The Real Mrs. Price

by J. D. Mason

  “And I’m a … what did you call me? The devil?”

  She swallowed. “Devil. Yes.” She nodded. “The bones told her you were coming.”

  “Whose bones?”

  “Possum.”

  Possum. “Possum. Isn’t that a rodent?” Plato couldn’t believe that he was sitting here having this conversation. “A possum’s bones said that I was the devil and that I was coming for Marlowe?”

  She nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Like Satan?”

  “I believe so. Yes.”

  Plato leaned back and thought about this for a moment. He’d been called a lot of things in his lifetime. Mother fucker. Asshole. Sonofabitch. He’d been called names in twenty different languages, and in all this time, in all those countries and circumstances, he couldn’t recall anyone ever referring to him as the devil or Satan or Lucifer.

  “So these bones,” he probed, giving way to his curiosity. “They what? Predict the future?”

  “They reveal things,” she explained. “Things that the spirits think you need to know.”

  “And you and Marlowe and this Shou Shou all believe I’m the devil.”

  Her gaze shifted back and forth in thought. “The bones said it.”

  “Do I look like the devil?” She truly believed what she was telling him, but Plato couldn’t help it. Teasing her was not even hard.

  She frowned. “How should I know? I’ve never seen him.”

  “Has Marlowe?”

  She didn’t answer.

  Well, that explained why Marlowe treated him like a leper and why she damn near choked herself in all those weird necklaces he’d seen her wearing last night at the hotel. They probably warded off evil spirits or something. Granted, in his lifetime, he had done some pretty devilish things, and if there was such a thing as heaven and hell, he’d likely end up in the latter, but to be walking around town with people actually believing that you’re Beelzebub?

  He couldn’t help it. Plato just started to chuckle, shook his head, leaned over his plate, and started to cut into his steak. Poor Belle backed away like she really had just seen Satan.

  It’s Still Burning

  QUENTIN PARKER WANTED TO BELIEVE Marlowe’s story. He stood back and watched police officers search through every inch of her yard, even getting down on their hands and knees looking for a shell casing or any other kind of evidence left over from a month ago that could provide some truth to her story.

  “If a murder had taken place back here like you said, Marlowe,” he said over his shoulder to Marlowe standing anxiously on her back deck, “all that rain we’ve been having has probably washed away any evidence.”

  Marlowe didn’t say a word. She knew that things weren’t looking good for her. All that Quentin had right now was a theory, but it was starting to morph into something more concrete with each passing day. Marlowe Price had found out that her husband was in fact married to another woman. She became jealous and then angry. Angry enough to kill him. Shit like that happened, and he was building a strong case for motive. Pressure was coming down hard for him to hurry up and solve this thing.

  “Ninety-nine percent of these mother fuckers couldn’t find Blink, Texas, on a map six months ago,” Mayor Brewer had grunted at Quentin and the mayor’s brother, the prosecuting attorney John Brewer, both standing on the other side of the mayor’s desk. He was talking about reporters. “Now they’re buzzing around here like flies on shit. This is not the kind of attention I want on my town.”

  “None of us do, Randall,” John had retorted.

  “Then put that bitch to trial and get this shit over with.”

  “We’re working as quickly as we can, Mayor,” Quentin had respectfully said. “But the evidence we have isn’t even circumstantial.”

  “Social media’s got that witch burned at the stake, Chief,” he’d said angrily. “They’ve got half the public buying into the same crap you call circumstantial. Why’s it working for them and not you?”

  “Because I’ve got to take her to trial on more than what’s going on in social media, Randall,” his brother had answered. “You’re talking about sending a woman possibly to death row over sensationalism and fucking public opinion without the benefit of a fair trial. She’d have an appeal filed and lawsuit along with it before they’d even closed the door on her cell.”

  The mayor had glared at them both. “I don’t care how you do it because Marlowe Brown doesn’t mean shit to me, but she’s a blight on my city. She’s shit in my yard, and I want her cleaned up.”

  Was he convinced that she’d killed him? Quentin didn’t truly believe it until the other day when she’d told him this story about seeing the two men fighting in her yard in the middle of the night. It made no sense to him why she wouldn’t have told the police about it the night it happened. After Price left that night, she could’ve called the precinct and reported it. Being afraid, well, that just didn’t jibe. Marlowe had had a month to come up with that story, and it had taken calling her in for official questioning to get it out of her.

  “I swear it happened just like I said it did, Quentin,” she said shakily.

  If he could figure out how she’d done it, how this woman who stood five five at the most, weighed maybe one forty, could get a six-foot, two-hundred-pound dead man in the car, drive to the next county, set him on fire, and get back home, he’d be able to wrap this case up. It would break his heart to do it, but there were no other suspects, no other people in this town who even knew the man, let alone had a reason to kill him. If Marlowe did this, she would’ve had help.

  “We got nothing out here, Chief,” an officer finally came up to him and said.

  He turned to where Marlowe stood, and she’d already gone inside.

  When I’m Alone with You

  FOR MARLOWE, SLEEP hadn’t been restful in a very long time. Burdens weighed heavily on her, and she’d toss and turn all night, until exhaustion and frustration compelled her to stop fighting a war she couldn’t win. It was nearly two in the morning. Quentin and his crew had torn through her yard until late the previous day before finally leaving.

  Marlowe slipped into her robe and slippers and started down the hallway to the stairs when she felt it and suddenly stopped. The air around her was different. Her senses awakened. The hairs on her arms stood up, and Marlowe’s heart began to race.

  “Someone’s been in my house,” she murmured.

  Her personal space felt invaded and violated. In the two days since those reporters had left her yard and Marlowe had come from that hotel she’d been staying in, she hadn’t left her house, and yet she knew instinctively that someone had been inside. Marlowe quickly hurried down the stairs, having no idea whether or not someone was still here, maybe hiding, maybe waiting for her. She grabbed her car keys off the coffee table and her purse off the couch. The residue of them alighted on her skin like spiderwebs. Fear wrapped around her like a blanket, and she couldn’t get out of that house fast enough.

  Marlowe hurried to her car parked in the driveway, managed to unlock the door, climb inside, and lock it again. And then she waited and stared at her front door, still wide open. Someone had been inside while she was home. Marlowe tried to think of when they’d even had an opportunity to sneak past her without her knowing. And they wouldn’t have. Her house was crawling with police yesterday afternoon. No one would be crazy enough to try to sneak past a host of police and break into somebody’s house. The only other time that they could come in was when … Marlowe’s eyes widened in disbelief, and she caught and held her breath without realizing it. The only other time that they could come into her house without her knowing was when she was asleep.

  Marlowe stared at that door like she believed Satan himself would walk through it. Plato. Could it have been him? Who else could it have been? Marlowe rummaged through her purse until she finally found her cell phone, surprised that it still had a charge, but barely. And without thinking, she fumbled through her purse for that card he’d given her
when they’d first met and called him.

  “Yes,” he answered, sounding like she’d woken him up.

  “You came into my house,” Marlowe said so softly that she barely heard herself.

  “What?”

  Marlowe swallowed the fear and anger forming a lump in the back of her throat. “You came to my house. Why? What the hell were you doing in my house?”

  “Marlowe. You need to calm down and tell me what’s going on.”

  “Somebody’s been inside my house,” she nearly shouted, angry tears streaming down her cheeks.

  The pressure was getting to her. Marlowe was at a breaking point she’d been warding off for weeks.

  “It was you! It had to have been you!”

  “No,” he said emphatically. “I have not been in your house, Marlowe.”

  He was a liar.

  “Where are you?” he demanded to know.

  She hung up on him and sat inside that car, clueless about what to do next.

  * * *

  Marlowe had no idea how long she’d sat outside in that parked car, watching the doorway leading into her house. Plato’s car pulled up behind her, and she watched from her rearview mirror as he got out of his car and cautiously walked up the steps to her door.

  Marlowe’s phone vibrated on her lap, startling her. It was Shou Shou.

  “There’s no turning back if you invite him in, Marlowe,” Shou Shou said before Marlowe could even say hello. “If you don’t want him, don’t let him in.”

  As she said those words, Marlowe watched in horror as Plato pulled a shiny silver gun from the back of his jeans and took a slow, deliberate step across the threshold into her house. An icy chill ran down her spine, and Marlowe swallowed.

  “Too late.” She shuddered.

  Shou Shou hung up.

  Marlowe didn’t know what to make of all this. She didn’t understand what kind of game this was that he was playing, but whatever it was, he was playing the hell out of it. A few minutes later, he came back out, his gun nowhere in sight, and he walked over to Marlowe’s side of the car. She reluctantly rolled down the window.

  He held up a small black object. “Is this yours?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve never seen that before. What is it?”

  “It’s a flash drive,” he told her and then tucked it into his pocket. “There’s nobody inside, Marlowe.”

  Jesus! He was close enough to kiss. Plato’s heavy brows and piercing dark eyes were hypnotic up close like this. His wide mouth and full lips compelled her to react by licking her own.

  “But somebody was,” she said with dread.

  “Did you hear or see someone? Is anything missing? Moved?”

  It wouldn’t be hard for him to think that she was crazy if she told him the truth. Marlowe hadn’t seen a damn thing, but she’d felt it.

  “How do you know that someone was in the house?” he probed, the warmth of his breath washing past the side of her neck.

  “I just know,” she said simply, hoping that he’d leave it at that.

  He stepped back and pulled open her car door for her to get out, and Shou Shou’s warning came back to her.

  “There’s no turning back if you invite him in, Marlowe.”

  Marlowe had invited him into her house by allowing him to go inside while she waited. There was no turning back now. He followed her back inside the house and closed the door behind him. The sound of that door shutting resonated down to her soul with such finality, as if it sealed a fate.

  “I’ve searched the whole place,” he told her, taking a seat at the breakfast counter. “Nobody’s here.”

  Plato sat there with muscles exploding through a plain T-shirt and staring at her like she was crazy. She must’ve looked crazy. She didn’t ask him to come over here and search the place for her, but she was relieved that he had. Still, the suspicion wasn’t far from her mind that maybe he’d been the one who’d come into her house in the first place. And still, whoever had come here had come while she was in bed asleep. And that scared the mess out of her.

  “Do you want me to stay?” he asked as if he could read her mind.

  No. Absolutely not. Not only no, but hell no!

  “You could sleep in the spare room,” she offered, ignoring her own private protests.

  He smiled wickedly and raked a raw gaze down the front of her. Marlowe adjusted her bathrobe, tied loosely around her waist.

  “Yeah.” He glanced down at her breasts. “I noticed.”

  She’d be a fool to trust him alone in this house with her. But Marlowe was too scared to stay here by herself.

  “The spare room will be fine,” he said, standing up, lingering over her for a moment, and then finally heading up the stairs. “I think I can find it,” he said over his shoulder.

  He was sleeping two doors down from Marlowe’s bedroom, and every time she closed her eyes, Marlowe swore that she could feel his breath on her lips, the weight of him pressing down on top of her, the whisper of her name in her ear from his lips. She forced herself awake each time, only to drift off again and to have those same sensations start over again, until finally, she couldn’t fight it anymore. Eventually, Marlowe’s eyelids were so heavy that she couldn’t have opened them if she’d wanted to, and frankly, she didn’t want to.

  “That’s it, sweetheart,” he whispered, nestling his large frame between her thighs. Plato’s lips grazed hers. His tongue darted into her mouth. He kissed her like he was claiming her and slowly pushed into her.

  “Yessss,” he hissed. “Let me in, Marlowe. Let me do this.”

  She opened her eyes, breathless and surprised that she was alone. Women had wet dreams, too. Marlowe closed her eyes again. “Let me do this.” Those were the last words to cross her mind as she drifted off again.

  Then I’m Cool

  IT HAD STARTED RAINING at dawn and had been coming down steadily ever since. Marlowe had been convinced that someone had been inside her house, and even though Plato hadn’t found any evidence to that claim didn’t mean it wasn’t true. And she refused to go into detail as to what made her believe that someone had trespassed. But no matter. The flash drive he’d found didn’t belong to her, so naturally he concluded that it had belonged to Price. Plato would try reading it on his own laptop first, but if that didn’t work, he’d have Wonder Boy work his magic.

  There were worse things in the world than waking up to Marlowe Price. The inside of her house was a direct reflection of who she was. Marlowe was an old-world soul with a few modern conveniences. The place was larger on the inside than it looked on the outside, courtesy of an addition to the back of the house. Original hardwood floors and molding gave the place character. Antiques, candles, flowers, crystal figurines, and wooden statues made for an eclectic interpretation of an eclectic woman.

  She’d fed him breakfast: turkey sausage, eggs, grits, whole wheat toast, and chicory coffee. Her way of apologizing for dragging him out of bed in the middle of the night (she conveniently failed to mention that she’d accused him of being the one to sneak into her house). And she still wouldn’t tell him why she believed that someone had been inside her place. Marlowe hinted that she wanted him to leave, but Plato wasn’t in any hurry to go.

  “I’ll be out of here as soon as it stops raining,” he half-assed promised, sitting casually on her sofa. Plato purposefully looked as if he was never going to leave. Marlowe worked hard not to appear irritated, which he found amusing.

  Marlowe sat across from him in an armchair. “I hear it’s going to rain all day. I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than to sit around here all day.”

  She wasn’t very good at being subtle. He dug that about her.

  “So the cops were here yesterday,” he casually mentioned. They’d been crawling all over her yard like ants. “Spent a couple hours here.”

  “How do you know that?” Every last one of Marlowe’s red flags must’ve gone up in that moment.

  “I was passing through the neighborh
ood,” he offered. “Kind of hard to miss the three police cruisers parked in front of your house.”

  Marlowe stared defensively at him, but reluctantly, she did open up. “They were following up on something I told them.”

  “What was that, Marlowe?” he asked, determined to get her to open up.

  He listened patiently as she told him the same story she’d told the police about seeing Ed Price fighting another man behind her house the night he disappeared from here.

  “Of course they don’t believe me,” she said resentfully. Marlowe’s hopeless brown gaze rested on his. “They think I made up the whole thing.”

  He didn’t think she’d made it up, and Plato committed every detail of the story she’d told him to memory. The last time she’d seen Price, the man was alive, but another man wasn’t.

  “I truly never thought that things would go this far.” She shrugged. “I’d hoped that they wouldn’t. I wanted what I saw that night to disappear with Eddie. What if I had told the police earlier?” she questioned. “What if that story made it onto the news? Eddie would know that I’m the one that told. What if he came back?”

  “You believe that he’d be that dumb?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know if I believe it or not. I couldn’t believe that I’d married someone who could do something like that. Beat a man the way he did and be cold enough to just shoot him like that when he didn’t have to.”

  If she was all bent out of shape over what she’d seen Price do in her backyard, Plato could only imagine how she’d twist herself into knots if she knew what he did for a living.

  “How do you know he didn’t have to?”

  He could think of a ton of reasons that one man would kill another. Then again, he had a different sense of justice than most folks.

  Obviously, she didn’t like the question. “Did you come into my house while I was asleep?”

  “No,” he answered simply. “But you believe that someone was in the house.”

  “I know someone was here.”

  “How do you know?”