by Mary Monroe
Also by Mary Monroe
Mama Ruby
God Ain’t Through Yet
God Ain’t Blind
The Company We Keep
Deliver Me From Evil
God Don’t Play
In Sheep’s Clothing
Red Light Wives
God Still Don’t Like Ugly
Gonna Lay Down My Burdens
God Don’t Like Ugly
The Upper Room
“Nightmare in Paradise” in Borrow Trouble
She Had It Coming
MARY MONROE
KENSINGTON BOOKS
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Also by Mary Monroe
Title Page
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
CHAPTER 63
Teaser chapter
Copyright Page
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To the wonderful national and international book club members (especially Louise Cook in Richmond, California, and Marsha Thomas in London, England), the bookstores who promote my books, and to the loyal fans who read my books: this one is for you. I sincerely appreciate your comments, support, and suggestions.
A very special thanks to the staff at The Ivy restaurant in Beverly Hills for always giving me A-List attention.
Please continue to send your e-mails and letters and visit my Web site at www.Marymonroe.org.
Peace and blessings!
Mary Monroe
Oakland, California
September, 2008
CHAPTER 1
I saw my best friend kill her vicious stepfather on the night of our senior prom. While our classmates were dancing the night away and plotting to do everything we had been told not to do after the prom, I was helping Valerie Proctor hide a dead body in her backyard beneath a lopsided fig tree.
Ezekiel “Zeke” Proctor’s violent death had come as no surprise to me. It happened sixteen years ago but it’s still fresh on my mind, and I know it will be until the day I die, too.
Mr. Zeke had been a fairly good neighbor as far back as I could remember. When he wasn’t too drunk or in a bad mood, he would haul old people and single mothers who didn’t have transportation around in his car. He would lend money, dole it out to people who needed it, and he never asked to be repaid. He would do yard work and other maintenance favors for little or no money. And when he was in a good mood, which was rare, he would host a backyard cookout and invite everybody on our block. However, those events usually ended when he got too drunk and paranoid and decided that everybody was “out to get him.”
When that happened, barbequed ribs, links, and chicken wings ended up on the ground, or stuck to somebody’s hair where he’d thrown them. People had to hop away from the backyard to avoid stepping on glasses that he had broken on purpose. There had not been any cookouts since the time he got mad and shot off his gun in the air because he thought one of the handsome young male guests was plotting to steal his wife. In addition to those lovely social events, he’d also been the stepfather and husband from hell.
Valerie’s mother, Miss Naomi, bruised and bleeding like a stuck pig herself after the last beating that she’d survived a few minutes before the killing, had also witnessed Mr. Zeke’s demise. Like a zombie, she had stood and watched her daughter commit the granddaddy of crimes. Had things turned out differently, Miss Naomi would have been the dead body on the floor that night, because this time her husband had gone too far. He had attempted to strangle her to death. She had his handprints on her neck and broken blood vessels in the whites of her eyes to prove it.
To this day I don’t like to think of what I witnessed as a murder, per se. If that wasn’t a slam dunk case of self-defense, I don’t know what was. But Valerie and her mother didn’t see things that way. They didn’t call the cops like they’d done so many times in the past. That had done no good. If anything, it had only made matters worse. Each time after the cops left, Miss Naomi got another beating. They also didn’t call the good preacher, Reverend Carter, who had told them time and time again, year after year, that “Brother Zeke can’t help hisself; he’s confused” and to be “patient and wait because things like this will work out somehow if y’all turn this over to God.” Well, they’d tried that, too, and God had not intervened.
“None of those motherfuckers helped us when we needed it, now we don’t need their help,” Valerie’s mother said, grinding her teeth as she gave her husband’s corpse one final kick in his side. She attempted to calm her nerves by drinking vodka straight out of the same bottle that he had been nursing from like a hungry baby all day.
Miss Naomi and Valerie buried Mr. Zeke’s vile body in the backyard of the house that Miss Naomi owned on Baylor Street. It was the most attractive residence on the block, not the kind of place that you would expect to host such a gruesome crime. People we all knew got killed in the crack houses in South Central and other rough parts of L.A., not in our quiet little neighborhood in houses like Miss Naomi’s. Directly across the street was the Baylor Street Mt. Zion Baptist Church, which almost everybody on the block attended at some time. Even the late Mr. Zeke. . . .
The scene of the crime was a two-story white stucco with a two-car garage and a wraparound front porch that was often cluttered with toys and neighborhood kids like me. The front lawn was spacious and well cared for. A bright white picket fence surrounded the entire front lawn like a houndstooth necklace. Behind the house, as with all the other houses on the block, was a high, dark fence that hid the backyard, as well as Valerie’s crime.
Miss Naomi’s house looked like one of those family friendly homes on those unrealistic television sitcoms. But because of Valerie’s stepfather’s frequent violence, the house was anything but family friendly. He had turned it into a war zone over the years. Valerie’s baby brother, Binkie, referred to it as Beirut because Mr. Zeke attacked every member of the family on a regular basis, including Valerie’s decrepit grandfather, Paw Paw, and even one-eyed Pete, the family dog.
Even though there was bloo
d in every room in that house, that didn’t stop me from making it my second home. Over the years I had learned how to get out of the “line of fire” in time to avoid injury whenever Mr. Zeke broke loose.
That night, I had innocently walked into the house and witnessed Valerie’s crime. As soon as I realized what was happening, I threw up all over the pale pink dress that had cost me a month’s worth of my earnings. I continued to vomit as I watched Valerie and her long-suffering mother drag the body across the kitchen floor to the backyard so casually you’d have thought it was a mop.
Before they reached the gaping hole in the ground that had several mounds of dirt piled up around it like little pyramids, they stumbled and dropped the corpse. There was a thud and then a weak, hissing sound from the body that made me think of a dying serpent. Somebody let out a long, loud, rhythmic fart. I could smell it from where I stood in the door like a prison guard. And it was fiercely potent. I couldn’t tell if it had come from Valerie, her mother, or if it was the last gas to ooze from the asshole of the dead man. It could have even been from me, but I was such a wreck, I couldn’t tell. I squeezed my nostrils and then I froze from my face to the soles of my feet.
I held my breath as Valerie stumbled and fell on top of one of the mounds of dirt. Miss Naomi, breathing hard and loud, fell on top of Mr. Zeke’s corpse. One of us screamed. I didn’t realize it was me until Valerie scolded me. “Dolores, shut the fuck up and help us.” Why, I didn’t know. With the tall dark fence protecting the backyard like a fort, none of our neighbors could see her. “We need to get him in this hole now,” she said, huffing and puffing. I couldn’t believe that this was the same girl that Reverend Carter had baptized less than a week ago, in the church across the street from the scene of her crime.
CHAPTER 2
The Los Angeles experience was like something out of a movie. Literally. Things just didn’t happen in L.A. Being that this was where Hollywood was located, even night didn’t just happen in L.A. It made an entrance the same way Gloria Swanson did in that old movie Sunset Boulevard. Just like the demented character that she had so brilliantly portrayed, this particular night was ready for its close-up. And I was right smack-dab in the middle of it. I was not the star, but in a way I had a strong supporting role. It was not where I wanted to be.
I grabbed a flashlight from the kitchen drawer and stepped into the backyard. Even in the dim light, I could see that the hairdo Valerie had spent a hundred dollars on was ruined. Her usually glorious mane, matted with dirt and saturated with sweat, looked like a sheep’s ass. With every move she made, the long curls that she was so proud of flopped about her face like limp vines. She leaped up from the ground, pulling her mother up by the hand. They then continued to slide Mr. Zeke into his final resting place. Well, it was final as long as some busybody didn’t dig him up.
“Lo, you need to hold that goddamned flashlight straight,” Valerie informed me, speaking in a voice I hardly recognized. There was a desperate look in her eyes that I had never seen before.
I was temporarily unable to speak. I moved my mouth, my tongue, and my lips, but nothing came out. All I could do was try to hold that fucking flashlight in place. Even with the porch light on, and the beam from the flashlight in my hands, everything seemed so dark, including my beautiful light pink dress. And nothing seemed real.
“Aren’t y’all supposed to wrap him up in something?” I asked in a trembling voice. It seemed almost disrespectful not to include a shroud. I even snatched a towel off the kitchen counter and held it up, waving it, hoping they would at least wrap up his head and cover his eyes. But Valerie and her mother ignored me. Mr. Zeke went into the ground with just the clothes on his back. Almost every single inch of the white shirt he’d died in had turned red with his blood.
Valerie and Miss Naomi put together didn’t weigh as much as that loathsome body that they had dropped into a hole that had already been dug. I don’t know how I managed to stand there holding the flashlight in my hands, both of them shaking hard. I had to use both to hold the flashlight in place so Valerie and her mother could see what they were doing.
Mr. Zeke had dug the grave himself the day before and told Valerie’s mother that she’d be in it by the weekend. No, he had promised her. Ironically, he’d dug it long and deep enough to accommodate his six foot four, 270-pound frame.
The murder weapon, a butcher knife that could have passed for a sword if it had been any longer, was on the kitchen table with half of the blade missing. I’d find out later that the missing part of the blade had been buried with Mr. Zeke, still planted in his chest like a spike. This was a horrible way for a horrible man to die, and for some reason I felt unbearably sad. Despite everything he was and had done, he was still somebody’s son. Having never known my blood relatives, family had a special meaning to me.
In the kitchen, the blood on the floor was so thick it looked like you could dip it up with a spoon. There was a large puddle in front of the sink that covered the floor like an area rug, and a wide trail that looked like a thick red snake that led to the door. The spot in front of the stove was where Mr. Zeke had issued his last threat, and breathed his last breath. Pete, the dingy black mutt that Valerie and I had rescued from the street, had already started slipping and sliding across the floor, lapping up blood like he was at a hog trough. Pete stared up at me with his remaining eye. Mr. Zeke’s blood was dripping from his tongue, whiskers and nose.
Besides Valerie and her mother, who died from natural causes herself about a year later, and Valerie’s one-eyed dog, I was the only other individual who knew what had happened to Mr. Zeke. That night, I promised Valerie that I would carry her secret with me to my grave. And one thing I knew how to do was to keep a promise.
I had kept that promise for sixteen years. And it had not been that hard for me to do. I knew that my knowledge of the crime, and not reporting it, put me somewhere in the vicinity of the guilt. Since Valerie never talked about Mr. Zeke’s murder after that night, I didn’t know if she had shared her secret with anybody else. And I didn’t want to know.
Even though I knew that Valerie’s mouth was one of the biggest things on her body, I shared secrets with her, too. A lot of people did. When I shared something with Valerie it was usually something petty—something that a lot of our friends already knew anyway, or would hear from me eventually. But not this time.
Not only was Valerie Proctor my best friend and former roommate, she was one of the most popular bartenders I knew, because her ears were even bigger than her mouth. She was the one person I knew who’d be more than a little interested in my confession, and the only person who would have any sympathy for me. But even before I spilled the beans, I had to ask myself, “Should I be telling this woman my business?” I didn’t even have to think about my answer. I had to tell somebody. This was a load I could no longer carry by myself. Besides, what were best friends for?
“Now what’s so important you had to drag me away from the comfort of my own place of business, and a possible date with one of the hottest men on the planet this side of Denzel? And it better be good,” Valerie warned, her voice half serious, her eyes wide with curiosity. “Girl, I’ve been itching to hear some juicy news all week. I want to hear some news that is going to make my ears ring.”
“Well, I’ve got some . . .” I said, speaking with hesitation. “And, it’s real juicy . . . I think.” We occupied a patio table at The Ivy in Beverly Hills.
“Who about? Paris Hilton? Nicole Richie? Lindsay Lohan? Beyoncé? Will Smith? Star Jones? Big-mouthed Rosie O’Donnell?” Valerie served drinks to a lot of celebrities who visited Paw Paw’s, the bar she owned in West Hollywood. And it was profitable for her in more ways than one. A lot of the things she heard from the famous and not-so-famous patrons had ended up on the pages of the tabloids. She was well paid by her media contacts, even for something as petty as one of the Lakers leaving a five dollar tip on a hundred dollar tab. “Who? Who?” she said, sounding like an owl. And the way her
eyes were stretched open, she looked like one, too.
“Uh . . . me.”
Valerie reared back in her seat so far her neck looked like it belonged on a goose. “You?” From the expression on her face, there was nothing I could have said that would have disappointed her more. She let out a disgusted sigh and rolled her eyes. “Shit,” she mouthed.
“Uh-huh,” I muttered. “Me.”
“Oh. Whatever, whatever,” Valerie said with an exasperated shrug. “Well, what did you do, mow somebody down with your Honda and flee the scene?”
I shook my head. “Valerie, I need to talk to you about something I’ve done. But you have to promise me that you won’t ever tell anybody. I . . . I can’t keep this to myself any longer,” I said, speaking in a low voice. “This is serious. Real serious.”
I was glad to see that Valerie seemed more interested now. She held her breath and stared at me for a moment. “Please don’t tell me you’ve got some fatal disease,” she squeaked, her eyes full of tears and her lips quivering. “I don’t know what I’d do without you!”
I shook my head again. “I’m not going to die,” I assured her.
“All right then. I’m listening,” she replied, letting out a loud sigh of relief.
CHAPTER 3
Not only was The Ivy our favorite restaurant, but it was a regular hangout for celebrities from the A list to the D list. The only thing that Valerie and I ever ordered was the grilled garden salad. We washed it down with several glasses of Chardonnay. This was the only time that I’d pushed my salad away after just a few bites, but I’d already sucked up two glasses of wine and had just started on the third.
