Shades of Black: Crime and Mystery Stories by African-American Authors (5 page)

Dwight bent down and pressed his handkerchief to Walter Lee's shoulder. “There's your motive,” he said. “Good work.”

“Yes, sir,” Walter Lee said.

Before he passed out, he wondered if the company would replace his uniform or if he would have to buy another out of his pay.

“I told you it wasn't a date-night story,” Lizzie said, reaching for their empty plates. “Do you want some coffee?”

“I'll make it,” Quinn said, following her over to the sink. “And actually, Lizabeth, it was the perfect date-night story.”

She turned, eyebrows raised in her tawny face. “How so, Quinn?”

“Because,” he said, drawing her into his arms. “That little tale of love and murder reminded me of how lucky I am to have you.”

“Yes, you are, aren't you? Of course, I'm rather lucky to have you too.”

“Before we get too mushy, why don't we go—”

“That's a splendid idea.”

“Don't leave me with him. I'm warning you!”

Stacey's mother stopped packing clothes and turned to face her. “Excuse me?” Frances Barron considered herself a good mother, an easy mother. She'd given her daughter a lot of slack in recent months, but even the mild-mannered Frances had her limits.

Stacey forced a smile.
But I'm not going to apologize,
she told herself. “I just mean it's not fair,” she said aloud, in her most whiny teenage voice. “Why do I have to stay here with him? He's your husband, not mine!”
And you could have done a lot better,
Stacey silently added.

Frances stopped her packing again and sat on the bed. She patted the spot where she wanted Stacey to sit. Stacey joined her. “I'm going to ask you one more time, baby, and I want you to tell me the truth. Has Phil ever touched you or done anything to make you think . . . you know?”

Stacey thought about what her mother was asking. She wished she could lie and say Phillip had molested or tried to molest her, but she knew, ultimately, that that lie would involve too many people. Her mother would probably want to take Phil to court, or worse, she might want to get them all into counseling. Maybe her mother would tell her brothers, inciting Stacey's uncles to come over and beat, maybe kill, Phillip. That
would be fine, but she wouldn't want any of her beloved uncles to do time because of her.

“No, it's not that, nothing like that; I just hate having him here. It was good before him, we had fun before your husband ruined everything. And every time that fool gets a few beers in him and somebody makes him mad . . .”

“You know that's just an act. He couldn't hurt a fly,” Frances interrupted.

Stacey remembered the day, about nine months earlier, when her mother called her into their bedroom. She had “the gun” in her hand. It was a .22 that Phillip waved around whenever he got really angry. “I want to show you something,” Frances had said. Her mother pulled the gun's trigger while pointing it at the television screen. Nothing happened, it didn't even click. She tried the trigger again and again, but the results didn't change.

“See, honey, this gun doesn't work. There's a part missing. I just don't want you to be afraid when Phil goes off and starts acting crazy. He said he used to carry this when he was younger. I guess it's hard being a little guy. This gun made him feel like a big man. He said he used to call it his equalizer.”

Stacey grunted and left the room. She wasn't interested in any stories about Phillip's tragic life—not that day, not ever. Why her mother had married the little fool was beyond her.

“I'll only be gone three days. I'll be back just as soon as Grandma is stable and your Aunt Regina gets there. Try to get along with him. He means you no harm, you know that. He's from the old school, he doesn't know how to talk to today's kids.”

Stacey nodded, and her mother smiled.
I was agreeing that he doesn't know how to talk to people,
Stacey said to herself,
that's all.
“Well, it's just the two of us,” Phillip announced when he returned from the train station.

“What a firm grasp of the obvious!”

Phillip looked at her and frowned, his shiny bald head falling into natural groove lines that extended down his forehead and from ear to ear across his face. Half the time he had no idea what the girl was saying. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you want me to go rent videos or something?”

He tried to grin, and wondered if she noticed that his big yellow teeth seemed too big for his mouth.

“No,” she answered. She didn't look at him.

“We can go out for dinner?”

“No thanks.”

“Are you going to cook?” he asked, still not sure if they were having a conversation. With her it was hard to know.

“Will you barbeque?” she asked him.

Phillip winced. That was the last thing he expected to hear her ask. He wondered would he ever come to understand this child.
I try, I really do,
he thought. “You know I love the Q,” he said trying to impress her with his hip lingo.

“Yes, I do know that,” she replied, still not meeting his gaze.

“Do you need to go to the store to get that stuff you eat?” He asked, his hand already in his pocket.

“No, I have what I need, and there's some pork ribs in the freezer for you. I'll go thaw and marinate them. When it's ready, I'll bring it out to the front yard.”

Her mentioning of the front yard brought a scowl to his face. He liked their new condo; plenty of room inside, new appliances—a new start for the three of them. But whoever heard of a house with the green space in the front? In the area that should have been their little backyard was a walkway and a carport. Behind the carport was one of the busiest, noisiest streets in the neighborhood.

It was a beautiful day, and Phillip felt good. For the first time, he felt as if he was getting somewhere with Fran's spoiled daughter. He smiled,
remembering when his buddy Clarence had called her a BAP, black American princess.

It took three trips inside and back to get everything set up the way he liked. Barbequing was a ritual, one that he enjoyed. There was ice in his cooler and four beers chilling. The beer on his preparation table was already nice and cold. The tongs, potholder, and water bottle were in place. He was a slow reader, and it took him all day to get through Sunday's paper, but the front page and sports section were on the table, ready. On his last trip, he remembered his cigarettes and lighter. Normally he would have gotten the phone, but, with the girl home, he knew there was little chance it would ring for him. When it did ring, she always got to it first.

Phillip thought about calling Clarence and a few of his other buddies over for a game of dominoes, but he fought the urge. This day was for getting to know the kid.

He sat down and read the paper while he waited for her to come out with the meat and her food.

About ninety minutes and four beers later, Stacey joined him on the front deck. She sat in the chair next to his, her mother's chair. The only items in her hands were an emery board and a bottle of midnight mauve nail polish.

“Where's the meat?”

“What meat?” she asked.

He turned his head in a manner that reminded her of a confused dog. “The meat I'm suppose to be out here barbequing, girl.”

“I changed my mind. And don't call me girl!”

“What?”

“What what?”

“Are you trying to say you didn't thaw the meat?”

“I ain't trying to tell you nothing, but what you said is true. I-did-not-thaw-the-meat,” she said it slow and carefully like he was a limited child. “And before you ask, I didn't marinate it either—that's what I changed my mind means!”

Phillip was a simple man. Her words left him speechless. He finished
his beer as he paced inside the house. He reviewed everything that had happened since he returned from the train station. There was nothing in his experience that could explain what had set her off. He knew he wasn't the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but he knew damn well he hadn't done or said anything wrong this time. “Somebody should have beat her little ass a long time ago,” he said to himself as he paced. He looked at the kitchen wall clock. Frances wouldn't be arriving at her grandmother's house for at least another hour. He went to the cabinet where he kept his good stuff.
She asked me not to drink while she was gone, but she probably asked her daughter to act like she had some sense too.

He poured about two fingers in a glass. Just a touch. The thought briefly crossed his mind that his wife might have wanted him to avoid drinking beer in her absence too, but he shook it off. She knew beer was little more than a soft drink as far as he was concerned.

He stood at the dining room window and looked out at Stacey. She was poking around with his fire. She didn't seem to be putting it out or stoking it. The damn girl was just playing around with his coals. The nerve, he thought. He knew why she didn't respect him. Frances denied it, but he knew. At age fifteen, the girl stood five nine in her bare feet. Two inches taller than him. He figured she had him by at least twenty pounds too.

But make no mistake about it, baby girl, your mother didn't marry no punk.
He decided he would go out there and tell her about herself. Phillip took a step and caught himself.
No,
he reasoned,
I don't have to play games with kids. I'll just leave. Maybe go see a movie or something.
He turned around and reached for the telephone so he could call the movie line. It was gone. He looked out on the deck.
I'll just be damned, she's got my telephone out there.

He stopped briefly in his bedroom before returning to the deck. “Look, bitch,” he started.

She stood before he could say another word. She towered over him. “Don't call me bitch!”

He stood rooted to the three feet that separated them. He was determined not to put his hands on her. He'd never struck a woman, and he wasn't going to start with the child of the woman he loved and the only
one who ever loved him. “That's what you are. A little spoiled bitch. I'm a man, Stacey . . .”

“You're not my man, and you better not touch me!”

“Touch you?”

She called him a stream of names he didn't want to remember, because it would hurt Frances too much to hear him repeat them. She left him no choice, he removed the gun from his waistband.

With his back to the street he looked at her. “This seems to be the only thing you little thugs respect nowadays.” He waved the gun as she knew he would.

They both heard the siren. He thought it was coming from the main street, they ran up and down that drag constantly.

From her perspective, she saw them approaching cautiously. Both uniformed officers were waving their free hands at her. She knew they were telling her to move, but they were waving in opposite directions. One seemed to be beckoning for her to come to him, and the other seemed to be telling her to move to the side. She stood still.

She knew she would never forget the shocked look on his face when one of them spoke.

The police said something. Later, they said the one who shot first told Phillip to lower his gun. She had to testify that she heard the words, but she didn't. The only thing she remembered hearing were the gunshots. They sounded so different than gunfire in the movies and on television. They didn't sound as real, but later her ears hurt.

Phillip Barron had been buried a month when Frances appeared at the precinct. The month had taken its toll on the petite woman. That toll was seen in the bags under her eyes and the slow, wary, way she walked. She asked for homicide and was directed to offices on the second floor.

“She killed him,” she told the young detective who'd asked her to have a seat. “She killed my husband.”

She looked ten years older, but the detective remembered her. “Mrs. Barron. We know about your husband,” he said carefully. His mind quickly calculated whom he should call to get some help for the poor woman.

“No, you don't understand! My husband was murdered! She used the police to murder him, and I can't live with it anymore.” She exhaled deliberately as if she'd been holding her breath. “There's got to be something sick in her. Something dangerous. I can't sleep with her in my house anymore.”

The detective sat back in his chair and picked up his pen. “Okay, I'll take your statement.”

“The first thing you should know is my daughter is a strict vegetarian. Whenever we cooked out, she would grill either soy burgers, mushrooms, or tofu. None of that stuff was in the house. I know . . . knew my husband. The idea to cook out had to be hers, and he would have asked her if she had the food she wanted him to grill. She knew it would never get to that point. My daughter didn't go to the store, and neither did . . . Phillip. I love my daughter, detective, but I can't live with her anymore. She killed him.”

The detective asked a few questions, and Frances answered them honestly, without passion.

“If what you say is true, Mrs. Barron, there's still one factor your daughter couldn't have predicted. She couldn't have known the responding officers would shoot her stepfather.”

Frances laughed without mirth. “That was as predictable as Phillip getting his .22. He was a black man waving a gun, detective. You're old enough to know the outcome of that.”

The detective thought about what she was saying. He had to admit, he didn't often hear of a black or brown man living to tell his story if the police arrived to find him armed. They would have to bring the juvenile in for questioning. “Why are you coming to us now?” he finally asked.

Frances opened her purse and took out a gun. She carefully set it on his desk. At a glance he could see it was a .357.

“I didn't know he had this. I found it last night. It works. If he had wanted to hurt her or anybody else, he could have. He was just a little guy trying to make her listen, and she killed him.”