A Simmering Dilemma

by Tyora Moody

  I started to tap on the door, but then heard the backdoor open. Porgy’s yips could be heard clear down the hallway. That dog must have sensed I was home because next thing I knew he was tearing around the corner towards me. I couldn’t help but smile.

  Amos was in the kitchen washing his hands at the sink. I glanced out the kitchen window and noticed the riding lawn mower was in the middle of the yard. “I see you’ve been busy out in the yard.”

  “Yes, I needed something to keep me busy.”

  “You mean from checking out the crime scene,” I winked at him.

  He smiled, “That too.”

  I grabbed some glasses from the cabinet and then reached inside the fridge. “Did you get any info about the case?” After filling each glass with ice cubes from the icemaker, I poured some ice tea as Amos settled at the kitchen table.

  He cocked his eyebrow. “Nope. Any contacts I have at the station were not cooperating today. I kept getting warned away.”

  I swirled the ice around in my tea before taking a long sip. “Why do you think your cop friends are being hush-hush on this one?”

  Amos took a long drink from his glass before responding. The frown marks in his large forehead seemed to be even deeper. “Probably because the body was in my yard. Or, well, in the backyard of a house I own. I’m sure Detective Wilkes is making it known that she wants no interference with the case.” He sighed deeply, “Briana didn’t make it any better. She didn’t cooperate last night.”

  I sat up in my chair. I still felt like Briana was hiding something, but didn’t want to come out and say so. “Maybe she was still in shock.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’m still in shock myself.” I told him about Gladys Howell’s visit to the church today and mentioning she was looking for her daughter. “I had a strange feeling. I felt so bad that I didn’t remember the girl until her mom started talking. I was kind of ashamed because I knew her face looked familiar last night.”

  “Wait,” Amos held up his hand. “How do you know the woman in the shed was Sondra?”

  “I mentioned to Gladys that she might want to report Sondra missing to the police and to be sure to have a current photo. She had a picture in her phone of her the other night. Amos, it was her! Same clothes.”

  He shook his head. “If I had known you were going to find out that fast, I wouldn’t have bothered my boys today.”

  I knew by boys that Amos was referring to fellow retirees, his former partner, Joe Douglas, and another colleague, Lenny Wilkes. Wilkes happened to be the father of our infamous Detective Sarah Wilkes. Both Joe and Lenny headed up their own private detective agency and occasionally sent work to Amos when he was interested.

  I smacked his arm. “Believe me it was purely a divine setup. Amani just happened to tell me someone was outside crying. I went to check and this woman fell in my lap, literally since Pastor Jones wasn’t around. I figured you would reach out to Joe and Lenny for this.”

  He drained his glass of tea and leaned back in the kitchen chair. “Yeah. The one piece of information Joe was able to gather intel on was the symbol on her right hand.” He reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out a notebook, probably similar to the one issued to him when he was a cop. He pointed to a symbol on a piece of paper.

  It looked like a diamond now that I saw it up close.

  Amos continued, “There wasn’t any ID on her, but this was probably a stamp from a nightclub. That fits with what her mother said about her going out Saturday evening. Detective Wilkes will probably narrow down which nightclub and show a photo around. Did you mention anything about last night to Gladys?”

  “No, I was scared too. I didn’t want that kind of news coming from me. Should I say something, as a lead to Detective Wilkes? I don’t want to be accused of meddling!”

  “No, it’s good you didn’t. Wilkes will find out soon enough as long as Gladys goes to the police.”

  “I’m sure she will. I can check back with her tomorrow.” I perked up, “You know what, apparently one of Sondra’s jobs was working at the Black Diamond Night Club. Would Sondra go and hang out at the place where she worked?”

  Amos shrugged, “It’s quite possible, especially if employees get discounts. It would be easy to look for the club and see if this symbol is used there.”

  “Then what?”

  Amos answered, “It would be great to find out who was around Sondra that night.”

  I shook my head, “Gladys did mention that Sondra had an on and off again relationship with her kids’ father. You know I didn’t get his name. Suppose he had something to do with it?”

  “Oftentimes domestic violence turns into foul play. It’s quite possible Sondra could have had a fatal run-in with this boyfriend. In fact, I can see that scenario of a boyfriend hiding the body.”

  “Well, I can certainly reach out to Gladys and get a name. When do you think this will all be confirmed by the police? I was so nervous talking to her today knowing about last night’s discovery.”

  “Knowing Detective Wilkes, she’s probably already identified Sondra and mapped out the timeline. It’s a matter of rounding up suspects.”

  I wrung my hands. “I can’t believe it was Sondra Howell. I remember her at thirteen having a lethal mouth. She was not afraid to speak what was on her mind no matter the consequences. In fact, she got on my nerves a couple of times. She was one of those children who liked to talk back to adults.” I sighed, “I wonder who she made angry enough to kill her?”

  “Good question.”

  I know we didn’t want to go there again, but I had to ask. “Have you been looking at your old cases? Any connections?”

  Amos scratched his head. “Yeah, I talked to Joe. I’m checking on the status of some inmates that I had suspicions about, but I don’t see anyone getting out of prison to come and pin a murder on me.”

  “Stranger things can happen. So will you keep looking?”

  “Of course.” He eyed me, “Are you worried?”

  “No. Well, sort of. You know Annie Mae and Willie Mae were upset that we have had all these murders in our neighborhood. It’s really not that many. But this murder is very different.”

  “It’s disturbing and I don’t blame the Brown sisters for being worried.” He reached in his pocket again and unfolded a piece of paper. “Briana was reluctant to share this with me.”

  “The list?” I picked up the yellow sheet of paper that looked to be pulled from a legal pad. There were some names I immediately recognized and others I didn’t. I counted about twenty names. I didn’t even know Briana had that many people over at the house. One name in particular was missing. “This can’t be everyone. Sondra’s name isn’t even on the list.”

  Amos shook his head, “I know, but it’s a start. Someone on this list had to know Sondra. Maybe she showed up and Briana wasn’t aware she was there. Either way, we need to know who did run into Sondra and were angry enough to not only strike her dead but attempt to hide the body on my property.”

  I heard movement at the kitchen door and looked up to see Briana’s distraught face.

  Amos turned to see his daughter. Frowning, he asked, “Briana, are you okay?”

  I cocked an eyebrow thinking about what I’d learned about Sondra so far. Her and Briana had to be in the same age range. I asked, “Did you know Sondra Howell?”

  Briana cringed as if someone had punched her in the chest, then turned and fled from the doorway. The next thing I comprehended was the front door slamming closed.

  Amos and I stared at each other.

  I finally stated what had been on my mind since last night. “Amos, I think Briana knows a lot more than she’s told us or the police.”

  He closed his eyes, “I think so too. Eugeena, I don’t know what to do. I’m fearful she’s done something that I can’t help her get out of this time.”

  This time.

  What had Briana done before, and what did Amos have to do the last time?

  Chapter 8r />
  Briana never returned to the house and though I tried to move on with our evening, Amos’s statement still bugged me. I became interested in Amos only two years ago. At the time, I couldn’t understand why the man next door had caught my attention. Now here we were married a whole five months. Married life had been good, but we didn’t know everything about each other’s past lives. That was okay with us both being over sixty. We had entire lives with other people. Still, I didn’t want us to be having secrets.

  Secrets with ramifications.

  Amos’s statement had spun up my anxiety level. It had already been elevated since we discovered the body next door. Knowing the woman’s identity made her death even more real.

  I managed to grill some chicken breast and sauté some green beans. It wasn’t a fancy meal, but it would do. I couldn’t concentrate on cooking anything too complex while my mind spun up all kinds of foolishness. You know your mind does that to you sometimes, just let the imagination take over. I had to flat out say to myself, “Eugeena, stop it.” This was Amos’s daughter, and this man had been nothing but good to my children. Whatever Amos had done for his daughter before, it couldn’t be that bad.

  Me and the Lord knew how many nights I prayed over my children knowing they were up to no good and in some cases winded up in trouble, and they turned out just fine.

  Praise the Lord!

  We ate dinner in silence, which was unusual. Amos and I usually had conversations about our day, the children, the grands and occasionally squabbled over local happenings and the news. I cleared the table, busying myself with loading the dishwasher. When I finished, I turned around and the list that Amos had pulled out earlier caught my eye. I grabbed the piece of paper and sat. “We didn’t talk about this list. Do you know the people on this list?”

  Amos had been typing on his phone. He’d been doing that a lot lately. Like me, he wasn’t a tech geek, but somehow those little devices took over your life. I often caught Amos engrossed in a game, which I found funny. It seemed out of the ordinary for him.

  “Amos,” I repeated and waved the list at him.

  He lifted his head and nodded, “Some of them. But only two names concern me.”

  I frowned. So he did hear me when I asked the question before.

  He continued not paying any attention to my face, which spoke volumes. “I plan on meeting with one or both of them tomorrow.”

  Amos was going to have me developing wrinkles with the workout on my face. I could feel the tension in my forehead as my frown deepened. I guessed the two names he was referring to were at the top of the list. The Nichols boys, Theo and Damion.

  “Is that really a good idea, Amos?”

  He waved like it was no big deal. “Don’t worry. I need some work done on my truck too. I have a cover story,” he winked.

  Amos might have been acting like this was no big deal, but I still didn’t like the idea. He’d already let it be known he wasn’t pleased with Theo visiting Briana the other night. What exactly was he planning to ask the brothers?

  Did you kill a girl and leave her body in my shed?

  I doubted seriously that a sixty-four year old man was going to make two young men confess. Young people rarely showed respect for their elders anyway. But before I could convey my concerns, Amos stood from the table. “I’m going to go next door to check on Briana.”

  “Okay, if you don’t mind, my first thought would be to check out some of these names on Facebook.”

  The grin that crossed Amos’s face almost made me blush.

  He pointed his finger at me, “I knew you couldn’t resist so don’t let me stop you.”

  After doing some other cleaning touch-ups in the kitchen, I grabbed my laptop and settled on the couch in the living room. I usually spent time in the evenings playing around on Facebook anyway, so I had to force myself not to scroll through the feed. It took me a whole twenty minutes to pull myself from watching funny video after video. I needed the humor, and laughter is good medicine. Some of my anxiety from earlier disappeared. Finally getting down to business, I started typing in names from the list starting with the two guys.

  The Nichols brothers had Facebook pages, but they didn’t post much. Some posts were from Instagram, mainly cars they worked on in their auto body shop. My preferred social media vice remained Facebook only. I still hadn’t quite gotten the hang of Instagram, though Leesa talked me into creating an account. All I saw most days was a whole lot of selfies.

  Speaking of selfies, the brothers did a lot of posing, looking more like overgrown teenagers than men. I had both of these young men in my classroom years ago, so I knew they were in their late twenties. Both brothers shared the same solemn look on their faces like it would hurt them to show some teeth. They were good-looking as boys and still remained handsome, now taller and more buffed than they were in my eighth grade class. I recalled Theo always being large for his age, while his younger brother, Damion, was small and skinny. He was only a year younger than Theo but it took him a while to catch up to his brother.

  Theo was bald, which was surprising to me. I wondered if that was by choice or if he had already started prematurely losing his hair. His skin was milk-chocolate and he had the most expressive brown eyes which almost seemed to not fit his solemn face. There was a hint of dimples. If the man smiled, women would probably lose their minds over them.

  Morris Chestnut. I snapped my fingers, Theo reminded me of him. I tickled myself sometimes at what I could recall. I may have been a history teacher, but I kept up on the pop culture stuff too.

  I clicked on the younger brother’s page. Damion resembled his older brother in bulk and height but had bright, caramel skin. Same expressive eyes as his brother’s, but Damion’s eyes were hazel and almost sorrowful like a puppy who’d lost his owner. In several photos, Damion wore his close-cut hair with blond streaks, reminding me of that singer Chris Brown.

  These were indeed two good-looking men. With Briana just coming back to town a few months ago, I wondered how she hooked up with them. She certainly had no problem inviting them to the house. Maybe she’d kept in touch all these years.

  Growing tired of looking at the Nichols boys, I scoured the list, recognizing a few other names who were all definitely students of mine. If people filled out their profiles on Facebook, an amateur detective like myself could gather quite a bit of data. I’d come to the conclusion that most of these people were in the same age range and probably were Sondra’s classmates. These folks had known each other all their lives, attended the same schools and graduated together.

  That started me thinking.

  Though they didn’t live in Sugar Creek while the girls were in school, Amos mentioned that Briana graduated from North Charleston high school. I knew when my own children had attended, the high school averaged six hundred students with about one hundred and fifty students per class.

  Sondra and Briana had to have been aware of each other.

  Why was Briana acting like she didn’t recognize her?

  I needed to know more about Sondra. I was still peeved at myself for not recognizing her. I could blame it on the state of her deceased body inside the shed. The horror of it all made me shiver slightly. I rubbed my arms, looking up from the laptop.

  Focus, Eugeena. The Lord is my protector.

  I didn’t have time to be getting weirded out now. I shook myself and typed in Sondra’s name. There were quite a few Sondra Howell Facebook pages and it took me some time to find the right page. Interesting enough, I found Sondra’s page by surfing through my daughter’s page. Apparently, Leesa and Sondra were friends on Facebook.

  That surprised me because Leesa was younger. After further calculations in my tired head, I came to the conclusion that Leesa was probably a freshman when Sondra was a senior. Leesa told me once people just friended and followed each other on social media to have the numbers. Those relationships weren’t always real. Still, I would be curious to know my daughter’s take on Sondra.

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nbsp; As I perused the posts Sondra kept public, I noticed a pattern. Despite Gladys mentioning that Sondra didn’t attend church, I found her page filled with bible verses, especially in the days prior to her death. I even spotted one of my favorites.

  “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6-7, NIV).

  As I scrolled down, I read another one from the book of John, “Do not let your heart be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me” (John 14:1, NIV).

  It seemed to me Sondra was going through something and she poured out her anguish on her Facebook page. I wondered if Sondra was suffering from some type of depression. She worked a lot, but Gladys said she spent the whole day in bed on Saturday, not really spending time with her children. She could have just been tired, but that was a little concerning to me. What was going through Sondra’s mind? Did she just sleep the whole day from exhaustion or was something else bothering her?

  Folks didn’t often deal with mental illness. I knew this from experience. Leesa suffered from postpartum depression after delivering her second child. Previously, as a teenager, she grieved deeply from the loss of her best friend during her junior year in high school. Her grief led to a rebellious period that resulted in her first child and my first granddaughter, Keisha.

  I decided to ramp up my nosiness and dug a little deeper into Sondra’s photos, at least those that were public. She kept quite a few photos of her children on public view, which I thought wasn’t a good idea. As I looked at Sondra’s little boy and girl, I recalled seeing both children in summer camp at Missionary Baptist this morning, specifically in Annie Mae’s class. I’d never made the connection they were Sondra’s kids. We had a lot of children attending the church’s summer camp who resided in the nearby community and needed a place to be during the summer. Digging further down, I found a birthday party celebration at Chuck E. Cheese only a few weeks ago. Looks like the boy had turned eight years old.