of my business.”
“How did you know?”
“Oh, come on, now. The man drives a brand new Escalade, he dresses in expensive clothes — hell, his sunglasses alone cost more than some people’s house note. He told Inez he was a car salesman. My uncle sells cars and he’s good at it, too. He don’t have the kinda money Vaughn’s always flashing around.”
“Did she confront him?”
“She sure did. He showed up not long after Renita left and they had it out behind the shop. I could hear her screaming and crying. I heard her tell him she never wanted to see him again.”
“He didn’t take that well, did he?”
“You got that right. I went outside to make sure everything was okay and he had her pinned against the wall by her throat.”
“Oh, my God! What did you do?” I was still feeling uneasy but resisted the urge to look around again.
“I didn’t have to do anything. When he saw me, he took off. I was going to call the police but Inez wouldn’t let me. She was real shook up.”
“I bet she was. Did he leave her alone?”
“Nope. He stayed away for about a week, then started sending her flowers and expensive gifts. He thought he could buy his way back into her life. He even offered to give her the money for her shop. But she wasn’t having it. I overheard her tellin’ him on the phone one day that if he didn’t leave her alone, she was gonna tell the cops on him. That did it. He kept his distance after that. Then the dirty bastard started messin’ with her cousin, Shanda, just to spite her. Inez tried to tell that stupid girl about Vaughn but she wouldn’t listen. Hardheaded. Now, Inez is dead.”
“Did you tell the police about this?”
“I would have if they’d asked me. The day they came to the shop to talk to everyone, I was out sick. They never did come back to talk to me. By then they was too busy lookin’ for your friend.”
“Would you have a problem telling them the same thing you just told me?”
“Sure, but I ain’t goin’ to the police. If they wanna hear what I got to say, they can come to me.”
“And you’re not afraid of Vaughn?” I asked in amazement. I wondered if she knew about the poor guy who got hacked up. Probably not.
“If that muthafucka tries anything with me, I got something for his ass,” she said angrily. She motioned for me to come closer and opened her purse. I leaned over, looked inside, and saw a black revolver nestled between her wallet and a value pack of Big Red gum. This woman didn’t play. I watched as she lit another cigarette.
“What happened to Renita?” I asked, still feeling a little unsettled from seeing the gun.
“Bruce fired her. Last time I saw her was a couple a weeks ago. She was walking downtown looking crazy and strung out. I offered her a ride and she cussed me out. I haven’t seen her since.” Aretha looked down at her empty glass longingly, then at me. I took the hint.
“Let me get you another drink,” I said, wanting to keep her talking.
“Thanks,” she said, smiling brightly as I got up and headed to the bar again. By now, the place was really crowded and the smoke and body heat, mingled with the scent of sweat, cologne, and perfume, made it feel stuffy and uncomfortable. I felt a trickle of sweat run down my back. The loud hum of conversation buzzed along to Cameo’s “Shake Your Pants.” I could barely hear myself think. I looked around again while I waited for Aretha’s drink. That’s when I spotted him. Sitting at a table in a far corner holding court to an entourage of baby thugs, who barely looked old enough to be in a bar, was Vaughn Castle. I felt my stomach knot up.
He was seated with his back to the wall and was nursing a Corona. All I could see of his attire was a black T-shirt. He didn’t have on his usual Ray Bans and his green eyes glittered in the dimly lit room like a serpent’s. He was staring directly at me with a sneer on his face. The young guy with the black do-rag who’d been sitting at the bar was on his left, whispering in his ear, telling him everything that Aretha and I had said about him. Time to get the hell out of Dodge.
How I managed to get Aretha’s drink to her without spilling it was a mystery to me because I was shaking so badly. I thanked Aretha and told her we should go. I didn’t mention Vaughn’s presence in the bar, which would turn out to be a big mistake. After draining her drink and putting out her cigarette, Aretha got up to leave with me. We made our way through the crowd towards the door. I was behind Aretha, about ten feet from the door, when I tripped over someone’s outstretched foot. I stumbled and fell onto my hands and knees as Aretha walked out of the bar, oblivious to my catastrophe. I heard loud laughter to my right and turned to see that it was Lewis Watt’s foot I’d tripped over, and he’d stuck it out on purpose.
“Oops! Some people just can’t hold their liquor,” he said, wrapping his arm around the ferret-faced woman he was sitting with. They both laughed like hyenas. My blood was boiling.
I looked around for my purse, which I’d dropped, and felt a rush of panic as I hunted around people’s legs on the dirty floor. When
I finally found it after a frantic minute, I stood up and swung it back up onto my left shoulder, purposefully hitting Lewis squarely in the back of his head and knocking off his hat.
“Oops! Some people shouldn’t have such a big head, asshole,” I said, and rushed out of the bar into the night.
I headed towards the parking lot, hoping to catch Aretha before she took off so I could warn her about Vaughn. As I walked towards her white Mustang, I could see a white shoe peeking out from behind the back tire on the driver’s side. I ran across the parking lot and around the car. Aretha was lying face down on the ground behind her car. I turned her over and felt her wrist for a pulse. She wasn’t breathing and her face was already starting to swell. Her eyes were opened wide and bulging. There was something knotted tightly around her throat and I started screaming as I struggled to untie it. I pulled it off just as a car pulled into the parking lot. A man emerged and, hearing my screams, came running over to help. He shoved me aside and listened to Aretha’s chest.
“Call nine-one-one!” he said, tossing me a cell phone from his pocket. He started to administer CPR. He got her breathing again, but she remained unconscious.
Five minutes later, an ambulance rushed Aretha to the hospital. I stood in the parking lot with a crowd of loud and rowdy bar patrons who’d come out to see what all the excitement was about. Two uniformed police officers were trying to restore order and find out what had happened. I just wanted to go home. Even though I’d yet to talk to the police, I had to get out of there. I started to walk across the street to my car when I realized I still had what had been wrapped around Aretha’s throat in my hand.
I looked at it closely for the first time and immediately realized it was the blue silk scarf that Shanda and Vaughn had stolen from Inez’s apartment. Shanda must have given it back to Vaughn. I dropped it like a hot rock and quickly looked around. I felt hot guilty tears well up in my eyes and did nothing to stop them from running down my face. Why hadn’t I warned Aretha about Vaughn before she left the bar? He must have followed her out when I was looking for my purse. She’d almost been killed and, by using the scarf, Vaughn wanted me to know he’d done it.