The Real Mrs. Price (27 page)

She got her gun out from underneath her bed, too, just in case Eddie decided to come back. Marlowe carried it with her from room to room, loaded and ready to aim and fire at him if he even thought about walking up in here on her again. This was her house. It had been hers before he'd moved in, and it was hers now. Eddie had snuck in while she was asleep before, and she hadn't been ready, but now she knew better. He'd given up his advantage by showing his face here. She'd kill him for real if he showed up again.

Marlowe hadn't heard back from Roman or Lucy since Roman had told them about those account numbers that Lucy had.

“Hi, Lucy?”

“Yes.”

“This is Marlowe.”

Lucy sounded as if she was half-asleep. “Oh, Marlowe. Hi. How are you?”

“I'm good. I woke you up?”

“No. I mean, I need to get up, anyway.”

Damn right she did. It was going on eight.

“I was hoping that we could talk.”

Lucy cleared her throat. “Yeah. We probably need to.”

“Maybe we could meet at my cousin's restaurant. It's not open yet, but she'll open it for me.”

“Sure. What's the name?”

“Belle's.”

“Oh, I've been there. Really good food.”

“How about in an hour?”

“That's fine, Marlowe,” she reluctantly responded. “I'll see you there in an hour.”

*   *   *

Meeting at Belle's made more sense than meeting at Marlowe's house. She'd spent hours cleansing that place of foul spirits. The only reason Plato was allowed inside was because she'd cleansed him, too, as much as he could be cleansed. Anything and anybody related to Eddie was most definitely foul, even if they didn't mean to be. She and Lucy Price weren't friends, and they never would be, but the two of them shared a burden, and because of that, they shared a bond.

*   *   *

Belle let the two women in and then went back to setting up the bar for the evening crowd, pretending that she wasn't listening.

“How are you since … well, since Ed showed up?” Lucy asked, looking absolutely sincere in her concern. The woman was either a damn good actress or she might've actually given a damn about Marlowe's well-being. In any event, Marlowe found it thoughtful that she'd asked.

“It was strange seeing him,” she began earnestly. “He looked like Eddie, sounded like him, but he was a stranger to me.”

“I can't imagine what it would be like to see him again,” Lucy muttered.

“He'd worked real hard to convince me that he was in love with me before we got married,” Marlowe admitted. “And I believed him.”

Marlowe could tell by the pinched expression on the other woman's face that hearing that her man had professed his love to another woman still didn't sit too well with her. “The other night, though, Eddie wasn't in love with me at all. It was like I was seeing him for the first time. It was a part of him that he'd gotten real good at hiding, from me, from you, from maybe everybody who knew him.”

Lucy nodded slowly. “I've seen that version of him, too. It's a miracle that either one of us is here, Marlowe.”

Marlowe thought back to the events that led to their sudden marriage. “I wasn't going to marry him,” she admitted. “He had been pushing for it for weeks, and it just didn't feel right.”

“What changed your mind?”

“He did,” Marlowe said with a shrug. “It wasn't so much what he'd said—it was how he'd said it. Kept saying how much he loved and needed me. How empty his life had been without me. But it was the look in his eyes, wild and desperate. The passion in his words.” Marlowe paused, realizing that in those conversations that the two of them had had leading up to marriage, there were about a hundred red flags coming from him waving in her face. “I was saving his life.” Her gaze drifted over to Lucy's. “That's how it felt. Like he needed me to save him, like he was drowning or something.”

“You understand how hearing this makes me feel?” Lucy asked solemnly. “He told me that he'd never loved any woman the way he loved me. I was the love of his life, Marlowe. To find out that he was saying things like that to another woman not long after he'd married me is mind-boggling.”

It's flattering to a woman when a man professes his love to her, but desperate and anxious love, which was what struck Marlowe about Eddie, was the kind that should've sent her running away screaming in the opposite direction. Instead, it had pulled her in, tethered her to him until she believed she couldn't live without him, only to regret saying the words
I do
almost as soon as she had. She'd made the biggest mistake of her life, which was saying a lot, because Marlowe had done some fucked-up shit. Nothing as bad as marrying him, though. Nothing so bad that it could cost her her life, which was on the line because of the mistake she'd made in marrying Eddie. And it shouldn't have been this way. The punishment didn't fit the crime.

“Roman told us about the account numbers, Lucy,” Marlowe abruptly brought up.

Lucy stared wide-eyed back at her. She had to know that that's why Marlowe wanted to talk to her.

“We—I mean, Plato Wells, a man who's been…” Lucy didn't know anything about Plato. It didn't matter. “He found one of those tiny, portable drives in my house. It wasn't mine. I'd never seen it before,” she explained. “But there were numbers on it. Roman and Plato seem to think that they're PINs that go to those account numbers that you have.”

Lucy nodded. “Roman told me.”

“Then you have some idea of where I'm going with this. Right?” Marlowe cautiously asked. When Lucy didn't respond quickly enough, Marlowe decided to make it clear for her. “That information needs to be turned over to the authorities. As soon as they realize what we have, they'll know that Eddie is the criminal here and not me. They'll see that he was embezzling or laundering or whatever all those stocks, and they'll turn the focus of this murder investigation from me and start looking for him, Lucy. Hopefully, they'll find him, and they'll arrest him and get him off the streets, find out that he killed that man, and put him under the damn jail.” Marlowe passionately laid out a very reasonable scenario to Lucy so that even she couldn't deny that it made sense. “And we can feel safe again, get on with our lives, and erase him from them like he was never part of either one of us. This can be over.”

Marlowe half expected the woman to leap from her seat, clap her hands, and shout a few hallelujahs or something, but Lucy just sat there.

“There is one more option, Marlowe,” she eventually said.

Marlowe immediately tensed up and shook her head. “There are no other options. We need to go to the police station and turn over this evidence. That's our only option, which doesn't make it an option at all. Does it?”

“We could keep it,” Lucy said without hesitation. “We could just take it, split it, and go. Twelve million dollars, Marlowe,” Lucy whispered, glancing over at Belle. “That's how much money you could walk away with, and you could go anywhere, do anything, and be anybody. You're not under arrest, Marlowe. Legally, they can't make you stay here. We could get money that technically doesn't exist and really make over our lives, not just get on with them or pick up where we left off. We can re-create ourselves.”

“We?” Marlowe asked, still stunned by what this woman was saying to her.

“Me, you, Roman, and your friend.”

Marlowe felt like she'd been kicked in the stomach. This woman couldn't be serious about this. Not when Marlowe's life was on the line here. Not when this one thing could set her free from all this bullshit.

“It's not you they're thinking killed a man, Lucy,” Marlowe reminded her. “It's not you they're trying to put in prison.”

“I know, Marlowe, but they haven't arrested you. You still have time. Everything they have is circumstantial in a big way. It's so fucking circumstantial that they can't touch you.”

“Not yet. But they're working on it,” she said bitterly.

“And by the time they figure it out, you could be gone.”

“For how long? How long before they decide to press charges and then put me on the FBI's most-wanted list, Lucy?”

“Change your name,” Lucy said matter-of-factly. “Change your identity.”

Was this fool serious? “This isn't some crime show, girl. This is real life, and people don't do that shit and get away with it.”

“They do it all the time, Marlowe,” she argued. “You'll have twelve million dollars to reinvent yourself. Nobody ever has to know who you are.”

Lucy wasn't just offering a suggestion. Marlowe could see in this woman's eyes that she'd already made up her mind that this was what she wanted to do.

“We are going to the police,” Marlowe said, struggling to remain calm and not jump across this table and maul this woman. “And we are turning over this evidence to them. I plan on going there this afternoon, and you're going with me.”

“I'm trying to help you, Marlowe,” Lucy shot back. “I'm trying to help all of us. Ed wants this money, too. And if he gets it, what do you think he's going to do? He's going to take it and vanish and nobody will ever see or hear from him again, and he'll go on living his fucking life with no regard for what he's done to ours.”

Was that really all these people cared about? Money? Lucy could dream about getting her hands on it all damn day, but the truth was, she couldn't touch it without those PINs that Plato was carrying around in his pocket, and he wasn't giving anybody a gotdamn thing.

“You've got account numbers,” Marlowe said. “I have the key to opening those accounts, and I'll be damned if I give you my key.” Marlowe picked up her purse, preparing to leave. “Are you coming with me this afternoon or not?”

Lucy folded her arms and stared defiantly back at her. “You're on your own.”

And there it was. Deep down, Marlowe had known that this woman would let her down. All the enthusiasm she'd clung to so desperately since finding out about all these numbers and accounts proving that Eddie was guiltier than she ever could've been was gone.

Marlowe tentatively stood up, clutching her purse close to her chest. “I could give the police what I have,” she said softly. But the truth was, she didn't have anything. Plato had it.

Lucy's smug expression taunted her. “And what do you have? A bunch of random numbers that
you
say belonged to Ed. Think they'll believe you?”

It took every ounce of restraint in Marlowe not to swing her purse against that bitch's head. But Marlowe had one last card to play. “Whether they do or not, without me, you can't get your hands on that money, and Eddie's still out there, Lucy.”

Color washed from Lucy's face.

“Yeah,” Marlowe said, walking away. “We in this together, like it or not. You need me as much as I need you. Do the right thing, Lucy, and go with me to the police.” Marlowe walked away, leaving Lucy alone to think on the only option that made any sense for either one of them.

 

To the River

“E
XCUSE ME, SIR
,” an officer said to Plato as he was leaving the coffee shop and heading toward his car. “Mind if we speak to you?”

He stopped and stared back hard at the man. “About?”

“Would you mind accompanying me to the station, sir?”

“Are you arresting me, Officer?” he challenged.

“No, sir. We'd just like to ask you a few questions.”

All of a sudden, Officer Whoeverthefuckhewas pulled back his narrow shoulders, stuck out his bird chest, and looped his thumb in his belt, positioning his hand extremely close to the weapon in the holster on his hip, sending a clear message that if Plato flinched or coughed or blinked too damn hard, this mother fucker would suddenly be “afraid for his life” and would likely draw that weapon and start shooting. Or at least he'd try.

Plato smiled. “Should I follow you?” he asked politely.

The officer nervously nodded. “That'd be fine,” he said, not quite certain, but it was also clear that the dude wasn't so sure that he wanted Plato riding in the same car with him either, especially seeing as how he wasn't under arrest, the officer couldn't cuff him.

“Lead the way, Officer,” he said cordially, walking over to his vehicle.

*   *   *

He'd given his name when they arrived at the station. Plato found this whole situation laughable and had pretty much surmised why they'd asked him to come in even before he'd turned off the engine of his car in the station parking lot.

“Mr. Wells,” the short and chubby police chief said, coming into the interrogation room and sitting across from Plato. Quentin Parker. Plato knew his name before he'd even come into the room. “Thank you for coming in to see me,” he said, clasping his hands together and resting them on the table in front of him. Next to him was a yellow legal pad and a pen.

“Mind telling me why I'm here?” Plato coolly questioned.

“Certainly,” he nodded. “Tell me, what's your relationship with Mrs. Marlowe Price?”

He'd said the magic words.
Marlowe
and
Price
.

“Acquaintances.”

Parker waited for him to elaborate. Plato didn't.

“We are investigating a murder,” he explained. He stopped and stared at Plato, probably looking for reaction.

Plato gave him none.

“So, you're a professor in Illinois?” Parker probed.

“I am.”

“What brings you to Blink, Texas?”

“School's out.”

Again, Parker waited. And again, Plato didn't see any need to feed the beast.

“Do you know Ed Price?”

He shook his head. “Never met the man.”

“You do know that Marlowe Price is a person of interest in his possible death?”