by Angela Henry
The rest of the drive was silent. Dennis dropped off his parents first. I was surprised that they only lived four doors down from Claire Easton in a salmon-colored, three story, art deco house that sat up on a hill. I’d have figured them for a nice sedate Cape Cod. As we were pulling out of the steep driveway, Dennis indicated that he lived in the old caretaker’s cottage at the back of his parent’s property.
“Much as I love the folks, I can’t be in the same house with them. I like having my own place and they don’t want me in the house anyway. I’m a slob,” he said, laughing.
“Was Julian a slob?” Dennis looked over at me. His expression was unreadable.
“I guess you picked up the fact that my parents think Julian was a saint.”
“Doesn’t that bother you?”
“Not like it used to. That’s why I moved to the West Coast. I thought if I put some distance between us they’d miss me and appreciate me more.”
“Did they?”
“Yeah, they did. But only as long I was on the West Coast. Once I moved back home, it was the same old story.” He shrugged his thick shoulders. “Where to?” he asked, changing the subject. I told him where I lived and we were silent for a few minutes.
“Did you know Julian gave the reunion fund money to Gerald to help him out of a bind on his last job?”
“Audrey told me after the last committee meeting. I guess I’m not surprised. Julian was like that. Always helping out a friend.”
“I never got to know that side of him,” I replied, trying to keep the bitterness out of my voice. He glanced over at me but didn’t comment.
“Kendra, I lied to you back in the parking lot when you asked me if I knew that Clair Easton was Gerald’s client.”
I swung around to face him. “Why?”
“Because I didn’t want to discuss what I’m about to say with my parents nearby.”
“Sounds serious.”
“It is. Julian was Clair Easton’s accountant. He was the one who recommended her to Gerald in the first place. When Audrey told me Julian had given the reunion fund money to Gerald, I was worried that Julian may have also dipped into one of Clair Easton’s accounts. She wouldn’t have noticed a few hundred missing here or there. It would just kill my folks if they thought he was stealing.”
“But why would he have stolen from Clair Easton?”
“Julian was in a lot of debt. His business was in trouble, which was why he freaked out when he lost out on that account thanks to Cherry. And he’d bought the old Bridges house out on Faucet Road and was sinking a ton of money into it to get it all fixed up. He was planning to turn it into a real show place and thought he would make a huge profit and use the money for his business. Even doing most of the work himself, the cost of materials was eating him alive.”
“He was trying to flip the old Bridges place?” The house Dennis was referring to had been an old abandoned house where he and his round table cronies used to get drunk and smoke weed. I had no idea that Julian had bought the place.
“Flip? Oh, yeah that’s what they call it. Yeah, he was trying to flip it. But it flipped him instead,” he said referring to the fact that Julian had fallen to his death from the roof of the house.
“Why didn’t he just get the money he needed from your parents?”
“Because they loaned him the money to start up his business. My folks adored Julian. But they’re both real big on initiative and making your own luck. They don’t believe in having anything handed to you. Their big thing is that hard work never hurt anybody. But hard work didn’t do a damned thing for Julian.”
“You don’t think Julian could have actually stolen money from Clair Easton, do you?”
“Naw, probably not. But Gerald’s another story. He’s as broke as Julian was and ten times shadier. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love the guy to death. But he owes child support for four kids and is still paying his first wife alimony. He’s seriously tapped out and refuses to live within his means. You saw that car he drives, didn’t you?” I nodded. I could have pointed out that a Lexus wasn’t the kind of car most college bookstore managers drove but didn’t bother. He must have bought the car when he’d had his last job.
“I know he’s your friend, Dennis. But if he was desperate enough to steal money from a client, then he may have also—”
“Killed Clair Easton? I hope to hell not. But I guess anything is possible when you’re desperate,” he said softly.
We were silent again and Dennis turned onto my street. But I still had a lot more questions.
“Did you know your cousin Julian was seeing Ms. Flack?” Dennis’s head whipped around and his mouth fell open.
“No way. Julian was banging Ms. Flack? You gotta be kidding me.”
“You really didn’t know? I thought you two were close?”
“Not once I moved out West. We were both so busy we just didn’t have the time to talk as much as we used to. I can’t believe it. Julian and Ms. Flack? You know, now that I think about it, Julian used to do handyman work on the side to earn extra money. He learned all that stuff from his dad. He told me he was seeing someone whose house he’d done work at. He never told me who it was, though. Damn! I had no idea he was into older women.”
He pulled up in front of my duplex and I thanked him and got out. I started to walk away when his voice stopped me. I leaned down into the window.
“I’m really sorry about that rumor I started about you back in high school. About you having had a secret abortion and not knowing who the baby’s father was. Forgive me?” He was giving me an embarrassed look and I stared at him without speaking for what seemed like an eternity before he repeated his request.
“Can you ever forgive me? I know I was a real asshole.”
First an apology from Audrey and now Dennis. I hoped this wasn’t a sign of the coming apocalypse. With great effort I gave him a smile and managed to say, “Don’t sweat it. It was a long time ago. You were a different person. We all were.”
I watched Dennis pull off and headed into my apartment thinking not about how much that rumor had hurt me, but realizing I now knew what Ivy Flack thought she’d had on me. She’d actually believed that old rumor about me and thought I’d be willing to pay to keep it quiet. If she’d believed it, then someone must have told her it was true. Who disliked me that much?
Chapter Eighteen
MY MOUTH WAS FILLED with buttered toast and I was rushing around trying to get dressed the next morning when my phone rang. It was only 7:00. I didn’t have to be at work until 8:30, but I was trying to catch Cherisse before she left for work. I managed to answer the phone on the second ring.
“Hello?” I said, trying hard not to choke on half-chewed food.
“Why are you so out of breath?” asked Carl, chuckling softly. I quickly swallowed the toast and washed it down with a gulp of orange juice.
“Hey, sweetie. How’s the trial going?”
“That’s why I’m calling. Looks like things are going to wrap up sooner than I thought. So I’ll be in town tomorrow night instead of Saturday afternoon. Have you been thinking about what we talked about?”
“I’ve hardly thought of anything else,” I replied, slumping into a nearby kitchen chair.
“Good. Then I bet you have an answer for me. I’ll see you tomorrow night, babe.” He hung up and I sat there holding the receiver, staring off into space.
This was not good. He was going to want an answer to his marriage proposal and I just wasn’t prepared at all for that conversation. I still didn’t know what I was going to tell him. I had a sinking feeling that our entire relationship was going to be decided during that little chat. The bleating dial tone startled me and I hung up the phone.
I arrived at Cherisse’s house ten minutes later and noticed a familiar car in her driveway. It was a black BMW convertible. It was Gerald Tate’s car. I parked across the street. It was still pretty early and her curtains were drawn. There were no signs of life coming from Cherisse
’s house, which told me that Gerald must have spent the night. I had no idea they were an item. Of course, I could be completely wrong as to why his car would be parked in her driveway before 7:30 in the morning. I tried to keep an open mind. Maybe they were running buddies and hooked up every morning to run. But thinking about the gut Gerald had acquired since high school, the only running he was doing was back and forth to the fridge. Clearly, I needed to get a closer look to verify my suspicions.
Except for a paperboy, who looked about twelve, flinging papers from his bike a few houses down, the block was deserted. I started to open my car door when Cherisse’s front door opened suddenly. I quickly slid down in my seat until the only thing showing was the top of my head. I peered through my window and watched as Gerald, dressed only in a towel slung around his middle, opened the screen door and reached down to get the paper that was laying on the doormat. In doing so, the towel slipped off and he caught it just before his privates were exposed to the cool morning air. He turned with the paper in one hand, and the towel in the other, and I got a crystal clear view of a round, brown ass bisected by a hairy butt crack. Eew! So much for them being running buddies. But they were buddies all right. The kind that starts with F and ends with K.
Gerald was too busy with the towel to notice me and thankfully pulled the front door shut behind him. I got out of my car and quickly crossed the street to Cherisse’s front yard and walked around to the side of the house. I was hoping there was a window open so that I could eavesdrop. There were two windows on the side that faced the house next door. The blinds on both windows were closed tight and they were both locked. I moved around to the back of the house. There were two small windows that looked out onto the backyard as well as a concrete patio with green metal patio chairs arranged around a matching glass table with a fringed umbrella. The back door was open and I could hear voices coming from inside the house. I couldn’t really hear what they were saying because of the loud hum of Cherisse’s central air-conditioning unit, which I was standing next to. I started to creep towards the back door so I could hear better when the voices got closer. The back door opened. I turned and ran back around the side of the house, slipping on the wet, dew soaked grass, getting grass stains on my white pants and hurting my wrist as I threw my hand down to catch my fall. I had to stifle a moan as I clutched my throbbing wrist to my chest. I looked around the corner into the backyard and saw that Cherisse and Gerald were eating their breakfast at the patio table. I willed my rapidly beating heart to slow down and listened.
“I still can’t believe you did it,” said Cherisse, spooning what looked like honeydew melon into her mouth. She was dressed in the same red Kimono robe that she’d had on yesterday and didn’t sound nearly as congested.
“I told you I was going to. I didn’t have a choice, did I? If I didn’t stop her, she was going to ruin everything.” Gerald had put on sweatpants and a white wifebeater T-Shirt. My ears perked up at that last part. Was he talking about Clair Easton or Ms. Flack?
“I just wish there’d been another way. I mean what you did was so brutal? Don’t you feel bad at all?” asked Cherisse.
“Hell no!” replied Gerald vehemently. “She gave me no choice. It was her own damned fault. It needed to be done. I couldn’t afford to have her running her mouth to Wheatley. I need my job.”
“Do you really think she would have gone to your boss?” Cherisse was pulling apart a croissant and spreading jam on it. Gerald shrugged nonchalantly and shoveled scrambled eggs into his mouth.
“I didn’t want to take any chances. I just wanted the bitch gone and now she is,” he said grimly after taking a gulp from a large coffee mug.
“Well luck seems to be on your side because you’re home free now. But you need to be more careful. Next time you won’t be so lucky.”
“Hell, lucky is my middle name,” said Gerald, laughing nastily. Charisse gave him a sharp look and took another bite of croissant. She started to tell him something that from the look on her face wasn’t going to be anything nice, when the cordless phone sitting next to her plate started ringing.
“Hello,” she said, cradling the phone between her ear and shoulder. I saw her frown and look around wildly. “What are you talking about?”
“Who is it?” asked Gerald, looking worried.
“Mrs. Grable from across the street. She said there’s a woman watching us,” Cherisse said, covering the receiver with her hand.
Crap. Someone had seen me. I looked over my shoulder and saw a woman in a green housedress, with fat pink curlers in her hair, watching me from the front porch of the Pepto pink house across the street. She was on the phone babbling and jabbing an accusing finger in my direction. I straightened up and turned back to look at Gerald and Cherisse.
Gerald immediately got up from the table and started looking around the backyard. I hot-footed it across Cherisse’s front yard, ran across the street, jumped in my car, and started the ignition just as Gerald ran into the front yard.
“I’m callin’ the po po on yo ass. You better run!” The woman I assumed to be Mrs. Grable called out in a gravelly smoker’s voice as I pulled away from the curb.
I looked back as I sped away and my eyes met and locked with Gerald’s. If the look on his face chilled me to the bone, then the slashing motion he made across his throat after pointing at me, made me almost wet my already dirty pants.
Later that day, during the two-hour break between the morning and afternoon sessions, I sat at my desk in my empty classroom to think things over. Two women were dead and there was one person both women had in common: Gerald Tate. From the conversation I’d overheard, Gerald had done something that Cherisse had described as brutal to some woman. Both Ivy Flack and Clair Easton posed threats to Gerald and both died in violent brutal ways, Ms. Flack by electrocution and Clair Easton by stabbing. Could Gerald have killed them both, or was Cherisse in on it too? Cherisse did have Ms. Flack’s silver compact. What was it doing in her bathroom? She had to have taken it after she shoved her into the bathtub with her blow dryer. It must be some kind of trophy.
I felt pain flare up in my wrist as I tossed my empty pop can in the trash. I’d had Iris tape it with an ace bandage from the first aid kit when I’d gotten to work, but even though I knew it wasn’t broken, it was still sore and swollen. I should probably see a doctor. And I knew just the one I wanted to see. I took the rest of the afternoon off and headed to the doctor’s office where I knew Cherisse worked as a secretary.
The medical practice of Drs. Mann, Freeling and Parks was located on Main Street in a three-story brick building that, in the years since it had been built, had been everything from an insurance office to a secretarial school, and everything in between. When I was a teenager, the ground floor was where my old dentist, Dr. Richman, now deceased, had had his office. It had been home to a medical practice for the past five years. I ought to know. Dr. Irene Freeling was Mama’s doctor and I’d brought her to many an appointment. Cherisse worked for Dr. Trent Mann, whose office was on the second floor. I walked into the packed waiting room and spotted Cherisse from across the room. She looked up with a smile when she heard the door to the office open. It immediately left her face when she saw that it was me. She was purposely avoiding my eyes and was pretending to be busy shuffling a stack of papers together as I approached the counter she was sitting behind.
“Can I help you?” she asked, through tight lips coated in peach lip gloss.
“Only if you plan to tell me the truth.” I looked around the waiting room to see if anyone was listening. The room was filled with mostly elderly people who were either watching the large TV mounted to the wall, dozing, or reading magazines.
“Are you here to see the doctor?” she asked, nodding towards my bandaged wrist.
“No. I’m here to see you, and I’m sure you know why.”
She sighed heavily and scowled at me. “I’m at work. I don’t have time for this,” she whispered fiercely, looking dramatically around the w
aiting room. I looked, too. No one was paying us any attention. Apparently, we couldn’t compete with Judge Judy and Reader’s Digest.
“Take a break. We really need to talk. I’m not going away until we do.”
We stared each other down for a few seconds and then Cherisse got up and stomped off to another room. I overheard her asking someone named Leanne to cover for her while she took a break. She came out from behind the counter and headed towards the doorway to the hallway. I assumed she wanted me to follow her. I did. She walked quickly to the stairwell and down two sets of steps and out the back exit to the parking lot, at which point she rounded on me.
“What the hell do you want?”
Instead of answering her, I pulled the silver compact that I’d found in her bathroom out of my purse and waved it in her face.
“I found this in your bathroom yesterday. It was Ms. Flack’s. What were you doing with it?” She reeled back a little like I’d just swung at her and her mouth fell open. No sound came out, though. I pressed on.
“You killed her, didn’t you? Or maybe it was Gerald. Did you guys do it together? And what about Clair Easton? Which one of you killed her?”
“Hold up! Are you crazy? I didn’t kill anybody! Neither did Gerald.”
“Then why do you have Ms. Flack’s compact, and who did I overhear you and Gerald talking about this morning?”
She looked truly confused for a minute before breaking out into a grin.
