Don't Believe Your Lying Eyes: A Darryl Billups Mystery Hardback - 2002

Excerpt

Baltimore, Maryland, August 2002

Trying not to be too obvious, Darryl Billups watched in horror as a tiny, brazen insect skittered across the dinner table of his future in-laws.

It first appeared as a caramel-colored dot beside a plastic pitcher filled with grape Kool-Aid, before vanishing under a glass margarine dish. Darryl blinked several times, wondering if his eyes were playing tricks on him.

A mad dash past the pepper shaker answered that question, followed by a hard left directly toward Darryl’s plate, which was piled high with pigs feet, collard greens, candied yams, and two steaming squares of corn bread.

Squinting at the fast-closing marauder, Darryl confirmed his suspicions—it was a baby cockroach! Now it was close enough that Darryl could make out its itty-bitty antennae twirl- ing excitedly, homing in on enough cholesterol to block the arteries of every man, woman, and child within a fifty-mile radius of Baltimore. Little bastard probably even has a tiny bottle of Tabasco sauce with it, Darryl thought disgustedly.

He’d been dreading this first meeting with his future in-laws for weeks. He had dreamed up every question Tyrus and Sharon Winslow could possibly lob his way and had carefully crafted a response for each.

Darryl had prepared for everything except for a kamikaze roach bearing down on his dinner with the determination of Sherman marching on Atlanta.

“Mo’ pig feets, sweetie?”

Startled, Darryl looked up into the face of Sharon Winslow, a petite, lemon-colored woman with keen, birdlike features and a startling sunburst Afro shot through with strands of gray.

“I’m doing great, Mom,” Darryl replied.

From its perch on a grease-stained green wall opposite Darryl a nappy headed, brown-skinned Jesus stared down benignly from black velvet, watching to see what would happen next.

Darryl brought his napkin to his mouth and coughed to stifle the gag reflex starting to gather force in the back of his throat. Then he smoothly brought the napkin down on the flame red tablecloth and snuffed out the cockroach.

Dear Abby, when you’re meeting your in-laws for the first time and grind a cockroach into their dinner table, should you wave your prize aloft and high-five the other guests?

Crumpling his catch into a ball, Darryl slickly eased it under the table and let the soiled paper napkin flutter to the floor. He’d only eaten two glazed doughnuts all day, the better to have a demon appetite for Mrs. Winslow’s cooking and make a favorable first impression.

That plan had disintegrated the moment Darryl cracked the front door and got a whiff of pig knuckles simmering at 175 degrees. Hungry as hell outside the Winslows’ house, Darryl had little interest in eating after crossing the threshold. It had been four years since swine last crossed his lips, when he’d gotten pissed drunk with some other Baltimore Herald reporters and scarfed down a slice of pepperoni pizza before realizing what he’d done.

Darryl had been pork-free since twenty-five, the age when he decided his body would benefit from less red meat. Pork was penciled off the menu instead of beef because Darryl was way too fond of his porterhouse steaks, London broil, and hamburgers.

Back in the days when he did eat pork, it was generally bacon and a smattering of ham every now and then. But not chitterlings and never, ever pigs’ feet!

One of the more distasteful memories from his childhood was the pig-poop aroma of chitterlings bubbling on the stove. The other was going to his grandparents’ farm in southern Maryland and watching pigs contentedly slosh about in their own smelly waste.

So today’s main course had come as an unpleasant surprise. The cockroach sighting had merely served as an exclamation point.

Darryl glanced around to see if anyone else at the table had observed his actions.

Certainly not mildly inebriated Tyrus Winslow, a stocky, handsome man who was happily slurring the punch line to the twentieth cornball joke Darryl had heard since entering Mr. Winslow’s East Baltimore row house.

Not Sharon Winslow, who was busily fishing something from between her front teeth with a burgundy fingernail.

Not Darryl’s bourgeois sister, Camille, staring with obvious distaste at a set of faded gold curtains framing the dining room window in the Winslows low-income dwelling. With downturned lips she had disapprovingly taken in every minute detail of the Winslows’ cheaply furnished home.

Her haughty, condescending air embarrassed and enraged Darryl. He wouldn’t have invited Camille in a million years—that well-intentioned mistake was made by Darryl’s fiancée, Yolanda Winslow, who apparently had witnessed the roach encounter. Poking dejectedly at her candied yams, Yolanda avoided Darryl’s gaze.

“Anybody want sumpthin’ outta the kitchen?” asked Mrs. Winslow, looking coldly at Camille. Proud and hypersensitive, Mrs. Winslow could sense Camille’s disapproving air. And she didn’t care for it one damn bit.

“You know, girlfriend,” Camille said, sounding characteristically clipped and nasal, “I would love some more of that Kool-Aid. That stuff is the bomb!”

If prizes were given for sounding like a white suburbanite trying to talk black, Camille would be the undisputed champ. Darryl cut his eyes at his younger sister. Do you always have to be such a class-conscious jerk? Hopefully, this evening from hell would be shutting down soon.

“They don’t be sellin’ Kool-Aid where you live?” Mrs. Wins- low replied icily.

“Momma!”

Now Yolanda was the one shooting disapproving glances.

“Shit, baby, I keeps it real,” Mrs. Winslow said tartly, rais- ing her voice. “I ain’t puttin’ on no goddamned airs. I’ll feed a stranger off the friggin’ street, long as they don’t act like they too good.” Spoken to Yolanda but meant for Camille, who looked like she was headed to a society ball with her showy pearl broach and ostentatious green silk blouse.

Darryl kicked his sister under the table and vigorously shook his head. Camille had been zinging the Winslows all evening about their ramshackle house, their impoverished neighborhood, even their speech. The gibes were growing bolder and meaner by the minute, as though Camille was intentionally out to sabotage the evening. Instead of heeding Darryl’s nudge, Camille seemed emboldened by it. Looking in the general direction of Sharon Winslow, she began waggling her finger.

“Excuse me, sister girl,” Camille said, sounding stilted with her ultraperfect diction. “But I happen to live in the city with soul folks, just like you do.”

“Camille, let’s call it a night,” Darryl said quietly. “You need to apologize to Mrs. Winslow and we need to leave.” Underscoring the seriousness of his words, Darryl pushed his chair back and stood up. It was time to get while the getting was good. Plus this would give him a reason not to touch the loathsome pork Mrs. Winslow had plopped onto his plate.

“Boy, you I like,” Mrs. Winslow said, smiling warmly. “You good peoples, down-to-earth.” The piece of collard greens she had been trying to dislodge from between her incisors was still firmly wedged there.

“I was giving you a compliment,” Camille said unconvincingly. Mrs. Winslow ignored her and continued to smile at Darryl.

“Even though it was a bit much to serve Kool-Aid at a formal dinner,” Camille muttered. With surprising swiftness Mrs. Winslow leapt to her feet and flitted around to the same side of the table as Camille, who also got up, towering a good four inches over Mrs. Winslow.

“Bitch, I think you oughta git to steppin’, like your brother said,” Mrs. Winslow said darkly. The time for polite conver- sation and quaint social niceties had passed. Darryl grabbed Camille’s arm.

A glowering Yolanda moved between her mother and pro- spective sister-in-law and gently pushed them apart.

Putting her hands on her hips, Camille stared down at Sharon Winslow. “I just know you did not just call me bitch, you straight-from-the-ghetto—”

Swack! Displaying the hand speed of a youthful Cassius Clay, Mrs. Winslow deftly slapped the taste out of Camille’s mouth with a forehand and struck her again with a backhand, ripping a button off Camille’s expensive blouse in the process. Camille stared in disbelief for a fraction of a second before viciously pushing her adversary back into the dinner table, sending pigs’ feet, yams and grape Kool-Aid crashing to the floor with a horrible din.

Yolanda never made a sound, never shouted, never uttered a curse word. She simply made a fist and struck Camille in the stomach with such ferocity that Camille, Darryl, and Mr. Winslow all grunted in unison. Camille sank slowly to her knees, touching the carpet with her exquisitely coiffed, tastefully tinted brunette hair as she gasped for air.

All this was lost on Mrs. Winslow, who had scampered up from the carpeted floor and bounded into the kitchen. She popped out, waving a wicked-looking serrated steak knife over her head.

“ ’Bout to put an East Baltimore ass-whipping on your bourgie ass!” Mrs. Winslow shrieked before her husband and Yolanda managed to overpower her and yank the knife away.

Darryl instinctively half crouched in front of his defenseless sibling. She may be a horse’s ass, but she was one from the Billups stable. When push comes to shove and serrated steak knives start materializing, blood sticks with blood.

“G’wan outta here!” Mr. Winslow growled, easily restraining his tiny, profanity-spewing spouse, who barely rose to his shoulder. Mr. Winslow’s jolly, semi-drunk demeanor had disappeared. Darryl guessed a deep bleeding cut on Mr. Winslow’s left hand between his thumb and forefinger probably had something to do with that.

“Hurry up and git now, gawddammit!”