Brad Parks - Eyes of the Innocent

“I didn’t think nothing of it at first,” Bertie continued. “I thought he was just helping her, like a mentor. He got her a job over at the hospital”-another area where Akilah didn’t fib-“and he looked after her. I didn’t think there was nothing going on.”

“I heard this part already,” Sweet Thang told me. “I’m going to check on the banana bread.”

She rose from her seat and slid by me, brushing me lightly with her hand as she passed, giving me a little chill down my spine. It made me wonder: if she could do that with a single light touch, what would full-body contact be like?

Bertie Harris brought me back into the conversation before my mind drifted too far.

“Are you going to put this in the newspaper?” she asked.

“I have no idea what I’m going to do,” I said, which happened to be an honest answer.

“Well, I guess it don’t matter now. You reap what you sow.”

I wasn’t sure who was reaping or who was sowing in this particular farming metaphor. But if it made Bertie more comfortable talking to me, she could plant a whole field for all I cared.

“So when did you realize they were…” I groped for wording that wouldn’t seem crude. “When did you start to think they were getting intimate?”

“Well, I should have known before I did. He was always giving her little presents, jewelry and stuff-a real charmer, he was. I’d see her wearing a necklace and say, ‘Where’d you get that, girl?’ and she wouldn’t say nothing. But I knew,” Bertie said. “Then she went and got herself pregnant.”

I nodded. Yes, that would be a strong indication intimacy had occurred.

“Then he bought her a house,” she added.

“He what?” I asked. Jewelry. Jobs. Even an apartment. I had heard of politicians getting those things for their girlfriends. But never a house.

“Uh-huh. A house. The house that burned down, he bought it for her,” Bertie said, shaking her head. “She came home one day and said, ‘Mama, me and the kids is moving out. My man got me a house.’ ”

It was, I realized, one final lie out of the mouth of Akilah Harris. She wasn’t struggling under the weight of a mortgage, as she told us. She was getting it for free.

Which was just lovely for Akilah, I’m sure. But I could only begin to imagine how Rhonda Byers felt when-as wives inevitably do-she learned about it. Your fifty-something-year-old husband is not only cheating on you with a twenty-something-year-old-woman, but he has two kids with her and bought her a house.

I’m no expert on the mysterious workings of that alien planet known as the female psyche, but I’ll posit that would make any woman pretty damn mad.

Mad enough to kill.

* * *

Sweet Thang returned to the living room, looking pleased with her domesticity.

“It’s done and it’s perfect,” she announced. “But we should give it at least twenty minutes to cool.”

I hadn’t eaten a thing since breakfast. A nice hunk of warm, fresh-out-of-the-oven banana bread sounded delightful. And it was tempting to think that since I was in possession of information no one else had, I didn’t need to be in too much of a rush. But I had learned, mostly the hard way, that nothing stays secret too long. And this story was sensational enough-SOURCE: MISSING POL WAS TWO-TIMING! — the New York tabloids would be swarming across the Hudson River as soon as they learned of it. I had to get as much of a head start on the competition as I could. There was no time to dawdle. Not even for fresh baked goods.

“Unfortunately, I think Bertie will have to enjoy it by herself,” I said to Sweet Thang. “You and I have to be going. We’ve got work to do.”

Bertie turned to Sweet Thang with a conspiratorial smile.

“Well, the boss has spoken!” Bertie said.

“Oh, he’s not so bad,” Sweet Thang assured her.

Bertie stood and shuffled toward her new friend.

“I just have to give you a hug,” she said, grabbing her, her voice choking slightly. “Thank you so much for listening to an old lady go on like I did.”

“Oh, my goodness, it was so lovely meeting you,” Sweet Thang said, hugging back. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

I stood up and extended a hand as soon as they broke their embrace. “Bertie, it was very nice talking with you,” I said as she lightly grabbed my hand for one of those nonshake shakes. “If you hear from Akilah, please give us a call.”

“Oh, she don’t come around here no more,” Bertie said. “We always end up fighting because I always tell her what I think. I know I should be more understanding, but I just can’t deal with her and that married man. I just can’t.”

“You mentioned she had brothers and sisters,” I said. “Do any of them have contact with her?”

“I don’t know. They wouldn’t tell me if they did. They’d know it would just upset me. But if Akilah was going to run to any of them, she would run to Tamikah. That’s her oldest sister. She was like a second mother to that child. They was always close.”

Bertie gave me Tamikah’s phone number.

“That’s her home number,” Bertie said. “She don’t like it when I call her on her cell, so I just call her at home.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind if we call you when we have more questions. And sorry again about last night.”

“You just be good to this young lady, you hear?” she said.

I assured her I would. And with that, we departed. I waited until we were down the stairwell and out into the courtyard, headed for our cars, before I spoke.

“Holy crap,” I said. “That was pretty incredible.”

“Which part?” Sweet Thang asked.

“Uh, the part where Windy Byers, the suddenly absent city councilman, had two children out of wedlock and bought a house for his mistress,” I said. “I thought that was kind of obvious.”

Sweet Thang had this look on her face like the Clue Fairy had not yet visited her.

“I thought we didn’t put people’s personal lives in the paper,” she said.

“We do when they turn up missing under mysterious circumstances,” I assured her. “Heck, in this case, we’d do it even if ol’ Windy was still hanging around. I mean, he’s a public figure. Sure, we might look the other way if a councilman has a quiet little something on the side. But a councilman having two kids with his mistress and buying her a house? That’s not just adultery. That’s practically polygamy. And it certainly raises hard questions about how he’s affording it, which is something a voter has a right to know.”

“Oh,” she said. She thought for a moment, almost said something, then stopped herself. If she was an NFL lineman, I would have whistled her for a false start.

She paused for another tick, then asked, “So what do we do now?”

“Well, we have one source saying Windy and Akilah were knocking boots, but we need more,” I said. “Then we need a law enforcement source to link Windy and Akilah and tell us Rhonda Byers, the scorned woman, is the primary suspect in the investigation.”

“She is?”

“Sure she is. Think about it. Windy Byers was unfaithful to his wife, and not in a small way. Then his girlfriend’s house gets burned down and he goes missing. Who else but the wife did it? Let’s face it, Windy is probably somewhere off the Jersey shore right now with a weight tied to his leg, slowly sinking to twenty thousand leagues under the sea. Or at least he is if Rhonda has contracted out her work properly.”

“But how…” she began and paused. Still no visit from the Clue Fairy. “But how are the cops going to figure that out?”

“We’re going to tell them.”

“We are?”

I sighed. Didn’t the journalism schools teach anything these days?