Games Divas Play (A Diva Mystery Novel)

by Angela Burt-Murray

  “Did you talk to Vanessa today? She’s home, right?” Terrence asked.

  “Yes, she’s home, but I haven’t talked to her since she left the doctor’s office. She and Marcus are holed up in their apartment. I think they’re trying to keep a low profile with the story about the attack coupled with the affair. I’m sure Kareem and his publicist are working overtime with the Gladiators to calm their concerns. This is not a good way to start off this new relationship. They don’t seem like the type of organization that thinks that all press is good press.”

  “Definitely not. The Gladiators like to keep it clean and the focus on the team’s performance on the court. But given that Marcus’s wife was assaulted, they may be cutting him some slack as long as there are no new stories about Laila James and he doesn’t appear in that reality show.”

  Within a few short blocks I started seeing signs for the Brooklyn Bridge.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Brooklyn.”

  “Why Brooklyn?”

  “You’ll see when we get there. Have patience.” He chuckled, knowing that wasn’t and had never been one of my strong suits. I reached over and began to fiddle with the radio dial in the old car.

  “Hey, don’t you know you don’t ever touch a black man’s radio?” he said in his best Chris Tucker impression as he swatted my hand way from the dashboard.

  “Whatever, man,” I said, laughing. “I was just trying to turn on 1010 WINS for some news after being trapped in a crazy episode of VH1’s Love and Hip-Hop for the past five hours.”

  “Well that had to be fun.”

  “Oh, you have no idea the laughs we had. How was your day?” We were having a nice, normal after-work conversation, exchanging benign pleasantries just like any normal couple. But we were not a couple. I wondered if this felt weird to him, too.

  “Good day. Very good day. Take out my iPad from my briefcase. I want you to look at a video.” I picked up his black leather briefcase and put it on my lap. I could tell it was expensive; the leather was shiny and supple, and the platinum hardware gleamed. He’d never buy something like this for himself, so I knew she must have bought it. I opened up the iPad to the home screen.

  “Where’s the video?”

  “It’s in my e-mail. Look for the message from Ray Rogers with ‘King Surveillance Video’ in the subject line.” I scanned his in-box, noticing there were quite a few unopened messages from his fiancée. When I located the e-mail from Ray, I opened the message. I pushed the button, and a grainy black-and-white video began to play, showing a steady stream of cars and cabs going by and people walking hurriedly down a street in Manhattan.

  “What am I watching?” I asked, balancing the iPad on my lap.

  “Keep watching,” Terrence said as we crossed over the bridge into Brooklyn.

  Suddenly out of the left side of the screen a large man dressed in all black came running down the street into the frame. He jumped into a car that was parked on the opposite side of the street and sped away. Then I realized what I was watching. This was the man who attacked Vanessa.

  “Where did you get this?” I asked excitedly as I pushed the button to replay the video and held the iPad closer to see if I could make out the details of the man’s face.

  “My buddy, Detective Ray Rogers, is working the case out of the first precinct. He sent the file over. The video is from one of the city’s thousands of crime watch cameras that happened to be located on the corner of Vanessa’s street. Based on the time stamp on the video and Vanessa’s description of her attacker, we believe this is our guy.”

  “Wow, this is amazing. Were you able to enhance the video to get a better look at the guy? Were there any other cameras in the area that may have provided a different angle so we could cross-reference and see his face?” I asked anxiously.

  “What? Do you think this is my first case?” Terrence chuckled at my eagerness. “Of course we checked for other cameras in the area, and luckily Vanessa’s building also had a camera outside that captured the license plate on the car.”

  “So you ran the plate, and what did you find?” I said as I twisted around to look at him.

  “Yes, we ran the plate, and what we found was a name and address of one Carlo Esposito. We ran his sheet, and the twenty-three-year-old Mr. Esposito of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, has been a very busy man. He’s got gang ties to the Diablo Negro crew—a cocaine, racketeering, guns, gambling, and sex-trafficking outfit with operations in Mexico, California, Arizona, Texas, and they’ve been pushing aggressively into New York over the last two years.”

  “And what is Carlo’s specialty in this crew?” My body tensed. Was Vanessa targeted to be in a sex-trafficking ring?

  “He’s a pretty low-level enforcer type from what we can tell, but he was on the come up. Diablo Negro is one of the most vicious gangs we’ve ever seen, and young Carlo was trying to make a name for himself.”

  “But what’s a guy like Carlo and a gang like Diablo Negro want with Vanessa? And is Carlo the one that’s been leaving the messages?”

  “Well, that’s where things get even more interesting,” Terrence said as he headed into the Crown Heights area of Brooklyn.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Carlo probably isn’t even related to the threatening notes. He doesn’t fit the profile worked up by my guy at Quantico. We’ll look for prints on the envelope, but my best guess at this point is that he was waiting for Vanessa by her car and picked up the envelope off the windshield, just being nosy, when she came up on him. When he chased her, he still had the envelope, but he wasn’t the one that left it. The stalker is someone else entirely different.”

  “So what you’re saying is, Vanessa and Marcus are being stalked by someone, but this Carlo person attacked her for some completely unrelated reason? Was it a random attack, or was she targeted?”

  “Yes, there are two people out there who have taken a very dangerous interest in Vanessa and Marcus. Carlo didn’t attack Vanessa randomly—these guys don’t work that way. They don’t freelance. He was definitely acting on someone’s order.”

  A chill ran down my spine as I shut down the iPad and slipped it back into Terrence’s briefcase. Dealing with a crazy stalker fan was one thing, and sometimes par for the course in the high-profile world of professional sports, but why would a Mexican drug gang be after Vanessa? That piece of new information didn’t make any sense.

  “The police are arresting him as we speak, so hopefully we’ll have some more information soon.”

  The car began to slow down as we approached the Quad, a nondescript four-unit brick housing project. A fleet of police cars and an ambulance were out front. A crowd of residents from the towers stood around, watching and gossiping. This wasn’t looking good. I immediately wondered if the ambulance had anything to do with Carlo.

  Suddenly the crowd parted as two paramedics burst through the doors of the building, wheeling a stretcher. I could see there was a large body underneath the white sheet. Terrence told me to wait by the car. He walked over to the group of police officers holding back the onlookers and then shook hands with one of the officers he seemed to know. He then ducked under the tape holding back the crowd and walked over to the stretcher. He lifted up the sheet and looked at the body. He then looked over at me and nodded his head in my direction.

  Carlo was dead.

  As we made our way back into Manhattan, I sent MJ a text and asked him to pull everything he could find on Carlo Esposito and Diablo Negro. I needed to learn as much as I could about all of these players because since Carlo’s throat had been cut, Terrence was only going to tell me so much.

  We were both deep in our own thoughts as we made our way to my apartment in Chelsea when Terrence’s phone rang. I looked over at the screen as he pushed “Talk” and saw that it was Vivica.

  “Hey, baby,” he said into the phone. My
stomach clenched at the sound of him calling another woman “baby” although I knew I had no right to be upset.

  “Busy day. I just left a crime scene in Brooklyn, and I’ve got a couple of other things to wrap up tonight, so I don’t think I’m going to make dinner.” I could tell she wasn’t happy about that news.

  “I’m sorry, Vivica,” he said, lowering his voice as if he thought I couldn’t hear him seated next to me. I could hear that her voice was elevated, but I couldn’t make out the exact words. “Look, I’ll call you later, and we can discuss it further. Do what you have to do.”

  “Ouch,” I said. “Everything OK?”

  “Yes, everything is fine,” he said as his knuckles gripped the steering wheel.

  “You can just let me out here, and I can grab a cab the rest of the way if you need to be somewhere.”

  “It’s fine, Nia. Just leave it alone.”

  “OK, my bad . . .” We rode the rest of the way in silence. When the car pulled up in front of my apartment building, I began to gather my things to get out.

  “Uh, you’ll let me know about that Quantico report, right?” I said, turning to look at him.

  “Oh shit. I forgot we were supposed to discuss that today. Do you want me to come up and we can go over it quickly?”

  “Uh, sure. Come on up.”

  Why was I suddenly nervous? Terrence and I were just going to look at a file, discuss the contents, and then he was going to leave. No big deal.

  I unlocked the door to my apartment and walked in, flipping on the light switches.

  “Nice place,” he said as he surveyed the space.

  The one-bedroom loft wasn’t large at only six hundred square feet, but the floor-to-ceiling windows in the sunken living room looked out to a terrace garden with a deck. The twinkling lights of the city as my backdrop had attracted me to the pricey apartment, which I decorated in a soothing palette of taupe and chocolate furniture with pops of citrus accents in the pillows. Some of my favorite elements were the bleach-blond wood floors, modern silver wall sconces, and mini crystal chandeliers. The galley kitchen, which I never used since I was in the city of endless takeout and delivery options, held my overflowing shoe and accessories collection in the cabinets. I was thankful I had resisted the urge to use the stainless steel refrigerator for more closet overflow. I grabbed a bottle of pinot, two wineglasses from the only cabinet where I stocked actual stemware, and walked back into the living room. Terrence had taken a seat on the low-slung black linen sofa and spread the contents of his briefcase out on the glass coffee table.

  I placed the wineglasses on the table and took a seat next to him.

  “Thanks,” he said as he took a sip of the wine. “Very nice.”

  “Thanks. So what do we have here?” I grabbed the manila folder with the Quantico seal on the front and perused the profile they had worked up on Vanessa’s stalker, but it was hard to focus with Terrence seated so close to me. I could feel the heat from his thighs as his leg pressed against mine when he leaned in to point something out.

  “See, this indicates the stalker leaving the notes isn’t Carlo. My guy has worked up motives and other identifiers to try to understand his, or her, behavior. For this person, the target—that would be Vanessa and Marcus—is personal. This is someone who feels a familiarity and more importantly feels like he or she is owed something. That’s not the MO of Carlo and the Diablo Negro gang who are much more direct in how they conduct their business. What they do is never personal and is always about increasing their bottom line.”

  “But Vanessa told me she thought he was going to rape her. That seems personal.”

  “I’m not sure. I doubt he was sent to rape Vanessa. And he may have ended up dead because he failed at his task. But we’ll learn more about that when we have his text messages translated.”

  “Text messages?”

  “One of the officers securing the crime scene found his cell phone stuffed under the cushion of the chair he was sitting in when his throat was cut from behind. Going back through his exchanges, we saw a message with a photo of Vanessa attached.”

  “Oh my God, Terrence.”

  “We’re running down the number. Hopefully it’s not a disposable phone, but these guys in Diablo Negro aren’t stupid. I doubt they’d take a chance communicating with a relatively low-level player like Carlo on one of their regular phones.”

  I took a large gulp of wine from my glass. The cool liquid did nothing to calm my nerves. I felt like Vanessa was in even more danger.

  “Look, relax, Nia,” Terrence said, taking my wineglass and setting it on the table. “I know you’re worried about your girl, but the NYPD is all over this, and we’re going to keep a patrol car on her building around the clock. And I’m sure Kareem is stepping up the private security as well. We’re going to catch this guy.”

  I felt the sting of hot tears prickling in my eyes, and I blinked to keep them from falling. Terrence picked up the wine bottle and poured me another glass, which I accepted. I took another deep swallow to calm my fears for Vanessa and to hopefully tamp down the quickening of my pulse from being so close to Terrence again.

  Suddenly he pulled me into his arms. I rested my head on his chest and against my better judgment inhaled deeply. I could feel his heart beat through the soft material of his V-neck sweater, and before I could stop myself, I placed my hand over it. It felt familiar to be in his arms again. I felt like there was something still between us. I was wondering if he felt it, too, and then I felt his lips.

  He kissed the top of my head softly and stroked my short hair. I looked up at him, and then our lips connected.

  Our mouths opened easily to each other, our tongues dancing like old friends reunited. His mouth was warm and wet, tasting of melted chocolate and a hint of fresh mint. Delicious and hypnotic.

  I shouldn’t be doing this. What we had was over. He’s engaged.

  But none of that seemed to matter as the rising heat of passion began to spread through both of our bodies and our limbs became entangled. His lips rained down kisses along my neck as I leaned into him, hungry for more.

  He laid my body down on the sofa, and his long hard body was on top of mine. He kissed me again deeply on the mouth, his large hands moving slowly up and down the sides of my body before slipping underneath my thin T-shirt. His lips soon found my hard nipples straining up against the thin fabric of my shirt, and he pulled at them gently, torturing me. His hot breath moved over the tops of them, teasing me through the fabric. I arched up against him, my body betraying me by begging him for more. I didn’t want him to stop. But as I felt the growing hardness in his pants and the silky wetness in my own panties, I knew we had to stop now or there would be no turning back.

  “We shouldn’t,” I said huskily as I attempted to push him away, but he responded by pulling me closer.

  “Nia,” he groaned in my ear, his voice thick with desire. He wanted me just as much as I wanted him. I forgot the way he said my name and how that always made me tingle all over.

  “No, seriously, Terrence. We have to stop.” This was getting out of hand. As much as I didn’t want to, I forced myself to push him away and to stand up. The room was hot, and I felt like I was suffocating. I took off the thick sweater to try to cool myself off and threw it on the chair. Terrence stood up and gathered his things as I took the wineglasses and bottle back into the kitchen. Outside of his view, I set down the glasses and bottle and leaned against the fridge.

  Dammit, what had we started? I raked my fingers through my hair and tried to calm myself down. I reasoned that we hadn’t actually done anything, so there was nothing to worry about, but then he hit me with a question that felt like a punch in the stomach.

  “Where did we go wrong, Nia?” His dark eyes searched mine for answers and caused me to look down as I picked at invisible lint on my black T-shirt.

  “Lo
ok, Terrence, what we had was a long time ago, and I don’t think we should get into rehashing all of that. We both wanted and needed different things back then. And we just couldn’t give it to each other.”

  The truth was the breakup had been hard for both of us, but we didn’t have a choice. After Terrence was shot, I told him I was offered a new job in LA and that I hoped he’d come with me. Seeing him unconscious in that hospital bed was the worst night of my life. I prayed that he’d pull through and God answered. But when I begged him to leave the force and move to LA with me, he said he couldn’t do it. And I said I couldn’t watch him risk his life every day and wait for another phone call like the one I had received, not knowing if he was alive or dead. I couldn’t live like that for him, and he said he couldn’t give up on his dream for me.

  “I’m sorry, Nia,” Terrence said as he closed his briefcase and put on his jacket. “This won’t happen again.”

  I was sorry, too. I was sorry we had stopped. But I couldn’t say that to him now. He was engaged.

  “It was my fault, too. I’m sorry. You’re right, it won’t happen again. I’ve never been the other woman, and I’m not about to start now.”

  As hard as it was for me to say, I knew it was the right thing to do. Terrence belonged to someone else now.

  CHAPTER 12

  Laila

  The Glam Network camera crew trailed me as I pretended to shop at Suga’ n’ Spice, a trendy lingerie and sex toy store. We’d been running all over the city, shooting snippets of content so that they could cobble together clips for a ten-minute show reel they were producing to start teasing the show’s premiere. And each stop required wardrobe, jewelry, a handbag change, and a new hairstyle so that all the clips looked like things were happening to me on different days. For this scene, I’d had the hairstylist put my hair up in a ponytail, and the stylist pulled some gold-threaded Miss Sixty jeans and a flowy black Narciso Rodriguez off-the-shoulder silk blouse with a keyhole design to show off my cleavage and six-inch crystal-studded Christian Louboutin Daffodil platform heels. The jeans were going to be murder to get off in the dressing room, but they appeared as if they had been painted on my body and made my ass look unbelievable on camera, so it was well worth the sacrifice.