The Marriage Lie

by Kimberly Belle

  “Now what?”

  Corban’s grin is Cheshire wide. “Now we wait.”

  * * *

  The clock on the cable box says it’s nearing eleven. More than an hour since I pushed Evan’s wallet through a crack in the front door, which means I must have been convincing. The police, if he’d alerted them, would have been and gone by now.

  But the police didn’t come, and we’re still waiting for Will.

  “Max Talmey,” Corban says, stopping his incessant pacing to turn to me, slumped on the den sofa. “Bet you don’t know that name, do you?”

  I shake my head. I’ve been awake for what feels like weeks, and now that the adrenaline has burned off, I can barely sit up straight.

  Corban hits the end of the carpet and whirls around, punching a fist into the air. “What about Dennis Sciama or Andrea del Verrocchio? No?”

  “No.” I stifle a yawn.

  “Mentors to Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Leonardo da Vinci, respectively.”

  “Oh.”

  It doesn’t help that Corban has been talking nonstop. Long, rambling verbiage that goes round and round and nowhere at all...except maybe crazy town. I stopped listening ages ago.

  “Why is Will getting all the credit? What is wrong with our society that we only acknowledge the quarterback and not the rest of the team? The lead singers and not the band? When in reality, we’re the brilliant ones here. Without us to lift them up, they’d have never made it out of obscurity.”

  Corban’s narcissistic personality disorder is textbook. A grandiose sense of self, a preoccupation with power and success, an outrageous sense of entitlement and a distinct lack of empathy. The symptoms are all there. In his manic state, he’s no longer bothering to disguise any of them.

  “Kind of like Neta Snook,” I say. What a narcissist wants, more than anything else, is the accolades he feels he deserves.

  “Who?”

  “The female pilot who taught Amelia Earhart to fly.”

  “Exactly!” He stabs a finger at my face. “You understand what I’m talking about.”

  What I understand is that this isn’t just about Will taking the money. It’s about Will taking the money and running away. Corban feels abandoned. He feels rejected and cast aside, and it’s this emotion that has triggered his rage.

  He resumes his pacing, launching into yet another tirade about how no one seems to appreciate his brilliance. How it was his idea to transfer stock and not the more easily traceable money to a company in the Bahamas. He’s the one who knew when to sell the stock for top-market price. If it weren’t for him, Will would still be selling dime bags on the street corner. Narcissists love to play the victim.

  He stops, looking down at me with a frown. “I’m beginning to think your husband is going to stand us up.”

  “He wouldn’t.” I say it with much more confidence than I feel. Will’s already proved he loves money more than me. Why not let Corban make good on his threats to rape me? Why not let him get his revenge?

  Except he said he was coming. He told me he was on his way.

  I’m so sorry, Will says in my head, as clearly as if he were sitting right here, on the couch next to me. For a second or two, I see him driving down a dusty Mexican road, one hand flicking in a wave out the open window.

  No, Corban was right about one thing. Will would hate it in Mexico. Too damn hot.

  Corban’s gaze whips to the back door. “Did you hear that?”

  I push myself up on the couch, ears straining. “Hear what?”

  “Shh!” He cocks his head, then sticks a finger into the air. “That. Did you hear it?”

  I think I might have heard something, a crunching outside the window, maybe, or the snap of a twig, right before a neighbor’s dog goes ballistic. His barks spark another, then another, carrying across the neighborhood until the barking comes at me in surround sound. It’s like that cartoon scene, when the dogs are alerting each other to a couple of missing dalmatians.

  Only this time, they’re alerting Corban to someone right outside my window.

  I flip around on the couch and cup my hands to the glass, trying to see out, but it’s like looking into a black hole, dark and endless. Somewhere in the near distance, the dogs go nuts.

  The house line rings.

  Corban frowns, and I can tell he’s thinking the same thing I am: Why wouldn’t Will call on my cell like he did last time?

  The phone rings again.

  “Should I—”

  “Don’t move,” he barks. He fetches the handheld off the stand in the kitchen and looks at the display. “It’s a 770 number.” He reads the rest of the digits out loud. “Do you recognize it?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”

  My phone flips the call to voice mail, and the caller hangs up. If there’s someone still under the window, I can’t hear it over the dogs and the thundering of my heart. Two seconds later, the phone starts up again.

  This time, Corban hits the button to pick up on the first ring. “Hello.” Not a question but a demand.

  Corban’s expression changes as distinctly as storm clouds scudding across the sun, turning light to dark. Whoever is on the other line is a surprise and not a pleasant one.

  “You’ve got it all wrong, friend. I’m here as a guest. Iris is—”

  The caller cuts him off, and the fact that Corban lets him tells me it’s someone Corban is trying to appease. Narcissists are masters at manipulation, and though his silence says he’s listening, his movements are preoccupied. His eyes scan the windows, and his body draws in on itself, like a rattlesnake coiling to spring.

  “I’d love to do that,” Corban says, his tone steering toward cajoling, “but her Ambien just kicked in. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but she recently lost her husband, and she’s not handling it very well.”

  Next door a light flips on, illuminating at least three silhouettes just outside. I blink, and the bodies slide into the shadows.

  Corban’s voice, when he speaks again, is cold as frozen concrete. “I see.”

  See what? I don’t see a thing. Is it Will outside my window? Where is he? I scan the windows, study Corban’s expression, but I don’t understand anything.

  Corban holds out the receiver, knocks it against my skull. “Tell the cops you’re fine, that this is all one big misunderstanding. Tell them I’m here as your guest and to get the fuck off your property.” When I can’t choke out an answer, he makes a disgusted sound. “Never mind, I’ll do it myself. Get the fuck off her property, assholes.”

  He chucks the receiver onto the floor and sighs. “It seems we have a little problem.”

  Under any other set of circumstances, Corban’s understatement might be amusing, but now his answer sucks some of the steam from my confusion. As far as I can tell, the house is surrounded by police, and Corban is looking at me like he doesn’t know what to do with me, which is not good. From where I’m sitting, there’s only one way out. A cornered man has nothing to lose. Whoever’s on the other side of that glass needs to shoot and do it now.

  But would the police do that? Would they shoot an unarmed man? As if Corban is thinking the exact same thing, he lifts both hands into the air and does a slow three-sixty before the window. Move along, folks, his smile seems to say. Nothing to see here.

  I notice every detail of what happens next in crisp, sharp focus. How the bullet hits the window with a hard pop, busting a neat hole in the center of the plate glass. How it whizzes past me with a breathy hiss, a spark of silver and air. How when it hits Corban, his head jerks back, and his blood and brain splatter like a Jackson Pollock painting on me and the wall. How the floorboards quake when his body hits the ground, a two-hundred-plus-pound solid mass of concrete bone and muscle.

  And then the back door exp
lodes open, a burst of wood and glass and boot, and an army of uniformed police swarm through. Their guns are drawn, and they’re aimed—every single one—at Corban.

  One of them drops to his knees and feels for a pulse, which may be standard procedure but, in this case, completely unnecessary. Corban’s eyes are open, but he’s missing a big chunk of his forehead.

  A female officer crouches next to me. “Ma’am, are you okay?” She runs her hands along my face and neck, her fingers probing into my shaking skin. When she pulls away, her hands are streaked with blood.

  “It’s n-not mine,” I say, but my teeth are chattering, and the words get swallowed up by all the yelling.

  A big, dark-haired man behind her is doing most of it. “Which one of you assholes fired?” His face is purple, and he’s screaming so hard, spittle sprays in a perfect arc from his mouth. “The suspect was unarmed. Who fired, goddammit?”

  The female officer ignores him, reaching around me for the afghan on the sofa and draping it around my shaking shoulders. “We need to warm you up. You’re in shock.” She twists around, yells into the room. “Can we get an EMT over here?”

  The EMTs trot up with a stretcher, but when they get a load of Corban leaking onto my floor, they slow down considerably. One of them breaks away, approaching me with a medical bag. He takes my blood pressure and checks my vitals while snippets of conversations float all around.

  The police set up a perimeter around the house, then hunkered down to wait.

  The hostage negotiator called Corban on the house line.

  The plan was to talk him down.

  The order was not to shoot.

  And yet Corban took one bullet to the left temple.

  No one here is claiming responsibility for firing it.

  The answer lurches me to my feet, and I spring over the coffee table, hurling myself through the bodies crowding the room. Hands grab at me, and I shake them off, sprinting out the back door.

  “Will!” The dogs start up again, and I yell it even louder. “Will!”

  I tear across my backyard to the fence, my head whipping back and forth, my gaze searching in the shadows. I’m frantic, wild and hysterical, desperate to find my husband, who I know—I know—is the one who fired the shot.

  I cup my hands and scream his name into the sky, even though I know he’s not here. By now, Will is long gone.

  The realization is like a kick to the gut, and I double over, wrapping both arms around my middle and wailing. Fury and frustration sweep over me in waves, gaining strength on the replay of tonight’s events.

  Strong hands clamp on to my shoulders and pull me up and back, turning me into a familiar embrace.

  “You’re okay,” Evan says, his big arms wrapping tightly around me. “I’ve got you.”

  30

  “Mrs. Griffith,” a female voice says. I look up from where my face is buried in Evan’s chest to see that it’s Detective Johnson standing at the edge of the grass, the detective we spoke to last week at the station. “We have some questions for you when you’re ready.”

  I’m not anywhere near ready. I’m still shaking all over, my muscles tense and slack at the same time, and I feel sick. An adrenaline hangover combined with horror and physical exhaustion. I grab Evan’s shirt in both fists and suck a lungful of crisp night air. The backyard spins. “I think I need to sit down.”

  Evan’s demeanor shifts in an instant, switching from friend and consoler to solemn lawyer mode. “My client needs a few moments to collect herself.”

  Detective Johnson locks eyes with me for the span of a couple breaths. “She’s got ten, but have her do it somewhere else. This backyard is an active crime scene, and y’all are contaminating it.”

  He gazes beyond her to the house, and the dozen or so officers swarming on the other side of the lit-up windows of my den, taking photographs and collecting evidence.

  “Let’s talk in my car,” he says, leading me to the side of the house.

  “That’s fine,” Detective Johnson calls out behind us, “but do not leave the premises. Ten minutes, Mr. Sheffield, and then I’m coming down there to get her. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  At the front of the house, a long line of police cars and ambulances stand silent and empty on the street, their blue and red lights swirling. A couple of cops stand in a huddle by the mailbox, holding back a pack of curious neighbors. They look up in surprise when they see us coming down the drive, and Evan gives them a quick rundown of the agreement. One of the cops squawks into his walkie-talkie, confirming Evan’s tale with Detective Johnson, then waves us on.

  “Don’t say a word until we’re in the car,” Evan mumbles.

  I press my lips together, letting him pack me into the passenger’s seat of his Range Rover. Once I’m in, he jogs around the front to his side, climbs in and slams the door.

  “Holy shit, Iris. Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you give me a sign?”

  “Because I was waiting for Will. I talked to him, Evan. He called me on the phone.”

  “Whose phone?” Evan doesn’t seem all that surprised, but he does look concerned.

  “My cell.”

  As I say the words, the realization hits, and I fumble for the phone in my pocket. Will called me, which means I have his number. I can call him back! I pull up the log and hit Redial on the top number. A few seconds later, three melodic beeps come down the line, then a recording in French that is slow and straightforward enough for me to get the gist. The number has been disconnected.

  “How can that be? He called me from this number just an hour ago.” I hit End, punch Redial, tears of fury and frustration building all over again when I get the same result. “Dammit!” I mash the buttons and try again.

  He wraps a palm over my hands, stilling them. “It’s okay. We’ll figure it out, okay? We’ll find him.”

  I nod, the movement fast and frantic, but the relief is instant. So far, Evan has done everything he’s said he would do and more. I release a breath, and my shoulders drop a good three inches. If he says he’ll help me find Will, Evan will help me find Will.

  Once Evan sees I’m calm, he settles back into his seat. “Okay. Tell me everything, starting the second I left.”

  The words come out as frenzied as I feel, jumbled and in spurts and starts, tumbling one over the next at breakneck speed. My story is all over the place, but Evan listens without interruption, without even an occasional nod. The entire time, his gaze never leaves my face.

  “Will shot Corban. I’m positive of it. He called the police, and when he saw they weren’t going to do it, Will took the shot himself.”

  “Will didn’t call the police, Iris. I did.”

  “What?”

  He swipes a hand down his face, his fingers digging into his beard, and nods. “After you handed me my wallet, I couldn’t shake the feeling there was something wrong. The whole way home I kept thinking I missed something, some signal you were trying to give me that things weren’t right. I was drifting when it came to me. Your alarm wasn’t on. Not when you answered the door, and not when you closed it. You didn’t arm the system.”

  “Because we were waiting for Will.”

  “So you said.”

  “What, you don’t believe me?”

  “No, I do. I do believe you, but if you’re right, if Will’s the one who pulled the trigger, that means he’s guilty of a lot more than just embezzlement. Assuming it wasn’t one of them, the police are going to treat Corban’s death as a murder. They’re going to put manpower behind finding his killer.”

  My mind is depleted by the night’s events, from trying to beat back my surging emotions like an exasperating game of Whac-A-Mole, so it takes more than a few seconds for Evan’s words to register. But when they do, when the magnitude o
f his meaning hits, it straightens my spine and skids my voice back into hysteria. “But that’s not right! Will killed Corban, because otherwise Corban would have killed me.”

  “Iris, Corban was unarmed.”

  “So? People can kill with their hands, especially when they’re attached to arms as big as Corban’s. And Will knew him. He knew what he was capable of.”

  “Calm down. I’m on your side, remember? And I’m glad as hell somebody shot that asshole before he laid a finger on you, but you need to slow down long enough to think about where the police are coming from. Especially once they learn Corban was here for the money. That gives Will motive. It makes what Will did murder.”

  Something heavy and unpleasant washes over me, and I realize with a start that it’s disappointment. Ridiculous. What was I expecting here, for Will to come home? For him to apologize and beg my forgiveness, for me to somehow find a way to give it to him, for us to pick up and move on as if nothing has happened? Beyond all the lies and betrayals Will carved into our marriage, five million dollars is still missing, and now there’s a man—a horrible, awful, despicable man—murdered. There’s no reset button on this thing.

  Evan’s gaze fishes over my shoulder and sticks. I twist on my seat to see Detective Johnson standing on my front stoop, watching us.

  “Her suspicions are already up,” Evan says, his gaze coming back to mine. “Whatever you tell her, she’s going to be looking for inconsistencies.”

  “Are you telling me to lie?”

  “Hell, no. I’m telling you to think long and hard about what you do say.”

  I give him a squinty look, thinking it still sounds an awful lot like the same thing.

  “You don’t have much time.” Detective Johnson must have given him a sign, because he nods over my shoulder. “Look, I’ll plead emotional exhaustion and shock, see if I can hold the big questions off for a day or two, but you’re still going to have to give her a statement tonight. She’s going to want the basics before she’ll release you.”