Chapter Twenty-one
“Prestige Capital and Associates. How may I direct your call?” Lenecia said as Reeva came through the door the following morning.
She waved as she passed the desk and mouthed, “Talk later,” and kept going to her office at CAMB. The call that she received the night before from Daniel Beason still had her shaken. Although she knew him from her days at Titanium, mostly because he used to pester her about having sex with him every time he came into the building to see Colton, there was nothing in that relationship, which consisted of her telling him no, that said, “Call me when you’re on the run from the police.” Reeva was confused and frightened and needed somebody to talk to.
“Good morning, everybody,” Shy said when she came into the office.
Reeva stood up and was at her door when Shy passed. “Morning, Shy.”
“Morning, Reeva.”
“I need to see you when you get settled.”
“Give me ten minutes?”
“Take fifteen.”
“See you then,” Shy said and continued to her office.
Shy went into her office, put her things down, and stood there. She exhaled. “Coffee,” she said, grabbed her cup, and came out of her office.
“You want me to get that for you, Shy?” Elise asked.
“No, thanks, Elise,” she said and went to the coffee machine, poured herself a cup, and came back to her office.
When Black got home last night, he told Shy about what Rain and Monika had been going through. Shy thought that she would much rather have been out there trading shots with the Albanians than having the night she had at home. As soon as Black left with Bobby, M and Joanne had come into the media room.
“Why did Michael do that?”
Shy explained to her mother and mother-in-law that Black felt, and she agreed, that they shouldn’t hide who and what they were from Michelle and Easy. And after all that they’d been through, they couldn’t. The truth was that their father was the head of a criminal organization. Both grandmas said that they understood that. They were more concerned about Easy calling himself Vicious Black Jr. So after spending an hour reassuring the Golden Girls that everything was going to be all right, Shy had gone upstairs to talk to her children. She started with Michelle.
“I’m okay, Mommy. I’ve known who you and Daddy are all my life, and I haven’t lost my mind yet.” Michelle had closed the advanced high school statistics book that she was reading. “You don’t have to worry about me,” she said because she knew her place in The Family. “You need to talk to Easy.”
Michelle had gotten up and gone with her mother to her brother’s room. With their mother and father being gone and involved in whatever it was they’d been involved in, it usually fell to Michelle to help her brother understand and deal with what was going on. Having established that relationship with her brother made what Shy had to say easier, but it had still taken the rest of the night.
“You ready for me?” Reeva asked, standing in the doorway.
“Come in.” Shy waved and Reeva came in, closed the door, and sat down. “What’s up?”
“Last night I got a call from Daniel Beason,” Reeva said.
Shy sat up straight. “What did he want?”
“He said that he needed my help.”
“Help with what?”
“I don’t know. I told him that I didn’t want to get involved, and I hung up on him.” Reeva paused. “What do you think I should do?”
Shy picked up the phone, and Lenecia answered. “Yes, Mrs. Black?”
“Who is in-house counsel this month?”
“Let me check.” There was silence on the line while she checked. “His name is Lavonne Reynard.”
“If he’s in this morning, have him come to my office please.”
“Yes, Mrs. Black.”
After two police detectives walked into the building and Shy decided that, since she hadn’t committed any crimes lately, she would speak with them without having the benefit of counsel present, Patrick Freeman, the head of The Family’s law firm, assigned a different criminal attorney to the property so that would never happen again. It was a rotating position because there was nothing to do most days. But every junior lawyer at Wanda Moore and Associates hoped that something would happen during their month and it would be their time to get recognized. Lavonne Reynard was no exception, so he literally ran to Shy’s office when he got Lenecia’s call.
“Mrs. Black?”
“Yes, Elise?”
“I have Lavonne Reynard to see you.”
“Send him in.”
After introductions were made, Shy gave him some background on Beason and what he was accused of, and then Reeva told him about the call that she received.
“Let me make sure I understand. You used to work for Elias Colton at Titanium as a shipping clerk, and then you got promoted to shipping manager. That’s how you know Beason, and other than that, you have no involvement with him, correct?”
“Yes, that’s correct,” Reeva said.
“And since you voluntarily terminated your employment at Titanium you’ve had no contact with Elias Colton?”
“That’s correct. I don’t even know how Daniel got my number.”
Reynard looked at Shy. “I think she needs to be proactive.” He turned to Reeva. “Call the police and report the call. Tell them what you told me, and everything should be fine.”
“Get Detective Mitchell’s number from Erykah,” Shy told Reynard, and he quickly got up to get the number from Erykah, overjoyed to be doing something other than playing Halo: Combat Evolved all day. He couldn’t wait to tell the other lawyers at the firm that not only did he have actual legal work to do, but Mrs. Black herself called him to her office and assigned him the task.
That morning, Jack and Diane were at the precinct when her phone rang. “Prestige Capital and Associates?” Diane questioned excitedly when she looked at her display. “This is Detective Mitchell.”
“Good morning, Detective Mitchell. This is Erykah Morgan. I’m sorry to bother you, but do you have time to take a call?”
“Yes, I have time.”
“Good. Would you mind holding for a moment?”
“Not at all.”
“Hold please.”
“What’s going on?” Jack asked.
“Erykah Morgan has me holding to take a call.”
“Oh, okay,” Jack said excitedly because he, like his partner, believed that Mike Black was calling.
“Good morning, Detective Mitchell. My name is Lavonne Reynard. I’m an attorney at Wanda Moore and Associates. Cassandra Black asked me to give you a call in reference to one of her employees receiving a call from Daniel Beason. Mrs. Black was hoping that you would come out to our office and speak with her about the matter.”
“We’ll be right out, Mr. Reynard. Thank you for calling.” Diane ended the call and stood up.
“What?”
“Beason called somebody last night,” Diane said, and they left the precinct.
After hanging up with the detective, Lavonne Reynard went to the reception area to talk to Lenecia. “Good morning, Lenecia.”
“Morning, Lavonne. What can I do for you?”
“Is there a conference room open this morning?”
“Let me check. Yes, conference room five is available.”
“Would you book it for me, please? And when Detective Mitchell and her partner get here, have them escorted there, and let me know when they get here.”
“Consider it done.”
“Thank you, Lenecia,” Reynard said and started for his office.
“Go on, Lavonne, with your bad self. Got something to do,” Lenecia said because it had become a running joke, and Reynard hit a step on his way down the hall.
It was a little over an hour later when the detectives arrived at Prestige and were escorted to conference room five, and it was a few minutes later when Lavonne Reynard came in with Reeva Duckworth. Once the introductions were made, Reynard told the detectives the background information of how his client knew their suspect.
“Thank you, Mr. Reynard. Can you tell us what happened, Ms. Duckworth?” Jack asked.
“When I came home last night, I got a call from Daniel Beason,” Reeva said.
“What time was it?”
“It was about eleven thirty.”
“What did he want?” Jack asked.
“He said that he needed my help.”
“What kind of help?”
“I didn’t give him a chance to say. I told him that I didn’t want to get involved, and I hung up.”
“Can I see your phone please, Ms. Duckworth?” Diane asked.
Reeva unlocked her phone and handed it to the detective. While Jack continued to ask questions, Diane looked at Reeva’s call list, noted the number and the time of Beason’s call, and then she scrolled through the rest of her calls, text messages, and emails before she handed the phone back to Reeva.
“If he reaches out to you again, please give us a call right away.”
Jack handed Reeva a card, and then he and Diane headed back to the precinct. The call was made from a burner, and it wasn’t on, so that was a dead end. A quick check of Reeva Duckworth’s phone and email records showed that she had no connection with any of the parties associated with the case.
“So why would he call her?” Diane asked.
“Desperate?”
Diane shook her head. “No, Jack. You don’t call someone you barely know and ask them for help.” She paused to think.
“It’s deeper than that. Is that what you were going to say?”
“No, I wasn’t going to say that, but it is deeper than that. I was going to say that he called her for a reason. Her relationship was with Colton.”
“So whatever he wanted her help with had to have something to do with Colton. But what?”
“Add that to the list of unanswered questions,” Diane said as her phone rang. “This is Detective Mitchell.” Jack sat back and watched his partner nodding and smiling as she wrote something down. Then she stood up, so he stood up too. “Thanks.”
“What you got?”
“Andrea Frazier’s car was found ten blocks from the warehouse where her body was found.”