Vengeance is Mine

Chapter 2: The Notebook

It was nearly midnight when I drove back to my apartment from the wake.  I tried to shut my door quietly, and tiptoe up the porch steps so I wouldn’t disturb my landlord, or the tenants upstairs.  I nearly jumped out of my skin when I realized James was sitting in his lounge chair, on his side of the porch.” 

I grabbed ahold of my chest to let him know he had frightened me.  “Sorry, Jules, I just wanted to make sure you got home okay.  I know it must have been a hard night for you.”  Jules?  When had he started calling me that?  I smiled my thanks at him, and fiddled with my keys, looking for the key that opened my apartment.

“Are you okay?”  I sighed and leaned my head against the door jam.  How do you answer such a question without words?  How did I tell him I was not okay, and I would never be okay.  He couldn’t understand the bond that I had shared with my sister.  Losing her was like losing a part of myself.  Standing there while all those fake people came to stare, standing beside a father who didn’t recognize me, having Melayia laughing at me all night long from the photo on the coffin.  Nope, not okay.  But I couldn’t tell my land lord that.  I could only nod, and swallow down the bile in my throat.

“I’m here, if you need to talk.  Well, I know… not talk-talk, but if you want to text me or something.” He waved his phone at me.  I nodded and let myself in, firmly shutting the door behind me.  James was a nice guy.  And the nicer he was, the worse he made me feel.  I turned the lock and headed for my fridge.  In the freezer I had two old friends waiting to console me.  Ben and Jerry. 

There were those women who lost their appetite and got all thin and tragic whenever something bad happen.  And then there were those women who drowned their sorrows in ice-cream and chocolate and wore their grief in their love-handles.  I grabbed a spoon and flopped down on my couch. 

The apartment was so quiet.  I hate the silence.  I wanted to scream, just to fill the void.  I wanted to scream out my own pain and frustration.  Out of habit I picked up my phone to check my text messages.  With an anguished sob I threw the phone back down.  My sister was the only person who ever texted me.  There would be no more messages.  No one would be checking on me.  No one would pop over for pizza in the middle of the night.  No one would be calling me to tell me her latest adventures.  For the first time in my life I was totally and completely alone.  I wanted to give up, I wanted to crawl in the coffin right along side Melayia.  But I had a work to do.  I had to find the person who murdered my sister.

I pulled out an innocent looking composition book.  In it I had compiled everything I could find or recall from the last few weeks of Melayia’s life.  What I knew of her schedule, her whereabouts, her last text messages.  The police had gone through her phone, and determined that there was nothing helpful in her messages or call history.  But I had gone through it again.  I had made a list of all her saved contacts, I had written down every text she had sent and received.  I had written down her work schedules.  I went through the contact list again, and put a check mark next to each one whom I had seen at the wake.

The problem was there were a lot of names I didn’t recognize.  Melayia had always been the social butterfly.  She had always been surrounded by friends and had a parade of man-friends.  She drew people like moths to the proverbial flame.  But I was certain of only two things.  I was sure that Melayia was murdered, and I was sure it was someone she KNEW.  Someone she knew intimately, because a stranger wouldn’t have known to park her car in front of our mother’s gravestone.

I needed to get closer to the people who had been closer to Melayia.  The crews from the rescue squad.  The ED staff at the hospital.  The volunteer fire-department.  I had an idea to get myself assigned to the Emergency Department at work.  It would take a little  manipulation, which wasn’t my forte.  That was one of Melayia’s specialties.  She could get inside someone’s head and plant an idea, and convince her victim that the idea was their own.  Just like she had convinced James that I would be the perfect tenant to live next door to him, and she had convinced my manager that I would be the perfect employee.  I sighed and threw the empty carton of ice-cream into the trash can.  I’d get it done, one way or another, as soon as I was done with the burial in the morning.