by J. D. Mason
“Or they could drive him right to me,” she said, noting the strange look on his face when she said the word me and not us, meaning her and Marlowe. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about Marlowe’s safety, but from what Roman had told her, Marlowe had someone looking out for her. Lucy wasn’t as fortunate. Roman was a detective, not a bodyguard. Lucy needed a pit bull.
“You could help get her off the hook on this murder thing. Or don’t you care?”
She didn’t like his tone and what it implied. “I barely know the woman, Roman. Marlowe and I aren’t friends. We’re two women caught up in a fiasco created by the man we married, but that’s all we are.”
“I don’t believe what I’m hearing. You could help clear this woman’s name, but you won’t?”
“I didn’t say that,” she snapped angrily. “I just think we should wait.”
“For what? Ed to drop out of the sky?”
“There are other ways to help Marlowe, Roman.”
“Enlighten me.”
Did she really have to come out and say it? Lucy’s mind had been reeling ever since he’d told her that he knew where those PINs were, and admittedly, some of those thoughts surprised even her. Lucy hadn’t committed herself to any one idea, but she was open to entertaining some that she’d never seriously considered before.
“No one knows about the money, Roman,” she cautiously began. “Forty-seven million is a lot.”
“Oh, people know about it, Lucy. The wrong people.”
“But they can’t get their hands on it. We can.”
“‘We’?”
“I can,” she responded pensively.
“I know where this is going,” he said, shaking his head.
“Just hear me out.”
“It’s not going to work.”
“Listen, Roman. Please,” she said, frustrated. “I know it’s going to sound crazy, but think about what we could do with that kind of money. I’m talking about me, you, and even Marlowe.”
Lucy couldn’t believe that these words were coming from her, but she’d been coming back to these thoughts time and time again ever since she’d found out about this money-laundering scheme of Ed’s, wondering how it could change her life if she could somehow get access to it. At first, it was just a fantasy, but now, knowing that Marlowe had those PINs, it was more than that. It was a possibility, a frightening one, but still, a possibility.
“These people whose money Ed was laundering, I mean, what do they know about me? About her? Do they know?”
He shook his head in dismay. “I guarantee you that they do.”
“Because of that Wells guy?” she asked.
He nodded. “Because of that Wells guy,” he concurred.
“Split three ways, we could each end up with almost sixteen million dollars apiece,” she explained. “If we include him, it’s nearly twelve million each. That’s tempting to anybody, even him.”
“What good is the money going to do Marlowe if she’s in prison?”
“Twelve million could buy her a ticket to anywhere in the world she wanted to go.”
Lucy hated the way he was looking at her, but she had to bring this up. They at least had to talk about it, and if it was a harebrained idea, too risky, too ridiculous, then fine. She would let it go. But the more she thought about it, the more she believed that the possibility was there to change all their lives forever.
“Tell me that you couldn’t use twelve million dollars, Roman.”
Lucy waited until she saw it, and gradually, it started to reveal itself in his eyes. With that kind of money, a person could bail themselves out of all sorts of situations. They could fix things that they had broken. Twelve million dollars could solve a ton of problems.
“This is why I’m not ready to go to the police yet. On her own, even if she tells them about the money and the accounts, they’re not going to believe her because she has nothing, no proof at all. Not account numbers or bank names or anything. It’ll just be another lie in a long string of lies that she’s told them.”
“You’re setting her up, Lucy.”
“I’m not doing anything,” Lucy said sorrowfully. “I’m just not helping her, Roman. Not in the way that she thinks.”
“If she runs, she’ll be a fugitive. She’ll be running for the rest of her life.”
“At least she’ll have a life. With Ed running around out there … he’s attacked her once, Roman. He’s been hiding in plain sight for well over a month, and the police have no idea. They couldn’t protect either one of us from him.”
He sighed. “This is crazy,” he finally said. “It’s ridiculous, Lucy. You can’t be serious.”
“I think we need to just sleep on it. We need to mull it over, seriously, before making any kind of decision, and then I think we need to talk to Mr. Wells.”
The thought of having this conversation with Plato did not sit well with Roman in the least.
“And Marlowe?”
“Of course Marlowe,” she said, uncertain.
Lucy was hesitant about bringing Marlowe into the conversation before getting the others to buy into this idea. Marlowe wouldn’t be as receptive because, on the surface, she had the most to lose, and any decision she made would likely be swayed by the threat of her losing her freedom. Lucy would rather speak to Marlowe separately and alone, but Roman wouldn’t understand.
“Can you get in touch with Wells first, though?” she suggested. “Maybe we can talk to him while she’s at the precinct and then talk to her later.”
He nodded cautiously. “What you’re thinking is preposterous.”
Roman waited for her to agree, disagree, something, but when she didn’t …
“I’ll see what I can do,” he promised halfheartedly.
“He’s the one with the PINs. He’s the one we’d need to convince to share the information, anyway,” she reasoned. “And from what I gather from my conversation with you, he’s not the most cooperative individual.”
“That’s the understatement of the millennium.”
She was looking for a consensus, a good old-fashioned vote on whether or not the other parties were interested in moving forward with this plan, and whether they had better ideas as to how to make this work—if it could work. The thoughts coursing through her were foreign and frightening and surprising. But she couldn’t let them go, not without thoroughly exploring them.
Never in a million years did she ever believe that she would become this person. But Chuck had been the one to plant the seed. He’d found out what Ed was doing and decided to capitalize on it and bring Lucy into the mix.
“You’re his wife, Lucy,” Chuck had told her before he died. “You’re closer to him than anyone. Ed probably keeps that information on him all the time.”
“I could just ask him. Like you said, I’m his wife.”
“He’ll wonder how you know, and that’ll lead back to me. If he finds out that I know, things could get ugly.”
Lucy couldn’t believe that she’d even had this conversation with Roman and that she had gone so far as to try to convince him that something like this could be done, that it should be. This was money that didn’t belong to anyone, really. It was money obtained illegally from illegal practices, and somehow Ed and this Tom Hilliard had managed to slip it in under the radar so that it was there and it wasn’t. So what if Lucy, Roman, Wells, and Marlowe took it?
“These people are dangerous, Lucy,” Roman warned. “And Wells is no Boy Scout. He’s a killer.”
“But if we can get him on our side … it’s a lot of money, Roman, for anybody.”
She just needed for everyone to listen. That’s all. It wouldn’t cost any of them anything to listen.
But Your Ghost
“WHO ATTACKED YOU, MARLOWE?” Quentin asked, sitting across from Marlowe again in that interrogation room.
Surprise flashed in her eyes, then quickly dissipated. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Quentin.”
“I’m not a
n idiot. Either you let ’em in or somehow they found a way into your house, but my guess is that you were home when it happened.” He eyed her suspiciously. “Maybe sleeping?”
Marlowe took a deep breath and rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t attacked. If someone came into my house, I wasn’t home when it happened.”
“You were at a friend’s house?”
“Yes.”
“What friend?”
“What difference does it make?” she shot back irritably. “Look, I didn’t report a crime, so why are you treating me like I did something wrong?”
Quentin was in a precarious position with this one. On the one hand, he cared for Marlowe, genuinely cared for her, but on the other, she wrapped herself in lies like a blanket and was only getting herself deeper and deeper into trouble. This break-in could’ve had something to do with Price’s murder. In a not-so-direct way, he was trying to get to that.
“There was evidence of some kind of struggle,” he continued. “We found bullet holes in the walls, and one officer noted the faint smell of pepper spray. And we found what looks like blood on the base of the lamp in the bedroom, Marlowe.” He stared hard at her. “Stop fucking with me and tell me the truth.”
Marlowe stared back, folded her arms, and curled her lip. “You know what I know.”
“No, Marlowe. I have a feeling that I don’t know half of what you know, but I’m sure as hell gonna keep searching until I do.”
Marlowe stared tearfully at him, unfolded her arms, and leaned across the table. “And what if I was attacked, Quentin?”
She paused and waited for him to say something.
“What if someone came into my house, and I woke up to them standing over me? And what if they climbed on top of me, and maybe I hit them with that lamp and tried to run away?” Again she stopped and waited. “What if the only way I could get that person off me was to pepper spray them because if I didn’t, I know they’d have killed me? Would you even believe me?”
Quentin looked at her and for a moment saw that sad little girl he’d picked up from that foster home with her scared sister holding on tight to her hand.
“Who was it, Marlowe?”
She sighed, dried her eyes, and leaned back. “Just a bad dream. Really,” she swallowed and rescinded. “I wasn’t home.”
* * *
He let her leave without asking any questions about Price at all.
One of his investigators came to him. “The blood and the hair samples found on the lamp have been sent to the crime lab in Clark City,” she told him.
“Fingerprints?”
“On the lamp. Just hers. Throughout the house, hers, Price’s of course, and quite a few that we haven’t identified.”
She was burying herself underneath lies for some reason.
“Did they ever match those dental impressions to Price’s?” he asked as an afterthought.
“They couldn’t match them to anything,” she said, shrugging. “Too far gone.”
Speculation was all that any of them had that Marlowe had had anything to do with Price’s murder. The part that bugged him the most was how she did it. She couldn’t have pulled it off on her own. Marlowe had to have had help. She’d been seen around town with some big black guy lately, someone no one recognized as being from Blink. Quentin hadn’t seen her with him, but a few people had, and they said that the guy could’ve been a pro football player, he was so big. But nobody had reported seeing this man before that body was found. Was he her lover? A relative? Quentin was making it a point to find out.
* * *
Marlowe hadn’t set foot in her house since the night Ed attacked her. She stood on the porch staring at that front door like it would open up and bite her. It was broad daylight. Surely, Ed wouldn’t be crazy enough to try to come at her with the sun still up. Marlowe pushed the door open and walked into the mess she’d left behind. The air inside that house smelled spoiled and felt prickly on her skin, raising goose bumps on her arms.
She carefully turned the coffee table back over onto its legs. Some of her things, things she’d collected through the years—porcelain owls, crystal pieces from all over the world—were shattered on the wooden floor. Dark spots littered almost everything, fingerprinting dust left behind by Quentin Parker and his crew, and dirty shoe prints left chaotic patterns on the floor. Marlowe pushed the sofa back to where it belonged. But nothing felt right in this place. She shook her head in disbelief and then remembered the sage she had in the sunroom.
Marlowe must’ve lit half a dozen sage sticks and let them burn in every corner of her house, ridding her home of all the evil that had trespassed through it. She stood in the center of the living room and took a deep breath as she began to feel the cleansing effects.
“Is that reefer?” Plato asked, stopping dead in his tracks outside the door.
Marlowe wasn’t the least bit surprised that the scent of the sage stopped him from coming inside. It did ward off evil spirits after all.
“No, it’s not,” she said smugly. She studied him, finding him absolutely fascinating at a time when his true nature was as clear to her as daylight, and yet he seemed to be oblivious to who or what he was. “Are you coming in or what?” she challenged.
He pulled open the screen door but was hesitant to cross over her threshold coming into the house. That perplexed look on his face spoke volumes to Marlowe.
“Are you afraid?” she asked with a smirk in her smile.
He recognized the challenge she offered and pushed past his reservations, took that big step inside, and stood there, like he was afraid that the ground would fall out from under him.
“Good boy,” she murmured.
“You’re freaking me out,” he finally said.
Marlowe laughed. “I thought you didn’t believe in my magic.”
“I don’t,” he retorted. “But you believe in that shit enough for both of us, so I don’t need to.”
He wearily made his way across the room, closer to her, and leaned down and kissed her. “How’d it go at the police station?”
“I thought they were going to ask me more questions about Eddie, but they didn’t.”
Marlowe walked over to the sofa and sat down. Plato sat down next to her.
“They wanted to know what had happened here the other night,” she explained.
“What’d you tell them?”
He pinned her down with those dark eyes of his.
“I know the rules, Plato,” she said softly. “You’ve made them clear.”
He’d warned her not to tell the police about Eddie. Marlowe had taken his warning to heart, which was just where he’d meant to put it.
“What do they think happened?”
“That someone broke in—or I let them in—and that they attacked me.”
“You understand why they can’t know about Price,” he said earnestly.
“Because you want him,” she responded softly.
“The people who hired me want him.”
“You’re here for him and not me,” she repeated with a weak smile. “And you would never intentionally hurt me.”
“I never would, but this is bigger than you or me. It’s bigger than the police, sweetheart, and it’s got to be done.”
Plato was saying things that Marlowe would never be able to wrap her mind around. Things that she didn’t want to equate to having anything to do with him, a man she’d shared her body with.
“Don’t tell me any more, Plato. I don’t ever want to know what it is you’re truly capable of. Whatever it is you plan on doing to him when and if you find him, you keep it to yourself.”
He nodded. “Agreed.”
Worship Her
HAVING TO SIT through two hours of sage burning gave Plato a headache, but it strikingly changed Marlowe’s mood.
“So I take it you’re planning on staying here tonight?”
She had swept up all the glass off the floor, cleaned the kitchen, and had even started to make a casserole. Marlowe
Price was a regular Suzy Homemaker.
“No. We’re staying here tonight.” She sat down on the sofa and pointed back and forth between the two of them. “He might come back if he thinks I’m here by myself,” she reluctantly admitted.
Ah, but then she missed the point and she’d made it at the same time. He might come back if he thought that she was there alone. Plato wanted him to come back. He needed him to come back, and Marlowe, alone in this house, was just the bait Plato needed to draw Price out of hiding. Of course, now was not the time to express his idea to her. She was still vulnerable, still in her feelings, and like one of those crystal figurines she’d swept up earlier, she was too easy to break.
“What smells so good?” he asked, smiling.
Marlowe looked proud. “Chicken and rice casserole. My grandmomma’s recipe.”
He couldn’t wait to taste Grandmomma’s casserole.
“Ever had your palm read?” Marlowe asked, gently taking hold of one of his hands and splaying it open on her thigh.
“No.”
She stared at his palm, furrowing her brow and biting on her lower lip, deep in concentration. “That’s surprising,” she murmured, raising a perfectly arched brow. “That’s not.”
If she wanted to pique his curiosity, she did. “What’s surprising and what’s not?”
“According to your heart line, you’re happy.” She looked at him.
“What? You’re surprised by that?”
“Well, yes, considering the kind of life you lead.”
“Ever think that I like what I do?”
“Not in a million years would I ever think that anybody in his or her right mind would like doing whatever it is that you do,” she said, staring blankly at him. “But that’s not the only surprising part,” she continued. “You’re very accepting and loving when you feel you’re being accepted and loved.”
Now it was his turn to be surprised. “Loving?”
She nodded. “I know. Right?”
Palm reading was such bullshit.