CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Although Grant cautioned Marti against taking the word of a scorned widow regarding her best friend’s involvement with what Eric was up to, Marti knew LeeAnn too well. She was loud and proud. She was narrow-minded and quick to blame race for everything. But she was no drama queen. She was no liar. You could take what LeeAnn said to the bank.
But then again, she thought, she’d always believed that about Kamille and Eric too!
“I’ll take what you said under advisement,” was all she said to Grant after he gave her his caution.
That was why Grant got Marti to contact a couple cops she trusted at the Memphis PD and invite them along in case an arrest needed to be made.
The two cops, both detectives who still had a fondness for their former boss, hugged Marti when they met up in the restaurant’s parking lot.
“We’ll be around back,” said the senior detective, “in case she tries to make a run for it.”
“And we’ll cover the front,” said Grant, and the foursome split up.
Marti was impressed by the beauty of the building and the fact that the parking lot was nearly filled with cars. It was lunch time and apparently they had a large lunch crowd.
But Marti wasn’t surprised. “If Kamille was going to do it,” she said, “it was going to be big and bold. That’s her,” she added as she and Grant made their way toward the front entrance. “That’s her.”
But when they got inside, it was so filled with customers that they had to search and search before they found her. They didn’t want to ask anybody if they knew where she was because she might have refused to see them and took off.
“There she is,” Marti said when she finally spotted her.
Grant looked where she was nodding. When he saw a beautiful black woman standing at a table seemingly thanking some of her customers, he could easily see how that lady and Marti would have been besties. They looked so much alike to him. Not like twins, but certainly like sisters. He almost had to do a double take.
“Come on,” Marti said as she and Grant made their way toward the back part of the huge restaurant where Kamille Oliver was standing. They were almost there when Kamille started laughing at something somebody at that table said and looked over her restaurant. That was when she saw them approaching. Her eyes locked in with Marti’s eyes, and the terror in Kamille’s eyes told the story.
For Grant, he saw a woman who never thought in a million years Marti would have put two and two together and found her best friend at the end of the chain of events that should have led to Marti’s death.
For Marti, she saw shame and regret and sadness in Kamille’s eyes, as if her true colors were coming out and she wanted them back in. But it was too late.
And Kamille took off running toward the back of the restaurant.
Marti and Grant ran after her. There was no way she was getting away with this! They toppled one waiter with his tray of food, another waiter with his tray of glasses, as they ran after Kamille.
Kamille ran through her kitchen and then out of the back door where, they would later find out, her Bentley was parked.
But as soon as she ran out of her back door and made her way down her backsteps, the two detectives, one on each side of the building, yelled for her to stop.
By the time Marti and Grant ran outside, Kamille had stopped running and had placed her hands in the air, her back to every one of them. Marti and Grant hurried down the backsteps.
“Now turn around!” yelled one of the detectives, their guns trained on Kamille as if she was some common criminal, not the successful businesswoman she had remade herself into being.
But as Kamille was turning around, Marti knew her friend too well. She was packing and she was pulling it out. And Marti panicked. “Kamille don’t !” she yelled to warn her friend.
But Kamille was already turning around with two Glocks already pulled out of her pockets, and both of them firing at the cops.
She shot one detective, but the other one shot her. Repeatedly.
Marti was devastated. “Stop shooting!” Grant yelled at the second detective as he and Marti ran to her friend.
But when she got there and cradled Kamille’s head on her lap, Kamille was barely breathing.
“Why Millie?” a stricken Marti asked her friend. “Why?”
But before Kamille could say the word she was struggling to say, she was shot again.
Grant and Marti jumped up and looked. The second detective, the one that had taken her down to begin with, looked pale. “She was reaching for her gun!” he yelled. “She was reaching for her gun!”
Grant and Marti looked at each other. They didn’t see her reaching for anything! But Grant stopped Marti from pointing that out. He didn’t know this town. He didn’t know who they could trust in this town. Kamille was a dead woman anyway. It was doubtful if she had the strength to breathe another breath, let alone tell them anything. He wanted to get his lady out of this town and get her out alive. He stopped her from saying a word.