Wrongful Accusations - Chapter 15
Stress Puke
The list of phone numbers was on the front of the fridge just as Pearce had said. I took the whole list and walked out of the house. Mrs. Alma locked the door behind us. I looked down the list as we drove down Jackson Ave, Mallory Ayers, I had forgotten all about her. I knew that she was at work so i sent her a text message asking her to call me as soon as she could.
Cole Slaw was getting in her car when we pulled in front of her house. She saw us and walked over to greet us.
“Y’all are at it early. What’s up?”
“I need your help. Mrs. Alma thinks that Kadijah may have kidnapped Shannon.”
“What? So where do you think she took her?”
“I don’t know that's what I’m trying to figure out.”
“Well, Peaches or Hinniyah or whatever had to have helped her.”
“Yeah, but I still don’t know where they could have gone.”
“Maybe they went to Philly, have you talked to Carl?”
“No, but he left me a message saying that he was coming to Memphis to find out about getting custody of the boys.” Just then my phone rang and Carl’s number popped up on the screen.
“Hey Carl, are you in Memphis already? How are the boys holding up?”
“They are just fine, thanks for asking. Carl will be busy for a while so he’s not going to be able to come to the phone.” Then the phone went dead.
“That’s not a “hey Carl” look on your face,” Cole Slaw said.
“I think it was Peaches or Kadijah. I’m so confused.”
“Once Peaches got out, she and Kadijah kidnapped Shannon,” Mrs. Alma said.
“Now they are in Philadelphia and they have Carl as well,” I added. “Is this case ever going to be over?”
“It will be when y’all get up there to Philly and stop those crazy floozies,” Mrs. Alma said, pointing at me and Cole Slaw.
“Let me go pack,” Cole Slaw said, going back into her house.
I opened Mrs. Alma’s car door and before I could get completely out of the car, my breakfast spilled out of my face and onto the sidewalk.
Mrs. Alma came around the car to see if I was all right and handed me a few napkins from her purse.
“Are you going to be alright?”
“Yeah, just stress-puke, it happens sometimes.”
Cole Slaw came back out. She stopped short when she saw the mess I had made. “You haven’t stressed puked in two years, do you need to call Marcus and see if he can contact someone in Philly?”
“No, this is my case and I’m going to find those crazy twins. They’ve got my ex-husband and a woman that I’ve grown quite fond of. I want to be there when the cops hall both of those evil twin witches away.”
“You want me to help clean this mess up?” Mrs. Alma asked.
“No, I think it’s going to rain this evening,” Cole said, going around to Mrs. Alma’s side of the car and getting in the back seat.
Mallory called me back when Cole Slaw and I were sitting in the airport lobby, waiting on our flight. She said that some strange woman had answered Shannon’s phone the last time she was able to get through.
“Sassy, if you need any more money, just give me a call and I can wire it to you.”
“Thanks, Mallory, I’ll keep that in mind but hopefully I won’t be there that long.”
“Please keep me informed of what’s going on, Shannon is my best friend. She’s already had a hard life, I wouldn’t want it to end before she’d fulfilled her dream.”
“Yeah, she told me that she was planning on writing a book.”
“Oh, that’s just part of it. Her ultimate dream is to be a guest on Oprah.”
I briefly wondered if it was remotely possible for Shannon to have planned all of this to get on Oprah, then I dismissed the idea. Who in their right mind would be that sick?
Cole Slaw went back on her word about not driving in Philly. So we went straight to Carl’s house as soon as we left the car rental place. The door was wide open and no one was there. I could tell that some of his neighbors had done some early Christmas shopping because the TV and microwave were gone. Cole Slaw and I came out and sat in the car.
“What are we going to do now?”
“I have no idea. I don’t even know where to start looking for them.”
We sat there for about ten minutes, and then my phone rang. I usually don’t answer numbers I don’t recognize but it looked like a New Jersey area code which was right across the bridge so I figured I better answer it.
“Sassy, please come help me. They’re going to kill me. I didn’t know it was two Kadijahs,” it was Shannon.
“Shannon, what part of New Jersey are you in?”
“Maple Tree, Maple Syrup?”
“Maple Shade, that’s not far from here. Are you in a house, apartment, or hotel?”
“Hotel, I gotta go,” the call ended.
I gave Cole the directions to the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge. Maple Shade was a small town but there were a number of hotels along the main highway. It was time for some real detective work. Cole Slaw and I each had pictures of the twins, Carl and Shannon. We got lucky at an extended-stay hotel that was located next to a car lot.
The hotel manager wouldn’t give us the key but he did walk us to the room. We knocked but there was no answer, so we entered the room. Carl was lying on the floor with dried blood on the side of his mouth. The hotel manager immediately called the police.
Because of the cast, I had to lie on the floor beside him. I put my hand on his wrist, his pulse was non-existent. Tears sprang into my eyes. I had never been “in love” with Carl, but I did care about him. Seeing him like that was something I never wanted to see.
“Hey Sassy, you need to look at this,” Cole Slaw said looking down at something that was on the bedside table.
I got up, Cole Slaw moved to let me get closer to the note without touching it.
I’m sorry, Sassy, I didn’t mean for it to go this far, Carl was just an innocent bystander.
I had no idea whose handwriting it was. Which one of them would apologize for killing a man whom they say was only an innocent bystander?
When we stepped out of the room onto the sidewalk, the police were rushing into the parking lot. The lead investigator approached us and asked us a million questions. I answered as many as I could before I excused myself and got as far as I could away from the group. I heard Cole Slaw whisper stress puke to the officer we had been talking to.
I got a text from Shannon’s phone asking me if I wanted to go shopping. Where I responded. At Frank’s, they sent back. I had never heard of a store by the name of Frank’s. Frank’s, Frankie, Franklin…that was it, Franklin Mills mall. I told Cole Slaw where we needed to go. It was a good thing we had parked in front of the office because we were just out of the span of the police cars.
We paid the toll before heading back to Philadelphia.
As Cole Slaw found a parking spot in front of Franklin Mills Outlet Mall, I texted Shannon’s phone to let the person on the other end know that I was in the parking lot in front of the mall. I sat there until they responded with, “Oh good now we can have a water ice together.” Water Ice? Then I remembered the Rita’s Water Ice stand that I had frequented almost every day during my long-ago pregnancy.
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