“It would have been nice if you had told me which love of your life wanted to kill you. I was almost certain you were talking about your wife,” Tommy said, with his fingers speeding over the computer’s keys as he composed an instant message to send to Katrina.
“I’m sorry. I assumed you knew which one I was talking about.”
“So how is she doing?” Tommy asked, without a care in his voice, as Meagan prayed that one of them would slip up and eventually say her name.
“Besides crazy and wanting all my time, she’s fine. She’s been trying to get me to buy a cabin to rent out in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, since we’re doing well with the other real estate. But I’ll get with you on that another time.”
“I noticed you kept that real estate out of your will,” Tommy said, giving William his full attention.
“That’s hers. You know that, Tommy. Whatever she decides to do with it is no business of mine. My only goal is to keep it lucrative while I’m living, and judging by the numbers, I’m doing a damn good job at it.”
“And if she dies, what happens to it then?”
“Then it goes to whomever she leaves it too. As a matter of fact, I’ve been meaning to have her meet with you to get her affairs in order. If she lists names in her will, I’ll pay you more to find out their relationship to her. She claims to be visiting her younger sister in Savannah when she leaves Atlanta, but I don’t believe it.”
“Hire a detective, then. If she becomes my client, there’s no dollar amount that will allow me to break her trust.”
William eyed Tommy in disgust but respected his words. “Your loyalty is why I hired you. I understand.”
“Mrs. Tolliver, are you ready to have me stamp your documents?”
Meagan hadn’t heard Katrina approach her and didn’t know how much of her eavesdropping she had seen.
“Oh yes, I’m ready. I thought I heard my husband call my name . . . but I guess not.” She shrugged.
“I’m sure you did. This way please,” Katrina said, then led the way down the hallway, not believing a word Meagan had said.
* * *
Trapped in his thoughts, Angelo was waiting for the couple to exit the building. There had to have been two people in the car that exploded at the barbershop on Oglethorpe Boulevard that day, but who was the other dead body? Pops had said it was Mrs. Tolliver from church, and William had confirmed that his first wife died in that car. Meagan had said her mother was in the car, too, but Mama had mentioned there being only one person in the car, and that was her best friend. Could her best friend be William’s wife, and could she not have known that Meagan’s mother was in the car too? he thought.
During one of his mother’s dementia moments, she had assumed she was at the pearly gates and was holding a conversation with God. From what he had gathered, she was appealing her sentence to spend eternal life in hell for killing her best friend. He had walked in at the tail end of her episode, but he had heard her say it was an accident, and she wished she had never thrown her cigarette. Angelo had been too young when his mother had walked out on him to remember who her friends were, but his father would have told him it was his mother’s best friend in that car, instead of saying, “Mrs. Tolliver from church.” Which left Meagan’s mother as her best friend, or there was a third person that no one really knew.
Not that Angelo remembered who Mrs. Tolliver was, since he had never heard her name mentioned. His mother had said that Mr. William Tolliver, being her lifelong friend, had volunteered to pay for her medical treatments. Why hadn’t she said she was best friends with his deceased wife, and that was why he was being so kind and generous? At first glance, he thought it was generous for a friend to step up and help out, because his father couldn’t afford to, but after securing a spot on William’s payroll, Angelo had realized William wasn’t doing it for free. He was taking sexual advantage of the old cancer patient with dementia.
If it wasn’t for the hatred Angelo had for his mother, his fist would have met William’s face when he first realized what was going on. The reality was that Angelo enjoyed knowing that she had to sell pussy for medical treatments. To him, it was part of her punishment for walking out on her family, and he wouldn’t dare step in the way of what she had coming to her. Sad but true. Angelo had ill feelings for William only because he beat his wife. He couldn’t care less about the way William treated his mother. Angelo was on a mission to find his truths and to learn more about the moves his mother had made during her disappearance. Everyone else’s problems didn’t belong to him, although it was becoming evident that they all somehow tied in to one another. He decided to let it go as he watched Meagan walk toward him.
“Angelo, I really need to find out who this bitch is he’s shacking up with. Do you know he’s scared of this ho? It almost sounds like she’s controlling him. Apparently, she is the same bitch that threatened to kill him, and he was never talking about me. I heard it while eavesdropping on his conversation with the lawyer. That little agreement we made is void, but I’m going to let you keep your job. Because once I get all the information, I need to take half of everything I helped him get, and I’m going to need a limo driver I can trust. Are you up for the job?”
He couldn’t answer her, because she had just given information he hadn’t known anything about. When he’d overheard William saying he had been threatened by the love of his life, Angelo had been sure he was lying to plot against Meagan. Now he knew differently. His mother had some kind of power over William, and Angelo was sure it had something to do with the time she’d been absent from his and his father’s life, but what? And why had she returned? Everything about her was becoming more suspicious by the day.
“Angelo, are you listening? I just offered you a job.”
Snapping out of his thoughts, he opened his mouth to answer, but the purplish-black bruise on her jaw and lower cheek wouldn’t allow him to focus on the job offer. “Man, that nigga is living a double life, and you keep letting him put his hands on you. I’m tired of the shit. I don’t understand how you’re not.”
“He didn’t hit me this time . . . He threw me out of the shower, and I hit the floor.”
“So that makes it okay? What’s the deal? You got Daddy issues?”
“Daddy issues?”
“Yeah, Daddy issues. I mean, you married a cat old enough to be your pops, and you allow him to fuck you up whenever he wants. Sounds like you were really looking for a daddy to me.”
“So now you think you’re Dr. Phil? No, Angelo, I don’t have Daddy issues. But what’s the real with you? You don’t wear a wedding band, and I’ve never heard you mention a woman in your life. If I was to play Dr. Phil, you’re either gay or have Mama issues. Better yet, you might be a mama’s boy, too in love with your mama to date because you’re scared to put somebody in front of her.”
“Is that what you think?” Angelo was agitated by her words but held his composure. “I’m not married by choice. I haven’t met anyone worthy of having my last name or carrying my child. I’m in and out of guts too often to be gay, by the way.”
“Up the ass is the fastest way to get into the guts.”
They both laughed as William walked hurriedly out the building. As Angelo stepped out of the limo to open the door for his boss, shots were fired in their direction. William fell to the ground. Angelo crouched down and then crawled army style over to him.
“Where are you hit?”
“I’m not hit, Angelo. But I’ve seen enough movies to know to play dead.” William laughed as Angelo scanned the area for the shooter but came up empty. There wasn’t a car speeding off nearby, nor were people fleeing the scene to get away from the shooter. Once he felt sure it was safe for them to move, he got up and helped William into the limo.
“Are you okay?” Meagan asked hysterically. She was on the floor of the car and refused to sit upright until they were away from the area.
“I’m fine, baby. You know I learned how to drop and roll when we opened u
p Georgia Peach’s in Chicago.” William laughed.
“How do you find this shit funny?” she retorted. “You could have been killed. It’s obvious they were shooting at you.”
“Who are they? I didn’t see anyone. Angelo, did you?”
“No, sir,” Angelo said, speeding away.
“The shooting didn’t start until you came walking out.” She retrieved a joint from her purse, and with shaky hands, she stroked her lighter until it was lit. She didn’t know if it was smart to mention that she knew his life had been threatened, so she smoked instead.
William shrugged. “That’s called a coincidence. You’re all shook up now. Let’s call it a day. Angelo?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Let’s drop Meagan off at a spa to relax her nerves. We can go to the mortuary without her.”
“I’m not going to the spa. I’m staying with you.”
“Take her to that new one in Atlantic Station,” William instructed. “I hear all the big names go there.”
“Did you fucking hear me? I said—” Her words were cut off by his hand wrapping around her neck.
“I didn’t forget about this morning,” William growled. “If I were you, I would go to the spa and relax. Understood?”
With tears dropping from her eyes, she nodded her head yes, while Angelo pretended not to see what was going on behind him.
When they made it to the spa, William handed her his credit card and told her to get a top-of-the-line treatment. Once she was out of the limo, Angelo pulled off.
“Do you have any clue about who was shooting at you, boss?” Angelo asked as they watched Meagan disappear through the spa doors.
“I don’t know who pulled the trigger, but I have an idea about who hired them.” William dialed a number and waited for the party to answer. “Hey, baby. Did you make it to Savannah yet?” he asked.
“Almost. You hired the slowest driver in the world to take me. I should have top-of-the-line everything. This is bullshit,” a weak robotic voice said into the phone. It was hard for William not to get squeamish when listening to her talk with her electrolarynx.
“I’ll get you a new driver ASAP, but I thought you said if I did everything you asked of me, we wouldn’t have any problems?”
“If I have a slower-ass driver that’s getting me to my destinations late, you’re not doing everything I asked, dumbass.”
“I said I’d fix it. Can you at least call off your goons?”
“Call off my goons? What are you rambling about? Are you having problems?” The electrolarynx didn’t properly display the emotion in her voice, but he was sure that she was laughing.
“I told you last night that I wasn’t going to leave my wife. You wake up this morning to put me out and then you send your goons to come shoot at me? What happened to our arrangement, Clara?” William had decided to accuse her of sending someone to kill him and then see where the call went from there.
Angelo’s ears perked up like nipples in the winter. Their arrangement was information he needed to complete his puzzle. It was immature of him to expend this much energy on filling in the blanks of his mother’s past, but he knew he couldn’t move forward in his life without knowing who she really was.
“William Edward Tolliver III, after all these years, you sound like you don’t know me. You should know that if I had sent shooters, they wouldn’t have missed. Killing you is my second option. It comes right behind what I’m doing to you now. As long as you continue to do as I ask, you don’t have to worry about me sending shooters. Now that we got that out of the way, do you think your beautiful young wife might have sent them?”
Clara had lied to William about not making it to Savannah. The limousine driver had dropped her off at the emergency room a little over an hour ago. She would wait there for the three and a half hours it would take Angelo Sr. to get to her. That way, the lie she had fed him about getting free treatment in Savannah could stay in place and her trips to doctors in Atlanta, courtesy of William’s pockets, could remain a secret. She had confessed only to her son that William had been paying for her treatments in Atlanta. She knew that Angelo could smell her bullshit, so she had decided she’d tell him the truth during fake dementia acts.
“Best friend, is that you?” she said.
Scared to make a move, let alone breathe, Angelo remained silent as his mother talked to the person only she could see.
“I’ve waited all day for you to come visit me so I can tell you what happened at the doctor’s office. Well, I’m still making progress on my journey to be with you, but all the money William is paying has bought me a little more time. You said he’d never be a good friend to us, because he was born with a dick and balls. Do you remember when you said that?” she said. She started laughing and then tried to catch her breath from the laughing she was doing, but it quickly turned into a smoker’s cough.
She inhaled deeply into her oxygen mask for help. Once she regained her breath, she continued by saying, “You said that his dick would keep him from loving us the way we loved each other and that his set of balls would keep him from being loyal to us, but you were wrong. I wish you were in the flesh to see how good of a friend his sorry ass has been to me in my time of need, but you’re not. Lord knows I miss you.”
It was not the entire truth but enough of to keep his curiosity at bay, or so she hoped. Clara’s days in the flesh were numbered, and even forcing William to pay for the expensive treatments wouldn’t keep her alive. She had been given six months to live seven months earlier, and she knew she was now living on borrowed time. Every night she prayed that she wouldn’t wake up and that she would die peacefully in her sleep, but her book of life wasn’t written that way. She would die painfully, she predicted, for all the hell she had raised in her younger days.
From the age of fifteen, Clara and her now deceased best friend, Rita, had made sleeping with grown men their job. They would get the men to have sex with them and then would blackmail them for whatever they could get. They had lived in the South, which was known as the most religious and family-oriented region of the United States. Unlike the rest of the country, it wasn’t uncommon for a grown man to jump the broom with a teenage girl. The laws of the land came second to the laws of the Bible, which wasn’t a problem for the girls. They just made sure to go after only the faithful men of God who attended their church. There had been a couple of single men in the congregation that Clara brought hell to, as well, but almost all of them had been married.
Threatening to tell their wives that she had been molested by their husbands, which had caused her to be forced to break the seventh commandment by committing adultery, had been something the men took seriously. They would pay whatever price Clara had requested to keep her quiet. Playing the underage dash, as they’d liked to call it, until they came of age had been the pact she and Rita made. Clara had broken that pact when she tried to play the game with the wrong person.
“Will you help me get closer to God? I need some saving,” she begged.
“Everybody needs some saving and to get closer to God. You have to be ready to fight whatever it is that’s standing in the way of that,” Angelo told her.
Angelo Sr. was the pastor’s son in training and was slated to take over his father’s position. Besides preaching on youth Sunday, he was the church’s full-time choir director and the youth Sunday school teacher. At the age of twenty-five, he wasn’t married, but his single marital status was what made him Clara’s number one choice. She knew if the pastor and congregation got wind of him having sex before marriage, and with a minor, his world would crumble, so she set her sights on him. It took much persuasion to get him to break his beliefs, and the fact that he was a virgin made it harder.
“Lust is standing in the way of it. How do I beat that? I pray for a renewed mind, cleansed of the perverted spirit that takes over me but that makes me lust more. Do you understand what I mean?” she said.
“No, I reckon I don’t.”
�
��You don’t know what it’s like to see something so beautiful in front of you, something that’s so perfect that you know the Lord had to have made it, and you want to touch it, kiss it and make love to it? You want to bring it so much pleasure that it moans your name until the words get lost in its throat and you’re left with reading its lips to try to make out the letters that its losing?”
Angelo Sr. Placed his index finger under his collar right above his tie and pulled it to the left to let out the built-up heat. Her words were hot and sinful, causing him to sweat, but he knew better than to get worked up over sinning.
“No, I don’t, and when I’m married, I pray I do.” He chuckled. “You’re having premarital sex, Clara? That isn’t good.”
“You think I don’t know that?” she snapped. “I came to you because I know you can help fix me. Not the pastor, you.”
“What do you think I can do that my daddy can’t?”
“That’s easy. You can be the first and only man to love me. Love conquers all, right?”
After making him believe she loved him and begging him to marry her once she turned eighteen, he gave in. Their one-on-one Bible study meetings turned into kissing sessions, until he confessed to her that his soul was weak. He tried to end it after praying on it, but instead he ended up in between Clara’s legs, pleasurably sinning on one of the church’s pews.
She enjoyed taking his virginity and decided to put the blackmailing on hold so she could see how many of his other firsts he’d surrender to her. He began spoiling her, and blackmailing him was no longer necessary. He worked in the fields when he wasn’t helping run the church, and since he wasn’t obligated to pay bills while he was living with his parents, his income became Clara’s. When she was only a few months away from turning eighteen, she became intrigued by the thought of being married to him.
The couple started secretly house hunting, with Clara conducting her escape from living with her father. She despised her always drunk and verbally abusive father, not because he drank moonshine by the gallon, but because she didn’t see him as a real man. He didn’t work and lived off the money his deceased wife had left him. He’d go days without bathing and always left a piss puddle on the bathroom floor for Clara to almost slip in. He was a slouch, to put it nicely, but if it weren’t for him, Clara’s unknown pregnancy would have taken her life.
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