Hot Flash (5 page)

“Hey, sugar. I'm betting you just got out of the shower. Wish I was there.”

“Calvin, stop with your foolishness.” Stupid. I sat up and wrapped myself with the towel.

“I do believe we have some unfinished business.”

“Mmmm.”

“Dinner tonight?”

“I'm there.”

I sat on the edge of the bed, smoothing lotion over my body, the phone lodged in the crook of my neck and ear. A loud
bang
shook the house. I dropped the phone, grabbed my gun from the top drawer of my nightstand, and hit the stairs, calling out to Travis on my way down. No answer. The front door was wide open. A car sped down the otherwise empty street. I slammed the door shut and turned the dead bolt. I continued to make my way through the living room, through the dining room, gun extended straight out, holding on with both hands except when flicking lights on as I went, moving from side to side. To the kitchen. Clear. Down the basement stairs, around each corner, in the closet, in the bathroom. Clear.

The sound of the front doorbell seized my heart.

C
HAPTER
4

“M
uriel, are you here? Miss Mabley?” Mr. Kim, my neighbor, pushed the door open wider than I offered. “Miss Mabley, are you in need of assistance?”

I pulled the towel tighter around me. “I'm fine, Mr. Kim.”

“I was just coming home from my evening walk and noticed a young man running from your house. He jumped into a blue Camry with a woman driving. It had New Jersey plates, though I could not see the number except the first two letters,
JH
.”

Mr. Kim manned the neighborhood watch. A martial arts wonder, he was fit for the position, all five feet two inches of him. Tinker Bell meets Hurricane Katrina.

I released my hold on the door and allowed him into the foyer. “Thanks, Mr. Kim.”

“Your teaching skills are impeccable, Miss Mabley.”

“And yours as well, Mr. Kim.”

I had studied tae kwon do with Mr. Kim going on twelve years, since I moved in, though my attendance had fallen off lately. To tell the truth, the amount of time I had spent over the years maybe added up to four years of training, maybe four and a half.

“The man who fled from here was African American, very tall.” He raised his arm and stood on his tiptoes, reminding me of a little boy trying to reach the forbidden cookie jar. “He resembled Mr. Laughton, but with long hair, dreads I believe you call them.” He made his fingers dance on his hair.

I was somewhat relieved, as Mr. Kim's description fit Travis's friend, Fortune, to a tee. “You saw all that in a matter of seconds.”

“Miss Mabley, I am a keen observer. It is an invaluable skill in the world of martial arts. Have I not expressed that to you many times?”

“Indeed, you have.” We laughed lightly.

“Where were you at when he got in the vehicle?”

“Behind the preposition, Miss Mabley.” He hesitated to allow me time to absorb his correction. Mr. Kim also teaches English at Northeast High School, one of the city's oldest high schools. “About a hundred feet in that direction,” he said, turning and pointing right. “Well, as long as my services are not needed, I will leave you now,” he said, bowing his way out of the foyer, I suspected embarrassed by my dress. “You have a wonderful evening.”

“Thanks for looking out, Mr. Kim. You have a good evening, too.” I watched him tiptoe down the flower-lined walkway. Flowers he had planted. As he picked his way down the steps and turned left to his house, I realized that in the twelve years of being neighbors that was the most conversation we had ever had. I did not even know where Mr. Kim was from or whether he was born in the United States, never mind how he became a martial arts expert or knew so much about plants, or came to teach English. I had a key to his house so I could use the dojo anytime I wanted. Yet I hardly knew the man. I promised myself I would visit Kim in the very near future and have a real conversation.

I closed the door and started upstairs to call Calvin, when the doorbell rang and there was a flurry of banging.

“Muriel, it's Calvin!”

I rushed down to rescue my door. He burst in.

“What happened?” he asked. “You left me hanging on the phone. First a loud noise, then the phone went dead.”

“I'm fine, Calvin, I'm fine. The door flew open is all. Travis must have left it open when he went out. Scared the hell outta me, though.” The explanation sounded plausible, but my tongue felt pasty saying it. I liked Calvin, a lot, but he had not reached the share-all level yet. It occurred to me how quickly he had arrived at my home.

Calvin closed the door and moved closer.

“I was on my way up to call you.” I gestured upward and realized I had my gun in hand. No wonder Kim had hurried away. I set the gun on the end table. In a single motion, Calvin kissed me, scooped me up, and carried me upstairs like Richard Gere scooped up Debra Winger at the end of
An Officer and a Gentleman
. Top of the stairs, straight ahead. I shook my head and groaned when my cell phone rang. Calvin held me captive for a few rings, then succumbed to my downturned lips and sent me hustling.

“Did I get you at a bad time, my dear?” Laughton.

“Are you spying on me?”

“We got another dead body.”

“Please tell me this isn't happening. Not now.”

“Now, partner. Wade Taylor, shot in the back of the head at his pad. Looks like a professional hit.”

“So why do we need to be at the scene?”

“So far I see three holes in the wall in the bedroom and hall that appear to be bullet holes and two fired cartridge cases across the room.”

“Give me a half hour. I'll be there.”

Marcy Taylor dead in the a.m. and Wade Taylor in the p.m. produced the makings of a bad movie, I thought. Laughton's voice had no play in it this time. Postponing my trip to Nareece's house in Boston for the weekend seemed a must-do, considering Laughton's closeness to the case. I also figured Marcy and Wade's deaths had just jumped to the front of our caseload.

This time, when I arrived at the scene, there were no reporters, no police lights, no commotion except what was going on inside the house. Chestnut Hill was a wealthy neighborhood in Northwest Philly. Folks here would not stand for the smear. The location on Germantown Avenue in Northwest Philly was a beautiful, old, three-story brick house, built around the early 1900s and worth half a million dollars, I guessed. Chestnut Hill was one of Philly's oldest settlements with many historic homes. I would say it was about the only wealthy neighborhood left inside the city besides its abutters, Mount Airy and Manayunk. I wondered what Wade Taylor did for a living.

When I went inside, I was directed to the basement. It was like descending into a dungeon; dirt floor, protruding stone walls, and a low ceiling, low enough for me to check the danger to my head at the bottom of the stairs. A section of the floor was dug up. Dirt, rocks, and rumble were piled beside a human-sized hole. Wade Taylor was sideways on the floor in the center of the room, with his hands tied behind his back and his feet tied to a chair, which had fallen with him. A rag protruded from his mouth. And, just as Laughton reported, he had one shot to the back of his head.

“Close up and personal,” Medical Examiner Robert Hayes said, as he rose from inspecting the body and snapped off his latex gloves. Officers moved in to remove the body. “You're all set, Ms. M. Your partner did the preliminaries.” Hayes was creepy in a bone-chilling sense, with his sculpted widow's peak and long, pointy nose, looking like Vincent Price complete with the deep, crackly voice. He continued, “Said he'd meet you at the lab.” He waved his long, skeletal finger, pointing toward the stairway.

“Where's the daughter? He has a daughter.”

“I don't know anything about a daughter.”

No doubt. I could not imagine Hayes a daddy.

“No one was here when we arrived, except, of course, the deceased.” His weak try at humor. His smile revealed scraggly, discolored teeth, completing his “Doctor Death” image.

Laughton's phone went straight to voice mail and his car was not in the parking lot when I arrived at the station. The lab was dark except for Parker's cubicle. He hunched over his desk disassembling a Beretta. I braced for an inappropriate remark as I passed and got a “Hey, M” instead.

“Hi, Parker. Laughton been here?”

“Nope. Nobody here but us.” He raised the Beretta. “Heard about Taylor getting popped. I'm bettin' he did the missus.”

I dropped my purse on my desk, moved over to Laughton's desk, and clicked on his lamp. At first I just looked, trying to discover something among the debris of guns, bullets, and folders.

I never doubted Laughton. Hell, like I said, we were lovers . . . once upon a time. We were friends, but most of all, we were partners. In life and near-death experiences, we protected each other's backs. We handled crime scenes together, tag-teamed possible scenarios, and worked the evidence.

I flashbacked on the garage scene . . .

Laughton had asked Taylor what was wrong with him, and Taylor had said something I could not decipher before Laughton punched him. I pulled open the top drawer of his desk, then the side drawers. The bottom side drawer would not open.

“Looking for something, are we?” Laughton spun his chair around with me in it, nudged me out, and sat down. I felt caught, hand stuck in the proverbial cookie jar.

“Where've you been?” I said, innocence oozing.

“Chasing down Wade's daughter. She's been with his parents since Marcy's murder.”

“We know she was murdered? Wait a minute, what the hell are you doing? We don't chase down murder victims' children. We do weapons, remember?”

“Looks like she was murdered, but we still have work to do before that conclusion is proven,” he said, ignoring my comments.

“And Wade Taylor?”

“Somebody executed him.”

“Laughton, what's going on with you? You okay? You're running with this solo, like I'm not a part of this team. You call me to the crime scenes late—”

Laughton popped up from his chair, grabbed my arm, and guided me to the back, where the microscope lab was located, empty at this time of night. He opened the door and nudged me inside the room in front of him, then closed and locked the door. He ran his hands over his head, walked to the rear of the lab and back, stopping in front of me, nose close.

“M, do me this favor—back off. This one's personal. I'll keep you informed, make it like we're working together.”

I took a half step back. “Laughton, what are you doing? We're partners. That's what we do, work together. I need to do my job.”

“Go home, M. Be with your new boyfriend. What's his name, Calvin? Make it work for a change. Take a trip for the weekend. Go.”

I shot back, “You're too close to this one, Laughton.”

He turned away, then came back and got up close. “I don't need you on this one. I don't
want
you on this one.” He stepped away and turned his back to me, then turned back and got up close again. “I want to . . . Just trust me on this one.”

The hotbed inside me exploded. Sweat dripped off my nose. I opened my mouth to speak as the door closed. A few seconds of stunned disbelief squeezed me before I regained my senses and followed him out. By then I saw him race up the stairs two at a time and then he was gone. Parker was gone, too. There were three other members of the division. All gone. I checked my watch. No wonder, since it was 8 p.m.

My cell phone buzzed. “Muriel Mabley.”

“Muriel. John.”

“John?” In ten years of marriage to Nareece, John had never called me before.

“Nareece is gone.”

I returned to my cubicle, as John went on, agitated.

“She supposedly went out to do errands earlier, much earlier today, and she hasn't returned home yet. I've tried her cell, but she's not answering. The girls keep asking, ‘Where's Mommy?' and I don't know what to say anymore. I'm about to call the police.”

“John, calm down. I'm sure she's fine. Hold off on the police. Let me make some calls, and I'll get back to you. Stay at the house in case she comes back.” This was not Reece's first disappearance episode.

“Muriel, she's getting worse. I keep telling her she needs to see a therapist. All right, another therapist, cuz truly the one she's jawing to isn't doing a damn thing to help her. She won't talk to me. I don't even know what's wrong with her, why she acts the way she does.”

“I'm coming this weekend. We'll talk about getting her more help when I'm there. Let's just find her first. I'll get back to you.”