Saturday, July 24, 2010

A Lonely Field


It took me four days to find him..... Avery Day....a cab driver. Clerow,Sepia and I talked to cab drivers from all three cab companies that worked in the area where April "Tiny" Allen was last seen alive..We showed them photos, we checked schedules and finnally after all of that leg work, I found Avery Day..an old man who drove cabs at night and worked for Budget Rental car during the day to make ends meet. He recognized the photo of April.

"Yeaaaah..I remember her....hot little number....See, most of the fares I get that time of night are drunks and bustouts...but her, I remember...She was wearing a tight little mini skirt....It was so short,She couldn't bend over ..lawddd to dayyyyy!" he exclaimed as he drank his third bottle of beer and munched on some crabs from Crabby's Crabshack...courtesy of my generous pockets.

"So you picked her up.....What time was it?" I said.

"It was around, oh....four in the mornin.....She was with a guy...." he said.

"A guy? " I exclaimed.

"Yeah...This guy walked her to the car stop...He was just a begging..." said Avery.

"Begging?" I asked.

"You know? I told you how she was dressed...I caint say that I blame him...He said that he and his friend had spent close to a hunnard dollars on her that night and he uh, you know, expected uh how can I say this...a return on his investment..heheheheheheh.." laughed the old man.

"Oh really? Then what happened?" I asked.

"Welll, she told him that she had gave him all the "pay" he was going to get."
said Avery.

"So did she get in the cab?" I said.

"Yeah...She did..and I took her to her house and let her out. I waited until she put her key in the door and then I left." he said.

"Hmmmmm...Funny...I've been turning this town upside down looking for her and never stopped by her house...You got an address?" I said.

"Well yeah..I can show you where I dropped her off." He said.

We got in his cab and he drove me to April's home. It was a nice neat little rowhome that she was probably renting. The police had already been here, no doubt...The door was locked. I got on the phone and called Clerow and Lockpick Johnson. I waited for them. Within an hour they arrived and we were inside the house.

There was no clues here to be found.. All of the beds were made up, The sink was clean, no dirty dishes on the table and everything was in order...She was clearly a better housekeeper than her girlfriend, Tangy... My guess was that she hadn't slept in this bed...and hadn't been in the house that long.

At any rate...The trail had grown cold again...I left and headed home.

"Oh Sepia...I caint believe Haywood was cheating on me...as good as I was to that man...I cooked for him, let him stay at my house, paid the note on his car and the insurance..and gave him good lovin whenever he asked...How he gone cheat on me with that skank, Tangy....and with my SISTER on top of that?" said Patrice as she sat in the kitchen of my house, talking to my wife, Sepia.

"Some guys are just no good." said Sepia.

"I know it's the truth." said Patrice.

"Evening Ladies." I said as I came in the kitchen and went in the refrigerator and poured myself a glass of orange juice.

"Anything Kevin?" asked Patrice.

"Well, I found the cabbie that took her home...but that was it..He said he took her to her door and that was the last she was seen or heard from...I'm thinkin she went back out." I said.

"But where?" asked Sepia.

"That is the question." I said. Personally , I was stumped...By now it would have had to have been 5:00 in the morning...Where else would she have gone after having been drinking and up all night?

Just then, the house phone rang....Sepia picked it up.....Her eyes began to get huge...She had a look of horror on her face...then she got a peice of paper and a
pencil and wrote an address down on the paper. She hung up, still looking like she'd seen a ghost.

"Who was that Sepia?" I asked.

"I don't know....it was a raspy voice.....it sounded like whoever it was...they was trying to hide their real voice...anyway they said to tell you that the girl you've been looking for is at this address...in the back." she said.

She gave me the paper and I looked at it closely...

"This isn't an address...This is where a neighborhood used to be..They've torn down all of those houses..There is nothing there but a field...It's like a garbage
dump." I said.

Patrice and Sepia looked at me....I grabbed my car keys and we all got in my car and drove. We wound up in Southwest Philadelphia...in an area, not too far from the Airport....There was nothing but weeds and grass and trash in this field...

The three of us walked and looked and searched for close to an hour....Just when I was ready to call it a day, I tripped over a hand...a human hand....There she was...Lying in this field, with a blanket covering her, as if she had been sleeping...wearing the same clothes she was last seen in...A yellow micro mini skirt and a black top. Her stilletto heels had been taken off and neatly placed to the side. Her hands had been placed under her head..She looked as if she was sleeping...

Because of the heat, her body had been decomposing at a fast rate...but there was no denying, that this was the remains of April "Tiny" Allen. Sepia held Patrice as she began weeping silently....I looked up at the sky...I had found Tiny at last...now to find out who had done this!

(Conclusion Next)

3 comments:

Toni said...

I think I know who the killer is!
But I'll wait until tomorrow to see if I was right!

Sunflower said...

I noticed, there has been no gunfire
or any other violence in this whole story...Interesting...(None in the last story either -Pastor Struthers and Rita Gordon) I like that you've toned down the mayhem a bit!

Cheryl said...

That cab driver sounds like a dirty old man...I wonder if he might be more involved?