Can You Keep a Secret? Read online

  Also by Mary Monroe

  The Lonely Heart, Deadly Heart Series

  Every Woman’s Dream

  Can You Keep a Secret?

  Never Trust a Stranger

  The God Series

  God Don’t Like Ugly

  God Still Don’t Like Ugly

  God Don’t Play

  God Ain’t Blind

  God Ain’t Through Yet

  God Don’t Make No Mistakes

  Mama Ruby Series

  Mama Ruby

  The Upper Room

  Lost Daughters

  Gonna Lay Down My Burdens

  Red Light Wives

  In Sheep’s Clothing

  Deliver Me From Evil

  She Had It Coming

  The Company We Keep

  Family of Lies

  Bad Blood

  “Nightmare in Paradise” in Borrow Trouble

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corp.

  Can You Keep a Secret?

  A Lonely Heart, Deadly Heart Novella

  MARY MONROE

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 - Lola

  Chapter 2 - Lola

  Chapter 3 - Joan

  Chapter 4 - Joan

  Chapter 5 - Joan

  Chapter 6 - Lola

  Chapter 7 - Lola

  Chapter 8 - Lola

  Chapter 9 - Joan

  Chapter 10 - Lola

  Chapter 11 - Lola

  Chapter 12 - Joan

  Chapter 13 - Lola

  Chapter 14 - Lola

  Chapter 15 - Joan

  Chapter 16 - Joan

  Chapter 17 - Lola

  ON SALE NOW

  Teaser chapter

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  DAFINA BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2016 by Mary Monroe

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Dafina and the Dafina logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  First Electronic Edition: October 2016

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-0994-3

  eISBN-10: 1-4967-0994-2

  This book is dedicated to Sheila Sims and Maria “Felice” Sanchez, my two best friends.

  This is a prequel to my Lonely Heart, Deadly Heart series.

  Chapter 1

  Lola

  October 1991

  MY PARENTS SEEMED SO HAPPY TOGETHER, I STARTED THINKING ABOUT marriage when I was in the fourth grade. My future husband had to be handsome, intelligent, and a well-respected member of our community. He had to want at least three children, make a good living, and treat me like a queen. I didn’t meet a man with all my requirements until I was thirty-two-years old. His name was Calvin Ramsey.

  Calvin was everything I had hoped for and more. He had a great personality and he was good in bed. He was also a war hero and a Christian. Before our relationship even had enough time to develop into something serious, I started planning our wedding and picking out names for our children.

  At the same time, the man I had fallen hopelessly in love with was methodically planning to murder me. And for a reason too incredible to comprehend . . .

  * * *

  I had a good life with two of the most wonderful and loving parents a girl could hope for. They were not perfect so they made a few stupid mistakes, but I refused to blame them for all the stupid mistakes I made.

  I had no siblings and other than my parents, the only other relative I had in California was Daddy’s older brother, Gerald. He lived in Anaheim and had three children and an ex-wife. Uncle Gerald had married a woman from the Philippines named Narissa Pullon. When they broke up, she took their children and returned to her native country and never looked back. I had never met Narissa and my cousins, and I had only seen Uncle Gerald in person once during one of our few visits to Disneyland. At the time, I didn’t really care that he didn’t seem interested in having a close relationship with us because my parents were my world anyway. I thought they were all I needed. Mama and Daddy were good people in every sense of the word. They were in the church, had good jobs, and everybody I knew admired and respected them.

  Daddy drove a bus for the city and Mama taught third grade in the same elementary school I attended. We lived in a nice big brown house on Fullerton Street in the San Jose, California suburb of South Bay City; with a population of approximately thirty thousand residents.

  People told me I was cute and smart so I had a lot of friends. But Joan Proctor was my main girl because she was so strong and full of life and not afraid to try anything. I didn’t approve of a lot of the things Joan did, but I usually ended up getting involved in the same things myself mainly because I wanted to impress her. I loved going to her house, which was located two blocks from ours. She had a huge family and they all liked to get loose and loud, something my laid-back parents rarely did. Any day of the week it was party central at Joan’s house. There were some days when you would have thought that the dullest people in the world occupied my house. Most of the time, I holed up in my room and read comic books and assembled jigsaw puzzles. At the same time, Daddy would be in the living room sitting on the couch as quiet as a mute watching reruns of old TV shows. Mama occupied another room, grading papers or chatting on the telephone with one of her friends or one of the other teachers. During dinner, my parents compared notes about how bad the world had become and how fast I was growing up. They both advised me on a regular basis to always stay on the straight and narrow; which was their way of warning me not to get pregnant before I finished school and got married.

  Despite my parents’ peculiar behavior, I envied the relationship they had. Daddy was very affectionate, so whenever Mama got close enough, he squeezed her hand or kissed her. When they went out together in public they held hands and occasionally smooched like a couple of love-struck teenagers. That was the kind of relationship I wanted to have with a man someday. I didn’t think there was anything better than a man showing his wife how much he loved her the way my daddy did. But a lot of his friends called him a player and he loved it.

  My ninth birthday was October 11, 1991; the same day the TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart was caught with a hooker that he had picked up to have sex with. When we saw the story on the six o’clock news the next day, Mama was horrified. She had been one of Reverend Swaggart’s followers for years. His downfall was the main subject my parents discussed at the dinner table for the next few days.

  “If a man of the cloth can’t control himself, who can?” Mama said as she dumped turnip greens onto my plate. “The news says that he pestered another prostitute three years ago that I didn’t even know about!” She let out a long loud sigh and shook her head. I had never seen her look so disappointed. “Oh well. I guess with Reverend Swaggart being famous and having money, greedy prostitutes were bound to come out of the woodwork eventually and tempt him. Right, Clarence?”

  Mama and I looked at Daddy at the same time. I couldn’t wait to hear what he had to say about the horny preacher today. First he took a long drink from his glass of buttermilk and let out a mild belch. After he excused himself and wiped a ring
of milk off his lips with a napkin, he started talking loud and fast with a dreamy-eyed look on his face. “Aw, shuck it! I don’t know why everybody is making such a fuss! I bet there ain’t a preacher alive that ain’t itching to fool around with a prostitute. And I bet a lot of them already done it. They just didn’t get caught. Some women jump at the chance to hop into bed with a man of God. Especially if the man is as good-looking and weak as Reverend Swaggart.”

  “Ugly men are just as weak,” Mama said with a smirk.

  “That’s true. I know a whole lot of butt-ugly men with some real pretty women chasing after them. But, by nature, a handsome dude has a much harder time fending off a frisky woman. She can’t resist a man’s good looks so she hounds him until he backslides all the way into a bed with her. Humph! Y’all wouldn’t believe all the hassles I went through with women when I was younger. And I didn’t even have no money. But I was as cool as a ice cube and my looks made up for my shallow pockets. I had to beat the women off with a stick. Everybody that knew me called me Stagger Lee.”

  “Who is Stagger Lee?” I asked as I dismembered a fried chicken wing with both hands.

  “Oh, he was way before your time. They even made a record about him years ago. He was a real ladies’ man,” Daddy said, eyeing Mama with caution.

  “Stagger Lee was a pimp,” Mama tossed in, glaring at Daddy.

  “But I was not a pimp,” Daddy went on. “I was just cool like that.” He softened his voice and winked at Mama. “When I met you, Mildred, everything changed. I had eyes only for you on account of you were one of a kind. You worked on me like a tonic. You really got my attention with them big, high-shelf titties and that bubble booty.”

  Daddy’s words pleased Mama, but she didn’t like it when he said anything even slightly related to sex in my presence. “Now, Clarence, I’ve told you time and time again not to talk nasty in front of this child,” she scolded.

  “Oops,” Daddy chuckled, covering his mouth with his hand.

  “Now you behave,” Mama added, glancing from Daddy to me. “I don’t want Lola to grow up thinking that, uh, the activities of the flesh are that important to a man.” She sniffed and raked her fingers through her thick brown hair. Her gray eyes lit up and a huge smile formed on her small round face. Next thing I knew, she leaned sideways in her chair and hauled off and kissed Daddy on the cheek. He put his fork down and wrapped his arms around her trim body.

  “Y’all need to get a room,” I teased.

  “This is our room,” Daddy shot back.

  He was right. One night when they thought I was in bed, I accidentally saw them making love backed up against the kitchen wall. It happened more than once and in other rooms. They never caught me watching them and I never mentioned it. I eventually realized that my folks were only dull when they knew I was around. But when they were alone, or thought they were alone, they got just as buck wild as other grown people.

  I was glad I had parents who were not shy about showing their affection.

  Apparently, Daddy had more love to give than Mama knew about. And it was no wonder. He was one of the best-looking black men in town. He was not that tall or that well built, but his piercing black eyes, chocolate skin, and wavy black hair attracted a lot of attention. Even though he claimed Mama was “one of a kind,” he felt the same way about other women.

  Chapter 2

  Lola

  TWO MONTHS AFTER MY BIRTHDAY DADDY STARTED TAKING ME with him whenever he wanted to get out of the house without Mama making a fuss. The first few times we went to the market to get some beer and to visit one of his sick friends. The “sick friend” he visited the most was a tall, beautiful, honey-colored woman named Shirelle Odom who had a shoulder-length blond weave and a shape that wouldn’t quit. With her huge brown eyes and heart-shaped face, she looked like a model. But she was a hairdresser. She worked for Kandy’s House of Beauty, a beauty shop located in a nearby mini-mall that Mama and I visited a couple of times a month. It was the best place in town for females to catch up on the latest gossip. Shirelle was quiet when Mama and I were on the premises, but her eyes lit up and she got real frisky when Daddy came to give us a ride home. Her eyes lit up even more when he visited her at her apartment with me in tow.

  “Don’t tell your mama about us going to Miss Shirelle’s apartment, baby. If she asks you where we went, tell her we stopped off at the mall so you could visit Santa Claus and there was a real long line of other kids,” Daddy told me one Friday evening on the way home. We had just visited the mysterious Shirelle for the third time in the same week and had stayed out longer than usual. That was because Daddy and Miss Shirelle had spent a couple of hours in her bedroom while I sat in the living room watching cartoons. “Your mama wouldn’t understand these things.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “Miss Shirelle is such a real nice lady.”

  “Uh, it’s a grown folks’ situation, sugar. I know I can trust you . . .”

  “Uh-huh. I won’t tell if you don’t want me to,” I said with a scheme already forming in my head. I liked a lot of things—dolls, cute outfits; puzzles, and whatnot. I usually had to do a lot of pouting to get my folks to take me to the toy store. Daddy had just put a cow in front of me that I planned to milk dry. “Do you think Santa Claus is going to bring me a lot of toys next week?”

  “Huh?” There was a puzzled look on Daddy’s face. Then his eyes suddenly got big and he nodded. “Yeah, yeah! I’m sure Santa Claus will bring you a bunch of nice toys. But in case he forgets a few, I’ll take you to Toys-R-Us or Kmart right after the holidays so you can pick out a few more things.”

  “Thanks!” I yelled. Not only did I have a huge pile of toys under the tree when I got up on Christmas morning, Daddy took me to Toys-R-Us and Kmart two days after New Year’s Day to pick out a few more. It seemed like the more we visited Miss Shirelle, the more toys I got. He never said it, and I certainly didn’t, but the toys were his way of bribing me to keep my mouth shut about him and Miss Shirelle. When Mama asked him why he had suddenly begun to spend so much money on more toys for me, he told her that it was because he loved me so much and wanted to keep me happy. He reminded her that he was also spending a lot more money on more things for her too. Daddy had been coming home (not long after he had started seeing Shirelle) two or three times a week with gift-wrapped boxes and roses for Mama.

  With her job as a teacher, her commitment to the church, and keeping me in line, Mama had a busy life. She didn’t have time to keep up with Daddy’s movements. As the months rolled by, he spent more and more time with Miss Shirelle. I didn’t have to tell Mama any lies about where we’d been because she never asked.

  It was not long before I knew more about my parents than I wanted to know. And it was Joan who told me.

  “I know something about your daddy,” she said in a taunting manner during our walk home from school one Monday afternoon, two weeks before Thanksgiving that year. “I bet you can’t guess what it is.”

  “I don’t know what you know about my daddy!” I boomed, pausing long enough to catch my breath. “If you know something, why don’t you just tell me?”

  “All right then.” Joan sniffed. “Your daddy is screwing Shirelle.”

  “Screwing? What do you mean by that?” Other than what I’d learned from watching late night R-rated movies on television behind my parents’ backs and from Joan and some of my other playmates, I knew very little about sex. I had no idea exactly what Daddy and Shirelle did when they went into her bedroom and closed the door.

  “They’re having intercourse,” Joan reported.

  “Huh?”

  “They are doing the nasty. The big nasty: intercourse.”

  “Oh. People call the nasty ‘intercourse’ too?”

  “People call sex a lot of different things. Everybody in the neighborhood knows about your father and Shirelle,” Joan said with a smirk on her face. She was only a few weeks older than me, but she was already a seasoned instigator and way too interested in sex for
a girl her age. Last month when she told me she’d been masturbating since she was six, she was surprised that I wasn’t doing it and that I didn’t even know what it was! When she told me, I was horrified at first. But when I pictured people “playing” with themselves, I laughed. Intercourse sounded even more ridiculous.

  “My daddy and Miss Shirelle are . . . are doing that?”

  “Yep! Having s-e-x. What you got to say about that?”

  I refused to show how agitated I was. I hid my feelings well so most of the time people didn’t know what I was thinking. I just shrugged and kept moving, admiring the Thanksgiving decorations on the houses and in the yards along the way. I had increased my speed so Joan had to skip to keep up with me.

  “Lola, what’s wrong with you, girl? Don’t you have anything to say about what I just told you?” she asked, stumbling along in the cowboy boots that her stepfather had bought her for winning the citywide spelling bee last month.

  “Well, I didn’t know about Daddy and Shirelle doing the nasty and I know my mama don’t know about it. She’d divorce Daddy so fast it would make your head spin. You need to stop listening to gossip and rumors.”

  Joan laughed. “Gossip? Rumors? Honey, your mother is the one that told my mother! I heard them talking about it in the beauty shop last Saturday when they thought I was in the restroom.”

  My jaw dropped and I almost tripped over a huge pumpkin that somebody had set in the middle of the sidewalk. The way Daddy hugged and kissed my mama all the time, why would he be having sex with Miss Shirelle? I wondered.

  “He wouldn’t do that! He loves Mama!” I hollered.