by Mary Monroe
There was nobody in the living room, so I started yelling out names. “Daddy! Bo! Vera! Where is everybody?” I checked the dining room next. It was empty. I almost collided with Delia as I ran down the hall toward the kitchen. She must have been cooking up a storm. She smelled like onions and baked chicken and there was flour all over the crisp white apron that hugged her barrel-shaped body like a second layer of flesh. “Where is everybody? Did something happen?” I asked. Delia was not the kind of servant like the ones on TV. She usually knew everything that was going on in the house, but she never stuck her nose into the family business. She knew better. She was careful not to say or do anything to jeopardize her job. She and her crusty old husband, Costa, and a few of her relatives who came to help out on an as-needed basis, had been with Daddy ever since he’d moved his business to California.
“Um . . . everyone is in kitchen. I believe they wait for you,” Delia told me, her voice cracking. The worried look on her face caused me to worry.
I continued on down the hall. When I got to the kitchen doorway, I stopped in my tracks. Bo, Daddy, Vera, Cash, and Collette were sitting at the breakfast table. It looked like they were about to have a séance. They all looked up at me at the same time. I moved toward them with caution.
“What’s going on?” I stopped a few feet from the table and looked from one face to the other. “Why all the long faces? Did something bad happen?”
“That’s what we’d like to know,” Daddy snapped.
“Huh? What do you mean?” I asked dumbly. I had made sure nobody saw me pick Curtis up and drop him off, and there was no way in the world they could have found out already that I’d spent time with him in a motel a few hours ago.
“Sarah Louise, what have you been up to?” Daddy asked, his voice cracking.
I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could get a word out, Cash yelled, “What’s wrong with you, girl?”
“What?” I asked dumbly.
“Karen Gorman braids my hair,” Collette offered.
“So?” I said with a shrug. “She does a good job.”
“Karen lives in Hunters Point,” Bo said quickly. His eyes were red.
“I have a feeling somebody’s trying to tell me something and I don’t have any idea what it is,” I said, glancing at Daddy. I didn’t like the somber look that was on his face now.
“Sarah, why were you seen coming out of Curtis Thompson’s apartment last night?” Vera asked in a low voice.
My jaw dropped. “Who said I was at Curtis’s place last night?” I wailed, rotating my neck and waving my arms defensively. I had spent time with Curtis in his apartment the night before today’s motel tryst.
“When I left Karen’s place last night, I saw a car exactly like yours parked on the street in front of her building. I didn’t think it was your car because as far as I knew, you were supposed to be at a bingo game in Oakland. Anyway, I decided to check it out. For all I knew, somebody could have carjacked you. I peeped in the window, and on the backseat I saw that red Windbreaker you wear sometimes. I went back into the building lobby and saw Curtis’s name and apartment number on his mailbox. I was about to leave when the elevator door opened and you walked out. I didn’t want you to see me, so I ducked into the stairwell.”
“So what if I was over there?” I snapped. “I still visit people over there all the time. If you saw me last night, how come you waited until now to say something about it?”
“I wasn’t going to say anything at all until . . .” Collette stopped talking and looked directly at Bo. “When I saw Curtis piling out of Sarah’s car in the alley behind the store on my way back from lunch this afternoon, I got real suspicious. I don’t want the wrong person to see her coming out of a man’s place and get the wrong idea.”
I was tempted to say that the “wrong person” had already seen me coming out of a man’s place and got the wrong idea. Collette could stir up a hornet’s nest quicker than anybody I knew. But I decided to remain as calm as I could. “I had lunch with Curtis today,” I said, looking to Daddy for support.
“How come you didn’t mention that to anybody?” Bo asked, glaring at me. If looks could kill, I would have dropped dead on the spot. I had never seen such a severe look of disgust on his face before.
“I go to lunch with my friends all the time, and I don’t mention it to anybody!” I said. “I, uh, chat with Curtis when I visit the store. I’m still thankful for what he did for me. What’s wrong with me taking him to lunch?” I looked at Daddy again. “Daddy, you enjoyed lunch with Curtis that day we went to the rib place, didn’t you? You said you liked him.”
“He’s a good old boy,” Daddy said with some hesitation.
I wondered how come Vera was being so quiet now. Each time I looked at her, she looked away.
“But what about you coming out of his building last night?” Bo barked. “What were you even doing in that neighborhood by yourself at night?”
“I wasn’t by myself!” I lied. “I had run into Lorna Moss, the girl who used to braid my hair. She asked me to give her a ride home. I didn’t even know she lived in the same building as Curtis. She insisted on giving me some gas money, but she had to collect the ten dollars Curtis owed her first. I went to his place with her. That’s why I was coming out of Curtis’s building last night.”
“I still don’t understand why you didn’t mention it to me,” Bo said.
“I was asleep when you got home last night. I was still asleep when you left for work this morning. When I called you around ten this morning, you were in a meeting. When could I have told you?”
“Sarah, we don’t want anything bad to happen to you. Curtis is a nice dude and a good employee. But you and he are from two different planets,” Daddy said in a gentle voice.
I could not believe my ears. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
Daddy looked so miserable and that bothered me. He was the last person in the world I wanted to hurt. “It’s okay to be friends with people like him, but it’s not too smart to be too friendly. He’s got too many enemies. There is just no telling what one of them might do to you if you happen to be with him the next time he gets attacked. And when that happens and if those people know whose daughter you are, you’ll really be in a pickle.”
“I’ve been telling Sarah that for years,” Vera muttered, talking to me but looking at Daddy.
“I’m twenty-six years old,” I reminded.
“And you’re my wife,” Bo said sharply. “Besides, none of us really know Curtis that well. Who knows what is really on his mind? He could be cooking up all kinds of schemes to get his hands on your money.”
“Curtis doesn’t want any money from me.” I guess that was the wrong thing for me to say. Vera gasped, Collette snickered, Daddy’s jaw dropped. But Bo’s reaction concerned me the most. He just stared at me with a blank expression on his face.
“If Curtis don’t want money, maybe he wants something else from you,” Cash suggested with a sneer.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into everybody—” I stopped talking in midsentence, threw up my hands, and shook my head. “What the hell! I’m going to bed.” I started to leave the room, but I stopped when Daddy rose.
“Sarah Louise, I don’t want you going out in public with Curtis. Do not go to lunch with him again unless Bo or I”—Daddy paused and looked from Vera to Collette to Cash—“or somebody else goes too.”
“Oh, so now I need a babysitter? Nobody trusts me anymore?”
“Sarah, if Curtis tries anything with you, I’m going to hurt him.” Bo’s words gave me a chill. It wasn’t just what he said; it was also the cold, threatening tone of voice he used. “He’ll regret the day he was born.” Bo was normally a mild-mannered man. I had never seen him angry except when his ex-wife’s name came up in a conversation. That was why what he’d just said disturbed me so much.
“You don’t have to worry about that. I won’t even speak to the man again, even when I come by the store.�
�� I blinked. “That is, if he still has a job with you now.”
“He’s still got a job. I always give people the benefit of the doubt and that includes Curtis,” Daddy said quickly. “As long as nothing inappropriate is going on between you and him, he can work for me as long as he does his job right.”
“Okay.” I sighed. “I don’t want to get the man in any trouble, and I don’t want him to lose his job. He’s got enough problems, so I hope this conversation stays between us.”
“I don’t intend to mention anything about our concerns to him,” Daddy said. Then he looked at Bo. “I think we’ve made our point.”
“Uh-huh.” Bo nodded. “This case is closed.”
I breathed a long sigh of relief this time. But because Bo and Daddy had come home from work early and confronted me as soon as I walked in the door, I knew this was more serious than it looked. And I sure didn’t like everybody talking to me like I was a rebellious teenager. Living in a house with nothing but folks over forty-five had turned into a nightmare.
Maybe my home was a prison after all. It suddenly felt that way.
Well, I had weaseled out of a tough spot this time. My explanation had sounded believable, even to me. But I had to do something and I had to do it before somebody got hurt. If I continued to see Curtis, sooner or later Collette or somebody else would see us together and I might not be so lucky the next time.
Now I knew what I had to do: I had to make a choice between my lover and my husband.
CHAPTER 47
KENNETH
I KNEW THAT NO MATTER HOW WELL YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW A PERSON, you could never know everything there was to know about him or her. The fact that I’d cheated on Vera for years without her suspecting anything was a good example. I knew that Sarah was not perfect and I expected her to make mistakes, just like everybody else. On one hand, I wanted her to learn from her mistakes like I had. On the other hand, I didn’t want her to make mistakes that she would regret and ones that would hurt other people. Bo was a good husband and as long as he remained a good husband, I was going to do whatever I had to do to keep them together.
I didn’t like to meddle in other peoples’ business, but when it involved my child, I made an exception to that rule. She didn’t have to know about me keeping my eye on her. Well, I’d keep my eye on her as much as I could, but I had suddenly decided to move it up a notch. The Monday after we’d had that discussion in the kitchen about her prowling around Curtis’s neighborhood, I left my office around noon. I told my secretary I had an appointment with my tax attorney, but the truth was, I had an appointment with a private investigator named Tim Larkin.
“I want you to follow somebody,” I told him after he had shut the door to his office and motioned for me to sit down. As soon as my butt hit the chair facing his desk, I got so anxious my knees began to knock against each other. I had never hired an investigator before in my life and it was something I didn’t feel comfortable doing. But I had decided that if I wanted to stay on top of things, I needed to know what was going on around me. Especially when it involved my only child.
“You’ve come to the right place, big guy.” Tim Larkin was a slightly built white dude I’d met at a reception back in November of ’92 to celebrate Bill Clinton’s win. We had a lot in common. He and I both loved our work and families more than anything. We played racquetball together every now and then, and we attended a lot of the same social events. Tim had a baby face and curly blond hair, so he looked a lot younger than seventy-two. Unlike me, he worked out several times a week, he was a vegetarian, and he only drank in moderation. I assumed that was what helped keep him looking and feeling so much younger. I should be so lucky.
Tim knew all about my past and he had never attempted to get in my business like some of my other male friends had. His office was on the twentieth floor of a high-rise in the financial district where the rent was extremely high. With a beautiful young secretary sitting in front of his office dressed to the nines, all the fancy furniture and exotic original paintings on the walls, a brand-new Cadillac every two years, I knew that Tim was doing better than some of the other private investigators in town. For one thing, he didn’t play by the rules, whatever they were. Some of the things he did were probably illegal to say the least. But he’d been highly recommended to me by a colleague who had hired Tim to spy on his mistress, a predatory she-devil who had once made eyes at me.
“Who is the subject?” Tim asked, handing me a cigar, which I eagerly accepted. I didn’t light up around Vera because she hated the smell of any kind of smoke. But when I was with my male buddies, I was happy to indulge myself.
“I want you to keep an eye on my daughter,” I said quickly, bile rising in my throat. The cigar smoke floating into my mouth helped hold it back.
“Your daughter?”
I nodded. “Sarah Louise.”
“Is she mixed up with the wrong crowd or something? Drugs?”
“I don’t know about any of that. If she is, I want to know that too. But right now, I’m more interested in her other activities. She’s got a damn good husband and I don’t want her to lose him.”
“Hmmm.” Tim paused and scratched his chin. “Is there another man involved?”
“Yes and no.”
“Can you be a little more specific? Is she involved with another man, or is she not? It can’t be both.”
“Remember that incident at the store when one of my security guards intercepted an assault on my daughter by a would-be thief?”
“Oh, I remember that all too well. That hit you pretty hard. Your daughter lost her baby,” Tim said with a nod and a grimace. He took a drag from his cigar and flipped the ashes into a gold-plated ashtray on his desk, next to a picture of his beautiful redheaded wife, his two divorced sons, and his three teenage grandchildren. “Is the man involved the one who attacked her?”
“Uh, no. She and the security guard who assisted her, they have become quite friendly.”
“I see. Is it possible they’ve become too friendly? Or that they might become too friendly?” Tim paused again and shook his head. “If you know what I mean . . .”
“I know exactly what you mean and that’s what I need to know. I love her to death and I’m quite fond of her husband and the security guard. I don’t want to see either one of them get hurt.”
“I doubt if I can help keep that from happening. But I can guarantee you that I will get all the necessary information and photographs that you and your son-in-law will need to take whatever action you have a mind to.”
“That’s another thing.”
“What’s another thing?”
“I don’t want anybody to know about this. My wife and especially my son-in-law. I don’t want to look like an overprotective father, even though that’s exactly what I am.” I laughed, but Tim didn’t.
“You can rest assured that whatever business we conduct is confidential unless you advise me otherwise. Now that that’s out of the way, tell me: do you think your daughter is capable of cheating on your son-in-law?”
“That’s what I need to know. The more I know, the more I can do to keep her from ruining her life. I know she’s a grown woman, but . . . well, you know. Our babies will always be our babies and it’s our nature to protect them from harm.”
“As a father and a grandfather, I agree with that assessment one hundred percent. If I had my way, I’d still be tucking both my middle-aged sons into bed each night.” Tim rubbed his nose and snorted and then he gave me a tentative look. “Is there anything else I can do for you? I know you’ve had to fire a few dishonest employees over the years. Do you want me to tail any of your current staff or anybody else?” Tim cleared his throat and shifted around in his high-back leather chair, which looked way too big for a dude his size. He looked to be only slightly larger than my daughter and she was a size eight. “This is a crazy world we live in, my friend. I hope I don’t come off sounding like Big Brother, but men like us, we can’t afford to be made a fool of
. Had I been more diligent, my wife would still be with me. . . .”
“Oh? You and Sherry are no longer together?”
Tim shook his head. There was an unbearably sad look on his face.
“She’s probably the finest Caucasian woman I’ve ever seen in my life! She reminds me of my beautiful bride. When did you separate?”
“Last month. I was so distraught I couldn’t even talk about it to my friends. Otherwise, you would have been the first to know. She moved out while I was in Baja on a weekend fishing trip with my grandsons. She served me with divorce papers a few days ago.” I gave Tim a sympathetic look. From the way he was looking, I could tell that he was still distraught. “The bitch!” he blazed. He slammed his fist down so hard on the top of his desk, everything on it rattled.
“Man, I am so sorry to hear that Sherry left you! What did she catch you doing?”
Tim’s mouth flew open and his small blue eyes rolled up in his head. “Me? What did she catch me doing? She didn’t catch me doing a goddamn thing! I found a package of condoms in her purse one day last month. Well, it didn’t take me long to find out the reason she needed them and it wasn’t for me. She’s banging her masseuse and has been for years! That . . . that BITCH! And the killer thing is, I found out the day of our anniversary. I devoted forty years to that woman and look how it ended!”
“Now that’s some cold shit, Tim. I’m so sorry for you.”
“I’m sorry for me too. Sorry I didn’t find out a lot sooner. I’d be a lot richer! I had just bought that whore a brand-new Cadillac two days before I busted her.” Tim held his breath and gave me a wan look. “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go off on a tangent. Now let’s get back to you and Vera. All right? Now, don’t take what I’m about to say the wrong way, but no woman can be trusted these days. . . .”
