Of Blood and Sorrow (12 page)

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Authors: Valerie Wilson Wesley

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General

BOOK: Of Blood and Sorrow
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She laid her head down on my table like a kid does at nap time.

“You took the baby to your Aunt Edna, and you came over here, right?”

She nodded that it was.

“How old are you, Thelma Lee?”

“Please call me Trinity.”

“Trinity, then.”

“I’m sixteen. I’ll be seventeen soon.”

I looked at Thelma Lee and thought about my son. Apparently, the Lord had added silly teenagers to the babies and fools He watched over.

“You tired?”

“I want to go to sleep and forget everything I saw. I been sleeping in your son’s room. Is that okay?”

“I’m sure he wouldn’t mind,” I said. “But I want you to call your Aunt Edna before you go upstairs. When she came to my office today, she was worried sick about you.”

“She came to your office? I called her when I was waiting for Mr. Barnes and told her where I was going to be, at the place Mama died. That’s the only place I go. She knew where that was.”

“Well, she was still worried about you. Because she came to see me this morning.”

“I don’t want her to be scared.”

“Then call her. Now!”

“But she never answers the phone anyway.”

“Then leave a message for her.”

“Okay already, Miss Hayle! Jeez Louise!” she said, and I smiled because the tone of her voice, if not the expression, reminded me of my son.

I gave her the phone and nodded to the living room, and I could hear the warmth in her voice as she left her message.

“I’m going to go visit Mama’s spirit tomorrow morning before I come home,” I heard her say. “I love you, Auntie. I love you!”

“Thank you, Miss Hayle. I feel better now,” she said after she hung up. “I’m going to go to bed now. I feel so safe here with you,” she added.

“I’m glad you do,” I said.

Still, I was uneasy about her, and I wasn’t sure why. So before I went to bed that night, I locked my door and tucked my .38 under my pillow where I could get it quick. Just in case.

ELEVEN

T
HE GIRL WAS GONE THE NEXT MORNING
. Jamal’s bed was made, corners tucked in, pillow fluffed, and her towel and washcloth were hung neatly on the bathroom rack. On my refrigerator door, I found a letter on notebook paper stuck underneath a heart-shaped magnet.

Dear Miss Tamara Hayle,

I left when the sun came up first thing this morning.

I don’t want nobody hurting you or your son. I could tell from his room he’s a nice boy. He got a nice mama, too. Like mine was. I shoulda told you this, but I washed my clothes in the basement when I was here. They were real dirty (blood!). I used all your detergent, so I went and got you some more. The cheap kind. My aunt says it’s all the same anyway. Hope that’s okay. And, oh yeah, something else. My cell went dead, so I used your phone to call Mr. Treyman Barnes before you got home last night. Hope that’s okay. I gotta make things right for Baby Dal. She deserves to be with a rich granddaddy, not a poor little aunt like me. It wasn’t long distance!! You a real nice lady, just like Lily said.

Your friend,
Trinity Sweets
(Thelma Lee)

I wished I could have done more for the girl, but that chance was gone. I wondered how much Thelma Lee knew about her big sister. Lilah had been hard on her “lame-ass, no-count baby sister,” but there had been an innocence about Thelma Lee, a sweetness that reminded me of Lilah in our Jamaica days, and that memory made me shake my head with sadness.

A fist straight through her throat. Fast and mean.

Thelma Lee wasn’t that mean or I would have seen it.

Or would I?

What instinct had told me to tuck that gun beneath my pillow? Truth be told, I wasn’t sure about Thelma Lee. I didn’t think she was as naïve as she seemed. But I could be wrong about that, too. My sense of myself as a reader of teenage minds had been seriously shaken.

I’d never know now. The girl was gone wherever she was going, and I had problems of my own.

I called Jamal on my cell phone before I left for work. I could tell he was scared and worried. I hoped DeWayne was up to parenting him like he needed, but I doubted it. DeWayne had always been good to his son, the best he could be, and Jamal was as central in DeWayne’s life, as much an anchor, as he was in mine. I didn’t have the right to judge him.

“So, Mom, when can I come home?” Jamal asked before he hung up. “Can I come home Sunday? I miss you.”

“We’ll see about Sunday. Jake will be back on Monday, and I want to make sure you have a lawyer in case you need one.”

“But the cops probably know where I am anyway.”

“Yeah, they probably do,” I agreed. “But they haven’t been down there, and if you come home, they might be tempted to bring you in for questioning. I don’t want you to go through that without a lawyer.”

Dead silence.

“Jamal, you’re breaking up. Are you still there?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” he said, but the tone of his voice worried me. He sounded sulky and spoiled, not the kid I knew.

“Listen, Jake is in Toronto. I’ve left messages for him, and the minute he gets in town, he’ll call.”

“Maybe I should just tell them what I know.”

“Not without a lawyer. And I want to find out more stuff anyway, about Lilah, about who could have killed her.”

“Maybe I should just, you know, go away somewhere. Not wait for them to come, just hide out.”

“Hide out? Hide out where? Are you out of your mind?” He was scaring the hell out of me. “Stay with your father, stay—”

“What if I just come home and hang out somewhere there? With some of the guys I know. We all look the same to the cops anyway. They don’t know one of us from another. We ain’t nothing but niggers to them anyway. We ain’t shit!”

“Don’t use language like that in my presence!”

“It’s the truth!”

“Stop it!” I said, but my heart was pounding. “Not all cops are the same. Think about your uncle Johnny.”

“He’s been dead a long time, Mom.”

“Just stay where you are. Promise me, Jamal, that you’ll stay with your dad. Don’t even think about coming up here now. Do you hear me, Son? Please, Son, please!” It was the first time I’d ever begged him for anything, and I didn’t like the way the words sounded coming out of my mouth. “Sunday. Somehow I’ll find a way to bring you home by Sunday. Sunday,” I said again, and prayed I wasn’t lying.

“I love you, Mommy.”

Mommy.
When was the last time I’d heard that? Ten years ago? Jamal was DeWayne’s anchor, and he was mine, too. But how much anchoring could a teenager do? Jamal needed an anchor in his life, and neither me nor DeWayne was able to be that for him, and the thought of that made me ashamed.

As I was leaving the house, I noticed a sparkle of gold near the sidewalk: Thelma Lee’s charm bracelet. When I picked it up, the jingling bells reminded me of Lilah. I dropped it in my bag, double-checked my locks, then glanced up at Jamal’s window to make sure she couldn’t get in like that again. I’d give her a call when I got to work and tell her I’d found it. The bracelet with her mother’s picture in it was important to her, and she was probably looking for it.

I wondered again about her story. There had been nothing in
The Star-Ledger
or on TV about a brutal murder, and those kinds of killings always lead the news. The paper was full of lottery winners, sports heroes, and class reunions. Nothing about a man named Turk Orlando in a notorious highway motel.

Could she have made the whole thing up? I only had her word that Turk was dead, and that she’d left the baby with her aunt. Sweet Thing had said she was covered with blood. But she hadn’t mentioned the baby. Maybe she was up to something else. Maybe that bracelet was actually Lilah’s anklet. I hadn’t really gotten a good look at it. Was Thelma Lee an angel earning her wings or something else entirely?

Always the doubting Thomas. I had to laugh at myself. Maybe Jamal and Larry were right, that being a PI and imagining the worst of everybody was distorting my view of the world. The girl had gone from murder suspect to innocent victim to crazy teenager back to murder suspect in the space of twenty-four hours. My doubts about the girl were ridiculous, comical. But what if they weren’t? Why had she trusted Turk Orlando so easily? Could they have been in it together from the jump, even when Lilah was alive? And when I listened to the message Matty Gilroy had left me, a chill went down my back, the kind that told me maybe I was right.

“Gilroy here. They found that guy, Turk, who killed that woman you asked about. He was the last call she made. They figure he met her, then murdered her. Found some jewelry that might have belonged to her on him, too. Case closed. No honor among thieves, ain’t that the truth? Found his body over there in that motel off the highway. You know the one I’m talking about. How’s your baby? Keep him where he is. Call me ASAP.”

I collapsed in my chair. Should I call the cops? Confess everything I knew? Should I tell them that Thelma Lee had been there right after it happened and that she might be in danger? Or that maybe she was the killer. But then they would ask me about Jamal, and why I hadn’t called them when she broke into my house.

Keep him where he is.

Matty knew more than she was saying. She couldn’t betray her badge; she was as torn between her loyalty to a friend and the rule of law as I would be.
Keep him where he is
was all she dared say, and she hadn’t said his name, just
your baby,
and that could mean anything to anybody who was listening. Her choice of words was deliberate, as if she were talking in code.

And what about Thelma Lee?

I played her message from Monday night again, listening closely to that high, little-girl voice crying about Baby Dal. She had been scared that night; she hadn’t been able to hide it. I called the cell number she’d left and asked her to call me, then I tried Jersey City information and asked for the number of an Edna Sweets, but it was unlisted. I turned on my computer and tried to do some work, but the questions banging around in my head wouldn’t let me be.

Had Turk Orlando been killed by the person who paid him to kill Lilah Love? He had been murdered around ten, according to Thelma Lee, two hours before Treyman Barnes was supposed to pick up the baby. But I had only Thelma Lee’s word that Baby Dal had been there and that was the time of the murder. She could have lured Turk to the motel, killed him, then planted the jewelry on him. Maybe Sweet Thing and Jimson Weed had the baby all along. Maybe Turk had tried to double-cross her, and she’d killed him because of that, or maybe she killed him to avenge Lilah’s death. Again, I wondered if Turk and Thelma Lee could have been in it from the beginning. Sixteen wasn’t what it was even ten years ago. Sixteen would gleefully hang with a man twice her age and get the better of him quick. Turk had probably followed Lilah’s advice about the older you get, the younger you fuck them…or try to. Or maybe it was somebody else who was playing a different game, another person working with Thelma for some reason impossible to know. And if that was the case, then who was next?

I jumped when the telephone rang, but I was glad to be distracted.

“You’re talking to the new vice president of the esteemed Businessmen’s Club of Newark, New Jersey,” said Larry Walton on the other end.

He took me by surprise. The esteemed Businessmen’s Club of Newark was so far from my mind, he could have been speaking in Hindi. “That’s good news!” I managed to say.

“Unanimous. That’s what the vote was, unanimous. You know what that means, don’t you?”

“Why don’t you tell me,” I said, and he did for the next ten minutes. “Are we still on for tonight?” I asked with forced cheer.

“You don’t sound too excited to me. Are you sure you still want to get together?” Larry said, picking up on my lack of enthusiasm; he was prone to sulk.

“Of course, I’m excited! And I have a surprise for you.” Wvyetta’s platinum package would come in handy.

“Okay, I’ll see you tonight. Around eight. Oh yeah, I have something really important to talk to you about. Is Jamal still at his dad’s? Be nice to have the place to ourselves.”

I couldn’t bring myself to answer.

“Good. See you then. Love you, Tam.”

“Me, too,” I said, the words stumbling out.

After he hung up, I called Gilroy to see if she had anything else about Turk’s murder. She answered on the first ring.

“Gilroy here.” I heard her light a cigarette, cough, then curse as she squashed it out, which made me smile.

“Hey Matty, it’s me, Tamara Hayle. Give it up, girl. Those damn cigarettes are going to kill you.”

“You don’t think I been trying?” I chuckled at that, and she joined in, then stopped and turned serious. “You keeping the boy where he is?”

“Are they looking for him, Matty?” My voice was calm, but my heart had begun to pound.

“Like I said, they found some of the woman’s jewelry on Turk, so they think he killed Lilah. He was also the last call she made.”

“What about after that?”

“I don’t know about after that. I just know what they told me. But nothing’s sure until it’s sure, you know what I mean? Look, Tamara, don’t tell me where he is, I don’t want to know, just make sure he has an alibi for this last one. That’s the main thing.”

“You don’t seriously think somebody could suspect my son of this, do you?”

“Of course not! But I’m not seriously supposed to think anything, so don’t tell me anything.”

“How was Turk killed?”

“Hard. Execution-style. Cut his throat. Blood all over the place. A real slaughterhouse in there. But it was professional. Neat. One cut, deep and long. Walked up to him from behind, slaughtered him like you butcher a hog. Somebody knew what they were doing. Maybe it was payback for the way Love was killed, the throat thing.”

“They should know there’s no way in hell that a teenage boy—my teenage boy—could be even remotely involved in that kind of brutality,” I said, incensed.

“You know it. I know it. But the cops don’t know shit about you or your son. Look, a lot has happened in Jamal’s life recently—all those killings in the city and everything—and except for the killer, he was the last person to see Lilah Love alive. He must have seen who killed her, even though he didn’t realize it. They’re still looking for more evidence. My bet is that they’re going to probably pull him in as a material witness, but I know you don’t want him involved in any of it, so just keep him where he is until they don’t need to question him.”

“Could the person who killed Turk have been a woman?”

“Possibly. A strong one. Big hands, big arms, good with a knife. Who knows? But she’d have to take him by surprise.”

I hung up, her last words staying with me. I thought about Thelma Lee again, Trinity as she liked to call herself. Sipping tea, crying about her murdered mama and sister. Turk would have trusted her. He was a big man, and she was a woman. But what if she actually believed the role she liked to play, that of a karate-chopping, take-no-prisoners woman?
I got a knife, and I know how to use it,
she’d said. Why mention a knife as a possible weapon? She’d admitted being in the room with Turk; there had to be more to her story than she was telling. She had broken into my house late on Tuesday night. Could she have found something in Jamal’s room—on his computer—that would tell her where he was? Could he be in danger?

I called DeWayne’s house and finally got him on his cell.

“Where you been? I been trying to call you for the last forty minutes,” DeWayne yelled into my ear. “Do you know where your son is? I been driving around here for the last hour looking for him.”

“I just spoke to him. He’s with you!”

“No he’s not. I don’t know where the hell he is! I had a, you know, an appointment, and when I got back—”

“Are you telling me that you left that boy by himself to see one of your sluts! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Now, Tamara, ain’t no need to be calling nobody out her name. Boy probably took a walk or something. I don’t know. You said you just talked to him, right? Then he’s okay.”

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