I hung up my cell phone, restarted my Mercedes, and finished driving home. When I made it in, I began to recharge my cell and thought about who I wanted to call to curse out first, Marcus Vessel in L.A. or Andrea in Chicago. And again, the phone rang while I held it in my hand, this time it was my home phone.

“Hello,” I answered.

“Terrance, this is Paula Robinson in San Diego. I need to talk to you about my niece TaShay.”

I was totally caught off-guard by it. Paula sounded extra professional and measured as if she had practiced keeping her cool before she called me. Did TaShay tell her aunt something? And did she know how late it was on the East Coast?

“Yeah, what’s going on with her?” I asked. I wanted to sound alarmed and innocent. She wasn’t getting any confessions out of me. But my heart was racing just from being asked about her. What if TaShay really wasn’t on any kind of birth control and I had gotten her pregnant?

Paula asked me, “Did she and her friend Taniva drive up to see you when you were out here in L.A. last weekend?”

My heart jumped through my white T-shirt. I had to be very cautious with everything I said.

“Is she in some kind of trouble?” I asked Paula slowly.

“Well, I have a few questions on my mind about her and Tan last weekend that still don’t quite add up, so I’m trying to get down to the bottom of this.”

“And she told you that they were with me?”

I wasn’t saying that they were or that they wasn’t until I heard all the facts.

Paula said, “I didn’t believe her when she told me that, that’s why I’m calling you.”

I said, “So, what’s going on? Did something happen to them?”

I never did find out how long TaShay remained with Tan before she returned home. They could have gone anywhere and done anything while they were still together.

“Well, I don’t quite know how to say this, but I feel that she’s been out here on the wild side with this girl Tan, and she’s been giving me all kinds of alibis as to where they were, so I’m just trying to dot my I’s and cross my T’s.”

It didn’t sound like she suspected me, so I could either leave TaShay out to dry, or I could help her out with a story of my own.

I said, “Am I allowed to be honest here?”

Paula paused. “Yes, of course.”

“Okay, well, they did make their rounds with me on Friday night,” I admitted. “We went to this club called The Palace in West Hollywood, where both girls got away from me and returned drunk. So I became concerned about them driving back home to San Diego in that condition, and I put them up at my hotel. But I had an early-morning photo shoot that Saturday morning in Santa Monica, and I left my cell phone in my room charging, where I wasn’t able to check on the girls before they checked out of the hotel and left for San Diego.