No Time to Die Read Free Page B

Not her. What happened?”
    I had no answer.
    The
Daily Challenge
and the
Amsterdam News
had come up with their own theories, but it was speculation. There were no clues—at least none that the papers knew about.
    The service ended and I watched Claudine’s parents emerge from the dim interior of the funeral home. Mrs. Hastings held her husband’s arm, her face a map of anguish as she walked toward the limousine. Yesterday at home, she couldn’t contain her bewilderment when she finally held the obituary and began to read it as if it had belonged to someone else. Then she pronounced Claudine’s name and birth date, and the scream that came did not stop until the doctor arrived.
    Later, when she had dropped into a fitful sleep, Mr. Hastings left her bedside and approached me. He was tall, reed-thin, and usually stood straight as a rod. Now he was shaking, as if sixty-seven years of life had sneaked up from behind and knocked him sideways. Even his voice wavered. “Mali, you were once a cop. What …? How …?”
    He raised his hands, trying to pull the answer from the air, then lowered them to hold onto my arm. I felt the tremor through my jacket sleeve. “Listen, Mali.” He softened his voice and nodded toward the bedroom where his wife lay oblivious of the activity going on around her. “My old queen will grieve herself into her grave, right behind our child. God knows I can’t let that happen. Somebody’s got to do something …”
    The only times I’d seen an older man cry was when Dad broke down at Mom’s funeral and again at the news of my sister Benin’s death. Mom had been so healthy, a nonsmoker, a dancer, walker, jogger, but in an instant her heart had pumped that erratic, extra beat and taken her away.
    Benin and her husband died in a hiking accident in Europe. I thought of them now as I watched Mr. Hastings and knew it was too late, too useless, to ask how death could arrive so quickly and in so many guises.
    Elizabeth and I watched the rest of the mournersstep forward to enlarge the crowd gathered in tight nervous knots. Deborah, our longtime friend, who had flown in from Washington, stepped from the door and moved toward us. Her face was swollen, as if the tears hadn’t stopped from the moment I’d called with the news.
    No greetings, only whispered amazement that something like this could have happened. Claudine’s building was supposed to be safe. The lobby door was always locked. Just as her own door was supposed to have been.
    “Mali. Elizabeth. How could this … how could something like this happen? Claudine was …”
    I held her arm and moved toward Elizabeth’s car a few feet away. Once seated inside, Deborah leaned back and closed her eyes. I saw fear imprinted on her face and a faint trace of the scar on her neck—the result of a push-in robbery that caused her to abandon the city for Washington. She had planned to return, but now with this latest circumstance, I doubted it. I watched the tremor in her hands and wondered if it had been a good idea to have called her at all. But we were old friends. She would have wanted to know.
    Elizabeth tapped my arm and I stepped away from the car. “You do think it was James. I can see it in your face.”
    I didn’t answer but concentrated on the traffic, which had slowed to a crawl. I scanned the cars, then glanced across the avenue and spotted Tad sitting in his car near St. James Church. He inclined his head slightly when our eyes met, and a minute later he pulled away, heading downtown.
    My breath caught in my throat as I remembered how he’d pulled me away from the bloated form in thekitchen. He had put his hand over my mouth and nose and kept me from throwing up.
    I turned back to Elizabeth. “I don’t know what to think. James was capable of some really bad stuff. I mean the things that girl went through, I can’t believe she stayed in the marriage as long as she did. The first black eye should’ve been the last.”
    I spoke