Black Cat Weekly #89

Chapter 5-7

He digs deeper and she sucks in her breath. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” She rolls her shoulders. “I’d go over to the dojo tonight and beat the crap out of someone, but I don’t have a car.”

“I’ll take you home.” Teague stares out the window. “Are you sure you’re going to be OK alone?”

“I’ve got a security system. And a gun.”

“Stand up and lean over your desk.”

“You getting kinky on me now, chico? This one of your—ooh, right there.”

chicoHe finds the knot below her shoulder blades.

“We can talk to St. Vincent tomorrow, but I don’t know where else we can go with this.”

“How about that blogger who’s been after the cops, too? Selma whatever.”

“Selma Alabama?” He assumes the name is a pseudonym, not necessarily female.

She looks over her shoulder at him, her eyes half-closed.

“Take me home?”

On the drive to Jody’s house, he slows down at every intersection and Jody turns to look behind them. He circles her block to see if any strange cars lurk before he pulls into her driveway.

The house looks big as a castle but lacks a moat or drawbridge. Her eyes look at him the way he suspects he’s looking at her, too.

When he puts his arms out, she moves against him, and her fingers dig into his back.

“Let me come in with you and make sure everything’s okay.”

“Yes. Please.”

When they get inside, she swallows and looks up at him. Her eyes look puffy, and her nose is red, but she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. She moves against him again, her voice muffled by his chest.

“I was just thinking, if we’d both died this afternoon, I’d never have another chance to tell you…”

He opens his mouth to say something, but his tongue feels huge, and he can’t get words out. He tilts her face up to kiss her. It lasts a lot longer than either one of them expected it to, and neither seems eager to stop. Finally, she steps back and bites her lip.

“Come upstairs with me?”

The next morning, he wakes up with her back spooned against his chest. When she rolls over, her left eye resembles an oil slick, and her nose is swollen. She still looks beautiful, and he knows he probably looks much worse than she does. When he rolls his head on his neck, he hears crackling like popcorn.

She looks over at him, her hair a black tangle on the pillow.

“The last time a man looked at me like you are now, it was Daniel.”

“How was that?” He may never forget the hour before they fell asleep in each other’s arms.

“You aren’t just looking at my…charms. You’re seeing at all of me.”

He doesn’t remember anyone ever looking at him like she is at that moment, either.

She walks into the bathroom to shower while he makes the bed, then he slips out to go home and clean up, too. And pop some ibuprofen.

Two hours later, Teague pulls into Jody’s driveway again, still struggling with what he can possibly say about how everything has changed in the last twelve hours.

Jody emerges from her back door wearing pleated khaki slacks with a long-sleeved shirt loose over a tee and sunglasses. Teague suspects the long sleeves hide bruises on her forearms. He has them too, courtesy of the air bag. The shirt conceals her g*n, too.

She lets him hold her door again. When he moves behind the wheel, she slides over and kisses him, then slides back and fastens her seatbelt.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

She pulls down her sunglasses to reveal her black eye, which has gained depth and diameter since he left earlier.

“I probably don’t feel any worse than you do. A little stiff, like I did two or three bouts last night.”

He catches himself before saying something stupid. She clears her throat and goes on.

“Actually, last night helped. A lot.”

“It did, didn’t it?” he says. “Me, too. With any kind of luck, it’ll happen again.”

That may depend on how quickly they find who was driving the SUV, but neither mentions that.

When they reach the office, Teague starts the coffee and Jody boots up her computer, thinking out loud.

“What are we close to that someone decided made us dangerous? I keep coming up with the cops again, even though we can’t prove anything.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Timing isn’t everything, but it’s pretty close.”

“Like martial arts,” she says. “And sex.”

“You’re killing me here.”

“No, someone else tried that yesterday.” She rolls her shoulders, and he hears the same crackling he has become familiar with.

She calls the Toyota dealer who has what’s left of her car, and they say the insurance people took one look at it and declared it a total loss.

“Well, that’s a surprise,” she says.

Teague studies his computer.

Selma Alabama has about sixty blog posts, none before mid-February, and all of them concern the Langloise raid or the Stonebury police, which tells him she’s local. Teague finds no information about her, and no pictures. Her last post is a week old, the day before Mitt found Regina Brinkley dead in her bathtub.

Jody messages both Shirlee and Tanya again. “If they don’t answer, you got any other ideas?”

He does. Morgan St. Vincent has office hours from ten to noon.

“Why don’t we talk to Langloise, too,” Teague suggests. “If we keep asking questions, maybe we’ll trip over a clue.”

“That’s what Nancy Drew always did with her chums.” Jody glares at him. “What? You didn’t think I could read?”

“I’m just trying to picture you with a Nancy Drew book.”

“I wanted to be Nancy Drew when I grew up. None of her buds were Latina, so I wanted to join her crew.”

Teague shakes his head. “I can’t wrap my head around…”

“Would it be easier if I got into jammies?” she asks. “And maybe some of that candy or ice cream you keep threatening me with?”

“I like you just the way you are,” he says. “A consenting adult.”

Trinity College lies on the hills of southern Hartford, old buildings that fulfill Teague’s concept of “liberal arts.” They reach Seabury Hall, which reminds him of something out of a Dickens novel, and find Morgan St. Vincent reading in his office with his feet up on the desk next to his laptop. Two walls hold built-in bookshelves that sag under the weight of his reading.

“Yes?” St. Vincent stands, slightly shorter than Teague, in an Oxford cloth shirt and jeans. His hair and goatee are still dark, but gray encroaches on his temples. His gold-rimmed glasses magnify his eyes to brown nickels.

“Good morning, Professor.” Teague introduces himself and Jody.

“Call me Morgan,” the man says. “I’m a doctor, but you’re definitely not students, so I don’t have to impress you.”

They take two chairs across from the desk, and Teague summarizes what little they know.

“How well do you know Kennedy M’tsumbe?”

“We’ve talked many times by email or text. I’ve only met him personally two or three times.”

“When did you first meet?” Jody asks. “Or communicate?”

“A couple of years ago. We exchanged texts over some issue and have stayed in touch.”

“How well do you know Henry Langloise? Or Christine Ferris?”

St. Vincent cleans his glasses on his shirttail. “I didn’t know them at all before last winter. But it’s a carbon copy of the Breonna Taylor case. A black woman is shot, and the police aren’t held accountable. Christine Ferris is still young, and it’s likely that she will never walk again. She had to find a new place to live because she can’t climb stairs. Her entire way of life has been taken from her and she gets nothing back.”

“We’ve tried talking with the Inspector General about the investigation.” Teague feels his phone vibrate in his pocket, but lets it go to voicemail. “How about Henry Langloise?”

St. Vincent peers through his lenses before replacing his glasses. “Small businessman. Enterprising.”

Teague waits for more, then looks at Jody.

“He doesn’t live in the part of Stonebury that people consider a bad area. The police told us—and we’re skeptical—that they had a tip he had meth, but that doesn’t sound credible.”

“No. He’s on the North side of town, isn’t he? My understanding is that the red-light area—I’m dating myself there, aren’t I?—is the South side.”

“How could the police have been so wrong? They got the tip from a confidential informant, apparently. Has Mr. Langloise talked about the case with you in more detail?”

St. Vincent adjusts his glasses.

“The more I listen to Henry Langloise, the less certain I am of his story.”

Teague counts slowly to five before replying. “How do you mean?”

“Henry has various…behaviors. I am no longer certain there were no drugs in the house when the police raided it.”

“But that would mean…” Jody stops.

“Right.” St. Vincent steeples his hands under his chin. “If there were indeed no drugs, he has a valid complaint, and he and Christine Ferris can file a huge lawsuit. But as far as I know, he hasn’t even consulted an attorney.”

“But if there were drugs,” Jody says, “whoever took them saved his ass.”

“I know. Well, I don’t know, but…”

“That would mean the cop’s CI was right. It was a clean bust, and someone, maybe even a cop—shoot, almost certainly a cop—took them.”

Teague remembers their conversation with Mitt. “Kennedy said he was trying to follow a lead about something like that. He was onto rumors that evidence was disappearing from the police storage, drugs and money. Could this be part of it?”

St. Vincent shrugs eloquently. Teague tried another tack.

“Do you know a blogger who goes by the name Selma Alabama?”

St. Vincent nodded. “Mr. M’tsumbe uses that pseudonym. He and I came up with it together.”

Outside, Teague checks his phone and sees a text from his cousin the cop.

No record of Regina Brinkley except the homicide case opened ten days ago.

No record of Regina Brinkley except the homicide case opened ten days ago.He shows it to Jody.

“Just like we thought. And maybe Langlois had drugs after all. We’re getting played, Eric, big time.”

Her own phone chirps. She looks at the screen and then she and Shirlee Kumin talk for a few minutes before she ends the call.

“She works at the Gap in Westfarms Mall,” she says. “She’s there until six, and it’s on our way home.”

The mall lies on the border of West Hartford and Farmington, immediately off an exit from I-84. Teague parks near the Macy’s entrance and they ride the escalator to the Gap on the second level.

Shirlee Kumin looks the same as in the picture with Regina Brinkley, minus the cocaine eyes and low-cut top. She’s two inches taller than Teague and her cornrows fall halfway down her back. Jody flashes her license, and the woman leads them into a corner where they pretend to look at blue jeans.