Brooklyn Bombshells: Part 2

Melanie turned and walked back into her bedroom. Her instincts told her to lock her door, and she listened. Melanie jumped into the shower and then got dressed. She was ready for this bogus merrymaking with the sisters to be over with. Once they were gone, she could breathe again and relax. She played nice because she and Claire were cool at school, and the young girl was intriguing. Melanie had wanted to do her good deed for the week. It felt nice to feed the homeless. It was her presumptuous way of thinking.

Dressed and ready to say goodbye to Claire and Charlie, she unlocked her bedroom door and stepped out. Rapidly, Melanie was met with a gruesome fate. From out of nowhere, Charlie viciously struck her in the head with a hammer. Melanie released a loud shriek that Charlie tried to silence by striking her in the head again. Melanie collapsed against the floor, copious amounts of her blood pooling around her head.

Melanie’s screams woke Claire up. When she picked herself u

p from the floor and finally realized what was happening, she flipped.

“Charlie, what the fuck did you do?”

“Just chill out and shut the fuck up! I got this!” Charlie replied.

Claire watched in horror as her sister sprung into action. Melanie was badly beaten, bleeding profusely, but she was still alive—barely. Wearing yellow dish gloves, Charlie stuffed a rag into Melanie’s mouth and dragged her into the bedroom. Charlie was moving quickly, like she was a professional at this. She tied Melanie’s hands behind her back with a silk scarf. Melanie, still conscious, was frantically trying to free herself, but then Charlie marched over and struck her again with the hammer, and again, and again until she was still.

Charlie said to her sister, who was now frozen with shock, “Claire, listen up, put these gloves on and bag up the linens we slept in and start wiping down everything we touched in here.”

Claire stood there looking like a deer caught in blinding headlights.

“Claire, get dressed and do it now!” Charlie barked, snapping her sister out of her shocked state.

Tears started to stream down Claire’s face. “Charlie, this is going too far. What are you doing? I don’t wanna go to jail,” she fretted.

“You won’t if you just listen to me and do what I say. Don’t come back into this room and give me your cell phone. Now, Claire!”

Claire sprung into action and did what her sister told her to do. Charlie pushed her out the bedroom and closed the door. Immediately, Charlie focused on the cell phones. She deleted all of her sister’s history from the phone and removed the SIM card. Next she meticulously went through Melanie’s phone, reading her text messages. There wasn’t anything to delete except Claire’s call to her the previous day. Melanie did mention to some nigga named Scott, who appeared to be her brother, that she was allowing a friend to sleep over. She never mentioned Claire’s name—which was great. Scott had texted her back, stating that he would be over her place that same night to make a quick drop. He was actually her brother and not some nigga she was messing with.

Charlie went into Melanie’s closet and found the brown duffel bag stashed in the back. She crouched down and opened it, and, as she predicted, it was filled with cash. From her estimate, she figured there was nearly $80,000 inside. Charlie beamed. Bingo!

Melanie was still hanging on to life by a thread. Surprisingly, the preppy bitch was tougher than Charlie had assumed. Now it was time for Charlie to clean up her mess. Melanie was a liability and Charlie couldn’t afford to leave behind any witnesses. She went over to where Melanie was lying bound on the floor and placed a plastic bag over the girl’s head. She coldheartedly finished what she started by bashing the girl’s skull in with the hammer. It was brutal. For good measure, Charlie held a pillow over her face for a few minutes. Melanie Jones was dead.

When Charlie emerged from the bedroom, Claire was fully dressed and methodically cleaning the apartment. Charlie didn’t want her sister to see the body, so she closed the bedroom door. They locked eyes, but they didn’t speak. Claire didn’t want to know what happened to Melanie inside the bedroom. She expected the worst. Everything felt still inside there.

Charlie grabbed two trash bags and went back into the bedroom. She started tossing essentials and anything worth taking into the bags—designer bags, jewelry, shoes, and most importantly, the money. She also tossed the linens into trash bags. Now they had more bags than they had come with, and it was becoming a burden for them. How were they going to drag all these bags out of the building without looking suspicious?

With the apartment thoroughly cleaned out, it was time to make their escape. Claire knew in her heart that they would eventually get caught. Melanie wasn’t some loser or some bum that you can easily make disappear. She had a lot going for her, and the detectives assigned to the case would be zealous in solving her murder. She was upset with Charlie for getting her mixed up in murder and robbery but, as usual, she didn’t say anything.

Charlie grabbed two baseball caps and two light jackets that belonged to Melanie. She and Claire both tucked their distinguishing red hair under the baseball caps, and then put on the largest pairs of sunglasses that Melanie owned. They painted their lips with dark colored lipstick and even gave themselves exaggerated eyebrows and moles. It was time to leave in their disguise.

“Look, we need to be careful and on point. I’ll start taking the bags down the stairwell and out the backdoor so we won’t be seen,” said Charlie. “It’s still early, so hopefully we won’t run into many people. You wait a few minutes and then bring the rest.”

Claire nodded, her stomach doing somersaults.

Charlie grabbed three full trash bags and acted like she had the strength of five men. She was determined to not get caught and not be seen. She left the apartment leaving Claire behind. The only thing to do was to be careful, smart, and patient.

It didn’t take long for them to remove the bags. They moved with urgency to leave the area. Before they knew it, they were outside waiting for the Uber Charlie had arranged from Melanie’s phone to show up. When their ride arrived, they sprung into action, asking the driver to pop the trunk. They quickly tossed the garbage bags in the trunk and climbed into the backseat. Charlie told him their destination.

“We’re going to Harlem.”

The Amsterdam Houses was a place that the sisters weren’t connected to. Once there, Charlie took the trash bags filled with their clothes and tossed them into the nearest dumpster, along with the bag containing the linens from Melanie’s apartment. Claire objected, but Charlie had to remind her that Bacardi had kept all their good shit and all that was in those bags was junk.

Charlie had seen too many bitches living better than her—the women she helped rob and kill with God and Fingers, her sister Chanel, and now this bitch Melanie. Charlie hated to see others having more than her. She vowed that from today on out, she would be upgrading her life.

With two bags left in their possession, mostly containing Melanie’s things and the money, the girls walked to the nearest train station and took the A train to 125th Street. There, on the busy street lined with fashion boutiques, nail shops, fast food places, and more street merchants than you could count, they purchased two extra large suitcases on wheels.

“We need to get right,” Charlie told Claire, walking quickly with the bag in one hand and rolling one of the suitcases with the other. “C’mon.”

Claire followed behind her sister like a stray puppy. She was terrified and jumpy, and her eyes darted all over the place. She felt that a swarm of cops was going to swoop down on them and haul them away at any moment.

The sisters came to a stop on a side block with strangers coming and going. Quickly, Charlie packed the suitcases and they discarded their baseball caps and shades in a nearby trash can and wiped off their makeup. Charlie exhaled, feeling confident that they were going to get away with murder. So far everything was going smoothly, and as long as Claire didn’t freak out, they were on the right path to a new life.