Read Online Trail of Echoes by Rachel Howzell Hall - Free Book Online

soul.
    â€œSorry back there with Ontrel,” Colin said. “Forgot that nobody knows she passed.”
    Despite the ibuprofen I had popped before leaving the house, a headache was forming beneath my right eyebrow. “Just remember: we’re playing chess when we’re working a case. Not checkers with its jumping all over the board and quickness and shit. Got it?”
    Colin said something, but my thoughts had turned back to finding the goddess on my car. Who had left it there? Why—?
    â€œYou ignoring me?” Colin asked.
    I blinked. “I’d never ignore you, Colin dear. Everything you say and do is of the utmost importance to me.”
    The magnolia trees thrived—large green leaves but no white blooms. The dwarf palms looked dry and diseased, brown fronds or no fronds. The buildings’ green paint had peeled in places and faded to white in others. Wet towels and underwear hung out to dry on every balcony.
    â€œWe will not mention the tooth,” I said. “Nor will we mention the duffel bag.”
    â€œWhat about the needle marks?” he asked. “Or the conversation just now with Mr. Boston Public Schools?”
    â€œNope. None of that.”
    Once we reached apartment 5, I took a deep breath, told myself that I didn’t have a headache—what headache?—then knocked on the door.
    Silence blanketed the complex. No televisions or stereos blasted from living rooms. No girls laughed on stairways. No women gossiped at the mailboxes. A ghost town.
    The door opened, and the aromas of fried pork chops and simmering collard greens wafted out to greet us. An older black woman with sagging cheeks and flat, tired eyes stood there. She wore a royal blue housecoat dusted with flour, pink slippers, and a pink scarf that covered the curlers in her hair. “Yes?”
    My stomach gurgled—I hadn’t eaten real food since yesterday’s pastrami with Sam. And even that didn’t compare to the meal being cooked now. Colin and I both flashed our badges.
    Before I could say, “Homicide Division,” the old woman grinned and looked to the heavens. “Thank you, Jesus.”
    The mole on the left cheek. The upper canine tooth that touched her bottom lip. The same apartment she had occupied since I was five years old.
    â€œAre you … Miss Alberta?” I asked.
    The woman’s eyes narrowed, and she cocked her head. “Yes, and you … look familiar.”
    I pointed to the apartments on the other side of the complex. “My family … We lived in apartment seven and—”
    She gasped, and her eyes widened. “Your daddy drove the 105.”
    â€œThat’s right.” My mouth lifted, fell, and then twisted. From surprise: she was still living here? Anger: two of my laundry-room bullies, Angelique and Dominique, were Miss Alberta’s daughters. And worry: how was Chanita Lords related?
    â€œAre you Chanita’s mom?” Colin asked.
    â€œNo. That’s Regina, my daughter. She’s in the shower right now. I’m Nita’s grandmother, Alberta Jackson.”
    Regina, a baby when I lived here, had been too young to join her siblings’ reign of terror.
    Alberta opened the door wider. “Come on in and sit. Y’all excuse my appearance.” She slapped the front of her housecoat and little clouds of flour puffed around her.
    Drawn curtains darkened the large living room. A big-screen television and a black leather couch took up most of the space. The latest issues of Ebony and Essence sat on the black lacquer coffee table alongside the large-as-an-atlas family Bible and television remote control. A box of yellow “Missing” flyers sat near the front door.
    Alberta beamed at me. “Just look at you. All tall and beautiful. A police officer. The Lord is good . I know your momma must be so proud, after all that.”
    All that . Days after Victoria’s disappearance, Alberta had