“I know you think she killed herself, but she didn’t,” I said. “And it’s not just me being in denial. Her death had something to do with her DUI. I just need to know what.” When he still didn’t say anything, I kept on. Sounding more desperate with each word. “I know you didn’t know her then, but did it ever come up? Bedroom talk, maybe.”
“It wasn’t something she wanted to talk about. How do you think it’s connected?”
I took in a breath. “She always insisted she wasn’t driving that night. And—”
He broke in. “She told me that, but then she told E! that too. It was years ago, though.” He downed his drink and prepped another, heavy on the champagne.
“I think she recently found someone who saw her car,” I said. “Maybe even someone who took a video. We can’t find it, though.”
He caressed his glass as he stared at her mural. “Well, then she definitely didn’t let me see it. I wasn’t the one in her bedroom, remember?” Suddenly, he slammed his glass down with such force I was surprised it didn’t shatter. “If she had told me, I could’ve helped her. Made sure she was okay.”
He was silent for a bit. We both were. Then he calmly picked his glass back up. “Another round?”
*
Naut had been angry, but he’d also been right. He wasn’t the one Desiree was talking with before she died. That person was in England, probably looking at naked pictures on the non-family phone.
I would have called Free as soon as I got into the Uber, but I didn’t have his number. Either of them. I’d already forgotten he’d seen Desiree the day she died, that he’d mentioned she was in a rush to meet someone. I hadn’t followed up at the time because I didn’t know I needed to.
Aunt E had her door open when I got back, her whites piled high in a hamper serving as a doorstop. I peeked in, but she wasn’t in her front room. I’d stop by after I made my call.
I grabbed Desiree’s phone, sat on my couch, and said a quick prayer. Please let me find his number. I knew he wasn’t in her contacts, but they’d definitely texted. It took me a half hour to find the exchange. I’d bypassed it before because it was one of dozens she’d replied to with three heart-eyes emojis. I’d assumed it was a standard birthday text.
I was wrong.
Here’s the thing. Texts and replied-to emails are stories told in reverse. Like Memento. Or How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. Or those scenes Virgil did in the Aeneid. And like any good story, heart-eyes emojis aside, my scroll up through Desiree and Free’s ended with a single image, this one a screenshot of Desiree’s Wells Fargo transactions. An expanded view of the $250,000 I’d seen in her bank balance. It was followed by a thank-you with exclamation points only outnumbered by the heart-eyes emojis and the eggplant thrown in for good measure.
I scrolled to his response, a mass of unpunctuated messages sent line by line that let me know he’d yet to master the talk-to-text function.
I was happy to give it
You know all you had to do was ask nicely ha ha
Glad I got to see you
Go enjoy your birthday
She’d responded with more red-hued emojis. Ooh a text back! I’m glad we did too. Though we woulda had a cute-ass baby. She’d ended with the three heart-eyes emojis in a row.
That answered one burning question. The $250K hadn’t been a blackmail payoff or hush money. It’d been a birthday gift. She must’ve told him some sob story to have gotten more money out of him, since the baby money would have come through months before. I scrolled back up further, hoping to have missed a mention of a video and instead hit a succession of naked pictures. At least she’d been smart enough not to show her face.
I dialed the number on my cell, but he didn’t pick up and hadn’t bothered to set up his voice mail. The only thing that stopped me from calling back was not wanting to annoy him. Instead I texted, praying he was the type to check his Unknown Senders list.
He wasn’t. Over the next six hours, I called twice with the same lack of response and left a couple more texts—caring less and less with each one about staying on his good side. The only time I stopped obsessively checking my phone was during hour two when Aunt E came upstairs to tell me lunch was ready, then it was right back to me and my iPhone in a staring contest. The texts I got were false alarms. I ignored both Omar and Erin, who asked for updates while sharing she was still looking for someone who had worked at the bar the night of the DUI. For shits and giggles, I looked up where Free had been when Desiree got her DUI. His world tour had been stopping in Toronto.
It was close to dinner when my desperation reached peak levels. Beyond calling and letting it ring enough times to spell out “Pick up” in Morse code, I had just one other idea.
Desiree’s phone.
Apparently getting a call from your dead lover’s number was enough to make someone pick up.
“One sec…” His voice was calm, the quick answer the only indication he might’ve been freaked. It also wasn’t the sole voice I heard. There was damn near a cacophony in the background, a buzz of people all speaking over each other. I was trying to make out where he could be when the voices abruptly disappeared. When Free spoke again, his was the only one I heard. “Who is this?”
“Lena.”
He audibly exhaled.
“Been trying to reach you all day. Finally realized this was the only way I could get you to pick up.”
“That’s ’cause this one’s mainly for pictures.”
“I know.” Even though I didn’t want to. “When we met up, you mentioned you only saw Desiree for a few minutes on her birthday.”
“Yeah. She left to meet someone.”
Maybe she’d gone to see Zor-El. Maybe she’d gone to see…someone else. “She say who?”
“Nope. Didn’t matter to me. Just know she had to pick something up. Figured it was a gift.”
Or a video. “She didn’t say where either?”
“No.”
“I’ll let you get back to…” I trailed off. It could be anything from the studio to an orgy. “Let me know if you think of anything. I texted you from my own number.”
There was a long pause and then, “You okay?” Said like he meant it.
Of course I wasn’t. There was a whole laundry list of things I could share, but I stuck with the one directly related to him. “Mel knows I came to see you. Don’t know how he found out.”
What’s the saying? The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
“I told him,” Free said.
Or in this case a snitch. Ironic, considering his profession. The popular narrative was Free and Mel hadn’t spoken in years, that they hated each other so much the Grammys once beefed up security. But I guess them not talking—like so many things related to hip-hop—was BS.
“You two chat often?” I said when I was finally ready.
“Only when it’s important.”
“Snitching on me was important?”
“You were important, Melina. I called him because I was worried.”
If this was some scripted ’90s sitcom, this would be where teenaged me said, “I already have a father.”