Mama Cracks a Mask of Innocence (17 page)

Lew took a book of matches out of his pocket, but Abe told him not to strike it. “Candi can’t take the smoke.

“Ain’t no use going over why you happened upon Elliott’s body last night, Candi. Fact is, if you hadn’t found him somebody else would have.”

That sounded like the old Abe talking
, I thought, the law officer that my mother had worked with many times before. I wanted to think he’d wrested control of the situation from Lew, but I didn’t want to jump the gun too quickly.

He threw Lew a warning look. “I’ve spent some time talking to the head of the narcotics department at SLED and he agrees with me that we’re a pretty close-knit town, that we believe in one hand washing the other. Now, I know that Lew here is used to dealing with drug dealers with their noses pierced, and long, nasty hair hanging halfway down their backs. Maybe he doesn’t quite understand the way people around here think. I mean, I have to give him credit—he’s found out some important things from his laboratory reports, things that got us heading in the right direction. But he’s come to agree with me that to get information and names from our people, lab reports won’t help. Folks around here talk to people they trust. I think a measure of confusion has come up because we didn’t combine what we got from the crime lab with a good thinking person.”

Mama’s eyes suddenly had a glint in them. I suspected, like me, she was beginning to see that the tables had turned, that Abe had taken back the case, and that she once again was a part of his team.

Lew’s mouth pulled down. “I suppose I should
tell you what we’ve learned from our lab reports. Fingerprints, hair, and skin samples found at the crime scene prove that Brenda and Kitty were killed by the same person. I’m sure once I get the lab report on Elliott, it’ll be confirmed that he too was killed by that person.”

“Something else, Candi,” Abe added. “The person we’re looking for has no prior criminal record. Nothing in the computers matched anything we’ve picked up on the fella.”

“We know that the killer is a black male,” Lew continued, “that he’s between sixteen and twenty-one, and that he had some marijuana and drunk beer shortly before he killed.”

“Now, don’t think we’re not going to talk with Clyde again,” Abe assured Mama. “It’s just that since Clyde’s been locked up before, we know everything there is about him, and his blood and fingerprints just don’t match. As a matter of fact, we haven’t found anything at any of the crime scenes that points to Clyde being there.”

“Am I right that Brenda told you the person she fingered was a high school student?” Mama asked Lew.

“Yeah,” he answered, “and despite the murders, the young people refuse to give us an inkling as to who this fella is. We’ve appealed to them through their teachers, through their preachers, and through their parents, but nobody will say a word.”

“Is there anything unusual about this kid, I mean
something that will help me pick him from the rest of the students?”

“Jewelry!” I blurted, thinking of the drug dealers I’d seen in Atlanta. “They wear lots of gold and diamonds—the real thing!”

My words hit Mama like a bolt of lightning. Something seemed to have just jumped out of the recesses of her brain. “That’s it!” she said, standing.

“What?” I asked, trying to follow her line of thought.

“Abe, was Brenda wearing any jewelry when you found her body?”

Abe thumbed through the papers on his desk, frowning. After a few seconds of reading through them, he looked up at my mother. “There’s no mention of jewelry being found on the body or anyplace around it.”

Mama motioned me toward the door. “There’s something I need to check out,” she told Abe and Lew. “As soon as I’m sure I’m right, I’ll call you!”

W
hatever clouds of confusion had existed in my mother’s mind, the look in her eyes told me that it was beginning to clear. “Simone,” she said, “now I know what’s been eluding me. Do you remember the jewelry we saw on Brenda’s dressing table the first time we visited Tootsie?”

“Yeah,” I told her. “It was a class ring and a beautiful designer watch.”

“It was a class ring with a diamond stone in it, a diamond just like the one I picked up from Kitty’s living room. Now, do you remember my remarking how attractive Stella’s class ring was.”

“Yeah.”

“Stella’s ring looked exactly like the one we saw on Brenda’s dressing table except that it had a cheaper stone in it. Remember when you first got
your high school class ring, how you kept it on your finger all the time?”

“Of course,” I answered, remembering how proud I was to wear my high school ring.

“Let’s visit Stella. If she tells us that Brenda had her ring on the night she was dropped off near Wesmart that means the killer took it off and somehow got it back into Tootsie’s house and into Brenda’s room after he’d killed her.”

A half hour later, when Stella opened her front door, we were greeted by the smell of burnt fried meat and by a young woman whose short hair stuck up on her head like Buckwheat’s. She wore an oversized gray T-shirt that hung almost to her knees, so that it was hard to tell whether she wore anything under it. Stella’s eyes were red and puffy.

Mama tried small talk. “It’s good to find you at home on a Saturday afternoon. Most young people are out shopping, getting ready for a fun Saturday night.”

Stella looked at Mama blankly, walked over to the table, picked up a king-size Milky Way, ripped open the wrapper, and took a large bite. Then she walked over to the window, turned her back to us, and finished off the candy bar.

“Stella, I guess you’re wondering why we’re here?”

She nodded. I could hear her lips smack, and I
could see the back of her head bob up and down like a ball that had grown stubby hair.

“I want to discuss something very important with you. Come sit down next to me,” Mama suggested.

Stella turned. Her eyes fixed coldly on Mama. When she spoke, I couldn’t help but wonder whether this was the same callous, defiant manner she adopted with her stepfather the morning she’d provoked him into slapping her. “I don’t want to sit down. What am I supposed to have done now?”

Mama let out a breath. “Stella,” she said as if she was making a confession, “I need you to help me.”

“Do what?”

“I need to know something about the person who’s selling drugs at the school.”

Stella threw up her hands in disgust. “Is that what this is all about? Miss Candi, you might as well pack your bags and get out of town if you think I’m going to tell you, or anybody else for that matter, about what’s going on at school!”

Uh-oh
, I thought.
Mama should have tried a different approach
.

“What did I say to get you so upset?”

Stella’s jaw tightened. Mama’s words might as well have been a red flag waving in front of her nostrils. “I’m sick and tired of people asking questions. Everything was going fine until Brenda decided that she was going to be holier-than-thou. Now a day doesn’t go by that our teachers aren’t on our backs. When I get home
from school, Mama threatens to throw me out of the house if she just
thinks
I’m using drugs. And on Sundays, our preacher beat us over the head with sermons about the evil among us. Do you know, that policeman from Columbia has even got him passing out paper during Sunday school so that if the Lord moves us, we’ll write down the name of one of our friends? What he doesn’t know is that Brenda started something, then went off and got herself killed. Nobody, including me, is about to make the same mistake. Fact is, I don’t care what another kid is doing as long as he doesn’t mess with me.”

“I suppose I should have realized how hard all of this has been on you kids.” Empathy flashed in Mama’s eyes.

But Stella continued lashing out. “What’s with these overprotective, self-righteous grown-up speeches on what’s wrong and what’s right? I bet when you were a teenager you did everything you wanted to do. Now that you’re old, and you can’t have any fun, you’ve all of a sudden decided that anything that’s the least bit fun is wrong!”

“I have to admit I did things my mother probably wouldn’t have liked.”

“And I bet when your mother got on your back to get you to squeal, you never told on your friends, did you?”

This was not my conversation, but truth is, I understood Stella’s youthful rationale. The first rule to getting along with your peers is that you can’t be a
squealer. It’s a sign of weakness, a character flaw that marks you for life. I remember a young girl named Trish who ran in my high school circle. Trish used to tell everything she knew and we avoided her like the plague. As a matter of fact, we used to tease her that the three fastest means of communication were telegraph, telephone, and teleTrish. Trish became a surgeon, a competent and extremely capable woman, but no matter how accomplished the adult Trish is, whenever we remember her we always refer to her as the class stool pigeon.

Stella might not have known Trish, but it was clear that she understood the consequences she’d have to endure if it were known that she had told an adult something about one of her classmates.

Mama didn’t seem to pay any attention to Stella’s reluctance. “Three people have been killed. Three innocent lives snuffed out.”

“I ain’t had nothing to do with that.”

Mama got up, walked over to Stella, and touched her arm. Stella twitched as though she was going to jump. “I need your help,” Mama said. “I need you to remember something very important, something that can bring an end to these terrible things that’s been happening.”

Stella continued to say nothing.

“Tell me,” Mama continued, “do you remember whether or not Brenda wore her class ring and her watch that last Thursday afternoon she came to your house?”

Stella’s look was steady but slightly warmer. “What?” she asked like she couldn’t believe what Mama wanted to know. “She had on her Anne Klein watch and her ring, which is just like mine except for the diamond.”

Mama opened her purse and took out a piece of tissue paper. She opened it to reveal the small diamond. “Let me see your ring again,” she asked.

Stella held up her ring finger. The diamond was the same exact size as the stone centered in Stella’s ring.

Stella looked surprised, almost dumbfounded. “Did that come from Brenda’s ring?” she asked.

When Mama shook her head, Stella let out a sigh of relief. “Brenda loved that ring. She’d roll over in her grave if she thought something had happened to it.”

“Do you know if any other student had a class ring exactly like the one Brenda had?” Mama asked.

For the seconds of quietness, it was almost as if Stella understood what Mama was asking and she was reluctant to answer. Then the words slipped from Stella’s lips. “Brenda and Stone Washington were the only two students who ordered that ring with the diamond center. I wanted one like theirs but my mother wouldn’t get the money from Victor to buy it for me.”

W
hen we walked out of Stella’s house, Mama had an intense look on her face. “Simone, do you realize what we’ve just learned? Stone Washington. Let me think about him.” She snapped her fingers, her eyes flashed with insight. “I saw Stone near the Wesmart the night Brenda was killed. It must have been sometime between seven-forty-five and eight because I was home at eight o’clock. I’d picked up a bouquet from the florist that’s next door to Wesmart. Stone was driving his mama’s old man’s white Mercedes. I didn’t think much of it at the time although I should have realized it when Abe mentioned that a woman saw Brenda getting into an expensive light-colored car around seven-fifty-five.”

“Was Stone Washington that handsome teenager
who slipped through Tootsie’s front door the first time we visited her?” I asked.

Mama nodded. “Yes, of course. He was the one who brought clothes to the community center around the time Sarah, Annie Mae, and Carrie arrived and at that time he told us that Tootsie sent the bag. If Tootsie sent him to Brenda’s room to get the bag, it would have been easy for him to put the ring and watch on Brenda’s dressing table.”

“Tootsie probably considered Stone as one of Brenda’s friends, although she seemed at a loss to remember him when you asked about her daughter’s friends.”

“Sabrina Miley did tell us she’d heard that Brenda had a friend who was in trouble and she didn’t have the sense to try to help him.” She hesitated. “Now, let me see. Stone killed Brenda because she learned he was selling drugs and she wanted him to tell her the name of the person who was supplying him the stuff. He killed Kitty Sharp because she was the one who told Brenda what he was doing.”

“Why kill poor old man Elliott?” I asked.

“Elliott talked a lot about the women who bought his vegetables. Come to think of it, I remember he mentioned that Stone was hanging around Tootsie’s house a lot even though the woman’s daughter was dead. And, of course there is the plastic bag I found in the basket of tomatoes. Who knows, Stone might have seen Elliott pick it up.”

“Okay,” I said, convinced. “Where to now?”