Tilly Bagshawe - Sidney Sheldon’s The Silent Widow

That was a bad time all around, back when Treyvon was still using, and dealing to fund his habit. A lot of good things had happened since then. Moving into this place. Trey getting clean. Getting a job. The Raymonds had Dr Douglas, God rest him, and his beautiful wife Nikki to thank for all that. Sometimes, Marsha thought, the Lord truly did work in mysterious ways.

‘TREY!’ she yelled now, struggling to make herself heard over her son’s booming music. ‘You got a visitor! Get out here.’

Haddon Defoe stood in the hallway and grinned as he watched Trey’s formidable mother march into her son’s bedroom and haul the boy out. What a long way Trey Raymond had come since Haddon first met him at the rehab clinic. With Doug. And not only Trey. The whole family. Back then the boy had been a desperate, wild-eyed addict, skeletally thin, his body covered in sores. He was having seizures, the whole nine yards. No one knew better than Haddon how often intervention attempts failed, especially with kids from hellholes like Westmont, kids as deep in their addiction as Treyvon Raymond was. But every now and then, things worked out perfectly. This was one of those rare cases.

‘Hey, man!’ Haddon high-fived Trey as his mom frogmarched him out into the hall. ‘How you been?’

‘Good, man,’ Trey said proudly. ‘I’m doing good. I wasn’t expecting you.’

‘I was in the neighborhood.’

Haddon winked and they both laughed. Westmont was not a neighborhood that a man like Haddon Defoe ‘passed through’. Haddon and Trey might share the same skin color, but they came from very different worlds. Haddon had grown up in Brentwood, the son of a doctor and a UCLA history professor. The black kids at the Roberts-Defoe Venice Clinic had nicknamed him ‘Obama’, a reference to his educated, privileged upbringing and whiter-than-white tastes, including a passion for baroque classical music and an obsession with 1920s silent movies. There was nothing Haddon Defoe couldn’t tell you about Charlie Chaplin, but Tupac lyrics drew a complete blank. Trey, on the other hand, was the product of a teenage relationship between his indomitable mother, Marsha Raymond, and a good-for-nothing troublemaker named Billy James who’d disappeared from their lives long ago and whom Trey assumed was either incarcerated or dead.

‘Seriously, Dr Defoe, is everything OK?’ Trey asked Haddon, leading him through to the tiny front room. ‘Why are you here?’

Haddon rested a hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘Everything’s fine, Trey. I wanted to check in on you, that’s all. I know Doug would have wanted me to.’

Trey nodded gratefully. Doug Roberts had been the closest thing to a father he’d ever had. He missed him terribly. Haddon Defoe had been the Doc’s best friend, which made him honorary family in Trey’s eyes.

‘How are things going at work? How’s Nikki?’ Haddon asked.

‘You mean since the murder?’

Haddon looked blank. ‘What murder?’

‘Seriously?’ Trey frowned. ‘You haven’t heard? Don’t you watch the news, man?’ Trey told him about what had happened to Lisa Flannagan, and the LAPD visit to Nikki’s office.

‘Lisa was one of Dr Roberts’ patients.’

‘This isn’t the girl they found by the freeway? Willie Baden’s mistress?’ Haddon asked, astonished.

‘She was a lot more than that,’ Trey said defensively. ‘Lisa was a beautiful person, she really was. The cops think Dr Roberts might have been the last person to see her alive. Apart from her killer, obviously.’

‘Obviously.’ Haddon seemed lost in thought. ‘What were they like?’ he asked.

‘Who?’

‘The detectives who came to Nikki’s office.’

‘Oh,’ said Trey. ‘You know. They were cops. One of them seemed all right, I guess. But his partner was this short, fat, Irish guy. Real mean. Racist too. You could see it in his eyes.’

Haddon Defoe nodded, still thinking.

‘How’s Nikki taken it? Was she close to this girl?’

Trey shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Not especially, I guess. Dr Roberts seems OK. I mean, she’s sad. Everyone’s sad. It’s a shock.’

‘I’ll bet,’ said Haddon.

They chatted for a few more minutes before Haddon left, declining all Marsha’s attempts to get him to stay for supper. ‘We got plenty,’ she assured him. ‘C’mon, Dr Defoe. Where you gotta be?’

‘Back at my office, I’m afraid.’ Haddon smiled ruefully. ‘You have no idea how much paperwork I still need to finish tonight.’

This was a lie. But then so was Marsha Raymond’s claim that she could afford to feed an extra mouth. Even with Trey’s salary coming in, the family were barely scraping by and Haddon knew it.

‘That’s a good man, right there,’ Trey’s grandma Coretta observed, tottering in from the backyard just in time to see Doc Defoe drive off in his fancy electric car. ‘You don’ know how lucky you are, Treyvon.’

‘I do know, Gamma.’ Trey kissed the old lady on the top of her balding head. ‘Believe me. I know.’

It was kind of Haddon to stop by and see him. Thoughtful.

At the same time, a small part of Trey felt suspicious. Why had he chosen tonight to trek all the way out to Westmont ? Doug Roberts had been dead a year and he’d never ‘stopped by’ before. And why all the questions about Nikki and the police? Was it really coincidence, Dr Defoe’s visit coming so soon after Lisa Flannagan’s sudden death? And did he really not know anything about Lisa’s murder?

Trey helped himself to a large plate of El Pollo Loco wings, trying to push these irrational fears aside. I’m being paranoid. What could Haddon Defoe possibly know? A few minutes later, his cell phone buzzed. Reading the text, he stiffened.

‘What’s the matter, baby?’ Marsha Raymond asked. After all Trey’s years of addiction, she’d learned to watch her son’s reactions like a hawk.

‘Nothing.’ He smiled.

‘You sure?’

He nodded, putting the phone away. ‘Just work. Something I forgot to do.’

After dinner, Trey did the dishes and took out the trash. It was important to keep to his normal routine, not to look as if he were rushing. He knew his mom would worry if anything seemed out of the ordinary. Only once the kitchen was clean did he grab his jacket, as casually as he could.

‘I’m going out,’ he told Marsha.

Instinctively, her eyes narrowed. ‘Out where?’ Trey hadn’t used in over two years, but ‘I’m going out’ still triggered a fear response. It probably always would.

‘Jus’ for a walk, Mama.’ He kissed her on the cheek.

‘A walk? In our beautiful neighborhood?’ she raised an eyebrow.

Trey chuckled. ‘I need some cigarettes. Today was a crazy day, you know? I won’t be long.’

‘OK, baby.’ Marsha forced herself to relax. He was a grown man after all. She couldn’t keep tabs on his every move. ‘Watch yourself.’

‘I will, Mama.’

The cool evening breeze on his skin gave Trey Raymond no comfort as he walked down Denker Avenue. He was wired like an over-strung guitar, ready to snap at any moment.

He waited till he’d turned the corner, out of sight of his house, to pull out his cell phone and re-read the text:

‘ Be at the corner of Vermont and 135th in 1 hr.’

That was all it said. But it was all it needed to say. Trey knew who the text was from, and what it meant. He wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. It was too late for that.

He could see the corner, less than fifty yards away. Apart from a couple of wasted hookers, slumped against the convenience store wall, it was deserted.

His phone buzzed again. MMS. A picture this time.

Trey clicked it open and felt the bile rise up in his throat. It was a woman’s torso, what was left of it, covered in stab wounds. Her bare breasts had been sliced open grotesquely, like a split chicken ready for stuffing.