Listen for the Lie (17 page)

I sit in bed that afternoon, laptop propped up in my lap, and text Ben to ask when we're doing our next interview. The big one. The one where I'm supposed to tell all about Matt.

I still need to decide what “all” will be.

I'm not actually interested in sharing my sob story with the podcast universe. I was never all that interested in telling anyone except Savvy.

She understood that. She didn't take my hand and gently suggest we march down to the police station. She didn't ask, “Why don't you just leave?”

She said, “
That's usually when men kill the woman. When they try to leave
.”

And I said, “
I actually don't think Matt would do that
.”

“
Is that really a risk you want to take?
” she'd asked.

No. It wasn't.

And she knew. Right away, she knew that I didn't want to just leave.

I wanted fucking revenge.

“
Let's Thelma and Louise this shit
,” she'd said, and I'd laughed.

I can't very well tell my abused-wife sob story to everyone when I once laughed about killing my husband. That's not cool.

My laptop dings with a message from Ben.

Want to grab a drink tonight?

And do the interview?

No. Interview tomorrow, maybe?

I sigh and start to type,
Can we just get this over with already?
I quickly delete it. That's not something an innocent person would say.

Downstairs, I hear Mom laugh loudly, as if she's inside my head.

Ben saves me from having to type anything at all.
Meet me in an hour at Bluebonnet Tavern?

I can feel that this is a bad idea by the way I glance over at my closet to see which dress I should wear. I'm relieved that I have an hour, so I have time to do my hair and put on makeup. There's danger here, and I should say no.
No, Ben, I'll see you for the interview. Text me then.
That's what I
should
send.

Sure, see you in an hour
, is what I actually send.

I'm at Bluebonnet an hour later. I chose the purple dress, which I rationalized by telling myself that he'd already seen me in it. I'd been wearing it the day we met, at the diner. It's cotton, casual. Not a date dress. It's a “too fucking hot for pants” dress.

Bluebonnet is big and bright, the large windows at the front letting in plenty of the early evening sunlight. The floors and walls are wood, the latter covered in Texas decor so we won't forget which state we're in. There's a Texas flag, a
Don't Mess with Texas
sign, and a bulletin board advertising various Hill Country wine tours. A bright
Real Ale
sign flickers as I walk by it.

Ben is already sitting at the bar, wearing a blue button-up shirt with sleeves pushed to his elbows. It's a date shirt, I note. One that's too warm for this weather. I try not to read too much into it.

He smiles when he spots me. I slide onto the stool next to him.

“Hey. Thanks for coming.”

I glance at his drink, which is pink. “Is that a cosmo?”

“Why do you say it like that? Cosmos are delicious. And they're the happy hour special.”

“I didn't say it like anything.”

The bartender, a pretty woman with dark hair cut into an angled bob, approaches and looks at me expectantly.

“I'll have one too.” I point to his drink. I don't drink hard liquor often, and I ignore the voice in the back of my head that says I should take this purple dress home.

“You got it.” She walks away to make the drink.

Savvy is on the other side of the bar in her place suddenly. I want to look away, but she looks so real. I have to remind myself that she's a product of my twisted, damaged brain.

She leans closer to me. Even in my hallucination, she smells a little like smoke. She only smoked when she drank, but, well, she drank a lot.

“
You know what I would do
,” she says with a grin.

I shift on my barstool.

“
I'd let him fuck me in the bathroom
.” She has a wistful look in her eye. “
And then probably out back behind the bar too. Remember that time you found me in the parking lot of the Charles? That guy had me bent over the hood of his car, my naked ass in the air, and you rushed over because you thought he was raping me? And I had to be like, oh no, honey, this was my idea
.”

Ben takes a sip of his drink. “Why do people judge men for ordering pink drinks? It's weird to gender drinks.”

“I didn't say anything.”

“
You're not wearing a bra under that dress, are you?”
Savvy asks. “
I approve
.” She winks at me and disappears. I let out a long breath.

“Men are lying when they say they don't like fruity drinks. That guy over there with a beer wishes he had my cosmo.”

I laugh, which makes his face brighten. The bartender returns with my drink and I take a sip. It's strong, thank god.

A burst of laughter explodes from behind me, and I look to see
a group of women at a corner booth, many empty margarita glasses in front of them. A waiter is putting new ones down.

A dark-haired woman on the end of the booth is draining the last of her margarita, and she barely takes a breath before she grabs the new one and takes a long sip. It's Nina.

She chugs half the margarita down in two gulps, and the other women explode into giggles again.

“You better go ahead and bring another one,” she says to the waiter. He laughs and nods.

For someone who said she doesn't drink much, she sure is putting away those margaritas.

Our eyes meet as she puts the glass down, and she quickly looks away, like she hoped I hadn't noticed her. She hastily recovers, turning in the booth and waving at me.

She stands and walks to us. She's wearing skinny jeans that hug her curves, and no fewer than three men check out her ass as she passes them. I give them disapproving looks that not one of them notices.

“Hey, Lucy.”

Ben turns around then, and Nina actually stumbles back in surprise. She blinks twice, and I swear she almost turns around and bolts. I can actually see the thought cross her face.

If Ben sees it, he pretends not to. He smiles and says, “Hi, Nina.”

“Hi?” It comes out as a question, directed at me. “Is … everything okay?”

“Fine. How about you?”

She squints. “Uhh…” Her cheeks are pink, and I can almost see that huge gulp of margarita hitting her. “Good. Yeah. Good.” She shakes her head. “I'm sorry. You seriously hang out with this guy?”

Ben laughs. “Tell us how you really feel, Nina.”

Nina casts an irritated look at him. She sounded friendly on the podcast, but that look in her eyes is anything but. Something happened between her interviews and now.

“If you can't be friendly with the podcaster who's trying to prove you killed your best friend, who can you be friendly with?” I say it in an effort to lighten the mood, but both Ben and Nina look at me like I've grown a second head.
Shit
. That's not something an innocent person would say.

“I'm going to go back to my friends.” Nina doesn't look at me as she turns. “Nice seeing you guys.”

I don't think she means that. I watch as she heads back to the table of women who are now gawking at us. I wave. No one seems to appreciate that. I turn to face the bar again.

“I'm not trying to prove you killed Savannah,” Ben says. “I'm trying to find out who killed her.”

“That's the same thing to a lot of people.”

“Not to me.” He looks over his shoulder, and I follow his gaze to see Nina frowning at us.

“Did you guys get into it or something?”

“Not that I know of. But I offend a lot of people, so who can say?”

I laugh, and Nina's frown deepens. I put a hand on his arm. (Yes, it is unnecessary to touch him. Yes, I do it anyway.) “Turn around. She's going to think we're talking about her.”

He smiles as he turns to face me again, and when I drop my hand from his arm, he catches my fingers, just for a moment.

“We are talking about her.”

“We're supposed to be subtle about it. It's the Texas way.”

“If you want to know the truth, I kind of love her and Emmett.” He leans closer to me, so close that our shoulders touch.

“I hate to tell you this, but I don't think the feeling's mutual.” I should move away. I don't.

“That's fine. I don't mind my one-sided love for them.”

“And what is it about them that you find so lovable?”

“They're on your side.”

I cock an eyebrow.

“I mean, the podcast would have gotten boring real quick if every single person I interviewed said the same thing. Nice of them to mix it up for me.”

I smile. Ben's gaze flickers down to my lips.

I lean away a little, so that our shoulders aren't touching anymore, and take a sip of my drink.

“Have you talked to Matt since the last episode aired?” Ben asks. I wonder whether he's been waiting to ask that question since I walked in.

“No. He's been ignoring my texts. I could drop by his house again.”

He looks at me. Looks away. Takes a sip of his pink drink.

“Is that … safe?”

Well, fuck. I wonder who told him. I wonder who even knows. I always thought that a couple of women from the neighborhood had an inkling, but I'm surprised they told him.

“Is it ever safe to confront a man about being a dick?”

“No.” He says it like he has experience with this, which is unsurprising. “It's not.”

I stay at the bar with Ben for two hours. He tells me about his family and his friends and how the east side of L.A. is the best side of L.A. I agree. It turns out we only live about fifteen minutes away from each other, which actually makes me a little uneasy. There's an upside to getting kicked out of Nathan's apartment.

I don't finish my second cosmo because I'm well on my way to tipsy. Maybe mostly on my way to drunk. Maybe already there.

I pull my phone out as we walk out of the bar and lean against the side of the building. He looks at me curiously.

“I'm calling an Uber.”

He points. “Isn't that your car?”

“I'm too drunk to drive.”

“Seriously? From two drinks?”

“I'm a lightweight.”

“I guess so.”

“It would probably be fine, but it doesn't seem worth the risk. I don't want to be the girl who murdered her friend
and
the girl who gets arrested for drunk driving. That's just embarrassing.”

He laughs and pulls his keys out of his pocket. “Come on. I'll drive you home.”

I slide my phone back into my purse. “Thank you.”

“Do they even have Uber in this town?”

“There's one dude. Apparently he takes forever to show up.”

“Not much incentive to be quick when you're the only game in town.”

“
Hey, jackass!
” The screaming voice is familiar, and my fingers instinctively tighten into fists. I whirl around.

It's Matt, tearing across the parking lot like his ass is on fire. His face is twisted with fury, his whole body so tense I can see the muscles rippling down his arms.

But his anger isn't directed at me, which is a new experience. He's charging straight for Ben.

Ben dives into his car and I think he's going to make a run for it. But he emerges a moment later and tosses something small and black onto the hood of the car. His digital recorder.

“Hi, Matt,” the smug idiot says.

“You son of a bitch, I should wring your neck.” Matt comes to a stop in front of Ben and doesn't wring his neck.

He punches him in the face.

Ben stumbles but doesn't fall, his back hitting the car. Matt grabs him by the collar of his shirt. He's an inch or two shorter than Ben, but he's making up for it with sheer rage.

“I am going to sue you for every penny you're worth,” Matt says through clenched teeth.

Ben tries to twist out of his grasp. “I'll give you my lawyer's number. Can you take your hands off me, please?”

Matt responds by gripping his shirt tighter and slamming Ben into the car.

“Matt!” I sound surprised, even though I'm not.

His head whips around to look at me, and then something behind me. I glance back. Half the bar is outside now, staring.

“Beverly is a fucking drunk, and that one is a fucking liar.” Matt lets go of Ben's shirt to point at me, just so there's no confusion about who the fucking liar is. Matt is breathing heavily, eyes still wild like they always are when he loses control.

Ben's shirt is stretched out at the collar and hanging loosely around his neck, but he looks remarkably fine otherwise.

“I'd be happy to add your reply to the podcast, if you'd like to give one.” Ben's voice wobbles, just a little.

“Go to hell, asshole. That's my reply.” Matt turns and stomps away.

Ben lifts and lowers his shoulders, like he's making sure they're okay. Then he walks around to the hood of the car and grabs his recorder.

He looks up at me with a self-satisfied smile that should be more annoying than it is. “You want to come back to my hotel for a drink?”

I'm sure it will surprise no one to learn that I made the stupid choice and accepted Ben's offer to go back to his hotel.

His suite is cold as I walk in, the AC up high. I shiver, and he pauses at the thermostat on his way into the kitchen.

“Sit,” he says, pointing at the couch. His laptop and notebooks are stacked neatly on the table in front of it. Nothing for me to see there. I don't know whether I'd want to anyway.

“Whiskey?” he asks.

That seems like a bad idea. “Yes.”

He pours two glasses, gingerly touching his cheek as he finishes. “Matt sure can throw a punch.”

Yes. Well. He's had some practice.

He walks over to me, whiskey in hand, and holds one out to me. I immediately take a sip. It burns going down, but I lift it to my lips a second time because I would actually really prefer to be drunk again.

I glance at the digital recorder he left on the counter in the kitchen. The light is off. Not recording. He notices me staring at it.

“You recorded that? Matt yelling at you?” I ask as he sits down on the other side of the couch.

“Yeah, I turned it on just in time.”

“Is that legal?”

“In Texas, you can record audio of people without their knowledge if there's no reasonable expectation of privacy. So, in a restaurant, or a bar, or…”

“If they're screaming in a parking lot.”

“Yep.”

“Were you recording in the bar?”

“No.”

I don't know whether I believe him, but it doesn't matter either way. I didn't say anything to him that I'd mind being broadcast to thousands of true-crime fans.

“You could have just driven away,” I say. “You had enough time to bolt.”

His lips quirk up. “Where's the fun in that?”

I prop my bare feet up on the coffee table, cradling the whiskey against my stomach. “You're going to put that on the podcast, then?”

“Yes. Don't ask me not to.”

“I wasn't going to.” I watch as he takes a long sip of his drink. “You know everyone thinks you're hinting that he's the one who killed Savvy.”

“I wasn't very subtle, was I?”

“Do you actually believe that?”

He looks at me with raised eyebrows. “It never occurred to you that Matt might have killed her?”

“Jesus Christ, Ben, I'm not an idiot. Of course it occurred to me.”

His cheeks go a little pink. “Right. Sorry.”

“I just…” I have nothing to say here.

Like I had nothing to say to the police. What could I say?
No, Officer, I definitely never would have killed Savvy, because actually we were planning to kill my husband together
? Not much of a defense.

I could have confessed that plan, and my suspicions that maybe, for whatever reason, we decided to go after Matt that night, and Matt killed Savvy in self-defense. And then he let everyone think that I did it as a giant
fuck you
to me.

I wouldn't blame him, honestly.

But, the fear. The look in his eyes when he asked me to go to my parents'. If that fear was because he thought I was going to try to kill him (again?), he would have told the police the truth. I can't think of any reason that Matt wouldn't go to the police if we'd tried to kill him that night. The truth would have mattered, for him.

Ben is staring at me expectantly.

“I wouldn't focus too much on Matt,” I say, finally.

“Seriously?”

“I don't think he did it.”

“
Seriously?”
It's the baffled word of someone who thinks I should know better.
Seriously, Lucy? He hit you!
He points to his cheek, which is red.

“It's your podcast, man, I'm just telling you what I think.”

He lets out a long sigh. “If you want to know the truth, I can't figure out a motive. I think what Kyle said about them maybe sleeping together is bullshit.”

“That is
definitely
bullshit.”

He touches his cheek and winces. “Matt's still a dick, though.”

“You should put ice on that.”

“Meh.”

I go to the fridge and pull a handful of ice from the freezer. I wrap it in a paper towel and walk over to him, holding it out.

“I think it's fine,” he says.

I sit down next to him and put the ice to his face.

“Ow.”

“Just for a couple minutes. Or are you hoping it swells so you can take a picture and put it on Twitter?”

A smile slides across his face, and I can't help the one that crosses mine as well.

He takes the ice from me and presses it to his cheek. We sit in silence for several moments that are not quite comfortable.

Then he tosses the ice on the coffee table, leans over, and kisses me.

I'm in his lap almost immediately, his hands under my dress and on my thighs. I can't remember why I thought this was a bad idea. This is a great idea. This is the best idea I've had since arriving in this cursed city.

He pulls my dress down around my waist, his hands on my breasts. I unbutton his pants. I'd like to blame the vodka for that decision.

And I'd like to blame the whiskey for letting him yank off my underwear so we can have sex right there on the couch.

But that would be a lie.