Schooled In Lies (15 page)

THE HEAT IN MY SWELTERING apartment chased me from my bed early Saturday morning. It was much cooler outside than in. So I opened all the windows and had my ceiling fan on full blast as I sat on my couch and nursed a soggy bowl of Capt N’ Crunch. There was nothing on TV but cartoons, infomercials for fitness equipment, and the news. Not in the mood to be amused, or made to feel bad about my less than toned thighs, I watched the six o’clock news. There wasn’t much going on in the world except for the usual crime, famine, and corruption. But when blonde, big-haired, news reporter Tracey Ripkey, on the air earlier than her usual time slot, started reporting on the early release of Urbana, Ohio, native, and white supremacist, Calvin Lee Vermillion from prison, I sat up abruptly, dumping my cereal bowl all over my oriental rug.

The camera showed a frail, gaunt old man walking out the gates of London Correctional Institute being met by a small handful of family and friends. In the background I could see a throng of protesters shouting and waving signs. According to Ripkey, Vermillion was suffering from liver cancer and had been released a week early to seek treatment. The camera then panned to one of the protestors, an attractive, well-dressed, middle-aged black woman named Ramona Chapman, the daughter of Maurice Groves, the man Vermillion killed.

“Where is the justice? That man should have been given the death penalty for what he did to my father. Now he’s been let out early to seek treatment to prolong his worthless life? What kind of world are we living in? Calvin Lee Vermillion didn’t just kill my father. He killed my mother, too. She died of a broken heart a year later, and that left me and my brothers and sisters orphans!” Her voice broke off with a sob and she had to be comforted by a man who was identified as her husband.

Next Ripkey interviewed Vermillion’s sister, Mildred Perry, a tall, thin woman with gray-streaked, brown hair who’s big blue eyes were bloodshot from crying. A large cross pendant on a thick chain hung from her neck and rested against her almost flat chest. She had her back to the protestors and I could see her flinch every time one of them hurled an insult at her brother.

“My brother has served his time!” She had to shout to be heard over the protestors. “He’s spent the last thirty years getting to know Jesus and accepting him as his Lord and Savior. Nothing anyone could do to my brother will bring back poor Maurice Groves. My heart goes out to his family. But Calvin Lee has paid for his crime and should be allowed to live out whatever time he has left with his family.”

The last person Ripkey interviewed was the man of the hour, Calvin Lee Vermillion. He looked so haggard and frail I thought he might drop dead on the spot. I calculated his age to be late fifties, but he looked much much older. He certainly didn’t look like anyone Ms. Flack had reason to be afraid of anymore. He could barely walk unassisted.

“Mr. Vermillion, how does it feel to be a free man?” asked Ripkey.

“Like a dream come true. I’m so blessed to be back amongst my family,” he responded in a weak voice. He might be a dying man, but that didn’t keep him from appreciating Tracy Ripkey’s blonde good looks and cleavage. I could also tell he was enjoying the limelight, at least until Ripkey asked her next question.

“Mr. Vermillion, do you still keep in touch with the other members of the Righteous Whites?”

Vermillion’s lip curled in distain, and he gave the pretty blonde reporter a look that could have curdled milk. It wasn’t until that moment that I could see the hatefulness that Ms. Flack had spoken of. Vermillion turned away from the camera, and his sister answered the question for him.

“My brother is a different man than he was thirty years ago.” She turned to help her brother into a waiting car.

I called Ms. Flack to see if she’d seen the news. There was no answer. After cleaning up the spilled cereal, I turned off the TV, showered, dressed, and headed out the door to Ms. Flack’s house. Surely after she heard what a sick, broken, old man Calvin Lee had become, she wouldn’t be afraid of him anymore and could get on with her life.

By the time I got to her house it was almost 8 o’clock; still early, but I figured she might be up packing, that is if she hadn’t skipped town yet. I wanted to catch her before she foolishly left everything behind to get away from a man who’d be dead soon. Her car was parked in the driveway in front of the detached garage. I was happy to see no signs of the stray dog from the day before but still kept half an eye on the neighbor’s bushes. There were lights on in Ms. Flack’s house, but no one came to the door when I rang the bell multiple times. I didn’t even see her cat perched on the sofa in front of the window. Figuring the doorbell was broken, I pounded on the front door and it swung open. I walked in.

“Hello! Ms. Flack, are you home?” No answer.

The stillness in the house unnerved me as I walked through the neat and modestly decorated living room. The only sound was the hum of the central air-conditioning. I’d only been in Ms. Flack’s house a couple of times, the last time being several years ago, and it hadn’t changed at all. There was a tiny dining room that led into a large kitchen. She wasn’t in the kitchen, which was also neat as a pin and painted in a soft yellow that made it look bright and cheerful. There was an empty cat carrier sitting on a large butcher block table sitting in the middle of the kitchen, but no Tamsin, and more importantly, no Ms. Flack. I headed out of the kitchen and down the short hallway.

“Ms. Flack, it’s Kendra. Are you here?” Still no answer. I could see the bathroom at the end of the hall. The door was half open and I knocked and walked in.

Ms. Flack was in the bathtub, though I needn’t have worried about embarrassing her because except for her bare feet, she was fully dressed. Unfortunately, she was also dead. I was rooted to the spot while my body tried to decide whether to flee or faint. I finally pulled myself together enough to press my trembling fingers to her neck to feel for a pulse, even though her open mouth and cloudy, staring eyes told me she was long gone. Her skin was ice cold and I quickly snatched my hand away. I let out a huge breath, that I didn’t realize I was holding, and sat down on the toilet.

Ms. Flack was dressed in what looked to be the same clothes she had on when I’d seen her yesterday. I got up and forced myself to look into the tub again. I’d been solely focusing on the body in the tub and hadn’t noticed the cord that was plugged into a blackened outlet on the wall by the sink that was attached to an object floating in the tub by her leg. It was a blow dryer. She’d been electrocuted. I quickly left the bathroom, pulled out my cell phone, and called the police.

After giving the 911 operator all the pertinent details, I had planned to wait for the police outside in my car. But I remembered Ms. Flack’s bedroom was accessible through the bathroom as well as the hall and went back. Strangely, the door between the two rooms was closed. If she’d been running bathwater, why would she close the door that led to her bedroom? I opened the door and walked through to Ms. Flack’s room. The room was a mess. It looked like she’d been packing in a hurry. Two large suitcases were open on the bed and stuffed with clothes. Her closet door was open and the closet was half full of clothes. The bottom of the closet was strewn with empty shoeboxes and garment bags. There was a one-way plane ticket to Mexico City, Mexico, on her dresser, along with a monthly bank statement showing a balance of almost twenty thousand dollars. A closer look at the statement revealed that several large deposits had recently been made to her account. She hadn’t been kidding when she said she was getting the hell out of dodge. The cat carrier sitting on the dining room table told me she’d been planning to take her cat as well, though I’d still seen no sign of the cat and wondered where it was hiding.

I saw that the window closest to the closet was open by about three inches, which was strange because the air-conditioning was on. I walked over and examined the window. There was some dirt on the white carpet directly underneath the window. I also noticed that the dust on the windowsill had been disturbed. There was another window on the other side of the bed and I went to look at it. The other window was locked and the sill was covered in dust. It looked to me like someone had gotten into the house through the window and that that same someone could still be in the house. I practically flew out the front door just as the police, sirens wailing, pulled up in front of the house.

Chapter Eleven

“YOU DIDN’T TOUCH ANYTHING, did you?” asked Harmon testily, after I explained what I’d seen in the house. Her partner, Charles Mercer, had gone inside where a couple of uniformed officers were already checking out the scene.

“I checked Ms. Flack for a pulse and I probably touched some stuff when I first went in the house. How was I supposed to know she was dead?” I replied, shocked to realize I was about to cry.

It had finally hit me. Ms. Flack was dead. We hadn’t exactly been best friends but I’d liked and admired her a lot, at least until I’d found out about what she’d been doing to the reunion committee. Harmon was eyeing me suspiciously, and I quickly filled her in on Ms. Flack’s past involvement with Calvin Lee Vermillion, being the one behind the reunion committee’s accidents and threatening messages, and her plan to fake her death and leave town. Predictably, Harmon was not pleased. Her face got red and her lips went tight and white with anger. She opened her mouth to speak but was interrupted when Mercer emerged from the house.

“Looks to me like she’d run bathwater and accidentally fell into the tub, pulled the blow dryer in with her, and got electrocuted,” he said, shrugging.

“But why would the blow dryer have even been plugged in if she hadn’t yet taken a bath or washed her hair?” I asked, looking from Mercer to Harmon.

“Maybe she’d already taken a bath and gotten dressed and just forgot to let out the bathwater,” Harmon offered.

It was certainly possible. But she was still dressed in the same clothes she had on yesterday and most people let the water out either right before or right after stepping out of the tub. Pulling the stopper to let the bathwater out is the first thing I do before getting out of the tub.

“Well, what about the open window and the dirt? Why would she have opened the window with the air-conditioning running? I think someone may have killed her,” I said. Harmon gave her partner a weary look and then wordlessly headed into the house to check out the scene for herself.

“How long do you think she’s been dead?” I asked Mercer.

“Hard to say until the medical examiner gets here. But since you said she was still in the clothes she was wearing yesterday, and the lights are still on in the house from last night, I’d guess between eight and twelve hours at least.”

“Do you need me for anything else?” I was trying hard to block out the image of poor Ms. Flack laying cold and dead in that tub for twelve hours. I was more than ready to leave.

“You know the drill. We’ll be in touch if we have any more questions.” I watched as he headed back into the house.

I got in my car and was pulling away as the medical examiner arrived in his tan station wagon. I headed to work at Estelle’s wondering where the hell Ms. Flack’s cat, Tamsin, was.

By lunchtime, news of Ms. Flack’s death was all over town. Estelle’s was hopping, as it is every Saturday, and everyone there was talking about Ms. Flack. And as usual, everything I was hearing was wrong.

“They say she was found nude in her bathtub, dead of an overdose.” I overheard one elderly woman telling her companions. They all shook their heads like it was a shame, but I couldn’t help but notice the excitement glittering in their eyes.

“I heard she was in the bathtub with her wrists slit. They say blood was everywhere,” claimed a man casually to the woman he was dining with. The woman put an angry finger to her lips to shush the man and gestured towards a boy of about six sitting next to her in their booth. But the kid just ignored them both and continued to roll a little blue racecar around the rim of his plate.

“You hear about that dead principal?” asked Gwen Robins, my uncle Alex’s girlfriend of almost a decade. Gwen was a statuesque 5’10” and wore wigs to suit her many moods. Today she must have been channeling her inner fool because she was wearing a light brown wig that was spiky on top with long straight hair that hung down her back. She looked like Tina Turner’s big evil twin. I had to resist the urge to remind her that Halloween was in October.

“You knew her, right?” she continued, when I didn’t answer her right away.

Until then, no one had asked me anything about Ms. Flack, which meant that no one knew I’d been the one to find her, at least not yet. It would be on the news tonight and in the Sunday paper tomorrow, and I was dreading the grilling I was going to get, especially from Mama. I pulled Gwen aside, well away from the diners, and told her about finding the body.

“Damn, girlfriend. Why is it every time there’s a dead body you got to be the one finding it?” She walked away from me shaking her head. I got back to work, determined to keep my mouth shut if anyone asked me about Ms. Flack.