Dead to Her

by Sarah Pinborough

“Worry about what?” he snapped.

  “That whoever found out about my past also knows about you.”

  For the briefest second his whole body froze, and then he rubbed his face as if impatient with her. “Know what about me, Marcie? I’m too tired for this.”

  “The money, Jason.” A long pause. “All the company money.”

  There it was. That strange expression, as if someone she didn’t know had slipped inside Jason’s skin. “How did it start?” she continued. “The occasional borrow from a client account? Then heavier dipping and having to move funds around? Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul? Did it all get out of hand? Did you invest some client funds with Emmett, hoping to make enough to replace what you’d taken and still buy William out of the firm?” She felt sick as she voiced her suspicions. When had things gotten so bad?

  “You’re crazy,” he said coldly. “You’ve been crazy for a while now.”

  “Me? Really? You’ve been moody as hell for the best part of a year. And don’t tell me it’s all in my head. That bullshit won’t wash with me. Just tell me if I’m right. I need to know the truth, Jason.”

  He pushed the sheets off and got out on the other side of the bed. “I need to shower. And so do you. We have to go to the hospital.”

  “You’re really going to ignore me?” She found she wasn’t surprised. Handsome and charming he might be, but Jason had never been good with confrontation. He closed down. Refused to discuss. He’d done the same with Jacquie when he’d divorced her. At the time Marcie had been young and stupid and thought he was being strong, but she’d been entirely wrong. He’d simply been too weak to face the woman he was leaving.

  “No wonder you’re so happy the police have taken Keisha. All that evidence they have against her stops them looking at both of us, doesn’t it? Not just me, but you too, you sanctimonious prick.” The cussing tasted good in her mouth. He’d earned it. “Keisha wasn’t the only one with something to gain by William’s death. This is all working out quite well for you too, isn’t it?”

  Jason paused in the doorway, spots of color blotched on his suddenly pale face. “What are you implying?” He looked aghast. “Are you asking if I poisoned William? Of course I didn’t. And for what it’s worth, I don’t think you did either, so forgive me for being slightly relieved for both our sakes that it looks pretty obvious that Keisha did.”

  Marcie stared at him. “So you did steal the money.”

  “I didn’t steal it. I . . . I borrowed it.” There was a long pause, and then his spine crumpled, his shoulders rolling forward as he sighed. “It got out of hand. I was in the process of putting it all back, I promise you. But there’s been a delay and I could only cover so much. I wasn’t expecting William to organize the audit. Not so quickly.”

  “But why?” she asked. “Why do it in the first place?” Having her suspicions confirmed had knocked the anger out of her, and now she was confused and afraid. Was there anything real in their marriage at all? If this was to come out, they’d be ruined. Imprisoned. Who’d believe that she hadn’t known?

  “I could see the way you looked at them,” he said, shrugging helplessly. “William and Eleanor. Iris and Noah. Even Virginia and Emmett. I wasn’t stupid. I knew we were the poor relations of our friendship group.”

  “You’ve never been poor, Jason. Far from it.”

  “Everything is relative. Happiness. Health. Wealth. You envied them.”

  “So did you. We had that in common.”

  “I did. But mainly I wanted to make you happy. First your store didn’t work out and then you were so insistent about having this house—”

  “You stop right there, Jason Maddox.” Marcie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. What kind of bullshit was this? “Are you really trying to put this on me? I didn’t make you steal anything. You did that all by yourself.” She wouldn’t have been so stupid to have risked their whole lives just for a bigger house. Why the hell had he? “We could have stayed in our old house,” she said, quieter this time. “I wouldn’t have minded. If you’d explained that money was tight.” Was that true? If she was honest, she preferred their old house. It was warmer. But this house—this was impressive, it commanded respect, and that counted for something, didn’t it?

  “No, it’s not your fault. Of course not. I’m just trying to explain.” Jason was so pathetic, his voice almost whining. “When we met, you looked at me as if I could conquer the world and that made me believe I could. You never put me down like Jacquie had. I wanted to keep that feeling. But it changed. The more you saw of this life, the more you wanted it. And I couldn’t—can’t—blame you for that.”

  He looked up at her, his eyes full of despair. “I’m so, so sorry. I wanted you to be happy. In a week or so all the money will be back where it should be. I promise you. I’ll never do anything like it again. It’s been killing me, it really has. So much deception. I couldn’t look at you or William, I felt so bad.” He took her hand. “But I didn’t hurt William. I swear to God I didn’t. I love you, Marcie. I really do.”

  Marcie was at a loss for words, instead wanting to pummel all her feelings out against his face. Did he really think she was going to believe that pile of horseshit? That he’d done it for her? She looked at him again, his face so earnest, and realized that yes, he did think she’d go for it—maybe he was even convinced of it. It was easier than taking the blame himself. She gritted her teeth. Did she want to have this fight now, or was it safer all around to just let it ride?

  “I love you too,” she murmured in the end, squeezing his hand back. “But what a mess.” Despite her conciliatory words, her heart thumped with no small amount of anger. So she wasn’t the only one with a secret to protect in this marriage. Her beloved Jason wasn’t so pure himself. Beloved. Did she love him anymore? she wondered, as he leaned in and kissed her, his mouth hot and stale from lack of sleep, his tongue probing for comfort and forgiveness from hers. She let him move her back on the bed. Of course they were going to have sex. An affirmation of their union. A reminder that they were in this together, for better or for worse.

  What she normally took for passion felt needy as he gripped her neck and hair and pulled her close, panting and pushing himself into her. She let her body move in rhythm with his, and even as her nerves tingled, responding, she felt somewhat detached. He’d been horrible to her for months and then made her feel like it was her fault. He’d gaslighted her and now she was supposed to forgive him, just like that? At least her secrets hadn’t affected him. Not until now. They’d stayed hers. Private. Irrelevant.

  She ran her hands over the familiar firmness of his chest around to his back, lingering in the curve of his spine before teasing the line down to his ass, trailing a finger along the crevice of his butt, knowing how the hint of the illicit excited him. She wanted him to come and quickly. She wasn’t ready to have sex with him. She wasn’t sure she even wanted to ever again. She was angry with him. She pitied him. It was all so different from how sex was with Keisha. How everything was with Keisha. But Keisha was in jail and Jason was here and they all had bigger problems to deal with than who she preferred fucking.

  Thankfully, he came fast.

  45.

  Keisha hadn’t slept all night. Not because of the unfamiliar bleak surroundings and the unforgiving excuse for a bed—in fact the bare cell had been almost comforting; it was almost a relief to find herself back in the gutter where she belonged—but because she could no longer trust her own memory. Her mind had never been her friend, but now that her head was clearer thanks to some proper medication, the thick dark storm clouds had evaporated and left her facing a sea of doubts. What was real and what wasn’t?

  The past few days were a haze. A terrible dream made up of disjointed moments. Yesterday the police had spent so much time talking to her about what they thought she’d done, they’d half-convinced her that she had poisoned William. She’d wanted him dead, yes. She had wished him dead. She could see the bottle of coolant in her mind
’s eye, the syringe, the coconut water, her hands at work. But that wasn’t real, it was just her crazy brain making truth out of the detectives’ fiction, her mind trusting them more than it trusted itself. No, she hadn’t tried to kill William in any normal way, but she had wished for his death, surrendered her desire to Old John Bayou, and in that she was guilty. Who knew what she’d caused by bringing that bad juju on them? She could barely look at the items on the desk in case they sang of her guilt.

  Say nothing, her attorney had repeated when he’d arrived early again this morning. He needn’t have worried. She’d never felt less like talking. She stared at the two items on the desk that the detectives had just referenced for the tape and swallowed hard. The two dolls, one male and one female, were coarsely hewn and small, but the female one was weighty all the same. Detective Anderson might not feel that, but Keisha did. The dolls were made from her clothes and William’s, she knew that, but the weight in hers was what disturbed her. What was inside it? The other detective, Washington, he kept looking too. Perhaps he had some grit in his soul, a history of night and earth, maybe some relative somewhere in the city still practicing the old ways.

  Maybe she had tried to kill William, she thought, staring at the ugly charms. But if she had, then she’d been hexed into it, and if she hadn’t, then she’d been hexed into taking the blame.

  “You say you found one of these dolls in your drawer on the morning of July eighth, is that correct?”

  Keisha looked at her attorney, who nodded. “Yes,” she said quietly. “When Elizabeth woke me up and said Billy had had a stroke or something. I rushed to get dressed and found it on top of my underwear.”

  “Did you react?”

  “I didn’t want to touch it. I wanted . . .” She bit her lip. She couldn’t finish what she’d been about to say. I wanted Marcie to come and make it better. I still want Marcie to come and make it better. She couldn’t mention Marcie. She’d promised her. That memory wasn’t jumbled.

  “Because you recognized it as a voodoo doll?”

  “Something like that.”

  “The second doll—the male doll—we found with the victim, on the desk in your husband’s study. Where he collapsed. Did you see that one?”

  Keisha shook her head. “No. I was too worried about Billy.”

  “Did you tell anyone about the doll you found?”

  “I’m not sure. I think so. Iris maybe. It freaked me out. It wasn’t the first thing like that . . .”

  “Ah yes. There was a ball of some kind in the house, is that right? Made of mud. You found it on the stairs and caused a bit of a scene.”

  “Billy said it was made of mud. But it was a conjure ball. They’re made of blood and grave dirt.” She flinched slightly remembering it. The thud on the steps.

  “We’ve been speaking to the police in London about your family,” Detective Anderson said.

  “Are they coming here? My aunt and uncle?” Keisha asked. She couldn’t deal with that on top of all this. Their disappointment.

  “They can’t get visas,” Washington answered. “They both have criminal records.”

  “And they were neither very forthcoming about your family relationship nor very concerned about your predicament. The English police, however,” Anderson continued, “have been very helpful.” She paused and leaned back in her chair. “You had a difficult start in life, didn’t you? Your mother killed herself when you were five, is that right?”

  “Yes.” She could barely remember her mother. A ghost. Always ghosts.

  “She had a history of mental health issues and alcoholism, and after her death you went to live with your uncle and aunt.”

  “Yes,” she said again.

  “Your uncle is a scam artist, isn’t he? Advertises his services as a witch doctor and promises to solve people’s problems for cash. A lot of cash. Some of which clients are coerced into paying against their will for fear of repercussions.”

  “I don’t know what my uncle does.”

  “Oh, come on.” Anderson smiled. Her front teeth were crooked, but the expression suddenly made her pretty. “You wrote text for his website.”

  “I know he provides a service. I don’t know about any scams.”

  “My colleagues in London tell me their house—your old home—has lots of these kinds of items in it. Voodoo or some equivalent. Books. Charms. It must have been very unusual growing up there.”

  “It was normal to me.”

  “So you saw these items on a regular basis?”

  “My aunt is a believer.”

  “Is it possible, that after realizing it would be difficult to cause your husband’s death by overdosing him with Viagra, you considered trying to scare him to death? This is the South, after all. We may not be in New Orleans, but there’s still a lot of superstition in our souls. You had all the tricks of the trade you’d learned back in England. Were you hoping to induce a heart attack, perhaps? Mr. Radford was an older, overweight man trying to keep up with a young, new wife. A heart attack wouldn’t be suspicious.”

  “I was the one who was afraid. Not Billy.”

  “So you said.” Detective Anderson leaned back in her chair and tapped a pen against the desk, and all Keisha could hear in her head was the thud of the conjure ball on the stairs again.

  “Were you in it with your family?” Anderson asked. “Did they send you here with the dolls and tell you what to do? Judging from their emails they were certainly keen for Mr. Radford’s money to start coming their way.”

  “No,” Keisha said. “No, no, no. Auntie Ayo would never share her gifts with me. Never.”

  It was Washington who leaned forward this time, his thick, gym-heavy arms resting on the desk, his eyes narrowing. He could sense what Anderson couldn’t. Keisha’s belief. “And why is that?” he asked.

  Keisha looked him straight in the eye. “She says I’m cursed. That I’m mad. Because of the boy. The ghost boy.” She swallowed hard. “The boy who wasn’t there.”

  “What boy?” the two detectives asked in unison.

  46.

  She wasn’t sure quite what the sex was supposed to have cured, but judging by the way Jason kept flashing her his best lopsided sexy grin as they drove to the hospital, telling her that they were a team, the Indestructible Maddoxes, and that within a week there’d be nothing to worry about, somehow by letting him screw her she’d agreed that their secrets had canceled each other out. He was acting as if she’d caught him covering up a red wine spill on a favorite expensive couch rather than risking both their lives by stealing money.

  “Let’s hope so,” she said curtly, as he pulled into the parking lot, and for a second his new good humor slipped.

  “Jesus, Marcie, can you at least try to be positive?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, honey.” Her blood fired hot. “For a minute there I thought I’d just found out that this entire year has been a web of lies on your part and that we’re lucky your partner has been poisoned, otherwise you’d be in prison and I would at the very least be left homeless.”

  She stepped out of the car and closed the door, watching him as he did the same on the other side and noticing the two young nurses who passed both giving him an appreciative glance. She didn’t blame them. He was still butter-wouldn’t-melt, charming, handsome Jason Maddox. Still full of confidence. Still full of shit. “So forgive me if it’s going to take me a day or so to process this.”

  “Now you know how I feel,” he muttered. “You lied first, Marcie. And you lied for longer.”

  By the time they reached the exclusive private rooms on the top floor, free of the visiting rules and regulations of the lower levels, they were holding hands, for all intents and purposes the perfect concerned couple, worried about one of their closest friends. As Marcie signed their names in the register, Jason spoke in hushed tones to the nurse, who then led them down a silent corridor decorated with bright modern art and vases of crisp fresh flowers that made Marcie believe even more that William wasn’t
going to make it. The whole place stank of somewhere that the rich came to politely die.

  They didn’t need the nurse to point out which of the vast rooms was William’s—there was only one door with a plainclothes officer sipping a cup of coffee outside.

  She’d half-expected to see the rest of their set already in the room, but there was only Elizabeth, looking tired and older than usual, wrapped in a cardigan, a far cry from her usual staidly smart self, sitting in a reclining armchair by the bed. It was hard to recognize William, his formidable form suddenly diminished, now simply a fleshy pale hub for the wires that snaked out of him to various machines humming in the background. Looking at him made her think of the yearbook sent to Jason and she felt haunted all over again, once more a pawn in a game she didn’t understand.

  “Have you been here all night?” Marcie asked as Elizabeth stood to greet them.

  “Most of it.” Her eyes were bloodshot. “I couldn’t sleep at home, so I came back in. The doctor said he still has his hearing so I thought I’d talk to him for a while in case he’s afraid in there. Did some reading when I ran out of things to say.” She nodded over at the bedside table, where a battered paperback lay. “Moby-Dick. I’ve always wanted to read it, so I figured I’d do so out loud.”

  “Is he going to get better?” Jason asked. He sounded hopeful and Marcie wondered what answer he was hoping for. Life would certainly be easier for Jason if William at least took his time getting back on his feet. Elizabeth shrugged, her eyes filling up, and signaled them to a corner, glancing over her shoulder as if William would be straining to eavesdrop. Marcie figured William was too busy straining to stay alive.

  “It’s so awful. Who would have thought coolant could do such terrible, agonizing things to a human body? His kidneys are failing. His liver is very damaged and the specialists are running tests to see how much. He’s lost his sight and is in a coma. There may even be brain damage. An ounce more in that drink and he’d have been dead or a deaf-blind vegetable for sure. But still, the next twenty-four hours are crucial.” Her face trembled as she fought back more tears. “But even if he lives, he will never be himself again. Not fully recovered.”