Pernicious (7 page)

         
“Thank you, Jesus! You heard my cry! I called Your name and You heard my cry!”

         
“Ma’am, we would like to talk to you about your son’s…death.” She’d almost said murder. No need to excite the woman further.

         
“Yes,” Mrs. Davis said. “Have a seat.”

         
The living room was sparsely furnished: a brown suede couch, a small oak coffee table and two metal folding chairs. On the floor, a box fan leaned on the unpainted concrete wall, blowing hot air, circulating a suffocating scent of bug spray.

         
Tasha sat on a folding chair while Bob opted for the couch, almost falling in.

         
“Could I get y’all something to drink?”

         
“No, thanks,” Bob and Tasha said in unison.

         
“Are you sure? It wouldn’t be any trouble.”

         
“Um…What you got?” Bob said, wiping sweat from his brow.

         
“I’ve got grape Kool-Aid and Kool-Aid with grape.” She laughed at herself and Bob laughed along with her.

         
“I’ll take grape Kool-Aid with water,” Bob said, grinning.

         
The woman stopped laughing. “Is that supposed to be funny?”

         
“Mrs. Davis,” Tasha intervened, “grape Kool-Aid will be fine.”

         
“Maybe,” Tasha whispered to Bob when the woman left the room, “I should do the talking.”

         
Presently, Mrs. Davis returned with a wooden tray, three jelly glasses, each brimming with grape Kool-Aid. No ice.

         
She said, “I knew it when you knocked on the door. Jesus told me to have patience, told me to wait on Him. He sent me to you, you know. I’ve called everybody. Nobody would give me the time of day. Ask and you shall receive. You gotta believe, though. Won’t help if you don’t believe.”

         
“Ma’am,” Tasha said, “please don’t misconstrue our being here as confirmation of your son’s death as anything other than an accident, okay? We’re here to make an inquiry of your complaints.”

         
Mrs. Davis raised her glass to her mouth and sipped, dark-brown eyes fixed on Tasha. She sat her glass on the coffee table.

         
“Don’t play with me, you hear!” Nostrils flared. “I’m old, not a damned fool! Been calling you people every day since I buried my boy. Called and called and called and called--and the way I’ve been treated, you’d think
I
murdered somebody. Now you in my house drinking my Kool-Aid outta my best glasses”--Bob sat his on the table--“blowing smoke up my butt. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t think my boy was murdered.”

         
Bob cleared his throat, a signal for Tasha to say something.

         
“Ma’am,” Tasha said, “we’re just--”

         
“You see this?” she said, touching her hair. “That’s right, gray to the scalp. My hair was charcoal black before my boy was murdered, charcoal black!” She started crying. “My only son…my
only
child…murdered!”

         
Bob and Tasha studied the floor, admiring the whirly beige patterns in the white linoleum.

         
“You know,” Mrs. Davis said, composing herself, “my boy always wanted to fly airplanes. When he was about five or so, he told me he was going to buy a airplane and fly me to Jamaica.”

         
“Mrs. Davis,” Tasha said, “how would you describe your son’s marriage?”

         
“Effed up!”

         
Tasha waited.

         
Mrs. Davis laughed. “He met her at the car wash, what that tell you? When he first told me about her, I thought she was a skink he was playing with, you know, no big deal. He told me he wanted me to meet her, and still I didn’t think much of it.

         
“I’d met a few of his girlfriends before--skinny, bug-eyed fools, to be honest with you. When he took a shower and put on clean clothes, I knew something was wrong. You see, my son suffered from…goodness, I can’t remember what my husband called it…hydro-something-or-other…I can’t remember. It caused him to have a negative reaction to water.

         
“My husband, God bless his soul, had to beat him into the tub. Willie would carry on so, you’d think we were killing him. So all a sudden he’s jumping into hot water without being whipped. I couldn’t believe it. Next thing I know, Miss Thang knocking on my door, looking like she just stepped out one of those naked magazines. Figured she was lost, you know. I says, ‘Can I help ya?’

         
“She say she here to see Willie. ‘Willie who?’ I says. Then Willie come strutting out, dressed to the nines, smelling like Ivory soap, skinning and grinning like a damned fool. He say, ‘Momma, meet my future wife. Her name Perry.’ That’s when I had to sit down.

         
“She’s kissing and hugging on him like a baby with a new teddy. She say, ‘Mrs. Davis, your son and I are getting married.’ I says, ‘Now why you wanna go do that?’ I knew they had just met weeks ago. I also know a mismatch when I see one.

         
“Now my Willie was no bum or anything like that, but he rarely bathed, on account of his medical condition. And he seldom did any manual labor, on account of his lifelong dream to become a pilot. I asked myself what this woman wanted with my Willie. Couldn’t come up with one thing. It just didn’t make sense…made no sense whatsoever.

         
“The next day he came and took his clothes. I told him the woman wasn’t no good. He said I was trying to stop him from enjoying the finer things in life. I was just holding on to him so I wouldn’t be alone, like Fred on
Sanford and Son
. That hurt.”

         
Tasha glanced at her watch, hoping the woman would catch the hint.

         
“You got something to do?” Mrs. Davis asked.

         
“Yes, we were scheduled to interview someone in an hour,” Tasha lied.

         
“About my son?”

         
“No, no. Another matter.”

         
“It can wait, can’t it? I’ve been itching to tell this. If it’s a life-or-death situation I understand. Otherwise, you might as well sit there and hear what I got to say.”

         
“Okay,” Tasha said. “There’s a few questions we’d like to ask. And like I said, we do have another interview.”

         
“As I was saying before you interrupted, my boy left with that woman. Two months he come back, apologizing, admitting I was right about Miss Thang. Told me she was making him do things he didn’t want to do. I couldn’t imagine what. Whatever it was, it scared him.
   

         
“The next morning--the sun hadn’t even come up yet--she come aknocking, hollering at the top of her lungs, ‘Willie, get your so-and-so out here!’

         
“I politely asked her what the hell her problem. Guess what she told me? ‘Get a grip, Granny.’ I told her get off my porch before I call the police. She kicked the screen door and the hook popped and she rushed in and grabbed me by the neck. Now I may look old and senile, but I ain’t never took a whooping without getting in a few licks. I grabbed that thing there,” pointing at the box fan, “and commenced to swinging.

         
“She started hollering, ‘Willie! Willie! Willie, come save me. Your mother trying to kill me!’ I was fixin’ to ring her bell when he came in. He say, ‘Momma, don’t hurt her.’ I says, ‘You better get this trash out my house!’ That’s when she
really
started bawling. ‘Willie, take me home…take me home!’ I says, ‘Willie ain’t taking you no-damn-where, get your butt out and don’t come back!’ But he did. I begged him not to, but he did.” She paused. “A few weeks later, a man called me and said my boy was…” She started crying again, more intense than before.

         
Bob and Tasha sat there quietly, waiting for her emotions to subside.

         
Tasha said, “Ma’am, was your son an avid fisherman?”

         
Mrs. Davis laughed and wiped her face with the sleeve of a blue-and-white checkered dress. “You ain’t listening. I told you Willie was scared of water, all kinds of water. Dishwater, spring water, rain water. Unless it came in a cup, Willie steered clear. That oughta tell you he didn’t fish no avid or any other fish.”

         
“So there’s no reason,” Bob said, “why Willie’s in a boat at night, fishing?”

         
Mrs. Davis stared at Bob as if he were something that dropped out of the sky. “Did you earn your badge or win it in a raffle?”

         
“Ma’am,” Tasha said, “does the name Keshana Green mean anything to you?”

         
“Nope. Is it supposed to?”

         
“Your son,” Tasha said, wondering if she should reveal the information, thinking it might cause another round of hysterics, “signed a life insurance policy a few weeks prior to his death. The beneficiary was a Keshana Green, whom we don’t have a clue to who she is or how she’s connected to Willie.”

         
The woman looked pained, her eyes on Tasha, but her thoughts elsewhere. “Well, I’ll be damn!” she said.

         
“What?” Tasha asked.

         
“It’s all adding up now. I could never figure out why she wanted Willie dead. You’re telling me he had some kinda insurance. The same young man who couldn’t muster enough change to buy a newspaper? Hmmph! That was her plan all along. That’s why she put him in rehab, you see? She had to get him cleaned up to start the insurance.”

         
Tasha said, “Keshana Green was the sole beneficiary. No one else.”

         
“Don’t matter what the name is, don’t matter at all. I’m telling you what I know. Perry got the money. Do I have to do your work for you? Keshana, Osama! That might be her nickname. I’ll guarantee you this, Perry got the money. All of it!”

         
“You mentioned a rehab,” Tasha said. “Do you know the name?”

         
“No, I’m sorry I don’t. It’s the one downtown, near the Capitol Hotel. My nephew called me and said he’d seen Willie down there.”

         
Tasha stood, signaling the time to leave. Mrs. Davis asked them to stay a minute longer; she had baby pictures of Willie she wanted to show. Tasha politely declined.

         
Tears welled in Mrs. Davis’ eyes. “Get that heifer, okay?”

         
“We’ll keep you informed,” Tasha said.

         
“I’ll be praying for you,” Mrs. Davis said.

                                     
* * * * *

         
“What you think?” Bob asked Tasha once they were in the car.

         
“I think she should be the lead investigator.”

         
Bob laughed. “She’s something else, isn’t she? One minute she’s calling the Lord, the next she’s talking about ringing somebody’s bell.”

         
“The rehab she mentioned, it has to be New Directions. You wanna check it now or wait till in the morning?”