City of Saviors, page 24
I introduced myself, then smiled to ease their fears. “How long have you folks lived here?”
He pushed back his maroon Morehouse College baseball cap. “Just moved in about three weeks ago.”
“Did you know the previous owner?” I asked.
He shook his head.
She tugged at her Spelman College tank top. “Oh, no. Did someone die here? Cuz there wasn’t anything in the papers. Cuz they have to disclose that, right? They have to.”
“They have to disclose if it’s a murder,” I said, “but I’m not here . . .” I blushed—I was here about someone’s murder. “Do you remember the realty company that sold you the house?”
She snorted, then rolled her eyes. “No, but they charged too much commission.”
“Was it a remodel or a complete tear-down?” I asked.
“They kept two walls,” he recalled. “Added the second level, enlarged the kitchen, new paint, new roof. It’s a great house.”
I thanked the HBCU homecoming king and queen, then returned to the car.
“Well?” Colin asked.
I sighed. “Nothing strange.”
He pulled out a roll of fruit Mentos. “You know who we haven’t heard from yet?”
“Dr. Goldberg?”
He popped a candy, then offered me the roll. “True, but we haven’t heard from Ike, either.”
“You’re absolutely correct.” I took a pink Mentos, then said, “Let’s check in on our good buddy.” I dialed Ike Underwood’s number.
He didn’t answer.
That didn’t stop me—I left a message for him to call me back immediately.
Then, I called Oswald Little’s phone number.
It rang and rang until an automated message told me that the voice-mail box was full.
Back on the laptop, I typed “Thomasina Jacobs,” and then “Phoebe Oleander,” “Ulysses Benjamin,” and “Florence Tatum”—all dead members of Blessed Mission. No property records listed for Phoebe, Ulysses, and Florence. Finally, I typed “Marcus Sandford.”
The deceased veteran had lived on Olmstead Avenue down in Leimert Park. He’d purchased the house there back in 2000.
As a result of construction on the Crenshaw Boulevard subway route, major streets had been closed. The businesses on these arteries had either been shuttered entirely or clutched at survival by posting desperate STILL OPEN!!! signs that no one saw.
After a detour from Crenshaw Boulevard to Coliseum Avenue to Buckingham Road to King Boulevard and then back again, Colin pulled up to 9919 Olmstead Avenue. The new, two-story California-Spanish featured a dead lawn filled with sanders, tile cutters, and leftover pieces of drywall. Squeezed between two tiny bungalows, the house also featured a FOR SALE sign jammed into the ground. The metal whir of machines and the unrelenting joy of Norteño music drifted out from the house to the sidewalk.
Colin and I stepped into the foyer and into the cacophony of whirring and tuba-oomphs. Men shouted at each other in the great room—and the guy hammering nails into drywall was the same guy who’d found Oswald Little’s hands in Eugene’s Washington’s bathroom.
Guillermo Velasquez spotted Colin and me and his ruddy complexion darkened.
We waved at him.
Guillermo Velasquez set down the hammer, then trudged over as though he owed us a million dollars. And he did owe us—he never came in to give his formal statement.
“I didn’t have no car,” he explained. “So sorry.”
“Ike working here today?” I asked.
Guillermo Velasquez shook his head.
“He come by at all?” Colin asked.
“He come early today. He a’stop at Mr. Gene’s house, see them digging, then come here. I work on this for now.” Velasquez offered a weak smile. “Es okay. Es clean here.”
Both Colin and I laughed. And so Guillermo Velasquez laughed.
“When did construction on this house start?” I asked.
He shrugged. “No se.”
“Who’s selling it?” I asked.
He shrugged again.
“What’s the name of Ike’s construction company?”
“No se.”
Frustration roiled inside of my stomach like gas. “Well, who’s paying you, then?”
“Mr. Ike, he a’pay me.”
“What name is on your check?” Colin asked, face flushed.
“Cash. He give me cash.” Velasquez lifted his hands. “Los manos? Who?”
“They belonged to Oswald Little,” I said. “Do you know that person?”
Guillermo Velasquez shook his head. “No. I don’t know Oswald a’Little.”
“You know how much they’re selling this house for?” Colin asked.
Guillermo Velasquez didn’t know.
So we asked Mr. Gatlin, the stoop-shouldered owner of the bungalow across the street.
“Probably high eights. Values here have gone up since I bought back in eighty-eight.” The older man scratched his snow-white head and considered the newest McMansion on the block. “Too big. Doesn’t fit the neighborhood. And I’m sure it ain’t energy efficient. Damn shame.”
“Did you know Marcus?”
“A little,” Mr. Gatlin said. “He was quiet. Pretty religious. Involved a lot with his church, but after his tours of duty—Iraq, Afghanistan—I wouldn’t blame him, you know? I’d be on my knees all the time.”
“Mr. Sandford have any family?” Colin asked. “Anybody who stopped by a lot?”
“He lived here alone,” the old guy said. “No women staying overnight. Like I said, pretty religious. He always asked my wife and me to attend service. We went once. Nice enough, but not a place for us. Anyway, he worked out all the time. He was a pretty healthy guy. Well, I thought he was.”
“How did he die?” Colin asked.
“He was about to go to the gym but had a heart attack in the front seat of his car.” Mr. Gatlin pointed to the driveway now crowded with bags of cement. “He died right over there in his Lexus. Ain’t that something? The church gave him a real nice service, made sure he was buried in the veterans’ cemetery over in Westwood. His pastor offered a lovely eulogy, too. Really nice.” He snapped off a lavender bloom and twisted it between his fingers.
“How long after Mr. Sandford’s burial did all of this”—I waved to the construction—“did all of this start?”
Mr. Gatlin laughed, then said, “Burial? Day after Marcus passed, folks was cleaning out the house.”
My heart lurched up and into my throat. “Who is ‘they’?” I asked. “The folks who cleared the house?”
“All I know is that they were from his church,” he said, “and I know that because I saw the church van a few times.”
“Heart attack,” Colin said. “They do an autopsy? He was a young guy, right?”
“Don’t know about any autopsy,” Mr. Gatlin said. “He was barely fifty.”
Colin and I chewed on this over oxtails and smothered pork chops at Dulan’s, a stone’s throw from Gene Washington’s house and a better alternative than eating someone’s thigh. We sat at a corner table next to an open window with a view of Crenshaw Boulevard. Aretha Franklin sang about freeways and pink Cadillacs from speakers nailed next to autographed pictures of Muhammad Ali and Roger Troutman. No other diners stood at the counter as one cook poured a pot of red beans into a stainless steel tray.
“No family, so they leave their big-ticket items to a friend,” I hypothesized. “Then, the friend tears down the old house, rebuilds it, and sells it for a small fortune. Gives ten percent or more to the church.” Eating had given me heft again, and the hard pounding all around my body eased.
Colin shoved a wedge of pork chop into his mouth. “That’s not illegal. Come again.”
My cell phone rang before I could offer another theory.
Ike Underwood sounded exhausted. “My clients got me going all over God’s creation nowadays.” He tried to chuckle. “Y’all finish digging over at Gene’s?”
“Hardly,” I said, “but we need to talk with you again. What time today can we stop by the house?”
“Uh . . . I can come to the station,” he offered. “That’s no problem.”
“We’re not sure when we’ll be back at the station,” I said. “So we’ll just stop by later today or tomorrow.”
Ike Underwood said, “Sure,” but his tone was anything but certain.
“I don’t think he wants visitors,” I said to Colin. “We’ve been very nice to him, haven’t we?”
“You haven’t even cursed at him.” He shoved more pork chop into his mouth. “When are we gonna look at the copies Sister Elliott gave us?”
I took a long gulp of my Arnold Palmer, then said, “When we get back to the station. And you’ll also send Solomon Tate’s prints over to the lab.”
“Sounds good, but I just wanna say again that when you die, you can leave your shit to whoever you want, and said shit receiver does nothing wrong when they take it and sell it.”
I twisted my lips—Colin was right.
And so I was stuck again.
Until God sent me Peachy Yates.
39
I TWISTED IN MY CHAIR TO STUDY THE ROOM AROUND ME—PAUSED AT THE GNARLED cords of the million desk fans meeting near the overstuffed power strip behind the watercooler. Stopped at the tangled dreads of Keyshawn Eastman—the shot caller for the Jungle Bloods was dripping sweat all over the worn blue carpet and kicking O’Shea’s desk with his shoe and being a general, all-around asshole. He guffawed once a kick knocked O’Shea’s Big Gulp to the floor.
Peachy Yates threw a glare at Keyshawn. “What’s wrong with you, boy?” she asked. “You retarded?” The seventy-five-year-old woman wore blue jeans, a jean jacket, and nurse shoes and didn’t wince when the handcuffed Blood mean-mugged her as his response. Earlier, she hadn’t blinked when a half-naked hooker threw her heroin-addled body against the coat rack and screamed, “Excessive force.” Peachy just patted her thin silver hair done up in wispy curls and clutched her purse handles tighter—not out of fear but to use it for knocking someone the hell out.
Had Peachy Yates been sent back from the future? Was I now seated across from Lou Norton, senior citizen, who had returned to warn Lou Norton of today about Skynet and the Great Cabernet Sauvignon shortage of 2044?
A stream of amusement trickled up my spine, and I smiled.
The old woman shot me a glare. “I say something funny to you?” She had a voice that had been seasoned by unfiltered Kools and bottles of Jim Beam.
My face flushed. “No, ma’am.”
Her baggy eyes squinted at me. “Why you smiling then?”
A woman named Shirley Hawthorne served as a head deaconess at Blessed Mission and had told Peachy about two police officers (Colin and me) visiting Bishop Solomon Tate twice now. Peachy had been Thomasina Jacobs’s best friend since their childhood back in Mississippi. And she had grown suspicious about her friend’s death.
“Two years ago,” Peachy Yates was now saying, “I told Tommie to leave that church. I left, and that’s why I’m still here, alive, talking to you. Don’t know what happened to Bishop—once he married that child, he ain’t been right. Folks don’t wanna show their W-2 forms, and they’re tired of special offerings for this and special offerings for that. And Bishop ain’t preached a true message since 9/11. Now it’s all about death and money, money and death. ‘Getting your house in order,’ he calls it.
“It was starting to feel Jim Jones off in there. Giving all your money and property to this man. And the Tates got enough—vaults and secret rooms, men with guns and people tied up.”
I must have sighed as I shifted in my chair.
“You ain’t gotta believe me.” She moved my stapler from near the tape dispenser over to the pen holder. “Not one Bible gotta open during service now. No more, ‘thus saith the Lord.’ So I went over to Faithful Central. That’s where I worship now.”
Colin returned to my desk holding a can of Dr Pepper. “Ma’am, I checked, and we don’t have any bottles.”
“You don’t need to tell me all that.” Peachy Yates took the soda can, then popped the top. She motioned at my desk. “Where the cup at?”
Colin’s face reddened as he marched back to the break room for the third time.
Keyshawn Eastman shouted, “Get me a Mountain Dew since you goin’ back.”
The old woman’s eyes settled on me. “I ain’t lying when I say they got gold coins and vacation houses down in Central America.”
A shot whizzed from my belly to my brain. “Gold coins and . . . Who has all of that?”
“Who we talkin’ ’bout? And I could care less about material things. I’m here about Tommie. She was only seventy-five years old when she died from colon cancer. And when she got it, it was only stage two, and it wasn’t in no other organs yet.”
According to Yates, her friend had taught middle-school math at Orville Wright. Tommie Jacobs had never married, didn’t have kids, took three cruises a year, and loved the Lord with all her heart and with all her soul.
“She had a wonderful doctor over at Cedar’s,” Peachy Yates said, although she didn’t smile as she said “wonderful.” “He was a Jew, so he knew what he was doing. And after he cut the tumor out the first time, she was doing well, but there was still some disease left and it came back. Worse this time.”
Colin, pink-faced and tight-lipped, approached my desk again. Flustered yet still polite, he sat a plastic cup in front of the old woman as though it had been made of nitroglycerin. “Need anything else, Mrs. Yates?”
She glared at him. “How about quieting down and not interrupting when a lady is speaking? And it’s ‘Miss Yates.’ ”
Colin dropped into his chair without a word.
And I no longer wanted this woman to be Lou Norton, Senior Citizen. This gnome in my guest chair never laughed. And she had obviously ignored her mother’s warning: you keep frowning, your face is gonna freeze that way. Let Skynet, terminators, and wine shortages come cuz fuck this.
“So Miss Jacobs was doing well on her treatments at Cedar’s?” I asked.
She nodded, then pushed the OFF switch on my fan. “Somehow, though, folks at the church convinced her to take some natural healing medicine. God’s cancer treatments, they said. There was a woman in the congregation claiming to be healed by beets and carrot juice. All this talk about coffee enemas, apricot seeds, cabbage juice. So Tommie was all excited, took all of that, and waited for her miracle. I ain’t agree with none of it, but I bought her a juicer and whatever vitamins she needed.”
“But there is proof,” I said, “that some foods—garlic, for example—taken with cancer treatments will help reduce the effects of—”
“Who do you think you are? Dr. Oz? You ain’t heard one word I said. Tommie didn’t go to the doctor at all once Blessed Mission got to her.” Peachy’s lemony skin darkened. “She told me that medicine was sorcery and that God spoke out against sorcery in the book of Psalms, and that He gave us herbs to heal. And so she’d sip her beet and carrot juice and . . .” Her thick lips clamped together. “The cancer kept attacking her and you could just smell it. And I begged her, ‘Let me take you back to Dr. Eisner,’ and she told me that I was being unfaithful, that I needed to trust in the Lord with all my heart and with all my soul.
“And I called on Bishop Tate, and he quoted John at me, the verse about my Father’s house having many rooms? So we’re duelin’ back and forth with our ‘thus saith the Lord’ and Tommie back there in the bedroom, dying, thinking she around the corner from her miracle and—”
The room dropped into silence.
Peachy Yates closed her eyes as her mouth moved in silent prayer. A tear, then another, slipped down her cheeks. “We used to go square dancing twice a month. We wore them big can-can skirts and . . .” She opened her eyes, then poured more soda into her cup. “When Tommie died, she weighed eighty-seven pounds.” She took the tissue I offered her, then shook her head, wiped her face, and sipped Dr Pepper. Her lips and cheeks quivered, and the cup shook in her hand.
I asked, “What did her family—?”
“She ain’t had no family,” the old woman said. “I was it. And I was expectin’ a call from the lawyer who handles both our papers.”
“But the lawyer didn’t call you?” Colin asked.
“Oh, he called me, and I got her diamond rings, the watch, all her clothes and purses. When I asked him who got the baby grand, the Buick, and her house over near Village Green, he wouldn’t tell me.”
“Do you know who was supposed to get those things?” Colin asked.
“Her sorority was supposed to,” Peachy Yates said. “Tommie was a Delta.”
“But the Deltas didn’t?” I asked.
“No, they didn’t. And the Road Runners? Her CB club? They were supposed to get her radio equipment.”
“But they didn’t?” Colin asked.
She shook her head. “Whoever got the house ain’t wasted no time. Ain’t even been a year yet, but they tore most of it down and put it on the market for a fortune.”
I asked, “Do you know Oswald Little, Marcus Sandford, Ike Underwood, or Eugene Washington? They all attended Blessed Mission.”
She poked out her bottom lip. “That church is too big now to get to know people. Folks are all strangers there. Just one more reason why I left.” She paused, then said, “But I bet you this: Blessed Mission got Tommie’s house. And I bet you this, too: they had an insurance policy on her, one she didn’t know about. And I bet you they have policies on every single member of that church.” She pushed away the cup of soda, then glared at Colin. “How old is this can of coke? The mixture’s off.”
40
“SHE SAID, ‘CAN I GET A COKE?’ ” COLIN SAID AS WE HUDDLED IN CONFERENCE room Democracy.
“But then,” I said, “she followed up with a request for a Dr Pepper.”
“But she said ‘coke.’ ”
“She wanted a Dr Pepper.”
“Then why didn’t she say get me a pop, a Dr Pepper if you have it’?” Colin asked.
“Because she says ‘coke’, and you say, ‘pop,’ and you’re both wrong cuz it’s—”
He pushed back his maroon Morehouse College baseball cap. “Just moved in about three weeks ago.”
“Did you know the previous owner?” I asked.
He shook his head.
She tugged at her Spelman College tank top. “Oh, no. Did someone die here? Cuz there wasn’t anything in the papers. Cuz they have to disclose that, right? They have to.”
“They have to disclose if it’s a murder,” I said, “but I’m not here . . .” I blushed—I was here about someone’s murder. “Do you remember the realty company that sold you the house?”
She snorted, then rolled her eyes. “No, but they charged too much commission.”
“Was it a remodel or a complete tear-down?” I asked.
“They kept two walls,” he recalled. “Added the second level, enlarged the kitchen, new paint, new roof. It’s a great house.”
I thanked the HBCU homecoming king and queen, then returned to the car.
“Well?” Colin asked.
I sighed. “Nothing strange.”
He pulled out a roll of fruit Mentos. “You know who we haven’t heard from yet?”
“Dr. Goldberg?”
He popped a candy, then offered me the roll. “True, but we haven’t heard from Ike, either.”
“You’re absolutely correct.” I took a pink Mentos, then said, “Let’s check in on our good buddy.” I dialed Ike Underwood’s number.
He didn’t answer.
That didn’t stop me—I left a message for him to call me back immediately.
Then, I called Oswald Little’s phone number.
It rang and rang until an automated message told me that the voice-mail box was full.
Back on the laptop, I typed “Thomasina Jacobs,” and then “Phoebe Oleander,” “Ulysses Benjamin,” and “Florence Tatum”—all dead members of Blessed Mission. No property records listed for Phoebe, Ulysses, and Florence. Finally, I typed “Marcus Sandford.”
The deceased veteran had lived on Olmstead Avenue down in Leimert Park. He’d purchased the house there back in 2000.
As a result of construction on the Crenshaw Boulevard subway route, major streets had been closed. The businesses on these arteries had either been shuttered entirely or clutched at survival by posting desperate STILL OPEN!!! signs that no one saw.
After a detour from Crenshaw Boulevard to Coliseum Avenue to Buckingham Road to King Boulevard and then back again, Colin pulled up to 9919 Olmstead Avenue. The new, two-story California-Spanish featured a dead lawn filled with sanders, tile cutters, and leftover pieces of drywall. Squeezed between two tiny bungalows, the house also featured a FOR SALE sign jammed into the ground. The metal whir of machines and the unrelenting joy of Norteño music drifted out from the house to the sidewalk.
Colin and I stepped into the foyer and into the cacophony of whirring and tuba-oomphs. Men shouted at each other in the great room—and the guy hammering nails into drywall was the same guy who’d found Oswald Little’s hands in Eugene’s Washington’s bathroom.
Guillermo Velasquez spotted Colin and me and his ruddy complexion darkened.
We waved at him.
Guillermo Velasquez set down the hammer, then trudged over as though he owed us a million dollars. And he did owe us—he never came in to give his formal statement.
“I didn’t have no car,” he explained. “So sorry.”
“Ike working here today?” I asked.
Guillermo Velasquez shook his head.
“He come by at all?” Colin asked.
“He come early today. He a’stop at Mr. Gene’s house, see them digging, then come here. I work on this for now.” Velasquez offered a weak smile. “Es okay. Es clean here.”
Both Colin and I laughed. And so Guillermo Velasquez laughed.
“When did construction on this house start?” I asked.
He shrugged. “No se.”
“Who’s selling it?” I asked.
He shrugged again.
“What’s the name of Ike’s construction company?”
“No se.”
Frustration roiled inside of my stomach like gas. “Well, who’s paying you, then?”
“Mr. Ike, he a’pay me.”
“What name is on your check?” Colin asked, face flushed.
“Cash. He give me cash.” Velasquez lifted his hands. “Los manos? Who?”
“They belonged to Oswald Little,” I said. “Do you know that person?”
Guillermo Velasquez shook his head. “No. I don’t know Oswald a’Little.”
“You know how much they’re selling this house for?” Colin asked.
Guillermo Velasquez didn’t know.
So we asked Mr. Gatlin, the stoop-shouldered owner of the bungalow across the street.
“Probably high eights. Values here have gone up since I bought back in eighty-eight.” The older man scratched his snow-white head and considered the newest McMansion on the block. “Too big. Doesn’t fit the neighborhood. And I’m sure it ain’t energy efficient. Damn shame.”
“Did you know Marcus?”
“A little,” Mr. Gatlin said. “He was quiet. Pretty religious. Involved a lot with his church, but after his tours of duty—Iraq, Afghanistan—I wouldn’t blame him, you know? I’d be on my knees all the time.”
“Mr. Sandford have any family?” Colin asked. “Anybody who stopped by a lot?”
“He lived here alone,” the old guy said. “No women staying overnight. Like I said, pretty religious. He always asked my wife and me to attend service. We went once. Nice enough, but not a place for us. Anyway, he worked out all the time. He was a pretty healthy guy. Well, I thought he was.”
“How did he die?” Colin asked.
“He was about to go to the gym but had a heart attack in the front seat of his car.” Mr. Gatlin pointed to the driveway now crowded with bags of cement. “He died right over there in his Lexus. Ain’t that something? The church gave him a real nice service, made sure he was buried in the veterans’ cemetery over in Westwood. His pastor offered a lovely eulogy, too. Really nice.” He snapped off a lavender bloom and twisted it between his fingers.
“How long after Mr. Sandford’s burial did all of this”—I waved to the construction—“did all of this start?”
Mr. Gatlin laughed, then said, “Burial? Day after Marcus passed, folks was cleaning out the house.”
My heart lurched up and into my throat. “Who is ‘they’?” I asked. “The folks who cleared the house?”
“All I know is that they were from his church,” he said, “and I know that because I saw the church van a few times.”
“Heart attack,” Colin said. “They do an autopsy? He was a young guy, right?”
“Don’t know about any autopsy,” Mr. Gatlin said. “He was barely fifty.”
Colin and I chewed on this over oxtails and smothered pork chops at Dulan’s, a stone’s throw from Gene Washington’s house and a better alternative than eating someone’s thigh. We sat at a corner table next to an open window with a view of Crenshaw Boulevard. Aretha Franklin sang about freeways and pink Cadillacs from speakers nailed next to autographed pictures of Muhammad Ali and Roger Troutman. No other diners stood at the counter as one cook poured a pot of red beans into a stainless steel tray.
“No family, so they leave their big-ticket items to a friend,” I hypothesized. “Then, the friend tears down the old house, rebuilds it, and sells it for a small fortune. Gives ten percent or more to the church.” Eating had given me heft again, and the hard pounding all around my body eased.
Colin shoved a wedge of pork chop into his mouth. “That’s not illegal. Come again.”
My cell phone rang before I could offer another theory.
Ike Underwood sounded exhausted. “My clients got me going all over God’s creation nowadays.” He tried to chuckle. “Y’all finish digging over at Gene’s?”
“Hardly,” I said, “but we need to talk with you again. What time today can we stop by the house?”
“Uh . . . I can come to the station,” he offered. “That’s no problem.”
“We’re not sure when we’ll be back at the station,” I said. “So we’ll just stop by later today or tomorrow.”
Ike Underwood said, “Sure,” but his tone was anything but certain.
“I don’t think he wants visitors,” I said to Colin. “We’ve been very nice to him, haven’t we?”
“You haven’t even cursed at him.” He shoved more pork chop into his mouth. “When are we gonna look at the copies Sister Elliott gave us?”
I took a long gulp of my Arnold Palmer, then said, “When we get back to the station. And you’ll also send Solomon Tate’s prints over to the lab.”
“Sounds good, but I just wanna say again that when you die, you can leave your shit to whoever you want, and said shit receiver does nothing wrong when they take it and sell it.”
I twisted my lips—Colin was right.
And so I was stuck again.
Until God sent me Peachy Yates.
39
I TWISTED IN MY CHAIR TO STUDY THE ROOM AROUND ME—PAUSED AT THE GNARLED cords of the million desk fans meeting near the overstuffed power strip behind the watercooler. Stopped at the tangled dreads of Keyshawn Eastman—the shot caller for the Jungle Bloods was dripping sweat all over the worn blue carpet and kicking O’Shea’s desk with his shoe and being a general, all-around asshole. He guffawed once a kick knocked O’Shea’s Big Gulp to the floor.
Peachy Yates threw a glare at Keyshawn. “What’s wrong with you, boy?” she asked. “You retarded?” The seventy-five-year-old woman wore blue jeans, a jean jacket, and nurse shoes and didn’t wince when the handcuffed Blood mean-mugged her as his response. Earlier, she hadn’t blinked when a half-naked hooker threw her heroin-addled body against the coat rack and screamed, “Excessive force.” Peachy just patted her thin silver hair done up in wispy curls and clutched her purse handles tighter—not out of fear but to use it for knocking someone the hell out.
Had Peachy Yates been sent back from the future? Was I now seated across from Lou Norton, senior citizen, who had returned to warn Lou Norton of today about Skynet and the Great Cabernet Sauvignon shortage of 2044?
A stream of amusement trickled up my spine, and I smiled.
The old woman shot me a glare. “I say something funny to you?” She had a voice that had been seasoned by unfiltered Kools and bottles of Jim Beam.
My face flushed. “No, ma’am.”
Her baggy eyes squinted at me. “Why you smiling then?”
A woman named Shirley Hawthorne served as a head deaconess at Blessed Mission and had told Peachy about two police officers (Colin and me) visiting Bishop Solomon Tate twice now. Peachy had been Thomasina Jacobs’s best friend since their childhood back in Mississippi. And she had grown suspicious about her friend’s death.
“Two years ago,” Peachy Yates was now saying, “I told Tommie to leave that church. I left, and that’s why I’m still here, alive, talking to you. Don’t know what happened to Bishop—once he married that child, he ain’t been right. Folks don’t wanna show their W-2 forms, and they’re tired of special offerings for this and special offerings for that. And Bishop ain’t preached a true message since 9/11. Now it’s all about death and money, money and death. ‘Getting your house in order,’ he calls it.
“It was starting to feel Jim Jones off in there. Giving all your money and property to this man. And the Tates got enough—vaults and secret rooms, men with guns and people tied up.”
I must have sighed as I shifted in my chair.
“You ain’t gotta believe me.” She moved my stapler from near the tape dispenser over to the pen holder. “Not one Bible gotta open during service now. No more, ‘thus saith the Lord.’ So I went over to Faithful Central. That’s where I worship now.”
Colin returned to my desk holding a can of Dr Pepper. “Ma’am, I checked, and we don’t have any bottles.”
“You don’t need to tell me all that.” Peachy Yates took the soda can, then popped the top. She motioned at my desk. “Where the cup at?”
Colin’s face reddened as he marched back to the break room for the third time.
Keyshawn Eastman shouted, “Get me a Mountain Dew since you goin’ back.”
The old woman’s eyes settled on me. “I ain’t lying when I say they got gold coins and vacation houses down in Central America.”
A shot whizzed from my belly to my brain. “Gold coins and . . . Who has all of that?”
“Who we talkin’ ’bout? And I could care less about material things. I’m here about Tommie. She was only seventy-five years old when she died from colon cancer. And when she got it, it was only stage two, and it wasn’t in no other organs yet.”
According to Yates, her friend had taught middle-school math at Orville Wright. Tommie Jacobs had never married, didn’t have kids, took three cruises a year, and loved the Lord with all her heart and with all her soul.
“She had a wonderful doctor over at Cedar’s,” Peachy Yates said, although she didn’t smile as she said “wonderful.” “He was a Jew, so he knew what he was doing. And after he cut the tumor out the first time, she was doing well, but there was still some disease left and it came back. Worse this time.”
Colin, pink-faced and tight-lipped, approached my desk again. Flustered yet still polite, he sat a plastic cup in front of the old woman as though it had been made of nitroglycerin. “Need anything else, Mrs. Yates?”
She glared at him. “How about quieting down and not interrupting when a lady is speaking? And it’s ‘Miss Yates.’ ”
Colin dropped into his chair without a word.
And I no longer wanted this woman to be Lou Norton, Senior Citizen. This gnome in my guest chair never laughed. And she had obviously ignored her mother’s warning: you keep frowning, your face is gonna freeze that way. Let Skynet, terminators, and wine shortages come cuz fuck this.
“So Miss Jacobs was doing well on her treatments at Cedar’s?” I asked.
She nodded, then pushed the OFF switch on my fan. “Somehow, though, folks at the church convinced her to take some natural healing medicine. God’s cancer treatments, they said. There was a woman in the congregation claiming to be healed by beets and carrot juice. All this talk about coffee enemas, apricot seeds, cabbage juice. So Tommie was all excited, took all of that, and waited for her miracle. I ain’t agree with none of it, but I bought her a juicer and whatever vitamins she needed.”
“But there is proof,” I said, “that some foods—garlic, for example—taken with cancer treatments will help reduce the effects of—”
“Who do you think you are? Dr. Oz? You ain’t heard one word I said. Tommie didn’t go to the doctor at all once Blessed Mission got to her.” Peachy’s lemony skin darkened. “She told me that medicine was sorcery and that God spoke out against sorcery in the book of Psalms, and that He gave us herbs to heal. And so she’d sip her beet and carrot juice and . . .” Her thick lips clamped together. “The cancer kept attacking her and you could just smell it. And I begged her, ‘Let me take you back to Dr. Eisner,’ and she told me that I was being unfaithful, that I needed to trust in the Lord with all my heart and with all my soul.
“And I called on Bishop Tate, and he quoted John at me, the verse about my Father’s house having many rooms? So we’re duelin’ back and forth with our ‘thus saith the Lord’ and Tommie back there in the bedroom, dying, thinking she around the corner from her miracle and—”
The room dropped into silence.
Peachy Yates closed her eyes as her mouth moved in silent prayer. A tear, then another, slipped down her cheeks. “We used to go square dancing twice a month. We wore them big can-can skirts and . . .” She opened her eyes, then poured more soda into her cup. “When Tommie died, she weighed eighty-seven pounds.” She took the tissue I offered her, then shook her head, wiped her face, and sipped Dr Pepper. Her lips and cheeks quivered, and the cup shook in her hand.
I asked, “What did her family—?”
“She ain’t had no family,” the old woman said. “I was it. And I was expectin’ a call from the lawyer who handles both our papers.”
“But the lawyer didn’t call you?” Colin asked.
“Oh, he called me, and I got her diamond rings, the watch, all her clothes and purses. When I asked him who got the baby grand, the Buick, and her house over near Village Green, he wouldn’t tell me.”
“Do you know who was supposed to get those things?” Colin asked.
“Her sorority was supposed to,” Peachy Yates said. “Tommie was a Delta.”
“But the Deltas didn’t?” I asked.
“No, they didn’t. And the Road Runners? Her CB club? They were supposed to get her radio equipment.”
“But they didn’t?” Colin asked.
She shook her head. “Whoever got the house ain’t wasted no time. Ain’t even been a year yet, but they tore most of it down and put it on the market for a fortune.”
I asked, “Do you know Oswald Little, Marcus Sandford, Ike Underwood, or Eugene Washington? They all attended Blessed Mission.”
She poked out her bottom lip. “That church is too big now to get to know people. Folks are all strangers there. Just one more reason why I left.” She paused, then said, “But I bet you this: Blessed Mission got Tommie’s house. And I bet you this, too: they had an insurance policy on her, one she didn’t know about. And I bet you they have policies on every single member of that church.” She pushed away the cup of soda, then glared at Colin. “How old is this can of coke? The mixture’s off.”
40
“SHE SAID, ‘CAN I GET A COKE?’ ” COLIN SAID AS WE HUDDLED IN CONFERENCE room Democracy.
“But then,” I said, “she followed up with a request for a Dr Pepper.”
“But she said ‘coke.’ ”
“She wanted a Dr Pepper.”
“Then why didn’t she say get me a pop, a Dr Pepper if you have it’?” Colin asked.
“Because she says ‘coke’, and you say, ‘pop,’ and you’re both wrong cuz it’s—”
