“You’re pathetic, Bates. How are Vicky and the family?”
“Vicky left. She couldn’t handle the job. The boys are young men.”
“Time does get away.”
“How about you and yours? Travis, right?”
“Travis is a young man now, too, first year in college. I’m still working forensics, firearms. Right now I’m recovering from a car accident.”
“On or off the job?”
“Off.”
“Damn. You’re supposed to get hurt on the job so you can take a sweet retirement, and get out while you’re still breathing.” We laughed.
“Tell me, why am I being blessed with your call?” he asked.
I hesitated. I decided Bates should remain outside the loop of people knowing Nareece’s true identity—for now.
“I need another favor, Bates. My girlfriend disappeared again. This time it’s been more than a week. She’s never been gone this long. Her husband, you remember John, he filed a missing person’s report and I hoped you could check into it a bit, see what’s getting done, if anything, and maybe do some digging.”
“No need to be hoping, I got you.” He asked several questions to reconfirm Nareece’s information. “I’ll call when something surfaces,” he said.
“Thanks, Bates. As soon as I get on my feet good, I’ll be up that way. I’ll stop in.”
The doorbell rang as I hung up. I hobbled across the room and barely got the door open when Laughton ducked inside as though hiding from somebody. I had not seen or heard from him since I’d returned home from the hospital. Cap called, Parker called, even Cap’s assistant, Connie, had called to check on me, but not Laughton.
“How you doin’?” he asked. “About time you got dressed and hit the streets, don’t you think?” He chuckled.
I rolled my eyes and moved past him to resume my position on the couch. A silent prayer kept a guard over my mouth.
He stopped halfway across the floor and stood there like he was waiting for directions.
“Got a beer?”
“Don’t I always keep a beer here for you?”
He went into the kitchen and returned with a Heineken, working the opener. The bottle top popped off to the floor. He stumbled forward, kicking the cap out of reach, lunged for it and missed, then grabbed the cap and flipped it onto the coffee table.
“Been sippin’ something already, huh?”
He took a swig of beer, swished the suds around in his mouth, and finished with an “Ah.” I suppressed a laugh. Laughton took another swig, then sat on the coffee table facing me, knee-distance away.
“Look, M. I don’t think your accident was an accident,” he said abruptly, ignoring my question about drinking.
“What do you mean? Why would you say that?”
“Trust me on this.”
“Now I have a problem, Laughton. You’ve been dodging me, working on things by yourself, holding back information—and that was all before my accident. Besides, the car came from Calvin’s side. If someone wanted to hurt me, they would have struck my side or head-on.” He did not respond. “Maybe someone was trying to kill Calvin,” I thought out loud.
“Nothing is the way you think. What’s happening behind the scenes is stuff you don’t know about, that you don’t need to get involved in.”
“I don’t need to know? I’m your partner, for chrissakes. You’re telling me the accident was not an accident at all, but that someone tried to kill me or Calvin or both of us, and I don’t need to be involved?”
“I want you to watch your back until I figure this out.” He took another long swig of beer and set the bottle on the coffee table, then moved to the couch, next to me. “Calvin’s still in a coma. Go to Boston like you planned. I promise when you get back, things will be straight.” He raised his hand and moved a strand of hair from my face to behind my ear.
I couldn’t believe a tingle surged through me.
“Hm, hm, hm. You are a beautiful woman.”
A moment of silence, Laughton’s arms around me, his hand on my leg, old ass embers trying to burn my butt. My leg twitched. This was not happening. No way.
I broke his hold, cleared my throat, and said, “What’s happening in the Taylor case?” I regained my upright composure, grabbed the closest thing to me, his bottle of beer, and drank. The beer went down wrong and came up through my nose, choking me. Laughton bolted to the kitchen and returned with a towel. Repositioned and wiping spilled beer from my lap, I continued, “I mean, Cap confirmed Marcy Taylor was murdered. He also said Wade’s execution pointed to a drug deal gone bad. Any leads there?”
“Not yet. The gun found at the scene didn’t kill him.”
Travis and Kenyetta came in as Laughton finished his sentence. He jumped up and hunkered over to Travis like a sumo wrestler going for the kill. I braced myself as Kenyetta bounded over to me like a puppy excited to see her master. This time she gracefully swooped down on me and kissed my cheek. I had no idea why the child thought she had to kiss me every time she came in the house.
“What’s going on with you, young man?” Laughton said, jabbing Travis in his gut. Travis countered with an uppercut to Laughton’s jaw.
“Doin’ good, Unc,” Travis said.
Unc, short for “uncle,” was what Travis had always called Laughton.
Laughton grabbed Travis’s head and pushed down to connect it with his uplifted knee.
“Gettin’ ready to bounce, headin’ to the Big Apple for the weekend.” Travis grabbed Laughton around the knees and lifted him off the ground.
“Damn, boy.” Travis set him down and Laughton swatted his head. Laughter filled the room. “I guess you’re grown enough to make the Big Apple.”
Travis came to the couch and kissed me, cuing Kenyetta to make a move downstairs.
“Better keep this lovely young lady close,” Laughton said, then crouched and made a move toward Kenyetta. She giggled and slid in behind Travis, who pulled her to his side and blocked Laughton’s access.
“Not to worry, babe. I won’t let this dirty ol’ man near you,” he said and punched Laughton in the shoulder. Laughton followed Travis and Kenyetta to the basement stairs and closed the door after them.
“Muriel,” Laughton said, returning to the living room.
Muriel. Laughton hadn’t called me Muriel since the day we met. M and M; M; Partner; Knuckles (don’t ask) . . . but never Muriel. I tensed and started to get up from the couch. Laughton blocked my effort. He stood over me, arms crossed. I settled back down.
“As long as we’ve been partners, we’ve shared everything, or so I thought,” he said.
I felt like he was my husband about to leave me for someone or something else.
“But, Muriel, I need to work this out and I need to do it alone.”
“I can’t make you tell me what’s going on. I can’t make you let me help. What do you want me to say? What do you want me to do?”
He uncrossed his arms and stretched them out toward me in a helpless gesture. “Stay home. Take some time off,” Laughton pleaded, still standing over me. He switched to a hard tone. “The captain gave you clearance for a few weeks of sick time. Take it,” he said, then he stormed to the door and out of the house.
Like I said before, I have never been married, never even been in a more serious relationship than with Laughton and now three months into things with Calvin, so I wasn’t real clear about how a breakup could crush you. I imagine Laughton’s leaving was as close as I wanted to get. I suppose Laughton was my husband in every way except sexually. That connection had ended almost from the sweet beginning.
I would have left the force to be with Laughton. But he said he didn’t want the backlash of being blamed if I ever regretted leaving the force or if our passions ever cooled.
Now my body burned and sweat poured from every pore.
The house was quiet and dark when the phone woke me. I searched for it with one arm, not wanting to move from my position of facedown on the couc
h. The ringing stopped before I found the phone between the cushions of the couch. I checked the caller ID. The number was unfamiliar. It rang again. The same number showed.
“Muriel Mabley.”
No answer.
“Hello, who’s calling, please?”
No answer.
I could hear rustling on the other end, like cellophane being crinkled. I sat up at attention.
“Nareece?”
The rustling noise gave way to soft, steady breathing.
“Nareece, if this is you, please answer me.”
Silence.
“Tell me you’re all right. Think about the girls, and John.”
More rustling.
“Please, Reece. Talk to me.” The line disconnected. A few minutes later, the phone rang again.
“Enough of this. Reece, answer me.”
“Reece called? Is she okay?” Dulcey screeched through the phone.
I sank back down into the couch. “I was about to go through the phone. There would have been no way, no how, no place for that girl to escape my reach.” I told Dulcey about the phone call and Laughton’s visit. “Dulcey, I need to go to Boston. I’m losing my ever-lovin’ mind between Nareece and Laughton and Calvin. . . and these damn hot flashes.” I jumped up and pulled off my robe, as sweat dripped from the tip of my nose. I paced the length of the living room, struggling against losing control and wanting to hit something or someone.
Dulcey jabbered away, “Breathe, girl, deep breaths. Go with the flow, M. Take deep breaths.”
I threw the phone. It hit the wall and landed on the couch in several pieces—the phone, battery, and battery cover. Just as quick as my body had fired up, the cool registered and a chill caught me. I put my robe back on, retrieved the phone, put the pieces back together, then called Dulcey back.
“Are you there?” I said when the ringing stopped but there was no “hello.”
“And you’ve only just begun, girl. I’m saying you need to learn how to flow with them flashes and feel the power in them,” she said. “I’ll make you a recording so you can push Replay whenever you’re needin’—”
“Dulcey, shut up. Please. Just shut up.”
“Listen to me, M. When you think you’re going to lose your mind and the temperature can’t go any higher and you want to just melt and be done, get pissed, girl. Punch something, scream. You’ll cool right down and your sense, what little you have”—she cackled, then continued—“will come right back, better than before you lost it.”
“Yeah, except the hotter I get, the more out of control I feel, and Lord only knows what might happen.”
CHAPTER 9
Another week passed before I regained enough strength to travel and Dulcey could clear her client schedule. I called Bates to let him know I was coming. He had called once since I’d asked him to look into Nareece’s disappearance, only to say there were no new developments.
On the way out of town, we stopped at the hospital to see Calvin. The nurse at the station said his condition remained unchanged, now three weeks in a coma. Three weeks since someone had tried to kill us.
I stood outside the door unable to move farther until a nurse came and pushed it open. She was on a mission to take his vitals. I stood in the doorway for a bit, then stumbled in behind her and waited for her to finish and leave before I inched up to his bedside. He looked as though he was just sleeping. I mean, there were two jagged lines on his forehead, and a scrape across the bridge of his nose, but his expression was uninhibited. I rubbed my fingers over his forehead and down his cheek. His skin was as smooth and shiny as a sandstone. My heart beat hard and fast. I kissed his stilled lips and his cheek.
Driving through New York took two hours, a drive that really should have taken half that time. Another three hours passed before patches of green with splashes of yellow, pink, and purple streaked by, the backdrop on both sides of the Massachusetts Turnpike. A long winter riddled with record snowstorms had finally given way to spring peeking through. Spring had bloomed all the way twenty years ago when Cap and I had moved Nareece to Boston. The tepid breeze and vibrant colors were even more inviting then, until I almost decided to move with her. Nareece shunned the idea. She said she needed to stand on her own two feet, which was a major contradiction where she was concerned. I thought her being in Boston would give me relief from wondering and having to deal with whatever insanity she managed to find on any given day. Really, her move became a twenty-year, long-distance upbringing, with no vacation from worry for me, until she met John, ten years ago.
“Hmm, not even then,” I said out loud without realizing it, but for Dulcey coming back at me.
“Girl, what you talkin’? I thought you were asleep.”
“No, just thinking. Nareece and her crazy self. Twenty years and still she acts crazy more than she acts sane, and even then you have to wonder if she really does manage to exhibit a lucid moment in her madness. John has to love the ground she prances on to put up with her stuff. What is she thinking, leaving those babies?”
“She’s not. You and John haven’t let her. Every time the child burps, one of you wipes any spittle from her cheeks and then you want to wash her up while you’re at it, and dress her up in bows and frills and put her in a bubble lined with cushiony stuff so she won’t bump anything or get bruised anywhere.”
Blah, blah, blah. Sweat beads popped out on her forehead.
I appreciated Dulcey being the devil at my back most times, but sometimes she pushed so hard I could hardly resist the urge to snatch her face off. I was watching her mouth moving fast, spit spraying out every other word, head bobbing up and down, and I was wondering how she was driving with so much other action going on. “You know I’m talkin’ true,” she was saying. “You and Reecey need to fix this so everybody can move on.” She looked sideways at me. I glared “enough” to her—one eye brow up, the other furrowed, lips sucked to one side.
After about a half hour I entered the Nareece conversation arena once again. Dulcey could be hard to take sometimes, but she was my other half and I needed her mouth to be running, feeding me and helping me find a halfway straight path to follow through this situation.
“I’m really worried about her this time, Dulce. It’s been three weeks since I was supposed to go there so we could open the letter.”
“Wait one minute. You mean she still hasn’t opened the letter?” Dulcey shook her head in wonder, then went on before I could say anything. “Yeah, I guess not since you been out of commission.”
“She wouldn’t open it until I got there and I never got there, and now I don’t know where she is or whether or not she has opened it yet. It’s been two weeks since I talked to John. He’s not answering his phone. Bates says one of the neighbors saw John and the girls a few days ago, so no missing persons there. I don’t know what the hell’s going on.”
An hour later we checked in to the Crown Plaza at Exit 17. The hotel hangs like a bridge over the Massachusetts Turnpike in Newton. Newton is about fifteen miles west of Boston and twenty minutes from Milton, where John and Nareece live.
When we got to the room, I called John. No answer. We went to the hotel restaurant, Applebee’s, and ate, then drove over to the house anyway. The time was 9 p.m. when we left the hotel. Surely they would be home by the time we got there.
I did not know my way around the area well, but I knew my way between the hotel and Nareece’s house. I had made the trip at least fifty times in twenty years: Massachusetts Turnpike east to Exit 14, I-95/Route 128, to Route 38N toward Milton, to Canton Avenue, right to Indian Spring Road. On most visits, I stayed with Nareece and John, but some situations warranted separate space.
The neighborhood consisted of a mixture of sprawling homes and medium-sized sprawling homes set on a minimum of three acres each, a pumped-up version of a Stepford Wives community. Yards showcased perfectly shaped trees, manicured lawns, and vibrant flower gardens, despite spring not having sprung to its full potential yet. Nareece and John
’s house was a medium-sized sprawling colonial set back a ways from the street, the front partly hidden by foliage. John had done well, though I still did not understand exactly what he did. Dulcey pulled into the half-circle driveway and stopped just past the front door. A faint light shone through the large picture window, giving off an eerie aura.
“Spooky,” Dulcey whispered.
“Oh girl, get your scary ass out of the car.” I chuckled with tentative sincerity.
Dulcey got out and came around to my side. “Now this is what I’m talking about,” she said, looking up and down the street and perusing the houses. “Reecey done good for herself. Maybe I’ll move here when I retire.”
“Shut up. You’ve only been out of Philly twice, once on your honeymoon and now. You are never leaving Philly and that’s a fact.” We laughed until Dulcey choked. It took a few minutes for her to stop coughing and catch her breath.
“There’s a time for everything,” she said, stealing her way up the driveway to the front door. I got to the door first. It stood ajar. I pulled my gun from its holster at my waist and waved Dulcey to get behind me. I pushed the door all the way open and stepped inside, flicking the light switch on in the same movement.
To the left, the cushions of the Italian leather couch and chair, Nareece’s prized possessions, were strewn across the floor, along with lamps, papers, and tchotchkes.
I whispered, “Stay put, Dulcey,” which was a waste of breath. Dulcey followed me step for step as I searched each room, then went upstairs.
At the top of the stairs to the right, John and Nareece’s bedroom door creaked open with a light touch. Everything seemed to be in its place. I tiptoed down the hall to the twins’ room.
He charged out the door at us like a bull, knocking me back and causing my gun to fire. Dulcey swung and landed a punch, knocking the man against the wall. He pushed her back and ran for the stairs, as Dulcey flipped sideways over the railing. I reached out and caught her arm, holding on for about three seconds before my grip slipped, and she fell to the stairs below, barely missing falling on the man, who fled through the open front door to the outside. She tumbled down the stairs like a rag doll, flipped head over body once, and landed at the bottom spread-eagle.
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