Kendra Clayton Mystery Box Set

by Angela Henry

  “Well, I hope they caught him and put him in jail,” I said quickly, changing the subject and taking on my role as victim-in-search-of- justice.

  Mama was momentarily speechless. I groaned. “Don’t tell me, let me guess. Raymond Hodge is still on the loose.”

  “No, baby, Raymond Hodge is dead. They found him in the bathroom of that hotel room after they loaded you into the ambulance. He was stabbed to death in the bathtub. Whoever attacked you must have killed him.”

  Now I was scared.

  Detectives Mercer and Harmon stopped by that morning to get a statement from me. They told me much the same thing as Mama had about Raymond Hodge. The knife used to kill him was found in the bushes outside the hotel room. There weren’t any prints on it. I was lucky not to have been stabbed myself. I had been admonished by everyone who stepped into my room about interfering in police work. Not to mention being threatened with a charge of obstructing justice by a tight-lipped Harmon. But they needn’t have worried; I had learned my lesson. I was going back to minding my own business. I was released later that morning, even though I still felt like crap. These days you have to be practically on death’s door to warrant any kind of a hospital stay.

  Mama had wanted me to come and stay at her house, but I wanted to be in my own apartment in my own bed. I felt sure that whoever had attacked me did so because they panicked and I was in the way of a clean getaway. Still, I was very wary. I went around and locked every window and dead-bolted my door. I even wedged a chair under it for good measure. My phone rang and I almost jumped out of my skin. It was Bernie.

  “Are you okay? I heard about you being attacked!”

  I explained to her what happened.

  “Kendra, I appreciate everything that you’re trying to do for me, but you gotta promise me no more Nancy Drew. There’s a lunatic running around. First Jordan, now Raymond. I just don’t understand what’s going on.”

  “Well at least now the police have to realize that you didn’t kill Jordan, right?”

  “Wrong, I was just questioned again. Seems now they think that I killed Raymond Hodge in retaliation for telling what I did to him twenty years ago and to keep him from testifying against me in the trial. Only this time they have no proof. I was out on bail but I had been with Emmett Palmer all afternoon discussing my case. Raymond Hodge. I just can’t believe it. Where did he come from and where in the world has he been all this time?”

  I told her that according to the news, he’d been in Atlanta. I also told her what Althea had done. She was silent so long I thought she’d hung up.

  “You know, I can’t even be mad at her anymore. I’m sure she was just trying to protect me. I just wish she’d have told me that I hadn’t killed him. Damn, I could really use Mother now. She’d know what to do, plus she’d tell that Detective Harmon where to go and how to get there.”

  “Bernie, do you have any idea who could have planted that stuff in your house?”

  “I didn’t even know half of those folks who came to the house after Jordan’s funeral. It could have been anybody.”

  It could have also been Joy for that matter. I did find her snooping around Bernie’s house. Was she trying to find a place to plant some stuff? As long as Cory and Joy’s aunt were around, I’d never get a chance to talk to Joy alone. Neither Vanessa nor Carl had been at the house, but they could have paid someone to plant evidence there. Was I really still suspicious of Carl? We did still have a date for Saturday night. I couldn’t believe I was still thinking like this. Hadn’t I vowed I was going to mind my own business? This was going to be a lot easier said than done.

  I ran myself a hot bath and sprinkled in some of my favorite aromatherapy bath salts. I’d left all my good tapes in my car, which Alex had been nice enough to bring home for me, and I wasn’t about to leave my apartment to go out to get them. Just then I remembered that I still had Jordan’s CD case sitting on my kitchen counter. I’d brought it in and meant to take it to Bernie and forgot in the excitement of the past few days. It was a brown leather case the size of an attaché case. I opened it and was surprised to see that Jordan had had very eclectic taste in music. There must have been about a hundred CDs by everyone from B.B. King to Evelyn Champagne King, Kenny G to Warren G. I perused the tapes and finally decided on Phyllis Hyman.

  In my rush to get to the bathroom to check on my water, I knocked the case off the counter. Cursing, I bent to pick up the CDs that had skittered across the kitchen floor. When I went to put them back in the case, I noticed the lining was worn away and revealed something yellow. I pulled and it came out. Underneath was a large manila envelope.

  I turned off my bathwater and sat down at the kitchen table to examine my find. There were several things inside the envelope. The first thing I pulled out was Jordan’s driver’s license. But I was surprised to see that the name on the license was Wallace Jordan Graham. The next thing I pulled out was the title to his car. Jordan had acquired the car in December 1976. The previous owner was listed as an Ina Graham with an address in Columbus. Next came a picture.

  It was an old, faded color snapshot showing a much younger, slimmer Jordan sporting an afro and wearing a blue shirt opened almost to the waist with a large gold medallion around his neck. I’d be willing to guess that it was his zodiac sign. He was sitting next to an elderly woman whose floral-print dress was clashing with the flowered print of the couch they were sitting on. Her hair was gray and curled into tight poodle curls all over her head. She was decked out in pearl jewelry. Jordan’s arm was around her shoulder, and they both had the same toothy grin, though the woman’s looked like hers was due to dentures. This had to be Jordan’s grandmother.

  Standing behind them was another younger woman. She wasn’t smiling. She was grossly overweight and had her hands on her large hips. She was wearing a tight red shirt, and her crocheted white vest was pulled tightly across the front of a shelf-like bosom. Her hair was pulled into one big Afro puff on the top of her head with yellow barrettes on either side of it. She had quite a funky look on her face. In fact, she looked pissed about life in general. I flipped the picture over. There were no names written on the back, just the month and the year, July 1976. No wonder she looked so mad. Seventies fashions weren’t exactly kind to the larger person. The clothes had looked ridiculous on non-overweight people. I wondered who she was.

  The last things I pulled from the envelope were what really shocked me. It was a marriage license and certificate issued to a Wallace J. Graham, aged twenty-two, occupation: self-employed and to a Delores D. Briggs, aged twenty-three, occupation: nurse’s aide. Both had been issued on December 1, 1976, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

  So Jordan had been married. Was he still married? I looked in the envelope but there were no divorce papers or wedding pictures. Was this why he was going by an assumed name? Was he hiding from his wife or possibly other women he screwed over? My guess was both. I should have turned this stuff over to the police. Instead, I called Carl and told him I’d meet him in Columbus for our date. I planned on visiting the address listed on the title to Jordan’s car. Ina Graham had to have been the grandmother’s name. Was I being stupid? Yes. But my life was already at risk from involving myself in this crazy mess. I figured I must not have been hit on the head hard enough with that bottle to knock any good sense into me. I certainly wanted to find out who had done it before they killed me next time.

  TWELVE

  Saturday morning it rained. By midmorning the rain had stopped, leaving behind a muggy heat that seemed to rise from the pavement, making the air feel like a sauna. I had all the fans in my apartment on full blast, but I only succeeded in moving hot air around. Today would be the first time in two days I’d ventured out of my apartment. My head felt fine, although I still had stitches. Luckily, they didn’t have to shave very much of my hair to treat my cut. It had grown about a half an inch in the past few weeks and was just long enough to hide the stitches. At worst I’d look like a Little Orphan Annie. I took a silk scarf
and tied it around my head to keep sweat from running in my face. It actually didn’t look half bad. It was kind of retro, like I could have danced down the Soul Train line back in the day.

  I had plans to meet Carl in Columbus at his condo for dinner later that evening. I couldn’t wait to sample his skills, culinary of course—yeah, right. I had a whole day to kill before then. I wrote down Ina Graham’s address, 2012 Chesterline Drive, and called the library to find out where in Columbus it was. After finding out it was on the east side, I put my white silk halter dress and some dressy sandals in a garment bag, I tossed my make-up bag in my purse, and I took along Ina Graham’s address and the snapshot of Jordan and the two women. I prayed the iffy air conditioning in my car would bless me with some relief on the way.

  I stopped at the drugstore before hitting the road to get a candy bar or two for the trip. I hadn’t yet eaten and didn’t want anything heavy with all the heat. As usual, once I got in the store I thought of a few other things I needed and picked them up as well. I was on my way to the checkout line when a thought hit me. I backtracked to the aisle where the condoms were and stood there staring. Should I? It was only our second date, but I couldn’t get that kiss out of my mind and it had been so long—too long since I’d been with a man. Would he think I was sleazy if I pulled out a box of condoms? And what would I say if it got to that point? “Here, baby, hope these fit. I took a chance ‘cause I didn’t know your size.” While I stood there pondering the chances of getting my groove on that night, a velvety voice with the hint of a Southern drawl spoke to me.

  “Hi there, sugar.”

  I turned and saw the woman from the funeral home, Winette Barlow, Crazy Frieda’s sister-in-law. She was smiling her bright-red-lipsticked smile and was dressed in a red silk pantsuit and three-inch black pumps. Somehow she managed to look fresh and cool despite the heat.

  “It’s Kendra, right?” she asked, eyeing the display of condoms in front of me with amusement. I had turned red with embarrassment.

  “Yes. How have you been, Mrs. Barlow?”

  “Child, call me Winnie, everybody does. I was hoping I’d see you around somewhere to thank you for stopping by during Elfrieda’s visitation hours. You forgot to sign the guestbook.”

  I wondered if she’d forgotten that I was there for someone else’s funeral.

  “I would have stayed longer, but I didn’t want to interrupt your visit with the Ivorys.”

  The smile immediately fled and she rolled her eyes so hard I thought they’d turn inside out. “Oh, trust me, honey, you weren’t interrupting a thing. The Ivorys were friends of my late husband Henry and his first wife, Francis. When Francis died and Henry married me, they didn’t come around very much, which was fine by me. I was fifteen years younger than Henry. I like gambling, love to dance, and I don’t think having a drink now and again is going to cause me to burn in hell for all eternity. And, as you can see, I love the color red. Donna Ivory thinks I’m a scarlet hussy. But that’s okay because I think she’s a hard-faced, holy-rollin’, hypocritical heifer!”

  Can you say that three times fast? I thought. This was a woman after my own heart.

  I laughed. “Well you certainly call it like you see it.”

  “I’m usually not so blunt. I’m just still mad at that simple woman for what she said about Elfrieda and all that nonsense about her knowing her time was near and acting strange. I don’t know who or what that woman saw, but it wasn’t Elfrieda.”

  “Why do you say that?” My curiosity was piqued.

  “Because when I arrived home from my brother’s, I found her dead in her bed. That was on Thursday, May seventeenth. The doctor said she died in her sleep the night before. So she couldn’t have been in any alley behind Donna Ivory’s house the morning of Friday, May eighteenth, unless it was her ghost.”

  The morning of May 18 was when Jordan had been killed. Whoever Donna Ivory saw must have been the killer. But the Ivorys said they hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary. And they hadn’t. Crazy Frieda rummaging around for cans wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. So what if she got her days mixed up. Only it hadn’t been her. Had it been the killer in disguise?

  “You okay, honey?” Winette Barlow was looking at me strangely.

  “Oh yes. I’m fine.”

  “Good. I’ve got to run now. I’m off to Atlantic City with my singles group. You take care, sweetie.”

  She reached past me, grabbed an economy-sized box of Trojan Magnums, flashed me a big smile, and headed off down the aisle. Well, there was obviously no shame in her game. Following her lead, I snatched up a box of condoms and headed to the checkout counter.

  My air conditioner blessed me with relatively cool air on my thirty-minute drive to Columbus. I munched my Snickers bar and sang along with Lisa Stansfield, still amazed that a white girl from Great Britain could sound so soulful.

  Traffic on 70 was backed up because of construction. I vaguely remembered Carl warning about this on the phone the other night. I had meant to take Route 40 but forgot in light of what Winette Barlow had told me. What did it mean? For starters, it meant that whoever killed Jordan, or whatever his name was, had planned it far in advance. The killer had known that it wasn’t unusual for Crazy Frieda—man, I had to stop calling her that—to be in the alley. No one would think anything of seeing someone dressed in raggedy clothes lurking in the alley. Everyone would assume it had been Frieda. Who would know about this? Everyone who lived on either side of the alley, which included Vanessa and Bernie.

  Could I really see Vanessa dressing up and lurking in the alley behind her own home waiting for Jordan to show up? Actually, yes I could. Bernie also knew about Frieda and her cans. I remembered her telling me about leaving cans out for Frieda when she lived in the house. I wondered how she could have found the time to borrow Iris’s car, put on a disguise, wait in the house, kill Jordan, change clothes, pick up the programs at the printer, and be back at the center without a hair out of place. It seemed unlikely but I guess not impossible.

  What about Joy? If she’d been following Jordan, she’d have followed him over to Vanessa’s and could have seen Frieda in the alley. Did it give her an idea? Could she have seen something she wasn’t supposed to and been run down on her bicycle as a result? I did have a hard time envisioning Carl dressed as an oversized bag lady lurking in the alley. Or was it just lust clouding my judgment? Probably. I planned on finding out why Vanessa was giving him money. Were they accomplices? Did they pretend to split up, knowing Vanessa’s father was dying, after which they would collect the insurance money and reunite? Did Jordan get in the way? Where was Jordan’s wife? I didn’t see any divorce papers in the envelope. Were they still married? And just how did Raymond Hodge fit into all of this?

  Chesterline Drive was a nice, quiet, tree-lined street of mainly two-story homes. I parked in front of 2012, a white stucco bi-level, and looked around before getting out. Whoever lived here now was taking good care of it. The lawn was immaculate and edged neatly. The front of the house was framed by high bushes that hid the front door from the street. There didn’t appear to be anyone home as far as I could tell. There was no car in the driveway and no signs of life coming from inside. I got out of my car and noticed an older woman across the street in front of a big brick two-story, sweeping grass from her sidewalk. I walked across the street.

  “Excuse me, ma’am. Do you know if anybody’s home across the street?”

  She looked up at me and appeared slightly annoyed at having been interrupted from her task.

  “You try knocking on the door?” she asked sourly. She had on dirty gardening gloves, blue sweatpants, and a yellow T-shirt with a picture of a cat on it. Her white tennis shoes had grass stains on them and a hole in the left toe. I could see her black sock peeking through. Her face was heavily lined and I guessed her age to be anywhere from fifty-five to a hundred and five. I couldn’t tell.

  “It doesn’t look like anybody’s home. Do you know who lives there?” />
  She gave me a suspicious look.

  “Of course I know who lives there. What kind of person doesn’t know her neighbors? Are you selling something? Because if you are, I’m not interested and neither are the Taylors. They got enough problems. He just got laid off from his job, and they don’t have money to spend on foolishness.”

  “No, ma’am, I’m not. Actually, I’m wondering if you also knew the previous owners of that house, the Grahams? I knew Mrs. Graham’s grandson, Wallace.”

  She stopped sweeping and stared at me. “If you’re a friend of Wally’s then you know he hasn’t lived across the street in over twenty years.”

  Wally? “I just met him last year. He was involved with a friend of mine.”

  She laughed and her wrinkles arranged themselves into a smile. “Oh, really. Wally always was quite the ladies’ man. You sure you’re not the friend?”

  “No, Ms. ah?”

  “Lambert, Tangy Lambert,” she offered grudgingly.

  “No, Ms. Lambert. To be perfectly honest with you, I knew Wallace Graham as Jordan Wallace. He was murdered a few weeks ago. A good friend of mine was involved with him and has been charged with his murder. I just need some questions answered. Can you help me?” She dropped her broom in the grass and invited me inside her house.

  Tangy Lambert’s place was clean but cluttered. Almost every surface was covered with knickknacks and piles of newspapers and magazines. The whole place smelled strongly of cat, coffee, and cigarettes. She offered me a seat on a hard recliner, one of the few clear spaces for sitting, and disappeared into the kitchen. A large yellow cat pounced into my lap from out of nowhere, scaring the life out of me. It sat heavily in my lap rubbing its head against my chest and purring. The thing must have weighed at least thirty pounds. What was she feeding this monster? She came back a few minutes later with two tall glasses of lemonade. I drank a third of it before I noticed a cat hair in it.