The Real Mrs. Price

by J. D. Mason

  Plato’s job was a dangerous one. Lives ended and he’d been fortunate that one of those lives hadn’t been his own. They paid him well. He lived well, and every now and then, one of these jobs landed him a nice consolation prize, and deep in his heart, he hoped that Marlowe Price would offer up a lovely little souvenir for him to take with him when he concluded his business here, a memory. That’s all. A single one. The one he’d been fantasizing about ever since he’d laid eyes on her. The one where he’d make it a point to get down on his knees and pay heartfelt and earnest homage to the altar of her lovely thighs.

  * * *

  “My compliments to the chef.” Plato smiled at the pretty woman refilling his glass with cool, sweet iced tea.

  But there was something about the way she refused to look him in the eyes. There was something about the way she struggled against the trembling in her hands. There was something about the vibe that she gave him, warning him that he left her feeling uneasy. Belle was her name. He had heard people call her that.

  “Thank you,” she said, clearing her throat and repeating the sentiment again before walking away.

  The steak was tender enough to almost melt in his mouth. He’d have to remember this place and come back again when his business here was finished. Before coming here this evening, Plato had made a call to that invisible and nameless associate of his, the computer guru who knew how to find anything on anyone with the touch of a few buttons. Edward Price was like a ghost in the wind, but it was the wind that carried that mother fucker’s stench.

  “I’ll take anything you’ve got,” Plato had told that associate of his over the phone.

  “Which isn’t much.” He’d sighed. “The wife recently purchased a plane ticket, though.”

  “Which wife?” Plato had asked. “He has two.”

  “Seriously?” The way he’d asked the question made that kid sound even younger than Plato had given him credit for. “Well, the one in Colorado. She bought a ticket to Dallas, Texas, a week ago.”

  Plato had waited patiently for the kid to continue.

  “More?”

  “Yes,” Plato had responded.

  “She has a recent credit card transaction that might be of some use,” he’d explained. “To an agency called Medlock Investigations.”

  Plato had frowned. “Wasn’t that a TV series?”

  “What?”

  “Andy Griffith?”

  Silence.

  Plato had shaken his head. Of course this kid had been too damn young to remember that old detective show. “Never mind,” he’d said, hanging up.

  Some of the best food he’d ever eaten had been in places nobody had ever heard of. Plato took his time with this meal, savoring every bite and relishing the nuances of the attention put into grilling this steak. You never rush through the things that matter. He’d learned that a long time ago.

  Marlowe Price. Admittedly, she’d made an unexpected impact. Beautiful women had a tendency to be impactful. Since meeting her yesterday, he found himself thinking about her a little too often. But hell. He was human. In his line of work, the commodity of a woman’s company was, well, a commodity. The act of sex itself was a necessary pleasure that he indulged in every chance he got, but never to distraction.

  In the meantime, he had her husband to find. Lucy Price was making this interesting. If she was flying into Dallas, he doubted seriously that she’d stop there. Even if Marlowe didn’t know where Ed was, or even if he was alive, there was nothing to confirm that Lucy was as clueless as Marlowe claimed to be. Thankfully, she was coming to him. Maybe he’d underestimated the complexity of this issue. What if both women knew where he was? And what if both women were helping to keep him hidden? Did one of these women know about the other? Did neither know about the other? It was a quandary that was starting to look a lot like a bowl of noodles. Plato knew better than to let his thoughts get tangled up into a mass of what-ifs. Find Ed Price. That was the only job he had. Keep it simple. Find Ed Price. Get those PINs from him. And move on.

  Forty-five minutes later, Plato was back in his hotel room, standing underneath the stream of hot, running water in his shower. As hard as he’d tried, he couldn’t turn off the thoughts flashing in his mind of Marlowe Price. What was it about her that consumed him so? On the surface, his attraction for her was obvious. Marlowe was a full woman, round and compact, robust in the places that mattered for a man with tastes like his.

  The water felt good. Plato gingerly rubbed soap over his expanding dick, allowing his mind to indulge in fantasy. Fucking a woman like that demanded patience. He would have to lure her in, get her to trust him enough to want to get close to him on purpose. He’d unwrap her like a gift, exercising patience in anticipation of what he would discover when it was all said and done.

  It would start with a kiss. He’d coax her down on her back, balance his body over hers, and gradually lower himself until his lips met hers. Sex, the best kind, began with tongues and the mating of mouths. A woman’s whole body demands kisses, though, and he’d know better than to ignore her breasts. Marlowe’s back arched as he covered one erect nipple with his mouth and drew long strokes of his lips against one and eventually the other. Her legs spread wide, inviting him in. Plato’s dick throbbed against the sticky wet lips of sweet pussy. She’d guide him with her hand, begging him to put it in.

  Thick thighs pressed against his sides. A man his size has to be careful with a woman. He has to be mindful that if he loses control, if he lets go completely, he can hurt her. Marlowe invites all of him into her, and Plato grinds and pushes and pulls. Slow, deep, stroking and stroking. She cries out. But he doesn’t stop. He can’t stop! And he won’t! Not until …

  “Shiiiiiiiit!” he hissed in the shower as he fired off a massive load. “Ahhh!” Plato stroked feverishly until he’d spent every last drop and then leaned back against the wall, disappointed that when it was all said and done, it was just him and his right hand.

  After drying off, Plato lay naked across the bed recalling details of his conversation with the second Mrs. Price, hoping to find clues in what she did and didn’t say.

  “They say he’s dead. I say he ain’t here.”

  She had a way with words, with her delivery of them that was almost whimsical. Full, soft, and pretty lips wrapped around every consonant and syllable to distraction.

  “Focus, man,” he muttered to himself. Plato removed her lips from the equation.

  “I say he ain’t here.”

  He wasn’t dead to her, and she’d made it a point to be sure that Plato knew that.

  Never, Ever Break Down

  “MARLOWE PRICE?”

  “Yes?” she responded guardedly.

  “My name is Roman Medlock.”

  “You a reporter? I don’t talk to reporters.”

  “No. I’m not a reporter, I’m a private investigator.”

  “I don’t talk to the police either,” she said curtly.

  “Then it’s a good thing I’m not the police,” he interjected. “I’ve been hired by Lucille Price to look into what may have happened to her … to Ed Price.”

  Silence came from the other end of the phone, and Roman figured that he had nothing to lose at this point, so he might as well just ask the question.

  “Would it be possible to sit and talk with you about Ed Price?”

  “What do you want to know?” she asked defensively.

  “We’d rather talk in person, Mrs. Price.”

  “‘We’?”

  Roman sighed, but not loud enough for her to hear him. “Lucy Price would like to meet with you.”

  Again, Marlowe was silent.

  “We plan on flying into Dallas day after tomorrow, renting a car, and driving to Blink. We’d just like a few minutes of your time. That’s all.”

  It was so quiet on the other end of the phone that Roman thought she’d hung up. “Mrs. Price?” He waited, pulled the phone away from his ear to make sure he still had a connection. She was there, u
nderstandably at a loss for words. “Aren’t you curious, Marlowe? Aren’t you curious about Lucy Price?”

  “You don’t need to come here to talk to me about what happened to Eddie because I don’t know what happened to him.”

  He understood that if she had actually killed the man, it wasn’t like she was going to tell Roman or Lucy. “Then can we just talk about him? Your marriage to him? How you two met? Lucy is just looking for answers,” he explained. “That’s all. Just like I’m sure that you have questions that you need for her to answer.”

  He was in no position to demand anything from this woman, so he played the only card he had and the only one that might land him an audience with Marlowe. “He used you both. Even if he is dead, he’s not the victim here, Marlowe. But you and Lucy are. He lied to both of you, and I think that it would serve the two of you to confront this, to meet, and to get the answers you need that only the other can provide, for closure if for no other reason.”

  That was the best damn speech he’d given in a very long time.

  After a long pause, she finally responded.

  “Come by at one,” she finally said. “I assume that since you have my number, you also have my address?”

  “Yes.”

  Marlowe abruptly hung up.

  Most of the cases that Roman had been hired for were driven by the fear of infidelity. People who suspected that their spouses were being unfaithful wasted their money and hired guys like Roman to prove them right. He’d always figured that if you suspected that it was true in your gut, to go with that instinct and get a divorce or whatever. This case was compelling. Not only did he have to contend with the cheating scandal, but there was murder and money involved, making this the kind of case that unfolded like one of those movies he used to watch on television as a kid. The trick for him was keeping his shit together long enough to see it through to the end.

  Was he born an addict, or did he just grow into one? For some reason, that question had gnawed at him ever since he had that come-to-Jesus moment and admitted that he was a drug addict, which shocked the hell out of everybody who knew him, because Roman never looked the part. Drug addicts, at least those defined by him and the rest of his privileged social circle, were strung-out junkies, living in flophouses, sleeping on dirty mattresses, sharing needles, sex, and food, slobbering and frothing at the mouth. That’s not what he was.

  Roman had a house in suburbia, a wife and two kids, a dog, and he drove an SUV. He went to work every day. Showed up on time, looking sharp in his uniform, anxious to get out there to protect and serve the public and catch the bad guys. He never considered himself one of those bad guys. But he bought drugs from them.

  His story wasn’t all that original. It was cliché, actually, to a fault. Roman had gotten shot in the hip one night walking up on a guy robbing a convenience store. The irony was that Roman was off duty and only there to get a gallon of milk. The guy rushed past him a little too quickly, and Roman’s intuition kicked in.

  He called after the guy. “Hey!”

  The guy turned and fired.

  It was a dumb move on Roman’s part, but when you believe that you’re Superman and get away with believing it for so long, you’re going to slip up and make that one mistake that’ll cost you.

  A bullet to the hip took him down for a while, but he lived. A little reconstructive surgery, a few months off from the job, some rampant emotions—everything from being happy to be alive to boredom to feeling a little sorry for himself—and toss in a little Vicodin, and you have what amounts to a perfect storm in the making of a prescription-drug addict. Or maybe just the awakening of one. Plenty of people had been in his situation or something close to it and come out on the other side, free and clear of the need to get and keep that perfect high. Roman couldn’t help wondering if he’d had that switch in him all along, just waiting to be flipped.

  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

  SHOU SHOU 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, irr
itated. “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?”