Mama Pursues Murderous Shadows (8 page)

“But Ruby didn’t overdose on medication,” Mama reminded him. “She was shot.”

“I don’t know anything about that!”

Once again, very quietly, Mama asked Leman, “Are you sure that you didn’t see Ruby the night she died?”

“I don’t know what makes you think that I’ve got
to tell you anything.” Leman hesitated. “But the last time I saw Ruby was when she knocked off work at four o’clock that day. We had a big shipment to get out, so I worked another four hours. When I got home that night I was bone-tired. Soon as I took my bath I went straight to my bed.”

Mama leaned forward. “I was told that you were in Avondale around midnight the night Ruby died.”

“Who told you that?” Leman asked. There was a trace of uneasiness in his eyes.

“Somebody saw you,” Mama told him, her voice low, calm.

“That somebody lied to you. Like I told you, I’d worked twelve hours straight that night. I came home, took a bath, and crashed.”

“Do you know Charles Parker?” Mama asked.

“No,” he answered.

Mama tilted her head a little.

Leman stood up to leave, took a breath as if to say something, then didn’t. He left us, pushing through the restaurant’s door and into the warm darkness.

Something’s wrong, I thought. I glanced at the speedometer. Sixty miles an hour, a cruising speed on the dark and desolate road from Avondale to Otis. So why is my heart pounding?

Then the hood of my Honda flew up in my face.

I hit the brakes. Mama reached out and grabbed my arm but then quickly released it when she realized
how tight my fingers were wrapped around the steering wheel and how hard I was struggling to blindly keep the car on the road.

“Take it easy, Simone!” she shouted as the smell of rubber and asphalt recorded the Honda’s disastrous skid.

The darkness confused me and the Honda spun around, left the pavement, flew up in the air and nose-dived in straight down.

Then all was silent, except for the trickle of some fluid running somewhere in the darkness of the car.

My body ached like I’d been used as a punching bag. “Mama,” I whispered.

Nothing.

I tried to turn, but my seat belt and the air bag pinned me tight. “Mama, are you all right?” I shouted.

Nothing.

Then, feeling myself a long way off and drifting farther into darkness, I decided that my mother was dead and I hadn’t told her good-bye.

T
he trip to Otis County General Hospital’s emergency room in the ambulance was a nightmare that I was glad to have over. We were lucky: a man driving by had spotted our wreck and called 911 to say that a car had gone off into a ditch.

“Nothing broken. Nothing fractured, not even a concussion,” the doctor told us, his voice devoid of emotion. “You can go home.”

My father smiled nervously. “Thank God,” he told Mama. “I don’t know what I would have done if I’d lost both you and Simone at the same time.”

It was almost one
A.M.
when we finally got home. Other than reassuring my father that we would be just fine, Mama hadn’t said very much. When my father asked, “What happened out there?” she simply told him, “Maybe tomorrow it’ll all make sense.”

Mama’s words told me that she, like me, was trying
to understand what had really happened to us. The hood of the Honda—why would it go up like that? Had somebody snapped the latch? If so, they’d have to undo the lock from the inside of the car. I tried to remember: Did I lock the car door when we went into McDonald’s? And who was the Good Samaritan who had called Abe?

It was almost noon before I opened my eyes. My body hurt all over, so the first thing I did was to take a steaming hot shower. I almost felt human by the time I stumbled into the kitchen.

Mama sat at the table, sipping coffee.

“What’s up, pretty lady?” I asked.

“You all right?” she responded without looking at me.

“Except for soreness, I’m terrific. What about you?”

“I’m okay,” she said, her voice distracted, her mind somewhere else. “Your breakfast is in the microwave.”

“Thanks. Where’s Daddy?”

“James has gone to get the car towed. I suspect you’ll need a rental to get back to Atlanta.”

“Today is Sunday, isn’t it? I wonder whether my car can be fixed.”

“James will take care of that,” Mama said.

I poured my coffee and orange juice. “Have you decided what happened out there?” I asked, taking a
plate of golden waffles from the microwave and joining her at the table.

“Simone,” Mama said, “why would that hood fly up like that?”

I looked into her eyes; the concern was deep. I picked up my fork, then put it back down. For once, even Mama’s wonderful food wasn’t tempting. We’d almost died on the road from Avondale to Otis.
Why?

“Could it have been Leman Moody?” Mama continued. “And, if so, why? I didn’t say anything that would have threatened him, did I?”

“Of course not,” I said, but I didn’t sound as soothing as I’d hoped. “It could just as well have been Inez Moore or her old man.”

Mama nodded but didn’t say anything. It was as if she was following some thought inside her head.

“Up until you started asking questions,” I said, “the consensus has been that Ruby Spikes committed suicide. The killer might have been satisfied that was going to be the end of it.”

“Yes,” Mama said. “But this only confirms that somebody killed Ruby, doesn’t it? If what happened to us was no accident, Ruby’s death wasn’t a suicide.”

I nodded. “You’d better be careful,” I warned. “The killer may try again!”

“Yes,” she murmured, “but I’d rather James not know what we suspect just now. He’d panic and do something to scare the killer.”

“That lunatic should be scared! Mama, we almost
died last night. And it’s really true: my whole life flashed in front of my eyes when I thought I was going to die!”

“Simone, honey, you’re exaggerating again.”

“Okay, but it was a close call and you know it. When I called you and you didn’t answer, I just knew you were dead. And, lady, that’s pretty scary!”

“I was stunned,” she admitted softly. “Confused, I guess. I heard your voice but—”

I reached over and squeezed her hands. “No need to apologize,” I said. “We got through that alive, that’s what counts.”

The front door opened and closed.

“Candi,” my father said as he walked into the kitchen. “There is a skid mark where you and Simone had your accident last night that looks like somebody pushed the Honda in the ditch.”

“Really?” Mama said, trying to look surprised.

“And the back fender on the car is dented, like it might have been the spot that took the blow,” he added, shaking his head.

“Things happened fast,” Mama said. “Do you want a cup of coffee?”

“No,” Daddy answered. “You know, baby, both Abe and I think there’s more to what happened than a freak accident. Do either you or Simone remember being hit from the rear?”

“Maybe the person who called Abe to report our car in the ditch bumped us accidentally?” I suggested. “Maybe, because of the darkness, he saw us too late and—”

“If it happened that way, I guess whoever called Abe did the right thing. Although he should’ve stayed around to make sure you and your mama were okay.”

“If he was alone in the car, he had no other choice but to get to a phone and report the accident. Everybody knows that the chances of another car driving on that road that time of night are nil,” I said.

My father seemed to relax. “Abe said that the caller didn’t give a name.”

“Whoever made that call saved our lives,” I told him, hoping this interpretation would satisfy his concern about the skid mark and dented back fender.

“I guess so,” my father said reluctantly. But it was clear from his tone that he wasn’t sure that my story was really what had happened to me and Mama as we drove back from Avondale the night before.

I
stayed in Otis until Monday morning, when my father helped me arrange for the Honda’s repair and a two-week rental of a Ford Escort. I arrived in Atlanta late Monday afternoon. The balance of the week was hectic, but Friday morning was a demon.

First thing that happened was that I got a ticket. The residential area off Piedmont onto Morningside is always targeted for speeders. I’d seen at least a dozen people get tickets there, but for some reason their sad experience escaped me this morning. I was driving fifty in a twenty-five-mile-an-hour zone when I got nipped right after I came over the small hill that’s down from Morningside Elementary School. That meant a $125 fine.

Once I finally got to the office and tried to make a pot of coffee, the darn machine wouldn’t turn on. Shirley, Sidney’s assistant, called the company that
services it. They told her it would be three days before they could get us another machine to replace it. So I had to make coffee the hard way, the way it was done in the Stone Age: put a cup of water in the microwave, boil it, and then use instant coffee. While my water was being nuked in the microwave, I discovered I had a run in my pantyhose an inch and a half wide that ran straight up my right leg. I groaned.

The only thing to do, I was thinking once I’d gotten back in my office with my cup of instant coffee, was to go down the street to buy another pair of stockings. That thought hadn’t cleared my mind when my boss walked into my office. “Simone,” Sidney snapped in an unusual tone, “this brief has so many typos in it, I refuse to read it!”

“Two of our typists are out with the flu,” I reminded him. “And the temp we hired just can’t cut it—she’s not familiar with legal terms.”

Sidney wasn’t satisfied. He threw the papers on my desk. “Get this corrected!” he roared, thrusting his face a little too close to mine. I noticed that there were tiny white flakes of dandruff on his shoulders. “I want it back on my desk
today
!” Then he stomped out.

For a moment, I didn’t know what to do. Finally, I decided to do the corrections myself. It would be the best way to make sure that they were done right, the way that Sidney always wanted it.

Then my computer went down. I went into the secretaries’ office: the whole system had crashed. “Now that we can’t live without them,” I told Shirley,
“the machines have started to exercise their control over us.”

“Maybe they’re like all the rest of us overworked laborers,” Shirley grumbled. “They stop when they’ve been pushed too far.”

Uh-oh, I thought, Sidney must have taken an angry swipe at her this morning, too.

“I’ll call the repairman,” Shirley told me. “I’ll make sure he understands that we need him ASAP.”

It wasn’t ten minutes later that I was at the copier and
that
sucker jammed. I pulled paper from every nook and cranny I could see, but to no avail. The message light kept flashing “Jammed.” Reluctantly, I had to go back to Shirley.

When I told her what had happened, she demanded, “What do you want me to do?”

“Call another repairman,” I suggested, bracing myself for another fit of temper.

“I’ll call in a minute.” Her tone told me that I’d been dismissed from her presence. I shrugged and headed back to my office. I drank two more cups of instant coffee, and cursed the run in my stocking at least a dozen times until I decided to leave the office early and stop by Lenox Mall before lunch. Just as I made that decision, the phone rang. It was Cliff. Cliff has eyes that remind me of Richard Roundtree’s, deep, dark, and sensuous. Today, however, his voice didn’t sound sexy. It sounded exasperated. “I have to break our lunch date,” he told me.

“What’s the matter now?” I asked, no doubt sounding more than a little impatient.

“It’s Daniel Abrams. That man won’t give me a break.”

Daniel Abrams was Cliff’s client. He was an accountant, a man who got his kicks knowing where every penny of his money was twenty-four hours a day. Daniel Abrams’s divorce was now final. Cliff’s law firm had given him an itemized bill for the services rendered. Now Abrams wanted proof that
x
amount of dollars had indeed been spent on postage, telephone calls, copying, etc., and it would take Cliff all afternoon to satisfy this man so that the firm could finally get paid for hours and hours of work.