The Real Mrs. Price (10 page)

So far, all the evidence that could possibly implicate Marlowe was weak and circumstantial. Even her omission of what she'd seen that night wasn't enough for them to arrest her, but it didn't make her look innocent either.

She must've been in that shower a good half hour, maybe forty-five minutes, before thinking that she'd washed herself raw. But she was tainted with the sludge that had become her life and could never seem to feel clean again. Eddie had turned it upside down with his lies and his killing, and maybe even his death. For all she knew, someone could've gotten ahold of him, shot him, and set his ass on fire. But she was convinced that the man found in Eddie's car was the man he'd shot in the yard.

Marlowe was getting as famous as Beyoncé but for all the wrong reasons. People she'd grown up around all of a sudden wanted her in prison for supposedly killing a man that
they
didn't even know. She and Eddie had been married for seven months before he disappeared, and he'd spent more time out of town than in, and when he was in, he didn't go much farther than the front porch or backyard. But he was white. She was black. If that didn't have something to do with how these people felt about her, she'd be surprised.

To top it all off, Marlowe had her own personal devil sitting on her shoulder. She was still wrapped in her towel after getting out of the shower, standing at the foot of the bed and staring down at the T-shirt he'd let her borrow. Marlowe had unfolded it without actually touching it and laid it flat on the bed with her rosary beads and cross on top of it. It looked freshly washed, and it probably was, but just to be safe, she twisted the cap off a small vial, held it out in front of her, and closed her eyes.

“I cover you in the blood of Jesus,” she murmured three times before sprinkling several drops of holy water on the garment.

For a moment, she thought that the water might make it burst into flames, but when it didn't, she surmised that this shirt had not been on his body and that it was in fact clean. Marlowe recapped her vial, set it aside, and slipped that big shirt of his over her head.

Damn, why'd he have to touch her? When she saw that it was him who'd pulled her out of that crowd, an electric jolt shot through her like lightning and wrapped around her spine. The place on her stomach where he'd put his hand had felt warmer than the rest of her. It was as if he'd left a fever in that part of her body that snaked down to … She didn't want to think about it. He was strong, though. Picked her up like she was nothing, and Marlowe weighed a good one fifty, maybe one sixty, but he'd snatched her up with one arm and carried her half a block to his car. He wasn't even out of breath when he'd put her down.

Suddenly, she rubbed her ear, the one he'd whispered into before she'd gotten inside the car. It was warm, too, warm like his breath had been.

“Stop it,” she commanded herself, clasping her hands together.

She'd washed every part of herself, three times, so the remnants of him should've been gone. It was just like in her dream, though, the part she'd purposely decided not to dwell on, so there was no reason for her to dwell on it now, and she shook loose the thought before it took hold.

How could she have been stupid enough to fall for Eddie and all his lies? Hindsight was a bitch, and all of a sudden, it slammed so hard against her that it left her feeling light-headed.

“I travel most of the time,” he'd explained. “Turns out I'm more comfortable in a hotel room than I am in my own home.”

“Why is that?”

“Home is lonely,” he'd admitted. “I've got a big house with no one in it except me.”

Eddie had told her bits and pieces about his dead wife.

“The two of you never had kids?” Marlowe had probed. Surely a man his age who had been married for as long as he had been had kids.

“We tried. We even thought about adopting, but…” He'd shrugged.

Marlowe was alone, too. She'd been married, but the marriage only lasted a few months. She understood loneliness, but unlike him, she'd found a way to embrace and even relish hers. It wasn't until Marjorie died that she found that hollow place in her soul. Her twin had passed away three months before she'd met Eddie, and without realizing it at the time, she was looking for somebody to fill that space. He just happened to show up at the right time.

“What about other family?” she'd asked. “Parents? Brothers, sisters, nieces, and nephews?”

“My parents died ten years ago in a car accident,” he'd explained. “I was the only kid they had.”

Marlowe had been a fool, and the penalty for it was costing her more than she'd bargained for, and she didn't know how much more of this she could take.

It was just past eight in the evening, and all she wanted to do was close her eyes and sleep, but a knock at the door let her know that that wouldn't be happening, at least not yet.

He stood there, looking like some oversized kid holding a large pizza box and a six-pack of beer, with a stupid smirk on his face.

“You gotta eat,” he said matter-of-factly.

Marlowe toyed with the hem of that shirt and thought about telling him to go away. Pizza and beer were not exactly her idea of food, but it did smell good, and she couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten.

“Wait,” she said, leaving him standing at the door and then rushing over to her purse to pull out her pepper spray. Marlowe's rosary was securely around her neck, along with her Solomon's magical circle amulet and her Guardians of the Four Quarters amulets, which both protected against evil. And her favorite, the Hamsa Hand amulet, which provided her with the protection of the angels. The pepper spray was just a deterrent that he could understand.

She came back to the door and reluctantly invited him in. He sat on the bed, opened up the pizza box, and held out a beer to her. Marlowe was appalled.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “We don't eat on the bed.”

He looked dumbfounded as she picked up the box and took it over to the small table across the room and sat down in one of the chairs. Reluctantly, he followed suit. She grimaced when she saw that thing, smothered in processed cheese, bacon, sausage, peppers, onions, and only God knew what else. Plato smacked his lips, wrapped those massive hands around a slice, folded it in half, and shoved most of it into his mouth.

“That's delicious,” he said after he'd finished sort of chewing and swallowing.

Marlowe chose her slice and then began the painstaking process of picking off the parts she didn't want—onions, some brown things, bacon, sausage, peppers.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked, mortified.

“I can't eat that. Too much cholesterol and sodium,” she said, shaking her head. After she'd finished, all she had left was part of the processed cheese, bread, and pizza sauce.

He immediately began collecting everything she'd pulled off her slice and piled it onto his next one. Then he tried passing her that beer again.

Marlowe shook her head. “No, thank you.”

“You've got to wash it down with something,” he pointed out.

She nodded. “Water's fine.”

Plato raised both eyebrows like water was a foreign substance he'd never heard of as it related to beverages.

They ate in silence, but the air was thick between the two of them. Marlowe owed him a debt, which scared the mess out of her, considering the warning she'd gotten about him from the bones, but he'd come to her rescue. The part that bothered her, though, was that he even knew she needed rescuing. How long had he been watching her?

“What if you can't find Eddie?” she finally asked.

“You'll likely go to prison.”

She stared curiously at him. “You didn't have to say it like that,” she said, genuinely offended.

He didn't respond. Didn't even blink.

This O.P. was no detective. So what was he? “So you're just supposed to find Eddie and take him back to the people who hired you? Or do you plan on turning him in to the police?”

Apparently, he worked on a need-to-know basis, and Marlowe obviously didn't need to know anything. But maybe it was for the best.

“Have you been paying as much attention to Lucy Price as you've been paying to me?”

He grinned. “Nah. With you, it was like I won the lottery. Lucky me. I get to spend a whole lot more time with you than her.”

“What does that mean?” she asked suspiciously.

“It means that you're the last person who's seen him alive. So I've decided to start at the end and pick up the trail from there.”

“I don't know where he is. If I did, I'd have no problem telling you.”

He stared at her with those dark eyes and made her spirit uneasy, and it must've showed.

“I keep telling you that I'm not here for you, Marlowe. So why are you so afraid of me?”

The last thing she'd wanted was for him to see her fear. But waving around pepper spray like an idiot obviously didn't help.

“I think that a person would be crazy not to be afraid of you.” She was being honest.

He leaned back and graciously accepted that honesty.

“What'd you and Lucy talk about?”

She shouldn't have been surprised that he knew about Lucy coming to see her. She was, though.

“Not everything's your business, O.P.,” she said coolly.

“But some things are,” he said, leaning forward. “You are my business. Lucy Price is my business, and anything or anyone else with any connection to Price is most definitely my business.”

There it was. That hint of menace that seeped from him into the room like smoke. It was subtle, but not invisible, and it came with a warning, a threat. He was charming when he wanted to be, and when he needed to be. And then he was something else entirely.

 

Open Your Eyes

R
OMAN SAT ACROSS FROM
L
UCY
at a restaurant called Belle's, trying to focus as much of his attention as was humanly possible on his meal. Had he really signed on for this? Lucy hadn't hired him to help solve a mystery. She'd hired him to referee a catfight. Her sole purpose in coming here was to claw out Marlowe Price's eyes over some conniving asshole who didn't deserve either one of them.

“I'll be leaving in the morning,” he finally said.

Roman had made arrangements to rent a car in town and drive back to Dallas on his own.

“I wish you wouldn't.”

“There's nothing for me to do here, Lucy. The police are investigating a murder, and even they don't have anything to go on, not even a body that they can positively identify.” The woman was disappointed, but she was wasting good money on a hopeless cause. “You want me to do what? Find Ed Price? Confirm that that's his body they found in that car? You can listen for that on the evening news, and as far as me finding him, hell. I wouldn't even know where to start.”

“With her, Roman,” Lucy argued.

He shook his head in disgust. “She doesn't know where he is.”

“How do you know? You didn't even ask her.”

“How could I when you were busy accusing her of stealing your husband?” he said, using air quotes around
your husband
for emphasis.

“I didn't mean to do that,” she said, frustrated, tossing her napkin on the table. “Ed certainly doesn't deserve that kind of consideration.”

“Well, regardless,” he said, wiping his mouth and tossing his napkin on the table, too, “after seeing what happened to her on the news last night, I doubt she'll be talking to anybody from this point on.”

“That was insane,” Lucy said reflectively. “I can't imagine … that whole mob-mentality thing was crazy to watch.”

He wanted to believe that she really was just that naïve because the truth was ugly.

“Do you think she killed him, Roman?”

He thought about it before just blurting out an answer. “Too many things just don't add up to me to point a finger at her,” he explained. “Like, how would she get a man out there by herself? And how'd she get back home if they drove out there in that car and she set it on fire?”

“You don't think the police have thought about those things?”

He shrugged. “I hope they have. It'd be unfortunate for her if they've chosen to ignore the obvious just to get a scapegoat, but it happens.”

“So just as a hypothetical, if that's not Ed they found in that car, who could it be?”

He stared back at her. “I have no idea, Lucy. All I know about this case is what you've told me and what I've read. All of Ed's secrets disappeared with him.”

“I still think that he could've left a few with her.”

He found her expression and her tone interesting. “Like what?”

“I don't know,” she said, quickly recovering. “I'm just thinking out loud.”

Was she? From their first meeting, Roman had always believed that Lucy was reluctant to tell him everything that she knew about her husband. It was that old gut instinct that he'd always had and relied upon that made him feel that way.

“What are you really looking for, Lucy? And don't tell me that you want to find out the truth about your husband's death or whatever. I think it's more than that.”

Before she could answer, Roman turned his attention to the door and immediately recognized the man who'd pulled Marlowe from that mob yesterday outside of the police station coming into the restaurant and taking a seat at the bar. The dude was huge, at least six four, two forty, maybe two fifty, dark, and bald. A man like him stood out in a crowd without even trying.

“Welcome back,” the woman behind the counter said, wiping off the space in front of him and putting down a place setting.

Roman noticed that she wouldn't look him in the eyes. She looked guarded.