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questions stumbled over themselves.
“Paul left but he is coming back. I’ll ask Keith about you coming here and call you in the morning.”
“All right. I love you, baby.”
“I love you, too, Mama.”
There wasn’t anything else to do, so I curled up with a copy of Keith’s life story.
Keith Williams was born the youngest of two children to Otis and Eleanor Williams on December 29, 1952, in Buffalo, New York. His father, a plumber, died of a heart attack when Keith was ten and his mother went to work as a cafeteria cook at the local high school. Keith’s sister, Dolores, was sixteen at the time. She started babysitting, Keith got a paper route, and the family managed to survive. Dolores disliked school from day one but Keith loved it. Since it was clear that Keith was a scholar and a leader, the two females doted on his every whim. He was the bravest, smartest, best-looking boy in the whole world as far as they were concerned. He felt like the world was his for the taking, and failure never entered his mind.
The only blot in his perfect teenaged life was the fact that at the age of sixteen, he had gone joyriding in a stolen car to prove his manhood to the other boys. “I didn’t get caught but for a long time I was scared that the police were going to come banging on our door,” he said.
He was valedictorian and voted most likely to succeed in his high school class, and then it was off to Howard University as a scholarship student. He majored in American history. As an undergraduate, Keith noticed that the law and medical students were stars in the girls’ eyes on campus. He decided to go to Howard Law School and picked criminal law because of injustice in the system.
After graduation, he spent five years with one firm. He became their brightest and most publicized attorney. He started his own firm and his star never stopped rising.
I did some quick calculations. If he was born in 1952, that meant he had just passed his forty-fifth birthday.
According to the book jacket, Keith owned a home in the Hamptons. There was no mention of the brownstone that was my hiding place.
I, on the other hand, was homeless and scared. Why did some people lead effortlessly charmed lives while others sank slowly no matter how hard they tried to stay afloat?
Throughout the book, it was clear that Keith felt more of an emotional attachment to his sister than he did to his mother. He wanted to marry someday and have children and said, “The woman I marry must be smart, beautiful, passionate about her people, and committed to building her own business and earning her own money.”
I had to snort at that. This combination of Coretta Scott King, Dorothy Dandridge, and Berry Gordy-in-a-skirt did not exist, which meant that deep down inside, he didn’t really want to get married at all.
I kept on reading, wondering how long I was supposed to stay hidden inside this beautiful dungeon before someone came to check on me.
I was just beginning a section about the trial that made him famous, when I heard noise. I dropped Winner and flew down the stairs. Keith and his driver were huffing and puffing through the front door, pushing boxes in front of them.
“What’s all this?” I asked.
“The police were finished when I went to check on your apartment. I thought you might like a few of your things,” Keith replied. “Somehow I ended up packing up almost every item in your apartment. There are three more boxes in the car. Tell Paul to get down here and help me.”
I hugged him gratefully. A gal needs her ornaments and knickknacks before she can settle down.
“Paul went to work. He’s coming back later.”
“Well, everything is here except the furniture,” he laughed. “By the way, I couldn’t find any computer disks. Since you’re in the writing business, I thought that was kind of strange.” He cocked his head to the side and waited for me to answer.
“I have lots of disks. They are all on the computer hutch in a couple of organizers. Right above my laptop computer. Did you bring that?”
“The police must have them,” Keith replied.
“Oh, no!” I plunked myself down on the bottom step. I just couldn’t take any more.
“Is there anything incriminating on the hard drive or the disks?” Keith asked.
How many disks had I lost? At least two dozen. My whole publishing career, the work of many aspiring writers, partial screenplays that I’d started trying my hand at, plus all my personal correspondence. Worse, the hard drive on my computer would lead them straight into the swirl of obsessive e-mails that I had sent to Victor over the past year.
I wasn’t in any mood to talk about that.
“Never mind,” he said. “We’ll talk about the case tomorrow.”
Keith and his driver went out and came back in twice as I sat there feeling like I had been stripped naked.
Finally, they were done and seven boxes sat in the middle of Keith’s polished wood living room floor. “Well, that’s everything,” he said.
