My heart was so heavy I thought I’d die. I reached for my Bible on the nightstand and opened it to the marker I’d placed in Deuteronomy 32. I had been reading it before I fell asleep last night.
For the Lord will vindicate His people, And will have compassion on His servants, When He sees that their strength is gone, And there is none remaining, bond or free.
The Lord will vindicate His people. I’d chosen that passage of scripture, because it was the one hanging in Powers’s office. I thought it an odd choice for décor, even the office of a PI, but then I considered I’d been in a room where glass beads hung in a solid panel between spaces. Not that there was any bad Bible, but Powers’s taste was probably in his mouth.
When He sees that their strength is gone. I read it again and thought about my situation. I needed God to vindicate me. I could only hope the scripture applied to sweetheart scams, because my strength was definitely gone. I closed the Bible, stared at the ceiling, and said a prayer. “Lord, please help me. I’m in so much trouble. All I wanted was to love my husband. Start a family and do some good for the community. How could things have come to this?”
God was silent. Hope did not engulf me. The answer to my problems did not fall from the sky. Even if I tried, I was hard-pressed to remove the layer of self-pity that was caked on my body from head to toe. My cell phone vibrated. I reached for it and opened the pending text message. It was from my graphic artist. I sighed and read:
Hope to catch you before you start work. I really need you to approve the artwork for the posters and postcards or the price is going to go up for printing.
And so it began: phone calls from everyone. The caterer wanted to finalize the menu, the videographer and photographers were looking for their deposits, the event planner had details to discuss, including her fee. Everyone wanted money from me. Money I couldn’t pay. The only thing that I owned was renovations on a building the city gave to me. We were going to lease the furniture. Leon’s idea of course. I didn’t quite agree with him on that, but now I understood. Greedy dog wanted all the cash for himself.
“God help me. What am I going to do?” I sat at my desk. Looked at all the e-mails and invoices that were waiting for me and began to pray between sobs. I had called in sick for the third day in a row and now I really was sick. I climbed the stairs again and looked at the door to Leon’s closet. I should just clean it out. I should just take all his stuff out and burn it at a dump. But I didn’t have the energy to do anything. After the barrage of responsibility that had fallen on me this morning, I just couldn’t do anything about his stuff.
“How dare you leave this mess behind for me to clean up!” I yelled at the door. More tears fell. I crawled into bed and tried to fall asleep, but I could not stop thinking about men—all the men in my life who had wronged me, starting with my father. He’d walked out on our family when I was six. Every boyfriend I’d ever had cheated on me, my brother got himself in trouble and was in jail, and now my husband. I was a magnet for disaster with the opposite sex, a complete failure. I cried some more. Eventually the sobbing gave way to a heaviness that lulled me into sleep.
Chapter Eight
I heard it in my dreams. The phone rang again and it would not stop. House phone, cell phone, ring . . . ring . . . ring . . . I finally answered it. I didn’t even take the time to look at the caller ID. My voice was so weak and my greeting so pitiful that my boss would have been convinced I was at death’s door if it were her.
“Ms. Watson, I’ve been trying to reach you all afternoon. I have a report.” Kemuel Powers’s voice came through the earpiece and miraculously bathed me in warmth. The man had a power, really a superpower, that made me feel like he could save me from this horrible mess.
I sat up in the bed. “That was fast.” I’d just met with him yesterday.
“I work fast.” For a fleeting second I imagined that crooked smile I’d seen fall across his face when he’d attempted to make me laugh; about what I couldn’t even remember now, but I remembered the smile. It was incredibly handsome. Just like old Hill Harper himself. “Look, I’m on my way out of the office. Wednesdays are my early day, Bible Study and all, but if you don’t mind, I can stop by your house and share it with you. You’re on my way home.”
So he didn’t live behind the beaded veil. That was good news. I nodded as if he could see me and cleared my throat. “Of course,” I said. “Please, I would appreciate it.”
Forty minutes and a quick shower later, I was letting Powers into my house. I showed him into the family room which I managed to clean up just before he rang the bell. The trash was now jammed with ice cream cartons and pizza boxes and potato chips bags. I was pathetic and I could tell I’d gained at least five pounds, because all my jeans were too tight.
I watched as Powers glided across the room and took a seat. I was reminded by his presence that I no longer had a man and, although I was nowhere near in the market to find a new one, the eating had to stop or I’d be as big as a house by the time I wanted to date.
“Leon Watson is at Roman’s Palace,” Powers said as soon as my rear hit the cushion on the sofa beside him.
“Roman’s Palace?” I questioned with my tone.
“Las Vegas.” Powers handed me a file folder stapled with a typed report. I glanced at it, flipped the page. There were pictures. “He’s been there since he left Phoenix.”
I was staring at a picture of my thieving husband at a card table. Grinning from ear to ear. Some cheap woman standing behind him. “You went to Vegas?”
“No, I have a detective buddy there who I pay a fee to follow up and get pictures. It helps cut down on expenses for my clients and travel for me.”
I continued to flip through the pictures. Roman’s Palace was clearly a five-star hotel. Gaudy, but posh. There were pictures of him by the pool, in a restaurant, in a jewelry store putting a necklace around the woman’s neck. I looked down at the meager diamond on my finger, the one I was still wearing, still holding out hope that this was all a bad dream. I put the report on the sofa, stood and slid the ring off my finger, and shoved it in the pocket of my jeans. “So, he’s definitely not kidnapped or dead.” I whispered those words to myself and then turned to Powers. “I guess you were wrong about the other woman though.”
“Unfortunately, I wasn’t.” Powers paused and I knew he was about to say something really foul. “Leon has a record. He’s served time for theft by deception, theft by taking—both are fraud charges. He’s a con man. A real professional. He’s done this exact same thing before two years ago in Houston. Stole the proceeds of the sale of a house from his fiancée. He just upped the ante with the corporate funds.”
I was still stuck on the “unfortunately, I wasn’t” part. He’d conveniently avoided explaining that, and although I was disgusted about Leon, I was confused about where Powers was going. “What does that have to do with the woman in the pictures?”
Powers pursed his lips for a few seconds. “Her name is Delilah Owens. She has a rap sheet too. That’s how I found him. The room is registered in one of her aliases. They’ve been busted together before. They went to the same high school. Graduated the same year.”
My stomach flipped and my hand flew over my mouth. I was going to be sick. I was going to vomit three days worth of pizza, Chinese food, and ice cream. Tears filled my eyes; anger burned the inside of my nostrils. I felt the room spin and then Powers’s powerful hands gripped my arm and back. “Have a seat.” His breath whisked past my ear. Like a spell it instantly quelled the nausea. “I know this is a shock.”
I sat and burst into tears. Powers joined me on the sofa again. He must have reached across the table for tissues, because he handed me a fistful. Tissues, they were everywhere in this room. I’d purchased five boxes the other day because I couldn’t stop crying. I peeked out of the corner of my eye at Powers. He looked so uncomfortable. He was probably used to delivering this horrible news from across a desk in his office, but now he had a weeping woman nex
t to him. I stood and walked across the room to the window where I could blow my nose without ruining his eardrum. I pulled myself together and stopped the waterworks, which was easy to do, because another emotion was taking over.
Leon was a professional con artist and he’d known that hooker in the pictures since high school. Steam was rising in my belly. Anger was boiling in my blood. He’d married me, lain in the bed with me every night, made love to me, learned all my fears and my secrets, so he could con me out of my grandmother’s inheritance. Oh heck no. The crying was stopping right now. “That bastard.”
“Ms. Watson, I think it’s time for you to consult an attorney.”
“Tamera,” I said. “Please call me Tamera, and I already have.” I turned back to look at him. He was standing also. “I talked to an attorney. She didn’t have anything to say that I wanted to hear.”
“You can press charges. I think the evidence that he’s got a track record of this will prove you’ve been a victim.”
I took a few steps, closed the space between us. “I don’t want to be a victim,” I said. “Do you know of any way I can get money back? And I’m not talking the way an attorney would advise me.”
“Something an attorney wouldn’t advise you to do?” Powers frowned, but I could tell he knew what I meant.
“I know it’s wrong,” I said. “I know I shouldn’t be trying to take matters into my own hands, but I have to try something. My mother and grandmother raised a fighter. I’m not this woman who lies down and gets swindled. I fight back.”
Powers swallowed noticeably. “Things like this sometimes get out of hand and I don’t want to see you get hurt any more than you’ve been hurt.”
I didn’t respond. Our eyes met for a moment and he seemed to be assessing me. “I know I sound unstable, but I’m not. I am acting in faith. I trust God to take care of me. To vindicate me and make this right.”
Powers nodded. I sensed he was thinking about the scripture in his office.
“Getting the money back is the way to make it right,” I said. “So, please tell me what to do.”
Powers sighed like he knew I was going to ask him this difficult question. He answered like he’d already thought about the answer. “I’d have to know where he was keeping it first, and then there’s the matter of getting him to hand it over. He’s not likely to do that willingly.”
I shook my head. “I’m not concerned about him being willing. You find the money. Can you do that? I have about a thousand dollars left and I get paid next Wednesday. That’s another thirteen hundred if I don’t eat.” I attempted a smile. “If you find the money I’ll take care of the rest.”
Powers looked mystified. “How are you going to do that?”
“I’m still his wife. The same way he was able to take all as my husband, I can take all as his widow.”
“Widow?” Powers’s eyebrows knit together.
“Yes, widow, because after I get my hands on my money, I’m going to kill that lowlife thief.”
Chapter Nine
After Powers delivered the bad news about Leon, I’d watched a few more episodes of Snapped and realized if I was going to kill Leon, I had to have a gun. I shifted on the sofa, and like the princess and the pea, I felt my wedding ring in my pocket under me. Leon had paid $1,200 for the rings, so I knew I should be able to pawn them for at least half. Boy, was I in for a rude awakening.
“I’ll give you four-fifty,” said Big Al of Big Al’s Pawn and Loan. He scratched his belly as he examined my diamond through an eye lens.
“Four-fifty,” I protested.
“Lady, this is barely a carat. I got rings coming out of my ears in here. Four-fifty is it.”
I looked over Al’s shoulder at the gun case. “I want one of those.” I nodded. “Since you’re not willing to negotiate with me can you throw that in the deal?”
Al laughed as he pulled a set of keys from his pants pocket and opened the case. “Live in a bad neighborhood?”
I smirked behind his back. He removed a gun from the very back of the cabinet. “Smith & Wesson double action .45,” he said. “Lightweight. Perfect gun for a lady and that price is a steal.”
The gun’s obscure location in the case was an indication that it probably was stolen. He put it in my hand. It didn’t feel that light. It felt like trouble. “Does it work for sure?”
“I don’t sell stuff that don’t work. You need to take some lessons on how to use it so you don’t kill yourself. Shooter’s Galaxy has classes.”
“What about bullets?” I asked, putting it on the counter.
“You have to get your own ammo. You can get ’em anywhere.” He reached back in the cabinet and pulled out a silver case about the size of a netbook computer. He opened it, removed a small cylinder, and dropped it in my hand.
“What’s this?”
“A silencer. Muffles the sound of the bullet. Came with the gun. Both these and the case are yours for the low asking price of four-fifty.”
I hesitated before asking my next question, because this was where it was going to get sticky. “Can I have it today?”
Big Al shook his head. “You gotta fill out a form and I need to do a NICS check.”
I put a hand on my hip. “NICS check. Come on, seriously, Al, do I look like a criminal? I mean, really take a good look.”
Al eyed me suspiciously and then said, “I’d have to say yes, because you look like somebody trying to break the firearm laws. That’s a crime.”
I pursed my lips. I’d done some reading online and it was common knowledge that the pawnshops in Phoenix were negligent on background checks. In fact, they didn’t even log in some of their gun purchases just in case they wanted to sell them off the books, hence mine coming from the back of the cabinet. One could learn a lot reading messages boards on Internet forums. I wasn’t going to be the only one in the state buying a gun on the straight and narrow, not when I didn’t have time for the formalities. “I need it today,” I said. There was resolute finality in my tone. The type of finality that said we were doing business my way or not at all. I let my eyes do a sweep of the empty store. Al’s eye’s followed mine. “It looks like you could use the business.”
Al’s bushy miniature squirrel’s tails for eyebrows came together. Suspicion laced his tone. “What’s so urgent?”
“I live in a bad neighborhood remember?” I said tersely. “Look, I can try to find another shop.”
Big Al shook his head as if saying “no need,” and then he slid my weapon across the counter. “You kill somebody and I don’t know you.”
I smiled, put the gun and the case in my oversized shoulder bag, and left the shop. Al didn’t have to worry about this gun. It was headed for Las Vegas, and if I killed somebody there, I wouldn’t even know myself.
Chapter Ten
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Pull your shoulders back and straighten out this elbow.” Bruce, my shooting instructor, helped position my arms. I squinted to improve my view of the black-and-white bull’s-eye target down the range and fired off another round. I was getting used to having this hard, black metal in my hands. At first it felt like a bug, like something that crawled up my arm that I needed to shake off. But now, almost four hours into my second session of the “Basic Shooting” lesson, it was feeling like an extension of my hand.
“You sure this is your first gun? You’re pretty good.” Bruce winked at me.
I smiled and shifted my feet to adjust my weight. “My first time,” I replied. “I think I like it.”
“Most women do. It’s the power. You chicks dig it.” Bruce laughed and I tried not to be insulted that a kid in his early twenties had just called me a chick.
“After this, you’ve got one more round.” He moved on to another student. I was glad to see him go. I didn’t need him anymore. I had this hitting-the-mark stuff down to a tee. I had gotten used to the recoil when I fired. I had gotten used to the noise. I had gotten used to the idea of firing a gun, period. I insert
ed a new clip of blank bullets and pushed the start button. My target flipped down and up popped the last round Bruce had told me about. The one with figures of men and women moving; targets that challenged me to shift and move and shoot. I imagined Leon and his skank girlfriend, Delilah, and pulled back on the trigger.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
I blocked out the voice in my head that said, “Vengeance is mine,” because I had a piece of revenge right in my hand. One that was sure to get me results here and now, not in five or ten years or in the afterlife. My targets were on the move again.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
My bullet clip was empty. I removed my protective eye and ear gear. The paper bodies down the lane were full of holes in all the right places. I smiled. Both of those no-good Negroes were dead.
I pulled into my driveway and noted a car rolling in right behind me. Erin. I’d been lucky she’d had to go to Denver last week for a training conference, but now she was back and I was about to get an earful. I cracked my car door and grabbed my bags.
“Are you out of your mind?” Erin yanked my poor Honda’s door back like she was trying to pull it off the hinges. “Do you know how many times I’ve called you?”
How could I not know? She’d called me almost as many times as I’d called Leon when he first went missing. I stayed calm, hoping it would diffuse her temper. “I left you a message.”
She stepped back to give me room to climb out. “Girl, you don’t leave me no message on my voice mail. I’ve been worried sick about you and the whole Leon the Loser situation. I can’t believe you didn’t take my calls.”
I pushed the key fob to lock my car and turned to walk to the house. She was right behind me. “Erin, I know you like to be kept up to date, but really, I’ve been pretty busy cleaning up the mess Leon the Loser, as you so eloquently put it, left behind.”
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