We Lie Here: A Thriller, page 12
“Someone?” I ask.
“Wasn’t me, but I can probably find out who,” he says. “Gonna cost you.”
“Bye, Ransom.” I hop off the deck railing and wander to the yard.
The sun is moments from dipping completely behind the mountains even as hawks continue to circle the sky in search of a last meal. Those clouds of gnats and mosquitoes follow me because I’m their evening supper.
Behind me, Ransom moseys past our gates. What does he know?
Was Felicia murdered? Forced at gunpoint to enter the lake?
I don’t have a lot of time.
That’s what she told me. Did she know that she’d soon meet her end?
Dominique stands beside me. “So can Ransom—”
“No,” I interrupt. “Ransom cannot come to the party.”
“So Lala can come, but her son can’t? You are so bougie.”
I pick up a rock from the parched ground and throw it far into the desert. “My boyfriend isn’t coming, either.”
“Oh. So . . .” She picks up a rock and throws it. “I’m thinking of moving in with Ransom in the fall.”
I place my hands on my hips. “No.”
“No, what?”
I level my shoulders. “No, you’re not moving in with Ransom. Why? So you can wind up pregnant and be crowned the fifth baby mama of a loser? You won’t get your degree, and you’ll end up living in some junky apartment on the east side, begging him for diaper money. So . . . no.”
She glares at me. “Is this one of your weird visions? Are you gonna write about this like you write about everything else that goes on in this house?”
Probably.
I waggle my head. “That’s not the point, and don’t change the subject. If you move in with Ransom, I promise you, next year this time, you’ll be begging Mom and Daddy for formula money. Or were you planning on breastfeeding?”
Dominique folds her arms. “Hollywood got you fooled. Got you thinking that you’re all that. Like you’re better than us.”
“Us?” I throw my head back and laugh. “Dom, darling. You’re not us. You’re we. When you come to LA, you want to eat nothing but Thai food and sushi. You like Solange more than Beyoncé. You’re a faux-ratchet cosplay hood rat, and you deserve better than Ransom Andrepont. If you think there’s a future with him, go ahead and ask Katrice, Alizé, Chardonnay, and Vixen how that’s working out for them and their sixteen children.”
“Five children.”
“Whatever.” I push up my glasses. “I’m paying for you to be in school—”
“Mom and Daddy are paying—”
“No, I’m paying. The papers are in my name.”
Tears build in Dominique’s eyes, her nostrils flare, and a sob breaks from her chest. She hides her face in her hands. Sensing water, the gnats and mosquitoes bumble over to my sister. In between sobs, she swats at the insects.
I pluck the rubber band around my wrist. “I’m sorry, okay?” I look back at the house.
Mom’s still in the kitchen. She’s chopping something, but her earbuds are still in and she’s still talking on the phone.
I squeeze Dominique’s shoulder, then offer her a tissue from my pocket. “Stop crying before she hears you, and then we’ll have to explain why you’re crying.”
The thought of explaining any of this to Mom makes my head hurt.
That calms Dominique down, though, and she quickly snatches the tissue from my hand to blow her nose. “You and me?” she says. “We’re just different. I’m authentic. I’m not interested in observing someone’s life like you do in your goofy TV show.”
“Goofy?” I ask, fire in my eyes.
Dominique jabs her chest. “I live it.”
“My goofy TV show paid for that Jeep you drive and degree you’re throwing away.”
“Whatever.” She stomps back toward the house.
My phone vibrates.
A text from Ransom.
I accept Venmo and Cashapp
He’s attached a PDF.
At approximately 3:37 a.m., I spotted a dark-colored Mercedes Benz sedan parked in a lot adjacent to Lake Palmdale. I approached and observed the abovementioned adjacently parked vehicle in the lot, which could . . .
I gasp. This is the incident report on Felicia’s case. Now, like every good investigator, I have my own informant!
. . . knocked on the driver’s side window and announced that I was with the sheriff’s department. There was no answer. The door was unlocked, and there was no one in the cabin . . . Smelled alcohol . . . flashlight to determine if there was a purse left behind . . .
I read as much as I can on my phone’s small screen.
One sentence stops me cold.
I then observed a note on the passenger-side footwell of the vehicle.
A note? Written by whom? What did it say? Was it a suicide note or . . . ?
I reach the last two lines of the PDF that Ransom sent:
At this time, I do not know with certainty the name of the deceased or if this MBZ sedan belongs to the victim.
My glasses slip down my nose, and I look up from the phone to push them back. With the sun dropping, the chaparral smells syrupy and the packed dirt skunkier.
Back to the PDF.
The crime scene investigators found six empty minibar bottes of rum in the footwell of the passenger seat.
Had Felicia been drinking alone, or was there someone with her? And if she’d been drunk and alone, would she have been in the mind to say, Hey, this water is cold, maybe I should get back in the car? Could she have passed out from drinking too much and accidentally drowned?
In one episode of Tough Cookie, Cookie investigated the death of a stuntman’s wife. According to the husband, his beloved had taken too much of her antianxiety medication and had either slipped as she’d taken a bath or intentionally ended her life. Cops pulled the dead woman from the bathtub, not paying attention to the scene around them. Cookie noticed bruises forming across the woman’s face . . . bruises in the shape of a man’s hand.
What would Cookie do now?
AN OLD FRIEND
21.
Mom spins from the sink to the fridge to the pantry, a whirling dervish with The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill as her soundtrack, slapping at the air with her favorite knife, then slipping it across the soft throats of blood oranges and strawberries. The air around us is lush with the aroma of good cheese and ripe fruit. After the track, this is her favorite place. “Dom’s sitting out front,” she says. “What’s she upset about now? What did Ransom do?”
I pluck a strawberry from the charcuterie board Mom’s preparing. “She’s pissed at me, not Random.”
Mom snorts. “Random. What did you say to her?”
I select a chunk of smoked gouda from the pile. “‘Stay in school. Don’t let him wreck your life.’ Y’know, the regular.”
“That was a waste of time.”
“I don’t want her to be his life lesson, but she wasn’t trying to hear me today.” I pop the cheese into my mouth, then select a chunk of gruyère. “But I must give Random his props—he had some tea to share on Felicia’s case.”
I peek out the den window.
Dominique is sitting beneath the silver maple with her phone and a french baguette. Yeah, she’s stressed.
Mom cocks her head. “He got info from Paul?”
“I don’t think so.”
Mom shifts her eyes to me. Blood-orange juice speckles her nose and cheeks. “And?”
“And he emailed me the sheriff’s initial investigation report,” I say. “They found Felicia’s phone—we know that since Kayla texted me from it—and they found some empty rum bottles and a note in the car.”
Color washes from Mom’s face, and she blinks at me. “A note? What did it say?”
I shrug. “No clue.”
“Who wrote it?” She leans forward and whispers, “Did you write it?”
“Me? Of course not. They don’t know who wrote it.”
She holds my eyes for a moment, then leans back. “And the gun?”
“The report didn’t mention a gun.”
“So where did LaRain . . . ?”
I shrug again. “What did Kayla say before I got here?”
“Just that Felicia had been found in the lake and that she was sorry for my family’s loss.”
I select a dried apricot from the board as Lauryn Hill tells us in her smoky alto that it hurts so bad. “And nothing from Aunt Cece?”
Mom nibbles a date. “No, I left a message but . . . I hope they don’t show up before Thursday. I can’t take her energy.”
“Alicia left me a voice mail.”
Mom gapes at me, but her shock turns to irritation and a scowl settles across her lips. “She didn’t dare.”
“Oh, but she did.” I force myself to chuckle.
“You know she’s Lee’s twin, right?”
I shake my head. “I did not know that. Anyway, listen.” I play the voice mail left by Felicia’s twin sister.
“The least you can do?” Mom spits, curling her lip.
“Right?”
“I’ll handle her.”
I hold up my hands. “Nope. I got this. I’ll channel my inner Bee and tell her to fuck off. It’ll be a poor facsimile of your epic drags, but I’m sure she’ll get the point.”
Mom folds her arms and cants her head. “She doesn’t even know you like that. Who the hell—” She snatches a breath and then another, then loudly exhales. “If she tries that again, let me know. She come for you again, she’ll find her flat ass sleeping eternally beside her sister.”
I nod and try to tamp down my nausea. Fancy cheese and dried fruit don’t mix well with the talk of death.
“Please don’t say anything about the report,” I ask Mom. “Don’t tell LaRain that Ransom sent it to me. I don’t want Paul getting in trouble. Then we’ll never learn anything.”
Mom grabs the salami from the fridge and drops the roll onto the countertop. “Don’t worry. I got your back. I’m not getting involved in a murder investigation, even if it’s family.”
I curl my arms to make biceps. “No, that’s my superpower.”
“You write for a TV show—that’s far from reality.” She taps the top of my head and then reaches to push the hair back from her forehead. But because she’s wearing a ponytail, her hand flutters about her face like a lost bird.
This is her go-to stressed-out gesture. Anytime Dominique screws up, anytime Dominique’s failing a class, Mom pushes back her hair. I stay out past curfew, I have an asthma attack, Mom pushes back her hair. Mom’s hairline is prematurely receding from pushing back her hair since eighteen-month-old Dominique bit a boy who tried to steal her blanket at daycare.
Mom’s head falls back. “Why, Felicia? You didn’t need to bring your fancy ass to Palmdale, and now, here we are.”
I nibble a grape and a candied walnut. “Seriously, what drove her to drive up here? Has Auntie said anything about why she came?”
Mom shakes her head, grabs the roll of salami, and points it at me. “Just . . . be careful, and let me know if you hear anything else. Hopefully Dom ain’t caught up in this mess, too.”
I, too, pray that Dominique isn’t playing Bonnie Parker to Ransom’s Clyde Barrow.
If so, Mom’s gonna be pushing her hair back all summer.
Back in my bedroom, I pull up Ransom’s PDF on my laptop.
The responding officer found the purple Benz abandoned in the Park N Ride lot beside Lake Palmdale at 3:37 a.m. Felicia had sent me the Help Lix uz text message hours before, at 11:01 p.m. Four and a half hours had passed between that text message and the deputy finding her car. No blood had been found initially at the scene—not in the car or on the asphalt around the car. If Felicia had a gun, dying by suicide would’ve been easier than walking into the lake to drown.
Why doesn’t this report mention a gun? And who’d been drinking with the soon-to-be dead woman?
I stare at the Italian glass vase for the answer.
First rule of solving a woman’s murder: statistically, it’s almost always the spouse.
Felicia had three husbands.
I visit my favorite people-search website and type William Harraway, husband number three. He’s several years younger than Felicia. Wide nose. Inked-up. A bare-chested personal trainer who takes selfies in bathroom mirrors. Most of his photos on Facebook show a shirtless man with his veins popping and his chin cocked. We have one mutual friend, Sierra Boone, who recently posted that Will and UPLIFT had helped her lose fifteen pounds. He studied at Xavier University and lives in El Segundo, about ten miles from my apartment in Santa Monica.
He could’ve easily followed Felicia up to Palmdale.
His wife, my cousin? She’s nowhere on his page. No married to Felicia Campbell status. No pictures or selfies with Felicia skiing or sunning beside him. No tags, no likes, no Felicia.
This is the social media profile of a single man.
In the crime-writing business, this is what we call a “clue.”
I send a friend request to William Harraway even though I don’t use Facebook anymore.
Husband number one was Aiden Rivers, the older white man who worked at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory down in Pasadena. He invented something, patented it, made a lot of money, died of a heart attack, and left Felicia, his wife of twelve years, a fortune.
Can’t be him.
Husband number two was Darius Montgomery, a man who doesn’t seem to do one singular thing. “Businessman” is his catchall. He ran a Christian nonprofit whose status was revoked in 2018. He’s now a “pastor” of a “church” in Tennessee.
Darius could’ve flown in. That hair. Those eyes . . . He’s the man in the dark-green Mazda!
I text Kayla and tell her that I think the stranger who was watching our house was Felicia’s ex-husband Darius Montgomery.
She texts back, Are you sure you saw that?
I snort and squint. Uhhhh YEAH. What kind of question . . . ?
Just need to be sure
You’ve always had an active imagination
Sure, I type, but I’m not a LIAR
The ellipsis bubbles, stops, then bubbles again. A thumbs-up pops beside my last text.
I’ll check it out and get back to you.
Not five minutes pass before my old friend texts me.
Not him
Darius M. is in the hospital
Jet ski accident in Florida
Who was the man in the freakin’ green Mazda?
It was dark green, right? Like the color of an old, cheap black leather jacket.
And anyway, what’s the deal with Felicia’s third husband? He looks like he’d never be caught driving a Mazda . . . unless he’s trying to blend in.
I text Ransom.
Thanks for the report!!
You know everybody don’t you?
Do you know anyone who drives a green Mazda?
He kinda looks like Jamie Foxx but with curly hair
BTW do you have a W9 form?
You’ll need one to get paid as a formal consultant
Nothing else in the initial investigative report sticks out at me. I type Lake Palmdale into Google Maps and click on “Street View.”
Where exactly did they find the Benz? The Park N Ride lot off Avenue S? Or the Fish and Fly Club’s parking lot? Because the club is private and has gated parking, I’m thinking Felicia parked at the public lot off Avenue S. I click the east directional arrow on Avenue S. There’s a shed business, the desert, parking lots . . . the glistening lake . . . At the intersection to turn into the Park N Ride, there are three traffic signals.
And atop each of those signals . . . three video cameras.
Did those license-plate-reader cameras record Felicia’s car?
Since I only write about a private investigator, I have no access to the kinds of protected information Cookie would. I could bring up the cameras to Kayla and maybe she’d spill the beans, but gaining her confidence will take time.
I don’t have a lot of time.
I need to know who killed Felicia before they strike again—and as a creator of drama, I know that killers always strike again.
Will Felicia’s murderer show up at the anniversary celebration?
Will they come for my family next?
Am I in danger?
Yeah. I don’t have a lot of time.
And neither did Felicia.
22.
Just as I’m about to return downstairs to watch television with Mom, my phone brightens with a Facebook message: Will Harraway accepted my friend request. I hold my breath and swipe into my mailbox.
Hey beautiful.
Ugh. Corny as hell already.
Hi Will, I write back.
I see we have a friend in common
She tell you how good I am?
No, Sierra didn’t tell me about you
But she looks great
I chew on my cuticles and stare at the bubbles.
You looking fit and fine
Don’t think you need those skills of mine
But I’d love to give you a free consult
Anytime anywhere
My stomach burns. This loser is trying to pick me up while his wife is literally chilling in the medical examiner’s freezer.
Love to, I message back.
But I don’t want any static from other—
Shall I type the word that I hate but guys like Will Harraway use?
I close my eyes and finish the sentence.
females
Not sure if you know who I am or what I do
but I’m not one for a lot of “look at me,” “look what I’m doing”
Outside, the wind whistles around the eaves of the house. Mr. Abernathy’s flag flicks and pops like an air rifle. Downstairs, the Lakers game is a fusion of rubber-soled squeaks, crowd cheers, and pontificating ex-athletes analyzing Anthony Davis’s free throws.
Yes, ma’am LOL, Will Harraway texts back.
You are a BEAST
Accomplished so much
#blackgirlmagic
You wouldn’t catch static from other females
I’m fine and free
You caught me at the right moment
I glare at the screen. Why is that?
First, he writes, I’ll be expanding
