Of Blood and Sorrow (19 page)

I had to go in now. I didn’t have a choice. Surprise was my only weapon.

I banged into the room like some crazed action hero, screaming at the top of my voice, swinging my arms around my head like a broken windmill. Stunned, he fell back as I heaved my body into his, throwing him off balance, knocking him to the floor. But he landed near the knife, grabbed it quick, headed toward me. I felt the blade slide across my throat, not deep enough to cut, but close enough to tell me he would kill us both without hesitation.

My thoughts came like they say they do when you’re going to die, randomly with no rhyme or reason: my last words to Jamal and my first night with Basil Dupre; the sound of my brother’s laughter and the morning Jamal was born; Jake’s glee when he fried up oysters and, for some crazy reason, that bottle of bourbon I hadn’t shared with Wyvetta Green. I closed my eyes, praying that death would come quickly and my son told gently.

“Jimson. Why you doing this, honey? Why you doing this?” It was Miss Edna Sweets, Jimson Weed’s Sweet Thing, black handbag in hand, about to change it all. She stood for a moment taking things in, then ran to Thelma Lee, cradling her in her arms.

The knife left my throat; I could breathe.

“Let me do what I come for, Sweet Thing, and we can go home. It will be like it was before, like it supposed to be,” he said.

She stared at him incredulously, stroking her niece’s head resting in her lap.

“They mean you harm, Sweet Thing. All of them. This one, the girl, they all mean you harm.” He lowered his voice and spoke in a haunted whisper. “And Lily keep coming back, baby. She won’t stay dead; she keep coming back.”

Sweet Thing rose from the bed, confused by his words. “What you mean, Jimson? What you talking about?” She walked toward him, ready to offer him comfort as she always had, as she thought she always would.

And I realized then what he’d said. It was the name that told me, the name Lilah refused to use. It wasn’t Lilah Love but Lily Sweets who haunted him—Edna Sweets’s daughter, the beginning of it all.

“You going to murder Thelma Lee like you murdered her mother, Lily?” I said, my voice surprisingly reasonable, like I was asking him the time of day. My new “weapon of surprise” was stronger than the last one; it came down hard. He drew back, dropping his hands to his sides as dread and confusion filled his eyes. There was silence then, so deep and thick it seemed no words could cut it, then Sweet Thing began to scream, a sound both ragged and desperate. He forgot about me then and fixed his gaze on her, and when he spoke, his voice was low and heavy as if it came from another place.

“That devil Treyman Barnes brought me here, selling women like he did, and he sold me her for an hour. She was demanding more money than I had, teasing me about having nothing, laughing at me like evil women do, and it made me so mad, I slapped her, and she laughed some more, and I couldn’t stop, and I did what I had to do.”

I saw him as he must have looked that night, filled with rage and loathing for every living thing. Treyman Barnes’s business had been drugs and women, and he had found an easy buyer in this soldier home from war who couldn’t forget the killing lessons he had learned.

“‘Miss Edna Sweets,’ she whispered in my ear, and I promised myself I’d take care of you because of what I done. But her Lily brought it back. Brought him back, after all these years. And after all these years, he knew me.”

“You stabbed my only daughter dead like she was nothing, didn’t you?” she asked him plain as day.

“She wasn’t nothing but a half-white whore,” he said.

And Sweet Thing reached into her handbag, took out that .22, and shot him through the heart, her aim straight and sure, as he had taught her.

EPILOGUE

N
OBODY KNEW WHAT MADE
Jimson Weed snap like he did. It could have been Lily Sweets come back as Lilah Love, snatching cash and giving grief. Or maybe this new war, so much like the other, unleashed demons he’d tried to forget. Or maybe he just woke up one morning and went plumb out of his mind. That could be the truth of it, too.

I do know one thing, though: truth will out in the end, and to quote Edna Sweets, life do have a way of righting itself. So I told Larry Walton what was on my mind, and Wyvetta Green who
really
put the smile on my face that Friday morning. I had a down and dirty talk with Jamal about the foolish things he’d done, and advised the Sweetses and Barneses to cherish Baby Dal and bury their sorrow. As for Basil Dupre, he called on Sunday as he promised he would, and we talked sweet and long about absolutely nothing. What will become of us? I’ll let you know when I do.

And
that
is the truth!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THERE ARE SO MANY PEOPLE
who contribute to my mysteries that it would be impossible to thank them all on one page, but I would like to give special thanks to several who have been particularly helpful with this book. Thanks to Barbara J. Kukla for her marvelous
Swing City: Newark Nightlife,
which reminded me how great Newark was—and can become again. Thank you, John Gruesser, PhD, for your continued support and for enthusiasm about my series. My thanks to Faith Hampton Childs, my good friend and great agent, and my editor, Melody Guy, for her insightful suggestions and careful editing. And, of course, thank you, family: Richard, Thembi, Nandi—and Primo, our newest member.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

V
ALERIE
W
ILSON
W
ESLEY
is the Blackboard bestselling author of eight Tamara Hayle mysteries. Her recent novels include
Dying in the Dark, Playing My Mother’s Blues, Always True to You in My Fashion,
and
Ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do,
for which she received the 2000 award for excellence in adult fiction from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She is also the author of the Willimena Rules! series for children. Her mysteries and novels are also published in Germany and the UK. A former executive editor at
Essence
magazine, she lives in New Jersey. Visit the author’s website at
www.tamarahayle.com
.

ALSO BY VALERIE WILSON WESLEY

Playing My Mother’s Blues

Always True to You in My Fashion

Ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do

THE TAMARA HAYLE MYSTERY SERIES

Dying in the Dark

The Devil Riding

Easier to Kill

No Hiding Place

Where Evil Sleeps

Devil’s Gonna Get Him

When Death Comes Stealing

BOOKS FOR CHILDREN

Willimena Rules! Series

Freedom’s Gift: A Juneteenth Story

Of Blood and Sorrow
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2008 by Valerie Wilson Wesley

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by One World Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

O
NE
W
ORLD
is a registered trademark and the One World colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Wesley, Valerie Wilson.

Of blood and sorrow: a Tamara Hayle mystery / Valerie Wilson Wesley.

p.                   cm.

1. Hayle, Tamara (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women private investigators—New Jersey—Newark—Fiction. 3. African American women—Fiction. 4. Newark (N.J.)—Fiction. 5. Kidnapping—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3573.E8148O34 2008

813'.54—dc22                                                       2007029572

www.oneworldbooks.net

eISBN: 978-0-345-50493-7

v3.0