Tangled Roots

by Angela Henry

  Timmy locked the car and wiped off the keys and everything else we’d touched with his shirtsleeve. He wrapped the keys up in a dirty discarded diaper found lying not far from the spot where I’d found the jump rope. He lobbed the diaper like a grenade deep into the woods. He took the Swiss Army knife and sunk it to the hilt several times in each one of the Escalade’s tires. When Vaughn woke up, he’d be in for one hell of a surprise. Timmy and I got into my car and drove away, leaving a still unconscious Vaughn locked in his undriveable car. It would probably be a while before anyone would find him, giving me plenty of time to report both of his attacks on me to the police.

  I drove Timmy back to the car he’d been driving, a rusted-out orange Chevy pickup truck that I’d never seen before, which was indeed parked right in the middle of the street with a couple of angry motorists gathered around it. One had pulled out a cell phone and was no doubt about to call the police. Timmy jumped out to assure them that the car would be moved quickly. I had to give him a jump to get it started, after which Timmy proceeded to drive off without even looking back. I called out after him but he didn’t stop, and left me standing in the middle of the street in a cloud of exhaust. Damn! I didn’t even get a chance to tell him about Inez being alive. Feeling pissed off, frustrated, and quite dirty, I quickly hopped into my own car and took off.

  I headed for the police station, which took me straight past Holy Cross Church. The parking lot was empty of cars except for a gold Mercedes Benz and a brown Lincoln Town Car. I looked at my watch and realized Morris Rollins was probably at Holy Cross meeting with Bonita at that very moment. I wondered what was going on and if it had anything to do with the fact that Rollins was hiding Inez. I’d overheard Rollins saying something about someone knowing something. I wondered whom he and Bonita had been talking about and what this person might know. My curiosity got the best of me — again. Vowing that this would be my last act of snooping before going to Harmon and Mercer, I parked my car across the street from the church and got out. I pulled my coat tightly around me, crossed the street, and headed across the parking lot. I hoped no one would notice me and get suspicious, but since I was dirty, wearing wrinkled clothes, had matted hair, and a knotted up forehead, I figured anyone who did see me would just think I was in need of Jesus and therefore in the right place.

  The door to the church was unlocked, but the atrium was dark and empty. Upon entering, I saw a glow of light underneath Rollins’s closed office door and crept up to it. I pressed my ear to the door but heard nothing. I heard voices coming from behind me in the direction of the church’s basement steps. It was Rollins and Bonita, and they were arguing. Their voices were getting closer. I quickly ducked inside Rollins’s office.

  “Well, how much does he know, Bonita?” I heard an exasperated Rollins ask his sister-in-law.

  “He knows Shanda might not be his daughter,” I heard Bonita say in a trembling, tear-filled voice. “It’s like I told you. The hospital didn’t have enough of Shanda’s blood type on hand. So they were going to have me, or Rondell, donate blood for her transfusion. I wasn’t a match so Rondell said he’d donate his blood and…and…” Bonita was unable to finish her sentence and dissolved into a fit of loud, snot-filled sobbing.

  “I understand, Bonita. It’s okay. I know you had to tell him. We should have told him the truth years ago. Does he know I might be Shanda’s father?” Rollins asked gently.

  “Yes, I tried to explain but he…he called me a…a…whore and just took off. I haven’t seen him since. Oh, Morris, what are we gonna do?”

  “What we aren’t going to do is get hysterical. I’ll try and find Rondell. Don’t you need to get back to the hospital to check on Shanda?”

  “Yes,” Bonita said, then blew her nose loudly before continuing. “They said I could take her home this evening if she was feeling better. Oh, my God! What am I gonna tell her? She’ll be asking for her daddy. What do I tell her?”

  “Just tell her he’ll be home soon. You can do this, Bonita. Now, can I count on you to pull yourself together?”

  I peeked through the doorjamb and saw Bonita nod mutely.

  “Promise me you’ll find him, Morris. We have to make him understand.”

  “I will, sweetheart. Now, you go and take care of Shanda.” I watched as Rollins ushered Bonita out the door before turning and walking towards his office.

  Crap! Here I go again, I thought as I flattened myself against the wall behind the door. But, to my great relief, Rollins just stuck his hand inside the door, flipped off the light, and pulled the office door shut. I heard his retreating footsteps as he left the church. I breathed out a sigh of relief. Then I realized that while I probably wasn’t locked in Rollins’s office, I was most likely locked inside the church. I waited a few minutes, then left the office to check the church’s front doors to find that they were indeed locked. I frantically fumbled around the dark church hoping to find a way out, with no luck. All the doors and windows were locked tight. Resigned to my fate, I reluctantly returned to Rollins’s office.

  I sat at his desk, resisting the urge to turn the lights on as they might attract unwanted attention. It was only then that I was able to give some thought to what I’d overheard. Morris Rollins might be Shanda’s real father. I thought hard about Shanda. Did she resemble Rollins in any way? As far as I could tell, Shanda looked more like Bonita than either Rollins or Rondell. I wondered how she’d take the news. Would it matter at all to her that Inez might not be her cousin but her half sister? And, how would Inez feel knowing that her father had cheated on her mother with her uncle’s wife? Boy, Rollins sure had a mess on his hands. But somehow I knew he’d come out unscathed, smelling like a rose, and possibly with a new daughter to boot. And Bonita? I tried hard to imagine prim and proper Bonita Kidd and Morris Rollins in the throes of passion. I could feel an attack of the giggles welling up in me as an image of a naked Bonita popped into my head — hair loose and flowing, mouth open, head flung back — straddling Rollins and riding him hard, like he was the odds-on favorite at the Kentucky Derby who’d fallen into last place.

  Then an image of a heartbroken Rondell Kidd popped into my head. Horrible fashion sense aside, he seemed like such a nice man. I remembered the pride in his face when he talked about Shanda’s beautiful singing voice and how terrified he’d been when she’d been rushed to the hospital. How could he possibly handle the fact that his only child might not be his and — to make matters even worse — she might have been fathered by his own brother, a brother who was rumored to already have more children than he was supposed to? If Shanda hadn’t tried to commit suicide, the truth may never have come out. Would Morris and Bonita ever have confessed? My guess was no. I was happy this wasn’t my problem. I had my own problems, the most pressing one being how I was going to get out of the locked church. I supposed if I wanted out badly enough I could call someone. But there was no excuse that I could come up with that would explain my being here in the first place. How in the world could I explain being locked inside Holy Cross Church to Mama? She’d immediately think I’d been involved in some kind of tryst with the reverend. Although, technically speaking, he was now a widower twice over.

  I rooted through Rollins’s desk in hopes of finding a set of keys to the front door or any door, for that matter. No such luck. But I did, however, find a big bag of miniature Hershey bars in his bottom drawer. I hungrily tore open the bag and began eating. I hadn’t had anything to eat since my hot fudge cake earlier in the day. Could a woman live on chocolate alone? I was about to find out. Since I had time to kill, I snooped through the rest of the desk drawers.

  I didn’t find anything of much interest at first, just several boxes of Kleenex, a bottle of antacids, an assortment of pens, pencils, and pads of notebook paper, telephone books, a nail clipper, a multitude of file folders, and a bottle of cologne. I was half expecting to find condoms and porn magazines, but not at all surprised when I didn’t. I halfheartedly flipped through the folders but most of
them just contained receipts, order forms, applications and lots of bills for work done or about to be done on Holy Cross. The pile of bills I’d flipped through on his desk before was nothing compared to what was filed in the desk drawer. Bills for work done on the roof, plumbing bills, repairs on the building’s foundation, landscaping bills, and so forth and so on. It appeared that Holy Cross’s upkeep was costing a small fortune. No wonder Rollins asked so much of his congregation. He’d told me every dime went back into the church, but apparently donations didn’t cover everything. How could the reverend live so lavishly, and support a much younger wife with expensive tastes, when Holy Cross was such a money pit? Unless Reverend Rollins was dipping into the donations to support his lush lifestyle and leaving Holy Cross’s upkeep to suffer. Was that the reason he had been so hot to cash in on an insurance policy on someone who wasn’t even dead? Did he need the money to live on? Whatever his reason, he was risking jail time for fraud if I was right.

  I refiled the folders in the correct order and tried closing the drawer. But it wouldn’t close all the way. Something was stuck in back of the drawer, preventing it from closing all the way. I had to remove the entire drawer to reach it. It was another unmarked file folder. In the folder I found copies of three huge life insurance checks. All the checks were made out to Morris Rollins. Each check was attached to a copy of a death certificate. I could feel my stomach start to knot up as I flipped through the file. The names on the death certificates were Richard Charles Maynard, Gina Camille Parks, and Joseph Robert Porter. For some reason, Richard Maynard’s name was familiar to me. Morris Rollins was listed as the father on all three death certificates. Wasn’t Vaughn Castle’s dead friend named Ricky Maynard? But something else about that name tugged at my memory. I saw that the mother’s name on the certificate was listed as Vera Maynard. Then it hit me: Vera Maynard was Mattie Lyons’s unfortunate niece who’d had an affair with Rollins years ago. She was the girl Mama always talked about. Richard must have been the result of that affair and he was also apparently Vaughn Castle’s dead friend Ricky. I looked at his death certificate and saw the cause of death was listed as vehicular homicide. Morris Rollins had been awarded a life insurance check for one hundred thousand dollars when Ricky met his unfortunate demise at the tender age of twenty-five. I looked at the other certificates.

  Gina Parks had been the daughter of Morris Rollins and Melvina Carmichael Parks. Good gravy! The reverend and the Christian romance writer? No wonder Melvina had given me such a contemptuous look when she’d seen me waiting in this office for Rollins. They had a bond because of their child. And even if the child was dead, Melvina still must have deep feelings for the reverend. Why was I so shocked? Hadn’t I, and the entire town of Willow, been hearing rumors about his illegitimate children for years? It was like finding out that a mythical race of humans actually existed. I read on and saw that Gina’s death was attributed to anaphylactic shock at the age of sixteen almost three years ago. I vaguely remembered reading something in the paper a few years ago about a teenaged girl dying from a bee sting. Could this have been the same girl? Rollins had received a mere twenty-five thousand dollars in life insurance upon Gina’s death.

  Lastly there was Joseph Porter. His mother was listed as Carla Porter. Her name wasn’t familiar to me. Joseph’s death had been an accidental drowning at the age of eighteen, almost five years ago. Rollins received a check for seventy-five thousand dollars when Joseph died.

  I sat in Rollins’s empty office and stared at the love seat I’d sat on only a week before. I couldn’t believe I’d been ready to succumb to the charms of a man who obviously took the love, affection, and admiration of the women around him as his due. Hadn’t the man ever heard of condoms? How many other children did he have? Were they dead, too? Either Morris Rollins had the worst luck of anyone I’d ever seen when it came to personal tragedy or there was something much more sinister at work here. And just how did Inez figure in to all of this? I took the file with the info on Rollins’s deceased children and put it in my purse. I knew Harmon and Mercer would be very interested in seeing it when I finally got a chance to get to the police station. Until then, I settled myself in for the long night ahead.

  Chapter 13

  The sound of voices outside the office door woke me up. Bright sunlight streamed into the office through the colored block glass windows that overlooked the parking lot. Remembering where I was, I quickly jumped up off of the love seat that I’d slept on. My neck was stiff from sleeping in a cramped position and my mouth tasted like stale chocolate. But I put that out of my mind as I frantically looked around for a hiding place. The voices outside the office were female, and judging from their conversation, they were there to clean the church. I could hear every word of what they were saying but they didn’t seem about to enter the office, at least not yet. I waited, and ten minutes later they’d moved to another part of the church. I opened the door a crack and, seeing no one in sight, ran like my tail was on fire straight out the front doors. I didn’t stop until I got to my car.

  It was a little after seven when I got home. Not wanting to waste any time in getting to the police station to tell Harmon and Mercer what I’d found out, I took a quick shower, and scarfed down a bowl of Cap’n Crunch. I turned on my TV as I dressed and was about to turn it off when the morning news came on and a familiar face flashed onto the screen, stopping me cold. It was Vaughn Castle. I turned up the TV and sat down heavily on the edge of my bed. According to Tracey Ripkey, Channel Four’s star news reporter — whose hair seemed to get bigger and blonder with each newscast — Vaughn Castle’s body had been found tied up in the backseat of his vandalized car. He’d been beaten and shot in the head. The camera cut to a shot of Vaughn’s Escalade being towed away. I noticed that the back window on the driver’s side was shattered. Ripkey then started interviewing people in the crowd that had gathered at the scene behind the police barrier.

  “I was telling my husband just the other day that something bad was going to happen out here,” sniffed a prim white woman in a red pantsuit who looked like a poster child for the upwardly mobile. “We live down the street and when we bought our house we were told this entire area was going to be developed. That was two years ago and it still looks like a jungle back here. We moved here to get away from this sort of thing. If we knew there would be this kind of trouble out here we’d have never come.” There was a murmur of agreement among the others in the crowd.

  The camera switched back to Ripkey. “Police have several witnesses who reported seeing two suspicious vehicles in this area yesterday afternoon. One was an orange Chevy pickup truck and the other was a small blue car that may have been either a Nova or an Escort. The victim, Vaughn Castle, was a known drug dealer with prior convictions for drug trafficking. Police believe his death may be the result of a drug deal gone wrong. Whatever the reason, the residents of Briar Creek will have a hard time regaining their peace of mind. I’m Tracey Ripkey, reporting live from Willow. Back to you, John.”

  I stood up shakily, feeling as if the room was spinning out of control. I barely made it to the bathroom in time before throwing up my cereal. I finally pulled my head out of the toilet, brushed my teeth, and splashed water on my face. The first thing that popped into my head was the last thing I wanted to think about. If the police found out it had been Timmy and me with Vaughn, and that we’d tied him up and put him in his car, they’d arrest us on the spot for his murder, no questions asked. I was already in trouble for helping a fugitive. The fact that Vaughn had set up Timmy would just be our motive for Vaughn’s murder. I remembered back to Timmy wiping everything down before we left and managed to convince myself that, despite our cars having been spotted, nothing that had happened the day before could be traced back to us. Vaughn had probably been killed by another drug dealer, possibly one of the thuglets I’d seen with him at the Spot who was trying to make a name for himself. Either way, it wasn’t my problem.

  I’d just go to Harmon and Mercer a
s planned, show them the folder, and tell them that Inez was still alive. They could talk to Inez and find out what really happened that night. Timmy would be cleared. Olivia could have her surgery. I could go on with my life. All would be right with the world. I was feeling so much better. I’d feel even better if Shanda had a change of heart and was willing to come clean. But I knew I couldn’t count on Shanda. Even though Vaughn had dumped her like yesterday’s trash, people had a way of elevating the dead to sainthood, purging themselves of every bad memory of the deceased. Shanda was probably still very much in love with Vaughn and still unwilling to say a word against him. I wondered if she even knew he was dead. The police could deal with her, too.

  I got up, put my coat on, flung my purse over my shoulder, and headed for the front door feeling quite pleased with myself. Funny, how things can change in an instant. I opened the door and saw two police cars pull up in front of my duplex. I stood frozen in my doorway. Were they there for me? I decided I didn’t want to find out. I slammed my door shut, ran to my bedroom, and climbed out the window. I jumped down into the backyard from the roof of Mrs. Carson’s back porch. I almost twisted my ankle but managed to run down the alley behind the house just as I heard the police pounding on the door demanding to be let in. I found myself on a side street. Panting, I looked up the block and saw, to my relief, a city bus coming down the street towards me. It stopped at the corner and I hurried to catch it before it pulled off. I bought a daily pass and headed to an empty seat in the back to think. What in the world was I going to do? Did the police find out what happened with Vaughn? I knew I shouldn’t worry. I was innocent, after all. Well, innocent of murder, at any rate. But visions of prison and a cellmate named Big Bertha loomed in my mind. I’d never even gotten so much as a parking ticket. Now this.