“Something really strange just happened in there,” I told her after I climbed in the front seat. I was still in awe. “They told me Charles doesn’t work here. I went to his office, and he wasn’t there.”
“Did he quit or something? Maybe he quit.”
“No. The receptionist told me he has never worked there. That was a total lie, and you know it. You yourself said that you and Keith brought him something here before, didn’t you?”
“Yes, we did. He used to work here, and whoever told you he didn’t was lying.”
“Yeah, there seems to be a lot of that going on lately. And all I can say is, something doesn’t feel right, Trina. All of a sudden Keith knows about me and his father, but you didn’t tell him. Not to mention that he didn’t tell you he knew. I don’t like the feeling of this, and I’m starting to feel real weird.”
“I agree that something isn’t adding up, but it could be that Charles just doesn’t want to have anything else to do with you. Men get like that, and it may be to the point where he’s trying to protect his marriage. I’m sure you call and bug him a lot, Evelyn. I know how you are, and you can be quite demanding.”
“Yeah, whatever, but it still doesn’t explain the whole bunker thing. That bunker in the basement is gone. It has a whole new look down there. You can go see for yourself.”
“I’ve never seen this bunker you’re talking about, but I do know that Mr. Washington has worked here before. I’ll let you figure out what is going on, and I’m sure the two of you will be in touch soon.”
I started the car, with a puzzled look locked on my face. I wasn’t so sure that Trina believed everything I’d said, but I had to be clear that I wasn’t crazy. “You don’t think I’m crazy, do you, Trina?”
“I’m not saying that you are crazy, Evelyn. What I’ve said all along is that you shouldn’t be messing with Mr. Washington. He’s a real private man, and to be honest with you, whenever I’ve been around him, it has kind of scared me. He’s too darn observant. Looks as if he’s studying people all the time and taking notes in his head. He makes me nervous, even though he is a nice man. I honestly do not know if he’s in some way connected with the CIA or not. Keith has never confirmed that either way. But I do know that he has a lot of power and influence in our city. That, I can confirm.”
I thought back to when Charles got pulled over by the police. Shit was starting to make sense to me, and I couldn’t help but wonder how this was going to unfold.
17
Trina
Evelyn and I ate dinner together at a restaurant, but the whole time she appeared to be in a daze. She picked at her salad and kept staring off into space. I waved my hand in front of her face, in hopes that she would snap out of it.
“Come back, come back from wherever you are,” I said.
She shot back a fake smile. “I’m sorry. I can’t help myself. My thoughts are all over the place right now.”
“They should be. And I hope you’re coming to the conclusion, like I have, that you shouldn’t have gone there with Mr. Washington.”
“I don’t know how I feel about it right now. The outcome of this has yet to be seen. I’m sure I’ll hear from him, and whenever I do, he’s going to get an earful.”
Evelyn told me about the white man coming to her door and whisking her away to the bunker. I myself was starting to feel not so good about this. Was there a chance that Evelyn was lying? Yes, Mr. Washington did work in the building we had gone to. But something wasn’t adding up. All this talk about bunkers, limos, and overly big dicks wasn’t quite clicking with me. Evelyn’s mother had a history of mental illness. A tiny part of me was starting to think that it had rubbed off. I didn’t dare say that to her.
By nine o’clock that night, we were done eating and on our way back home. When we got back to her place, Evelyn parked her car, and then she popped the trunk.
“I put a trash bag in my trunk earlier,” she said, in a somber mood. “I forgot to take it to the Dumpster, so I’m taking it now. Here are my keys to let yourself in.”
“I’ll take the trash to the Dumpster. Go inside and lie down. You look like you could use some rest.”
She released a deep sigh. “Yes, I could. Thanks, Trina. I really appreciate it.”
She walked toward her town house, and with the trash bag in hand, I made my way to the Dumpster, thinking about my BFF’s. We were seriously going through some things. But we always had a problem rallying around each other for support. Either Kayla was mad at me or at Evelyn. Or she was mad at both of us, or I was in no mood to be around them. We had to do better than this, and even though I didn’t want to force anything on either of them, we had to try again to work things out. I wasn’t giving up on my friends, and the truth of the matter was this: we were all we had.
I dumped the trash and then made my way back to Evelyn’s town house. From a short distance away, I heard something like moaning going on. I thought someone was having sex in a car, until I approached Evelyn’s door. When I opened it, there she was on the hallway floor, with her skirt flipped up and Cedric on top of her. His hand was clamped over her mouth, and she was squirming around on the floor, moaning something and trying to get away from him. He punched her in the stomach to try to get her to be still.
“You can’t run from me, bitch! I know your every move, and I told you there would be consequences if you didn’t do what I told you to do!” Cedric yelled.
I was shocked by what I saw. I had never witnessed Cedric in action like this, and I moved a little closer to make sure it was him. He didn’t see me, but I was positive that Evelyn did. Her watery eyes, with mascara running from them, shifted to me. That was what made him turn around. Without saying one word, I picked up one of Evelyn’s statues on a shelf in the hallway and slammed it against his head. The hard blow was enough to knock him out cold, and it damn sure caused him to get off of her. She crawled backward and then got up off the floor and rushed to her bedroom.
Cedric got up slowly, holding his head. His eyes fluttered a few times, and he peered at me with a devilish look in his eyes. “I . . . I’ve been waiting on a piece of you for a long time too,” he said softly, then looked at the blood on his trembling fingers. Thick blood started to run slowly down the side of his face, and his eyes fluttered again. He looked dizzy, as if he was seconds away from collapsing and dying right in front of me.
Did I hit him that hard? I wondered. I started to get real, real nervous, and even more so when Evelyn appeared in the hallway with a gun in her hand.
“Get out, Cedric! And don’t you ever bring your ass back here again!” she shouted.
He stumbled as he turned around and looked at her, and when they made eye contact, she moved closer and fired one bullet into his chest. His blood splattered all over her clothes. He fell forward, and as he leaned on her, she pumped two more bullets into his stomach. She growled, as if doing this hurt her more than the bullets hurt him.
“Die, bastard! Die!” she said through gritted teeth.
I was numb all over. Couldn’t move, didn’t breathe. Didn’t take one step. Just stood there and watched Cedric’s body hit the floor like a bloody piece of meat. My body trembled as I watched Evelyn. It was as if she were another person when that gun was in her hand. After she snapped out of it and began to fall apart, she dropped the gun and fell beside Cedric.
“OMG, Trina! What did I just do? Come help me with him. We’ve got to save him!” She spoke in a panic. As she struggled to turn Cedric’s body over, it was obvious that he was, indeed, dead. “Help me!” Evelyn cried out. “What did I do?”
I stared at the huge gash on his head, knowing that my blow had probably mortally wounded him and that he would have died even if Evelyn hadn’t shot him. I wasn’t sure if Evelyn knew it too, until she looked at the gash and covered her mouth. She looked at me with wide eyes.
“Did this gash . . . how . . . what?” She was crying so hard, she could barely get out the words.
I finally sn
apped out of my trance and rushed over to them. “Should we call the police?” I blurted, all the while thinking about my situation and about going to jail. This was so fucked up. I couldn’t believe how people’s lives could change in an instant. I began to cry.
Evelyn ran her bloody fingers through her hair, pulling it back. “Uh, let me think. Let me think. Let me think about this.” She looked at Cedric again, which caused her to cry harder. “Oh, my, God! What did we do to him, and what should we do?”
Both of us couldn’t stop the tears. We were in a severe panic, and we definitely knew that someone had heard those gunshots.
“We have to get out of here,” I said. “Let’s get out of here and go . . . go somewhere and think. I can’t stay in here with his body lying there like that.” I slowly backed away from Cedric’s body, and so did Evelyn.
“But we, we can’t leave him here like this, can we?” she screamed. “Trina, damn it! We have to call the police!”
“Stop screaming, would you? We will call them, just not right now. Right now we need to think hard and come up with the best story that will help to clear us. This isn’t good, Evelyn. Trust me when I say this isn’t good.”
She clawed at her chest and kept looking at Cedric’s body. “I know this isn’t good, but what if he’s still alive? We need to call an ambulance and see if they can get here and save him.”
I didn’t know what Evelyn was thinking, but with his eyes opened wide like that, it was clear that Cedric was dead. He was gone, and there was no bringing him back this time.
“Calling an ambulance won’t save him. And calling the police won’t save us. We’ve got to lock up your place and go.”
Finally, Evelyn agreed. She tiptoed over Cedric’s body, washed her hands in the kitchen, and then snatched up a jacket to cover her bloody clothes. Hoping that no one saw us, after Evelyn locked the front door, we ran to my car.
“Where are we going?” she said.
“To Kayla’s place. We’ve got to go there.”
Evelyn seemed reluctant, and while we were in the car, she told me that she thought going to Kayla’s was a bad idea. “Trina, Kayla would love to see me behind bars. I know she would, and I don’t think we should go there.”
“What makes you think that you’ll be the one locked up? I think it was my blow that ultimately killed him. He was mortally wounded before you put those bullets into him.”
She was quiet for a few minutes, as if she was pondering something. “You don’t know that for sure. And even if you were the one who killed him, you can’t go to jail. I won’t let you do it. I won’t let you take the blame.”
I swallowed hard, thinking about my situation again. “I don’t have a choice. What choice do I have?”
“We do have a choice, and the last thing you’re going to do is have that baby in jail. He or she will need you, Trina. You can’t be a mother to your child if you’re in prison.”
I didn’t know how Evelyn knew I was pregnant, because I hadn’t told anyone. She must have seen the pregnancy test in the trash bag.
“Yes, I know,” she said. “I saw the pregnancy test. We have to figure out a way to spin this, and we have to do it real fast.”
I couldn’t even think straight. It was in our best interest to go somewhere and chill for a while. I couldn’t think of a better place than Kayla’s. I tried to convince Evelyn to go there with me.
“We have so much to explain to her. She doesn’t know what you told me about Cedric, does she?” I said.
“I tried to tell her, but she didn’t listen. If she didn’t listen then, she won’t listen now.”
“Please, just follow my lead on this. Just this one time, Evelyn, do it.”
Evelyn’s legs kept shaking, and she didn’t say another word. When we got to Kayla’s place, she remained in the car.
“I’m not going in there, because all she’ll want to do is fight me,” she said. “I’m not in the mood for it, so I’m staying right here. You can go in there and talk to her.”
“No, Evelyn, we both need to go inside. Please do this. I can’t think of a better time for us to come together and figure out what to do.”
Evelyn finally listened to me and went to Kayla’s door with me. We knocked several times, and almost five minutes later, Kayla opened the door. She appeared calm, but there was no smile whatsoever on her face, especially as she looked at Evelyn.
“Trina, I told you not to do this,” she said. “Don’t bring her over here. All I want right now is peace.”
“I do too, but . . . but something just happened that I think you need to know about. It’s important, Kayla. I wouldn’t be here like this if it wasn’t.”
Kayla let us inside, and when she turned on the light in the foyer, she finally saw some of the bloodstains on our clothes, especially on Evelyn’s. Kayla covered her mouth, then stepped back.
“What happened?” she said in a high-pitched tone. “Where did all this blood come from?”
“Cedric,” I didn’t hesitate to say. “Cedric is dead.”
Kayla’s eyes bugged out. She took a few more steps back. “How . . . ? When? And who—”
“I’ll tell you all about it, but I want you to come with us,” I said. “Please come with us so that I can explain everything to you.”
This time, it wasn’t Evelyn who was hesitant. It was Kayla. “I’m not going anywhere. Tell me what is going on right now!”
Tears were on the brink of falling from her eyes. This was one gut-wrenching moment, but I needed Kayla, as well as Evelyn, to cooperate.
“Evelyn and I are going to be in big trouble,” I said. “Cedric made us do this. He was like an out-of-control madman who couldn’t be stopped. If you had seen him, you would know what I mean. We had to do something to stop him.”
Something snapped Kayla out of her resistance mode. She opened the front door, then wiped away a tear that had fallen down her face. “I know what you mean, but take me to him,” she said. “Tell me what happened in the car and take me to him.”
I didn’t want to go back there and stare at him again. But when I asked Kayla if we could just chill at her place for a few hours, she wasn’t down with it.
“No, Trina. Let’s go now. I want to see him. Staying here won’t do us any good.”
I didn’t want to argue with Kayla, and neither did Evelyn. We all got in the car, and as I took a circuitous route back to Evelyn’s place, just to waste more time, we gave Kayla more details about what had happened before and after this incident. I couldn’t remember some of the missing pieces, so Evelyn spoke up and told Kayla everything. She spilled her guts about Cedric coming to the hospital, and about him forcing himself on her. She mentioned his threatening phone calls and her suspicions that he was trying to destroy our friendship. She also gave specific details about what had just happened at her town house. She made it seem as if her shooting him had killed him. I then told Kayla that I thought his death was due to what I’d done. Kayla was speechless the whole time we spoke.
There was a long silence before Kayla mentioned what Cedric had done to her. “I didn’t know who he was,” she said tearfully. “I never thought he would do me like that, and I’m still in shock about it.”
Not only was she in shock then, but she was in complete and utter shock when she walked through the door of Evelyn’s town house and saw Cedric’s dead body lying there. At a slow pace, Kayla walked up to him and then fell to her knees.
“No, no, no!” she cried out. “How dare you do this! How dare you cause me so much pain and suffering and then lay your ass there and die!” She pounded his chest with her fists, causing it to rise a little.
I had no idea what was going through her head right now. She and Cedric had a long history together, and they had been together since college. As much as Kayla might have despised him, I was sure that it was hard on her to see him lying there like this. It was hard on all of us, and when Evelyn walked up to Kayla, she lost it.
“I am so sorry,
my dear friend,” Evelyn said softly. “I didn’t want to kill him, but I had to. I had to do it, Kayla, and you just don’t understand what kind of man Cedric was. Maybe with you he was different. With me, he wasn’t. He treated me like shit, and I had my own reasons for accepting it. I wish I could bring him back. Lord knows, I wish I could, but I . . . I’m sorry.”
Kayla didn’t respond to Evelyn. She laid her head on Cedric’s bloody chest, sobbing uncontrollably. All we could hear was her cries. Other than that, the room was silent. There was something in the air that sent chills all over my body. I wasn’t sure if Evelyn or Kayla felt it, but I surely did. I stood there without moving, looked at my BFF’s, who were torn beyond repair, and couldn’t find the right words to say to either one of them. I just allowed them all the time and space they needed to get through this very frightening moment.
“What are we going to do?” Kayla finally said, with tears streaming down her face, as she looked from Evelyn to me. “We can’t leave him lying here like this.”
I stepped closer, but my legs were so weak that I could barely stand. “I guess we need to call the police. But what are we going to say?”
Evelyn sucked in a deep breath, then released it. “We’re going to tell them that it was self-defense and that I shot him.”
“But what about the gash on his head?” I questioned. “This doesn’t look good, and I doubt that the police will believe it was self-defense.”
Kayla slowly stood and started to wipe the tears from her face. “Trina is right. They’re not going to buy that. I hate to say this, but I think we may need to take his body somewhere and dump it.”
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