Murder Through the Grapevine

Murder Through The Grapevine



Sometimes the salon would be just humming along, most of the conversation sedated, until Greta say, “Chile, did you hear...” to whoever’s head she was working on at the time, and everybody would get quiet and listen. As her supervisor, I once tried to have a little talk with her about all of that big gossiping she was doing, but Anne had a little talk with me.

“Greta’s mouth keeps customers coming back,” she said. “Leave her alone. She’s my best advertisement.”

This morning, however, Greta was advertising doom and gloom as she talked about this killing of a crack addict. She seemed to love to tell the news, I thought, watching her, as her entire plain face lit up with joy as she talked about something no one in their right mind could view as joyful.

But then Neka’s name was mentioned. And my heart dropped. I hurried to Greta, asking for more details, and she gladly obliged. A friend of hers, she said, who knew a friend of a cop, had told her that Crackhead Neka’s beaten up body was found in some dark alley last night over on Hazelhurst.

After the initial shock of it, after the disbelief finally began to turn into that hard, cold reality that made my stomach ache, I hoisted my small self up onto the large, hydraulic chair that sat between Greta’s and Ernest’s work stations and began swiveling side to side. I was still stunned, remembering that skeletal face of Neka’s and her pretty, staring eyes, remembering that I’d seen her alive just last night, and now she was gone forever.

I shook my head and blinked a few times as if I still couldn’t believe it, and then I looked at Greta and Ernest. It should be shocking to them, too, since they also knew Neka. But it didn’t seem shocking to them at all. They kept right on talking about what happened, and about how bad Neka looked, as if they were talking about a minor matter, an everyday thing, another piece of gossip to add to their string.

“Do they have any suspects?” I asked nervously, pushing my glasses up on my still stunned face, knowing full well it was probably too soon. But given the way Neka was acting at my house last night, and that promise my big mouth had made to her about not letting them get away with it, I felt I had to ask.

“Suspects?” Greta said, amazed that I’d asked. “Already? The body’s barely cold, Roni, okay, and you know good and well Gillette is not the kind of man that’s gonna be beating the pavement looking for the killer of no crackhead like Neka. And if you don’t believe that, you on crack yourself.”

From Murder Through the Grapevine. Copyright © 2010 Teresa McClain-Watson All rights reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with Urban Books c/o Kensington Pub. Corp.