by Rhonda Bowen
Mikey shrugged as he handed Adam the clipboard.
“Say the word and you can be out of here right now,” Mikey answered.
Adam found himself hoping that Toni turned down whatever homeboy was offering. Instead, she stomped her foot, and uttered a word he used to use quite frequently before God put a noose on his tongue.
“Fine, I’ll do it,” she hissed through her teeth.
“Really?” Mikey said, sounding surprised. “I never actually thought—”
Mikey stopped short when he caught her glare. “So eight on Friday then?” He tried to whisper but Adam still heard him. Adam shook his head in disappointment.
“Whatever,” Toni said. “Just get me out of these.”
Mikey grinned as he fumbled with the keys and freed Toni’s hands from the restraints. With a look of pure annoyance, she snatched the release form from Mikey’s pudgy fingers and examined it. She probably wanted to make sure that whatever she had done didn’t end up on her record.
Adam frowned but began to scan the form in front of him. He just wanted to sign Rasheed out and be done with it. The night had gotten too weird. However, when Mikey leaned in a little too close to the woman, Adam couldn’t help but look up again. And when the rent-a-cop put his hand on Toni’s behind, Adam didn’t even think before he reacted.
“Brothah, you need to back up,” he said, stepping forward angrily. Who did this toy cop think he was?
But before he acted on his temptation to handle matters in a less verbal manner, the petite woman turned around and kneed the officer hard in a place so close to the groin that it made Adam shudder. Mikey hollered like a five-year-old and doubled over in pain.
“You think you feel something now?” Toni hissed at his bent over form. “You lucky I never put my foot where it really wanted to go.”
“Oh man, she got you!” Rasheed hollered with a laugh.
“If you ever put your hands on me again, you’ll be sorry you ever met me, you got that?” Toni snapped angrily in the officer’s ear.
Rasheed was still hooting in laughter as she stuffed the release into her pocket and grabbed her stuff out of the tray on the table. Adam stepped way out of her way as she stormed past him and through the door, pulling her friend behind her.
He glanced at the cop, still crouched over and holding on to the table for support, then at the door where Toni had just exited.
Yes. That woman was definitely trouble.
Chapter 2
“Toni, boardroom now.”
Gordon didn’t wait for a reply, and as Toni replaced the phone receiver, she knew it wasn’t going to be a good morning.
“Come on, kid, let’s go,” Naomi said, tapping her pen on Toni’s desk as she walked past it on her way to Gordon’s office.
With a deep breath, Toni got up and followed her editor down the hall. They both knew the routine. They had gone through it every time Toni wrote a story that was a little too edgy or ruffled the wrong somebody’s feathers. Gordon was about to read them the riot act.
“Okay, Gordon.” Noami seated herself in front of the paper’s publisher and nodded at the seat beside her for Toni to do the same. “What’s got your knickers all knotted up today?”
Toni knew that only Naomi could get away with talking to Gordon like that. The slim Caucasian woman barely reached Toni’s height and was probably a hundred pounds soaking wet, but there were two things Toni knew: no one could work an Anne Klein suit or a news story like Naomi.
“I think you know what,” Gordon snapped, not bothering to sit down. He flung the morning’s edition on the table in front of them.
“What’s this?” Naomi glanced briefly at the paper over the top of her Prada glasses, as if she had not seen it roll off the presses herself some seven hours earlier.
“It’s our Thursday edition,” Naomi exclaimed. “In fact, I think this is the lunchroom copy. Looks like there’s some coffee stains on it... .”
“Naomi, don’t play games with me.” Gordon’s pale freckled face had already started to turn an unnatural shade of red. “The story, Naomi. How could you print this on the front page?
“And you, Toni.” He turned his furious eyes on her. “How could you write this? What happened to responsible journalism?”
Toni opened her mouth, but Naomi stood up before she could say a word.
“This is responsible journalism.” Her voice had lost its earlier mock cheerfulness in favor of a sharper edge. “It would be irresponsible not to print it. It was a darn good story, Gordon, and you know it.”
“What I know,” Gordon said, yanking off his glasses to glare at Naomi, “is that the mayor’s office is threatening to sue us for libel and slander, and Brenners is threatening to pull all their advertising and support from the paper.”
“Let them keep their partisan support. Maybe then we can go back to having a fair and balanced paper,” Naomi retorted stubbornly.
“And what about the lawsuit? Should we let them do that too?”
“Please, we’ve had lawsuits before and we’ll have them again,” Naomi said, her hands on her hips. “Besides, we didn’t print anything that wasn’t true.”
“How did you even get that photo?” Toni flinched slightly as Gordon’s glare zeroed in on her. “Was that what you were doing when you were crawling around on the mayor’s premises last night?”
Toni rolled her eyes. She should have known Gordon would find out. He was more connected than the CIA.
“Technically I wasn’t actually on the mayor’s premises,” she pointed out.
Not when she got caught anyway.
“But regardless, he’s a crook, Gordon.” Toni frowned. “Who’s gonna blow the whistle on this dude if we don’t?”
“That’s not an excuse for committing a crime and putting this paper in legal jeopardy,” Gordon growled, pounding the table with his fist.
“How did that photo make it to the front page anyway? I thought they took your camera when you got caught?”
Toni glared at Gordon and the vein in the middle of his forehead that was growing bigger by the second, but said nothing.
“Our information comes from credible sources,” Naomi said, filling in for Toni.
Gordon crossed his arms over his skinny chest and cocked his head. “And who are these sources?”
“Come on, Gordon, you know that’s protected information,” Toni said.
“Only until there’s a court order for them.”
“Oh, please.” Naomi rolled her eyes. “You know the law protects us on this. They don’t have any right to that information.”
Toni looked back and forth between the two powerhouses of the newspaper squared off on either side of the table. They always seemed be at loggerheads about something. In fact it sometimes seemed as if Naomi purposely provoked the fifty-six-year-old publisher of the newspaper to see how far she could push him. He had run the AJC for almost thirty years, but Naomi was one of the most sought after editors in the region and even beyond. He knew that they would be foolish to get rid of her and so did she. But Gordon was still their boss. It made for an interesting game.
“That may be the case, but this time things have gone too far.” Gordon put his glasses back on. “Toni, you’re being reassigned from Business and Government.”
“Gordon, no!”
“You are now back in the pool with the other general assignment reporters.” He sat down and began to shuffle papers as if he had not just ruined her life. “This week you can go dig something out of city court.”
“City court?” The words fell from Toni’s mouth with disdain.
“Yes.” He glanced up at her in confirmation. “And you will send me the first draft of your story before it goes anywhere else.”
“Gordon, this is not fair.” Toni stomped her foot. “I’m your best Metro reporter. Who is gonna cover the lead-up to the November elections?”
“We’ll find someone.”
“But it’s already May!”
“You did this to yourself.” Gordon folded his hands on the table in front of him. End of discussion.
Toni wanted to scream. She couldn’t believe this was happening. Not after five years at AJC. She had covered the last local election and had written more Metro front page stories than she could remember. This was supposed to be her time to get a leg up. To get a chance at running with the big boys. And now she was being demoted to general assignment? Thrown into the pool with freshie reporters who couldn’t smell a scoop if they stepped in it?
She turned to her editor. “Naomi, you can’t let him do this.”
She already knew that if she got dumped into general assignment Gordon would make sure she got nothing but crap stories for the rest of her AJC career.
“Toni, would you excuse us, please?” Naomi kept her eyes on Gordon. “I need to have a few words with our publisher.”
Toni glanced at Gordon again before sighing and heading toward the exit. As soon as the door closed she heard their voices. They were definitely going at it again but she couldn’t tell who was winning. She crossed her fingers and hoped it was Naomi. Because if it wasn’t, Toni wasn’t sure she could handle what came next.
“Remind me why we’re here again instead of at K and K’s?” Afrika asked as they walked up the driveway of 25 Wicker Way.
“Because Jasmine wanted to show us something,” Toni said.
Toni heard Afrika’s stomach growl.
“She couldn’t show us at the restaurant?” Afrika rubbed her middle longingly. “I haven’t eaten all morning. After last night’s drama a sister had to skip breakfast just to catch up on some sleep.”
At the other end of the wide, cobblestone driveway, they found the double doors to the huge two-story home slightly ajar. As they slipped inside they could hear Jasmine’s voice echoing off the high ceilings and open walls.
Afrika gave an appreciative whistle from behind Toni. “This place is nice.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Toni’s eyebrows knotted. “Too nice.”
Jasmine came from money. Old money. So it was no surprise that when she and Toni’s brother, Trey, had started looking for a house, her tastes were more on the high end. It seemed like Jasmine had forgotten, again, that her father’s credit card was no longer the source from which all blessings flowed.
“Chicas, I thought you would never get here!” Jasmine beamed as she appeared from around a corner, her six-month-pregnant belly showing up before she did. Toni wasn’t sure how such a tiny woman managed to carry around such a round belly.
“Well, it does take a while in midday traffic to come all the way to Ansley Park,” Toni said, referring to the almost upper-middle class neighborhood where Jasmine had asked them to meet her. “It’s not really on our regular route.”
“Well, you’re here now.” Jasmine clapped her tiny creamy hands. “You’ve got to see this place; it’s amazing!”
She looped her arms through Toni’s and Afrika’s, pulling their reluctant forms forward.
“Don’t you love this huge two-story foyer and this amazing floor? It’s hardwood throughout, you know, except for the bathrooms, of course. But can’t you imagine Trey and I having the best Christmas parties in here?” She tittered. “The foyer, of course, not the bathrooms.”
“I don’t know, Jasmine,” Afrika began, unwrapping a stick of gum she had rummaged out of her purse. “Trey doesn’t really seem like the fancy Christmas party type. Some chicken wings, sodas, and a pool table seem more like his flow.”
Toni bit back a laugh as she watched Jasmine visibly shudder. Better from Afrika’s mouth than hers.
“Well, it’s not anymore,” Jasmine said matter-of-factly. “Besides, who wants chicken wings when you can make the most amazing tapas in this fantastic oversized kitchen?”
Jasmine was off again, not waiting for either of them as she gave the full tour of the nearly three thousand square foot property, including the living room, the beautiful den off the kitchen, and the three massive bedrooms.
As Jasmine glided through the second kitchen with them trailing behind, Afrika caught Toni’s eye. “Aren’t you gonna say something?” Afrika mouthed.
“You know I’ve been trying to stay out of Trey and Jasmine’s business,” Toni whispered, shaking her head.
“I know, but are you seeing all of this?” Afrika whispered back “This place must cost a mint. I know your brother makes good money, but I didn’t know it was this good.”
“Girl, please, we’re in a recession,” Toni muttered dryly. “Ain’t nobody’s money this good.”
“So, what do you think?” Jasmine asked as they stood in the front foyer again at the end of the tour. “Think this is the house for me and Trey?”
“Too fancy-pants for me,” Afrika said, blowing a bubble with her gum. “But hey, I’m just a little black girl from Grove Park. What do I know?”
Jasmine rolled her eyes and turned to Toni. “Well?”
“ ‘Well’ what?” Toni hedged.
“Well, what do you think of the place?” Jasmine asked with exasperation. “Could you see me and Trey here?”
Toni sighed. Maybe if your dad kicked the bucket early, was the answer she had on the tip of her tongue.
She was a speak-the-truth-and-speak-it-immediately kind of girl, which was what got her in trouble most of the time. And if she said what she really thought, this time would be no different.
“What do you think of the place?” Toni deflected.
“I love it.” Jasmine’s eyes were brighter than the floodlights in the soccer-field-sized backyard. “I think Trey would love it here too. He really appreciates high quality in a home.”
Toni wrinkled her nose.
“What?” Jasmine said, her tone changing. “You don’t think he’ll like it, do you? ’Cause you know so much more about what Trey likes—more than me, his own wife, who he comes home to every night.”
Out the corner of her eye Toni saw Afrika shake her head and give her a don’t-go-there look. Too late.
“I actually don’t think Trey would like all this.” Toni folded her arms. “And I don’t know why you think he would. You know how mellow Trey is. All the bougie stuff just makes him uncomfortable.”
Jasmine narrowed her eyes. “You mean my bougie stuff.”
Toni shrugged. “Hey, you said it, not me.”
“Why are you always trying to class down your brother? You think just because you have to be everybody’s homegirl that he wants to be ghetto too?”
Toni turned to look at Afrika. “Did she just call me ghetto?”
Afrika rubbed her eyes tiredly. “T, she probably never meant it like—”
“Oh, she meant it like that.” Toni glared at Jasmine. “She still thinks she did our family a favor by marrying Trey. Like we weren’t doing fine on our own before she tried to spend my brother into debt.”
“Excuse me?” Jasmine stepped back, hands on her hips. “So because I want nice things I’m spending my husband into debt? In case you forgot, I work and make my own money too. But I guess I’m supposed to wear Walmart clothes to make you feel better.”
“Please, Jasmine, you couldn’t find a Walmart if it was in your own backyard,” Toni replied. “And nobody’s saying you gotta be cheap, but sometimes you gotta bring it down. Everything can’t be the Ritz all the time.”
“But it isn’t,” Jasmine protested.
“Really.” Toni smirked. “So tell me, what’s the price on this house?”
“Huh?” Jasmine stuttered, caught off guard.
“What is the price on this house?” Toni spoke slowly and deliberately. “You know, since you’re not high-end all the time.”
Toni folded her arms as both she and Afrika turned to Jasmine. She shook her head as she watched her sister-in-law spin her wedding ring on her finger, then fiddle with the ends of her long dark hair.
“It’s not much, just a couple hundred thousand.”
“Really.” Toni could smell Jasmine’s lie. “How many is a cou
ple?”
“Just a couple,” Jasmine said, getting in a huff as she shouldered her purse and turned toward the door. “Are we going to eat or what?”
Toni and Afrika exchanged amused looks as they followed Jasmine to the door. Toni noticed a sheet of paper sticking out the top of Jasmine’s open purse and snatched it from behind. It was the listing.
“Hey!” Jasmine protested. “Give me that!”
But Toni turned away so she couldn’t reach it. Her eyes widened when she saw the asking price.
Afrika, who was peeping over Toni’s shoulder, swore loudly. “Five hundred K?” she squealed.
“It’s just an asking price,” Jasmine said, snatching back the paper and stuffing it into her purse. She made sure to zip it shut. “We can negotiate.”
“Down to what?” Toni retorted. “Four-fifty? That price doesn’t even include closing and negotiation costs! Jasmine, there’s no way Trey can afford that!”
“How do you know what Trey and I can afford together?” Jasmine snapped. “Why don’t you just mind your own business?”
“Why don’t you stop trying to send my brother to the poorhouse with your high-maintenance self,” Toni snapped back.
“Okay, okay!” Afrika said, stepping between Toni and Jasmine. “That’s enough!”
“Why’s she always in the middle of my marriage like a third wheel?” Jasmine snapped.
“Okay. Firstly, Jasmine,” Afrika said, “you were the one who invited us here to see this place that you were considering. You were the one who asked us our opinions. So don’t get mad if you hear something you don’t like.”
“And before you start gloating, Toni, you know you need to fall back and let Jasmine handle her business with her husband. I know Trey’s your brother, but she’s his wife. She comes first.”
Toni and Jasmine had a brief eye-rolling standoff.
“Now can we get some food?” Afrika whined. “I’m about to pass out.”
“You two go ahead.” Toni slipped on her sunglasses and pushed past them. “I’m not that hungry anymore.” Toni wasn’t sure she could deal with Jasmine right then. She loved her sister-in-law but sometimes she really didn’t like her.