Shades of Black: Crime and Mystery Stories by African-American Authors Read Online Free PDF

the rest of them, Zach was in a world of trouble right now.
    Walter Lee went back to the men’s washroom and began to collect the shoes that had been scattered across the floor when the train came to a stop. Whatever happened, the passengers were going to want their shoes back and polished in the morning. He could think while he shined.
    When he knocked on Dwight Kent’s door, Walter Lee was prepared to have the young man look at him suspicious. Instead, Dwight opened the door, smiled, and made a sweeping gesture of his arm for Walter Lee to enter. “I was hoping you’d come,” he said, shutting the door.
    Now, Walter Lee was the one feeling suspicious. Not that he had been sure this was the best idea he’d ever had, even before he knocked. “Why is that, sir?”
    Dwight Kent nodded. “We need to confer don’t we? About the suspects. I’ve been watching them, and you’ve been watching them, and if we put our heads together—”
    â€œSo you don’t think Zach did it?” Walter Lee said.
    â€œI asked myself why he would kill her.” Dwight looked up toward theceiling. “Unless, of course, he was tying to rape her, and ended up killing her when she fought back. But from what I could see, there wasn’t much of a struggle. And you would think she would have screamed loud enough for somebody to hear if she was being attacked . . . unless he stopped her from screaming . . . but he didn’t have any bite marks that I could see . . . and, anyway, that stuff about colored men lusting after white women all the time . . .” he stopped talking and looked at Walter Lee. “But you’ve already thought all this through, haven’t you? Not that you probably had to think about it as much as I did.”
    â€œNo, I didn’t have to think about it long,” Walter Lee said.
    â€œSo you’ve come to confer, haven’t you?” Dwight smiled. “That must mean you don’t think I did it. Well, I don’t think you did either.”
    â€œThank you, sir,” Walter Lee said. “But what I need . . . if you wouldn’t mind . . . is to have another look at those drawings you were doing—”
    Dwight nodded. “I thought of that too. She reacted to one of them when she was flipping back through the pad. But I couldn’t see which one it was, could you?”
    â€œNo, sir. But I thought if we looked at them—”
    They spent the next half hour looking and trying to see what it was that had made Ruby say, “There’s something about . . .”
    â€œShe must have meant something that reminded her of something,” Walter Lee said.
    â€œOr something that wasn’t right about one of the sketches,” Dwight said from his lounging position in the other chair.
    â€œBut all your drawings aren’t quite right, sir,” Walter Lee said. “I mean they—”
    â€œThey’re caricatures,” Dwight said. “And, sometimes, I can be a little mean.”
    Walter Lee nodded. “Yes, sir, like with the preacher and the major.”
    Dwight held up the pad. “But I did flatter our middle-aged spinster.”
    â€œYes, sir, you made the schoolteacher look pretty. Except she looks like she—”
    â€œWell, she’d probably like to.”
    â€œUh-huh, sir. But we aren’t getting anywhere with—” Walter Lee closed his eyes. He’d had a thought and lost it. He tried to find it again, to grasp what it was.
    â€œWhat?” Dwight said. “You’ve got something haven’t you?”
    Walter Lee pointed at the sketch. “Her hair,” he said. “David, the widow’s little boy, said her hair smelled funny.”
    â€œMaybe he meant it didn’t smell as nice as his mother’s.”
    â€œYes, sir, maybe. But have you ever been in one of those beauty parlors. I