Dying In The Dark_ A Tamara Hayle Mystery Part 15

It was Friday night, and Jamal was spending the night with a friend, so I decided to take Wyvetta up on her offer for dinner, but she'd already left. I thought about calling Jake to see if he was up for a drink, but changed my mind. If my suspicions about the nature of Jake's relations.h.i.+p with Ramona Covington were true, then he was probably with her. One run-in with Ramona was enough for one week. Finally, I decided to simply head home, maybe stop at the fish fry place on Central Avenue for some fish and coleslaw.

I grabbed my coat and bag, turned off the lights, set my second-rate burglar alarm, and headed to the rest room on my way out. The building was empty and cold as a tomb, and I s.h.i.+vered as I came out of my office, making a mental note to take up the heating problem with my friend Annie, who owns the place. It was also dark; two of the ceiling lights had burned out. Another matter to take up with Ms. Annie B. Landlady. She'd recently installed a new lock on the ladies' room door, which locked when it was closed, and I was happy she'd done that. With fried porgies on my mind, I came out of the rest room heading toward the stairs.

I saw him as the lavatory door closed behind me. He was kneeling in front of my office door. His hat was pulled down low over his face, and the black coat trailed on the floor behind him like a train. He glanced up and around when the door closed, then went back to fiddling with the lock. He wasn't very good at it. It's a cheap lock and any professional with nimble fingers could have jacked it open in a minute flat. I could have done it in two.

I stopped where I stood, my heart pounding so hard I was afraid he could hear it. He was breaking into my place so he probably had a gun. I was alone in this building. My first impulse was to run back into the rest room, but it was too late for that. I'd have to dig through the junk in my bag to find the key again, and he'd hear me sure as h.e.l.l. If he saw me standing here, he could rush me, shove me back into the bathroom, then lock the door behind us before I had a chance to get away.

I could make a run for it, down the hallway, down the stairs, but I'd have to pa.s.s him on the way out, and the stairway was long and steep. If I ran too fast, I'd risk breaking my neck on the way down. Or he could give me a shove to make sure I went down faster than I should.

I stepped back into the shadows and reached for my cell phone, which was on the top of my junk. I'd put 911 on speed dial, and was sure I could put up a noisy enough struggle for the cops to get here within five or ten minutes. I could fight him off until then. But then came the realization that the d.a.m.n thing needed to be recharged. I always forget to do it. I cursed my forgetfulness. The man looked up again, as if he sensed my presence, then stopped long enough to glance warily to either side. I stepped deeper into the shadowy corner of the door, thankful for the darkness I'd cursed a moment ago. He started working again. The best I could hope for was that he would manage to open it. When the door opened, it would set the alarm off.

And then I smelled it, the same scent that had been in my house that night I'd come back from Jake's, that heavy fragrance that I couldn't quite place but I knew was from my past. It was Tabu, Celia's perfume, the heady, cheap fragrance she'd worn as a kid. Along with my memory came her father, who had been a mean-spirited drunk, not like my own, who was loving if irresponsible when he "got in his cups," as my grandma used to call it, but a mean son of a b.i.t.c.h, who chased his kids out of his house as soon as they had the means and money to go. I never knew what became of her mother.

He used to tease Celia about that perfume, I remembered that. Made her smell like a backstreet wh.o.r.e, he'd tell her, and Celia would throw back her head and laugh that devil-may-care laugh that said she didn't give a d.a.m.n what he thought, and that he should go back to h.e.l.l where he came from. But those hateful words, spoken so often to a daughter who felt no love, had taken their toll. Maybe they were the reason she acted out the role he told her she was destined to play; maybe they were why she'd ended up where she did.

"Celia!" I said her name without thinking about it; that fragrance and the pain of that memory brought her back. And at that moment, he opened the door, setting off my cheap-a.s.s alarm. It was louder than I'd remembered, startling both me and him, but it was the chance I was looking for. Before he could get his bearings, I pounced on his back like a wildcat, shoving him headfirst through the door and onto the floor of my office. He sprawled out, hitting the floor with a thud, and I jammed my cell phone into the back of his head. Startled by the screech of the alarm and what he took for a gun, he tossed his hands up over his head and screamed.

"Please don't shoot me! I don't mean no harm. Please don't shoot me!"

He was the poorest excuse for a thief I'd ever seen in my life.

"Who are you? And why in the h.e.l.l are you wearing that perfume?" The smell of Celia's Tabu was overpowering.

"I'm Aaron. Aaron Dawson. I just wanted to get something that belonged to me. Something that belonged to Celia. Please. Please. I didn't mean you no harm. I loved Celia. I know you were her friend, and I wouldn't do you no harm. I wear the perfume because it reminds me of her."

He looked up and I saw he was the man who had been at Cecil Jones's funeral, the one I a.s.sumed was a teacher.

"Keep your head down!" His face hit the floor again and his gla.s.ses slipped off his nose, which began to bleed.

"Don't shoot me!"

"Keep your face on the floor. Nose first! Keep your hands overhead, straight. The police are on their way," I said in my tough-girl voice, although I knew the security company hadn't made their call yet to verify that there was a break-in.

"Please, please, please don't let them take me," he pleaded. "It would break my mother's heart if I got arrested for something like this. It would kill her! Please don't let them take me."

Lying on the floor with his face mashed against it, blood dripping from his nose, he looked pathetic. I shook my head in disgust, more sorry for him than angry.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing here?"

"Trying to get what belonged to Celia. I didn't mean no harm. I thought you'd left."

"So you've been watching my office?"

"Yes. I'm sorry."

'And you broke into my house?"

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I just wanted to get it. It was all I had left from her!" Blood from his nose dripped onto the floor when he lifted his head.

"Put your d.a.m.n head down! I should shoot you with this gun right now for breaking into my place and scaring the s.h.i.+t out of me, you stupid son of a b.i.t.c.h." I had a sudden, strong impulse to give him a couple of swift kicks in the b.u.t.t, but I was taught never to kick a man when he's down, and lessons like that stay with you, so I held myself back. I sure felt like it, though.

"Please don't shoot. Please. There's been enough killing already. Celia and the boy. Please! I just wanted to get it back. It was all I had left. I gave it to her and I just wanted to get it back," he cried out.

"Get what back?"

"My ring. The ring I gave her. My diamond ring! It belonged to my daddy, and I gave it to Celia. I wanted to get it back."

"What made you think I had it?"

"Because Cecil told me he was coming to see you. He told me you were Celia's friend. He said she was trying to contact you before she died. I knew he had come to see you before he died, and I thought maybe he had left it here with you. Because it belonged to his mama and he'd want it to stay safe."

The telephone rang. It was the security company, finally responding to the alarm, about d.a.m.n time.

"Close your eyes! Keep your hands above your head, your face on the floor. Or I'll shoot you right now!"

"Please, please don't let them take me. Please." I felt a nearly uncontrollable urge to laugh. I stepped over his p.r.o.ne body to the phone and gave the security company my code, then watched Aaron Daw-son sweat for another five minutes or so.

"So what can you tell me about Celia Jones if I let you go?"

'Anything," he said, his voice cracking as if he were about to cry. "I'll tell you anything you want to know because I loved that woman more than my own life."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

So for the third time in less than two weeks, I sat across from one of Celia's old lovers bent upon telling me a tale of woe. We were in a c.r.a.ppy luncheonette about a block and a half from my office. I've put in enough time with mean-a.s.s Negroes to know this fool was n.o.body's threat, but there's always that chance that somebody will flip out and turn ugly when you think you've got them pegged. A mistake like that can cost a woman her life. With that in mind, I brought him to this cafe, which was warm, empty, and reasonably clean. I ordered a cup of coffee and a piece of apple pie. Dawson ordered an orange soda. His hands shook when he dropped in the straw. It did my heart good to know I could still throw a scare into somebody. than two weeks, I sat across from one of Celia's old lovers bent upon telling me a tale of woe. We were in a c.r.a.ppy luncheonette about a block and a half from my office. I've put in enough time with mean-a.s.s Negroes to know this fool was n.o.body's threat, but there's always that chance that somebody will flip out and turn ugly when you think you've got them pegged. A mistake like that can cost a woman her life. With that in mind, I brought him to this cafe, which was warm, empty, and reasonably clean. I ordered a cup of coffee and a piece of apple pie. Dawson ordered an orange soda. His hands shook when he dropped in the straw. It did my heart good to know I could still throw a scare into somebody.

It looked like he was dressed in the same clothes he'd worn to the funeral, but he seemed to be the kind of man who would wear the same color and style day in, day out for twenty years and never get tired of it. If I saw him on the street, I never would have pegged him as one of Celia's men. He looked like a mama's boy, if ever there was one, and younger than Celia by about ten years. Maybe that was what she saw in him.

"Thank you for not giving me to the cops," he said after we'd sat down. "I don't know what my mother would have done if she'd had to come and bail me out of jail. Listen, I'm sorry about the break-in, about trying to get into your house, I'm sorry-"

"Don't ever do it again!"

"I was desperate."

"Desperate will get your a.s.s in jail for life. How did you know where I lived?"

"Celia showed me when we first started going out together. I had my mother's car and we were driving somewhere, and Celia said, turn down this street, then she said, my used-to-be-best-friend lives here."

Used-to-he-best-friend. That sounded like her. That sounded like her.

'And after all this time you remembered it?"

"It wasn't all that long ago, and anyway, I remember everything she ever told me about herself. And when Cecil told me she was planning to go to see you before she died, I remembered that, too, and that was why I thought you might have that ring."

"Like I told you, the cops have the ring," I said, eager to get him off the d.a.m.n ring. "Cecil was wearing it when he died, and his father must have gotten it from the funeral director. He had it on his finger the day the boy was buried."

He visibly shuddered, so I added, "I know the cop who is working the case. I'll see if maybe I can help you get it back." Truth was, that ring belonged to Brent Liston because it belonged to his son, and there was no way he was going to get it back, I was certain of that. But that brought a look of relief from him, and he nodded without saying anything, glancing around the luncheonette as if uneasy. Then he shook his head as if troubling thoughts had entered.

"I never thought when I met her it would end up like this."

"When did you meet her?"

"Last September."

"How?"

"Night school. I teach a course in computer programming in the adult school they run at night at the high school. Celia liked playing around with computers, and she was trying to get into another line of work. She was always trying to improve herself."

I smiled to myself. A love of computers was yet another side of Celia Jones I wouldn't have guessed she had.

"What did she want to become?"

"She thought maybe she wanted to be like an executive a.s.sistant, you know, somebody who works in a big office. She liked the idea of working around people who dressed nice, people who went out to lunch and did things like that. She wanted to make things better for herself and her son. But there was always something standing in the way, always somebody or something wouldn't leave her alone."

"Like who? Drew Sampson?" I volunteered the name.

He didn't say anything for a moment. "That's Annette's husband, isn't it?"

"So you know Annette Sampson?" I used the present tense; it was too early in our conversation to let him know she was dead.

"Yeah," he looked down, focusing on his soda. "She thought she was the only one who could do Celia any good. I don't think she likes me very much."

"Who else wouldn't leave her alone?"

He thought for a moment, then added, "Somebody was writing her dirty letters. She showed me a couple, and they were so hateful and mean, so disgusting. I couldn't believe that somebody would say those things about her, would write that kind of filth to her. Celia said she didn't know how somebody could hate her so much for nothing."

"She showed them to you?"

"Yeah."

"What did they say?"

He closed his eyes like a kid does when something scares him.

"I don't like to say those kinds of words," he said, his mouth pursed like a prissy little girl, which brought to mind Old Man Morgan.

"Tell me what the G.o.dd.a.m.n things said!" I was losing patience.

"You f.u.c.king immoral, diseased c.u.n.t. You f.u.c.king immoral c.u.n.t. You f.u.c.king immoral diseased c.u.n.t. You have no right to live when others have died. That and other things written again and again and again down the page. Other things too nasty to repeat out loud."

"I get the idea. Cecil never mentioned letters to me," I said, as much to myself as to him, but no mother in her right mind would share garbage like that with her son. "Did he know about them?"

"Yeah, I think she may have mentioned them to him, but she didn't want him to be scared for her. She didn't show them to him because they were too mean."

I thought of my own son then, and how I keep things that scare me from him, and my heart softened again toward my old friend and the boy she loved.

"What did they look like? What kind of paper?"

"Nice paper. Like the kind you write invitations on. When she got the first one, Celia thought somebody was inviting her somewhere fancy. They had a nice feel to them, that paper. Like silk, almost. So many nasty words on such pretty paper."

He shook his head with a sad smile, then a light came into his eyes as if he remembered something. "They were written in red, and sometimes the letters were blurred. Not like a pencil or ballpoint pen, but real ink like my daddy used to sign checks before he died. The kind you put into a pen. The writing is prettier when it comes out than it is from a ballpoint pen."

c.u.n.t. That was Annette Sampson's word for Celia. She probably had fountain pens, too, and colored inks. That was Annette Sampson's word for Celia. She probably had fountain pens, too, and colored inks.

"Once she said that she thought the letters had something to do with a relations.h.i.+p that came out her past."

"What did she mean by that?"

He shook his head at a loss. "I don't know but I think she meant something that happened a long time ago, that wasn't important to her anymore."

My thoughts swung back to Drew Sampson. Maybe he didn't know that Annette's relations.h.i.+p with Celia was over. Larry said she had asked him for money, and he had generously given it to her. Had there been more to his relations.h.i.+p to Celia Jones than anybody knew?

Dawson began to play with his straw like a kid does when he doesn't know what to do with his hands. "She was going to bring the letters over to you, so you could see them, maybe help her figure out what to do about them, when she got them back from Annette."

'Annette had them?"

"Yeah."

"Did you mention the letters to the police when they questioned you?"

"I told them, but they didn't think it amounted to much. They didn't think it was all that important. I think they misjudged her. I think they thought she was the kind of woman who would get letters like that."

I took a sip of my coffee, and he finished his orange soda, sucking it up loudly.

"You knew the people in her life. Do you have any idea who could have sent them?"

The expression on his face was impossible to read. "I thought it was Annette at first. She felt like Celia had betrayed her because she was mad and jealous when Celia moved out. She said a lot of hateful things to Celia, things you shouldn't say to anybody. I thought it was Annette, and I think Celia thought it might be, too. That was why she took them to her, to confront her, but when she came home she said it wasn't Annette."

'And she was sure it wasn't?"

"She said Annette wanted to keep the letters because she thought she might know who wrote them, but she never told Celia who did."

I wondered why Annette hadn't mentioned them when we spoke. Unless she had confronted the person and thought things were resolved.

'Annette was so mad at her when she broke off with her. She called her all kinds of things," he said as if speaking to himself.

'Annette told me Celia was pregnant with your child, but that wasn't true, was it?"

"Celia told Annette that was why she was leaving her, but she was lying about that. I told Celia to go on and tell the woman the truth, but Celia didn't want to hurt her more than she had to, and figured that lying about why she was leaving, saying she was going to have a baby would make her feel better.

"Celia had herself fixed a couple of years ago. She couldn't have no kids. She said it was hard enough for her to take care of one child without having another. She said she liked to do it without rubbers, and if she was fixed she didn't have to use them."

That piece of information was delivered with a smile that gave me the creeps. Risk-taking had obviously still been part of Celia's behavior. If that gun hadn't killed her, risky s.e.x might have done the job sooner or later. What truly amazed me was the number of lovers-both men and women-who had gone along for the ride. I wondered if Celia had been tested for AIDS and if she could have tested positive. That would have given somebody a reason to shoot her through the womb.