“Ms. Temple,” Garrett said rising to his feet.
“And it’s Porsche. Please have a seat.” Garrett gladly reclaimed his spot and Porsche made herself comfortable on the couch next to him. “Tell me what I can do for you?”
“Carmen Taylor asked me to talk to you and I apologize for just showing up like this. I was telling the young lady who answered the door that I should have called first.”
“It's alright. Carmen called me and said she'd asked you to talk to me. So I've been expecting you.”
“Good. I'll try not to take up a lot of your time.”
“I have all the time you need. How's your investigation going?” Porsche asked.
“Well, I'm just getting started and looking for a direction to go in. So, what I'd like to have happen here, is for you to tell me,” Garrett paused as he glanced out the sliding glass door at Misty and Chocolate, “everything you know about Desireé Ferguson. And if I ask you anything that you don't want to answer, just tell me to back off.”
“I've done a lot of things in my life and I'm not ashamed of any of them,” Porsche said confidently. “Ask me anything you want. I'm here to help you. If anything I say helps you find who did that shit to her, all the better.”
“Let’s start with you. What do you do, Porsche?”
“I manage the three girls that live here with me, Mr. Mason. They're dancers and I'm training them to be professional escorts. I used to be an escort until my habits made me unreliable. But I still have some access to clientele, so I'm putting that information to good use.”
“How did you get started?”
“Me and Desireé used to get ourselves invited to all types of parties. Any place we could meet men with money. I met a man at one of those parties named James Martin. He said when I was ready to stop waiting on one of these limp dick old man to give me money and start making some money on my own, to call him. He trained me, just like I'm doing with these girls. I started working for him escorting, and once a month we'd drive to Miami to pick up 2 kilos of cocaine.”
“Was Desireé involved with James Martin, too?”
“No, Desireé never met him,” Porsche said and lit a cigarette. “By the time I hooked up with James, Desireé had married Roland and pretty much stopped hanging out.”
“Who do you think killed her?”
“Like everybody else, I thought Roland did it.”
“Ms. Taylor told me that you hadn't talked to Desireé for a while at the time of her death.”
“I used to smoke a lot of cocaine, and those days I was smoking more. But I've been clean for three hundred and eight days. It was Desireé's death that made me wake up.”
“How was that?”
“When she died, I lost it. I know I was up in this house smoking for eight days straight at least. There were different people here smoking with me and they'd come and go. But somebody was always here smokin' with me the whole time. Shit, I was buying. We'd smoke up what we had and call for more. But this time my guy took his time about bringin it. So while I'm walking around frantic, looking out the window, I started thinking about Desireé and I started crying. Just like that, she was dead. Dead at twenty-seven. And Desireé was so full of life. It made me realize how short life can be. It ain't promised to you. Desireé had everything and now she's dead.”
“Did Desireé ever smoke with you?”
“Never. And I never told her that I did. I didn't want her to know. She woulda been so disappointed in me.”
“How long did you know Desireé?”
“We met my sophomore year at Spellman. Me and Carmen had a class together my freshmen year. She introduced me to Desireé when she came to Spellman that next year. We've been friends ever since. To be honest with you, I was in love with her then.”
“You're a lesbian?”
“No, I'm bi-sexual. I've always known I was bi-sexual, but at the time Desireé was strictly dickly, so I didn't approach her with it. I loved her and was happy just to be around her. I was shocked the first time she came on to me—” Porsche started, but Garrett interrupted her.
“You didn't know she was bi-sexual, too?”
“She wasn't. She told me somebody turned her out.”
“You know who?”
“I think this is a good time for me to say back off. If who turned Desireé becomes important to you, ask me again and I'll tell you. But now I think I should respect the woman's privacy.”