Murder with Fried Chicken and Waffles (Mahalia Watkins Soul Food Mystery) (17 page)

 

“T
he whole thing was silly and bound to happen if you axe me,” Wavonne says. “Everybody and their momma knew Marcus was a playa’. What made Jennie Becks think she was gonna keep him from straying without a leash around his neck is beyond me.”

“You see,” Melva chimes in. “I think what really chapped Jennie’s ass was that it all happened right there in front of her. She was sitting under the dryer at Salon Cuts watching with her own two eyes while Régine put the moves on her man . . . right there in the beauty shop waiting area. I’m sure Jennie wanted to hop out of her seat and intervene, but choosing between your man and your hair—that’s a tough choice for a sister.”

“Surely, Marcus didn’t dump Jennie right then and there, did he?”

“No. Jennie thought there was just some flirting going on at the hair salon, and figured she’d think twice about ever bringing Marcus with her to Salon Cuts again. But that Régine is slick—she somehow managed to slip Marcus her number without Jennie seeing.”

“So Régine and Marcus had a thing going for a while before Jennie found out about it?”

“Well, this is where it gets interesting,” Melva says, rubbing her hands together. “Not only did Jennie find out that Marcus was seeing Régine. Régine found out that Marcus was still seeing Jennie after he told her he had stopped.”

“Oooh, girl. This is better than
The Young and the Restless,
” Wavonne says.

“Monique over at Hair Chique cuts Jennie’s hair now. She gave me the four-one-one.”

“I thought you went to Salon Cuts?”

“Halia, you gotta go to more than one beauty shop if you’re gonna get all the good gossip,” Wavonne says.

Melva nods in agreement with an “I thought everyone knew that” sort of look and continues. “For a smart man Marcus did some stupid things. He wasn’t satisfied with
just
Régine or
just
Jennie—he had to have both. He and Régine did their secret thing on the side for a few weeks until Régine demanded he drop Jennie. Word is Marcus told Régine that he had given Jennie the heave-ho when he really hadn’t, but then the dumb brother took Jennie out to Jasper’s in Largo. If he’d paid attention when he visited Régine at the beauty shop, he’d have known that Quinn, who shampoos hair at Salon Cuts, also waits tables at Jasper’s three nights a week.”

“Quinn’s workin’ two jobs to save up for some new titties,” Wavonne says. “Quinn’s got a big ass, but no boobies up top. So to even things out, she looked into either gettin’ the fat sucked outta her ass or some implants shoved behind her itty bitties. She opted for the implants.”

“Thanks for the insight, Wavonne,” I say, before turning back to Melva. “You were saying . . .”

“So Quinn sees Marcus and Jennie at Jaspers and gets on the horn to Régine. Quinn tells her that Marcus is there with his cheese stick all up in Jennie’s marinara sauce. Not long after, Régine storms into the restaurant and goes full-blown Omarosa on both of them.”

“Wow. This really is better than
The Young and the Restless,
” I say.

“Sure is. Jennie still didn’t know about Marcus and Régine at that point.”

“She was about the only one in town who didn’t know,” Wavonne pipes in.

“After Régine’s tirade at the restaurant and Jennie learning about Marcus’s affair with her, Marcus didn’t need to choose between the two girls anymore—Jennie made the choice for him and dumped his ass . . . probably the smartest thing she ever did.”

“Hmmm. Very interesting,” I say. I’m about to question Melva further when I happen to see Jennie chatting with Régine in one corner of the room. It’s only the two of them and, oddly, their conversation seems to be very cordial.

Wavonne catches me staring at them. “Well, look at the two of them makin’ all nice-nice.”

“Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” I ask.

“About what?”

“What Marcus’s old girlfriend and the woman he was cheating on her with are saying to each other.”

I’m really surprised when I see Jennie give Régine a hug and then start for the door.

“Let’s go,” I abruptly say to Wavonne and hurriedly get up from the table. I want to catch up with Jennie before she leaves, and the most discreet way to do just that would be to “happen” to leave the repast at the same time.

“Go? I’ve barely touched my food. I ain’t goin’ no place.”

“You go ahead,” Melva says. “I’ll drop Wavonne at the restaurant.”

“Thanks, Melva,” I say and scurry through the church basement to catch up with Jennie.

“Leaving already?” I call behind her. She’s just about to step out the door.

“Yes. I need to get back to work.” She walks out the door and holds it open for me to follow.

“Did I see you chatting with Régine?”

“Yes.”

“It’s really none of my business, but didn’t you say over by the buffet table that Marcus was cheating on you with Régine? I guess I was surprised to see you two chatting so genially.”

“I’m not really into drama. It’s in the past, and Marcus is dead. Régine probably did me a favor by taking him off my hands anyway.”

“That’s a good way to look at it,” I say and wonder if Jennie is telling the truth. Has she really forgiven and forgotten, or is it all an act to hide the fact that she pummeled Marcus over the head with my frying pan? I’m about to say my good-bye when another thought occurs to me:
What if Jennie and Régine were in it together? What if they joined forces to get back at Marcus for playing both of them for fools?

“You have a good day,” Jennie says when her phone chirps, and she pulls it out to check for a text.

“You, too.”

She smiles at me, and I wonder who’s texting her now . . . and I wonder even more if anyone was texting her the night Marcus was killed. Régine was typing something on her phone as she walked into her building the night Marcus died. Could she and Jennie have been trading texts about a mission accomplished? Was it just a coincidence that Régine and Jennie were at the restaurant together on the evening of Marcus’s death or were they communicating to each other between tables? It all raises a lot of questions. I’ve been good at that lately . . . raising questions . . . it’s the answers I don’t have yet.

 

R
égine and Jennie speaking so amicably to one another and seeing Jennie get a text right before we parted company in the parking lot makes me wonder even more about the two of them. As I get in my van, I think back to the footage of Régine walking into her building the night Marcus died. She was typing on her phone as she walked through the door. Clearly she was at home before Marcus was killed, but isn’t it possible that she was still involved in some fashion? Of course she could have been texting anyone while she was coming into her building, or maybe she was just browsing on the Internet. I’m thinking how handy it would be if I could see the screen of her phone on the camera footage when I remember Jeffrey, the front desk clerk at Régine’s building, saying that Régine was not seen exiting the building until the next morning. That meant that not only was there a camera facing people entering the building, which Wavonne and I viewed, but there must be a camera facing people exiting the building—a camera that would have been to Régine’s back when she entered the Madison a week ago Saturday, and it might show what was transpiring on her phone.

It was a long shot, but I decide to make a detour back to the Madison before returning to Sweet Tea. When I reach the apartment building, I park in a visitor space and walk toward the lobby. I press the button at the front door and am disappointed to be greeted by a female voice—I was hoping Jeffrey would be on duty again and amenable to taking a few more bucks in exchange for letting me view the security footage a second time. Not knowing anything about the woman on the other side of the intercom, I tell her that I’m interested in renting an apartment in the building. She buzzes me in, and when I reach the front desk I see a white woman of about fifty years standing behind the counter.

“Hello,” she says in a gravelly voice as I approach the desk. She has the look of someone to whom life has not been terribly kind, and I detect the smell of cigarette smoke as I get closer. Her hair has a seen a few too many bottles of do-it-yourself Nice ’N Easy, and her heavy makeup has settled into the creases on her face.

“Hi.”

“Hello. I’m Viola. What can I help you with? You’re interested in an apartment?”

“Yes. What do you have available?”

“We’ve got one and two bedrooms.” She hands me a piece of paper with some details about the units. I give it a quick look.

“Thanks,” I say. “How is the security? You know I’m a single woman.” I’m trying to veer the conversation toward the cameras and feel her out to see what I think the chances are of her letting me take a look at some of the video footage.

“It’s very good. We have coverage at the front desk until seven p.m., and then a security guard makes regular rounds throughout the night. We share him with a few other buildings in the area.”

“I see some cameras.” I point to the one behind her that faces the entrance.

“That’s camera one,” she says. “It constantly monitors who comes into the building. And that’s camera two,” she adds, pointing to the camera behind me. “That monitors who exits the building. We also have cameras at the four side doors, which are always locked. Only staff members have keys. Residents can only exit from them.”

“Good to know. Safety is very important to me.”

Now that we’re on the subject of the cameras, I’m trying to think of a way to ask if I can see some footage from them and relate the request to my concerns about the security of the building, but nothing that I think she’ll buy is coming to mind. I briefly ponder the idea of just explaining my situation to Viola and seeing if she’ll help a girl out, but I’m not getting a vibe from her that indicates she’d be receptive to violating policy. Jeffrey was young and easily manipulated—plus, when he was manning the desk, I had Wavonne and her ample bazumbas working the situation. My bazumbas are nowhere near the caliber of Wavonne’s, and they wouldn’t do me much good with another woman even if they were. Viola also doesn’t seem like the type of person who’s going to break the rules for a few bucks.

I’m about to give it up, make an excuse to Viola as to why I’m no longer interested, and head back to Sweet Tea, but then Viola leans in a bit closer, and I get another whiff of cigarette smoke, which gives me an idea.

“We have a couple of vacant units open if you want to take a look.”

“That would be great, but I’ll be renting with a roommate,” I lie. “She should be here soon. Do you mind if I wait in the lobby until she gets here, and we can look together?”

“No. Make yourself comfortable.”

The lobby isn’t much to look at, but there’s a reasonably comfortable-looking sofa across from the front desk. I’ve barely sat down on it when my phone rings.

“Hi, Momma,” I say.

“Halia. I’m in line at the Giant, and I’ve met the nicest man . . . and he’s single.”

“What?”

“His name is Lorence. He’s right here. Say hi.”

I hear Momma put the phone up to him.

“Hello,” he says.

Momma takes the phone back. “He works for a health insurance company.”

“That’s nice, Momma. Now leave the man alone and let him pay for his groceries.”

“You’d like Halia,” I hear her say to him. “She works in a restaurant.”

Momma always tells men she’s trying to set me up with that I “work in” a restaurant. She never tells them that I own the place. “Let them get to know you first before you tell them you run your own business,” she always says. “Men can be put off by successful women.”

I can’t make out what he says in response, but my guess is he just wants to get away from the pushy old lady trying to set him up with her daughter.

“I’m going to give him your number, Halia,” she says to me. Then I hear her speaking to Lorence. “You should call her. She’s really very nice.”

I’m about to protest, but then my eyes wander back over to Viola, and exactly what I’ve been waiting for happens.

“I have to go, Momma. Leave the man alone and work on getting your own dates.”

I hang up the phone and watch as Viola gets up and leaves her post with a lighter and a pack of cigarettes in hand. Just as I suspected from the gravelly voice and ashy smell, Viola is a smoker, and we all know, sooner or later, smokers are going to take a smoke break. And thanks to the Maryland Clean Indoor Air Act, the same law that doesn’t allow me to offer a smoking section in Sweet Tea, Viola has to go outside to do it. I don’t smoke myself, but enough of my staff does for me to know that she’ll be gone for at least five minutes, maybe more.

After I watch her walk down a long hallway to the left of the reception area and disappear out a side door, I don’t waste any time scurrying behind the desk and through the door to the back office. I quickly grab the mouse next to the keyboard and start clicking. I watched Jeffrey as he was navigating the files earlier and, besides, it’s pretty simple—there’s one main folder for each camera and then additional subfolders by date. Fortunately, Viola was kind enough to let me know that camera two is the one I want to view. I simply click on that folder and then open the file for the night in question. I find the fast-forward button and rush the footage to 12:21 a.m. I lift my finger from the mouse to let the recording play. When I lean in close to the screen I can see Régine’s back as she enters the building. I can even see her phone, but the footage is way too grainy for me see what’s on the screen.

Disappointed, I close the file and exit the office. I grab a pen and a slip of paper from the desk and leave Viola a note thanking her for her time but letting her know something has come up, and I have to leave.

Annoyed that I wasn’t able to garner any useful information, I head toward the main door and leave the building.