Tangled Roots (11 page)

As I walked to my car, I looked into the Healthy Food Emporium next door to the shop and saw the owner in a clinch with his cashier. A thought came to me and I headed into the store. The wind chime that hung over the door to the shop tinkled pleasantly as I walked in. I’d only been into the store once during their grand opening a year ago. But I knew that the woman the owner was hugged up with was not his wife. By the time I reached the front of the store, the amorous couple had broken apart and the owner had disappeared into the back room. As I got closer I could tell that the cashier was much younger than I first thought; she barely looked out of her teens. She had long, bleached-blond hair that was dark at the roots, and she wore her makeup so heavy she could have graduated cum laude from Clown College. Her name tag revealed her name to be Kitten. Since there was nothing feline about her that I could see, I figured it must be a cutesy nickname for Katherine. Kitten smiled when she saw me and I noticed her bright purple lipstick was smeared on her teeth.

“Hi. I’m looking for some multivitamins. Can you tell me what aisle they’re in?”

“Sure, they’re at the end of the middle aisle on the big display,” she replied.

As she spoke, the owner, a runty middle-aged guy with a beer gut and a straggly ponytail, emerged from the back room carrying a box. He walked to the front of the store and started restocking a display of carob candy near where I was headed. I thanked her and headed towards the vitamins.

I pretended to browse through the various brands of vitamins. The owner was behind me, bent over his box. I purposefully backed into him.

“Sorry,” I said, looking sheepish.

“Not a problem. You finding what you need?” he asked, standing to face me. I could see traces of Kitten’s lipstick in the corners of his mouth. That must have been one hell of a kiss.

“Actually,” I said, looking out the store’s window dramatically. “There was a strange man following me. So I ducked in here,” I whispered.

The owner went outside and looked up and down both sides of the street before coming back inside. “Nobody’s out there now. You want me to call the police?”

“No. That’s okay. I’m probably being paranoid. You know, since that girl got killed next door. Have you or your wife seen anyone strange lurking around here?” I asked, still whispering and gesturing in Kitten’s direction.

“No. But I thought they knew who killed that girl,” he said, looking from Kitten to me uneasily. His face was slightly flushed.

“Well, they still haven’t caught him. How about your wife? Has she seen anyone?”

“Ah, she’s not my wife, and she hasn’t seen anyone, either.” He turned away from me back to his box. The wind chime above the door tinkled as a woman entered the store. She was dumpy and wore a peasant dress and Birkenstocks with thick black socks. As she passed by the owner, she grabbed his ass. He turned slightly and gave her retreating back a halfhearted smile. I watched her walk past Kitten, who was filing her nails, into the back room.

“Oh, is
that
your wife?” I asked feigning ignorance.

He turned and stared daggers at me but didn’t answer.

“You might want to wipe your mouth, lover boy, or your wife’s gonna know you’ve been playing with a certain Kitten.”

He straightened up and quickly wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Did I get it all off?” he asked pleadingly, looking towards the back of the store. His wife had emerged from the back room and was talking to Kitten.

“I’ll tell you if you answer my questions.”

“What do want from me, lady?”

“Calm down. I just want to know if you saw anybody around the beauty shop the night of the murder next door. It would have been after nine that night.”

“What are you, a reporter?” He wiped at his mouth again, still looking at his wife.

“Just answer the question, please.”

“The only person I saw that night was some black girl. I saw her go around the back of the shop.”

“What time was this?”

He sighed heavily. “I can’t remember exactly, maybe around nine-thirty.” He kept looking at his wife. For some reason, I was getting the biggest kick out of his discomfort.

“Did you recognize her?”

“I didn’t see her face, just her hair. She had long braids.”

“Did you see anyone else?”

“No,” he said sullenly.

“Did you hear anything after you saw her, like a gunshot, maybe?”

“No. I left after that.”

“Would you be willing to tell the police what you saw that night?”

“Are you crazy, lady?” His voice was high-pitched and panicky.

I glanced at a sign on the wall listing the store’s hours. They closed at six every night.

“So, I guess I don’t need to ask what you were doing here so late.” He glared at me, and started to say something, but his wife walked up behind him and wrapped her arms around his middle. She kissed him on the cheek.

“Is my handsome husband giving you a hard time?” Handsome? He hardly looked like love’s dream to me, but what did I know. Maybe he was packing some major equipment in his pants.

“Not at all, ma’am. He’s been very helpful,” I replied, scratching the corner of my mouth to indicate where he still had some lipstick. He wiped the corner of his mouth hard before turning to plant a big wet one on his wife. Yuck.

I left the store and headed to my car. The girl he’d seen that night had braids. Could it have been Shanda? I knew there was bad blood between her and Inez because of Vaughn. But could Shanda have killed her own cousin? Maybe that was the real reason she was acting so indifferently at Inez’s funeral and why she was so willing to help set Timmy up.

I was running pretty late when I arrived at Lynette’s mother’s brick tri-level that evening. I had to park around the block and almost fell as I tried rushing down the sidewalk in high-heeled boots. Lynette’s mother, Justine, is a stickler for punctuality and I was in no mood to be on the receiving end of one of her my- time - is - precious - how - dare - you - be - late looks. Most of the time I like Justine. But she’s moody as hell. You never know if you’re going to get hugged or cussed out.

Justine Martin opened the front door before I could ring the bell. I walked straight into an overpowering cloud of her Cinnabar perfume. But I was used to how heavy she wore her fragrance and knew to hold my breath. I could tell she was pissed at me because she tossed her long, black, curly weave, which hung down her back much like a horse’s mane, and didn’t speak. She was dressed in an emerald green silk pantsuit without a shirt underneath. I could see her lacy, black push-up bra peeking out from beneath her buttoned up jacket. Her feet were crammed into heels that looked two sizes too small for her and were so high I wondered why she didn’t have a nosebleed. Her makeup was dramatic and overdone, with eyes ringed with so much eyeliner she looked like an ancient Egyptian queen. Justine’s in her fifties but doesn’t look it and is determined to retain a tight grasp on her youth, no matter how foolish she may look in the process. She took my coat; looked me up and down; gave my cashmere sweater; long vintage suede skirt; and boots a disapproving roll of her eyes, and practically shoved me into the living room where the other guests were congregating. I almost tripped over her terrier, Coco.

“The maid of honor has decided to grace us with her presence,” Justine said loudly, making my face burn hot with embarrassment. Apparently, I was the last one to arrive. The three dozen or so people in the room, most of whom I didn’t recognize, turned to stare briefly at me before turning their attention back to whatever they’d been doing when I arrived. A jazz instrumental was playing on the CD player and people were helping themselves to an abundance of finger food that had been laid out on the dining room table.

Lynette’s fiancé, Greg, looking quite handsome in black slacks and a gray turtleneck, came to my rescue and pressed a drink into my hand. I sipped it and gave him a grateful look.

“As you can see, my future mother-in-law is in rare form,” he whispered to me. “I’ve been trying to avoid her but she keeps grabbing me and introducing me to people as her future son-in-law, the bank president. I wouldn’t mind it so much but some of her people keep asking me about why their loans didn’t go through.” Greg’s actually an accountant at Willow Federal Bank, where he met Lynette, who’s a personal banker.

We laughed, but I knew how he felt. For the longest time, Justine would introduce me to her friends as Lynette’s best friend Kendra, the restaurant owner, when she knows full well I’m just a hostess. I knew her embellishment of my career was to make people think she mixed and mingled with the elite of Willow. The only way I got Justine to stop was by saying I owned and operated the Weenie Hut on Route 40 whenever the folks she introduced me to asked me about my
restaurant
.

“Where’s Lynette?” I asked. Greg pointed in the direction of the kitchen and I headed off in search of my best friend.

I heard laughter as I approached the kitchen but when I walked in the laughter stopped and I was immediately met by the silent gaze of several women, three of whom I didn’t know. Lynette was sitting at the kitchen table looking uncomfortable. I instantly knew they’d been talking about me and felt my face start to burn again.

“Hey, Kendra,” said Lynette, jumping up and giving me a quick hug that I only half returned.

I greeted the other women in the room — Lynette’s sister-in-law, Abby, and Greg’s sister, Liz, both of whom I actually like a lot, and smiled at the other women, figuring they were bridesmaids, too. Lynette made the introductions.

“Kendra, these are Greg’s cousins, Celeste and Cecile Warner from Cincinnati,” she said, gesturing to two women who I just realized were identical twins. Celeste and Cecile were both tall and thin, almost to the point of being gaunt. Both twins wore their hair closely cropped and natural but one had her hair dyed a bright orange. The only other difference in their appearances was that one twin was wearing a blue, sequined cocktail dress that looked too big, while the other sported a tight red minidress and thigh-high boots. Both women were guzzling large drinks and, upon further inspection of the way they were propped up against the kitchen counter, appeared to be either drunk off their asses or well on their way to being so. I said hello and held out my hand to the nearest twin. She gave me a moist, limp handshake while her sister belched and rubbed her stomach. I quickly turned my attention to the other woman.

“Kendra, this is a coworker of mine at the bank, Georgette Combs,” Lynette said, gesturing towards the pretty, smiling, conservatively dressed young woman seated at the kitchen table.
This is more like it
, I thought as I held out my hand. Georgette reached out to shake my hand and I froze with shock as I saw that her fingernails were at least four inches long. Some of her nails were so long they had actually started to curl into spirals.

“Nice meeting you, Georgette,” I said, recovering quickly. I tried not to wince as my hand disappeared into hers and pushed the question of how she wiped without giving herself a hysterectomy firmly out of mind.

“Nice meeting you, too, Kendra,” Georgette replied in a high-pitched voice that sounded like she’d inhaled helium. “Come on over here, girl, and sit down next to me,” she said, patting the chair beside her. I walked over to her, willing myself not to laugh at that Minnie Mouse voice by filling my head with visions of my pet bunny, Fifi, who got run over when I was eight. I didn’t want to hurt this woman’s feelings when she seemed so friendly. However, you’d think I’d have learned by now that first impressions aren’t always accurate.

“So, Kendra, what’s this we hear about you not liking your maid of honor dress? I thought it was real pretty,” Georgette said, leaning forward in her seat, her friendly smile gone.

“Yeah, what makes you think you’re too good to wear what the bride picked out? Ain’t none of us complained,” piped in the twin wearing the blue sequins, slurring her words slightly.

You could have heard a pin drop as they all waited for my response. I looked over at Lynette, who looked mortified.

“Well, I certainly never meant to come across that way. But this is really between Lynette and me,” I said, slowly and deliberately taking deep breaths to keep from working myself up into a full-blown snit. A certain bride-to-be was going to have hell to pay.

“Kendra, you know I didn’t mean it like that,” said Lynette, looking down at the table.

“Yes, you did. You said Kendra would rather wear a rag from the thrift store than the nice dress you picked out. Didn’t she, y’all?” Georgette said, looking around the room for affirmation. Liz and Abby just rolled their eyes and left the kitchen.

“Uh-huh, she did say that,” replied the twin in the red dress, loudly, filling the room with her liquor-scented breath.

“You gonna let her talk about you like that, Kim?” asked the blue-sequined twin, shaking a bony finger in my face.

“It’s Kendra, and if you want that finger, you better keep it out of my face,” I said, getting up from the table, my quest to be diplomatic short-lived. If I’d known I was walking into an ambush, I’d have kept my behind at home.

“Ooh, I’m so scared. Miss Cheap Ass is gonna beat me up, y’all,” said the blue twin, lurching around the kitchen, bobbing and weaving like she was ducking imaginary blows. Everyone in the room, except Lynette and me, started laughing hysterically.

“You guys need to quit,” said Lynette, sounding like she was about to cry.

“You were the one talking about your so-called best friend. Not us,” replied Georgette in a huff.

She and the twins were staring at Lynette and me with glittering eyes and I suddenly realized that these three crazy heifers wanted us to fight. They would like nothing better than to see Lynette and me push back the kitchen table and start brawling and tearing each other’s hair out.

I’d had quite enough of Talon Woman and the Double Lush Twins. As far as I was concerned, Lynette and I had settled the dress issue, and even though I was annoyed that she’d been talking about me behind my back, I wasn’t about to act a fool for the enjoyment of these crazy women. I pulled Lynette to her feet. “Come on and introduce me to everybody else.” I led her out of the kitchen.