Murder on the Down Low (3 page)

Eugene proposed nine months later, and they had all celebrated Maya’s lucky catch.

Vernetta could think of nothing to say to Eugene so she turned to leave.

“Could I talk to you for a minute?” Uncertainty filled his voice. “If there’s anything I can do to help out. . .” His words trailed off. “If Maya’s mother needs anything, would you let me know?”

“We’ll take care of anything she needs,” Vernetta snapped. She had never gone off on the man the way Special had, but she wasn’t about to give him the impression that she had even an ounce of sympathy for him.

She was about twenty feet away when Eugene called out to her again. She stopped and waited as he hurried over.

“Uh, what do . . . um . . .” He looked down at his hands as if he didn’t know what to do with them. “People still think Maya died of pneumonia, right?”

The resentment Vernetta had been carefully holding in check teetered on an eruption. She took a second to compose herself. “So it’s still all about you, huh, Eugene? You and your deadly little secrets.”

“No, I . . . uh . . . I just wanted to know.” He looked down again and kicked the grass with his foot. “If people know, it’s fine. I just . . .”

“Well, you know what?” Vernetta’s lips eased into a wicked smile. “Everybody knows Maya suffered from AIDS and everybody knows that you infected her. In fact, Special stood up at the funeral and announced it to the whole congregation.”

Vernetta chuckled softly to herself as she turned away, relishing the horrified look on Eugene’s face.

The brother wasn’t on the down low anymore.

A
s much as she hated funerals, J.C. actually enjoyed the gathering that followed. The repast was a shot of anesthetic for the soul. A chance to eat, laugh, and reminisce. If only temporarily.

Several people greeted her as she stepped into Maya’s living room. The two-bedroom home in the middle-class Leimert Park neighborhood had a cheery, homey atmosphere. Even without the bright peach walls and the chocolate wood trim, it still would have felt that way. Maya’s spirit permeated the place.

Making her way to Maya’s kitchen, J.C. offered to help, but three older women from Mt. Moriah shooed her away. Seeing strangers take charge of Maya’s kitchen left her with an uneasy feeling.

J.C. had easily bonded with Maya after testifying in a murder case Maya was prosecuting. Her friendship with Vernetta, Special and Nichelle began during the latter days of Maya’s illness. At first, J.C. felt like an outsider, but the three women soon welcomed her into their sister-circle.

Nichelle and Maya had attended Loyola Law School together. Vernetta became part of the group as a result of being Special’s best friend. She wondered what would become of their friendship now that their anchor was gone. J.C. had never made friends easily, particularly not with other women. Growing up with a name like Johnine Cleopatra Sparks hadn’t made things any easier.

J.C. grew anxious as she watched the crowd of strangers traipsing through Maya’s front door. She wandered from the living room into the tiny dining room. A dinner table draped with Kente cloth was stacked with the kind of food that the normally health-conscious Maya rarely indulged in. An oval platter was piled high with fried chicken, while large metal tins held thinly sliced roast beef and ham. There were two big bowls of macaroni and cheese, plus large Tupperware containers with potato salad, collard greens, fried cabbage, and hot water cornbread. J.C. counted six sweet potato pies and three pound cakes. All of her favorite dishes. And she had no appetite for any of it.

She decided to head to the backyard and was relieved to see Special and Nichelle come through the back gate. Special no longer looked angry enough to bite somebody, and Nichelle finally seemed all cried out.

“Where’s Vernetta?” J.C. asked.

“We dropped her off at home,” Nichelle replied. “She’s coming over with Jefferson.”

They each found a folding chair and formed a small circle away from the other mourners. Special sat on the edge of her chair. “We’re still going through with our plan, right?”

Nichelle and J.C. looked at each other, then nodded.

Nichelle pulled a fresh Kleenex from her purse and loudly blew her nose. “So when should we talk to Maya’s mother?”

“Let’s do it tonight,” Special said. “She’s going back to Detroit Monday morning.”

Nichelle shook her head. “No way. Not on the same day she buries her only child.”

“How about tomorrow?” J.C. suggested. “After church.” The women again consented with silent nods of the head.

“You think she’ll do it?” Nichelle asked.

“If she doesn’t, we’ll just have to convince her otherwise.” Special sounded confident that she could. “Eugene has to pay.”

J.C. felt torn about what they were planning to do. She should’ve objected when Special first came up with the idea. It was too late to jump ship now. She heard her cell phone ring and pulled it from her purse. Flipping it open, she saw that the call was from her partner, Detective Gerald Jessup. J.C. found a deserted corner of the backyard.

Seconds later, she hurried back to her friends, her pulse racing.

“I have to run over to a crime scene in Inglewood,” J.C. said. “Somebody just murdered a doctor in broad daylight.”

E
xactly twenty-four minutes later, J.C. turned her Range Rover off Manchester onto Hillcrest. The Horton Medical Plaza was bustling with police activity. Yellow crime scene tape roped off the driveway leading into the parking structure. A crowd of onlookers watched from across the street, craning their necks and pointing. J.C. parked between two police cruisers and climbed out.

As she neared the entrance to the building’s parking structure, she eyed the young officer charged with logging everyone into the crime scene. J.C. could tell from his body language that he was about to give her flack. It was the same thing over and over and over. She waited until she was within arm’s reach of the rookie before flashing her badge.

“Homicide.” Her curt greeting silenced his lips, but his eyes flashed disbelief. A female homicide detective in L.A. was rare enough. A black, female dick was about as common as a unicorn strolling down Crenshaw Boulevard.

J.C. gave her name and unit number, then waited as he wrote it down on his clipboard.

“Second level,” he mumbled, then lifted the tape high enough for her to slide underneath.

Inside the parking structure, J.C. spotted a stairwell and took the steps two at a time. When she got to the second level, she saw several men, most of them in plainclothes, crowded around a black Jaguar in the northwest corner of the structure.

Lieutenant Donny Wilson was the first person she recognized. As usual, he had a bite-sized Snickers bar in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

J.C. owed her rank as a detective after only six years on the force in large part to Lieutenant Wilson. One of the Department’s first black officers to rise to the rank of lieutenant, he had experienced his share of discrimination and felt compelled to protect other minorities and women from similar abuse. He had taken the time to school J.C. not only on proper police procedures, but the politics of climbing the blue ladder.

“What’s going on?” J.C.’s two-inch heels placed her at eye-level with her boss.

Lieutenant Wilson took a sip of coffee, which he drank any way it came: hot, cold or in between. He had a thick, but toned body and a gruff exterior that camouflaged a soft side few knew he possessed. “The vic got it once in the head. Another in the neck and a third in the chest.”

“I’m surprised you’re here,” J.C. said. “Is this guy somebody important?”

He took a bite of his candy bar. “Let’s just say he has friends in high places. And one of ’em is the mayor. He donated big bucks to the mayor’s last campaign.”

J.C. examined the black man sprawled on the pavement in a pool of his own blood. He was casually dressed, but the expensive leather of his shoes and the style and fabric of his clothing advertised not just wealth, but class. “What do we know about him?”

Before Lieutenant Wilson could respond, Detective Jessup, J.C.’s partner for the past four months, answered for him. “Dr. Quentin Banks. OB/GYN. Has an office on the fourth floor. Married with two kids. Owns what his nurses describe as a mansion up in View Park. Very successful practice.”

Detective Jessup was a young, wannabe police chief. When he wasn’t talking about himself, he was usually being an all-around pain. Unlike most people in law enforcement, Detective Jessup loved telling people he was a cop. He claimed to be writing a screenplay about a black detective and a Hispanic drug dealer. A hip-hop version of
Beverly Hills Cop
. He wanted Fat Joe and Jamie Foxx to star in it.

“So, did anybody see anything?” J.C. asked.

“Yep, and here it is.” Detective Jessup flipped open his notepad and held up a blank page. “At least fifty people are standing across the street over there, but nobody saw a thing.”

Lieutenant Wilson’s cell phone rang and he stepped away to answer it. J.C. crouched down to examine the bullet wounds, which wasn’t easy to do in her tight-fitting skirt.

Detective Jessup knelt down beside her. “You think gynecologists ever get tired of staring between women’s legs?” He inspected J.C.’s exposed thigh through the slit in her skirt.

“I don’t know, Gerald. You ever get tired of being such an asshole?”

“You should start being nicer to me, you know. Once my movie gets produced, I can get you a job as an extra.”

J.C. stood up. “You have major issues.”

The lieutenant finished his call and loudly drained his cup. “Ahhhhh,” he said, with exaggerated satisfaction. “What a meal! I don’t understand why anyone would pay four dollars for a cup of supposedly gourmet coffee when you can get the same thing for just over a buck at 7-Eleven.” He tossed the empty cup into a trashcan near a wall scarred with graffiti.

“So what do we think happened here?” J.C. asked.

“Wasn’t robbery. That’s for sure,” Detective Jessup replied. “The guy had more than three hundred bucks and several credit cards on him, and they’re still there. Looks like a hit to me.”

The crime scene tech walked up carrying a heavy metal box. J.C. liked Chester Dowd because he never made her feel like she didn’t belong. Short and round with sandy blond hair, he was undisputedly the Department’s best.

J.C. watched as he conducted a cursory examination of the body.

“Anything important you can tell us at this point?”

Dowd scratched his temple. “Maybe. Remember that shooting two days ago, about six miles from here?”

Shootings weren’t exactly uncommon in L.A. J.C. tried to recall which one he was talking about.

“That engineer killed outside the Ramada Inn on Bristol Parkway,” Dowd said. “Another well-dressed black guy. Shot in the head and chest three times. Small caliber gun. Probably a twenty-two.”

J.C. took a step closer. “Yeah?”

“This one—and this is just my initial take—looks a whole lot like that one.”

“So, what’re you saying? You think the murders are connected?”

“Maybe,” Dowd said, “but that’s not my job. That’s something
you
gotta figure out.”

A
fter leaving Maya’s repast, Vernetta found herself plodding down the twelfth floor hallway at the offices of O’Reilly & Finney. There wasn’t the usual hubbub of activity typical of a weekday, but a fair number of attorneys were still chained to their desks at seven o’clock on a Saturday night.

Easing into the chair behind her desk, Vernetta frowned at the bright red message light on the telephone. She turned on her computer, then picked up the phone and punched in her voicemail password.

You have sixteen new messages.

With a loud sigh, she dropped the telephone back into the cradle.
What was she even doing here?
She had hoped to get a head start on next week’s workload, but no matter how much she got done tonight, there would still be more to do Monday morning. That was the worst part of her job. You could never catch up. There was always another lawsuit waiting in the wings.

Vernetta had recently been passed up for partnership and her passion for practicing law was slowly ebbing away. Just getting dressed in the morning and coming into the office was becoming more and more of a chore.

During the past few weeks, she had given serious thought to leaving the firm. Perhaps it was Maya’s ordeal and the realization that life was too short to waste time doing something you didn’t absolutely love. But she wasn’t a quitter. She was bound to make it on the next go-round. She would evaluate her career options
after
she made partner.

“Oh, good. You’re here.” Jim O’Reilly, the firm’s managing partner, who used to be her staunchest supporter, stood in the doorway of her office.
Used to
being theoperative phrase.

After a sexual harassment case spiraled way out of her control, their relationship had become strained. And there didn’t seem to be anything Vernetta could do to fix it.

“Did you get my voicemail message?” he asked.

“Uh . . . no, I didn’t.” Vernetta sat forward in her chair. “I’ve been out most of the week. I was just about to listen to my voicemail now.”

O’Reilly grimaced. “I left that message two days ago. I also sent you an email. Didn’t you have your BlackBerry with you?”

She didn’t respond. It wasn’t like O’Reilly to berate her. “I had a death in the family,” she said, not feeling at all like she was telling a lie since Maya felt as close as family.

“Sorry to hear that.”

The old O’Reilly, the one who’d been her mentor and friend, would have inquired further.

“I had an out-of-office message on both my voicemail and email.”

“I guess I wasn’t paying attention. You should always check your messages. Even when you’re on vacation.”

Vernetta disagreed, but wisely held her tongue.

“Anyway,” he went on, as if he had better things to do, “Honeywell has an employee who’s been abusing family leave. I gave them a quick answer, but promised that you’d get them a memo with some additional steps they should take. They need it by Monday afternoon.”