Buried Leads (A Headlines in High Heels Mystery) (4 page)

I tucked the drive in my pocket, went back to my desk, and unplugged my computer. Amesworth’s social life would have to wait. Eunice was counting on my feature for Sunday, and I had an interview appointment.

3.

Old story, new friends

Graffiti-covered storefronts hawking liquor, cigarettes, and soul food lined one side of the street. On the other, narrow front porches cluttered with junk sagged from years of neglect. My little red SUV slowed to a crawl as I looked for address markers. Some houses had them, some didn’t.

The row house where Joyce Wright raised both a drug dealer and an honor student had three out of five numbers over the front door.

I made the block and parallel parked the car on my first try. Not bad for a girl who’d learned to drive amid the sprawl of Dallas’ plentiful parking lots.

Joyce’s was the neatest of the block’s porches, occupied only by a battered ten-speed and a couple of metal yard chairs that looked like their best days had come and gone back when Lucy was trying to finagle a way into Ricky’s acts on Monday night TV.

I smoothed my beige linen slacks, eyes on my sapphire Louboutins, and pushed the doorbell.

It opened quickly, and I looked up to meet Troy Wright’s deep brown eyes.

“Miss Clarke!” His face lit with an infectious smile.

“It’s nice to see you, Troy.” I returned his grin. “How’s school?”

“Good.” He stared at me for a long minute. “School is good. Life is getting better.” Troy dropped his eyes to his shoes and shuffled backward, holding the door. “I should thank you for that. I didn’t expect you to listen to me when I told you what I thought about my brother and why he died. So thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” I laid a hand on his arm and stepped into a cluttered living room. The furnishings matched the era and wear of the porch chairs. No air conditioning, but the warmth in the homey little room was more than temperature. Love oozed from every chip in the once-white paint on the walls.

“Thank you, too. For trusting me.” I squeezed his outstretched hand and laughed when he pulled me into a hug.

He shoved his hands into pockets of faded jeans that were at least two sizes too big. “So, what brings you to my neighborhood? Mama said you wanted to talk to us. Are you doing another story about Darryl?”

“No. I want to write a story about you. What it was like to grow up in the city with a single mom. I’d also like to talk about your academic achievements. Have you started applying to colleges yet?” I looked around. “Is your mom here?”

“She’s...sleeping.” He dropped his gaze to the worn red carpet. “She does a lot of that when she’s not at work since Darryl...well. She said to get her when you got here. I’ll be right back.”

He disappeared through a narrow door into a dim hallway. I studied the photos that covered the wall. Troy at different ages. And another boy, a happier one than the Darryl Wright I’d seen in mugshots. They posed next to a Christmas tree with vastly different-sized, new-to-them bikes. In another picture they sprayed each other with super soakers on the tiny lawn I’d crossed on my way to front door.

I could tell Joyce Wright loved her sons. Both of them. My throat tightened at the thought of her holed up in her bedroom when she wasn’t at work. No parent should have to bury a child. A voice breached my reverie with a soft “hello,” and I spun around, arranging my features into a bright smile.

“It’s so nice to meet you, ma’am,” I said, extending my hand to the robust woman who shuffled into the room. She was two heads shorter than me, with a full figure and close-cropped hair. Her handshake was firm, but the smile on her face didn’t reach her eyes. The same extraordinary espresso color as Troy’s, Joyce’s eyes betrayed anguish.

“Likewise, Miss Clarke,” she said. “I want to thank you for what you did for my Darryl. Not many people would care about a black boy with a record who got shot with a house full of dope.”

“They should,” I said. “And thanks to Troy, they do now. Thank you for taking time to see me today.”

She gestured to the small sofa that ran the length of one wall, and I settled myself on the floral fabric and dug a pen and a notebook out of my bag. Joyce took the La-Z-Boy in the room’s opposite corner, and Troy dropped his long frame to the floor in front of her, pulling his knees to his chest.

“You want to talk to us about Troy’s schooling?” Joyce asked.

“Among other things.” I smiled. “But why don’t we start there? Troy, have you made any decisions about what you’re going to study in college?”

“I want to be a sportscaster.” His eyes lit up, excitement creeping into his voice. “You know, like on ESPN. Sometimes when there’s a game on TV, I turn the sound off and call the plays myself.”

“He’s good.” Joyce rested a hand on top of his head. Her voice brightened the tiniest bit. “I tell him all the time, I don’t much care for watching sports on TV, but I love to watch the games with him when he does the commenting. He knows everything there is to know about it, it seems like. And he’s funny, too.”

“That’s great.” I smiled. “Just know it’s not quite as glamorous as it looks on TV. But this business is never boring.”

“My baby boy here’s done so much to make his mama proud.” Joyce’s fingers closed around her younger son’s shoulder. “This is just one more thing. My boy in the
Telegraph
for being a smart kid. This one’s not going to spend his life cleaning up other people’s messes. He’s going to do better. My Troy is going to be the first person in this family to go to college.”

I nodded and smiled. “Do you know which college will be lucky enough to have you, Troy?”

Troy plucked at a dingy shoelace, his eyes trained on something on the floor. “That depends on whether or not I get my scholarship, and I won’t know that until after Christmas,” he said. “I’m going to apply to UVA and Tech, and we’re going to try for financial aid.”

“And we’ll get it,” Joyce said, determined. “And we’ll get loans. And I’ll mortgage this damn house if I have to. It’s paid for. You’re going to college, baby.”

I stared at her ragged nails, betraying the work she did with her hands every day to keep food on the table and buy a home for her children, as her fingers sank into Troy’s shoulder. I had no trouble believing she’d mortgage her soul to see her son get his bachelor’s. She reminded me so much of my own mother a lump formed in my throat.

“If it’s my choice, I go,” he said. “There were a few kids in my school last year who got picked to go to Blacksburg to the Tech campus overnight, and I was one of them.”

“He won an essay contest,” Joyce interrupted. “First place.”

Troy rolled his eyes. “Thanks, mama. Anyway, I’ve never seen anything like that. All the buildings are so big and the campus is huge. We went in the spring and there were people just sitting under trees reading and guys playing catch in the middle of the grass, and the library...I didn’t think there were that many books anywhere.”

I smiled at his enthusiasm as I scribbled, remembering the first time I’d ever stepped foot into the library at Syracuse. I’d had that same thought, staring at the shelves that soared toward the heavens on every floor of the four-level building.

“Troy, your mom is right to be proud of you. You should be proud of yourself. And put that essay contest on your applications. College applications are no place for modesty. You have to toot your own horn loud enough to get noticed among the other kids who are blowing theirs.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, nodding. “My counselor at school is helping me, and I’m taking the first SAT in October so if I have to re-take it I can.”

“You ain’t gonna have to re-take no test,” Joyce said. “You might get an award for the last one.”

“The National Merit program is a big deal, Troy,” I said. Our schools reporter had forwarded me the Richmond finalist list when Troy’s name popped up on it, and Eunice had jumped at my pitch of a feature on a drug dealer’s brother up for such an award.

“Damn right,” Joyce said. The first real smile I’d seen on her face radiated pride at her son. “I didn’t spend my whole life cleaning other people’s toilets for nothing. I made sure my boys had plenty to read and took them places when I could, too. I think Troy’s read every book in that library up the street, and he could be a tour guide for most of the historical stuff ’round these parts.”

“Can you tell me a little about your work, ma’am?”

“I don’t see how that’s going to make interesting reading. I wasn’t much older than Troy is now, when I found out I was expecting Darryl.  I’d have starved right to death waiting for their lazy-ass daddy to get a job. I thought he was Richmond’s own Billy Dee Williams, he was so charming.” She kept her eyes on her hands. “I learned charming wasn’t everything, but not ’til I had my boys to take care of. I’d do anything for my boys. Scrubbing toilets may not be the proudest work there is, but it kept food on our table.”

“You don’t need to defend anything to me,” I said, something in my tone bringing Joyce’s eyes back to mine. “My mother was seventeen when I was born. And she’s been a single mom all my life. When I was little, she worked as a secretary all day and went to school at night until she got a business degree. She owns a flower shop now, but it took a lot of work to get there.

“Things happen,” I told Joyce. “I believe it’s what you do when things happen that defines your character. And I’m looking at a young man who scored better than ninety-five percent of high school kids in the United States on a test that’s not exactly easy, as I remember. I don’t see where you have much to defend to anyone.”

She sat a little taller in the chair and her chin lifted slightly.

“I saw an ad in the newspaper,” she said. “It said they needed people to clean houses. I figured I could mop a floor or scrub a toilet if it would buy diapers and formula for my baby. When Troy came along, I figured out I’d have more money if I wasn’t supporting their daddy’s lazy behind. So I threw him out, got a second job and paid a lady down the street to watch my boys for me in the evening. When Troy was two, they give me my own crew at the cleaning company, and I could afford to quit moonlighting.

“In almost fifteen years, I’ve only had one employee leave my crew. They say I’m fair. I got the best crew in the city. We work mostly over to the Fan. Clean houses for big executives. Even got a few doctors and a senator on my list.”

I nodded, my hand moving like lightning to catch every word exactly as she spoke it. She told me about the weekend days she’d spent showing her boys around the Civil War battlegrounds scattered across the Mid-Atlantic, and taking them to experience the living colonial history that defined the Williamsburg corridor.

Troy beamed at his mother. “My mama was like the Energizer bunny. She’d come home after being on her feet for ten hours and clean our house, cook us supper, and help us with our homework. I definitely learned the value of hard work. I don’t care if I have to start out bringing someone coffee or making copies. I’ll make the best coffee and the cleanest copies they’ve ever seen, and I’ll have my own mic in the press box one day, you wait and see. When I was just a kid in middle school, I wanted my own column in the newspaper like Grant Parker. But then I started watching SportsCenter, and they get to report on all the games that happen everywhere, not just the ones that are in their town. I like that.”

I kept writing, but I had an idea. “Troy, I know you want to work in TV, but how would you like to spend a day hanging out with Parker?” I looked up from my notes and felt a smile tug at the corners of my lips as his mouth dropped open.

“Seriously? Do you really think he might let me tag around after him? I won’t be a pest, I swear it! Do you know him? Can you ask him if that would be all right?” He sounded like a little boy who’d just been told he might go to Disney World.

Parker owed me a favor. He had been walking around in a megawatt-grin daze for weeks, since I’d decided to play cupid with him and Melanie from the city desk. “We’re friends. I think I can go ahead and tell you it’ll be fine.” I matched Troy’s grin with one of my own. “Do you think you could miss a day of school next week? Parker’s not much for coming in on the weekends.”

“I’m ahead in all my classes, anyway,” he said. “I have a part-time job at the grocery store two blocks up, but I’m off on Mondays and Tuesdays.”

“Parker’s column runs Tuesday, Thursday…”

“And Saturday,” Troy interrupted. “I read it every time it’s in. This is the baddest thing ever, Miss Clarke.”

I laughed. “I’m guessing you’ll see more of what he does on Monday, but I’ll double check that with him and call you later.”

“Thank you,” Joyce mouthed over her son’s head. I nodded.

I asked a few more questions about Troy’s classes, and thanked them both as I shoved my notebook back into my bag and capped my pen.

Troy stood up to get the front door, and Joyce rose when I did. She crossed the shoebox-sized room in three steps and took both my hands in hers. I felt calluses under my fingertips.

“I’m obliged to you for coming, Nichelle,” she said, holding her back straight. Tears swam in her eyes again, but she didn’t blink them back. “My boys are the world to me.” A tear fell, followed closely by another. “This is something. I’m obliged.”

“Thank you for sharing your story,” I said, returning the pressure she was putting on my fingers. “I hope I can tell it right.”

With Larry’s USB drive full of photos burning a hole in my pocket, I pulled back into the garage at the office at ten after seven, detouring past the break room’s vintage soda machine on the way to my desk.

Sipping a Diet Coke and thinking about Troy’s game-show-host grin, I checked the clock and went past Parker’s office, hoping he’d stayed late. Dark and empty. Damn. There wasn’t a game that night, so he was probably out with Mel. I’d have to catch up with him tomorrow.

I plugged the drive into the side of my computer and waited for the photos to load, opening a slideshow so I wouldn’t miss anything important.

Three hours and over a thousand images later, my head was starting to hurt. I rifled through my desk drawer for a bottle of Advil and washed two down with the last of my soda before I clicked to the next photo.

And found something.

I checked the information in the sidebar. It was from a charity casino night in April. There was Amesworth, laughing and leaning one hand on the shoulder of a tall, dark-haired man in a sharp tux. They looked chummy, which was interesting, since the dark-haired man was Senator Ted Grayson.

A tobacco lobbyist and a U.S. Senator in the middle of a bone-crushingly tight reelection campaign laughing over drinks and cards might mean nothing, except that Grayson could deliver a good punchline. But it was a hell of a coincidence. I’d covered crime for long enough to know true coincidences are few and far between. My inner Lois Lane said I might have an exclusive. The photo hadn’t been published, which meant no one else had access to it.