by Tyora Moody
Maybe Eddie was hurt somewhere. He wasn’t that old, only in his fifties. With all the health scares and issues she’d seen with her grandparents, Angel would have hated if she walked away and he was hurt. That was the only explanation Angel could think of for him just disappearing. But then that wouldn’t explain the dead body found at Southern Soul Café.
She looked back at her car in the driveway and decided to take a look around outside. Angel walked around to the side of the house. When Denise and she were kids, they never went through the front door. Mrs. Gowins was one of those women who did not like children in her living room, so the back door was the main entrance.
While the house looked immaculate from the front, she saw objects leaning against it as she moved closer to the back. There were at least three cars, older cars that Eddie used to drive. They appeared to be in great shape, clean and polished.
Angel thought maybe she ought to have had more than coffee this morning due to the throbbing feeling in her gut. She pulled the latch on the fence to enter the backyard. Angel headed toward the back door. The Gowins used to leave a key under the mat. The black mat was still there. Angel peeled the mat back but didn’t see any key. She glanced around the yard. What was she doing here? Certainly the police had been by here, looking for Eddie. She sighed and decided to leave.
As she came around the side of the house, Angel saw that the front door was now open. She walked up fast to the front door. “Eddie? Eddie, are you in here?” Angel placed one foot across the threshold and called out, “I need to talk to you.” This was too weird. Angel spun around and yelped.
Eddie was standing behind her. He had a wild-eyed look, which she didn’t recall ever seeing before. What happened to his face? she wondered. There were ugly scratches across his cheek, like he’d been in a fight. He smiled. “Angel, what a surprise. Why don’t we go inside?”
As she slowly stepped inside the house, Angel looked around. “Denise and a lot of people are looking for you,” she told him. She jumped and spun around when the door slammed closed behind her. “Eddie?”
Eddie pointed his finger in her face and walked around her like an animal examining his prey. “You are just like your mother. Showing up at the wrong time. The day you walked into Southern Soul Café with that reporter, I knew you would be trouble.”
Angel frowned. “Why would me talking to Wes bother you?”
“Because it meant you were digging and he was helping you,” Eddie spat.
“Well, I have learned a lot about my mother, but not enough. You were close to her before she died, so you can tell me the truth.”
Eddie glared at her, and then he looked away. “Elisa was my star, the best thing I had going with all those other clowns I had under me.”
“You managed K-Dawg, Larry Stowe, and some of the other local rap artists in the area.”
“They came to me wanting a demo tape. I said I would help them if I could manage them. It helped me later convince your granddad, although he was real hesitant, to let me manage Elisa’s career.” Eddie grew quiet as he paced, almost like he’d forgotten Angel was standing in the same room.
Angel nudged him. “Do you know what happened to my mother?”
“It was an accident.”
Angel’s body tensed, and she crossed her arms. That was not what she’d expected to hear.
Eddie stopped pacing. “She came to my house, here, just like you did today. I knew something had been bothering her. She was all excited and waving her hands. Elisa kept saying, ‘I saw him. He had a gun.’ That’s when I knew she was talking about Larry.”
“Wait a minute. Larry? Larry shot K-Dawg? I thought they were friends.”
Eddie laughed out loud, his voice harsh and bitter. “K-Dawg was a pretty boy with no talent. The real talent of the group was Larry. I don’t know how he had been pushed into being the hype man. K-Dawg was always wisecracking on him. I told Larry over and over again he needed to assert himself more.”
“So, if Larry killed him, why would that concern you? Why didn’t you and my mother turn him in? Wasn’t that what my mother was trying to say?”
“It would have come back to me. I gave him the gun. I also gave him money.”
“You hired him to kill K-Dawg? Wasn’t he your client too?”
“K-Dawg was smarter than he looked. He’d been digging around my past and was trying to get out of his contract. His ego had gotten inflated once that song blew up on radio stations around the country. To think I was the one who gave him a chance, when no one would hear him. The real talent was Larry. He wrote the song. Your mother was singing the background hook. It was amazing. Her time was coming. Elisa was a star already.”
As Angel listened to Eddie ramble, she couldn’t believe this man. What was it about his past that would cause him to be concerned? She stared at the man she’d known all her life. I don’t know him at all. “You still haven’t told me what happened to my mother.”
“Larry showed up is what happened. She was babbling about him. I told her to shut up. Larry wanted to shoot her. I told him he was in enough trouble. Your mom took off and ran. I grabbed her, and somehow she fell, hitting her head on the table.” Eddie waved his hands around. “It was bad. Blood was coming from her head.”
Angel felt like she was going to throw up, she was so nauseated. She cried out, “Why didn’t you get her some help?”
“It was too late. She knew too much, and Larry was about to lose it. He wanted to put a bullet in her to make sure she was dead. I told him we had to get her out of there and I knew a place. In fact, we are going there now.”
“What?” Angel watched as Eddie leaned over and took something out of a duffel bag on the floor.
Eddie stared at Angel as if he were looking through her. “Angel, why don’t we go for a ride?”
Angel noticed Eddie’s hand. He was holding a gun. She looked at him, tears flooding her eyes. “Why?”
His eyes didn’t move from her face. “You should’ve left the past alone, girl. It’s been so long. You and Larry, I don’t know why you both decided you wanted to dig up the past now.” Eddie laughed. “Old Larry had the nerve to want to come clean now. He’d served his time and wanted to get right with God.” Eddie was yelling and waving the gun.
Angel held her arms tighter around her as it dawned on her what had really happened at Southern Soul Café. Tears fell down her face. Eddie had burned up all those memories to cover up his crime. But it wasn’t his only crime. What else had Eddie done?
He turned to look at her. “Stop with the tears. Just move. Go!”
Knowing the gun was at her back, she walked out of the house toward her car. She glanced at the street, hoping cops would show up looking for Eddie. Angel opened the car door and climbed in. She remembered she’d put her phone in her left pocket. As Eddie came around the car, she pulled out the phone and tapped it to see the touch screen. From the corner of her eye, she saw the last phone number she had dialed. She selected the number and slipped the phone into the car-door pocket as Eddie jumped in.
She looked at the barrel of the gun. “What about Denise? She’s been worrying about you.”
Eddie jabbed the gun into her side, causing Angel to cry out. “Stop asking me questions. Just do what I tell you to do.”
She turned the car’s engine on and placed her shaking hands on the steering wheel. Her mother was dead, and this man, a trusted family friend, was responsible. What he intended to do with her, she didn’t know, but she prayed to God that Eddie would get the punishment he deserved.
Chapter Forty-nine
Wes had tried several times to get Angel on the phone after hearing her message. He decided to swing by her house to see if her family knew where she had gone. Wes drove into the Robertses’ driveway. Though she didn’t ask him directly this time, Wes felt led to pray for Angel’s safety for some reason. Something in her voice caught his heart. Angel sounded scared to him. In the back of his mind, he knew what she must be trying to do. He
just hoped he was wrong.
Wes rang the doorbell. Angel’s uncle opened the door. He appeared puzzled and said, “Wes? It’s good seeing you again. Are you here to see Angel?”
“Yes, we were supposed to meet up this afternoon. She left me a message about something she had to do. I was hoping she came back home.”
Jacob eyed him. “No, she hasn’t been back since she left this morning. She did seem a bit preoccupied, though. Do you know what’s going on with her?”
Wes was hesitant to say anything. He wasn’t sure how much Angel had told her family about her research over the past few weeks. But this was her family, so he decided to take the plunge. “Angel and I have been looking into her mother’s disappearance. We came across a few things, and we were going to meet to try and put the pieces together.”
“Oh no!” Jacob rubbed his head. “She asked me questions last night about her mother and Eddie. I was wondering why she had so many questions.”
Wes frowned. “Well, where do you think she went?”
“Probably to find Eddie. I told her last night that Elisa had gotten really close to Eddie before she went missing. She would confide in him and listen to his advice over our parents’ and mine.”
Wes’s phone buzzed in his pocket. “Hold on a minute. This could be her. I’ve been calling her for the past hour.” He pulled out the phone. “It’s her.” Wes answered the call and said, “Angel, where are you . . .”
He stopped talking and listened. Angel was talking in the background to someone else. “Angel?”
Jacob stepped forward. “What’s going on?”
Wes shook his head and strained to listen. He pulled the phone away. Wes had clearly heard a man’s voice say, “Just do what I tell you to do.” He swallowed hard, lowered the phone, and said, “We need to call the police and get them to trace Angel’s phone. I think Angel found Eddie. He sounds like he’s going to hurt her.”
Chapter Fifty
Angel gripped the steering wheel in fear as she calculated every move Eddie would make. What if she jerked the car off the road? No. She wanted to live. Still, a car accident had to be better than what he would do to her. She had no idea where they were going. Angel could only hope that Wes had picked up the phone and had caught her conversation with Eddie. She knew enough from watching television that it was possible for the police to trace her cell phone.
“Pull over right up here.” Eddie turned his hot breath on her. “Do it now.”
With as much ease as her trembling body allowed, she slowed the car and pulled to the side of the road. There hadn’t been another car for miles on this back road. The sun was hidden behind cloudy dark gray skies.
Eddie cocked the gun toward her chest. “Get out.” He swung the passenger door open.
Angel peeked down into the car-door pocket. Her eyes were glued to that phone, and she hoped it wouldn’t fail her now. Her hands felt ice cold as she struggled to grasp the door handle.
“Come on!” he growled.
She yanked the door handle and scrambled out of the car to face her abductor.
Eddie waved the gun and yelled, “Start walking.”
Sticks and leaves crunched as they walked into the mass of trees. From a distance, she saw lightning streak across the sky. It was the time of year for southern thunderstorms to roll through. A cool breeze whipped through the trees, but it brought Angel no comfort. Her heart raced, as if she had just run a marathon. She choked back a sob. Eddie was going to kill her. She couldn’t believe this was happening.
To think how much she had trusted him. It never would have crossed her mind that he would hurt her. More lightning split the sky, and it was followed by an intense rumble of thunder. The trees shook their limbs, as if taunting her for being so naive.
“Stop.”
She turned and noticed that Eddie had cocked his head like he had heard something. Was someone else out here?
He swung the gun an inch from her temple. “Get down.”
“What?”
“Get on your knees,” he snarled.
She fell on her knees, feeling the earth beneath her. Her heart lurched as the thunder roared like an angry lion above their heads. Big drops of rain began to crash down around them. Angel shut her eyes tight, not believing this was her fate. “Please, God, help me,” she prayed fervently.
When she opened her eyes, an answer lay near her, barely covered by leaves. She glanced up at him. Eddie’s eyes had grown wilder as he paced around her. He seemed to be having a conversation, but she couldn’t understand a word he was saying. The rain was falling harder now, soaking her clothes. She peered down at the ground again. Why not? What did she have to lose? She had to do something.
Angel scooped the smooth rock up from the muddy ground. Her dormant softball skills kicked in as she zoomed in on his hand. Not waiting another second, she swung the rock with all her might.
The rock smacked him square on the hand, and he dropped the gun. “No, you . . .”
She leaped forward like a track sprinter and headed into the trees. As Angel ran, the oddest memory of a Sunday school lesson entered her mind. The one about Lot’s wife. God told her not to look back, but she did and lost her life.
Eddie’s voice bellowed behind her.
“Don’t look back,” Angel told herself as she ran. “Don’t. Look. Back.”
Chapter Fifty-one
Wes and Jacob waited for Detective Jackson to return to his desk from the captain’s office. Wes stared at his phone, praying for Angel. He was glad he’d activated the mute button, so he could keep the connection without Eddie being aware of conversations.
Jacob asked, “What’s the plan? How are they going to find her?”
“Angel was clever enough to call, so her phone can be used to trace her location. It used to be only the FBI had access to tracking technology, but now quite a number of police departments can also track cell phones in case of emergencies, like a kidnapping. Right now they are working to nail down her location, and I’m pretty sure the SWAT team has been called in.”
Jacob frowned. “SWAT? You think he has a weapon on him?”
Wes hesitated because he wasn’t sure how much Jacob knew, but Angel was his niece. “Look, you know about the fire at Southern Soul Café.”
“Yeah.”
“There was a body in there with a gunshot wound to the head.”
“Are you serious? Who was it? Are you telling me that Eddie killed someone?” Jacob got up from the chair and paced. “I knew it. I knew it. All this time, I knew that man was no good.”
Wes noticed Jacob’s tightened fists. “Okay, calm down. If we can’t keep it together, they won’t let us go with them to find her.” Wes wasn’t actually sure if they would or would not, but he hoped his buddy Darnell could pull some strings. Wes had to be there to help them find Angel. He said, “You know I talked to some of the members of Southern Soul, Pete and Buddy. They seemed to not care too much for Eddie, either. Neither did my pops. Do you know why Nick was the one that always seemed to be in Eddie’s corner?”
Jacob shook his head. “Wes, that’s the million-dollar question. I don’t know why my dad was such a fan of Eddie’s. Don’t get me wrong. I remember admiring him when I was a kid. I think I was twelve when he joined the group. He was different, younger, and he could play the drums. I wanted to play the drums just watching him. But I don’t know.... He had a way of being manipulative when he wanted something. He just turned on the charm, but there was something else about him that just never sat right with me.”
Jacob sat down. “My dad had this one-track mind. When he made up his mind about something, it was hard to convince him that he could be wrong. I remember I was accused of being jealous. Nick was my dad. He was on the road a lot, and I wanted his time. Eddie would come by with his problems, and Dad would stop and listen. You know, later I learned he bailed him out of jail.”
Jacob threw up his hands. “This dude was arrested and put in jail. If that wasn’t the ha
ndwriting on the wall, I don’t know what it was. None of the guys in Southern Soul were perfect, but they all were God-fearing men who had families.”
Wes nodded, agreeing with Jacob’s rants. To bring Eddie into a group that had already been in existence for quite some time, and especially with his age difference, did seem a bit odd. He asked Jacob, “What was Eddie arrested for?”
“Assault and battery, I believe,” Jacob answered. “Eddie claimed the guy he used to work for had called him a racial slur, so he hit him. The man called the cops, and Eddie was arrested. I believe the guy dropped the charges, because nothing happened, or at least I didn’t hear anything more.”
Wes looked up and saw Darnell walk out of the captain’s office. He was wearing a bulletproof vest. He walked over.
“Okay, SWAT has been called, and the signal from Angel’s phone has her up near the Lake Wylie area,” he told them. “There are cabins out there. Do you, by any chance, know if Eddie has property up there?”
Jacob stood. “No, he doesn’t have property, but before he became the drummer with Southern Soul, he worked at a place with cabins. In fact, he worked there for a while even after he joined Southern Soul.”
“You remember the name of the place?” Darnell asked.
Jacob looked at Wes and then focused back on Darnell. “I was just telling Wes about the time my dad bailed Eddie out of jail. He had been arrested for assaulting the owner of a cabin resort. I don’t remember what the place was called. Misty Pine, maybe. I remember the name of the place had the word pine included.”
“Okay, okay. That might help us narrow down the search. Do you remember what year Eddie was arrested?” Darnell asked.