Triple Pass: An MFMM Reverse Harem Romance

by Sierra Sparks

  Blake rises through is chest, and beams as the sudden reality dawns on me.

  “Jasmine Glenn-Turner, you are under arrest for the murder of Carl Glenn. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…”

  It’s the way he winked at me that keeps me chilled half-way under my waist even after he’s long gone with me ahead of him and my door fully locked behind the one place I felt safe. The silver is tight round my wrists and the shame upon my face even tighter. Nothing beats walking across the halls of a five star hotel cuffed up and escorted away, with the softest fibers clothing you are of a bath robe.

  Why do I have to be so toxic? Here I was, thinking that my shit would all be pieced back together…but it’s not. What does he mean they found the murder weapon with my prints on it? Surely if it’s something from the house it’s bound to have them, right? But how…how and who and when and why…all these marks around my questions and no answers to fulfill their purpose…it angers me.

  Why would whomever killed Glenn do it? What do they have to gain from it? Is it for the money? For the power? Whatever the reason, or whoever it is, their end goal was for me to be framed for it. And so far, they’re winning this.

  Only Spencer knows I didn’t do this. Even Henrietta has a cloudy eye when she looks at me, and my son has no idea why I’m incarcerated and he’s living away from me. My love knows, and that, in an idea, gives me hope. The hope that I will never be apart from him again; the hope that the thing I am most afraid of, that Spence will suffer if I am thrown in jail, will get lost in the haven nightmares go to brood.

  I know it’s a foolish thing to have in plenty of or in little supply, but…it’s the only thing I’ve got.

  Chapter 17 – Spencer

  The house falls in creaky quiet and hushed squeaks. The night is young, but its age is to be questioned as the years go by. It is night, and the fall of the emerald winds calms the warm interior of the dilapidated crime scene. I am alone, as always riding on my own to catch a lead; anything that I can use to find the real killer.

  I started at the basement. Well, to be honest, I started at the hotel room. The receptionist was the stick-in-a-hole kinda guy, but a $50 tip made him sing. There was no need for a badge – I needed it as quiet as possible without raising the alarm. A simple name, different from the aliases I use, sufficed, and to be honest, I was quite lucky not to meet the same guy from the time I had escorted Jazz in.

  Through her door I searched the covers, the sweet smelling sheets she and I slept on a few hours before, even the slippers she had on before Blake took her away. There just had to be a shred of evidence that would not lie. I ruffled her bag. I checked her documents. In her personal effects I filtered.

  There was nothing. Nothing that could prove her innocence, or even trace her to the crime was in her possession. I left hurriedly after hearing sirens down below. On checking the ground floor as I ran down the fire escape, I could see a squad car and hear the rush of footsteps up the stairs. The asshole had made me.

  Back to the basement – down below, I found two beds, well, more like two cots. In one of them, was a very soft blanket, a teddy bear, two books on dinosaurs and a pair of glasses. The nightlight by the bed stand was enough proof whose room I was in. The other bed, a few corners apart, had a thin sheet and an empty bottle of wine at the foot of it. The smell of the sheets…nothing new. It had to have been Jasmine’s.

  The room, which had an eerie taste of brown to its color, smelled of roast peanuts and aged cardigans. The hearth at the far end of the dank room kept the place warm enough to survive the winter, and also to warm some water in a kettle. The metal contraption stood tall and black in the empty grate. Thinning air…that’s what stole my mind while I was there. All these years, while I partied and studied and traveled, she was there, in that room with a rat’s window for air at the very top of the back bricked wall.

  And with all that, struggling with another man’s son who clearly had no love lost on him.

  Even now, walking up the steps to the foot of the crime scene, I try to mince the thought of Jasmine having another man’s kid. Ha, she never took me the type to sleep with any other guy apart from me. Call me cocky, but that girl was mine and I was hers. Period. But times do change, and the people enjoying them follow suite. Even when we were together we spoke of having them, kids, for our own. Running in the back yard with noses full of ice cream and dirt, their mother making lemonade or reading up on a book by the canopy, and me grilling some cheese by the picket fence. A guy can dream, sue me, but so can a girl. So when I snuck into this really weird house a few hours ago to investigate this shit in my own, I was under the impression that I would find peace – and the murderer’s tracks.

  Jasmine’s innocence is too visible for me to ignore. The way she fell into me last night, crying as we fucked – the scars on her back and neck and feet and breasts had recent markings, and old ones too, giving me the chance to reminisce on the moment we booked her. There were a couple of cops who looked at her funny, and I mistook it for envy or malice. It was odd then, seeing how they were both female and having emotions towards a suspect. I did my own digging, but not before Bryce came in with Jasmine a few hours ago in cuffs, with a broad smile on his face. I would say it was a triumphant one even.

  “What are you doing, Young?’ I asked in his ear, amidst the claps from Alice and the gang.

  “What does it look like I’m doing Spencer? Booking the criminal in of course – didn’t you get the memo?”

  I hate it when his tone gets all melodramatic. Jasmine was quiet, avoiding my stare all the way.

  “Blake -”

  “Nah, listen golden boy. We found the murder weapon tucked away in that house, and her fingerprints are all over this. It’s an open and shut case boy – and…” he grabbed me closer by the ear and whispered “I advise you stay away from this case. Something tells me there’s more than meets the eyes between you two. For your sake, and hers, you better hope I never find out.”

  They creak. I hate floorboards. Why doesn’t the average American just go for tiles? It saves up on the tiles as well as the nights thinking about the creaking footsteps of intruders. Plus they’re really cool to slide on with socks on a warm Sunday.

  Okay, I digress. The house is clearly well maintained, from the dining room full of broken china to the kitchens with faucets unused. I know for a fact that this cannot be Jasmine’s doing. A woman who lives in the basement of her own house does no leave the rest of it spotless, unless it’s in a fairytale. She must have a nanny.

  The second floor is riddled with old clothes and the smell of bleach. Must have been the cleaning crew…but…the body was found on the third, not here. So…bleach? I mill around with my flashlight carefully, tactfully missing on getting close to any windows. Neighbors can be a burden when you’re trying to figure out a murder with no backup or approval from the department. Going solo – read rogue – is never good for an aspiring cop.

  A corner office, or study, hides around at the edge of my flashlight. The bleach smell is stronger as I walk along. I am praying against all that I stand for that the techies and EMTs cleared this when they moved the body, and that it’s nothing that could have been used against Jazz.

  The door fucking creaks open…

  Underwear. Piles of underwear – the ladies’ variety.

  Okay. So…on a desk, polished and glazed with the most expensive of liquor and pens, lies at the very least six pieces of undergarments. Laced thongs…Then I hear the voices, nay, moans.

  The door to my left, the white with black etchings in it, is slightly ajar. I push it open. Well call it Sunday and fuck me to hell…

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Seven girls, naked, scramble for the door. I move out of the way to avoid a collision by the gravy train – see what I did there? Clearly, an orgy was underway, and on closer inspection, the girls, who by now are on the front lawns, were hi
gh on something. Something really strong lying in a box on the carpet. My guess – bleach.

  Kids these days…they can get off on anything huh?

  They threw me off, but now I’m sure I’m all alone to my thoughts. The afternoon had been long, with me asking the two female cops who had been generous with their stares on Jazz what the deal was. My fear was confirmed.

  Over the past six years, Jasmine had been seen by the two cops over a hundred dozen times for complaints from neighbors. From an old coot living so close to them in a small and cozy chalet, Montoya and Kristy got called in on a noise complaint at the Glenn-Turner’s almost every week. And every time, Jasmine answered the door with a smile on her face, a bleeding nose and a split lip. “It was just a fall in the kitchen officers, I can get clumsy at times” or “The stairs were really slippery today” and her favorite “Must be the heat in the attic”.

  All the time, she never mentioned how brutal Carl was to her, trying her best to maintain a silence and a cover for her son to grow up in a sort-of-stable environment. I can get why she would be afraid to even talk about such abuse to anyone. If she got help, then who would win her son’s custody? She didn’t, and still does not for the hope of me, have the money to get the justice Carl would get behind closed doors. She would lose her son, her one true love in the cruelty of the world.

  I wish I would have warned her last night before we slept together, to tell her that they were coming for her, innocent or otherwise. Now, while I look for clues in places I know not, I fucking wish I was there in the morning to hide her away. Screw the law. Like it ever did anything for me or my father back then. He died in the line of duty, and more so in the line of fire. This same department, these same old files and desks are where he worked for justice. Where he slaved for years, trying his best to manage and maintain a family in the worst of odds. And they killed him for it.

  Ah well, that time will come, when I realize who did it and why. But tonight, in the burrows of the muddy underbelly of crime, I want to figure out why Jasmine is still our only suspect. If she did kill Carl Glenn, then I know for a fact that it was in self-defense. The tenderness in that woman is enough to birth a butterfly out of a cocoon. She’s become a victim for all the wrong reasons – twice – because I wasn’t there for her.

  Third floor – where the mystery ends and begins. It stinks of treason, the highest of all orders. In here is where the body was found two nights ago by a drunk and disheveled Jasmine. She ran downstairs, thinking an intruder was in the house, and dialed 911. The first thing she mentioned was the presence of someone else in the house, but later mentioning that her husband was lying upstairs in a pool of his own shit and blood. Then I came in after a few hours and here I am, at the start of it all.

  The markings are still fresh on the carpet. It’s cold and unmoving, and the moonlight is clear from where I’m standing. This is where Carl was stitched. The carpet is stained crimson, and markers around the frame still shine yellow. The room smells of sex, the old and skanky kind, like it’s emanating from the walls themselves. I can take a wild guess and suppose that this is where Carl cheated on Jazz constantly with his prostitutes.

  Then comes my hypothesis. Conjecture – what if one of the women who slept with Carl conspired against him and hired some professional help? It wouldn’t be the first time to hear of it. Or suppose Carl stabbed himself and took the weapon inside his person? There was a case three years ago of a man who shanked himself in the neck repeatedly with a chicken bone after he was laid off from work. The coroner found it in his rectum after the post mortem.

  Whatever happened here, I can feel the energy of a set up.

  Blake took Jasmine in because he felt it was the right thing to do. I wouldn’t even blame the man. He needs a win too. Jasmine can’t say anything because no one will believe a word she says. I’m the only one who understands what she’s going through right now, given that she’s going to sleep in a cell. Fuck…

  They’ve shut me off from the case. The Chief has dis suspicions of my involvement, given the history on file; Jasmine and I grew up in the same place, and I can bet my chicken nugget stash that he knew Harvey Turner.

  The crime scene has shown me all I needed to know. I should leave and make the necessary arrangements. No neighbors have seen me, and I should breathe easy; no one will be the wiser, maybe just those weird and horny lesbians taking a ride in a crime scene. Ha-ha, I guess the thrill can come from anywhere if you look deep for it.

  There is a patrol car outside, surfing for any intruders. Lucky fir me I know the place a little too well. There are bushes untended in the back, and they smell of pup poo. Yeesh.

  I’m on the other side, and I walk casually, keeping my brim low and my tail coat tight. It’s a cold night out here, and even colder for men and women with no one to hold on to for hope. I hear a child crying in a home on my left. There are fairy lights on the eastern wall, calming and benign. The softest cry and the calming hush of the parents warm my heart as I clamber my way home. Maybe someday Jasmine and I could still have a child, and who knows – maybe even two.

  For Jasmine…this nightmare should be over soon. I must.

  Chapter 18 – Jasmine

  Some things in life are not meant for most people. In homes, most people are never meant to even commit to be parents. They abuse their children and spouses, either physically or verbally. In schools, most fools are not meant to be teachers, and neither are some students. Countries rise and fall as a result of hard men and women who try to be in positions they are not meant to be in, and never will. It’s all a game, and in this round, I made a bad bet.

  Life shouldn’t be this cold. Here, in this metal box, caged like a bird never set to spruce its wings in the summer’s air. Things could have been so different back then, if only I could have listened. Not to my father, of course, or to the frightfully big bullies at Crimson High, or even at the butcher’s while getting Spencer’s old dog, Macbeth, some chops for the night…no, I should have listened to the still voice that belonged to my mother.

  She always warned, always came to me in my dreams, telling me the wrongs and rights I had done, was doing, and was to do. I took I as a means for my brain to cope with my loneliness, tucked away at the base of my mind, deep in my subconscious. In a way she was always there, fair in blonde hair and hindsight. She had always blessed the union I had with Spencer, and she treasured it all the way. In one way, more than some in most nights, she told me of a night she feared more than the day she always lost me – the night she would never have me in her dreams as well.

  “Move over ya runt!” growls one of the biggest women I have ever seen in my life. She has a plethora of tattoos all over her breasts, and enough muscle around her groin to squeeze the life out of any living being that came close to taking a whiff of the ol’ honey pot.

  I move over, hurriedly. There is no way I want to start something I doubt I will ever finish. And besides, there are more of them in here than there are me. By me, I mean the only chick dressed in yellow. My bath robe was not cutting it, and so the good and healthy bureaucrats lent me the county jail attire. It fits surprisingly well by the way.

  The rest of them are in the corners. One of them talks in hushed tones to herself. I guess she’s mad or crazy, or convincing herself that she’s not a loaf of cornbread. Only the bug surly mother of all ink is seated next to the grills.

  It’s a quiet night, and how unfortunate it is to have memory like mine. Last night was the best I have ever had in over eight years, and in a snap of fate, it was all taken away. Spencer, the one man who knows how to get down and dirty inside of me, was the one shield that could keep the monsters at bay. I felt…trust. I still feel it. But the longer this bitch snarls at me, the more the deep bond with him gets lost in the wind.

  I try my best to fall asleep, but coming and going from the plane of dreams to this harsh reality is as far as I can go. I see Bryce playing with Carl’s head as a du-du doll, and Spencer eating me out upsi
de down…

  Morning comes swiftly. Only the crazy lady at the corner didn’t sleep. I open my eyes to see her still mumbling to herself. The rest of us are groggy to the sounds of the clanging metal on the sides.

  “Rise and shine ya ingrates!” yells the puckered up lady in fatty skin, spitting her daily rounds with the help of her trusty little metal friend. If this is the morning call…

  “Ohey you – tiny one in tha yellow! Ye have a visitor,” she pries.

  “Me?” I ask, fumbling upon the sudden news. If Spencer has come to visit me, then his entire career is over.

  “Did I stutter?” she menacingly grits. I rise up and stumble. My legs haven’t seen this long without activity. Even the blows from Carl helped me with my blood flow. Damn, I’ve gotten this morbid? Ha-ha, I guess it all comes in spades.

  “Open tha main-sail,” she spits. A buzz rockets through the air, and the cell grates clink open. They slam into the wall hard, and the echo resounds. “This way lollipop.”

  I follow behind the massive and sweaty back that stinks of feminine hygiene gone wrong. The hallways are surprisingly squeaky clean, and the walls timidly fresh. She leads me to an official looking door. It has the kind of glass you could only find in a bathroom, so that you can only see faded images of people on the other side, and vice versa. She opens it. I walk through. I look at her. She nods and locks the door behind her. I can see her massive flesh wait by the end of the knob.

  The dick in blue, the shining armor from hell; Ray Duncan sits across the metal table all smiling. His sinister eyes speak of nothing but greed.

  “What are you doing here Duncan?” I ask, letting myself on the uncomfortably low seat.

  He smiles and places his hands on the table. Must be a $5000 watch if I’m not wrong. Dad always raised me badly enough to know the difference between knock offs and the real deal. This, unfortunately, is the real deal.