The Real Mrs. Price (6 page)

He recovered and went back to work and had no idea that he was working overtime to lose everything he'd ever loved: home, family, and career. Those things took a backseat to trying to get his hands on a drug his doctor would no longer prescribe for him. So he found it elsewhere. That perfect high gradually dulled, though, and that's when he started to get creative. Drug addicts are great problem solvers, and if they weren't drug addicts, they could probably rule the world if they set their minds to it. Mix a little Xanax with some Vicodin, and damn! He had a sweet high. Add a muscle relaxant, and sit there drooling on yourself as you watch your wife pack up the kids and the dog and walk out of your life forever.

He'd been clean and sober for almost a year now. Roman had started this private investigator business eight months ago and had taken the slow-and-steady road of sobriety ever since. Work kept his mind off feeling sorry for himself, which kept his mind off wishing he was high. A case like this was intricate and complicated enough to keep his thoughts from being idle for a while.

He pulled up Lucy's number on his phone and stared at it. Pretty lady. Short, brunette hair and big blue eyes. She had those kinds of lips that immediately made him just want to plant a big wet one on them, but of course, that would be rude. She had nice tits. He wondered if she was aware of that, and he made it a point not to stare at them.

Ed Price. Interesting fellow, to say the least, and a real piece of work. He almost made Roman look like a choir boy. As far as the media was concerned, the man was dead. Lucy said she wanted to be sure because she was afraid he'd come after her. Seemed like she would just get on the bandwagon with everyone else and believe that he was and that Marlowe Price had killed him.

Marlowe. She and Lucy were as different as day and night on the surface. In the literal sense—one black, one white. And figuratively. Lucy was Miss Straight and Narrow, and Marlowe appeared to be some kind of mystical voodoo priestess from the backwoods of Louisiana. He'd married them both. But why?

He dialed Lucy's number. “It's Roman,” he said after she'd answered.

“Yes?” Her voice was soft and … just soft.

“I spoke to Marlowe Price,” he told her. “She agreed to meet with us day after tomorrow.”

Lucy sighed. “All right,” she said with resolve. “I'll see you at the airport in a few days, I guess.”

“I guess so.”

He'd have been lying to himself if he'd pretended that he wasn't looking forward to seeing her again. He'd have also been lying if he'd believed that Lucy Price had been entirely truthful with him.

 

Hold Back the River

S
HOU
S
HOU WAS LESS THAN
five feet tall and weighed ninety pounds on a good day. Short, curly white hair covered her head, and her small frame was draped in a colorful tapestry of African fabrics, complementing the pearl necklace she'd inherited from her mother, and a large, black onyx ring almost as big as her frail hand. Her small house was a shrine of antiques, everything from an old icebox that she used as an accent table to a chamber pot used as a planter and a bed warmer that hung on the wall. Tapestries of every pattern and color hung on walls next to African masks, and a huge fertility statue that she used as a coatrack welcomed you when you walked through the front door.

Marlowe had called her first thing that morning. The two of them sat at her small bistro table in the kitchen. Shou Shou had made honey, lemon, and ginger tea because of stomach issues she'd been dealing with.

Marlowe took a sip of tea and then paused before telling Shou Shou what'd she'd planned on doing. “I'm thinking about leaving, Shou,” she said gravely. She waited for her aunt to say something, but Shou Shou quietly stirred her tea.

“The police haven't pressed charges. All that they said was ‘We suggest you don't leave town.' That's not telling me that I can't leave. It's just a suggestion.”

“And go where?” Shou Shou raised her brows inquisitively. “I seen you on that CNN news the other night. Where you think you can go where nobody's gonna know who you are?”

Marlowe sighed. “You didn't see me on CNN,” she said, irritated. “You can't see, Auntie.”

“Well, I heard you, then,” she snapped. Shou Shou was blind and had been since she was twenty. “The point is, somebody's gonna see you and know where you are and turn you in, so running away ain't gonna help.”

“Well, staying won't help either if I end up in prison. Every damn body thinks I shot that man and burned him in that car.”

“That man. That man. You keep calling him that instead of calling him by your husband's name, because you know that ain't Eddie,” she said, smirking. “He ain't nothing but a snake. I knew it as soon as you let him in yo' house. Youda known, too, if you'd paid attention.”

“How many times are you going to throw that back in my face?” Marlowe asked, frustrated.

“Until I decide not to.”

“I don't know who they found in that car, but the last time I saw Eddie, he was alive. If anybody killed him, it happened after he walked out of the house that night.”

Shou Shou instinctively warmed Marlowe's tea without spilling a drop of water. “What them bones tell you?”

Marlowe had gotten the call from her aunt about reading the bones three nights ago, but she hadn't had the courage to repeat what she'd seen to anybody. Shou Shou wasn't just anyone, though. And if anyone could help Marlowe to make clear what she thought she saw in those bones, it was Shou Shou.

Marlowe took a deep breath and gathered her courage. “I saw the devil,” she said weakly. “They showed him coming for me.”

Shou Shou nodded and curled the corners of her full lips. “I figured.”

“Why me, Shou? I'm already being punished for marrying Eddie. My life is a mess, and more of a mess is the last thing I need. I wish I hadn't read them.”

“Then he'd sneak up on you, and you wouldn't be ready for him.”

“He did sneak up on me,” she said dismally.

Her aunt leaned forward. “You already seen him? He here?”

“He showed up at my house,” she told her. “Even crossed my barrier line, Shou.” Marlowe felt absolutely helpless against him, and Shou Shou had to have heard it in her voice.

“Oh, baby,” she said sorrowfully. Shou Shou shook her head. “Are you sure it was him, Marlowe? Are you most certainly sure? More sure than you ever been about anything?”

“I've never been so sure about anything in my life, Auntie. I felt it as soon as I saw him.”

Marlowe recalled the tall, dark, handsome monster standing in her yard and hovering over her like a storm cloud. She worked as hard as she could to fight back tears. “How come I couldn't have gotten warning about Eddie? If I'd known then what I know now about him, I wouldn't be in this mess.”

“Oh, you had your warning,” her aunt said irritably. All that sympathy was gone as soon as it'd come. “You had plenty, but you chose to do what you wanted to do anyhow.”

Marlowe became angry. “How, you say?”

“You felt it. Remember you was breaking up with him before he took you to Vegas. Remember you thought something about him wasn't right. Next thing I know, you come back wearing a ring and calling yourself Marlowe Price 'stead of Brown. I think you knew. But I think you can't help how you are. Just like Merrilyn couldn't help who she was.”

“I'm not like her,” Marlowe retorted. Her mother had spent more time out of their lives than in it. She hardly even knew the woman, but she knew enough to argue being anything like her. “Besides, you said she was possessed.”

“I said she was haunted. Not possessed. There's a difference.”

“Well, I ain't like her.”

“You ain't haunted but sure as hell are like her. Follow your heart all around the world like it's got you on a leash. Never using your head. Never listening to your instinct. Instinct is always true. It's never false. But you choose to ignore it, same way she did.”

She was right. Marlowe had only been seeing Eddie for a few months when she realized that she didn't love him. Not like she thought she should. He was handsome and sweet and funny, but he was absent. Even when they were together, he never seemed to be really present. Now she understood why. He was married and who knows what else he was. He was most certainly a murderer.

“I let him talk me into taking that trip,” she said, disappointed.

“He saw your weakness and played on it,” her aunt said. “He saw you was lonesome. He saw you was lost.”

“Why marry me, though, when he was married already? Why not get a divorce first?”

“Who the hell knows, child? Men do what they do for all kinds of dumb reasons, mostly pussy.”

Marlowe was shocked. “Auntie!” She didn't even know that Shou Shou knew that word.

“What? It's the truth,” she said, holding her cup between two dainty hands. “Men to ass is like bees to honey. You grown. You know that.”

He made her feel like she was everything that week in Vegas. Eddie wined and dined her, danced with her, made love to her. He promised her that he'd give her everything she needed and even some things she didn't. He'd promised to love her how she needed to be loved. He even bought her a ring. The morning after Marlowe said “I do,” she wished she hadn't. If she had to pinpoint a moment when her life began spiraling out of control, that would be it, only she didn't know it at the time.

“What do you think he wants with me?” she asked, thinking back to that tall, dark man standing in her front yard. It was hard enough dealing with this drama that Eddie had caused. To have to deal with that one, too? Marlowe didn't know if she had the strength.

Her aunt sighed. “I had hoped that if you knew up front that he was coming, you could stop him. But apparently not. You might be able to fight him. It'll have to be spiritual, though, because I imagine that he's powerful.”

“He is,” she murmured. He was massive in size, but even more daunting than being physically powerful, Marlowe sensed that spiritually and possibly emotionally, he was like nothing or no one she'd ever encountered.

“You might be able to win. But I couldn't tell you how. It could be that he just wants to use you for something and then go on his way,” Shou Shou said optimistically.

“The bones said he was coming for me.”

“I don't know what that means, Marlowe. It could mean so many things. Did he threaten you?”

“Would he?”

She shook her head. “Probably not. Was he charming?”

“Charming with warning.”

“Yes,” she whispered, nodding. “Get the sage sticks out,” she advised her. “Carry your rosary. Stay prayed up.”

She hadn't told Marlowe to do anything she didn't already know about, but she was right. Marlowe needed to do what she could to protect herself.

“Holy water?” Holy water worked on demons, but Marlowe couldn't be sure that it would work on an actual devil.

“Can't hurt.” Shou Shou sighed.

All that was missing were wooden stakes, garlic, and silver bullets. Marlowe made a mental note to stop at the hardware store for wood and the grocery store for garlic on the way home. As for bullets? She figured that she might have to look for silver ones online.

“Eddie's first wife had a man call and ask if she could come see me.”

“You say yes?”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“I think she's curious about me.”

“Her curiosity is not your problem, Marlowe. That woman don't need to be coming down here starting no mess.”

“I'm curious, too, Auntie.”

“About what?”

“Her. Him. She was married to him longer. Maybe she can tell me something about him that can help clear my name.”

“Well, if she do or if she don't, both of y'all were fools for a fool. And I'm sorry for you both.”

 

Black Gypsy

E
VERYBODY DON
'
T NEED EYES
to see. Shou Shou could tell that candle was burning by the smell and the warmth.

An old scratchy song called “Black Gypsy Blues” spun on her record player. She'd been playing it over and over again all morning. That song was always in the back of her mind. Shou Shou played the record whenever people came to her for help having to do with otherworldly matters. She claimed that song as her own, claimed it was about her, written by a man who had loved her once. The women in Shou Shou's family had never had much luck with love. Oh, the men found them easily enough, loved them hard and strong. All of the women were said to have been so beautiful that men couldn't keep away from them, claimed that the women put spells on them that drove them mad with desire. Somehow, though, the men who loved them would end up dead or broken or lost.

She lost her first love, Lewis Jr., when she was fifteen. He was playing baseball and got hit in the head with the ball, which cracked his skull. Her second lover was shot trying to break up a fight at a bar. After the third one went crazy, Shou Shou stopped letting men get close to her. And poor Belle, one of her nieces, had only ever been with a man long enough to break her heart. Marjorie never did let love in. She died before it even got close. But Marlowe? Oh, that Marlowe. That girl had a head as hard as a rock and a heart as big as the world. Her first husband ended up on drugs, and nobody had heard from him in years. This next one, the one she called Eddie, just up and disappeared out of the blue one day.

There was another man, though, circling that girl like a shark. And that was the one who worried her most. Shou Shou had managed to convince Marlowe to create a cross-me-not barrier in front of her house, telling her that it would keep those reporters from coming up to her door. It had kept away the reporters, but most importantly, it had kept him away, too. The rains were coming soon. Shou Shou could smell it in the air. They would wash away those barriers and leave Marlowe vulnerable to him, and he was likely the type to be ready to pounce on that girl as soon as opportunity allowed him.