Kiss the Girls

trouble.”
    “Why do you think that is?” I asked Florence a question that was bouncing around inside my own head.
    She stared deeply into my eyes. “Because Naomi’s an Afro-American woman. The Durham police, the FBI, they don’t care about us as much as they do about the white women.”
    “Do you believe that?” I asked her.
    Florence Campbell rolled her eyes. “It’s the truth, so why wouldn’t I believe it? Frantz Fanon argued that racist superstructures are permanently embedded in the psychology, economy, and culture of our society. I believe
that,
too.”
    Florence was a very serious woman. She had a copy of Albert Murray’s
The Omni-Americans
under her arm. I was beginning to like her style. It was time to find out what secrets she knew about Naomi.
    “Tell me what’s going on around here, Florence. Don’t edit your thoughts because I’m Naomi’s uncle, or because I’m a police detective. I need somebody to help me out. I am resisting a
superstructure
down here in Durham.”
    Florence smiled. She pulled a tangle of hair away from her face. She was part Immanuel Kant, part Prissy from
Gone With the Wind.
“Here’s what I know so far, Dr. Cross. This is why some girls in the dorm were upset with Naomi.”
    She took a sip of the magnolia-fragrant air. “It started with a man named Seth Samuel Taylor. He’s a social worker in the projects of Durham. I introduced Naomi to Seth. He’s my cousin.” Florence suddenly looked a little uncertain as she talked.
    “I don’t see a problem so far,” I told her.
    “Seth Samuel and Naomi fell in love around December of last year,” she went on. “Naomi was walking around with a starry-night look in her eyes, and that’s not like her, as you know. He came to the dorm at first, but then she started staying at Seth’s apartment in Durham.”
    I was a little surprised that Naomi had fallen in love and hadn’t mentioned it to Cilla. Why didn’t she tell any of us about it? I still didn’t understand the problem with the other girls at the dorm.
    “I’m pretty sure Naomi wasn’t the first coed to fall in love at Duke. Or to have a man over for tea and crumpets and whatever,” I said.
    “She wasn’t just having a man over for whatever, she was having a black man over for
whatever.
Seth would show up from the projects in his dusty overalls and dusty workboots, and his leather engineering jacket. Naomi started to wear an old sharecropper’s straw hat around campus. Sometimes, Seth wore a hard hat with ‘Slave Labor’ written on it. He
dared
to be a little caustic and ironic about the sisters’ social activity, and, heaven forbid, their social awareness. He scolded the black housekeepers when they tried to do their jobs.”
    “What do
you
think about your cousin Seth?” I asked Florence.
    “Seth has a definite chip on his shoulder. He’s angry about racial injustice, to the point where it gets in the way of his ideas sometimes. Other than that, he’s really great. He’s a doer, not afraid to get his hands dirty. If he wasn’t my
distant
cousin…,” Florence said with a wink.
    I had to smile at Florence’s sneaky sense of humor. She was a little Mississippi-gawky, but she was a neat lady. I was even starting to like her high hairstyle.
    “You and Naomi were fast friends?” I asked her.
    “We weren’t at first. I think we both felt we were competing for Law Review. Probably only one black woman could make it, you understand. But as our first year wore on, we got very close. I
love
Naomi. She’s the greatest.”
    I suddenly wondered if Naomi’s disappearance might be connected to her boyfriend, and maybe had nothing to do with the killer loose in North Carolina.
    “He’s a real good person. Don’t go hurting him,” Florence warned me. “Don’t even think about it.”
    I nodded. “I’ll only break
one
of his legs.”
    “He’s strong as an ox,” she came back at me.
    “I
am
an ox,” I told Florence Campbell, imparting a little secret of my own.

Chapter 30

    I STARED into the dark eyes of Seth Samuel Taylor. He stared back. I kept on staring. His eyes looked like jet black marbles set in almonds.
    Naomi’s boyfriend was tall, very muscular, and workingman-hard. He reminded me more of a young lion than an ox. He looked disconsolate, and it was hard for me to question him. I had the premonition that Naomi was gone forever.
    Seth Taylor hadn’t shaved, and I could tell that he hadn’t slept in days. I don’t think he