“Girl, it’s minus two degrees out there. Instead of going home to nurse my broken heart, I’ll probably die of frost bite.”
Iona laughed. “Well, if you’re still alive in the morning, I’ll pick you up for breakfast – my treat. Okay?”
“All right, I’ll see you then. But if it’s your treat, I want to go to the Marriott for breakfast. I love their waffles and omelets,” Vivian told her as she gathered her belongings and left.
Iona looked at her watch. It was 9:45 in the morning. She had about fifteen minutes before her meeting with Clarence and she hadn’t even gone over his file yet.
Back in her office, Iona opened the file that JL’s office had sent over last Friday while she was in Chicago. She had only gone up against JL in one other trial. He had played dirty and withheld evidence until it was too late for her to do anything about it. In short, her drug dealing client was now doing Federal time. Therefore, she planned to go over all the documents JL sent to her and then she was going to petition the court for any other documents that might have somehow been misplaced. How does that saying go? Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, and I might have to cut you.
According to the documents JL sent over, Clarence had not been spotted on the surveillance tapes inside the jewelry store at the time of the heist. What messed Clarence up was the fact that the jewelry store also had cameras installed on the outside of the building. Those cameras clearly show two masked men jumping into a red Monte Carlo, Ohio license plate number DDU-1470. When the police ran the plates, they discovered that the car was registered to Clarence Mason. They picked him up on his job. Clarence claimed that he had been at work all day and that someone else had his car. But when the detectives pressed him about the identity of the person who had his car, Clarence stopped talking.
“That’s why his stupid self is heading to prison. If he didn’t do it, why didn’t he just tell the cops who had his car?” Iona said to herself then jotted that question down on a note pad to ask Clarence when he arrived.
She looked at her watch again. He was five minutes late. Her telephone rang. Iona almost didn’t pick it up then she remembered that Vivian had left for the day. “This is Iona Walker. Can I help you?”
“Thank God you picked up. You’re my one phone call; I just got popped,” a voice on the other end told her.
Iona recognized the voice. The caller was Vinny the petty thief. If someone looked up the word repeat offender, his picture would be next to the definition. “What did you do this time, Vinny?” Iona asked.
“They got me down here on a bogus breaking and entering charge. But they don’t have no witnesses.” He sighed as if he was just so tired of being falsely accused. “I need a date, Counselor. Are you available or what?”
The words Vinny spoke made Iona feel dirty. She shivered in her seat as she replayed Johnny telling her that she wasn’t a lawyer, but a prostitute, and she snapped. “Why don’t you just call it what it is, Vinny? A court appearance. And why do you need a lawyer to make a court appearance for you? Could it be because you can’t stop stealing? Well, guess what, Vinny? This time I have better things to do than to try and keep your sorry self out of prison.”
“Now wait a minute,” Vinny said, raising his voice. “You’re my attorney. You’re supposed to help me. I need your advice.”
“You know what, Vinny? I’m going to give you some free advice. Stop stealing and get a job,” she told him and then hung up the telephone.
As she sat behind her mahogany desk looking at her bookshelf full of serious, no nonsense leather bound case law books, she determined that she would never again refer to a meeting with a client as a date. She was a professional. She had earned her right to be an attorney and she would start acting like it.
Her telephone rang again. Iona snatched it up, hoping that it would be Clarence with some explanation about his tardiness.
It was Vivian. “I know I’m supposed to be crying my eyes out and not calling the office for the rest of the day, but I had to tell you what I saw.”
“What’s up?” Iona asked.
“When I left the office, Clarence was walking towards our building, but then this black sedan with smoked out windows pulled up and Clarence got in the car.”
“Who did he get in the car with?” Iona asked.
“I don’t know. But I did get the license plate number. Do you want it?”
The second line on Iona’s phone rang. “Hold on a minute, Vivian.” She clicked over. “This is Iona Walker can I help you?”
“Hey, Hon, it’s your dad.”
“Hey, Dad, what’s up? You ready to tell me what’s going on with Donavan?”
Isaac’s voice sounded hurried and a bit disturbed as he said, “We’ll have to talk about that later. But I need to know if Clarence is there with you. He told me he was meeting with you this morning.”
“No. He blew our meeting off. Probably out hiding the jewels with his accomplices.”
“I don’t think Clarence is with any accomplice,” Isaac told her.
“How can you be so sure? Vivian just told me she saw him getting into a car right in front of my building this morning.”
“Honey, I just received a call from someone claiming to be holding Clarence. He said he was going to kill him.”
“Daddy, what are you talking about? Why would anyone want to kill Clarence?”
“I don’t know. But this guy said that he was going to kill Clarence for me – like I asked him to do it or something.”
Iona stood up and frantically looked around the office, as if something within would help her solve this dilemma. “Daddy, listen to me. You’ve got to hang up with me and call the police. I’ll go to Clarence’s house and talk to his wife.”
“No. I don’t want you going anywhere by yourself. If this maniac has really killed Clarence, who knows, he could be after you next. I’ll pick you up in front of your office. We’ll go together.”
“Okay, Daddy, I’ll wait for you downstairs,” she said, then hung up the phone. As Iona cleared off her desk and then reached for her purse, she noticed that line one on her phone was blinking. She hit her forehead with the palm of her hand as she realized she had left Vivian on hold. She picked up the telephone and hit the line one button. “Vivian! Vivian!”
No answer.
“Vivian, can you hear me?” Iona yelled. When Vivian first told her that she’d seen Clarence get into a car right outside her law office, Iona assumed he was bailing on her. But after talking with her father, she was now concerned that Clarence might have been abducted or even worse. She needed that license plate number from Vivian like she needed to breathe. “Vivian, please say something.”
Iona hung up and tried her friend’s cell. No answer. She dialed her home number and didn’t get an answer there either. Alarm swept through her. What if the abductor saw Vivian when she saw him?
Chapter 11
“We need to go to Vivian’s house first, Dad,” Iona told Isaac as she jumped in his car. “Vivian told me she wrote down the license plate number of the car Clarence got into. I’m worried that if Clarence really was abducted, maybe the person who did it saw Vivian writing down his license plate number.”
Iona gave her father the address and they sped off in that direction. Isaac picked up his cell and dialed. It rang twice and then was picked up.
“Dunford here,” Johnny said.
“Johnny, I think we may need some police back up.” It was funny to Isaac that he would voluntarily contact the police to help with anything. For more than thirty some years he avoided the police. Now in his sixties and a law abiding citizen, he reached out – worked with the police to prevent crime. “We’re headed over to the Salem Woods apartments over by Cub Foods.” Isaac gave him the full address and then asked, “Can you meet us over there? It’s one of Iona’s friends and we think someone might have attacked her?”
“I’m on my way,” Johnny told Isaac.
“Thanks, son. We’ll see you when
you get there.”
Iona rolled her eyes when Isaac hung up the phone. She asked her father, “Why’d you have to call him? We could have dialed 911 if we needed the police.”
“I know, but I trust Johnny. He knows what he’s doing, and if anyone can help your friend, it’ll be him.”
Iona wasn’t going to waste her breath discussing her ex-boyfriend with her father. She knew good and well that Pastor Walker thought the sun rose and set on Johnny Dunford; that a finer man had not been born, except of course Donavan. “Daddy, have you talked to Donavan?” Isaac gripped the wheel tighter. Iona knew that her father’s tight grip on the steering wheel was his way of trying to grab hold of a situation that had spiraled out of control; like trying to bottle a whirlwind. She patted her father’s shoulder to comfort him.
“He won’t return my calls,” Isaac finally told her. “He messed up, but it’s as if he blames me for catching him. Like I sent that email to myself.”
“What email?”
Isaac took his eyes off the road for a second and looked at his daughter, then turned his eyes back to the road. “You haven’t talked to your brother?”
Iona sighed. “He won’t return my calls either. But he can’t avoid me forever. I’ll talk to him sooner or later. But right now I need you to tell me about this email.”
Isaac shrugged. “Nothing to it. Donavan emailed me. Asked me to meet him at his house. His email indicated that I might get there before he did, so I needed to let myself in. Which I did, and I don’t even want to discuss what I saw when I opened that door.”
“Daddy, are you telling me that my brother told you to let yourself into his house when he knew you would find him in a compromising position?”
“Sounds crazy, I know. But I think he wanted me to catch him.”
“Not in a million years, Daddy. It didn’t happen like that.”
“Then you explain it to me. I saw everything with my own eyes.”
“I can’t explain it right now. But I’ll get to the bottom of this. You better believe I will.” She snapped her fingers and said, “Oh yeah, Vinny got arrested again.”
“I don’t want to hear that,” Isaac told Iona.
“I know, but I’m telling you; that boy is his own worst enemy. And I’m done. I’m not taking his case this time.”
“Iona, you need to understand something about Vinny. I don’t think he wants to be the way he is. He just needs someone to believe in him. His entire family is a bunch of criminals; that’s all he knows.”
“I don’t care. I’m done.”
“All right, all right. I’ll find someone else to take his case.”
Iona turned and looked at her father as if he’d just stunned her by saying he was going to divorce Nina or something else crazy like that. “I don’t understand you, Daddy. When do you finally throw in the towel on some of these guys?”
“I used to be just like them, Iona. And I wish that someone had gone out of their way for me. Maybe I would have come out of that life sooner than I did, and caused a little less destruction.”
They pulled up in front of Vivian’s apartment. Iona got out of the car, ran over to her friend’s door and started banging on it. When Iona didn’t receive an answer, she turned to Isaac and said, “The manager’s apartment is right next door, maybe he can open the door for us.”
Johnny pulled up next to Isaac’s car. Isaac waved him over. As Johnny approached, Isaac pointed in the direction of the manager’s door and asked Johnny to go see if the manager could open the door for them.
The manager was still in his robe when he came down the stairs. The man appeared to be about fifty, but Vivian had told her that her manager was well into his seventies. He slowly walked over to Vivian’s door and unlocked it after the officers told him that they needed to get in.
They entered Vivian’s apartment and Iona ran in. She put her hand to her mouth and screamed as she spotted Vivian stretched out on the floor.
Johnny called for an ambulance.
Iona noticed the bruise on the side of Vivian’s head and screamed louder.
“Get out of here, Iona,” Johnny said.
Isaac grabbed Iona by the arm and tried to pull her out of the house.
“She needs her inhaler!” Iona screamed. “Get her inhaler.” Isaac was pushing her out the door when she said, “It’s in her pocket!”
Isaac put his arms around Iona and told her, “Let him do his job, Baby Girl. Just wait here with me.”
Iona hugged Isaac. “What have I done, Daddy? What have I done?”
“You didn’t do anything, Baby Girl.”
“Yes, I did,” Iona said through tears. “I sent her home. I’m the reason she saw something she shouldn’t have. And do you want to know something, Daddy? I sent her home because I didn’t want to hear about her problems.”
Isaac hugged his daughter tight and said, “Don’t do this to yourself. You couldn’t have known what would happen.”
“I’m an awful person, Daddy. I’m an awful friend.”
Johnny ran back outside with a frantic look on his face. He asked Iona, “Does she have a breathing machine?”
She pulled herself out of Isaac’s arms and said, “I-I don’t know. Can’t you just use her inhaler?”
“She doesn’t have an inhaler.”
“She keeps it in her pocket,” Iona said.
Johnny told Iona, “It’s not there, I looked.”
Iona rushed back into the apartment and checked Vivian’s pockets herself. Nothing was there. She turned back to Johnny and shouted, “You’ve got to do something. She’s turning blue.”
Isaac said, “Move out of the way, Iona. Let me pray for her.”
Isaac got on his knees and put one hand on Vivian’s forehead and the other at the top of her chest and began to pray as Iona stood up and moved out of his way. “Father God, we need you in this situation. This young woman’s air passages are blocked, but I believe that you can breathe life into her. So, right now in Jesus’ mighty name, I speak life into Vivian’s body. Do you hear me Vivian? Live, in Jesus name.”
Iona expected her father to hoop and holler over Vivian’s body and spit all over the girl while trying to get God to revive her. But his prayer was more like a conversation; like he was in direct communication with God and he knew that God heard him even without all the hoopla. Like when Lazarus had died and Jesus simply said, ‘Lazarus, come forth’ and Lazarus got up out of the grave just like that; because God always heard Jesus.
The bluish/purple tint to Vivian’s skin color began to subside and Iona could see Vivian’s own honey skin tone again. Vivian’s eyelids fluttered.
Johnny pumped his fist in the air as he said, “Thank God. Oh, thank God.”
The paramedics came through the door, put Vivian on the stretcher and carted her out of the room. Iona ran to her father and hugged him. “Thank you, Daddy. Thank you so much.”
Isaac pulled Iona’s hands from around his waist and held them in his hands as he corrected her. “No, baby, thank the Lord. He is the healer.”
Tears streamed down Iona’s face as the realization of what her father said sunk in. God was more than able to bring a person like Vivian back from near death and He was able to heal her mother from this cancer that was eating away at her body.
“Okay, Daddy. Okay. I will thank the Lord for all He did for Vivian and for what He will do for my mother also.”
“Never stop believing in the power of prayer, Iona.”
***
The problem for Iona was that she had stopped believing. But now as she sat in the hospital waiting room with Vivian’s parents waiting to find out if her friend would live or die, she desperately wanted to believe again. Iona found herself questioning the decisions she’d made her whole adult life. When had she become the master of her own fate? When had she decided that she didn’t need God anymore?
Iona couldn’t point to a certain date or even a particular situation. She could only remember that when she w
ent away to college, prayer time had taken a back seat to all the other activities and school work that concerned a young college student. And then she discovered sororities and frat parties, and within a year of being away from home and at her college, Iona hadn’t even noticed that she had lost her Bible; or maybe it had been stolen. She didn’t know for sure what had happened to the leather bound Bible that Nina had engraved with Iona’s name on it.
Her father, Nina, her mother and Keith all believed in God. Nothing and no one had ever been able to sway them from what they believed, so how did she get so messed up?
Iona put her feet in the chair she was sitting in and hugged her knees to her chest as she pondered the twists and turns of her life. She was a young, black professional woman with money in the bank. But Iona knew that no matter how much money she had, she couldn’t help Vivian now, nor could she help her mother with her fight against death. All of that was in God’s hands. “Please be merciful,” Iona mumbled.
Johnny sat down in the seat next to Iona’s. He had two cups of coffee in his hands and offered one to her.
“Thanks.” She grabbed the cup and then asked, “Where did Daddy go?”
“He had to go take care of something with your mom. He said to tell you that he would be back in about an hour.”
“Which mom?” Iona said with a half-smile.
“Nina,” Johnny answered.
Iona took a sip of her coffee and then told Johnny, “I was just kidding. That’s just my own private joke. I think of Nina as another mother. I love them both. I just don’t know how to show it when it counts.”
He sipped his coffee then asked, “Why is Vivian’s father so angry with her?”
Iona turned to Johnny. “Her dad isn’t angry with her – he’s probably upset about what happened to Vivian and you’re just reading it wrong.”
Johnny glanced over at Mr. Stellar. He had his feet propped up on the coffee table and a pillow cushioning the back of his head as he leaned back and took a nap. “Vivian is back there fighting for her life and he doesn’t seem to care. When I tried to get some information out of him, he acted as if I were bothering him. Maybe I should list him as a suspect.”
Through the Storm Page 7
