Murder with Fried Chicken and Waffles (Mahalia Watkins Soul Food Mystery) (18 page)

 

I’
m thinking about Régine and Jennie as I arrive at Sweet Tea. I can’t help but wonder if they were somehow in cahoots with each other. But, then again, one would think they’d be smart enough not to be seen hugging each other at Marcus’s funeral if they’d actually conspired to kill him.

When I come through the front door of the restaurant, I see that the place is packed with customers. We had exactly three chicken potpies left over from yesterday, and I see that all three of them have already made their way to some of the tables. At one table in particular I see a fork pierce the crust of one of those pies, lift out a heaping portion of filling, and follow it to the lips of one Officer Jack Spruce. I don’t know Detective Hutchins well, but Jack has been coming in to the restaurant for years, and we’ve always been friendly. And, if Wavonne is right, and he is, in fact, a little sweet on me, maybe he’ll share something with me about Marcus’s case that Detective Hutchins hasn’t.

“Jack. How’s it going?”

“Hey there, Halia. Just fine. This pie is delicious.”

“I’m so glad you’re enjoying it. We made them fresh yesterday. You got one of the few we had left over.” I pull out the chair across from him. “Mind if I sit down?”

“Of course not.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“You know an acquaintance of mine, Marcus Rand? I’m sure you’re aware that he recently met with an untimely death?”

“It’s been the talk of the station for days.”

“Can you tell me anything about what’s going on? Do the police have any leads or prime suspects?”

Jack suddenly looks uncomfortable.

“What? What is it?” I ask.

“Halia, I really can’t be divulging information about active cases.”

“Of course. I wouldn’t want you getting into trouble, but even the tiniest bit of information would be appreciated.”

He looks down at the table and then back up at me. “I don’t know how to say this, Halia . . . and I probably shouldn’t mention it anyway. . . .”

“Mention what?”

“There are some leads and they all . . . well, they all point to one prime suspect.”

“Who?”

Jack doesn’t say anything. Instead he points his eyes at Wavonne, who is taking an order at a table a few feet away.

“Wavonne? But Detective Hutchins was in here the other day and talked with her for almost an hour. I thought she had been cleared.”

“Just between you and me, Halia”—Jack lowers his voice—“I don’t think it will be long before they bring her in for more formal questioning. They are trying to get a Macy’s clerk to agree to identify her in a lineup . . . well, not Wavonne. . . . I’m sure Wavonne is innocent.... I mean, whoever bought a purse from the Macy’s in Marlow Heights with Marcus’s credit card—that’s the person they are looking to identify.”

“What do you mean they are
trying
to get the Macy’s clerk to agree to indentify her?”

“The young lady at Macy’s doesn’t want to get involved in a murder investigation and is refusing to cooperate. Can’t say I blame her, even though Hutchins assured her that she won’t be in any danger. He tried to get her to identify Wavonne in a photo, but she wouldn’t even look at it.”

God bless her!
I think to myself. “How did they get a photo of Wavonne?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they downloaded it from her Facebook page or something.”

“I hope the clerk does agree to get involved,” I lie. “Wavonne has nothing to do with Marcus’s murder, and if they were to put Wavonne in a lineup, I’m sure the Macy’s clerk would not recognize her because it simply was not Wavonne who used Marcus’s credit card.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Halia.”

“I wish the police would stop wasting their time on Wavonne. There are so many other people in Marcus’s life they should be checking out. Jennie Becks, for instance. Do you know if they have checked out Jennie? She was Marcus’s old girlfriend—”

Jack interrupts me. “Marcus’s old girlfriend who he was cheating on with Régine. Yes, we’re aware of her relationship with Marcus. She’s been interviewed. She actually was here the night Marcus was killed.”

“Yes. I know. I just saw her at Marcus’s funeral and recognized her from that evening.”

“She was with three of her friends all night. After they left here, they went to a bar—someplace called The Park at 14th. Apparently it’s a fancy-smanchy nightclub in the city. Her friends served as her alibi, and the doorman said they are regulars at the club. He remembered letting them in ahead of several other guests waiting in line. You know how those clubs are—they always let the pretty young women in ahead of everyone else.”

“So that takes Jennie off the suspect list. But what about some of Marcus’s other dinner companions that night he was killed?” I ask. “You’re familiar with the case, so you’re aware of Heather and Josh Williams, right?”

“Yes.”

“I gave Detective Hutchins a lead about them a couple of days ago? Do you know if he followed up?”

Jack smiles. “The cologne smell? Yes. Everyone had a good laugh over that one at the station.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I think you did Wavonne more harm than good by bringing that up to Hutchins. Now he half-thinks you’re a little nutty and imagining smells . . . and half-thinks you made the whole thing up to take suspicion off Wavonne.”

“What?! Imagining smells? Are—”

I’m infuriated, but Jack interrupts me again and doesn’t allow me to finish the tirade I’m about to go on. “But to his credit, Halia, Detective Hutchins did follow up. He had the trunk swept for DNA samples.”

“And?”

“Nada. Which isn’t surprising given that Marcus shaved his head, and even less surprising considering that, at some point, the trunk liner had been removed.”

“Removed?”

“Yep. Word at the station is that there was no liner or carpet or whatever you call it in the trunk.”

“Please tell me the cops find that very dubious.”

“Yes, I suppose, but apparently Heather and Josh said that milk had leaked from some groceries, and they had to get rid of the liner due to the sour smell.”

“Sour smell, my ass! Marcus Rand was in that trunk. I’m sure of it.”

Jack just looks at me, clearly unsure what to say.

“Don’t tell me you think I’m imagining smells, too?”

“Of course not, but what you smelled could have been any number of things, and it’s certainly not enough to lead to any arrests.”

I think about what he’s said and sit across from him quietly as I consider it.

“Things will be okay, Halia. Hutchins is a good cop. He’ll find out who did it.”

“I hope so, Jack. I appreciate you sharing what you know with me. I’ll let you get back to your lunch. Pick something off the dessert menu on the house,” I say and get up from the table.

It’s too busy to leave right now, but when peak lunch hours are over, I’m going to pay a visit to Heather and Josh Williams. Wavonne is not going to be paraded around in a lineup for something I got her involved in. I’m not convinced Heather and Josh killed Marcus, but I am convinced they are hiding something, and I’m going to find out what it is if I have to promise them free fried chicken and waffles for the rest of their lives.

 

“W
e’ve got trouble,” I say to Wavonne.

“Trouble? New trouble or old trouble?”

“The police are looking at you as the prime suspect.”

“Me?! Oh,
hail
no!” It’s after two o’clock and the restaurant has quieted down so Wavonne’s words echo throughout the place.

“Would you keep your voice down?”

Wavonne lowers her voice. “Why me?”

“Because you fit the description of the person who used Marcus’s credit card, which makes sense, considering you
were
the person using Marcus’s credit card. Lucky for us, the salesperson who remembers you is wary about getting involved in a murder investigation and isn’t cooperating.”

“Remembers me? She must wait on thousands of people. Why’d she remember me?”

“Because you apparently complained to no end when she was ringing up the purse you bought.”

“All I said was ‘Macy’s
sucks ass
.’ She must hear that all the time. You’ve been in that store over by Iverson Mall. They don’t stock half the nice things they sell over at Pentagon City or Montgomery Mall. And it’s always a mess. Whenever I go in there, it looks like Porsha and Kenya just had a throwdown on top the Gucci display.”

“Never mind. It doesn’t matter. What’s important now is getting the police off your case and moving them on to someone who may have actually committed the crime.”

“And how we gonna do that?”

“I’m leaving now to go see Heather. I couldn’t find her home address, but I did a search on the Internet, and I found out where she works.”

“I’m goin’ with you.”

“No. You stay here. We need to handle her delicately and being . . . being delicate is not your specialty, Wavonne. I think she might talk to me if I approach her in the right way.”

“And she might
kill
you like she did Marcus. I’m goin’ with you, Halia. That girl’s gonna talk one way or the other.”

Once again I explain to an increasingly concerned Laura that Wavonne and I are ducking out for an hour or so, and Wavonne and I leave Sweet Tea and make our way into the city. We’re only a few miles over the border from D.C., so with no traffic, we make it to Heather’s office in less than half an hour and find street parking nearby.

“Where does she work?”

“From what I could find online, she works in human resources for a law firm,” I say to Wavonne as we enter Heather’s building and look at the directory for Saunders and Kraff and Associates.

“Seventh floor.”

Wavonne and I approach the elevators that eventually open to an opulent space of shiny hardwood floors, plush chairs, and a granite reception counter with fresh flowers on the far corner.

“May I help you?” asks a pretty blond receptionist.

“Yes. We’re here to see Heather Williams.”

“May I get your name?”

“Halia Watkins and Wavonne Hix.”

She picks up her phone and dials. “Heather. I have Ms. Watkins and Ms. Hix here to see you?”

Silence.

“Halia Watkins and Wavonne Hix,” the receptionist repeats into the phone.

“Tell her we’re from Sweet Tea.”

“They said to tell you they are from Sweet Tea,” the young lady says into the phone before looking back at us. “She’ll be right out.”

Shortly thereafter Heather emerges from behind a dark wood-paneled door looking more mature than I remembered her, probably because of her professional dress.

“Halia. Hello,” she says with a perplexed look on her face. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“Damn straight, there is,” Wavonne says.

I bump Wavonne with my elbow to shut her up. “Yes. There is, Heather. Thank you. Can we talk in private?”

She hesitates for a moment. “Ah . . . yes . . . sure.” She gestures for us to follow her, and the three of us walk along a softly lit hallway to her office.

“Such a nice office,” I say as she closes the door behind us.

“Thanks. I really only have it because I’m a recruiter. I need a private place to conduct interviews. Otherwise, I’d be out there in one of the cubes.”

I nod and there’s a brief moment of silence before Heather asks, “Are you still considering investing in the Reverie Homes program?”

“No. We’re here about another matter, actually.”

Heather doesn’t say anything so I begin. “I don’t know of a good way to approach this, so I guess I’ll just say it. Heather, you’re a nice young woman . . . at least I hope you’re a nice young woman, but I know as sure as the sky is blue that I smelled Marcus’s cologne coming from the trunk of your car, and I need you to explain why.”

“So you’re the one who prompted the police to show up at our house and search our trunk?”

“So I am.”

“Did they tell you they didn’t find anything related to Marcus’s death?”

“Yes. They also told me the trunk liner had been removed.”

“So?” Heather asks, and I can tell she’s trying to hide it, but my comment has unsettled her.

“Seems like an extraordinary coincidence that shortly after Marcus is killed, I get a whiff of his cologne from your trunk. Then, when the police arrive at your house, the piece of material that would most likely contain some DNA evidence has been removed.”

“Josh had a gasoline container in the trunk . . . that he uses for the lawn mower. It tipped over. That’s—”

“A gasoline container? That’s funny. I heard it was a carton of milk that leaked.”

Heather stumbles. “There was a carton of milk.... That was before the incident with the gasoline.”

“You expect us to believe that?! Do we look like some kind of dumbass hood rats?”

I glare at Wavonne, and she shuts up. But I can see her simmering toward a boil. I put my hand on her leg and stroke it gently. “Take it down a notch, Wavonne. There’s no need to get riled up,” I say to her before turning back to Heather. “As Wavonne said, you really don’t expect us to believe that, do you? And even if we did, it still does not explain why Marcus’s cologne, a custom scent made just for him, was wafting out of your trunk.”

Heather just stares back at us, and I can see her hands trembling just ever so much.

“You and Josh had a right to be angry with Marcus. I don’t dispute that, and one might understand . . . even a jury might understand how, in a heated moment, someone might lose it. What do they call that? Temporary insanity?”

“I’m sorry, but you two need to go. I don’t have any information for you.”

“We’re not leaving, Heather, until you tell us what happened the night Marcus was killed.”

“Do I need to call security?”

I call her bluff. “I don’t think you’ll do that. You’ll have a lot of explaining to do when your colleagues see two women being manhandled out of your office.”

Wavonne and I just sit there and stare at Heather. She looks genuinely afraid, but doesn’t say anything.

“I’ve got all day,” I say, looking at my watch.

Heather nervously shrugs her shoulders, a bead of sweat forming on her forehead. The three of us sit there in silence for a few seconds, which turns into a minute, and then two minutes. I begin to wonder if I’ve ever been in a more uncomfortable situation in my life. We continue to play the waiting game, and I begin to doubt that Wavonne and I will be able to outlast her. She’s clearly strong-willed. I’ve got a restaurant to run. I can’t sit here all day playing chicken with Heather Williams.

“Fine,” I say and stand up. “We’ll go, but we are
not
done here.”

“Goin’?” Wavonne says, standing up, as well. “
Hold
up!” she adds, putting a hand in the air. “We ain’t goin’ nowhere.” She stomps over to the other side of Heather’s desk. “Look here. The police are on my ass, and I didn’t do
nothin’
. We know you know somethin’, and we ain’t leavin’ ’til you tell us what it is. I’d hate to mess up that pretty little white girl mug of yours,” Wavonne says in a harsh tone before she puts her hands on the arms of Heather’s chair and shoves her face right up against hers. Heather’s head is pressed so hard against the high back of her chair I swear it might burst right through. Her face goes from bright red to stark white as Wavonne raises her voice even louder. “And I don’t like no violence, but let me remind you in case you forgot . . . I’m from PG County, hooka’, and I will
wreck
a bitch!”

“We didn’t kill him! We
didn’t!
Josh just moved the body.
I swear !
” Heather yelps like a scared kitten.

“Josh did
what?
” I ask, grabbing Wavonne by the elbow and pulling her away from Heather.

“He moved Marcus’s body . . . dumped him in the lake. That’s all. We . . . he didn’t kill him.”

“Then why’d he move the body?” Wavonne asks.

Heather looks down at her lap and then back up at us. “Because Josh thought I killed Marcus. I do have a temper on me, and honestly, I’ve gotten . . . well, I’ve gotten sort of violent before. But I go to an anger management program, and I’m doing better. I’ve done some things in the past that I’m not proud of, but I would never kill anyone. Josh and I had a fight when we got home from the restaurant . . . not really a fight . . . it was mostly me yelling at him. I’ve always blamed him for us getting involved in Marcus’s mortgage scheme. I eventually stormed out of the house, and, when I didn’t come back for a while, he got worried and went looking for me.”

The color has come back into her face, and I sense she’s relieved to finally be sharing this information with someone.

“He didn’t know where I went, but he thought I might have gone back to your restaurant to see if Marcus was still there and scream at him the way I’d screamed at Josh. He drove back over there, but the restaurant was dark, so he figured he’d look for me at my mother’s or my friend Christie’s house. Once he’d passed the restaurant, instead of turning around, he said he figured he’d just loop around the back of the shopping center to the exit. That’s when he came upon Marcus’s body. He thought I’d killed him.”

“You? You’re tiny. How would you have killed Marcus?” I ask.

“I have . . .
used
to have anger issues. Poor Josh has been on the wrong side of my temper more than once. It’s ridiculous . . . really it is, but I can see how, in a panicked moment, he might have thought that I . . . well, you know . . .”

“The scar on Josh’s cheek?” I ask, remembering how noticeable it was when they came to Sweet Tea for lunch a couple of days ago.

Heather looks away from us. “Like I said, I’ve done some things I’m not proud of, but I would never
kill
someone. Josh just got all flustered and wanted to protect me. He thought he could fix the situation by getting rid of the body or at least buy some time to figure out what to do. It was a stupid thing to do. I had been at my mother’s the whole time.”

“Josh must be awfully strong,” Wavonne says. “Halia and I were barely able to drag Marcus out of the kitchen to the back alley, and there were two of us. How’d Josh get him in the trunk and dump him in the lake all by himself ?”

I frown at Wavonne as Heather raises her eyebrows. “What do you mean you were barely able to drag Marcus out of the kitchen?”

“Nothing,” I say.

“Marcus was dead inside of Sweet Tea? And you guys moved the body? And you’re here questioning
me?
”

“That’s not important—”

“Like hell it isn’t. How do I know
you
didn’t kill him?”

“Fine,” I say and take a breath, seething mad at Wavonne for opening her big mouth. “We did drag Marcus’s body out back. We found him dead in the restaurant. Someone hit him over the head with a cast-iron frying pan. Much like your husband, I panicked and was afraid my business wouldn’t survive if word got out it was a murder scene, so Wavonne and I did some body-moving of our own.”

Heather looks at me thoughtfully. “Well, at least I know Josh’s secret is safe with you. You blab to the police about Josh, and I’ll blab to the police about you.”

“Point taken.” I sit back down, and motion for Wavonne to do the same. “So if you and Josh didn’t kill Marcus, then who did?”

“Jacqueline,” Heather says conclusively. “I’m almost certain she did it.”