Tangled Roots

by Angela Henry

  Chapter 8

  I woke up on my couch early the next morning still dressed in my clothes from the night before. My head hurt and my eyes felt gritty from cigarette smoke and tears. I sat up and the kitchen knife that I’d slept with clattered to the floor. Not that I had counted on the knife for much protection. After all, Aretha had had a gun and it hadn’t helped her one bit. I sat on the couch for a few minutes and enjoyed the silence. It was seven o’clock. Not a time I’d normally be up at on a Sunday morning but then again, I wasn’t used to being on a crazy drug dealer’s shit list, either.

  I called the hospital to see if I could find out anything about Aretha. I had gone to the hospital to check on her after leaving the Spot but, not being a family member, I was unable to get them to give me any info. The impatient-sounding hospital operator told me that there was no one by that name admitted to the hospital, which must mean she’d been treated and released. At least, I hoped and prayed that’s what it meant. It could also mean she was dead. I felt guilty as hell. I finally got up and headed to the bathroom, peeled off my clothes, and got in the shower. I stood under the hot spray for a long time, hoping it would wash away the mess I was in. I wrapped myself in a towel and headed to the kitchen to make some coffee. Someone was sitting at my kitchen table reading the newspaper with their back to me, and I froze in midstep. I recognized the Dallas Cowboys jersey.

  “Timmy! How the hell did you get in here?” He turned around and grinned, a little too widely, and I remembered that I was wrapped in a towel about as big as a postage stamp.

  “You know, you kinda tight, Kendra,” he said, still grinning at me. “If I was into older women, I’d hit you up for them digits.” I backed out of the kitchen slowly, wondering how tight he’d think I was if he saw my naked booty unleashed from its control-top panties. I threw some sweats on and marched back into the kitchen. Timmy had put some coffee on.

  “I’m waiting,” I said, as I sat down opposite him. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Chill, Kendra. I found a better place to lay low. Safer. I didn’t know them cops would be comin’ to your crib,” he said, leaning back in the chair.

  “They said someone spotted you in this neighborhood. You know I didn’t call them, don’t you?”

  “I didn’t think that. I know I put you on the spot by comin’ here. I left so I wouldn’t get you in trouble.”

  “So, where have you been?” I asked again.

  “Can’t tell you that. Privileged information. If I told you, I’d have to —”

  “Kill me. Okay, I get the hint,” I said, relieved to know that he didn’t think I’d betrayed him. I already had enough to feel guilty about over Aretha.

  “Have you talked to your mother? She found a lawyer to take your case.” I got up and poured us both some coffee. I was amused to see that Timmy liked his coffee laden with sugar and cream, just like me.

  “Yeah, I talked to her. She and that lawyer want me to turn myself in. I don’t know, Kendra. I been locked up before. I thought I was gonna go crazy in there. What if I don’t get bail and I have to stay locked up? What if I can’t prove I was set up?”

  I had no answers for him. I was zero for two. No Shanda, and now I couldn’t imagine, after what had happened to her, that Aretha would want to get involved any further, if she was still alive. Timmy had a right to be very scared. I told him everything that I’d found out so far. I could tell by the way he stared moodily into his coffee cup that the news of Shanda’s role in Vaughn’s plot had hit him hard.

  “That explains a lot of shit,” he said finally.

  “What?”

  “Shanda never had jack to say to me unless it was related to schoolwork. I asked her out and she said she had a man. Then all of a sudden, ’bout two weeks ago, she starts flirtin’ and smilin’. You know, actin’ like she’s all into me. I wasn’t complainin’. She’s hot to death. How was I ’sposed to know she and that muthafucka Vaughn were plottin’ to set me up? I even gave her ass a ride home last week. That’s when she probably planted that shit in my car.” He got up and leaned against the counter.

  “Speaking of your car,” I said, bracing myself for the worst. “The police told me that they found a crack vial in your car. They think you’re using again. Are you?”

  “I used to get high in that car, Kendra. Hell, I even lived in that car when my mom kicked me out. Once, I even sold it for a hundred bucks so I could buy crack. My mom found out and bought it back. It was in her name. So, they probably did find a crack vial in it. No tellin’ what you’d find in that car if you looked hard enough. But, I’m clean, man. I ain’t touched that shit in almost a year and a half, for real,” he said proudly. I believed him.

  I noticed the front page of the newspaper Timmy had been reading. The headline Woman Attacked in Bar Parking Lot caught my eye and I snatched up the paper. There weren’t many details. But I was happy to note that the headline read attacked, not killed, and nowhere in the article did it mention that Aretha was dead. I read further and saw that the police were looking for the victim’s companion who she’d been seen drinking with in the bar and who she’d left with minutes before the attack. The article went on to say that her name might be Kelly. I groaned and started to say something, but Timmy was gone. He’d snuck out while I was engrossed in the article.

  I headed over to Mama’s around four for Sunday dinner. I really didn’t want to go since she thought I’d been flirting with Reverend Rollins. But, Gwen and Alex usually ate dinner there on Sunday, as well. If anyone would know what was going on with Aretha, it was Gwen. I wanted to ease my mind.

  When I arrived at Mama’s house on Orchard Street, where she’d lived with my grandfather for almost the entire fifty years of their marriage, she was setting food on the dining room table: roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy, mustard greens, corn bread, cucumber and tomato salad, and lemonade. The scent of apple pie wafted out from the kitchen and suddenly my day was looking much brighter. Mama’s cooking does that to me. It’s better than Prozac.

  Alex was reading the Sunday paper in the living room and Gwen was out on the back porch talking on her cell phone. Mama still had on the dress she’d worn to church that morning with a pink-and-white gingham apron on over it. She frowned slightly when I walked in but I knew she was happy to see me.

  “Tell your uncle and Gwen dinner is ready, and don’t forget to wash your hands,” she said, brushing past me to put the salt and pepper shakers on the table. She was apparently still mad.

  “Oh, I’ve been just fine. Thanks for asking,” I said sarcastically. She cut me a hard look and I went to do as I was told.

  Alex took his seat at the head of the table and said grace. Then we dug in. We ate in silence for a while with only the sound of our forks scraping the plates. Everyone seemed preoccupied. I decided to break the ice.

  “You’re looking kind of down, Gwen. Is something wrong?” I asked casually between mouthfuls of mashed potatoes.

  “Girl, you don’t even want to know,” she said with a heavy sigh. Gwen was wearing a short, curly red wig that made her look like Little Orphan Annie. I’d lost count of just how many wigs she owned.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Mama, looking concerned.

  “You know, another stylist from the beauty shop almost got killed last night?”

  “Who?” I took a sip of lemonade to wet my suddenly dry mouth.

  “Aretha Marshall. Somebody almost strangled her to death in the parking lot of the Spot last night. Can you believe that mess?”

  “How is she?’ Alex asked.

  “Oh, she’s all right. They kept her overnight for observation and ran a bunch of tests. They cut her loose this morning. She’s pretty shook up, though.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. “Does she know who did it?”

  “If she does, she ain’t talkin’. She’s gonna go stay with her mama in Dayton for a while,” said Gwen, helping herself to another serving of greens.

  “That just goes t
o show you that nothing good comes of runnin’ the streets and hangin’ out in bars,” Mama said. Alex, Gwen, and I looked at each other and smirked.

  “I know you all think I’m just an old lady. But young women these days have lost their dignity. They run around in skimpy clothing, sleep with a bunch of different men, have babies out of wedlock, and then complain when men don’t want to marry them. I may be old-fashioned, but in my day women had respect for themselves and everybody grew up in the church. Now, nobody thinks they need to go to church anymore.” I knew that last part was a dig at me. But I ignored it.

  “So, in other words, women these days need to put some clothes on, close their legs, and get back to church,” said Gwen, winking at me.

  “Amen,” said Mama. We all laughed.

  “Well now, Mama, sometimes church isn’t always the answer. There’s a certain minister in town who’s led many a woman astray,” Alex said teasingly. He loved baiting Mama. But I could have killed him. This was the last thing I wanted to talk about. Mama tensed up and looked at me.

  “Yeah, there are some wolves in sheep’s clothing runnin’ around. Morris Rollins would be one. That man is shameless. You all know my friend Mattie Lyons?”

  We all groaned. Mattie Lyons was the source of so many of Mama’s stories that we all suspected that she didn’t really exist, especially since none of us had ever met her. Mama ignored us.

  “Mattie has a niece named Vera, I think her last name is Maynard, who was a schoolteacher. One summer about twenty-five years ago, Vera came to visit Mattie from Detroit. Vera’s husband was on the road a lot for his job so he didn’t come with her. Vera started going to church at St. Luke’s with Mattie. That was back during Morris Rollins’s first year as assistant pastor. Vera was a shy, quiet woman, a good Christian, a loyal wife. She started attending private Bible study meetings with Rollins. Next thing you know, Vera’s pregnant. It didn’t take Einstein to figure out who the father was since she didn’t go nowhere but to church. Vera ended up having a minor breakdown when Rollins wouldn’t leave his wife, Jeanne. She ended up going back to Detroit. Her husband figured out the baby couldn’t be his. He left Vera to raise her son all by herself.”

  “Now, that don’t necessarily make the reverend a bad person,” said Gwen, spooning more mashed potatoes onto her plate. “It just sounds like he’s got a lot of love to give.”

  “And, from what I hear, a whole lot of women who want to receive it,” said Alex as he and Gwen laughed heartily. I felt my own lips twitching in an effort to keep a straight face. But Mama wasn’t laughing. She was staring at me like I was on the express elevator straight to hell.

  “And the moral of this little story would be what?” I asked, trying hard not to sound annoyed.

  “That even a good woman, who doesn’t think she’s capable of such behavior, can suffer a fall from grace, Kendra,” Mama said quietly.

  “Okay, I get the point.”

  I could tell that Gwen and Alex were confused about what had just transpired. I felt no need to enlighten them.

  “Who wants pie?” Mama asked, getting up from the table.

  We all held our hands up high.

  Monday arrived and I was half afraid to wake up for fear of what new and terrible developments were awaiting me. I lay in bed as long as I dared before finally getting ready and heading to work. Shanda was a no-show and I didn’t expect to see her at the center at all that week. Midterms at Kingford College were a week away and I knew she’d be busy studying. I also hadn’t heard from Timmy again. According to the newspaper, people were spotting him all over the place. The latest sighting had him back in his former neighborhood in Detroit. I was walking around like the devil was stalking me. I carried a can of pepper spray in my pocket everywhere I went and wouldn’t leave my apartment after dark. I had been talking to Carl every night on the phone. There was no change in his brother-in-law’s condition. He could tell something was wrong with me but I just didn’t feel like getting into it with him.

  Lynette and I had made up after she came by my place with a peace offering of hot fudge cake, and to remind me I had a fitting at Gracie’s Gowns Galore later that week. Needing some kind of normalcy back in my life, and to prove to her that I wasn’t cheap or jealous, I agreed to wear the ugly maid of honor dress without complaint. I was glad we’d made up because I’d completely forgotten that Lynette’s mother was hosting an engagement party for her and Greg on Tuesday night. It was the only time the entire bridal party would get a chance to meet each other before the wedding. I couldn’t understand why it was so important to Lynette’s mother that we all meet, especially since the wedding was still months away. But, as the maid of honor, there was no way I could get out of going. At least it would be better than sitting around worried that someone was going to strangle me.

  I was long overdue for a haircut and headed to B & S Hair Design and Nail Sculpture after work on Tuesday. Everyone in the shop was subdued and quiet. Sheila Robins, the S in B & S and Bruce Robins’s wife, was filling in for Aretha as a stylist. Sheila runs the shop’s nail salon and doesn’t have the flair for doing hair. I watched one older woman leave the shop looking like a pissed-off poodle. Bruce must be desperate for help. I noticed that Inez’s empty workstation had been turned into a shrine and was decorated with flowers, cards, and stuffed animals.

  “Have you heard anything about Aretha?” I asked Bruce as he massaged almond oil into my dry scalp. The normally fine-as-wine Bruce was looking tired and thinner than usual. I could see the hollows of his cheekbones through the scruff on his face. What had happened to Inez, and now Aretha, was causing his business to suffer. The shop’s usually packed waiting room had been uncharacteristically bare when I arrived.

  “I’m not sure she’s coming back. Whoever attacked her really scared the hell out of her,” he said mechanically, like he’d already answered the question a million times that day. I decided not to ask him anything else. He seemed to perk up a little when I gave him a bigger tip than usual.

  As I walked to my car, I looked into the Healthy Food Emporium next door to the shop and saw the owner in a clinch with his cashier. A thought came to me and I headed into the store. The wind chime that hung over the door to the shop tinkled pleasantly as I walked in. I’d only been into the store once during their grand opening a year ago. But I knew that the woman the owner was hugged up with was not his wife. By the time I reached the front of the store, the amorous couple had broken apart and the owner had disappeared into the back room. As I got closer I could tell that the cashier was much younger than I first thought; she barely looked out of her teens. She had long, bleached-blond hair that was dark at the roots, and she wore her makeup so heavy she could have graduated cum laude from Clown College. Her name tag revealed her name to be Kitten. Since there was nothing feline about her that I could see, I figured it must be a cutesy nickname for Katherine. Kitten smiled when she saw me and I noticed her bright purple lipstick was smeared on her teeth.

  “Hi. I’m looking for some multivitamins. Can you tell me what aisle they’re in?”

  “Sure, they’re at the end of the middle aisle on the big display,” she replied.

  As she spoke, the owner, a runty middle-aged guy with a beer gut and a straggly ponytail, emerged from the back room carrying a box. He walked to the front of the store and started restocking a display of carob candy near where I was headed. I thanked her and headed towards the vitamins.

  I pretended to browse through the various brands of vitamins. The owner was behind me, bent over his box. I purposefully backed into him.

  “Sorry,” I said, looking sheepish.

  “Not a problem. You finding what you need?” he asked, standing to face me. I could see traces of Kitten’s lipstick in the corners of his mouth. That must have been one hell of a kiss.

  “Actually,” I said, looking out the store’s window dramatically. “There was a strange man following me. So I ducked in here,” I whispered.

  The owner
went outside and looked up and down both sides of the street before coming back inside. “Nobody’s out there now. You want me to call the police?”

  “No. That’s okay. I’m probably being paranoid. You know, since that girl got killed next door. Have you or your wife seen anyone strange lurking around here?” I asked, still whispering and gesturing in Kitten’s direction.

  “No. But I thought they knew who killed that girl,” he said, looking from Kitten to me uneasily. His face was slightly flushed.

  “Well, they still haven’t caught him. How about your wife? Has she seen anyone?”

  “Ah, she’s not my wife, and she hasn’t seen anyone, either.” He turned away from me back to his box. The wind chime above the door tinkled as a woman entered the store. She was dumpy and wore a peasant dress and Birkenstocks with thick black socks. As she passed by the owner, she grabbed his ass. He turned slightly and gave her retreating back a halfhearted smile. I watched her walk past Kitten, who was filing her nails, into the back room.

  “Oh, is that your wife?” I asked feigning ignorance.

  He turned and stared daggers at me but didn’t answer.

  “You might want to wipe your mouth, lover boy, or your wife’s gonna know you’ve been playing with a certain Kitten.”

  He straightened up and quickly wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Did I get it all off?” he asked pleadingly, looking towards the back of the store. His wife had emerged from the back room and was talking to Kitten.

  “I’ll tell you if you answer my questions.”

  “What do want from me, lady?”

  “Calm down. I just want to know if you saw anybody around the beauty shop the night of the murder next door. It would have been after nine that night.”