Murder with Fried Chicken and Waffles (Mahalia Watkins Soul Food Mystery)

by Herbert, A. L.

  “Detective Hutchins is here to see you,” she says.

  I feel my shoulders rise ever so slightly with tension, and tell Laura to let him know I’ll be right out. I knew he’d be back, but I didn’t think he’d be back so soon. As she walks away, I take a deep breath and compose myself.

  “Detective Hutchins. What can I do for you?” I say when I reach the back of the dining room, where he’s seated at a small table behind an almost empty glass of freshly brewed peach iced tea that Laura must have gotten for him.

  “You said you left the restaurant with your cousin the night Marcus was last seen alive, correct?” he asks, bypassing any niceties.

  “Yes. We left here shortly before midnight, stopped by the grocery store, and went home.”

  “Are you sure, Ms. Watkins?”

  “Please. Call me Halia. And yes, I’m sure. Why?”

  “We haven’t been able to obtain any security camera footage of the person who used Marcus’s credit card, but we traced one of the purchases as a handbag from the Macy’s in Marlow Heights. We found the clerk who rang up the purchase, and she remembered selling it . . . only because the woman who bought it complained that they didn’t have the one she wanted in stock and then went on to criticize what a mess the store was, saying something to the effect of seeing flea markets that were better organized.”

  “What does any of this have to do with me?” I ask, ready to strangle Wavonne for behaving so stupidly. How could she be so foolish as to make a spectacle of herself when she was using a stolen credit card?

  “The clerk’s description of the woman who purchased the bag fits your cousin.”

  “How so?”

  “The clerk said it was a twentysomething black woman with shoulder-length curly hair, flashy costume jewelry, tight clothing . . . and . . . well, an ample backside.”

  “A twentysomething black woman with curly hair, flashy jewelry, tight clothing, and a big behind? Are you kidding me? You just described half the hoochies in PG County.”

  “Maybe so, Ms. Watkins, but ‘half the hoochies in PG County’ didn’t know Marcus Rand. Your cousin did know him, and she fits the description.”

  “Yes. She knew him, but not well, Mr. Hutchins. She only saw him when he came into the restaurant. I’m not sure I would even call them friends. And, frankly, Mr. Hutchins, I’m not sure I like where this conversation is going. You don’t honestly think Wavonne had something to do with Marcus’s murder?”

  “I’m just doing my job, Ms. Watkins . . . Halia. Are you sure that was the extent of their relationship? They never dated or had a thing going?”

  “A thing going?” I say, my irritation showing. “No. They never had a thing going, Mr. Hutchins.” I don’t like him talking about Wavonne as if she’s a murderer. She may be lazy and stubborn . . . and steal credit cards off dead bodies, but she’s no murderer . . . and if anyone is going to talk smack about Wavonne, it’s going to be me. “Besides. Wavonne was with me all night.”

  “Are you positive? She couldn’t have left the house quietly after you were asleep?”

  “You’ve met Wavonne. Does she seem like the type of person who would be able to do anything quietly? So yes, I’m certain she didn’t leave the house after we went to bed.”

  “I’ll still need to speak to her. Do you know where she is?”

  “No,” I lie. “She’ll be in for the dinner service at four thirty, but I need her waiting tables, not talking with you.”

  “I’ll be back then. I’ll try to keep it brief and let her get to work.”

  “Really, Mr. Hutchins, my cousin isn’t the smartest girl in the world, and she may not be the hardest worker, but one thing I know for sure, she is not a killer.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right,” Detective Hutchins says to me, nods, and turns to leave.

  Once he’s out the door, I scurry to my office and waste no time calling Wavonne.

  “Hey,” she says.

  “Get in here now,” I say with a sense of urgency. I’ll need all the time I can get to coach Wavonne on how to answer Detective Hutchins’s questions when he comes back in a few hours.

  CHAPTER 22

  I’m trying to act like I’m not worried, and I’m making an effort to keep my eyes off Wavonne and Detective Hutchins, who are seated in the back of the dining room. But when I do occasionally steal a glance, I see Wavonne talking way more than she should be. I told her to answer questions with simply a yes or no as often as possible and to stick to the story without adding any embellishments: We left the restaurant around eleven forty-five. We stopped by the grocery store and have a receipt that showed we were there for almost an hour, and then we went straight home, and went to bed.

  Why are her lips moving so much if that’s all she’s saying? I think to myself.

  I would have preferred to sit there with them, but Detective Hutchins asked to speak to her alone, and I thought it would look odd if I insisted. And yes, I did think about trying to find a lawyer to be present during the questioning, but again, I figured that would make Wavonne appear guilty. And honestly, Wavonne only needs to follow simple instructions about what to say. Even she can’t screw up something so easy, can she?

  I’m keeping busy checking in on tables and manning the hosting station, when I see Detective Hutchins get up from his chair and extend his hand to Wavonne, who accepts it and gives it a quick shake.

  “Everything go okay?” I ask Detective Hutchins as he heads toward the door.

  “Fine. I’ll be in touch if I need anything further.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to stay and have some dinner? Tonight’s special is a butter baked chicken . . . the meat falls right off the bone.”

  I’m glad when he politely declines and says he has another appointment to get to.

  When I see his car pull out and head toward the exit, I walk over to Wavonne, who is still seated with her phone in one hand and a glass of tea in the other as if she’s a customer instead of an employee.

  “So?”

  Wavonne pauses from tapping the screen of her phone with her long red fingernails and looks up at me. “It went okay. He just axed me some questions about what happened the night Marcus was killed and what sorta relationship I had with him.”

  “Asked you. He just asked you.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I said.”

  I roll my eyes and decide to save the grammar lesson for later. “What did he tell you?”

  “I told him the truth. I ain’t never done the dirty-dirty with Marcus.”

  “What did you tell him about the night Marcus disappeared ?”

  “Exactly what you told me to tell him. I told him we went by the grocery store on the way home, and went home, and went to bed.”

  “So what were you talking about all that time?”

  “He asked me a lot of questions about what happened before we left the restaurant. He wanted to know if I knew anything about the people Marcus was having dinner with that night.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I didn’t know much about the couple at the table or about Marcus’s friend, Charles. I told him what I knew about Régine—that she’s Marcus’s usual type . . . sort of hoe-baggish with big tits.”

  I wonder if Detective Hutchins suspects any of Marcus’s dinner companions. If he knows something about them that I don’t. If he knew that the murder happened here in the restaurant, he would definitely be more suspicious of them.

  “You know, Wavonne, it might be nice if you’d get back to work. Darius has been covering your tables since Detective Hutchins got here.”

  Wavonne sighs at me, grabs her phone, and gets up from the table. As she walks away, I look at my watch and realize I’ve got to get moving if I’m going to make it to the Reverie Homes presentation that starts in less than an hour.

  CHAPTER 23

  I’m walking quickly from the parking garage to the Gaylord Hotel at National Harbor. Traffic was bad on the way over, so I’m running late. The pr
esentation has probably already started, but if I move fast, I should only miss the first few minutes. Besides, it’s not really the presentation I’m interested in. I mostly just want to grab a few minutes with Charles afterward and see what I can find out about him—how well he knew Marcus . . . how long he knew him . . . if there’s anything in his eyes or his demeanor when he talks of Marcus that would lead me to believe there was some tension in their relationship.

  When I get through the revolving door of the hotel, I’m taken aback by the size of the place. It’s a huge building with a lobby and atrium the size of a small town. There are fountains, and trees, and even a life-sized house that serves as a gift shop. As Jacqueline said earlier, Reverie is definitely trying to send a message by holding their lecture here. People are more likely to think they are on the up-and-up and that cash is flowing when their events are held at places like this. If they had held the meeting in a Holiday Inn or a Best Western, it wouldn’t inspire the same kind of confidence.

  Once I’ve checked the daily schedule and found the room where the presentation is taking place, I scurry along a wide corridor until I find the gathering. I walk in, take a seat in the back, and see Charles in the front of the room. He has a clicker in his hand and is elaborating on a slide he has up on a large screen. He’s one of those people who walks around while he presents and uses lots of hand gestures—no standing stiffly at a podium for this guy. The smile on his face is constant and, oddly, has both a charming and smarmy quality about it. He speaks loudly and with vigor. Everything about him says “salesman.”

  I listen as he talks about the program and clicks through his slick presentation, which makes all sorts of promises, but is short on detail and statistics. I hear about the “many, many, many” people who have quickly paid off their houses thanks to the Reverie Homes program. I hear about how an initial investment into the program will be returned fivefold through mortgage payment assistance. I hear about Mary Walker in Mount Rainer who paid off her house in just five years. I hear about Stephanie and Devon Mitchell who paid off their Greenbelt home in just seven years. What I don’t hear about is how much the initial investment is or reference information for others in the program. And, while there are a few brief comments on how Reverie invests the money of people who join the program into ventures such as in-store ATMs and phone card kiosks, there’s little mention about how these seemingly meager initiatives manage to earn enough profit to pay off what must be millions of dollars in home mortgages.

  It seems like Charles is about to finish up his presentation when, for the first time since I walked in the door, I see the smile leave his face, and he stops speaking in midsentence. His eyes focus on the back of the room, and his expression goes from forced delight to trepidation. I and everyone else in the room turn to see what he’s looking at, and there they are—the young couple who was having dinner with Charles and Marcus the night Marcus was killed. And they don’t look happy.

  “Have you gotten to the question-and-answer period of the evening yet?” the young lady asks in a heated tone. “Has anyone asked what the plan is when the checks from Reverie stop coming, and you’re months behind on your mortgage, and the word ‘foreclosure’ starts getting tossed around?”

  “Mrs. Williams,” Charles says to the girl. He’s regained his composure, and the smile, while not as bright, is back on his face. “If you’d take a seat, I’d be happy to discuss any questions you have after the presentation.”

  “So now you’ll answer questions? You haven’t answered a single one of my phone calls? Our main contact ends up dead in a pond, we’re in debt to the tune of three hundred thousand dollars, the assistance we were promised has dried up, and you can’t so much as call me back?! Have you told any of these people about that?” she asks. All the while, her meek-looking husband stands beside her, quiet as a mouse.

  I see the looks on the faces of the people in the room. Mostly they are just awestruck. One woman gets up and is about to leave, but I think, although she now realizes what kind of racket is going on and must know better than to invest, she’s decided she might as well stick around and watch the fireworks.

  “Yes. We are experiencing some cash flow problems, Mrs. Williams. But, as we discussed at dinner a few days ago, we need you to be patient. We expect our investments to get back on track soon and produce additional profits. As soon as that happens, we will make up for any lost payments and get your mortgage back in the black. I promise.”

  “You promise?!” she says, her husband still silent beside her. “We are done with promises, Mr. Pritchett. We want our money back, so we can start putting it toward our mortgage and not lose our house.”

  “If you’ll just calm down, Mrs.—”

  “Calm down!? How calm would you be if you were out thirty thousand dollars and about to lose your home?”

  Charles sighs and directs his attention to the audience. “Ladies and gentlemen, due to such a rude interruption, I believe we’ll have to close the presentation early tonight. I assure you that the Reverie Homes program is sound, and any missed payments will be more than made up for in the near future. Please take some literature with you on the way out and call me if you have any questions.”

  What a quintessential salesman, I think to myself. The lid has been blown off his operation, and he’s trying to salvage any clients on the off chance that one or two of them may still be naïve enough to invest with him. I’m relieved to see that not a single person takes any of his brochures as they exit.

  After the audience filters out, whispering among themselves, Charles invites Mrs. Williams and her husband to sit down.

  “I’m fine standing, thank you,” she responds curtly, but her husband touches her on her back, gently prodding her to take a seat.

  Charles grabs a chair next to them, moves it so it’s facing them and takes a seat. I remain seated in the back of the room. Charles looks at me for a brief second with a “what are you still doing here?” look on his face, but says nothing. I know the polite thing would be to leave and give them some privacy, but I might pick up some important information related to Marcus’s murder through whatever I’m able to overhear.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Williams, I know you’re anxious about the lack of payments going toward your mortgage lately, but, like any business, we occasionally experience cash flow problems. As we discussed last week, it’s temporary. I promise you, the checks will resume soon, and we’ll make up for any missed payments.”

  Charles has a natural calmness about him and a unique ability to respond to anger and hostility with a gentle demeanor that diffuses people. He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing if I ever saw one, but his shtick seems to be working.

  “How do I know that?” Mrs. Williams says back to him, in the most composed voice she’s used all night. “How do I know you’re not just buying time to skip town and leave us with no house and no money?”

  “Would I be holding a presentation looking for new investors if I planned to skip town?”

  Of course you would. More money to run off with, I think to myself as I pretend to be surfing the Internet on my phone.

  “I need some kind of assurance, Mr. Pritchett. I . . .” she says, pausing for a moment and looking at her husband with disapproval. “We will not be taken for a ride. We’ve gotten the runaround from Marcus for months, and then he turns up dead . . . murdered, actually. His assistant said we would need to speak to you from now on about the program.”

  “Yes. I heard about Mr. Rand’s unfortunate demise, but I assure you it has nothing to do with Reverie.”

  “When can we expect the first of many payments to start coming in again? I need a date.”

  “I’ll need to check on that and get back to you.”

  “I want a date, Mr. Pritchett. I’ll expect to hear from you first thing in the morning, and if I don’t, I will start the process of finding a lawyer and sue you for everything you have . . . assuming you have anything at this point,” she growls, gets up from her chair,
and motions for her husband to follow her.

  I see them walking toward me, and when they pass by, I get up and follow them out the door.

  “Excuse me?” I call from behind, and they turn around. “Can I talk with you for a moment?”

  They both look at me warily.

  “You probably don’t remember me. I’m Halia Watkins. I own Sweet Tea. I believe you had dinner with Marcus at my restaurant a few days ago.”

  “Yes. We did. I remember you,” Mrs. Williams says.

  “May I ask your names again?”

  “Heather. And this is my husband, Josh.”

  “It’s nice to see you again. I’m sorry things aren’t going well for you. I knew Marcus for a long time, and before he died he was trying to get me to invest with Reverie Homes, as well. I came tonight to find out some more information about the program. Honestly, I had planned to invest, but after tonight, clearly I’m reconsidering.”

  “I would do more than reconsider, if I were you.”

  “Would you two be willing to tell me a bit more about your experience? Maybe you could come back to the restaurant and have lunch . . . on me.”

  I figured it was better to convince them that I was only interested in investing in the program. If I told them I was really interested in what happened the night Marcus died and getting a better idea of what sort of relationship they had with him, I might scare them off . . . especially if they were, indeed, responsible for his death.

  Josh is silent and looks to Heather for a response.

  “I suppose we could. Believe me, you really don’t want to get mixed up in all of this. It’s been a nightmare.”

  “Any insight you have would really be appreciated. Why don’t you come by Sweet Tea for lunch tomorrow? Around noon? You remember where it is?”

  “Yes. We’ll do our best to make it.”