We trundled up and she stared, but then again anyone would stare. Sissy and I had black eyes (Sissy’s was fading but mine still looked angry). Shirleen’s Afro seemed to have grown two inches in the last week. Daisy’s hair rivaled Shirleen’s in size and volume, she had five-inch, shiny white, platform go-aheads on her feet and her body was encased in skintight denim with enough rhinestones to supply Celine Dion’s wardrobe technician for emergency mending on a concert tour. And finally there was Tex who looked like a recently reformed serial killer (and that was being nice).
We were undoubtedly not the popular choice for Sunday visitors.
“It’s all right, Mrs. Conrad. We may look crazy but we ain’t gonna hurt you,” Shirleen assured her as we hit the porch.
Winnie didn’t look like she believed Shirleen. “How do you know my name?” she asked.
“We’re lookin’ for Walter Ellis, AKA Noah Dexter but I think you knew him as Jeremiah Levine,” Shirleen said.
Winnie sucked in breath, her kindly face got hard then she muttered, “Jeremiah?”
“Yeah. You know who we’re talkin’ about?” Tex asked.
Winnie looked at Tex then her eyes scanned all of us. “What now with Jeremiah? I had some boys come talk to me earlier this week about him. I don’t know anything and I don’t want to know anything. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. I haven’t seen him in months and I like it that way.”
I couldn’t blame her.
Shirleen grabbed me and pulled me forward. “See this girl here?”
Winnie nodded, her eyes wide as she looked at me.
“Well, while Jeremiah was rippin’ you off, he was also rippin’ off my girl Ava. Stole her money and her dead auntie’s jewelry. A little while ago she got herself a man who found out this little piece of ugly history. He’s the kinda man who doesn’t like that shit much and went lookin’ for payback. Jeremiah felt the heat, got angry and, a coupla days ago, took it out on Ava. You get what I’m sayin’ to you?” Shirleen asked.
The wary hardness went out of Winnie’s face and it went soft as she gazed at me. “Oh honey,” she whispered.
“I’m fine,” I told her, smiling just to prove my point.
“You don’t look fine to me,” Winnie said and I could see the concern in her eyes.
“No, really,” I promised quietly, got closer and knelt down by her chair.
She looked down at me. “Was it your man who came by earlier this week?”
“Probably,” I said.
“Which one was he, the Native American or the one with the mustache?” she asked.
“The mustache,” I answered.
She smiled and reached out a hand to me. I took it and she squeezed.
“He’s cute. Drives a Porsche, looks good in it too,” she told me then went on. “He’s got a great mustache. Most men would look all kinds a fool with that mustache but he works it real fine. Real fine. Seems a good sort. A whole lot better than Jeremiah.”
She had that right, all of it.
“Right now, he’s also kind of angry,” I fibbed. It wasn’t exactly a lie, more a significant understatement. “After Noah… or, sorry, Jeremiah beat me up a couple of days ago, Luke’s payback turned to retribution. I’m trying to find Jeremiah before Luke does and turn him in to the police so Luke won’t do anything gonzo and get himself into trouble,” I said.
She shook her head and squeezed my hand again. “Seems to me Jeremiah could use someone metin’ out gonzo retribution but I’d hate to see your man get himself into trouble. I’d like to help but, like I said, I haven’t seen Jeremiah in months.”
“You have an address? Phone number? Did you meet any of his friends? Did he say anything to you that might help us find him?” Daisy asked.
Winnie let go of my hand and looked at Daisy. I stood up and stepped away.
“Like I told those boys that came lookin’ for him, I don’t know anything. My family tried to find him after he –” Winnie stopped talking and looked away and I could tell she was embarrassed.
I kind of understood how she felt but I was a white woman with a somewhat hefty inheritance that Noah luckily couldn’t figure out how to steal. She was an elderly, disabled black lady, living in Aurora, Colorado, not a penthouse on Central Park in NYC. You could tell she wasn’t exactly rolling in it. What Noah got from her probably cut deep into whatever end-of-life living-in-a-wheelchair safety net she had.
This pissed me off so much for a moment I considered calling off the Noah chase and letting Luke do whatever Luke was going to do. Then I realized it could mean I wouldn’t get to process all my life’s complications in a warm bed with Luke lying next to me so instead I vowed octuple revenge against Noah, rat-bastard.
“This is beginning to tick me off,” I announced, crossing my arms on my chest. “We’re not getting anywhere. We keep running into dead ends but they’re dead ends that the Hot Bunch moved through days ago. We’re never going to catch up. Luke’s gonna find Noah and I’m not altogether certain Eddie and Hank are going to keep this whole thing off the radar when Noah turns up with a cap busted in his ass.”
“Sugar, Luke ain’t gonna be aimin’ at Noah’s ass,” Daisy told me.
“Listen to you, ‘a cap busted in his ass’. You’re cute,” Shirleen said. “I can see why Luke likes you, outside of the fact you got a great ass that is. Luke strikes me as an ass man.”
She was wrong. Luke didn’t discriminate. He was a whole package man.
“I have an idea,” Sissy threw in and everyone looked at her. “You, Indy and Jules lure your boys home somehow, I don’t know, pretend you’ve got flu or food poisoning or something. We’ll assign each one of you a buddy. The minute they get close to you in bed, you give the high sign, we’ll jump out of a closet, stun gun them and cuff them to the bed. Then we can keep searching and maybe talk Eddie and Hank into helping us on account of they’re cops and will want to do this lawful like.”
This was a terrible plan but I did allow myself a moment to think of Luke cuffed to a bed. It was an intriguing thought.
“I ain’t cuffin’ Luke to no bed,” Tex boomed, tearing me away from my intriguing thoughts. “Fuck, I’m not cuffin’ Lee or Vance to a bed either. Those boys would lose their badass motherfucker minds. I got a girlfriend and fifteen cats. I get tortured and killed, who’s gonna take care of Nancy and my kitties?”
I stared at Tex. Tex didn’t strike me as the type of guy who had “kitties” much less actually used the word.
“I’m checkin’ in to Command Central, see if Jules’s got anythin’ new,” Shirleen announced, walking off the porch and around the house all the while flipping open her cell.
I turned to Winnie and crouched beside her again. “You doing okay? After…erm, Noah –”
Winnie shook her head but said, “Got a large, big-hearted family. They’re takin’ good care of me.”
I smiled at her again, reached out and gave her another hand squeeze. Then I pulled a pen and a stray receipt out of my purse and wrote my name, home and cell numbers on it and handed it to her.
“Your family just got larger. You need anything, even if it’s just company, call me.”
She took the piece of paper and looked at it then she looked at me. “He got your auntie’s jewelry?”
I nodded. “The jewelry didn’t mean much, wasn’t my style, but Auntie Ella meant the world to me and it was hers and she wanted me to have it. I try not to think about it but it sucks that it’s gone.”
“Maybe you should let your man do what he’s gotta do,” she suggested.
I stared at her thinking maybe she didn’t just get back from church. The Bible said an eye for an eye but it also went on about forgiveness being divine. Nothing like mixed messages. Still, even though Luke looked the part of a kickass angel of vengeance, I couldn’t be totally sure he was God’s chosen tool to send Noah straight to hell.
“The thought had crossed my mind,” I admitted, Winnie grinned and I went on. “Problem is, Luke
moved in across the street when I was eight which is about the time I fell in love with him. He was always hot, even when he was twelve, but I was fat, had glasses and mousy hair. Didn’t matter, he liked me all the same even back then. It took us awhile to hook up and I’m not anxious to get unhooked.”
It was her turn to nod. “I can see your point.”
I got closer. “I’m a little worried Noah, or Jeremiah, or whoever he is, is getting kind of desperate. Who knows what he’ll do but if he finds out we’ve all looked you up –”
“I’ll give my grandchildren a call,” she interrupted me. “They’ll keep an eye on me.”
“Could you check in with me just to set my mind at ease?” I asked.
Her grin went ultra warm. “Be happy to.”
I gave her another hand squeeze just as we heard the deep bass thrumming from a moving vehicle on the street. A shiny, dark blue, older model Lexus with gold trim pulled up in front of the house, seriously loud rap assaulting the quiet neighborhood. The rap cut off and four young black women of varying shapes and sizes, but all dressed and made up as if they were just about to stroll into a club, rolled out of the Lexus.
“Uh-oh,” Daisy muttered as she stared at the girls heading up the walk.
I stood up as Sissy asked, “Uh-oh, what?”
The leader of the pack was short, round and had her black hair in big fat ringlets that were bouncing around her head and face. She wore fire-engine red lipstick and it looked good on her.
Daisy was moving behind Tex and I didn’t get a good feeling about it. Daisy was not the kind of woman who hid without good reason and I didn’t relish finding out what her good reason might be.
“What’s going on?” I whispered toward Daisy.
“You! Bitch! I see you!” The ringlet girl was clickety-clacking on her high-heeled, bronze, peek-a-boo toe pumps and she was pointing at Daisy.
What now?
“Think you can stun gun me twice then walk away?” Miss Ringlet demanded.
Stun gun? Twice?
Uh-oh was wrong.
Eek! was more like it.
I looked at Daisy and Daisy was done trying to hide behind Tex. She came out in full view and she’d morphed straight to Attitude.
“I didn’t stun gun you!” she shouted back. “Indy did, but only after you charged her and that time I wasn’t even there. Then Jet did it but only after you called Ally a be-atch and punched me so I had to take you down.”
Eekity, eek, eek, eek.
“Olivia Conrad,” Winnie waded in. “What you thinkin’ waltzin’ up to my porch, all attitude? These are my friends.”
“Ain’t no friends of yours, Big Momma,” Olivia answered, having arrived on the porch looking ready for action.
“What’s going on?” I asked and Olivia’s eyes swung to me and they got big.
“Shit, girl, what happened to yo’ face?” she asked, forgetting her tirade when confronted with the busted up vision of me.
“Noah Dexter beat me up,” I told her.
“Noah who?”
“You know him as Jeremiah Levine,” I explained.
At my words, Olivia, already ready to blow, pushed the lever up to engage the rocket launchers.
“That no-good motherfucker beat you up?” she screeched and I was pretty certain my eardrums were close to bleeding.
“Duct taped her to a steel post in her basement,” Daisy shared then went ultra generous with information. “Once he’d taped her, he stuck his hand down her pants, dry humped her and then left her in a basement coal room for hours before one of our boys found her.”
Shit.
Olivia’s eyes bugged out and all her girls sucked in breath. “What?” she shrieked and the windows on Winnie’s house shook.
“You didn’t tell me that last part,” Winnie Conrad said from beside me, her voice sounding not-sweet-old-lady-who-goes-to-church-on-Sunday at all.
“Well –” I began, turning to Winnie but I was interrupted.
Olivia turned to Daisy. “What’s this got to do with you, bitch?”
“Olivia, girl, watch your mouth,” Winnie put in but Daisy ignored Winnie.
“She’s a Rock Chick and I’m a Rock Chick. Rock Chicks look out for each other. We’re after Jeremiah-Noah whoever the hell. And don’t call me bitch, comprende?” Daisy answered, her own rocket launchers fired up and blazing, ready to roar.
“I hear what you’re sayin’, lookin’ out for your girl but no one disrespects me,” Olivia shot back.
“You punched me in the face. What’d you expect me to do?” Daisy fired her bullet.
“I wasn’t aimin’ at you. It was a mistake. You got in the way when I was aimin’ at your other girl. What’d you expect me to do?” Olivia retaliated.
“I expect you to get over it. It all started when Indy stun-gunned you during a bar brawl and she was protectin’ her man by stun gunnin’ your man and you got all attitude,” Daisy carried on.
“What? She got a right to protect her man and I got no right to protect mine?” Olivia asked what I thought was a valid question.
“Your man had skipped bond, Indy’s man’s a bounty hunter. Sounds to me like your man ain’t worth your troubles. Not that I judge what he’s gotta do to make a livin’, I just judge the motherfuckers stupid enough to get caught,” Daisy retorted.
Hmm, I didn’t think that was the right thing to say.
“Tell me you did not just say that,” Olivia demanded, her head bobbing, her ringlets bouncing.
Yep, I was right, that wasn’t the right thing to say.
“Sugar, I said it,” Daisy replied.
Everyone tensed.
Time to de-escalate the hostilities.
I went for the sympathy tactic. “Listen,” I put in. “I think Mrs. Conrad and I have been through enough without a catfight between my girls and her girls on her porch. Everyone, please, help us out and stand down.”
“We don’t got time for this silly-ass girlie shit anyway,” Tex boomed. “We got a dickhead on the loose.”
The Rock Chick Posse and the Pissed Off Black Women Posse turned to glare at Tex.
Shit.
Foiled again by Tex being a lunatic.
“Don’t look at me!” Tex shouted, if it could be believed, sounding even louder. “Jee-zus, huggin’ and cryin’ and badass motherfucker showdowns in livin’ rooms and takin’ a break from the action to have Sunday breakfast with your man’s mother, what the fuck? We gonna take a side trip to the mall next or do we want to find this fuckin’ guy?”
“Actually, I could use a side trip to the mall,” Sissy put in. “I didn’t bring enough clothes with me from Wyoming and I don’t want to go back to my house. It depresses me.”
“What’s wrong with your house?” One of Olivia’s girls asked.
“Drive by, AK-47 through the living room. It’s a mess, all my pottery, dust.”
I stared as all of Olivia’s girls nodded, accepting this as if Sissy had said her house had been accidentally flooded by the normal, everyday, but annoying, occurrence of blocked pipes.
“I could go to the mall too,” Daisy added. “Marcus is takin’ me out to dinner tonight and I don’t have a thing to wear.”
A thought hit me and I said, “I need thirty minutes in the lingerie section, Luke and I have special plans tonight.”
Tex looked to the heavens. “Lord, forgive me for what I’m about to do.”
“What are you about to do?” Sissy asked.
“Wring all you alls necks,” Tex boomed back.
“We take Tod and Stevie to the mall with us, we’d be in and out in thirty minutes. Those boys don’t fuck around at the mall. They got, like, a different kind of gay-dar,” Daisy told Tex. “It’s the kind that they can hone in on the best outfit, pair of shoes, or whatever you need, find your size without even askin’ and feed you the shit in your dressing room without you havin’ to leave it. They don’t spare your feelin’s either. If it don’t look good, they just snatch it from
you and find you somethin’ else. They could do it in the Olympics, they’re so good.”
Tex scowled at Daisy, completely unimpressed.
“We have no leads. It wouldn’t hurt, a quick stop to the mall,” Sissy pointed out and I couldn’t stop my smile. Sissy going head-to-head with Tex meant the old Sissy I knew was back. Three weeks ago, Sissy probably wouldn’t have had the gumption to say “boo” to Tex.
“What’re you grinnin’ about?” Tex demanded, his scowl now directed at me. “A second ago, you were thinking of cuffin’ Luke to the bed to get ahead of him in this hunt.”
“Luke?” Olivia cut in, staring at me. “Big Momma told me Luke Stark paid her a visit this week. We talkin’ ‘bout Stark here?”
“Yeah,” I told her.
Her eyes got big again. “You seein’ Stark?”
My smile grew wide. “Yeah.”
“Shee-it, girl. I seen him around. I seen him lots. That boy is fine. That boy’s ass, hon-nee, that ass could win awards. You sure bounced back from Jeremiah all right. Good for you,” Olivia smiled back.
“Are we goin’ to the mall or what?” Daisy asked.
“I could go to the mall,” Olivia said.
The Rock Chick party stared at her.
“I could join the hunt for Jeremiah too, wouldn’t mind takin’ that boy down,” Olivia went on and then turned to her girls. “He’s the one stole from Big Momma.”
“Rat-bastard,” one of her girls muttered.
“That’s what I’m saying,” I muttered back and got a bunch of big, white grins.
Shirleen, who’d missed all the action and not only didn’t look like she cared but didn’t bother to ask, hoofed up to us.
“We got a situation,” she announced and everyone’s eyes swung to her. “Smithie’s cornered in someone’s yard by a couple of German Shepherds. Any of you good with dogs?”
Crap!
This just keeps getting better all the time, Bad Ava took that opportunity to chime in.
Oo, puppies! I love puppies! Good Ava exclaimed.
“I’m good with dogs,” Sissy said.
“Right, let’s go,” Shirleen didn’t waste any time. She waved at Winnie and took off toward her Navigator. Everyone followed suit except I leaned over and gave Winnie a kiss on the cheek and Olivia gave her a big hug finished with a kiss on the top of her head.