CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
They were in bed, with Grant on his back and Marti on her side. With his arm around her, she had her head resting on his shoulder. He wrapped his other arm around her too. “I know it’s upsetting. Try to get some sleep.”
But Marti was far too distressed. “If that driver had been a stranger, I would be able to deal with it. But it wasn’t a stranger, Grant. It was Eric.” Her frown of puzzlement was fixed on her face. “He was a really close friend of mine. He was there, right in my backyard, the night Jaleesa . . . The night of that shooting.” She still couldn’t talk about it without the pain piercing through. “He was the one that was upset about Andy Sloan crashing her party because he knew I didn’t want Andy anywhere near me or my daughter. He was my dog. He was my ride or die.”
A part of Grant felt a spark of jealousy when she spoke so lovingly about some man. But he quickly dismissed such foolishness because he knew she felt so betrayed by that man. And that man had tried to kill her. “Something apparently changed.”
“But what? I haven’t seen Eric in years. We haven’t talked on the phone, there’s been no communication between us, there’s been nothing. What could have changed?”
“Maybe he didn’t like what happened to your daughter and turned on you?”
But she quickly shook her head. “He stuck with me longer than anybody else. Until I wasn’t moving on and he couldn’t keep singing that same old song with me. I understood when he moved on. Everybody moved on.”
“Except you.”
“I would have if I could have,” Marti said.
Grant exhaled. “Whatever the reason, it’s chilling either way because that was the same pickup truck that I saw on the street cameras I reviewed after you had that car crash. The windows were too tinted for us to see who was inside that truck, but it’s the same truck.”
Marti nodded. “I know it is.”
“Which means he was trying to kill, not just tonight, but earlier this week too.”
Marti couldn’t hardly wrap her brains around it. Here they were thinking it was a local matter.
“Who would know something? Does this Eric have a family?”
It was when Grant said it that Marti remembered it. She sat up in bed. “LeeAnn. LeeAnn will know.”
“Who’s LeeAnn?”
“His wife. She’ll know everything.” Then she looked at Grant. “I’ve got to go to Memphis.”
Grant stared at her for several seconds. “Are you sure you can handle that, babe?”
Marti’s face became even more distressed at the thought of returning to the scene of the crime, as she saw it. Then she exhaled and nodded her head. “I have to. I’ve got to find out what became of Eric and why he turned our friendship into this level of hate.”
She could tell Grant didn’t want her to leave Belgrave. He knew Belgrave. He didn’t know shit about Memphis. But then he nodded his head. “Looks like we’re going to Memphis then,” he said.
When he said we , Marti’s heart soared. “You’re going with me?”
“Of course I am! Think I’m going to let you deal with this shit alone? Not on your life, kiddo.”
Marti smiled and laid her head, once again, on his shoulder. He held her once again.
At a time like this, she craved his embrace.