Schooled In Lies (18 page)

“Don’t get me wrong. I think what happened to Julian was horrible. But I don’t think it’s fair that you, Audrey, and Gerald are blaming Cherisse. You shouldn’t be making her a scapegoat for what happened to your cousin. It’s bad enough you guys made her life miserable in high school. Can’t you just cut her a break?”

“What ever happened to her? Do you know if she’s married?” he asked with such avid interest that I didn’t have the heart to tell him that she was missing, and married or not, he wasn’t her type. I just shrugged and looked at my watch.

“Even with her fancy new clothes, Cherry’s no match for her sister. Now, Serena Craig was my kinda woman hot, wild, and tattooed. Serena’s a hothouse flower while Cherisse is a dandelion.” Dennis laughed and pounded on the table so hard that his fist landed on Cherisse’s fork, launching the salsa-drenched lettuce resting on it into his face.

I burst out laughing but a loud gasp behind me made me turn. It was Cherisse and she was in tears. She was staring at us with such a hurt look on her face that I realized she must have overheard what Dennis said and thought I was laughing with him and not at him.

“Cherisse, I wasn’t—” I began, trying to explain. She grabbed her purse from under the table and ran out the door before I could stop her.

“Man, what’s her problem?” Dennis wiped his face.

I just glared at him.

Chapter Thirteen

“LORD, YES, I REMEMBER that terrible murder,” exclaimed Mama the next day. I’d stopped by her house on my way to work the next morning, and she’d insisted on fixing me breakfast. While she whipped up the waffle batter, I asked her about the Groves murder.

“Did you know Maurice Groves?” I had to be at work in a half hour and was trying to wolf down the piping hot waffle quickly. However, the waffle had other plans. The warm maple syrup, and melted butter dripping from it, were forcing me to slow down and savor my meal.

“No. I didn’t know him. I knew some folks from church who did, though. Heard he was a hardworking man who took good care of his family. Are you sure Ivy Flack was mixed up in his murder? I remember meeting her back when you were in school and she seemed so nice.”

Mama took a sip of her coffee and glanced at the glaring headline of that morning’s paper, which declared: “Dead Principal Linked to 1967 Race Murder” Ms. Flack’s secret was out. The picture that accompanied the story showed a teenaged Ms. Flack, identified by her former name, Alice Ivy Rivers, being escorted from the courthouse after having testified against the four members of the Righteous Whites.

I looked closely at the picture, trying hard to see if I could detect any traces of violence in the teen that had become Ivy Flack. Despite what Ben Brock had told me, I still had a hard time believing she’d had a hand in Maurice Groves’s grisly fate. But all I could see was a skinny teenaged girl with thick bangs, wearing cat-eyed glasses and a winter coat that looked too big. She was accompanied by her parents who were identified as Sharon and Fred Rivers, both of whom looked shell-shocked and wore expressions that practically screamed,
Why did this happen to us
?

“Me, too,” she said. “Cause I seem to recall a certain fifteen-year-old who was so lazy when it came to doing her schoolwork because she was too busy reading romance novels that she almost flunked the tenth grade. Remember her?”

“Yeah, but look how she turned out,” I smiled smugly, causing Mama to chuckle.

“And I also remember that same fifteen-year-old who snuck out of the house when she was grounded because of those pitiful grades to go to a party because some little bumpy-faced boy she liked was going to be there, and he didn’t even pay her any attention and spent the whole evening dancing with some other girl. Remember her?”

“It’s not just about her past.” I said, instead of pointing out that Conrad Franklin’s face hadn’t been that bumpy and he only danced with Rita Baker because she was a ho. “She did some other stuff, too.” I told her about the stalking of the reunion committee and the plan to fake her death.

She let out a deep breath. “I swear I don’t know why I bother watching the soaps. Those people in Hollywood could never make up mess as good as this.”

I agreed with her, shoved the last forkful of waffle into my mouth, and rushed out the door to get to work.

After work I had a free afternoon and, on a whim, headed over to Urbana. I located an address for an M. Perry in the Urbana phone book at work and, assuming it was Calvin Lee’s sister, planned to pay her a visit. Urbana was a small town on the other side of Springfield, Ohio, a mere fifteen minute drive from Willow. M. Perry lived on Logan, a street that dead-ended next to a set of railroad tracks. I drove slowly until I found the address and then pulled up in front of a two-story white house with black shutters and a slightly sagging porch. There was a large tree in the middle of the mostly dirt and weed-filled front yard with an overweight beagle lying on its side underneath. I though for a minute the dog might be dead until it got up and lumbered across the yard to finish its nap on the porch. There was a brand new green Ford pickup truck in the driveway. But I had the feeling that no one was home, or maybe it was just wishful thinking.

I sat in my car and contemplated the wisdom of coming to see Mildred Perry. I wasn’t buying for a minute that Calvin Lee Vermillion had truly changed his beliefs. The timing seemed a little too convenient to me. Did Mildred Perry share her brother’s views on race? Would she even open her door if she saw a black woman standing on her porch? From what I’d seen on television, and heard from Ben Brock, Mildred Perry was a religious woman. Just how far did her devoutness go? It’s been my experience that too many people tended to pick and choose the parts of the Bible that appealed to them the most, and often it was the parts that allowed them to feel superior to other folks, morally or otherwise.

I was so caught up in my thoughts that the tap on my driver’s side window almost sent me the through the roof of my car. I looked over and saw that a tiny elderly man, of indeterminate race, whose tanned wrinkled face reminded me of a golden raisin, was smiling at me. The street had been totally deserted a minute ago and I figured he must have come out of one of the neighboring houses. I rolled down my window and he leaned into the car.

“Hi there. You here for the Bible study meetin’,” he asked providing me with an excellent excuse.

“Yes, I am. Do you know if Mrs. Perry’s at home?” I leaned back a little and hoped he would notice he was trespassing in my personal space. No such luck. He leaned in even further.

“No, ma’am. Millie’s brother took sick early this morning. She rode over to the hospital in the ambulance with him. He’s got that cancer real bad. She’s still not back so I been tryin’ to catch everybody to let ‘em know Bible study’s been cancelled. Ain’t seen you here before. You new?”

“Yes. This was going to be my first meeting.” I tried to look and sound disappointed.

“Well, if you’re a friend a Millie’s, you might wanna go on over to the hospital and see if she needs anything. She ain’t got nobody but that brother a hers since her husband died. Never did have no kids. I’d go myself but I’m so old, and got so much wrong with me, I’m afraid if I walked in there they’d keep me,” he said with a chuckle. I thanked him and headed over to the hospital.

Urbana had one hospital, Mercy Memorial. I pulled into the half-full parking lot and hoped the media hadn’t gotten wind of Calvin Lee being rushed to the hospital. I looked around before going inside and was relieved to see there were no news vans anywhere to be seen. Calvin Lee was apparently yesterday’s news. It didn’t take me long to locate Mildred Perry. I found her talking, or sobbing to be more precise, on a pay phone near the emergency room waiting area. I watched as she finished her conversation and went back to sit down on a nearby couch. I hated to intrude on her misery, but she did look like she could use a friend. I pulled a tissue from my purse and offered it to her.

“Are you okay, Mrs. Perry? Is there anything I can get you?” I asked gently. She gave me a startled look and cautiously took the tissue and blew her nose before replying. The tears in her blue eyes made them look even brighter. She looked like a woman who’d almost been pretty but never quite made it. She was wearing the same large cross pendant that I’d seen her wearing on the news, as well as a pair of brown polyester shorts that came to her knees and a blue sleeveless blouse with wet stains down the front, probably from her tears. Her gray-streaked, brown hair was longer than most women her age wore it, but it looked thick and healthy and hung down her back.

“My brother just died. I’m waiting for my pastor to come help me with the details.” She looked away then realized I knew her name and added, “Do I know you?” She looked at my face and then my clothes. I could tell she was trying to figure out if I worked for the hospital. I could have lied but I just didn’t have the energy to deceive her.

“No, ma’am. We’ve never met. But I think we have a mutual friend, Alice Ivy Rivers?” At the mention of Alice River’s name, Mildred Perry’s thin frame tensed up, and her hands curled into fists.

“Alice Ivy Rivers is no friend of mine. And if you were smart, she wouldn’t be your friend, either.” She got up and walked over to look out the window. I followed.

“That’s the problem, Mrs. Perry. I thought she was a friend of mine but I realize now that I never really knew her. Dr. Ben Brock told me that you told your brother she was dead. Is that true?”

“Yes,” she said, blowing her nose again. “At one time my brother’s sole purpose in life was to get even with that girl. It was eating him alive. He needed a new outlook, a new focus to redirect all that passion. I felt it would do him a world of good to get involved in the church and redirect his life towards Jesus. Rid himself of all the hate that ruined his life and took the life of another man. Alice came to me and begged me to tell him she was dead because he found out where she was and had other inmates calling her and sending her threatening letters. It would have ruined his chance at parole if they found out he was behind it. So I lied to him and told him Alice was killed in a car crash. I didn’t do it for her, mind you. I did it so my brother could move on. Once he thought she was dead, he eventually joined the prison ministry,” she said proudly.

“Alice knew Calvin Lee thought she was dead?” I asked. Mildred Perry nodded.

I sank down in a nearby chair. Ms. Flack had lied to me. How could I have been so stupid? Hadn’t Ben Brock told me she’d been involved in Maurice Groves’s murder? Why had I been so reluctant to believe it?

“Don’t feel bad, honey.” She sat down next to me and patted my hand. “She had everybody fooled.”

“Mrs. Perry, do you believe what your brother said about Alice Rivers having participated in Maurice Groves’s murder?”

“I have to admit that I didn’t at first. Calvin was a liar. But what always gave him away was that he could never keep his lies straight. I thought he was just trying to blame others for what he’d done to that man. But in the thirty years he was in prison, his story about what happened that night Groves was killed never changed. Calvin told me Maurice Groves worked as a janitor at the same factory as Alice Rivers’s daddy. She was afraid he was going to tell her father he’d seen her out with Calvin after her parents had told her to keep away from him. She didn’t want to get in trouble. She attacked him first, and since my brother didn’t like blacks anyway, he and the others followed her lead.”

I felt sick to my stomach and couldn’t speak.

“I was with Calvin when he died and I asked him if there was anything he wanted to get off his conscious before he died. He told me no. I think if he’d have lied about Alice Rivers, he’d have said so.”

I thanked Mildred Perry and got up to leave, but she had something else to say.

“You tell Alice Rivers, or whatever she’s calling herself these days, that I meant what I told her,” she said vehemently.

I turned to look at her. Having been busy taking care of her sick brother, she obviously had no idea the former Miss Rivers was dead. I filled her in and the news took the remaining wind from her sails. More tears streamed down her face but they were angry tears this time.