CHAPTER 5
After I made a copy of the file, I debated driving to Laughton’s house and confronting him, but I was beyond exhausted from the day, and I decided on sleep first. Two murders in one day, Nareece losing her ever-loving mind, Laughton following close behind her, old wounds coming to roost—and it was only Wednesday.
It was 9:00 p.m. when I finally turned the corner onto my block. I pulled up in front of the house rather than down the driveway and into the garage as I usually did. A noisy gaggle of teenagers swooped down on the otherwise quiet block, half in the street, the other on the sidewalk. I stayed in the car until they passed, too tired to act, praying for nothing happening that I’d need to act on.
When I got in the house, I started up the stairs, my bed screaming for my attention, but then I paused midway, backtracked to the dining room table, took the file out of my briefcase, and dropped into the chair.
I flipped open the file and fingered its contents, then dove in. This whole time I’d thought my sister was the only fragment of my life I had kept from Laughton. How did he learn about the file? Carmella Ann Mabley disappeared twenty years ago. She was now Nareece Troung. Before marrying John, she was Nareece Dotson. Why had Carmella resurfaced now? Nareece’s rants were too vague to determine what the envelope she received might be about. She made it sound like there were goings-on I was not privy to, that someone who had known her twenty years ago was threatening her new life.
I shuffled through the photographs. The photographs’ borders blurred when my brain took over and streamed images in front of my eyes like a flip book. I fast-forwarded and replayed the images in my head, searching for anything meaningful. Nothing. I drilled my memory pack, but a lobotomy would have served me better, I thought, waving a tearstained photograph of a battered Nareece from the cold case file.
I dug my cell out of my briefcase and called Laughton again. Rather than make a lot of assumptions, I would ask questions. No answer made me crazy. I left a tenth message on his cell and home phones, refusing a pleading tone. I checked the clock on the cable box set on top of the television: 9:45. A moment of desperation attacked my gut. The pangs surrendered to Dulcey leaning on the bell as only she could. When I got up to answer the door, I realized I still had my coat on. I took it off on my way to the door and threw it on the couch.
When I opened the door, Dulcey blew past me saying, “I know, I know, it’s late, and you’re working, you’re always working, so it’s time to take a break and sit with me. I can’t listen any more to them ladies at the shop talking up a storm about anything and everybody. Lord should deliver down a lightnin’ bolt, burn up all their behinds, and send ’em hollering for cover, gossiping and carrying on like ain’t no savin’ souls mornin’ comin’. They shoulda been long gone anyway. Acting like they don’t have homes to go to, families to care for.”
I followed her in. The windstorm she made sent the contents of the file that were spread across the dining room table flying, her butt swaying like a giant pendulum. She caught sight of a photo on the table, stopped short, and backed up. She had her hairdressing case hanging on her back from a wide strap that lay across her chest and a shopping bag in her arms. She shifted the shopping bag and picked up the picture of Nareece, unconscious, beaten and bloodied, sprawled across her bed.
“Girl, you told me about this before,” she said. “But I never imagined anything this bad.”
I snatched the photo from her and gathered the papers from the floor and the table, shuffling them into a pile. “Don’t even go there. Bad enough I have to relive this nightmare, without you getting dragged in.”
“What kind of mess you talkin’? Relive the nightmare? What’s that about?” She gave me about a second to respond, then said, “I’ve been in this from the git-go, so don’t start blocking me out now. I want to know what we’ve been talking about all these years. I want a full understanding.”
“Trust me. You understand enough,” I said, stuffing the papers into my briefcase, avoiding her stare. She allowed me a smidgeon of latitude.
“You look like you need a little somethin’ somethin’, honey,” she crooned, moving on to the kitchen. I plopped into the chair. The opening and closing of drawers and cabinets and her ramblings echoed in my ears until no sound penetrated them.
Next thing I knew, Dulcey was talking to me like I was deaf. “M, where are you?” She stood in front of me with a glass of wine. In a softer tone she said, “Here, honey, your favorite, or one of them anyway.” She cackled a bit. “I’m clueless since you’ve become such a wine connoisseur.” Then she examined my hair, running her fingers up under my kitchen, you know that place at the nape of the neck where the nappiest and most resistant to change hair resides. “Looks like a sister didn’t come a moment too soon.” More cackling. She pulled out a chair opposite me and folded her legs under her with the grace of a gazelle, then lifted her glass. “Soon as I settle my brain with a few swigs, I’ma hook you up. To the evening.” Dulcey took a few sips and set her glass on the table.
I gulped and let the sweet, aromatic Sancerre warm my insides. Second go ’round I sipped and savored.
“Now, spill it,” she said.
I unloaded the happenings of the past few days: my testimony at Boone’s trial and how I felt like a victim, Laughton’s weird behavior and his ex-wife, my sneaking around behind him, and Nareece’s neurotic behavior and desire to confess all to Travis. I held back the part about the letter Nareece had received. There was no sense getting Dulcey in a tizzy until I knew what was in the damn thing.
“You and Laughton ain’t nothing but a minute. You all will work that stuff out and move on like nothing happened. Too much glue in you all’s relationship for anything different. Now this thing with Nareece, that’s another story.”
Silence fell between us as she readjusted her legs, one over the other in the opposite direction, and jerked her head back to empty her glass. Then she got up and went for refills.
“She got a letter today addressed to Carmella Ann Mabley.” I don’t know what made me say it, but suddenly I needed Dulcey to know exactly what was going on.
Dulcey stopped her steps, spun around, and made her way back, almost tripping over rather than into the chair. “Nobody knows she’s who she is. I mean, nobody knows who she was.”
“Somebody knows.”
She returned to the table and sat down, empty glasses in hand. “What are you gonna do? What did the letter say?”
“She wouldn’t tell me. Rather, she wouldn’t open the envelope. Said she won’t open it until I’m with her. She just started talking crazy. Said something about they know what she did. You know how Reecey can get.”
Dulcey got up again and went to the kitchen. “Then we need to take a road trip,” she called over her shoulder. She must have had second thoughts about more wine before doing my hair because the next thing that came out of her mouth was, “C’mon in here, girl, let me fix those numbers you got invading your head.”
I obeyed her command. I sat in the chair Dulcey had set up at the kitchen sink and let her wrap a cape around my shoulders, before I commented on the road trip comment. “Yeah, I was planning on going to Boston this weekend, see what’s in the envelope.” I hesitated. “I should have been there, Dulce.”
“Don’t go there, girl.” Dulcey snapped on some rubber gloves and began parting and retouching the roots of my hair. Part, dab, rub. The mercaptan smell of the perm made me pinch my nose and breathe through my mouth to survive. She moved through my head like gangbusters, yapping all the way. “You were there or the girl might not be with us now. You been carryin’ guilt around in your briefcase all these years blockin’ you from livin’ life the way God intended.”
“I’m ready to retire from the job, Dulcey. Do something more . . . sane. I’m forty-nine years old, no man, change coming on, Travis in college, and then there’s Reecey.”
“Long as you do what you do for you, Muriel. Reece got her life. And what you mean, no man? You got that fine Calvin dotin’ on you now. Nothing like a good man to soothe what ails ya. And if he’s fine, then all the better, and Calvin is fiiine!”
“And you know about a good man soothing ailments how?”
“Honey, Hampton is a good husband and fine as they come. Hamp got issues for sure, but what man doesn’t?”
“Exactly.” I huffed for air, then jumped up, grabbed the day’s newspaper from the counter, and waved it for a breeze.
“What the hell is wrong with you? I mean, I know what’s wrong with you, but you must be out of your mind right now.” Dulcey waved her gloved hands, which were covered in relaxer. “You better sit your behind down here before you burn all that hair off your head, hoppin’ around with this perm on your head. First thing you’ll do is curse me for leaving scabs in your scalp. Never mind it’s your behind acting the fool.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I sat down, and Dulcey immediately laid me back and rinsed the perm out of my hair. “Calvin’s no different. I’m positive he has issues,” I said. “I haven’t figured him out yet is all.” I struggled to sit still and let Dulcey finish rinsing my hair before I lost it and jumped up again. I felt like I was being suffocated and strangled by the plastic cape she had wrapped around my body and tied at the neck.
“You’re the one with issues, honey,” Dulcey said, wrapping a towel around my head. She snapped off the gloves and cackled her way through getting some ice cubes and wrapping them in a dish towel, as I labored through the fire that welled up from my insides. “Breathe, girl, deep breaths,” she instructed, wrapping the cold towel around my neck and rubbing ice cubes on my cheeks. “Gotta go with it. It’s your initiation, preparing you for the second half of your life.” She put on more gloves and worked some conditioner through my hair, then put a plastic cap over it.
Dulcey pulled off her gloves again and refilled our wineglasses. “It’s a shame you dealing with so much drama on top of gettin’ the hot spells. At least when I thought I was losing my mind I didn’t have anything or anybody to deal with but me. Poor Hamp thought he was gonna have to sign me in the looney house for real.” We laughed. “You’ll make it through. Just knowing there’s an end to it right around that corner you keep bumping into, oughtta keep you straight. Like I said, preparation for the second half of your life—the best half.”
“Yeah, providing it doesn’t fry my brain or kill me. Or worse, make me kill somebody else first. Hell, I’m still dealing with the first half of my life, never mind the second half.”
“How that little girl sing—‘what doesn’t kill ya makes you stronger’?” Dulcey crooned.
An hour later Dulcey pulled down on the last curl. It was then I heard the basement door open. Travis. I jumped up like a jack-in-the-box and rushed to gather the rest of the file papers and stuff them into my briefcase. With everything popping, I’d forgotten he’d called earlier to say he wouldn’t be home until late. I was back in my chair before Travis and his girlfriend graced the top step from the basement.
“Hello, Miss Mabley,” Kenyetta said, gliding from the basement door over to me. At five-eleven, she was statuesque with creamy dark skin and bold eyes, her hair braided into a spiraled updo intertwined with gold strands. Elegant. Almost. Her size twelves didn’t clear the corner of the counter. She tripped and fell forward, so her head grazed my cheek, rather than her giving me an intended kiss.
Travis bounded over to Dulcey, who wrapped the cord around her curling iron and put it in her case.
“Hi, Auntie.”
“Hey, baby. How’s my favorite godchild?”
“Your only godchild is right,” Travis kidded and lifted Dulcey off the floor in a bear hug.
I noticed I’d missed a photograph that had fallen on the floor under the dining table. I went for it and stuffed it into my briefcase in one swoop.
“Working on something murderous, huh?” Travis said, shaking his head, as he put Dulcey down and headed for me.
“Like I keep telling you, you have a lifetime to experience awful things, as much as I hate the thought. You can’t escape, but there’s no need rushin’.” He hugged me and headed back down to the basement. Kenyetta followed on his heels.
“We’re going to New York this weekend, remember?” he called back. “We’re leaving tomorrow morning. Ms. Nelson is rollin’ through at eight.”
“New York. You mean to tell me your mama is letting you go to New York by yo’self?” Dulcey hollered down the stairs. “Hmm, hmm, hmm, she really is growing up.” Dulcey cackled some more.
“I know that’s right,” Travis said. You could hear him whispering to Kenyetta and laughing.
Dulcey closed the basement door and said, “You sure he’s gonna be all right in New York alone?”
“Oh, and I worry too much?”
We moved into the living room and stretched out across the sectional sofa that occupied three-quarters of the room. By the time we killed the bottle of Sancerre, we had solved the immediate problems of the world: hunger, homelessness, and age-old discrimination against gays and blacks. Then we moved on to the more delicate, sweeter blend of a Vouvray and softer issues: rising food and gas prices, rising irritation with aging men, and grandchildren, which neither of us had. Dulcey’s forty-year-old-daughter, Macey, was gay and lived in Nova Scotia with her now wife of fifteen years. They did not want children. I had no problem waiting for Travis to do his education thing before becoming a baby daddy. So ours was a dreamscape conversation of Nana’s little darlings.
Dulcey left at 2:00 a.m. An evening with Dulcey always made me feel like I had experienced a full body massage and was ready for whatever came at me.
The orange numbers glared 4:41 when I woke up, dry-mouthed and woozy. I rolled over like a roast on a rotisserie for an hour before I surrendered, clicked on the light, and recovered the file from the briefcase at my bedside and began reading.
The report noted that Nareece had little memory of the attack when she woke from being in a coma for two weeks. The coma was caused by a severe concussion. She told police she had been in her bedroom lying on her bed with earphones on, listening to music, when three men attacked her. No, two men. She was unsure. One punched her in the face. “They were all over me. They kept punching me and tearing my clothes and punching me, and cutting me and spreading shit over me.” The attackers had slashed her arms, legs, stomach, and face with a hunting knife.
I hugged the papers to my chest, fighting against the memory as my eyes filled with tears.
I pulled into the driveway and groaned at the first tingle of apprehension. The house was dark. Since Mom and Pops had died six months earlier, Carmella kept every light on when she was home alone. The tingle became a bear skittering around in my stomach. I knew she was home. I’d just talked with her on the phone during the drive.
I peered through the windshield, craning my neck to see the whole house. What was wrong with that girl? Lights out. Windows closed. “It’s going to be hot as hell in there.” Did the curtain just move? I squinted more. A few hours of sleep would do wonders for my eyesight, I thought. I looked away and tried shaking off my anxiety. Carmella was fine.
She was sixteen going on thirty-six. Girl was always telling me, “You’re worse than an old mama. You need to find yourself a man so you can get a life and let me get on with mine.” Hmph. I chuckled to myself. I had plenty of time for the man thang. First things first—getting her through senior year to graduation and into college took priority.
I considered putting the car in the garage, then decided against it since I would be leaving in a few hours to go back to work. While working undercover, sneaking home to check on Carmella was necessary, though it wasn’t wise nor in the job description.
“Carmella,” I yelled going in.
I dropped my stuff on the kitchen counter and flipped the light switch next to the door. Then toe-to-heel slid my shoes off and went for the refrigerator. I hadn’t eaten since the Lots O’ Chocolate cookie from Dunkin’ Donuts I’d had for breakfast. “Mmmm.”
“Ca—” A blow to the mouth sucked my words away. Every muscle in my body tensed as I spun around with raised arms, knocking away the arm that reached for me. I knocked the man aside and tried to bolt. “No! No! No!” I shook my head furiously, kicking and screaming and scratching and pulling at the hands that covered my mouth and kept my feet off the floor. Then I was flying, stopped by the maple cabinets lining the walls above the sink. I hit the stone tile floor face-first. Don’t pass out, get up, get up, get up. I was a rag doll when he lifted me off the floor and banged me down on the island countertop. My back cracked like a two-by-four. My head ricocheted from the force. Blood pulsed through my veins and slammed against my temples.
I gulped a breath and thrust my leg out, kicking the man at my front in the face, and went for my ankle pistol. The second man tried to knock it away, causing a bullet to discharge and hit the ceiling light, which then crashed down on his head. Move! I rolled off the counter and stumbled backward, holding on to the gun with both hands, waving more than pointing it at them. “Carmella! Where are you, baby girl? Answer me! Mel!” I backed up to the hall staircase and looked away for a second. The men bolted out the door as my pistol exploded again and again.
Pain shattered my body each time I raised a foot to take another step, shoving me to my knees at the top of the stairs. Tears and mucus blinded me as I struggled to stay conscious. “Mel.” I pulled myself up by the railing and stumbled up the last steps to the bedroom door. “Don’t be . . .”
In the shadows, I could see Mel’s silhouette. She was facedown across her bed. I flicked the wall switch and went to her. Carmella’s ninety pounds felt like nine hundred as I struggled to turn her over and leaned in close to feel for her breath. “Please, dear God, please.” I pushed the hair from her bloodied face and rubbed her cheeks. My insides tried to force their way to the surface. Black and blue handprints peppered her thighs. Blood trickled from her groin. “Come on, girl, wake up. You’re all right. Come on now. It’s just me and you now. You have to be all right.” I pulled the soiled bedsheets around her half-naked body and rocked her. “It’s going to be okay, Mel. I’m here.”
The vision forced me over the side of the bed with the dry heaves. The file contents nearly dumped out, but only a slip of notepaper escaped my grasp. I picked it up and almost slid it back in the file, but took notice instead. FMJ 732-5697. Who was FMJ?
The thought was interrupted by Travis’s knock on the door before he opened it and stuck his head in, then rushed to my bedside.
“I’m out,” he said and kissed my forehead. “You good? You look like you seen a ghost.”
“Long night trying to solve crime is all,” I said.
He handed me a piece of paper. “Here’s where we’re holdin’ up, and Ms. Nelson’s cell number. See you Monday.” He danced to the door, singing, “Who you gonna call? Crime busters.”
“Get out of here, boy. Have fun and be careful.”
He stuck his head back in the door and said, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be very, very careful.” He e-nun-ci-a-ted the very, very part. I threw a pillow at the door he slammed shut.
Back to FMJ. Assuming it was a phone number, I pressed in the number with a 215 area code. It went right to a generic recording saying that the number was not available and to leave a message after the beep. I hung up without leaving one. Then I tried Laughton’s number. No answer. His voice-mail recording said there was no room to leave a new message. I tried his home landline. After ten rings and no appeal to leave a message, I hung up.
I showered and put on clean khaki pants and a blue polo shirt—our lab uniform—and accessories, which included gun belt, handcuffs, and baton. The whole police outfit was unflattering, and with accessories added at least ten pounds to my already weight-sensitive parts. You would think hoisting around the extra weight would help melt away some poundage. Not happening.
I tried Laughton again before leaving the house.
Still no answer, so I decided to drive over to his place before going to the station. My first-ever visit to his place of residence. Ahem.
Laughton lived in Old City on cobblestoned Church Street. Old City is a neighborhood of Center City bounded by Vine Street to the north and Walnut Street to the south. It is one of Philly’s most popular nightlife destinations, with an artsy aura. His condo was the only one with a private entrance street side. His Audi Quattro manned the entrance. It took me leaning on the doorbell Dulcey-style and banging on the door Calvin-style, which brought neighbors to their windows spewing obscenities at me, before he answered.
Surprise lost, he droned, “I thought you were going to Boston.” He was shirtless and rumpled-looking, and he squinted to lessen the effect of sunlight in his eyes. “You shoulda called first,” he said, turning back into the town house. “If I’d known you were coming, I would’ve had Jemima clean the place.”
I shuddered down to my core at this new feeling between us. A wave of pain and sadness slid through my body, leaving goose bumps behind.
I stepped over the threshold, holding the wall to steady myself. When I got inside I hesitated, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness, then closed the door and followed Laughton down a short hallway. It felt like ten o’clock at night in the apartment rather than the bright morning hour of 10 a.m. that it was. The hallway opened into a living space with high, beamed ceilings and dark wood floors, accented with muted-colored orientals. A giant Robert Freeman painting hung on one wall. To the left were a kitchen and a short hallway, which I guessed led to his bedroom.
I closed the door and followed him farther into the room, completely dark save for a sliver of sunlight through an open fold of the floor-to-ceiling drapes that covered two walls, as well as the light from the television. The room reeked of cigarettes accented by the morning after a party boozy smell. A cigarette burned in an ashtray on the coffee table. The smoke settled in the sliver of sunlight and swirled in the air like a fog. I could handle the smoke. I had smoked for thirty years myself before quitting two years ago. But the stench of old beer and stale butts that overflowed several ashtrays around the room permeated the air and challenged my breathing.
“What’s going on, Laughton? Talk to me,” I said. I dropped the file on the table in front of him. “What about this? And why didn’t you ever tell me you were once a married man?”
He ignored me for a few moments before saying, “You tell me. All these years we’ve been partners and you never mentioned you had a sister.” The words, laden with sarcasm, spilled from his mouth.
Guilt and betrayal blew through me. “You never asked. I had no reason to mention it.” My voice intensified. “Why do you have this file?”
His face looked ashen in the glow from the television. I followed his gaze.
“Laughton!” I yelled in frustration.
The words I was about to say lodged in the back of my throat. On the television, Jesse Boone stood on the stairs of the Criminal Justice Center, reporters’ microphones shoved in his face. Laughton reached for the remote and turned up the volume.
“I been telling you all I was innocent. They had to let me go,” Boone said, laughing as he pushed his way through the hungry reporters who heaped questions on his back, until he escaped into the backseat of a black Range Rover and was driven away.