Tangled Roots

by Angela Henry

  “Mrs. Rollins? Nicole, are you awake?” I gently touched her shoulder and she sighed and rolled onto her back. As she did, her braids fell away from her face and I gasped. I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. I looked wildly around the room at the family pictures, noticing they were of Inez as a cheerleader, Inez at the prom, Inez on Santa’s knee, and realizing why the room seemed so odd. This wasn’t Morris and Nicole’s bedroom. It must be Inez’s old room, and the sleeping woman I was looking down at was not Nicole Rollins but Inez Rollins.

  Chapter 12

  Before I could fully grasp that I was looking at a woman everybody in town, including the police, thought was dead, Inez sat straight up and screamed at the top of her lungs.

  “Daddy, don’t!” Inez began flailing and swinging her arms like a psychotic windmill looking for a fight. I tried to calm her down and caught a forearm to the forehead, smashing me right in my swollen knot and sending me flying backwards off the bed onto the floor with a loud thud. I was paralyzed for a few minutes until I heard rapidly approaching footsteps. I rolled under the bed. I heard the door to the bedroom swing open, and saw a pair of chubby legs encased in white stockings ending in orthopedic loafers run across the room.

  “Mrs. Rollins, are you all right?” I heard the panicked nurse ask. Inez’s only response was a loud snore. “You scared me half to death. I thought you fell out of bed,” the nurse whispered to Inez’s sleeping form.

  The nurse had called Inez Mrs. Rollins, not Ms. Rollins. She thought the woman she was taking care of was Nicole and that could only mean that Morris Rollins was passing Inez off as Nicole. It also meant that Nicole must be dead. I needed to get out of the house and take my newfound revelation to Harmon and Mercer. I felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Timmy couldn’t be held responsible for the death of a woman who wasn’t dead, which meant he’d have to be cleared of all suspicion. He could come out of hiding, and Olivia could have her surgery. I was happier than anyone hiding under someone else’s bed had a right to be. I watched as the nurse headed towards the bedroom door. Once she left, I could make my escape. However, I should have known it wasn’t going to be that easy. I saw the nurse’s legs stop, pausing at the bedroom door. I poked my head out a bit farther and saw her looking at the keyhole. Damn. She must have realized the door should have been locked. I hadn’t thought to lock it behind me when I came in.

  “I could have sworn I locked this door. What in the world is going on around here?” she said aloud. My heart sank as I watched the nurse walk back towards the bed and stop.

  “Are you really asleep, or are you faking?” I heard her ask Inez. Of course, there was no response, as Inez was really sleeping. But the nurse was undeterred. “You can pretend all you want, Mrs. Rollins. I don’t know how you’re doing it but I know you’ve been sneaking out of this room. I’m going to sit right here next to this bed until your husband gets home.” The nurse then removed the large stuffed teddy bear from the rocking chair by the bed and proceeded to sit down.

  I felt like crying. Plus, I was starting to feel a bit claustrophobic. I waited, hoping she would realize Inez was really asleep and leave the room. No such luck. The nurse sat rocking back and forth, humming Broadway show tunes to herself. I was treated to a tuneless medley that included “Hello Dolly,” “If I Were a Rich Man,” “There’s a Place for Us,” and “Oklahoma!” It was hot under the bed and I was getting cramped from lying in the same position for so long. Sweat started trickling down my face, making the knot on my forehead itch. Heat makes me sleepy and that, combined with the nurse’s humming and Inez’s soft snoring, was lulling me into a stupor. With no place to go and nothing to do but wait, I drifted off to sleep, hoping like hell I didn’t start snoring myself.

  I woke in a panic after a bizarre dream about marrying Lewis Watts while wearing the ugly blue maid of honor dress, not remembering where I was, and unable to move. When I finally remembered my predicament, I looked out from under the bed to see that the nurse was no longer sitting in the rocker. Her chubby gams had been replaced by a man’s long legs clad in brown slacks with a pair of enormous feet shod in expensive leather loafers. The lord of the manor had returned. As much as I wanted to roll out from under the bed and demand he tell me what the hell was going on, I had to get out of the house, quickly. Somehow I didn’t think Rollins would remember his offers of hugs and conversation if he found me hiding in his house. As nice as he’d been to me, I didn’t want to incur the man’s wrath, especially since he appeared to have faked his daughter’s death. Who knew what else he was capable of?

  I thought back to the funeral and the heavily veiled, dazed-looking woman Rollins had told me was Nicole. Had Rollins actually had the balls to pass off his doped-up, very-much-alive daughter as his wife at her own funeral? If Inez was being drugged and locked in her room, was it for her own safety or to keep her from telling who’d really killed Nicole? Then I remembered Inez calling out the words, “Daddy, don’t,” in her sleep. Don’t what? What didn’t Inez want her father to do? If I had to guess, with my choices being “Don’t kill Nicole,” “Don’t kill me,” or “Don’t run with scissors,” I’m sure I’d be closer to the truth in choosing one of the first two. Was Morris Rollins a murderer? My heart sank.

  I heard the shrill chirp of a cell phone ringing. Rollins answered it with a terse hello.

  “Slow down, Bonita, I can’t understand a word you’re saying.” He sounded like his patience was evaporating like water drops on a hot griddle. “What? He knows? He knows what?” Rollins paused to listen to whatever his sister-in-law was telling him. Then I heard him groan. I took a chance, peeked out, and saw him leaning forward in the rocker with his forehead resting in the palm of his hand. The cell phone was still in his other hand, pressed against his ear. Bonita was talking so loudly that I could hear her under the bed. But I couldn’t hear what she was saying, just a loud buzzing chatter emanating from the phone.

  “Oh, my God,” I heard Rollins whisper softly. It didn’t sound like good news.

  “Where is he now? Okay, Bonita. Now, calm down and tell me where you are.” Rollins stood up and I heard him walking slowly towards the bedroom door. “I want you to meet me at the church in an hour, you hear me? Good.” Rollins was headed out the door when a voice stopped him.

  “Daddy?” Rollins was back across the room and by his daughter’s bedside in two strides.

  “Hey, baby girl. What are you doing awake? You’re supposed to be getting your rest.” I felt Inez shifting in the bed above me.

  “Where you going, Daddy?” Inez sounded groggy and weak.

  “I’ll be right back, baby. You just lie back down and get some sleep. Here, it’s about time for another pill.”

  “Don’t want no more pills. Daddy, we gotta tell ’em. We gotta tell ’em.” I heard Inez’s voice trail off into a sigh then heard her breathing heavily; she must have fallen back to sleep. Rollins stood by the bed for another minute to make sure she was asleep and then quickly left the room.

  I rolled out from under the bed. A quick peek at the clock on the bedside table told me it was almost three o’clock. I’d been under the bed for two hours and my limbs felt numb. My stomach had an imprint of my purse on it, which I’d been lying on top of the whole time. I looked down at Inez, who had indeed fallen back into a deep slumber. I wondered what she wanted to tell and to whom she wanted to tell it. I resisted an urge to try and wake her. I had to tell Harmon and Mercer she was still alive. Whatever secret Inez was keeping, Harmon and Mercer could deal with it. Being trapped under a bed for two hours gives a person amazing perspective. I left the room and crept down the steps.

  I heard Rollins talking to someone, probably the nurse, in another room and decided to make a break for it. I quietly unlocked the front door, stepped out into the afternoon sunshine, gently pulled the door shut behind me, and hurried down the driveway to my car.

  I jumped into the driver’s seat and started to put the key in the ignitio
n when I felt fingers twisting into the hair on the back of my head. I yelped and tried to get out of the car and was pulled back against the driver’s seat by the collar of my jacket. I looked into the rearview mirror and was greeted by the sight of Vaughn Castle. I felt something sharp poking me in my neck and realized with horror that it was the Swiss Army knife Mrs. Carson had given me. I had dropped it on my porch in my excitement over seeing Carl and had completely forgotten about it until now. Vaughn must have been at my apartment.

  “Your granny ain’t here to save your ass this time, bitch,” he said in a hissing lisp, like his tongue was having a hard time adjusting to the extra spaces left by his missing teeth. I seriously doubted drug dealing provided any kind of a dental plan and sincerely hoped he’d be snaggletoothed for the rest of his life.

  “What do you want?” I asked. I kept my eyes on him in the mirror.

  “Just start this raggedy muthafucka and drive. I’ll tell you where to go.”

  I did as I was told and Vaughn told me to drive towards the wooded area at the back of the Briar Creek development. Once I stopped the car, he reached between the seats and took my keys from the ignition. I looked around desperately for someone whose eye I could catch who could run for help. But all I could see were trees, dirt, and litter. There was nobody around who could help me. Vaughn kept the knife’s tip pressed against my neck with one hand while he had a firm grip on my jacket collar with the other. I had rolled out from under Inez’s bed and landed right in a pile of shit.

  “Where’s Milton?” he asked. I could feel and smell his hot foul breath against my cheek and wondered how I had failed to notice his odor of stale beer, cologne, and funk when I’d gotten in the car. I felt like throwing up.

  “I don’t know where he is,” I replied truthfully, trying hard not to move my head.

  “Liar,” he said, poking me in the back of the head. “I know you tight with him and his mom. Shanda told me. So I know you know where his ass is.”

  “Why do you hate him so much?” I wanted to keep him talking, mainly to buy time, but also to see if his story matched Timmy’s.

  “That’s none a your fuckin’ business, bitch.” I felt a spray of spittle on my neck. Yuck! Telling him to “say it, don’t spray it” would probably earn me a fist in the face, or worse, a knife in my jugular, so I gritted my teeth and kept silent as visions of him cutting me into tiny pieces flooded my brain. I looked at him again in the rearview mirror and realized by his red, glassy eyes that he was high as a kite.

  “He was hiding out at my place but he told me he was going back to Detroit. I haven’t seen him in a week,” I offered, hoping to appease him.

  “I don’t believe that shit. Shanda told me —”

  “Did you know Shanda tried to kill herself?” I asked, quickly cutting him off in the hope he would let down his guard. Instead, he just tightened his grip on my collar and laughed like I’d just told him a big joke.

  “Well, I guess it’s a good thing I cut that silly ho loose. She was gettin’ way too clingy, anyway. She wasn’t a bad lay. Matter a fact, I used to bring her out here to this very spot to fuck her. But she couldn’t give good head to save her life. Made her practice on bananas and she still couldn’t get the shit right.”

  Now there was a mental image I really didn’t need. “You broke up with Shanda?” I knew her suicide attempt had something to do with this loser. Shanda loved Vaughn so much she’d helped him frame an innocent man for her cousin’s murder only to have him dump her. She must have been devastated. “She loved you. She slit her wrist, probably over you. Don’t you even care that she almost died?”

  “Shanda don’t love me any more than I love her. She’s just a sad little girl lookin’ for attention. She don’t care where she get it from. If she really wanted to kill herself, she’d a done it. Let me guess, her mom or her pops found her in time, right?”

  “She loved you enough to help you frame Timmy, didn’t she? Why did you kill Inez, anyway?”

  “I didn’t kill that ho! I went to see that bitch to tell her to stop runnin’ me down behind my back and when I got there her ass was already dead with half her face splattered against the wall,” he said, clutching my collar tighter.

  Which would have made it easy for Rollins to lie and identify Nicole as Inez. But, why? Did Vaughn mistake Nicole for Inez because of their braids, and kill her? Did Inez witness the murder and Rollins was trying to protect her?

  “And then you decided to frame Timmy. He must have really screwed you over pretty bad. You don’t strike me as the kind of man who would let himself be played.” That hit a nerve, and I saw Vaughn’s jaw clench.

  “Not me, my boy Ricky Maynard. Milton’s the reason Ricky’s dead and I’m gonna make that muthafucka pay. Ricky got run down like a damn dog in the street chasing Milton’s ass. That nigga thinks he can bring me down like he did Ricky. But he ’bout to find out who he messin’ wit. I’m bulletproof. Can’t nobody get wit me,” he said, breathing down my neck. From the little bit he’d told me, his story seemed to match Timmy’s, except for that last part, which just sounded plain crazy.

  “Timmy didn’t know Inez or have any reason to kill her. It shouldn’t take long for the police to figure out that the one person who had a reason to hurt her was you.” He let go of my collar and grabbed a handful of my hair, pulling my head back against the seat. If I got out of this alive, I was going to have one hell of a headache.

  “I told you I didn’t kill her. But, since you think you so smart, bitch, answer me this: If I killed Inez, why would I bother putting a bloody tissue in Milton’s car when I could have just planted the piece on him?”

  The gun. It had completely slipped my mind. No one had ever mentioned the gun. It wasn’t in any of the articles I’d read about the murder. I’d figured the police were withholding information on the murder weapon.

  “You mean it wasn’t there at the scene?” I asked in a whisper.

  “I’m tired of answering questions. It’s time you answered mine. Where is Milton? I need to know so the police can get another anonymous call about his location.” I felt the knife press against my neck breaking the skin. A small warm trickle of blood ran down inside my collar.

  I realized that, no matter what I did or didn’t tell him, he was going to kill me, anyway. There was no way he could let me go. I knew too much. I thought about my family and how devastated they’d be when Harmon and Mercer broke the news of finding my body in the deserted, wooded area that Vaughn was sure to drag it into. I wondered if they’d be able to find all of me. I started to cry, which pissed him off.

  “Did you hear me? Where’s Milton?” he asked again, louder this time. I cried even harder, lapsing into hiccupping, heaving sobs.

  “Here I am, bitch!” came a familiar voice from outside the car. The passenger door on the driver’s side flew open and I watched in the rearview mirror as Timmy Milton dragged Vaughn Castle ass backwards out of the car and proceeded to administer a beat-down worthy of Mike Tyson in his prime.

  Timmy had caught Vaughn off guard and had him on the ground so quickly that all he could do, in the face of all the kicks and blows Timmy was raining down on him, was to flail pitifully at Timmy’s legs with the Swiss Army knife, which he’d somehow managed to hold on to. I jumped out of the car and stomped on his wrist, causing him to let go of the knife, and kicked it underneath my car. Timmy aimed a punch at Vaughn’s face. Vaughn managed to move his head, but still caught the brunt of the blow on his temple. He was out cold.

  Timmy and I stood staring at each other. I was still sniveling. Timmy was panting hard like he’d just run a marathon. He came over and put his arm around me.

  “You okay, Kendra?”

  “I’ll be all right,” I said, wiping my face with the back of my hand. “How in the world did you know where to find me?”

  “I been followin’ this fool. Saw him sneak into the back a your ride. I didn’t want to cause no scene in that ritzy neighborhood and have them call
in’ the police so I followed y’all out here. Woulda been here sooner but that brokedown whip I was drivin’ stalled out at the stop sign back there. I had to leave it parked in the street. I ran all the way down here.”

  “Why were you following Vaughn?” I asked, looking down at the man in question and suppressing an urge to kick him.

  “Better to be the hunter than the hunted. Know what I’m sayin’?” he asked, then, sensing my confusion, explained himself. “I figured if I was followin’ him, I’d know what his ass was up to. I was goin’ crazy sittin’ around waitin’ for his punk ass to find me. I wasn’t feelin’ that at all. So, after he attacked you, I started tailin’ him —”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, holding up my hand to stop him. “How did you know he attacked me?” Timmy stared at me with an annoying smirk but didn’t answer. Vaughn started moaning and we both stared at him, panic-stricken.

  “We need to tie his ass up before he comes to. You wait here,” Timmy said, searching Vaughn’s pockets and pulling out a set of car keys. “I’ll be right back,” he said, after seeing the look of fear on my face.

  Timmy ran off in the direction he’d come from, leaving me alone with the unconscious Vaughn. I got on my hands and knees and retrieved the knife from under my car, just in case, and picked up my car keys, which Vaughn had dropped when he was pulled from the car. I spotted an orange plastic jump rope in the weeds by my car and grabbed it. I started to tie Vaughn’s hands with it but was too afraid to touch him. I waited for Timmy. Minutes later he returned, driving Vaughn’s Escalade.

  “Where’d you get his car?”

  “He parked it a block over from where you was parked. Help me turn this mutha over.” We turned Vaughn over and Timmy pressed his knee in Vaughn’s back, in case he woke up, while I used the jump rope to tie his hands tightly behind his back. My hands were shaking and sweating badly, which was a good thing, since I hoped it would keep my prints from sticking to the plastic rope. I then helped Timmy lift Vaughn into the back of his Escalade. No easy feat since he was deadweight. I spied something blue on the floor in the back seat. It was the blue scarf that he’d used to strangle Aretha Marshall. I got a chill as I realized he must have been watching me that night and seen me drop it in the street. I could feel myself getting angry just thinking about Aretha’s blue lips and swollen face. I balled up the scarf and stuffed it in Vaughn’s mouth.