Tangled Roots (20 page)

Gina Parks had been the daughter of Morris Rollins and Melvina Carmichael Parks. Good gravy! The reverend and the Christian romance writer? No wonder Melvina had given me such a contemptuous look when she’d seen me waiting in this office for Rollins. They had a bond because of their child. And even if the child was dead, Melvina still must have deep feelings for the reverend. Why was I so shocked? Hadn’t I, and the entire town of Willow, been hearing rumors about his illegitimate children for years? It was like finding out that a mythical race of humans actually existed. I read on and saw that Gina’s death was attributed to anaphylactic shock at the age of sixteen almost three years ago. I vaguely remembered reading something in the paper a few years ago about a teenaged girl dying from a bee sting. Could this have been the same girl? Rollins had received a mere twenty-five thousand dollars in life insurance upon Gina’s death.

Lastly there was Joseph Porter. His mother was listed as Carla Porter. Her name wasn’t familiar to me. Joseph’s death had been an accidental drowning at the age of eighteen, almost five years ago. Rollins received a check for seventy-five thousand dollars when Joseph died.

I sat in Rollins’s empty office and stared at the love seat I’d sat on only a week before. I couldn’t believe I’d been ready to succumb to the charms of a man who obviously took the love, affection, and admiration of the women around him as his due. Hadn’t the man ever heard of condoms? How many other children did he have? Were they dead, too? Either Morris Rollins had the worst luck of anyone I’d ever seen when it came to personal tragedy or there was something much more sinister at work here. And just how did Inez figure in to all of this? I took the file with the info on Rollins’s deceased children and put it in my purse. I knew Harmon and Mercer would be very interested in seeing it when I finally got a chance to get to the police station. Until then, I settled myself in for the long night ahead.

T
he
sound of voices outside the office door woke me up. Bright sunlight streamed into the office through the colored block glass windows that overlooked the parking lot. Remembering where I was, I quickly jumped up off of the love seat that I’d slept on. My neck was stiff from sleeping in a cramped position and my mouth tasted like stale chocolate. But I put that out of my mind as I frantically looked around for a hiding place. The voices outside the office were female, and judging from their conversation, they were there to clean the church. I could hear every word of what they were saying but they didn’t seem about to enter the office, at least not yet. I waited, and ten minutes later they’d moved to another part of the church. I opened the door a crack and, seeing no one in sight, ran like my tail was on fire straight out the front doors. I didn’t stop until I got to my car.

It was a little after seven when I got home. Not wanting to waste any time in getting to the police station to tell Harmon and Mercer what I’d found out, I took a quick shower, and scarfed down a bowl of Cap’n Crunch. I turned on my TV as I dressed and was about to turn it off when the morning news came on and a familiar face flashed onto the screen, stopping me cold. It was Vaughn Castle. I turned up the TV and sat down heavily on the edge of my bed. According to Tracey Ripkey, Channel Four’s star news reporter — whose hair seemed to get bigger and blonder with each newscast — Vaughn Castle’s body had been found tied up in the backseat of his vandalized car. He’d been beaten and shot in the head. The camera cut to a shot of Vaughn’s Escalade being towed away. I noticed that the back window on the driver’s side was shattered. Ripkey then started interviewing people in the crowd that had gathered at the scene behind the police barrier.

“I was telling my husband just the other day that something bad was going to happen out here,” sniffed a prim white woman in a red pantsuit who looked like a poster child for the upwardly mobile. “We live down the street and when we bought our house we were told this entire area was going to be developed. That was two years ago and it still looks like a jungle back here. We moved here to get away from this sort of thing. If we knew there would be this kind of trouble out here we’d have never come.” There was a murmur of agreement among the others in the crowd.

The camera switched back to Ripkey. “Police have several witnesses who reported seeing two suspicious vehicles in this area yesterday afternoon. One was an orange Chevy pickup truck and the other was a small blue car that may have been either a Nova or an Escort. The victim, Vaughn Castle, was a known drug dealer with prior convictions for drug trafficking. Police believe his death may be the result of a drug deal gone wrong. Whatever the reason, the residents of Briar Creek will have a hard time regaining their peace of mind. I’m Tracey Ripkey, reporting live from Willow. Back to you, John.”

I stood up shakily, feeling as if the room was spinning out of control. I barely made it to the bathroom in time before throwing up my cereal. I finally pulled my head out of the toilet, brushed my teeth, and splashed water on my face. The first thing that popped into my head was the last thing I wanted to think about. If the police found out it had been Timmy and me with Vaughn, and that we’d tied him up and put him in his car, they’d arrest us on the spot for his murder, no questions asked. I was already in trouble for helping a fugitive. The fact that Vaughn had set up Timmy would just be our motive for Vaughn’s murder. I remembered back to Timmy wiping everything down before we left and managed to convince myself that, despite our cars having been spotted, nothing that had happened the day before could be traced back to us. Vaughn had probably been killed by another drug dealer, possibly one of the thuglets I’d seen with him at the Spot who was trying to make a name for himself. Either way, it wasn’t my problem.

I’d just go to Harmon and Mercer as planned, show them the folder, and tell them that Inez was still alive. They could talk to Inez and find out what really happened that night. Timmy would be cleared. Olivia could have her surgery. I could go on with my life. All would be right with the world. I was feeling so much better. I’d feel even better if Shanda had a change of heart and was willing to come clean. But I knew I couldn’t count on Shanda. Even though Vaughn had dumped her like yesterday’s trash, people had a way of elevating the dead to sainthood, purging themselves of every bad memory of the deceased. Shanda was probably still very much in love with Vaughn and still unwilling to say a word against him. I wondered if she even knew he was dead. The police could deal with her, too.

I got up, put my coat on, flung my purse over my shoulder, and headed for the front door feeling quite pleased with myself. Funny, how things can change in an instant. I opened the door and saw two police cars pull up in front of my duplex. I stood frozen in my doorway. Were they there for me? I decided I didn’t want to find out. I slammed my door shut, ran to my bedroom, and climbed out the window. I jumped down into the backyard from the roof of Mrs. Carson’s back porch. I almost twisted my ankle but managed to run down the alley behind the house just as I heard the police pounding on the door demanding to be let in. I found myself on a side street. Panting, I looked up the block and saw, to my relief, a city bus coming down the street towards me. It stopped at the corner and I hurried to catch it before it pulled off. I bought a daily pass and headed to an empty seat in the back to think. What in the world was I going to do? Did the police find out what happened with Vaughn? I knew I shouldn’t worry. I was innocent, after all. Well, innocent of murder, at any rate. But visions of prison and a cellmate named Big Bertha loomed in my mind. I’d never even gotten so much as a parking ticket. Now this.

I rode around on the bus for two hours, too afraid to get off for fear the police would be waiting for me. Bus fumes and being wedged between two cleanliness-challenged people were making me sick to my stomach. I finally decided to get off at the library after a wild-eyed woman started hissing at me. She was wearing a matted, full-length fur coat buttoned up to her chin, high-topped tennis shoes, and smelled strongly of cough syrup and cat piss. When I asked her what her problem was, she accused me of fucking her boyfriend Woody. No amount of denials on my part convinced her that Woody and I weren’t getting it on regularly behind her back. When I tried to tell her I didn’t even know anyone named Woody, she pulled a ragged stuffed Woody Woodpecker doll out of her enormous handbag, threw it at me, then proceeded to laugh maniacally just like the cartoon woodpecker. As I hurriedly stepped off the bus into the cold fresh air, I could hear her accusing some other poor innocent soul of fucking Woody.

The library was fairly crowded for that time of the morning, but I was able to find a comfortable leather chair near the magazines and newspapers. I grabbed a copy of the newspaper from the stand. Vaughn Castle’s murder was front-page news. The article didn’t tell me anything that I hadn’t already heard on the news. My stomach growled loudly and I rummaged around in my purse for the remainder of the miniature Hershey bars I’d stolen from Rollins’s office. Disappointed at not being able to find any more chocolate, I pulled out the file I’d also stolen from the office. Realizing I had nothing but time and was in the perfect place to get more info on Rollins’s deceased children, I headed over to the periodicals desk.

“May I help you?” asked the bored-looking male librarian sporting a mullet and a shaggy mustache with crumbs from his breakfast nesting in it.

“I need to look up some info on three accidental deaths. How would I go about doing that?”

“First off, do you know the names of the deceased, and the dates and places where the deaths occurred?” he asked, looking quite reenergized, like he’d been waiting all morning for someone to ask him a question.

“Yes, I have the names. One of the deaths occurred here in town, one in Springfield, and the other in Detroit, Michigan,” I said, flipping through the file folder.

“Well, we have the
Willow News-Gazette
and the
Springfield News-Sun
on microfilm as far back as the 1890s. But we stopped getting the
Detroit Free Press
about five years ago when we had to cut our periodicals budget,” he whispered like he’d just spilled a state secret. “You might be able to find that info on the Internet but we won’t be getting Internet access until next year. You might try over at the college.”

I really didn’t need to know any more about Ricky Maynard’s death. I’d already gotten all the info I needed from Timmy, Vaughn, and Ricky’s death certificate. It was the deaths of Gina Parks and Joseph Porter that most interested me. I gave the librarian the dates and waited while he pulled two rolls of microfilm from a large drawer. He set me up on a microfilm reader then rushed off to help another patron.

I looked for info on Gina Parks’s death first and finally found the headline TEEN DIES OF BEE STING AT CHURCH PICNIC at the end of the roll of microfilm. I printed it out and read it:

I noticed the article didn’t mention how they knew she’d been stung by a bee. If she had other allergies, then any one of them could have killed her. I searched the entire roll of microfilm but never found any further info on Gina’s death other than her obit, which stated that she was an only child survived by her mother. I loaded the other roll of microfilm. I didn’t have to hunt very long for the article on Joseph Porter’s death, MISSING MAN’S BODY FOUND IN RESERVOIR:

I searched further and found another article about Porter’s death a month later, titled DROWNING DEATH RULED AN ACCIDENT.

Two suspicious deaths during Holy Cross Church outings seemed more than a little fishy to me. The fact that they were both illegitimate children of Morris Rollins, and he benefited greatly from the deaths of all three of his children, left me feeling sick to my stomach. Either Rollins was the unluckiest father alive or he had caused the deaths of his own children for the insurance money. But, in spite of my suspicions, I still couldn’t figure out why Inez’s death had been faked and why he would risk trying to claim the life insurance. I printed out both articles on Joseph Porter and went to the reference department. I found a copy of the Willow phone book and located addresses for Melvina Carmichael and Rosalie Porter. I’d bought a daily bus pass so I figured I might as well get my money’s worth.

Rosalie Porter lived about six blocks from the library on Farley Street. Farley wasn’t exactly one of Willow’s better neighborhoods. It was a mix of empty buildings and old homes that ranged from abandoned and falling down to merely run-down and in need of repair. The bus let me off at what I hoped was about a block from Rosalie Porter’s address. I walked down the street slowly, looking at the addresses on each house. I knew I probably looked like a confused tourist lost in the wrong part of town. But I didn’t see anyone I could ask. A stray dog peered menacingly at me from underneath a rusted-out abandoned car, making me happy I’d worn my tennis shoes in case I needed to run. My ankle was still smarting from jumping off the roof, so I hoped running would not be required. I could hear loud arguing coming from one house and saw a toddler with a snot-encrusted nose and wearing a dirty winter coat playing on the sagging porch of another house. I hurried down the street looking for the Porter house, which turned out to be the last one on the block, cursing my nosiness and questioning what in the world I was trying to accomplish. I started to turn back but the next bus wasn’t for another half hour so I had no choice but to make the most of my impulsiveness.

Rosalie Porter’s house was one of the better-kept houses on the block but was still in desperate need of a paint job. Long strips of brown paint had fallen off of the two-story house, revealing the former color to have been white. I could hear the faint sound of a television as I walked up the creaking front steps. Before I had a chance to knock on the front door, it flew open and an elderly black woman in a tight, black, lint-covered sweat suit with fat pink curlers in her sparse white hair leaned out the door and stuck her hand in the mailbox. We both jumped at the unexpected meeting. The woman quickly recovered and peered at me suspiciously.