Hot Flash (6 page)

After I hung up from John, I moved to Laughton's desk. My locked-drawer curiosity ratcheted up to near-execution before I abandoned the idea and punched Reece's number into my cell phone. It took five rings before she answered.

“Reece, you alright? John is worried sick.”

“I want to open it, M. I want to but I can't.”

“Where are you?” Silence. “Reece, answer me.” More silence.

“Remember when you said everything would go away? That one day it'd be so far away that it would seem like a dream? I was almost there.”

“You
are
almost there, Reecey.”

“It was almost just a bad dream.”

“Nothing can bring that night back. It's so far behind us, baby girl.”

“If they'd only been caught, put in jail. But they're still out there.”

Silence.

“Look, I'm coming in two days. I'll be there on Saturday. I promise. We'll open the letter together and you'll see that there's nothing to worry about. Please just go home. I'll call John, tell him you're safe and on your way.”

I could hear her sniffling and sucking back tears.

“Travis. Are you bringing Travis with you?” Her tone switched up as though nothing was wrong, as if there was no envelope or note and everything was right with the world.

I struggled to contain my irritation. “No, he's only home for spring break, and you know college kids. He's going to New York for the weekend. Now, go home. Please.”

Travis had not visited Boston since he was ten. I always feigned a sleepover or sporting event, some reason for his absence. Nareece had made him hate going there. She had acted like he was the devil child from
The Omen
the few times we visited together. I shielded him when he was a baby. As a rambling and roving two-year-old, everything he touched, every word out of his mouth, he heard, “Bad, bad, boy,” which often resulted in arguing the likes of which totally exposed our communication incompetence. Travis always came away asking why Auntie Reece did not like him. All I could say was that Auntie Reece loved him and her issues had nothing to do with him. After the twins' birth, she changed, though. She started asking about Travis. She drilled for things, like how he was doing in school, what sports he played and whether he was the star player, whether he liked vegetables, whether he was smart, and then when was he coming to visit, spend a week with her, and meet his cousins? Travis and the twins, Rose and Helen, were acquainted by phone only.

“Does he like the college he's going to? What is it, Lincoln University?”

“Yeah, he likes it. Look Reecey, I'm at work, I gotta go. Please just go home. I'll call you later to check on you.”

She rambled on about how fast time passed before finally acknowledging that she would go home and then clicked off. I called John to relay that Nareece was fine and on her way home. Then I tried Laughton's cell. His final words were unacceptable. When his phone went to voice mail, I hesitated, then left a message that we needed to talk before I went to Boston for the weekend. I didn't like the idea of letting him investigate his ex-wife's death on his own, and I had no intention of doing so. I figured he would be more apt to return my call if I seemingly agreed to his request to back off for a bit. I definitely had to go to Boston anyway, and I expected Laughton could handle that much time without me.

The black glint behind his eyes when he told me he didn't need me made me think that something more than Marcy Taylor's death had him twisted up. As close as we were, that much I knew. I was unsure who had me more twisted, Laughton or Nareece. Fact was, it did not matter. Between the two I would end up checking in to the senseless bureau in a minute.

I started out the door, then went back. Laughton's locked drawer opened easily with a gun-cleaning pick. As soon as it popped open, I felt guilty, rifling through his files like he was the enemy. I flipped through the file tabs. Then I pushed them back, revealing a manila folder lying flat at the bottom. On the tab was
Mabley—Case #92-22-82965
.
COLD CASE
was stamped across the jacket. Emotional walls that had held steady for twenty years crashed down around me.

C
HAPTER
5

A
fter I made a copy of the file, I debated driving to Laughton's house and confronting him, but I was beyond exhausted from the day, and I decided on sleep first. Two murders in one day, Nareece losing her ever-loving mind, Laughton following close behind her, old wounds coming to roost—and it was only Wednesday.

It was 9:00 p.m. when I finally turned the corner onto my block. I pulled up in front of the house rather than down the driveway and into the garage as I usually did. A noisy gaggle of teenagers swooped down on the otherwise quiet block, half in the street, the other on the sidewalk. I stayed in the car until they passed, too tired to act, praying for nothing happening that I'd need to act on.

When I got in the house, I started up the stairs, my bed screaming for my attention, but then I paused midway, backtracked to the dining room table, took the file out of my briefcase, and dropped into the chair.

I flipped open the file and fingered its contents, then dove in. This whole time I'd thought my sister was the only fragment of my life I had kept from Laughton. How did he learn about the file? Carmella Ann Mabley disappeared twenty years ago. She was now Nareece Troung. Before marrying John, she was Nareece Dotson. Why had
Carmella
resurfaced now? Nareece's rants were too vague to determine what the envelope she received might be about. She made it sound like there were goings-on I was not privy to, that someone who had known her twenty years ago was threatening her new life.

I shuffled through the photographs. The photographs' borders blurred when my brain took over and streamed images in front of my eyes like a flip book. I fast-forwarded and replayed the images in my head, searching for anything meaningful. Nothing. I drilled my memory pack, but a lobotomy would have served me better, I thought, waving a tearstained photograph of a battered Nareece from the cold case file.

I dug my cell out of my briefcase and called Laughton again. Rather than make a lot of assumptions, I would ask questions. No answer made me crazy. I left a tenth message on his cell and home phones, refusing a pleading tone. I checked the clock on the cable box set on top of the television: 9:45. A moment of desperation attacked my gut. The pangs surrendered to Dulcey leaning on the bell as only she could. When I got up to answer the door, I realized I still had my coat on. I took it off on my way to the door and threw it on the couch.

When I opened the door, Dulcey blew past me saying, “I know, I know, it's late, and you're working, you're always working, so it's time to take a break and sit with me. I can't listen any more to them ladies at the shop talking up a storm about anything and everybody. Lord should deliver down a lightnin' bolt, burn up all their behinds, and send 'em hollering for cover, gossiping and carrying on like ain't no savin' souls mornin' comin'. They shoulda been long gone anyway. Acting like they don't have homes to go to, families to care for.”

I followed her in. The windstorm she made sent the contents of the file that were spread across the dining room table flying, her butt swaying like a giant pendulum. She caught sight of a photo on the table, stopped short, and backed up. She had her hairdressing case hanging on her back from a wide strap that lay across her chest and a shopping bag in her arms. She shifted the shopping bag and picked up the picture of Nareece, unconscious, beaten and bloodied, sprawled across her bed.

“Girl, you told me about this before,” she said. “But I never imagined anything this bad.”

I snatched the photo from her and gathered the papers from the floor and the table, shuffling them into a pile. “Don't even go there. Bad enough I have to relive this nightmare, without you getting dragged in.”

“What kind of mess you talkin'? Relive the nightmare? What's that about?” She gave me about a second to respond, then said, “I've been in this from the git-go, so don't start blocking me out now. I want to know what we've been talking about all these years. I want a full understanding.”

“Trust me. You understand enough,” I said, stuffing the papers into my briefcase, avoiding her stare. She allowed me a smidgeon of latitude.

“You look like you need a little somethin' somethin', honey,” she crooned, moving on to the kitchen. I plopped into the chair. The opening and closing of drawers and cabinets and her ramblings echoed in my ears until no sound penetrated them.

Next thing I knew, Dulcey was talking to me like I was deaf. “M, where are you?” She stood in front of me with a glass of wine. In a softer tone she said, “Here, honey, your favorite, or one of them anyway.” She cackled a bit. “I'm clueless since you've become such a wine
connoisseur.
” Then she examined my hair, running her fingers up under my kitchen, you know that place at the nape of the neck where the nappiest and most resistant to change hair resides. “Looks like a sister didn't come a moment too soon.” More cackling. She pulled out a chair opposite me and folded her legs under her with the grace of a gazelle, then lifted her glass. “Soon as I settle my brain with a few swigs, I'ma hook you up. To the evening.” Dulcey took a few sips and set her glass on the table.

I gulped and let the sweet, aromatic Sancerre warm my insides. Second go 'round I sipped and savored.

“Now, spill it,” she said.

I unloaded the happenings of the past few days: my testimony at Boone's trial and how I felt like a victim, Laughton's weird behavior and his ex-wife, my sneaking around behind him, and Nareece's neurotic behavior and desire to confess all to Travis. I held back the part about the letter Nareece had received. There was no sense getting Dulcey in a tizzy until I knew what was in the damn thing.

“You and Laughton ain't nothing but a minute. You all will work that stuff out and move on like nothing happened. Too much glue in you all's relationship for anything different. Now this thing with Nareece, that's another story.”

Silence fell between us as she readjusted her legs, one over the other in the opposite direction, and jerked her head back to empty her glass. Then she got up and went for refills.

“She got a letter today addressed to Carmella Ann Mabley.” I don't know what made me say it, but suddenly I needed Dulcey to know exactly what was going on.

Dulcey stopped her steps, spun around, and made her way back, almost tripping over rather than into the chair. “Nobody knows she's who she is. I mean, nobody knows who she was.”

“Somebody knows.”

She returned to the table and sat down, empty glasses in hand. “What are you gonna do? What did the letter say?”

“She wouldn't tell me. Rather, she wouldn't open the envelope. Said she won't open it until I'm with her. She just started talking crazy. Said something about they know what she did. You know how Reecey can get.”

Dulcey got up again and went to the kitchen. “Then we need to take a road trip,” she called over her shoulder. She must have had second thoughts about more wine before doing my hair because the next thing that came out of her mouth was, “C'mon in here, girl, let me fix those numbers you got invading your head.”

I obeyed her command. I sat in the chair Dulcey had set up at the kitchen sink and let her wrap a cape around my shoulders, before I commented on the road trip comment. “Yeah, I was planning on going to Boston this weekend, see what's in the envelope.” I hesitated. “I should have been there, Dulce.”

“Don't go there, girl.” Dulcey snapped on some rubber gloves and began parting and retouching the roots of my hair. Part, dab, rub. The mercaptan smell of the perm made me pinch my nose and breathe through my mouth to survive. She moved through my head like gangbusters, yapping all the way. “You
were
there or the girl might not be with us now. You been carryin' guilt around in your briefcase all these years blockin' you from livin' life the way God intended.”

“I'm ready to retire from the job, Dulcey. Do something more . . . sane. I'm forty-nine years old, no man, change coming on, Travis in college, and then there's Reecey.”

“Long as you do what you do for you, Muriel. Reece got her life. And what you mean, no man? You got that fine Calvin dotin' on you now. Nothing like a good man to soothe what ails ya. And if he's fine, then all the better, and Calvin is fiiine!”

“And you know about a good man soothing ailments how?”

“Honey, Hampton is a good husband and fine as they come. Hamp got issues for sure, but what man doesn't?”

“Exactly.” I huffed for air, then jumped up, grabbed the day's newspaper from the counter, and waved it for a breeze.

“What the hell is wrong with you? I mean, I know what's wrong with you, but you must be out of your mind right now.” Dulcey waved her gloved hands, which were covered in relaxer. “You better sit your behind down here before you burn all that hair off your head, hoppin' around with this perm on your head. First thing you'll do is curse me for leaving scabs in your scalp. Never mind it's your behind acting the fool.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I sat down, and Dulcey immediately laid me back and rinsed the perm out of my hair. “Calvin's no different. I'm positive he has issues,” I said. “I haven't figured him out yet is all.” I struggled to sit still and let Dulcey finish rinsing my hair before I lost it and jumped up again. I felt like I was being suffocated and strangled by the plastic cape she had wrapped around my body and tied at the neck.

“You're the one with issues, honey,” Dulcey said, wrapping a towel around my head. She snapped off the gloves and cackled her way through getting some ice cubes and wrapping them in a dish towel, as I labored through the fire that welled up from my insides. “Breathe, girl, deep breaths,” she instructed, wrapping the cold towel around my neck and rubbing ice cubes on my cheeks. “Gotta go with it. It's your initiation, preparing you for the second half of your life.” She put on more gloves and worked some conditioner through my hair, then put a plastic cap over it.

Dulcey pulled off her gloves again and refilled our wineglasses. “It's a shame you dealing with so much drama on top of gettin' the hot spells. At least when I thought I was losing my mind I didn't have anything or anybody to deal with but me. Poor Hamp thought he was gonna have to sign me in the looney house for real.” We laughed. “You'll make it through. Just knowing there's an end to it right around that corner you keep bumping into, oughtta keep you straight. Like I said, preparation for the second half of your life—the best half.”

“Yeah, providing it doesn't fry my brain or kill me. Or worse, make me kill somebody else first. Hell, I'm still dealing with the first half of my life, never mind the second half.”

“How that little girl sing—‘what doesn't kill ya makes you stronger'?” Dulcey crooned.

An hour later Dulcey pulled down on the last curl. It was then I heard the basement door open. Travis. I jumped up like a jack-in-the-box and rushed to gather the rest of the file papers and stuff them into my briefcase. With everything popping, I'd forgotten he'd called earlier to say he wouldn't be home until late. I was back in my chair before Travis and his girlfriend graced the top step from the basement.

“Hello, Miss Mabley,” Kenyetta said, gliding from the basement door over to me. At five-eleven, she was statuesque with creamy dark skin and bold eyes, her hair braided into a spiraled updo intertwined with gold strands. Elegant. Almost. Her size twelves didn't clear the corner of the counter. She tripped and fell forward, so her head grazed my cheek, rather than her giving me an intended kiss.

Travis bounded over to Dulcey, who wrapped the cord around her curling iron and put it in her case.

“Hi, Auntie.”

“Hey, baby. How's my favorite godchild?”

“Your
only
godchild is right,” Travis kidded and lifted Dulcey off the floor in a bear hug.

I noticed I'd missed a photograph that had fallen on the floor under the dining table. I went for it and stuffed it into my briefcase in one swoop.

“Working on something murderous, huh?” Travis said, shaking his head, as he put Dulcey down and headed for me.

“Like I keep telling you, you have a lifetime to experience awful things, as much as I hate the thought. You can't escape, but there's no need rushin'.” He hugged me and headed back down to the basement. Kenyetta followed on his heels.

“We're going to New York this weekend, remember?” he called back. “We're leaving tomorrow morning. Ms. Nelson is rollin' through at eight.”

“New York. You mean to tell me your mama is letting you go to New York by yo'self?” Dulcey hollered down the stairs. “
Hmm, hmm, hmm
, she really is growing up.” Dulcey cackled some more.

“I know that's right,” Travis said. You could hear him whispering to Kenyetta and laughing.

Dulcey closed the basement door and said, “You sure he's gonna be all right in New York alone?”

“Oh, and I worry too much?”

We moved into the living room and stretched out across the sectional sofa that occupied three-quarters of the room. By the time we killed the bottle of Sancerre, we had solved the immediate problems of the world: hunger, homelessness, and age-old discrimination against gays and blacks. Then we moved on to the more delicate, sweeter blend of a Vouvray and softer issues: rising food and gas prices, rising irritation with aging men, and grandchildren, which neither of us had. Dulcey's forty-year-old-daughter, Macey, was gay and lived in Nova Scotia with her now wife of fifteen years. They did not want children. I had no problem waiting for Travis to do his education thing before becoming a baby daddy. So ours was a dreamscape conversation of Nana's little darlings.