Chapter Forty-eight
After a fitful night of sleeping, Angel sat propped up against her pillow, watching the sun come up. While memories of her mother were usually faded, last night she could picture her mother’s face vividly in her dreams and when she awoke. She’d always sensed her mother’s moods, especially the extreme ones. Now there was a name for it, and all this time Angel hadn’t known. People would tell her Elisa was spoiled and got her way, but her grandparents probably did all they could to keep up with a talented, but troubled woman.
She had read a bit about bipolar disorder before going to bed. If her mother hadn’t been taking her medicine, in a manic state could she have confided in the wrong person? Angel had grown weary in her search for answers, but she couldn’t rest until she knew the truth. She was the closest she had ever been to learning more about her mother.
A half an hour later, Angel entered the kitchen to grab some coffee, which someone had already started. She peeked into the dining room and found Jacob and Grams talking. Her uncle looked like he hadn’t slept much, either, but thankfully, he had shaved his beard. To see her uncle’s clean-shaven face gave Angel hope that he was doing better.
“Morning, Angel,” Grams said with a familiar smile.
Angel was sure having Jacob around had improved her grandmother’s mood. Angel hugged her and then did something she hadn’t done since she was a little girl. She hugged Jacob. He accepted her hug, barely touching her as she squeezed him.
He stared at her with questions in his eyes. Maybe he was having second thoughts about being so candid with her last night. “You are up early this morning,” he said.
“Yeah, I have some things to do. You two enjoy the day. I will see you later.” She exited the house and walked briskly to her car. Today the forecast was for rain all day. It was cool compared to the hot, muggy weather of the past few weeks.
Before Angel started the car, she dialed Wes’s number. They had talked last night about meeting but hadn’t set a time. He didn’t answer, so she left him a message. Angel checked to see if the phone was on vibrate and slipped it into her jacket pocket. As she drove, she felt the phone vibrate in her pocket. Angel concentrated on the road instead of taking the call. She sensed it was Wes, but she didn’t want him to try to talk her out of what she was about to do.
Like a few weeks ago, when she went to meet her father, she had felt compelled to let someone know what she was doing. Well, sort of. She was sure her cryptic message would leave Wes scratching his head, but knowing his inquisitive mind, Angel knew she could count on him.
It occurred to her after she started driving that she should think this through. Soon she found herself on the familiar street. Angel hadn’t been to the Gowins’ home in years. As she drove up to the house, she saw Eddie’s Mercedes in the driveway. She did think the man was flashier than the other members of the group, who were more or less good old country boys. Maybe because Eddie was a bit younger.
Angel parked her car behind the Mercedes. She walked to the door, rang the bell, and waited. She stood there for about two minutes before ringing the doorbell again. Angel cupped her hands around her face and leaned against the windowpane. It could have been a reflection, but Angel thought she saw someone moving around inside the house. She had called Denise before coming over to see if she’d heard from her dad, but there had been no response to her calls.
Maybe Eddie was hurt somewhere. He wasn’t that old, only in his fifties. With all the health scares and issues she’d seen with her grandparents, Angel would have hated if she walked away and he was hurt. That was the only explanation Angel could think of for him just disappearing. But then that wouldn’t explain the dead body found at Southern Soul Café.
She looked back at her car in the driveway and decided to take a look around outside. Angel walked around to the side of the house. When Denise and she were kids, they never went through the front door. Mrs. Gowins was one of those women who did not like children in her living room, so the back door was the main entrance.
While the house looked immaculate from the front, she saw objects leaning against it as she moved closer to the back. There were at least three cars, older cars that Eddie used to drive. They appeared to be in great shape, clean and polished.
Angel thought maybe she ought to have had more than coffee this morning due to the throbbing feeling in her gut. She pulled the latch on the fence to enter the backyard. Angel headed toward the back door. The Gowins used to leave a key under the mat. The black mat was still there. Angel peeled the mat back but didn’t see any key. She glanced around the yard. What was she doing here? Certainly the police had been by here, looking for Eddie. She sighed and decided to leave.
As she came around the side of the house, Angel saw that the front door was now open. She walked up fast to the front door. “Eddie? Eddie, are you in here?” Angel placed one foot across the threshold and called out, “I need to talk to you.” This was too weird. Angel spun around and yelped.
Eddie was standing behind her. He had a wild-eyed look, which she didn’t recall ever seeing before. What happened to his face? she wondered. There were ugly scratches across his cheek, like he’d been in a fight. He smiled. “Angel, what a surprise. Why don’t we go inside?”
As she slowly stepped inside the house, Angel looked around. “Denise and a lot of people are looking for you,” she told him. She jumped and spun around when the door slammed closed behind her. “Eddie?”
Eddie pointed his finger in her face and walked around her like an animal examining his prey. “You are just like your mother. Showing up at the wrong time. The day you walked into Southern Soul Café with that reporter, I knew you would be trouble.”
Angel frowned. “Why would me talking to Wes bother you?”
“Because it meant you were digging and he was helping you,” Eddie spat.
“Well, I have learned a lot about my mother, but not enough. You were close to her before she died, so you can tell me the truth.”
Eddie glared at her, and then he looked away. “Elisa was my star, the best thing I had going with all those other clowns I had under me.”
“You managed K-Dawg, Larry Stowe, and some of the other local rap artists in the area.”
“They came to me wanting a demo tape. I said I would help them if I could manage them. It helped me later convince your granddad, although he was real hesitant, to let me manage Elisa’s career.” Eddie grew quiet as he paced, almost like he’d forgotten Angel was standing in the same room.
Angel nudged him. “Do you know what happened to my mother?”
“It was an accident.”
Angel’s body tensed, and she crossed her arms. That was not what she’d expected to hear.
Eddie stopped pacing. “She came to my house, here, just like you did today. I knew something had been bothering her. She was all excited and waving her hands. Elisa kept saying, ‘I saw him. He had a gun.’ That’s when I knew she was talking about Larry.”
“Wait a minute. Larry? Larry shot K-Dawg? I thought they were friends.”
Eddie laughed out loud, his voice harsh and bitter. “K-Dawg was a pretty boy with no talent. The real talent of the group was Larry. I don’t know how he had been pushed into being the hype man. K-Dawg was always wisecracking on him. I told Larry over and over again he needed to assert himself more.”
“So, if Larry killed him, why would that concern you? Why didn’t you and my mother turn him in? Wasn’t that what my mother was trying to say?”
“It would have come back to me. I gave him the gun. I also gave him money.”
“You hired him to kill K-Dawg? Wasn’t he your client too?”
“K-Dawg was smarter than he looked. He’d been digging around my past and was trying to get out of his contract. His ego had gotten inflated once that song blew up on radio stations around the country. To think I was the one who gave him a chance, when no one would hear him. The real talent was Larry. He wrote the song. Your mother was singing the background hook. It was amazing. Her time was coming. Elisa was a star already.”
As Angel listened to Eddie ramble, she couldn’t believe this man. What was it about his past that would cause him to be concerned? She stared at the man she’d known all her life. I don’t know him at all. “You still haven’t told me what happened to my mother.”
“Larry showed up is what happened. She was babbling about him. I told her to shut up. Larry wanted to shoot her. I told him he was in enough trouble. Your mom took off and ran. I grabbed her, and somehow she fell, hitting her head on the table.” Eddie waved his hands around. “It was bad. Blood was coming from her head.”
Angel felt like she was going to throw up, she was so nauseated. She cried out, “Why didn’t you get her some help?”
“It was too late. She knew too much, and Larry was about to lose it. He wanted to put a bullet in her to make sure she was dead. I told him we had to get her out of there and I knew a place. In fact, we are going there now.”
“What?” Angel watched as Eddie leaned over and took something out of a duffel bag on the floor.
Eddie stared at Angel as if he were looking through her. “Angel, why don’t we go for a ride?”
Angel noticed Eddie’s hand. He was holding a gun. She looked at him, tears flooding her eyes. “Why?”
His eyes didn’t move from her face. “You should’ve left the past alone, girl. It’s been so long. You and Larry, I don’t know why you both decided you wanted to dig up the past now.” Eddie laughed. “Old Larry had the nerve to want to come clean now. He’d served his time and wanted to get right with God.” Eddie was yelling and waving the gun.
Angel held her arms tighter around her as it dawned on her what had really happened at Southern Soul Café. Tears fell down her face. Eddie had burned up all those memories to cover up his crime. But it wasn’t his only crime. What else had Eddie done?
He turned to look at her. “Stop with the tears. Just move. Go!”
Knowing the gun was at her back, she walked out of the house toward her car. She glanced at the street, hoping cops would show up looking for Eddie. Angel opened the car door and climbed in. She remembered she’d put her phone in her left pocket. As Eddie came around the car, she pulled out the phone and tapped it to see the touch screen. From the corner of her eye, she saw the last phone number she had dialed. She selected the number and slipped the phone into the car-door pocket as Eddie jumped in.
She looked at the barrel of the gun. “What about Denise? She’s been worrying about you.”
Eddie jabbed the gun into her side, causing Angel to cry out. “Stop asking me questions. Just do what I tell you to do.”
She turned the car’s engine on and placed her shaking hands on the steering wheel. Her mother was dead, and this man, a trusted family friend, was responsible. What he intended to do with her, she didn’t know, but she prayed to God that Eddie would get the punishment he deserved.