“So they say she murdered a man named David Jamison. I don’t know who the fuck that is,” I shook my head.
“Boy, watch your damn mouth! You ain’t too grown to beat. I’ll tag you and that lil heifer downstairs.” Rita cracked a smile.
“Sorry, grandma. Do you know who that is, though? I’ve never heard the name.”
“Baby, I don’t. Serenity ain’t no killa! This is that damn Vivica. Even in death, she’s raising hell.”
“In hell, raising hell.” I shook my head.
“I’ll get it fixed. She will not be delivering my nephew in a jail cell. We can’t let what happened to Zainab happen to her.”
I pulled out my phone and called Xander Wall. Xander and I went back to Hampton. His father was locked up doing lifeon drug charges and Xander had turned that pain into a law degree and a practice that specialized in the kind of cases that made other lawyers nervous. He’d done work for us before and had gotten us out of a few binds. He was sharp, discreet, and he didn’t flinch at complicated. Right now, complicated was an understatement.
He picked up on the third ring.
“X, it’s Justice. I need a lawyer.”
“What’s up?”
“My sister just got arrested. Murder warrant out of Connecticut. Cold case. They’re extraditing her today. She’s pregnant and she’s sitting in a cell somewhere right now and I need you to get to her before they transport her out of state.”
Silence for two seconds. Then: “I’m on it. Send me everything you got. Name of the victim, arresting department, warrant number if you have it. I’ll be on a flight to Hartford by tonight.”
“That’s why I fuck with you, X.”
“Yeah, you know I got her.”
I hung up and looked at Rita. “Xander’s on it. He’s heading to Connecticut tonight. He’ll get to her. She’s gonna have a bail hearing and we’re gonna get her out. She’s not having this baby in a jail cell, Grandma. I promise you that.”
Rita nodded but her hands were still folded tight in her lap and I could see the tension in her fingers. She wasn’t convinced. Rita believed in preparation, not promises. She’d believe Serenity was safe when Serenity was standing in this living room with her belly and her freedom intact. Until then, Rita was going to sit in that chair and worry with the intensity of a woman who had spent her whole life watching her family survive things they shouldn’t have had to survive in the first place.
“I need to call Quest,” I said, more to myself than to her. “He needs to know about this.”
I pulled up Quest’s number and hit call. It rang four times and went to voicemail.
I hung up and tried Mehar. Straight to voicemail. Didn’t even ring.
I looked at the time. They’d left yesterday afternoon. The flight to the ABC islands was about four hours. Quest booked a trip to a private island called Isla Solara, right outside of Bonaire. Even with settling in and getting to the private island, Quest should’ve called by now. He always called when he landed. Always. It was a thing between us. You get where you’re going, you check in. We’d been doing it since the transport days when a missed check-in meant something had gone wrong and somebody needed to start making moves.
But this wasn’t transport. This was a babymoon. My brother was on a private island with his pregnant fiancée probably drinking something with an umbrella in it, rubbing cocoa butter on Mehar’s belly, being the over-the-top, rich nigga romantic that he was. He’d call when he surfaced. Probably tomorrow. Probably with a long story about the villa and the view and how he was about to buy the whole island because that’s what Quest does. He sees something he likes and he acquires it.
I put the phone down and took another sip of Banks Reserve and told myself it was nothing.
It was probably nothing.
I sent him a text anyway.Call me when you get this. Serenity got arrested. Murder charge out of Connecticut. Long story. Need to talk.
Then I called Erika and asked her if she could drive down from Pittsburgh to pick up the girls from Rita’s. She said of course. She said she’d be there by the evening. I told her I’d explain later and she didn’t push it because Erika had been married into the orbit of the Banks family long enough to knowthat “I’ll explain later” meant the explanation was going to be exhausting.
I sat back on Rita’s sofa with the whiskey in my hand and my phone on my thigh and tried to organize the chaos into something I could manage. Serenity. Connecticut. Murder. A dead man nobody had ever mentioned. Vivica pulling strings from the afterlife. And my brother on vacation not answering his phone.
A nigga like me couldn’t even get a Saturday.
5
Serenity
What I wouldn’t give to be waking up in my bed, in the guest room in Rita’s house. It was so plush and soft. This prison cot was murder to my back and hips.
