Games Divas Play (A Diva Mystery Novel)

by Angela Burt-Murray

  “Sounds good to me as well,” I said, shifting uncomfortably in my seat.

  “Wonderful. I’ll go get your bottle of wine, and you can have some time to look over your menus.”

  I glanced down at my menu, grateful for the momentary distraction.

  “So, how are you?” asked Terrence, as he leaned toward me. I wished he would stay on his side of the banquette.

  “I’m fine. Excited to be back in New York,” I replied. “How have you been?”

  “Good. I’m happy in the DA’s office.”

  “The DA’s office? You’re not on the force anymore?”

  “No, I left the force after I finished law school. I’ve been a special prosecutor in the district attorney’s office for the last three years.”

  He told me that after his five years on the police force in the narcotics unit and three years in the DA’s office, he was continuing his work in narcotics by working on the prosecutor’s special drug task force to help state and federal agents to build cases against large international drug cartels.

  “I’ve been working on some important cases that require me to pretty much split my time between New York and Washington, and I also spent some time in Colombia and Bolivia last month.”

  “Terrence, you did it. Just like you said you would. That’s wonderful. Your mom must be so proud of you.” I felt a flood of relief that he was no longer working as a cop. He was safe now.

  “Yeah, you know my mom is just happy I’m no longer chasing down bad guys and in the line of fire anymore. But I try to tell Brenda Joyce that working in the DA’s office has its own line of fire.”

  An awkward pause fell between us as I flashed back to our last encounter when he was lying in the hospital bed after being shot in the line of duty. His words had brought up an unpleasant memory for me. We sat across the table from each other, the silence weighing heavily between us.

  “So, what are you doing in town?” Terrence asked to quickly change the subject.

  “I got a new job. I’m the editor of a new magazine and website, DivaDish.”

  “Congratulations, Nia. That’s great news. Maybe we should have had Blaine bring us some champagne to toast instead of wine. When do you start?”

  “Start?” I asked, unsure of what he meant. “I’ve been in the job almost three months now.”

  “You mean you’ve been back in my city for three months, and you didn’t even call me?” he asked, sounding wounded.

  “I did call you,” I said defensively. “Last week, I called you to ask you to dinner to discuss something.” Did he expect that I would call him when I got to town and we’d hook up like old times? Too much had been said and too much time had gone by. And I probably wouldn’t have called him last week if I didn’t need his help for Vanessa.

  Our waiter, Blaine, returned to the table with the bottle of wine. He uncorked the bottle and presented the cork to Terrence who sniffed it and then held out his wineglass to sample the vintage merlot. Satisfied with the sample, he asked Blaine to fill our glasses. Not eager to return to his line of questioning, I jumped in and let the waiter know we were ready to order. I ordered the grilled salmon with asparagus, and Terrence said he’d have the lamb chops and spinach.

  “Very good, Mr. Graham,” Blaine said as he finished taking our orders before leaving the table.

  I took a sip of the fragrant wine to calm my nerves. Why did I suddenly feel like I needed to be on the defensive?

  “So, OK, you couldn’t call a brother and let him know you were back in town,” he said tightly, resuming the tense conversation. “What did you want to discuss?”

  I decided to cut to the chase.

  “Look, all bullshit from the past aside, Terrence, I called you because I need your help.” I reached into my large clutch and pulled out the envelope Vanessa had given me with the threatening letters, e-mails, and text messages. I spread out everything across the table. I had placed each of the letters in an individual plastic sleeve in case there was any sort of forensic evidence that could be obtained from them. Although, given all the hands that had held the letters and the amount of time that had gone by, I doubted there would be anything traceable.

  “What the hell . . . ?” Terrence began to pick up the pages one by one and examine them, turning them over in his large hands. “What is this stuff?”

  I quickly ran down the story Vanessa had shared with me last week and told him the rumors about Marcus and the dead dancer in case that had any relation to the letters.

  Terrence had met Vanessa once when she had come to visit me while we were dating. They had hit it off just like I had hoped they would, and that was why I knew I could trust him with her secret.

  When Blaine returned to the table with some warm bread, I leaned over the photos to shield them from his eyes. When he left, Terrence began to look carefully at the letters again.

  “She needs to go to the police,” he said, thumbing through the ghastly threats.

  “I know. I told her that, but she says they can’t do it. Marcus recently signed his new contract with the Gladiators, and he and his management team told her they can’t afford for this to get out. Initially they didn’t want to jeopardize the trade to New York, and now that it’s complete, they don’t want to rock the boat.”

  “What kind of man puts money in front of his family’s safety?” Terrence asked with his jaw tightening. “Just a cursory glance at these letters tells me that whoever is sending these letters is sick, and the fact that he or she managed to have them delivered directly to their homes in both Phoenix and now New York means whoever it is is serious. Dead serious, Nia.”

  “Look, I’m not trying to judge their marriage or judge how that man chooses to take care of his family,” I said, my tone bristling, even though I felt the same way about Marcus not focusing on the safety of his family instead of his multimillion-dollar contract. “But I want to help out my best friend who is scared to death and feels like she has nowhere to turn.” I released a heavy sigh, unclenched my hands, which had been balled up in my lap, and reached for my wineglass.

  Terrence reached across the table and took my hand. I felt my heart jump as his large warm hand enveloped mine.

  “I’m sorry, Nia. I don’t mean to upset you, but Vanessa needs to understand the seriousness of this situation. These letters aren’t just the musings of some random fan trying to get his favorite player’s attention.”

  “I know, Terrence. She refuses to go to the police, so I came to you. But if you can’t help us, then I’m sorry I bothered you.” I began to gather up the letters and stacked them together again so that I could put them back into the envelope.

  “I guess nothing’s changed. It’s always your way or no way, right?” he said as he sighed and shook his head. He took the envelope from me. “The first thing I want to do is have all the letters analyzed for DNA as well as the handwriting. I’ve got to go up to DC tomorrow, and I’ve got a buddy at Quantico who will take a look at this stuff and keep it on the low. Once he reviews the material, we should have some sort of profile of this person, and then we can see where we want to go from there.”

  “Thank you, Terrence!” Before I could stop myself, I leaned in to hug him. His arm slipped around my body, and he hugged me back. Our embrace was familiar and warm, as though no time had passed between us at all.

  But clearly things had changed.

  “There you are, Terrence,” a female voice called out.

  Terrence suddenly pulled away from me and turned toward a woman quickly making her way over to our table. Terrence stood up and embraced a tall woman who looked like she just stepped off an international runway. She had glowing cinnamon-brown skin and sleek dark brown hair in soft-layered waves that caressed her bare shoulders. It was hard to tell if her best feature was the large golden-brown cat eyes framed by impossibly long dark lashes or her high cheekbones
that could cut glass. Her tight black strapless dress hugged her curves, and it was clear she had just come from some sort of formal event.

  I wanted to say, “Harpo, who dis woman?” but unlike Squeak in The Color Purple when she questioned her man, Harpo, Terrence was not my man. My stomach dropped.

  “Hello, Vivica,” Terrence said as he smiled. He greeted her with a deep kiss and put an arm around her small waist. “I thought you weren’t going to be free until after the auction.”

  “I know, but I missed you, darling, so I snuck out of Russell Simmons’s event early. I remembered you said you were meeting someone for dinner here, so I popped over,” the woman said as she kissed him with full pouty red lips and wrapped her long, toned arms around him.

  Someone? He told her he was meeting someone? That was who I was now, someone . . .

  “Yes, I’m meeting my friend Nia Bullock for dinner,” Terrence said as he turned to introduce me. I wasn’t sure what to make of the “friend” label, but I tried to smile even though my face felt like it had hit the table and cracked.

  “Oh, right—Nia!” the woman said brightly as she looked down at me from her Amazonian-model-height advantage.

  “Hello, Nia.” She extended a long elegant arm across the table to shake my hand. “I’ve heard so much about you.” I managed to bite back the urge to say I hadn’t heard a damn thing about her.

  After she shook my hand, she leaned back into Terrence with her head on his shoulder, one arm around his waist while her left hand caressed the silk pocket square in his suit jacket.

  That’s when I saw the ring.

  “Hello, Vivica, is it?” I said as I tried not to stare at the beautiful princess-cut diamond in the platinum setting on her ring finger. Suddenly I knew where I’d seen her before. She was actually a model. But not just any model. She did major advertising campaigns and had just appeared on the cover of Elle magazine’s fall fashion issue.

  “I hadn’t gotten a chance to tell you yet, Nia,” Terrence began. I already knew what he was going to say. I tried to shut the words out before I could hear them, but it was too late. “Meet my fiancée, Vivica DeWalders. We’re getting married this summer.”

  Even though I had known what he was going to say, I felt like the air had been knocked out of me. Suddenly my face felt warm and a drop of sweat trickled down my back. I felt foolish.

  “Congratulations, Terrence,” I managed to squeeze out. “I guess we’ll need Blaine to get that champagne after all.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Vanessa

  I wanted revenge.

  I wanted a divorce.

  With Marcus on the road, I was able to be alone with my thoughts, but I still wasn’t ready to see him when he returned, so I told him to stay at the Four Seasons. That was two weeks ago.

  What the hell was I going to do with my life?

  I should have known better. I should have left Marcus when I first found out he was cheating back in Phoenix. Why had I believed that he had changed? Why had I believed that he loved me?

  Most mornings I felt like a heavy fog was weighing me down. I was having trouble getting out of bed to walk the two blocks to drop off Damon at his new school. But today I forced myself to jump in the shower and put on a navy-blue Juicy sweat suit, because after I dropped off Damon at school, I had an appointment with the real estate agent the Gladiators’ concierge had found for us. Dawn, who had already taken me out to see homes in Westchester and Connecticut, was meeting me in Alpine, New Jersey, at nine thirty. The swanky enclave with multimillion-dollar mansions just outside of New York was home to celebrities like Chris Rock, Mary J. Blige, and Eddie Murphy, but I really wasn’t in the mood to look for a new house. I thought about canceling the appointment. After all, would I even need a new home for the three of us?

  As I glanced down at my iPhone, I could see there were missed calls from Marcus, Kareem, and Nia from when I was in the shower. I wasn’t in the mood to talk to any of them right now, but I planned to at least call Nia back when I got in the car to head to my appointment in New Jersey. We hadn’t spoken at length since I told her about the stalker, but I knew she was working on something to help us.

  As I went to put the phone back down on the nightstand, it buzzed again, and Kareem’s name flashed across the screen.

  “What the hell do you want?” I said into the phone.

  “Look, V., I know you’re upset, but you have to listen to me,” Kareem hissed into the phone. We had both long stopped pretending to be cordial with each other, especially when Marcus wasn’t around. Family or not, we couldn’t stand each other. And while I always felt like Kareem wanted me out of Marcus’s life from day one, he needed me to stay put so that I didn’t cause problems with the Gladiators’ owner. Still, that didn’t stop him from being nasty to me. Ever since he had found out several years ago that I’d been trying to pressure Marcus to fire him and get another manager, the gloves had come off.

  “Really, Kareem. What is it you want to say to me this time? Are you going to run down your usual routine about how I shouldn’t believe what I’m seeing? Are you calling to tell me that my husband isn’t sleeping with Laila?” I could hear my voice getting more shrill as I shot the questions out to Kareem and waited for his pathetic answer.

  “Look, you’re a grown woman, Vanessa. Shit, you know the deal better than anyone. You ain’t no rookie in this here game anymore. You believe what you want about your husband, but you better not even think about walking out. You have to stay for the family.” I could tell from his tone, he was taking great pleasure at my pain.

  This was one of those moments I wished there was a way to slam down a cell phone in Kareem’s ear as I disconnected the call. He had to go. I would never have a chance at saving my marriage with Kareem in the picture.

  Shaking my head, I put three bobby pins between my teeth and twisted my thick hair up into a casual bun. I flipped the light switch on the wall as I walked into Damon’s bedroom, which was decorated with a race-car theme and a life-size cutout poster on the wall of his hero dunking a basketball.

  The morning sunlight streamed into the room through sheer curtains. I slipped into Damon’s race-car bed beneath the window and wrapped my arms around his warm body.

  “Good morning, sunshine,” I whispered softly in his ear, trying to forget my heated conversation with Kareem as my son began to stir. I stroked his head and inhaled the scent of Carol’s Daughter Vanilla Hair Honey in his short crop of tight curls.

  “Morning, Mommy,” Damon said as he yawned sleepily, displaying a missing front tooth. He turned over to face me, his eyes still closed and his yellow SpongeBob pajamas twisted around his body. At seven years old, Damon took after his father in height and with his deep brown chocolate skin. He was already tall for his age and towered over most of his second-grade classmates by several inches. His eyes were also like his father’s—warm dark pools framed by long black lashes any woman would pay for. He got the deep dimples in his cheeks from me. I kissed his little brown nose as he wrapped his arms and legs around me tightly for what we called our octopus hug.

  “Is Daddy home?” Damon asked as he untangled himself, sat up in the bed, and immediately looked at the poster of his father stretching toward an invisible basketball rim on his wall. Damon always woke up every morning looking for his best friend.

  Marcus used to be my best friend, too.

  “No, sweetheart. Remember, I reminded you last night that Daddy said he wouldn’t be home until Saturday because he has games out of town this week? He’ll be home tomorrow.” Marcus and I were coordinating via text and Nicole, the indispensable nanny and cook the Gladiators’ concierge found for us, to make sure he saw his son who didn’t realize that his mom and dad were having problems. But I wasn’t sure how much longer we could keep up the charade.

  I pushed myself up and off the bed and walked over to his dresser to get his cl
othes for school. I selected some underwear, a bright red long-sleeve T-shirt with a growling T. rex on the front, socks, and a pair of jeans, and then laid them out on the bed.

  “So I’m still the man of the house, then?” Damon asked as he took off his pajamas, dropped them in the middle of the floor, and stepped into his underwear. Before going out of town, Marcus always told Damon that it was their job as men to watch over Mommy and help her with anything she needs.

  “Yeah, I guess so, little man of the house,” I answered as I chuckled softly and picked up the pile of discarded pajamas to toss them into the wicker hamper in the corner of the room. “Well, little man of the house, let’s go get some breakfast.”

  “Waffles and applesauce, Mommy!” Damon shouted as he quickly put on the rest of his clothes and went to get a pair of sneakers from his closet.

  “Go to the bathroom and brush your teeth, wash your face, and put on lotion while I check on breakfast. And don’t forget to get rid of the ash monster, little boy.”

  “OK, Mommy.” Damon turned, put his arms out like Superman, and dashed down the hallway to his bathroom.

  Nicole was already in the kitchen preparing breakfast when I walked in. The kitchen, which smelled of fresh waffles and smoky bacon, was a modern stainless steel and granite masterpiece that looked out into a large sunken great room with a recessed movie-theater-size plasma TV, gas fireplace, beige suede couches, and a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows that covered two walls and overlooked the Manhattan skyline.

  “Good morning, Mrs. King,” Nicole said brightly in her lilting Trinidadian accent as she poured sweet-potato batter into the Krups waffle maker. Damon had been on a major waffle kick for two weeks straight after he came back from a sleepover at his best friend Jacob’s house. Jacob’s mom, Mika, a former investment banker turned celebrity chef, lived two floors below us with her partner, Delilah. She shared her recipe for sweet-potato waffles with me after Damon came home begging for them. Drizzled with warm Vermont maple syrup and roasted pecans, they were pretty delicious, I had to admit, but unlike Damon, I didn’t want to eat them every day.