Page 3 of Happy Is On Hiatus
“But you arrived before us? She call you?” Phillips asked the questions, but Cranston was writing every word of her response.
“She’s my cousin. I heard the address on the scanner when I was leaving for work. I came here first,” she replied tightly.
“Ma’am, you need medical assistance?” one of the paramedics who’d climbed down off the fire truck asked Rita.
“No. She’s not hurt,” Sharae yelled back at him.
“My gracious! My word! What’s going on over here? I woke up to the smell of fire and hurried to call the fire department. Rita, what happened?” Ethel Canvers—the biggest of busybodies in Willow Grove—pushed her red-framed glasses up on her nose, her almond-brown eyes peering over Sharae’s shoulder to where Rita stood behind her.
“Hey, Ethel. All is well,” Sharae said and then turned to grab Rita by the elbow. “Come on. Let’s get you inside.”
“So, she’s all right? No injuries?” the paramedic called to them. He looked concerned with his blue medic bag draped over his shoulder, his bushy eyebrows furrowed.
“No. No injuries,” Sharae told him. By now there were more neighbors outside, a few standing across the street, while the bolder ones stood on the sidewalk about thirty feet from Rita’s driveway. The other two officers had spread out a bit, intending to keep any bystanders from getting closer to the house. A barking dog joined the birds, and the flashing of combined red, white, and blue lights lit up the area like it was the Fourth of July.
“We’re gonna need a statement from her,” Phillips said.
“Yeah, us too!” That was the fire chief, who made his way around the men using fire extinguishers to tamp down the flames. When he tilted his hat back on his head, Sharae could see his discerning brown eyes.
It’d always been her practice to look at the eyes first. She could decipher so much more about a person in the first moments she stared into their eyes than she could sometimes after hours of interrogation. It was often hard to turn the practice off when she wasn’t working a murder case. This morning she felt like she was working another type of case, and it was the worst kind—one that involved her family.
“Rita? Dear, what happened?” Ethel asked as she kept pace beside Sharae. How she’d gotten past the cops at the end of the front yard, Sharae had no idea. As for the other two, they were more focused on her and Rita than the nosy neighbor pressing them with questions right now.
“I’m here! Hey, Ethel. It’s fine, I’m here.” Jemel talked while easing her petite body between Ethel and Sharae. The officers had obviously let her through as well. Even though Jemel was her cousin, and exactly the person Sharae had planned to call the moment she got Rita into the house, the careless way in which the responding officers were managing the scene left a lot to be desired.
“My statement!” the fire chief yelled.
“I’ll get the damn statement. You put out the fire!” Sharae yelled back.
“You gonna type up your cousin’s statement too?” Phillips asked, sarcasm lacing his tone.
Sharae whipped her head around to face him, her gaze questioning.
He shrugged. “I’m just sayin’, Sarge.”
That last word was full of disrespect, and Sharae didn’t plan to forget it. Sexism ran rampant in the police department, so a woman sergeant on the scene outranking the responding officers wasn’t an easy pill to swallow. Add that it was a Black woman with nineteen years on the force, and there were bound to be some noses twisted out of joint. If this incident didn’t involve her family—a reason for which she knew she should’ve recused herself—she would’ve verbally acknowledged the officer’s misstep and made a note to report it to the captain.
Instead, she kept her gaze level with his and replied, “Fine. I’ll type the report and send a copy to the fire chief when I get back to the precinct. Just get off the lawn and put the fire out!” It was too early in the morning to be yelling at people, but now, certain her captain was going to hear about this incident whether she was the one who told him or not, she didn’t give a damn. Rita was her cousin. No way was she letting anybody else hear her story first.
Rita was the oldest of their threesome—Rita, Sharae, and Jemel. They’d been thick as thieves all their lives, growing up on the same Baltimore city block since their mothers were sisters. And normally, Rita was the stable one, the calm and collected one who’d walked thepath their mothers wanted for each of them. She was the backbone to their trio, the moderator, and Sharae was afraid she might be starting to unravel.
“It’s about damn time. I was drowning out there,” Sharae snapped at Jemel as soon as they walked into Rita’s house.
“Well, excuse me. I’m not nosy Ethel, peeping out my front window at every waking moment. And I had to push past Mrs.Barksdale, who’d pulled out a chair in the middle of the sidewalk to watch the activities. I try to ignore these folk around here as much as possible.” Jemel closed the door behind them. “As soon as I heard the sirens and saw the fire truck pull up down here, I threw on something and came down.”
Jemel had bought a house in the Willow Grove development about five years ago, while Sharae preferred the apartment she leased in a building close to the mall. She’d had to wait until she was eighteen to move out of her aunt’s house, and when she did, she’d sworn she’d never live within walking distance of family again. Even of the two closest friends she’d ever had.
“Well, I’m glad somebody decided to put something on before coming out,” Sharae said.
For the second time this morning, Rita jerked out of Sharae’s grasp. “I’m a grown woman,” she said before walking toward the kitchen.
“A grown woman who was just outside in her short-ass nightshirt standing in front of a blazing fire,” Sharae whispered to Jemel.
“Yeah, what’s up with that?”
Sharae shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“She’s still wearing her bonnet.”
