Murder with Fried Chicken and Waffles (Mahalia Watkins Soul Food Mystery) (25 page)

“Wavonne’s right. There was nothing to take. All I found were statements about overdrawn accounts and past due bills. From what I could tell, he was on the verge of losing his own house, which would have served him right. I was furious! All the planning and time it took to assume a new identity and enmesh myself into Marcus’s life was for nothing.
Nothing!
In a frenzy I drove back to the restaurant. I might not have been able to get any money out of Marcus, but I was going to give him a piece of my mind.”

There is an overall sense of relief emoting from Régine. It’s as if she’s being freed by telling her story. There’s a way about her as she speaks that shows she really doesn’t think she did anything wrong.

“I got back here and found Marcus in the kitchen by himself. Everyone else had gone. He said he was going to pack up some of your fried chicken to take to his mother. I just looked at him with rage as he talked about how things went well over dinner and how he thought he and Charles had calmed Heather and Josh down for the time being. Then he noticed I was unsettled and asked what was wrong. All I could say was, ‘You rat bastard. Do you have any idea who I am?’ He just looked at me like I was crazy. ‘Do you?!’ I screamed at him.”

“What did he say?”

“He asked me what I was talking about. That’s when I asked, ‘Does the name Audrey Whitlock ring any bells?’ Do you know what he said when I asked him that?”

No one answers, and while we sit quietly and wait for her to tell us, I see Detective Hutchins discreetly press some buttons on his cell phone.

“He said, ‘Audrey Whitlock? That silly old bag out in Hyattsville ?’ That’s what he said about my mother. He called her an
old bag
as if she were nothing.
Nothing!
He wasn’t even looking at me when he said it. He was bending over to get a takeout container. I was livid. The woman who raised me and my sister, nursed my father on his deathbed, and sometimes worked two jobs to make ends meet was nothing but an old bag to him. As he began to straighten himself up, I grabbed the first thing I could find, a cast-iron frying pan sitting on the counter. I completely lost it and walloped him over the head with it. Before I realized what I’d done, he’d dropped like a sack of flour. From there it’s all a blur. I vaguely remember dropping the frying pan, running back to my car, and calling Cherise in a panic. Honestly, I didn’t know if he was dead or alive.”

“But you were covered if he was dead because you had already arranged for Cherise to pose as you and ensure that your whereabouts were accounted for.” As I say this, I see two uniformed policemen come through the front door of Sweet Tea. Régine and Cherise have their backs to the door and do not see them.
Well, I’ll be,
I think to myself.
Detective Hutchins took me seriously when I told him to bring backup.

Régine nods. “I drove around for a long time, and Cherise and I talked. We decided I’d try to get some sleep in the car, and Cherise would leave the building posing as me the next morning as planned.”

“What about the frying pan?” Wavonne asks. “Weren’t you afraid it had your fingerprints on it?”

“I was wearing gloves while I searched Marcus’s house. I was in such a state. I never thought to take them off before I got here.”

“If you ask me, he deserved it . . . evil snake,” Cherise says. “Régine did the world a favor.”

“That may be,” Detective Hutchins pipes in. “But you’ll have to sell that to a jury. I’m placing both of you under arrest. We have two squad cars outside—one in the front and one in the back. We can make this easy or hard. It’s up to the two of you.” He stands up and gestures for the women to follow. The girls do as they’re instructed, and he motions for them to turn around and gently but firmly reaches for Régine’s hands and places them in cuffs behind her back. The restaurant falls silent and everyone stares as he does the same with Cherise. He then directs the two uniformed officers to read them their rights and walk them out to the cruiser.

“Oooh, child, that is a hot mess,” Wavonne says as we watch Régine and Cherise be escorted out of Sweet Tea.

“It sure is, Wavonne.”

“We should have known it was Régine. Anyone who jacks up a hairdo like she did yours surely had to be up to no good.”

I don’t respond as I’m not really paying attention to Wavonne. I’m too upset over the whole situation, and it breaks my heart to see the two girls who cared so much about their mother . . . who could have had bright futures . . . be led off to a police car.

“You okay, Halia?” Wavonne asks.

“I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure? You don’t look good. What do you say we go to Red Lobster for some crab legs, make you feel better?”

 

I
t’s been almost a week since Denise and Cherise were arrested at Sweet Tea, and my entire being is decidedly more relaxed than it was this time last week as I sit at a table in the dining room proofreading our list of specials for the day. It took a few days for me to finally drop my guard and start to feel like myself again now that I know Wavonne is no longer a murder suspect, but things are finally starting to get back to normal. I feel like I can return to focusing on running Sweet Tea rather than trying to track down a killer.

I look at the clock and see that it’s ten thirty. We’ll be opening in a half hour, so I figure I’d better get this list of specials on the copier. I’m about to get up from my chair when I see Laura approach.

“Have you seen the morning paper?” she says as she hands today’s edition to me before going back into the kitchen.

I scan the front page and see a headline in the lower left corner: “Local Man Charged in $18 Million Mortgage Fraud Scheme.”

I call over to Wavonne, who is filling ketchup bottles a few tables over. “Wavonne, listen to this.” I begin reciting from the article: “Charles Pritchett, age fifty-six, of Washington, D.C, along with other Reverie Home leaders, was arrested today for participation in a mortgage fraud scheme that promised to pay off the mortgages of home owners, many of them local D.C. area residents. According to evidence that led to the arrest of Mr. Pritchett, he and his colleagues convinced several area residents to participate in what was called the Reverie Homes Program. In exchange for a minimum thirty-thousand-dollar initial investment, Mr. Pritchett agreed to make the investors’ future monthly mortgage payments and pay off their mortgages within seven years. Reverie encouraged home owners to refinance existing mortgages on their homes and use any equity to fund their initial investment in the program.

“Investors were told that their initial payment would be used to fund investments in in-store ATMs, phone card kiosks, DVD rental machines, and other automated business ventures. They were led to believe these ventures generated enough revenue to provide generous mortgage payment assistance. To instill confidence in the Reverie Homes Program, executive management spent thousands of dollars conducting seminars at luxury hotels such as the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland.

“According to records obtained by this newspaper, Mr. Pritchett and other Reverie executives never advised participating home owners that the company’s ATMs, phone card kiosks, and DVD rental machines generated no significant income. Instead Reverie Home leaders used money from the program’s later investors to fund the mortgages of the program’s earlier investors. Records also show that home owner investments were used to fund the personal indulgences of Reverie executives, including salaries of up to three hundred thousand dollars per year, luxury company cars, and even an all-expenses-paid trip to the Super Bowl.

“The program lured more than six hundred participants (forty-three in the Washington, D.C., metro area), who invested a total of more than eighteen million dollars. When Reverie began to have trouble recruiting enough new investors to cover the payments of current program participants, Pritchett and his coconspirators stopped making the promised mortgage payments, and the affected home owners were left to fend for themselves. Mr. Pritchett—”

“Does it say anything about Marcus?” Wavonne asks, interrupting me.

I scan the rest of the article and see no mention of him. “It doesn’t look like it,” I say, relieved. The more Marcus Rand and his murder stay out of the press, the better. The day after Denise and Cherise were escorted from the premises, we did receive calls from the newspaper and local television stations for comment. Some of my patrons must have given them a tip about two young ladies being led away from Sweet Tea in handcuffs. Of course, I declined to comment and instructed my entire staff to do the same.

The next day there was a brief story about Denise and Cherise’s arrest on the local TV news, and there was a little snippet about it in the newspaper. Fortunately, my restaurant wasn’t specifically named in either, but I’m guessing that as the juicy details of Marcus’s murder begin to emerge, perhaps when the case goes to trial, interest, and therefore news coverage, will increase. One way or another, it seems as though the fact that Marcus was murdered in my restaurant is going to become public knowledge, which makes me wonder if Wavonne and I going to such lengths to get Marcus’s dead body out of Sweet Tea was worth it. But when I think of the circus Sweet Tea would have been become if the police had been alerted to Marcus’s body on my kitchen floor, I wonder a bit less. For all I know, my restaurant might have been shut down for days. What kind of notice do you post on the door in that case?
Closed due to a murder in the kitchen?
Sweet Tea would have been the epicenter of the tragedy, and rather than a news crew filming at Wellington Lake, they would have been filming in front of my restaurant. The idea of Sweet Tea being featured on the news with yellow police tape across the front door or the chalk outline of a dead body on my kitchen floor accompanying a newspaper article sends chills down my spine. At least now, when and if word gets out, there’s some distance . . . some time between the event and the press. Either way, I’m just thankful it’s over.

I set the newspaper down, and as I get up from the table, I see Jack Spruce at the front door. I walk over and let him in.

“Good morning, Jack. Looking for a cup of coffee?”

“You read my mind,” he says and walks with me toward the coffee station.

“I haven’t seen you in a while,” I say as I pour him a cup.

“I’ve been on vacation. I just got back yesterday and heard the news about Régine . . . or Denise and her sister.”

“Yes, we definitely had some excitement around here while you were gone. Honestly, I’m just glad the whole thing is resolved. Do you have any more news about the girls?”

“They’re still being held at a local facility. They’ve been arraigned. Cherise was granted bail and may be able to leave the detention center if she comes up with the money. Denise was deemed as a flight risk as her charges are much more serious, and she has not been granted bail. She will have to stay in jail until her trial, and who knows when that will be.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t,” I say to Jack, “but I can’t help but feel a little sorry for the girls. They were only trying to keep their mother in her home, and the whole thing got out of control so quickly.”

“Denise will probably plead temporary insanity. When a jury gets the details of the situation, she might stand a chance of an innocent verdict. Pounding someone over the head with a cast-iron frying pan hardly sounds like premeditated murder. I guess only time will tell.”

“I guess so.”

“And you know, Halia, while I think Detective Hutchins has pretty much closed the case, word is that Denise swears up and down that she hit Marcus over the head with a pan in the kitchen of this very restaurant, then left and never came back. At this point there doesn’t seem to be any reason for her to lie, so we still have no idea how Marcus’s body got from here to Wellington Lake.”

“That’s interesting, but I do recall Régine saying that everything that happened after she popped Marcus was a blur. Perhaps she really doesn’t remember what happened or blocked the memory of her disturbing Marcus’s body. Who knows.”

“It’s plausible, I guess,” Jack says. “And true or not, it might be the best reason we have to explain how Marcus got from here to Wellington Lake.”

Jack looks at me while he sips his coffee as if he’s checking for my reaction to everything he’s shared with me. At this point, I’ve gotten pretty good at hiding my angst and keeping a poker face. In a relaxed manner I just respond with, “When Denise was here last week, she said she left the scene of the crime so quickly that she didn’t even know if Marcus was alive or dead. For all we know, he got up and walked away and somehow ended up in the lake. So many things could have happened.”

“True. I guess the reality of the situation is that we may never know.” Jack takes a sip from his mug. “I guess I should get going. Thanks for the coffee, Halia. I’m sure I’ll see you again soon.”

“You’re quite welcome.”

I walk Jack to the door and go ahead and leave it unlocked after he exits since it’s almost eleven o’clock anyway. As I walk toward the kitchen, I’m thankful that finding out how Marcus’s body got from my kitchen floor to Wellington Lake doesn’t seem to be a priority for the police. I’m even more grateful that the whole messy situation seems to have come to a close.

“Hey there, Tacy,” I say as I walk through the kitchen door. “What do you say we get these waffle irons fired up? We’re going to have a lot of hungry customers in here in just a few minutes.”

I grab an apron from a hook on the wall and slip it over my head.
Yes, an apron is a much better fit than the detective hat I’ve been wearing recently,
I think to myself as I tie the apron around my waist. And with that, I get back to doing what I do best and join Tacy in mixing up the waffle batter.

“I’m sure you have more important things to do, Miss Watkins. I can handle making the waffles.”

“You know what, Tacy?” I respond. “For some reason, right now at this moment, there is nothing I’d rather be doing.”