Kendra Clayton Mystery Box Set

by Angela Henry

“So you got busted, huh?” she said with a smirk.

  “Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  “Oh, I know exactly what you’re talking about. You and your friend’s man with your hands all over each other. Yeah, I saw you all right, only I’m not the one who told on you. I got better things to do than to be telling the police anything, especially when it don’t have shit to do with me.”

  “Since when have you ever let that keep you out of other people’s business?” Joy is notorious for stirring up a mess wherever she goes, and I was sure that this time was no different.

  “Hey, don’t get mad at me because you got busted,” she said, holding her hands up in front of her like we were about to play patty- cake. “You should consider yourself real lucky though. Your girl Bernie could have seen you and killed you both right there on the spot. Instead she just killed him.” She flicked her cigarette on the ground and mashed it with her foot.

  “Duty calls,” she said, giving me a mock salute and then disappearing through the door.

  I stood outside for a few minutes to think. I didn’t believe her. Who else could have been there? It never occurred to me to ask Mercer and Harmon who told them. I started to go inside and couldn’t. Joy had moved the piece of brick and I was locked out. I kicked the door.

  I stopped at the store on my way home and wandered up and down the aisles, hoping something would interest me. I finally ended up with a bottle of my favorite Japanese plum wine and a roasted chicken from the deli. I was in the checkout line when I heard someone call my name. I turned around and saw Carl Brumfield standing behind me. He had on a navy blue double-breasted suit that he was wearing the hell out of. Since he had been sitting most of the time the night we met, I hadn’t realized how tall he was. He was smiling down on me with those perfect white teeth framed by that incredible mouth. “Saucy lips” as Lynette would say, meant for kissing. I caught a whiff of what smelled like Obsession for Men. Lord, have mercy.

  “You must be in another world. I’ve been calling you for five minutes.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. After the day I’ve had, I wish I were in another world. A world with no Mondays, no bosses with attitudes, and no friends with big problems.”

  “I hear you,” he said, looking down into my cart. “I guess that accounts for the bottle of wine?”

  “Yeah, it’s been that kind of day.” I was suddenly wishing I had worn the dress I almost put on this morning instead of jeans and a T-shirt. Of course, if I’d been dressed to kill I wouldn’t have run into him.

  “So what brings you here? You do all your grocery shopping in Willow?”

  “I was in court this afternoon. The final hearing for my divorce,” he said, watching me closely.

  Had Vanessa shown up? And if so, where had she been? It dawned on me that Carl Brumfield probably knew who I was by now, and I was suddenly very uncomfortable.

  “So how’s it feel to be a free man again?” I asked, not quite able to look him in the eye.

  “Not completely free yet. We’ll get a call from the court in a week to ten days, then it will all be over.”

  So, she had shown up. I was aware that Carl was watching me, and his smile was barely hanging on.

  “You know, I should be really mad at you. Why didn’t you tell me you were friends with Vanessa’s landlady? The paper said you were a witness at the scene. How come you never said anything?”

  “I guess I didn’t quite know how to bring up the subject of a dead man in your ex-wife’s house in casual conversation. I really didn’t mean to be evasive. Am I forgiven?” I gave him my best doe-eyed innocent look.

  “On one condition.” His smile had returned to its full wattage. “Have dinner with me Friday night.”

  Hell yes, my mind screamed. But my mouth said, “Okay, I’d really like that.” We exchanged phone numbers, paid for our purchases, and he walked me to my car. It didn’t hit me until later that he might be using me for information just as I’d used him. I knew what answers I was after. But what was he after?

  “Look, how many times do I have to say I’m sorry?” Lynette said later that evening as we sat in my tiny kitchen eating roasted chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy, and green beans.

  “If it weren’t for that pitiful date Saturday, you wouldn’t have met Carl Brumfield,” she said, waving a chicken leg in the air. “And I hope you know you ain’t half slick. I saw you go back into the restaurant when I was sitting at the traffic light. I hope you don’t blow this, Kendra.”

  “Whatever,” I said, my mouth half filled with mashed potatoes. “It’s just a date, Lynette. He didn’t ask me to marry him. I think you’re more excited about this than I am. And I thought you said I shouldn’t be making eyes at him, remember.”

  “That was before I knew he was so close to being a free man. And you know when a wife goes missing and there’s a dead man in her house, the first person they look at is the husband. But from what you said, she was just out of town for the weekend.”

  “Yeah, which makes me wonder what in the world Jordan was doing over there in the first place.”

  “You don’t think... Naw, even he wasn’t that big of an asshole,” Lynette said.

  “What?”

  “You don’t think he had the nerve to be meeting another woman. Maybe he knew Vanessa was out of town and decided to use the house to hook up with some other chick.”

  “It’s possible. I wouldn’t have put anything past that man.” I filled Lynette in on what Gwen heard at the shop about the possibility of a third woman. Would Jordan have had the nerve to meet another woman in the house where his other woman lived? I was getting tired just thinking about all the plotting and planning that would have involved. That would certainly be grounds for murder in most women’s eyes.

  “Now that makes me wonder if he had a key, and if he didn’t, who let him in?” I said, carving another piece of chicken.

  “Bernie was at work and Vanessa was out of town. So that leaves the mystery woman,” Lynette said.

  “Yeah, but if he was screwing someone else besides Bernie and Vanessa, why not go to her house? Why risk going to Vanessa’s?”

  “Maybe she has a husband or a boyfriend.”

  “Why not a hotel?” I asked.

  “Hell, I don’t know, Kendra. Maybe the idea of doing it in someone else’s bed turned them on. Folks are freaky these days. Don’t you watch Jerry Springer?”

  “Not if I can help it,” I said, laughing.

  We cleaned up the kitchen and took the bottle of wine and our glasses into the living room. I knew I’d have a headache in the morning but didn’t care. Between our jobs, her kids and fiancé, Lynette and I didn’t get a chance to get together for girl talk very often.

  “You miss the kids yet?” Lynette’s ex-husband, Lamont, had the kids for a month every summer. They’d left for California the day before.

  “Nope,” she said, then taking a sip of wine added, “not yet anyway. Ask me in a week or two.”

  “Were they excited about going?”

  “You know how kids are. They act like they can’t wait to get away from me whenever they’re not getting their way. They couldn’t wait to get out there to see their daddy’s new house. He’s got that big new job now, so I think they figure he’s going to spend a lot of money on them. I didn’t tell them about Daddy’s new wife. He can tell them that himself. I imagine when they come home they’ll tell me how mean Daddy was and how they couldn’t wait to get home. They’re spoiled. As much as I appreciate Ma letting us stay with her, she spoils those kids rotten.”

  “And of course you don’t have anything to do with it,” I teased.

  “Of course not,” she said with a wink.

  We drank almost the entire bottle of wine and talked until midnight. If it weren’t for our jobs, we would have probably talked all night. I walked Lynette to the door and as I opened it, I saw a flash of gray like a puff of smoke shoot down the steps.

  “I see Mrs. C
arson still has that raggedy cat. That thing must be as old as she is.”

  “Don’t talk about Mahalia. You’d think that cat is one of her children. She treats it a lot better than she treats her kids. She even buys Mahalia presents when she hits the numbers.”

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Lynette said, reaching into her purse and pulling out a bottle of pills. “Be careful with these, girl, they’re strong. I never took them during the day because they knocked me out. They’ll take care of your back pain, though, and anything else that’s hurting.”

  I took the pills and watched her go. I wouldn’t be taking anything tonight. The wine had given me a nice buzz, and I wasn’t in any pain at the moment. But, the morning wasn’t far off.

  The next two days dragged by slowly. Our attendance at the center remained low. Bernie had come back to work but was keeping a low profile and avoiding me. I’d heard from someone else that Jordan’s wake and funeral were going to be on Thursday. Dorothy had decided to cancel afternoon classes then so we could all attend.

  I was functioning in a daze for the most part because of the painkillers I’d gotten from Lynette. I’d taken only one on Tuesday night and ended up oversleeping the next morning and being late for work. I was exhausted all the next day. But, true to Lynette’s word, my back felt great.

  Carl had called me, and we made plans to have dinner at one of my favorite restaurants over in Springfield—Cedar Street Restaurant. I was excited about the date because it would be great to be in the company of an attractive man, and it would also give me an opportunity to get some more information about him and Vanessa.

  There had been a brief account in the paper about how Jordan’s murder investigation was going. Apparently, Vanessa had been visiting friends in Dayton for the weekend and didn’t have any clue as to why Jordan Wallace would have been in the house. According to the article, the police didn’t have any suspects. No one in the neighborhood had seen anything out of the ordinary that morning. I knew Vanessa hadn’t told the police about her personal involvement with Jordan. It was only a matter of time before they found out. I kept wondering if Carl had known. What I did know was that I didn’t like the fact that, thanks to Joy, the police were looking at me for any reason. I smiled when I thought about my date and then realized I still had Jordan’s wake and funeral to get through.

  It rained on Thursday. Fitting funeral weather, I couldn’t help thinking as I sat on a hard wooden chair at the Walker and Willis Funeral Home that afternoon. Reverend Robert Merriman was delivering the eulogy to a half-filled room of people, most of whom had never met Jordan Wallace. The wake had been held an hour before and had been attended by mostly friends and coworkers of Bernie’s and a few close friends of her mother’s. It was a closed-casket ceremony with the same picture of Jordan that had been in the paper sitting in a wreath of flowers in front of the casket.

  Bernie had put on a brave face as she sat in the first row ahead of me. She was dressed in a charcoal-gray suit, and every few seconds she would wipe away a tear with a white lace hanky. As she did so, Diane, who was sitting next to her, would pat her gently on the back. I couldn’t help but wonder how Bernie really felt. She’d been ready to end her relationship with Jordan. Hadn’t she told me the night she found him that she’d wanted to end things with Jordan once and for all? Killing someone was definitely once and for all.

  I looked around the room. Detectives Mercer and Harmon were sitting in the back taking everything in, especially Harmon. I was sure she was making a mental note of everyone who’d come to the funeral. The one thing that had amazed me was that Jordan had no relatives there. I’d read in the paper that his parents were dead. There were no brothers or sisters listed as survivors. Was Jordan an only child or did Bernie just not know? What about cousins or aunts and uncles? Could Jordan have a family out there who didn’t know one of its members had been murdered? I couldn’t ask Bernie. She was just barely speaking to me. I guess reluctantly revealing a secret that you desperately wanted to forget has a way of putting a damper on a friendship.

  The service was brief. It had to be. There wasn’t much to say about a man who most of us, including Bernie, barely knew. The minister had talked about the precarious nature of human life and living it to its fullest. I had a feeling that Jordan had done that and mostly at the expense of other people. There would be an even briefer graveside service in the morning, which I did not plan on attending.

  I was sitting between my boss, Dorothy, who was wearing a disgustingly tight dark green dress, and our program’s secretary, Iris Reynolds. Iris had been out sick all week and had just come back to work that day, which was a relief to us all. Her sub had been hours away from being run off the premises by an angry mob of pissed-off students and employees with me leading the pack. The woman must have been a graduate of the Eat Shit and Die school of charm. I didn’t want to think about how many prospective students she’d run off with her less-than-lovely phone etiquette.

  The service was over and people were leaving to go to Bernie’s house for the usual post-funeral swine fest. I’d been wondering if I should go. In the end, my stomach won out as it always does. I was also in desperate need of a bathroom. I’d been holding it since before the service began. After telling Iris and Dorothy that I’d see them at Bernie’s, I went off in search of a bathroom. As I left the room, I spotted Detective Trish Harmon. We nodded at each other solemnly, befitting the occasion. Then once past her, as I rounded the corner, I flipped her the finger. Hey, what can I say? My level of maturity slips on me now and then.

  The Walker and Willis Funeral Home had once been one of the finest homes in Willow. Back in the days when Madison Street, on which the home sits, was the ritziest street in town. Blacks mostly populated the east side of town or wherever they could get anyone to sell them a house. In the mid-to-late fifties, when realtors and contractors started building up the north side of town, many whites moved north, and the south side of Willow slowly became predominately black.

  Edmond Willis and Hugh Walker ran separate funeral homes and had been competitors in servicing the black community of Willow for years. But when their grandchildren Roger Willis and Leticia Walker, both only children, fell in love and got married after both inherited the family business, they combined both funeral homes into a large one. The house that they moved their combined business to was an old mansion that sits back from the street. The house was made of brick that has been painted white with black shutters and a mansard roof. The place has three floors. The ground floor and the basement are used for the business. Roger, Leticia, and their children occupy the second and third floors.

  I found a powder room at the end of a long hallway. When I came out, I noticed another parlor across the hall smaller than the one Jordan’s funeral had been in but every bit as nice, with the same maroon carpet and lace curtains. The sign posted on a wrought iron easel by the door said “Elfrieda Barlow” and listed visitation hours. I peeked in and saw a mahogany casket opened to reveal an elderly black woman in a blue suit. No one else seemed to be present. I felt sad. Didn’t this woman have a family? The visitation hours were half over.

  “Hello,” said a cheerful voice behind me, making me jump. I turned and saw an attractive, light-skinned woman who looked to be in her mid fifties. Her thick black hair was streaked with white and piled high on her head. She wore bright red lipstick on her wide smiling mouth and had on a sharp black-and-white Donna Karan suit that I’d seen at the mall for more money than I pay in rent a month. Her suit matched her hair.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you, honey,” she said in a soft voice with just the hint of a Southern drawl. “I’m Winette Barlow. Did you know Elfrieda?” she asked, gesturing toward the casket.

  “No, ma’am. I’m sorry I didn’t. I was here for the Wallace funeral. I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  “No harm done, honey. I probably should have done without the visitation. Elfrieda didn’t exactly like people very well. The only ones who showed up today we
re friends of mine. But, she was my sister- in-law. She was my late husband’s older sister, and he would have wanted me to make sure everything was done properly,” she said, smiling.

  “Was she sick very long?” I was at a loss for words.

  “Oh, honey, she wasn’t sick. She died of a stroke in her sleep. I found her when I came back from visiting my brother in South Carolina. She lived with me, you know. Such a sad life,” she said, shaking her head. Her smile softened a bit. “I know what everyone thought, but she wasn’t a bag lady,” she said, lifting her chin defiantly. I watched her walk over to the side of the casket and bend to adjust the lapel of the blue suit.

  I went and stood by her and looked down into the casket. The occupant looked like she had just lain down for a nap after church. Her short gray hair was styled away from her face in finger waves and her hands were folded at her waist. Her blue suit looked a little big and I had to wonder if it was something she’d worn in life.

  “Why would anyone think she was a bag lady? Didn’t you say she lived with you?” I asked quietly as if the woman in the casket might wake up from her nap.

  “Well, Elfrieda was eccentric. But it wasn’t her fault, you see. She was a perfectly normal person up until her accident years ago. She was an educated woman, had a good job at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. One night she was coming home late from work and nodded off at the wheel. She crashed into a tree. It’s a wonder she survived. Sometimes I think it would have been better if she had died ‘cause she was never the same afterward. She had a severe head injury that left her brain damaged. I thought it would have been better if she was institutionalized, but Henry, my late husband, wouldn’t hear of it.

  “We did the best we could. She would disappear for days at a time, wandering the streets at all hours. It was all we could do to keep her fed and in clean clothes. Things had gotten a little better in the last few years since we finally got her on some medicine that worked for her. She was still a handful though. I felt so guilty leaving her here when I went to South Carolina, but my brother was recovering from heart surgery, and I went to take care of him. I couldn’t look after them both. I had a home health nurse come check on her every day.”