Bad Girls Finish First (23 page)

Now that he was, Grace didn't know what to say. Neither did Michael, but after a few uncomfortable seconds, he said, “I apologize for the way I called the last time. I was out of line.”

“That's okay,” Grace heard herself say.
That's okay? That's
not
what I planned to say.

“Look, I know you probably hate me, but I'm just . . . seeing you was just so good. I know it may not seem like it, but I've always wanted the best for you. Looks like you're doing well.” Michael paused, then softly asked, “Are you?”

“I'm fine.”

“Well, good. That's all I wanted to say. I'll let you go.”

“Bye.”

“Bye,” Michael said and hurriedly added, “Grace? I think about you all the time. Good night.”

Grace tried to figure out what Michael's calls meant. Did he want them to be friends? If he was so happy with Raven, why was he calling her? Would he call again? All her questions did was lead her to more questions. She ended up with dozens of “whys” and “what ifs” but not with any answers.

22

“Y
ou want my opinion, he's dead.”

“What makes you so sure?” Dudley asked. He was talking to the retired detective who'd investigated Omar's disappearance.

“It was pretty obvious. Raven's place was the last place he was believed to be,” the detective said. He spoke in the officious twang used exclusively by Texas law enforcement types.

“And?” Dudley pressed.

“And all the little gals he was tomcatting around with said he wasn't the type to up and disappear.”

“What evidence did you get from Raven's home?”

“Whatcha mean?”

Dudley exhaled. He hated dealing with slow people. “From the search of her apartment. What did you find out?”

“Well, er. I don't rightly recall getting a warrant,” the detective said. He didn't sound as blustery as before.

“How could you not get a warrant to search her place?” Dudley asked.

“As I recall it was the end of the year, so I ran out of time.”

Dudley was incredulous. “How on earth could you run out of time? The guy had only been missing for six months!”

“I retired the end of that year. I had a lot of paperwork to fill out.”

Dudley couldn't take any more. He hung up and reached for the notebook he kept on Omar Faxton.

He had checked name and social security number databases using the Internet and there was no record of Omar Faxton. All three of Omar's women said that he had to be dead. And now the detective, sorry though he might be, said he believed the same thing. One way or another, Omar had fallen off the face of the earth. As far as Dudley was concerned, Omar Faxton was dead.

I'm so good at shoveling dirt I should've been a gravedigger,
he said to himself.

 

 

Dudley placed his call at exactly noon. “So, brother, what mischief are you planning to get into while you're here?” Dudley asked. He had taken to checking Raven's schedule behind her back and learned that she had set aside a block of time from one until five during which she was “unavailable.” That could mean only one thing: David was in Austin.

“I had a meeting with a minister's coalition,” David said, then added a lie. “I started to call you for lunch, but I've been sidetracked.”

“By Raven, I presume,” Dudley wisecracked.

“No, by business,” David replied curtly. The more Dudley dug, the more tight lipped David became. He was actually on his way to meet Raven. She had rented a suite at the Driskill Hotel. Before he could think of how to change the subject, Dudley did it for him.

“By the way, when's the last time you saw Erika?”

“Couple weeks ago, why?”

“Oh, no reason,” Dudley said casually. “A friend of mine saw her out last night, said she was with a black guy. I thought maybe it was you.”

“Wasn't me. I just got here this morning.” David hoped that his voice sounded natural.

“Mmm. I guess she's moved on.” Dudley struck a cheery tone. “I've got to run, David. I'll talk to you later.”

David slid his phone into the inside pocket of his jacket. Although it was a cool October day, his face felt flushed.
Is she fucking another man? Another
black
man?
David thought. He knew he didn't have a right to question Erika's activities because he'd put her on the back burner since he and Raven had returned from San Diego.

When David walked into the Driskill Hotel his plan had been to go straight to the bank of elevators and make it to the suite as quickly as possible. Instead he stopped in the lobby and pulled out his cell phone.

“Hey. It's me,” he whispered. “Are you available for a late-night dinner?”

 

 

When the elevator doors opened, Grace stepped to one side to let the UPS man get on.

“Ladies first,” he said. When he smiled at Grace, she found that he looked only a year or so older than Christopher.

“No. I'm not the one with the heavy load. Go on,” she said as she put her hand on the door to keep it open. As the UPS man rolled his cart onto the elevator, Grace absently noted that he had strong, sturdy legs, a luminous smile like Evan, and broad shoulders like Christopher.

“What floor?” Grace asked as she pressed floor twenty-five for herself.

“Twenty-two.”

“Sure is unseasonably warm today. It feels more like June than October,” Grace said, making conversation. “Hope you're keeping cool.”

“I was, until we got on the elevator.”

Grace heard something familiar in the young man's tone, but it had been so long, she wasn't sure what it was. She turned and looked at him.

She may have forgotten the tone, but Grace remembered the look. He was coming on to her!

“I like your dress, it fits well,” he said. “I thought I'd have a chance to cool off on my ride up, but it's hotter in here than it is outside.”

He looked her up and down appreciatively.

“Son, I've got children almost as old as you.”

“So? You're not my mama.”

He smiled that smile that she loved to see on Evan. It struck her for the first time that one day some girl was going to find her baby boy sexy as hell. Of course, Evan got his smile from his mother, but when she looked in the mirror, Grace didn't see a sensual being. She had no idea that the sexy, Evanlike smile the UPS man flashed at her was pretty much the same as the smile she gave back to him.

“Don't let my baby face fool you, I'm twenty-eight.” The UPS man leaned against the elevator wall, with one leg bent, and the bottom of his foot on the wall. He balanced his clipboard on his raised thigh and cocked his head to one side. “And I happen to like good-looking grown women.”

When he said that, the UPS man reminded Grace less of her son, and more of the young man on the cover of one of Christopher's CDs—what was his name? Tyrese. She had turned the CD facedown the first time she saw it because looking at Tyrese's ripped body made her feel like a child molester. But she never forgot his name.

When the elevator door opened, the UPS man pressed a card into her hand as he backed out. “My cell number is on the back. Call me.”

Grace looked him in the eye and said, “Have a good day.”

Oh, my goodness, I just flirted with a kid!
Grace thought, but she couldn't stop smiling. She folded the UPS card in half, intending to tear it up, changed her mind, and slid it into her handbag. Then she exited the elevator at her doctor's office.

At the end of Grace's examination, her doctor said, “You're in great shape, Grace, but your blood pressure's a little elevated. What's the story?”

“Oh, doctor, there's nothing to worry about. I'm sure it's just the heat.”

 

 

“Why do you have to drive back to Dallas this evening? It's already too late to do anything but get caught in traffic. Look, it's piling up already. You could at least stay the night and leave early Saturday morning.”

David joined Raven at the window of the Driskill and embraced her from behind. “That's just the rush hour traffic, baby. It'll ease up soon, so my drive won't be too bad. I have a late-night meeting with a Dallas school board member, otherwise you know I'd stay.”

“But I want more,” she said and playfully tried to push him back to the bed. “We never do it just once.”

“I know.” David put his powerful arms around her and stopped her in her tracks. “But you wear a brother out. Another round with you and I might fall asleep on my drive back to Dallas.”

 

 

“You won't believe what my sources dug up on Erika,” Dudley told Raven. When he'd called her, Raven insisted that Dudley meet her in the relaxation room of the Driskill Hotel spa, where she lounged while waiting for her fingernails and toenails to dry. When she'd called from her suite to book her services, the receptionist had asked, “No massage today?” Raven's skin still tingled from David's nimble touch, so she smiled to herself and said, “Not today.”

“It'd better be something good, Dudley. Erika's killing us, knocking down every piece of legislation Michael wants pushed through, even small items. I don't understand how she can be so petty,” Raven added, talking more to herself than to Dudley. “And I didn't realize she was so powerful.”

“Erika's got three things going for her. Number one, she's got deep pockets. Forget about STRAPPED's money, I'm talking her own inheritance, which I'm sure she's using now.” Dudley was using his fingers to tick off Erika's advantages. He moved from his pinkie finger to the one next to it. “Politicians—many of them Democrats—who don't mind undercutting Michael. No matter how much they smile in his face, some of these good old boys still aren't ready for a black governor.” Dudley went to his middle finger. “And she's a home girl with a reputation for loyalty. These guys know that if they come through for her now, Erika will help them out later.”

Raven listened closely because she found Erika's reach as instructive as it was disturbing. Like a very good chess player up against a grand master, Raven wanted to remember every move Erika made.

When Dudley finished, Raven asked, “And you think you've uncovered something good enough to overcome all that?”

Dudley delivered his news with triumphant flair. “Erika's into black men. How's that for good?”

Raven rolled her eyes. “It's mediocre, that's what it is. We need something that's going to bring her down, Dudley, not just make people talk about her behind her back.”

“Raven, how long are you going to have to live in this state before you catch on to the way things work? How many prominent mixed-race couples do you know?”

Raven thought about it. She shrugged, conceding the point. She knew a few black judges with white wives, but the men deliberately kept their spouses in the background as though they were shameful family secrets.

“I've always suspected that Erika liked dark meat, I just had no idea she had such poor judgment.”

Raven sat up. “Meaning?”

“Meaning that she's got a thing going with a STRAPPED employee. The young man works for STRAPPED and spends a lot of time with Erika. He's just a kid, only seventeen, eighteen at the most, his folks are dead and Erika's set herself up as a mentor. She's taken to having the young man over every Friday night. From what I hear, he doesn't know enough to keep his mouth shut and Erika is too into the relationship to see that people are starting to talk.”

If Erika's anything like me she couldn't care less about what people are saying,
Raven thought. “If it's common knowledge around the office, why hasn't anyone said anything?”

“You'd be surprised at the things people close their eyes to.” Dudley realized he'd gotten carried away, made his story too juicy.
The best lies are simple ones,
he reminded himself. “Only a core group knows, and they're all loyal to Erika. They won't tell.”

Raven threw up her hands in frustration. “Then it's not a big deal after all. Jeez, Dudley!”

“It will be if the rank-and-file faithful get wind of it. Guys who are pro-gun are generally anti everything else. Anti-abortion, anti-immigration, and anti-race mixing. STRAPPED has to be the most conservative group in Texas. That's saying a lot.”

“So you think I should expose Erika—get her out of the way?”

“Not necessarily. Just like Erika's hurting us, she can help us, given the right motivation. You think Erika opened STRAPPED's purse for you before? Just think how much it'll be worth to her, in money and influence, to keep her secret a secret.” As Dudley spoke, he thought,
Raven's losing her edge. Six months ago, she wouldn't have had to ask me what to do.

Just as Dudley began to think he was wasting his time, Raven rewarded him by saying, “Don't just sit there, Dudley, it's already six o'clock. You've hired an investigator, right? See if he can catch Erika in the act. Getting caught with a black man who's practically a kid probably won't ruin her, but it'll get her off our backs long enough to win the election.”

Dudley gave Raven a confident nod, and prayed that he knew his brother as well as he assumed. Right about now David should be going crazy with jealousy that Erika had found another black man to spend time with. He wouldn't leave Austin without reclaiming Erika as his property.

Dudley assured himself that he knew David's weaknesses like the back of his hand. He set aside his doubts and thought about the future.
Once I get rid of Erika, it'll be one down, one to go.

 

 

“Come on,” Erika said. She took David's hand, intending to lead him toward her bedroom. When David had called out of the blue, Erika hadn't asked why he'd been scarce because she didn't care. She had no love for him, but it had been a taxing week and he was the best stress alleviator a woman could ask for.

David stayed where he was. “I need to ask you something.”

Silence.

“Are you screwing somebody else?”

Erika let go of his hand and crossed her arms. “That wouldn't be your business, seeing as how there's not much going on between us.”

David stuck his hands in his pockets. “If you plan on me going in there”—he nodded toward the bedroom—“then it is my business.”

While David had been spending time with Raven, Erika had made it up to lover number seventy-two. “David, I'm a grown woman with a healthy libido. There's always somebody.”