by J. D. Mason
“And then Eddie got up off him, saw the gun, and picked it up.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “He pointed it at him.” She paused. “And shot him.”
Quentin stared at her so hard that she felt like he’d burn a hole through her. “Price picked up the gun and pointed it at the unconscious man, stood over him, and shot him?”
All she could do was nod.
“What did you do?”
Quentin’s question gave her pause. “I-I couldn’t believe he’d done it. I think I covered my mouth to keep quiet. I might’ve cried. I’d never seen anyone get shot before.”
“And when you saw him pointing the gun at the man, before he’d shot him, did it occur to you to say anything or to try to stop him?”
Marlowe was shocked by the question. “I was scared to death! How’d I know he wouldn’t shoot me, too?”
“You’re his wife, Marlowe. Why would you think he’d shoot you?”
“I didn’t know. I didn’t know what he’d do. I just … I had just watched him beat a man to a bloody mess and then pick up a gun to kill him. What was to stop him from killing me, too?”
Quentin didn’t believe her. She could see it in his eyes. He thought she’d made this whole thing up.
“What happened next?”
She shook her head. “As soon as he’d done it, I crouched down on the floor and tried not to make any noise.” She sniffed and swiped tears from her face. “The next thing I knew, I heard the key in the front door.”
“It was Price?” he asked, confused.
“Yeah. I was still in the kitchen, on my knees behind the breakfast counter, and I heard him run up the stairs.”
“And what did you do?”
“There’s a storage closet in the kitchen. I crawled over to it and hid.” She looked shamefully at him. “A few minutes later, I heard him coming back down the stairs and then the front door open and close again. I waited until I heard the car start up, and then I crept into the living room to make sure he was leaving.”
“Did he leave?”
“I didn’t see him at first. He wasn’t in the car, but then I saw him coming from around the side of the house dragging that man from the backyard to his car”—she swallowed—“and put him in the trunk.”
Saying it now, she still couldn’t believe it. If she didn’t know better, Marlowe would’ve thought she’d dreamed that whole thing.
“A few minutes later, he drove off,” she said, sighing and locking gazes with Quentin. “That’s the last time I saw my husband.”
Marlowe sighed, but that sick feeling in her stomach worsened. She’d told the truth this time, but deep down, she knew that she’d probably told it too late and sealed her own terrible fate. She waited while Quentin scribbled on that pad of paper.
Fresh Poison
WHO NEEDS CNN AND MSNBC when you’ve got Twitter?
#MarlowePrice-Blink, Texas, police will officially question Mrs. Price about her husband’s alleged murder today at one.
Plato half expected people to show up here wearing 3-D glasses and eating popcorn. Reporters from various news stations, Confederate-flag wavers, women’s rights activists, and every other type of citizen that you could think of showed up at the police station armed with angry words, cameras, and judgment for the woman. You’d think she was accused of killing the pope instead of some shady bigamist businessman.
Unlike the other people here, Plato hadn’t come to see Marlowe Price. He’d come to see if Ed Price might come to see Marlowe Price. He’d come to see if Lucy Price might show up here. Was there anyone in this crowd of lunatics who had come here for any other reason than to see a freak show? Someone with a vested interest in this woman’s fate and not just an angry curiosity, or an opportunity to voice an opinion that really didn’t matter because it came from nobody who was anybody? Half an hour later, Marlowe emerged from that building, and the crowd converged on her so quickly that he lost sight of her.
“Did you do it, Marlowe?”
“Don’t waste our tax dollars! Die, bitch! Death penalty!”
“Guilty! I don’t know why they just don’t go ahead and arrest your ass!”
“Why’d you do it? You could’ve just divorced him!”
“Has the other Mrs. Price reached out to you, Marlowe? Have you spoken to the real Mrs. Price?”
She looked like a goddess even in a sea of monsters. She walked briskly with her head up, defiant and brave, wearing aviator sunglasses, a form-fitting T-shirt, jeans cuffed at the ankles, and high-heeled shoes. Marlowe pushed through that crowd, alone, fighting for each and every step to get to her car parked in the lot across the street, while dutiful and dedicated police officers stood back and watched. Plato didn’t like this. He didn’t like it at all. But he was a man. And even though he’d never had many opportunities to put it to use, Plato had been born with a chivalry gene buried in the deep recesses of him somewhere, and like a hidden superpower, he began to resurrect the damn thing.
Someone pushed her, she stumbled, and that’s when all hell really broke loose.
Marlowe cursed. “Don’t put your hands on me!” She swung that big-ass purse of hers through the air, causing half the crowd to rear back to avoid being hit.
“You almost hit me!” an angry woman shouted.
Marlowe’s hand came out of nowhere, and she almost slapped that woman’s face. The man behind the woman roared some obscenity, then drew back his fist, aimed at Marlowe.
“Hit me, mother fucker!” Marlowe yelled hysterically at him.
Plato bulldozed his way through the crowd, nearly knocking people over. Marlowe had swung that purse of hers back over her head and was about to hurl it again, when Plato snatched it from her and glared at the man threatening to throw that punch, and he quickly recoiled. Smarter than he looked? Plato wrapped his arm around Marlowe’s waist and carried her, kicking and cussing, back to his car half a block away.
She started swinging at him when he put her down on the ground again, landing a few blows to his chest and arms.
He swung open the passenger door. “Get in the gotdamned car, Marlowe!” he commanded, lowering his head until his face was mere inches from hers.
She froze at the sight of him. The crowd began to gather around them. “Either you get in or I’ll put you in my damn self,” he said, putting his lips to her ear. “Now.”
Plato drove the getaway car, half expecting those sorry-ass cops to chase him down and drag her back to the station and plant her back where he’d found her. But he respected the speed limit, the laws, and didn’t peel out of that scene like he was being chased by zombies.
He glanced at Marlowe just as she was wrapping a string of rosary beads around her wrists. She turned to face the window and then raised the beads to her lips and kissed them when she thought he wasn’t looking. Was she crying? He drove in silence and listened. Yep. He distinctly heard a sob. Women and tears. In most circumstances, he didn’t give a damn about a crying woman. But in this case … this was different. She was afraid or remorseful or mad or pleading. She was sad. Women and sad tears were a whole other thing. What do you say? What do you do? He sighed. Nothing.
Plato came to a corner near a park and stopped at the stop sign. The passenger door suddenly swung open, and Marlowe bolted.
“Where the hell you going?” he asked, getting out, too.
Marlowe stopped in the middle of the park, dug deep down into that purse of hers, and pulled out a pink device and pointed it at him. “What do you want with me?” she asked, terrified.
He stopped and scratched his head. “What the hell is that?”
“Bring your ass over here and find out,” she dared him.
He gave her the side eye. “Didn’t I just save your life?”
Marlowe did something odd, odder than jumping out of the car of the man who’d just saved her from an unruly mob. She pressed her free hand to her stomach, pursed her lips together, and moaned.
“Are you all right?” he asked as she to
ok a step back.
“You just stay away from me,” she demanded again.
He was confused as he watched her visibly inhale, bite down on her lower lip, moan, and seductively move her hand from her stomach, down to the broad curve of her hip, and finally slid it sensuously down her thigh. She gasped and literally shuddered. Marlowe stared back at him with eyes wide with confusion.
“What did you do?” she whispered, her lips trembling. “What did you do to me?”
That shit was erotic, and obviously, she was crazy. There was no other explanation for this woman’s erratic behavior. She was that crazy hoodoo woman who likely snapped one night, put a bullet in Price’s head, and set his ass on fire using a spell! And then, she flew home on a broomstick and forgot it ever happened. Maybe she didn’t need to get back into his car after all. But that damn chivalry thing kicked in, to his dismay.
“I can’t just leave you stranded, Marlowe,” he said, cursing himself out in his mind. “Let me at least give you a ride home.”
That hand of hers traced an invisible line back up to her stomach. She trembled again and slowly shook her head. “Don’t.” She swallowed. “You can’t touch me again,” she said breathlessly.
He raised both hands in surrender. “Never again.”
Plato backed away from her until he was back on his side of the car and climbed inside. Cars pulled up behind the two of them and drove around them until she got back in, closed the door, and Plato could finally get out of that intersection. And he decided right then and there that chivalry was overrated, underappreciated, and too damn risky.
Fifteen minutes later, Plato stopped at the corner of the road leading to her house. The place was packed with reporters and people who looked a lot like the crowd they’d just left at the police station.
“Do you want to deal with that?” he asked, knowing the answer as he’d asked the question.
She shook her head. “No,” she said quietly.
“Is there somewhere else you can go?”
Marlowe reached for her purse and pulled out her cell phone, selected a number to call, and then put the phone to her ear. “It’s me, Shou.”
He didn’t hear what the other person was saying, but from the expression on Marlowe’s face, it wasn’t good. “They at Belle’s, too?” Marlowe sighed. “Naw,” she said, disappointed. “I’ll be fine. I’ll call you later.” She hung up.
Marlowe just sat there, and it was obvious that she wasn’t exactly “fine” like she’d said she was.
“I can get you a room at the hotel,” he offered.
The woman’s life was under siege, and he couldn’t even begin to understand what that must’ve felt like.
“I’ve got money,” she snapped impatiently.
“Then you can get you a room at the hotel.”
She nodded.
Clear a Space
ON THE WAY TO HER hotel room, they stopped at his room on the second floor. Plato went in and then came back out and held out to her one of his T-shirts and an extra travel pack of toothpaste and a brush. Marlowe eyed his offering with suspicion.
“Is it clean?” she asked, referring to his shirt.
It wasn’t that it looked soiled, but he was tricky. Just his touch had sent waves through her body unlike anything she’d ever experienced before, and if he’d worn that shirt, and then she were to put it on? Lord! She’d probably turn into a puddle.
He raised the shirt to his face and sniffed. Then he sniffed it again and held it out to her again. “Probably.”
She couldn’t tell if he was being serious or sarcastic, but Marlowe had a fix for this, either way. So she took his shirt and his travel pack.
Marlowe’s room was on the floor above his. As soon as the door closed behind her, she stripped out of all her clothes, crawled onto the bed, and fell apart.
“You must think I’m a fool, Marlowe,” Quentin Parker had told her at the end of his questioning.
“It’s the truth, Quentin,” she’d said earnestly. “I swear it is.”
“You’ve had nearly a month to come up with this story,” he’d said, staring hard at her. “I might’ve believed it if you’d told me when I first asked you when was the last time you’d seen your husband, but you come up with this shit a month later?”
Hope can sink like a rock, and hers was sinking fast. “I was afraid to say anything.”
“Afraid of what? Who? Afraid of me?” he’d asked, surprised.
“Of Eddie.”
She’d been a such a fool for not telling this story to Quentin before, but back then, Marlowe had just seen her husband beat a man nearly to death and then shoot him in the face like he did things like that every day.
“I don’t know, Quentin,” she said sorrowfully. “Of everything. The next morning, Eddie’s car was gone, he was gone, that man in my yard was gone, and I’d hoped that it was over. That I’d never have to talk about it and that I could forget I ever knew him.”
So far, all the evidence that could possibly implicate Marlowe was weak and circumstantial. Even her omission of what she’d seen that night wasn’t enough for them to arrest her, but it didn’t make her look innocent either.
She must’ve been in that shower a good half hour, maybe forty-five minutes, before thinking that she’d washed herself raw. But she was tainted with the sludge that had become her life and could never seem to feel clean again. Eddie had turned it upside down with his lies and his killing, and maybe even his death. For all she knew, someone could’ve gotten ahold of him, shot him, and set his ass on fire. But she was convinced that the man found in Eddie’s car was the man he’d shot in the yard.
Marlowe was getting as famous as Beyoncé but for all the wrong reasons. People she’d grown up around all of a sudden wanted her in prison for supposedly killing a man that they didn’t even know. She and Eddie had been married for seven months before he disappeared, and he’d spent more time out of town than in, and when he was in, he didn’t go much farther than the front porch or backyard. But he was white. She was black. If that didn’t have something to do with how these people felt about her, she’d be surprised.
To top it all off, Marlowe had her own personal devil sitting on her shoulder. She was still wrapped in her towel after getting out of the shower, standing at the foot of the bed and staring down at the T-shirt he’d let her borrow. Marlowe had unfolded it without actually touching it and laid it flat on the bed with her rosary beads and cross on top of it. It looked freshly washed, and it probably was, but just to be safe, she twisted the cap off a small vial, held it out in front of her, and closed her eyes.
“I cover you in the blood of Jesus,” she murmured three times before sprinkling several drops of holy water on the garment.
For a moment, she thought that the water might make it burst into flames, but when it didn’t, she surmised that this shirt had not been on his body and that it was in fact clean. Marlowe recapped her vial, set it aside, and slipped that big shirt of his over her head.
Damn, why’d he have to touch her? When she saw that it was him who’d pulled her out of that crowd, an electric jolt shot through her like lightning and wrapped around her spine. The place on her stomach where he’d put his hand had felt warmer than the rest of her. It was as if he’d left a fever in that part of her body that snaked down to … She didn’t want to think about it. He was strong, though. Picked her up like she was nothing, and Marlowe weighed a good one fifty, maybe one sixty, but he’d snatched her up with one arm and carried her half a block to his car. He wasn’t even out of breath when he’d put her down.
Suddenly, she rubbed her ear, the one he’d whispered into before she’d gotten inside the car. It was warm, too, warm like his breath had been.
“Stop it,” she commanded herself, clasping her hands together.
She’d washed every part of herself, three times, so the remnants of him should’ve been gone. It was just like in her dream, though, the part she’d purposely decided not to dwell on, so ther
e was no reason for her to dwell on it now, and she shook loose the thought before it took hold.
How could she have been stupid enough to fall for Eddie and all his lies? Hindsight was a bitch, and all of a sudden, it slammed so hard against her that it left her feeling light-headed.
“I travel most of the time,” he’d explained. “Turns out I’m more comfortable in a hotel room than I am in my own home.”
“Why is that?”
“Home is lonely,” he’d admitted. “I’ve got a big house with no one in it except me.”
Eddie had told her bits and pieces about his dead wife.
“The two of you never had kids?” Marlowe had probed. Surely a man his age who had been married for as long as he had been had kids.
“We tried. We even thought about adopting, but…” He’d shrugged.
Marlowe was alone, too. She’d been married, but the marriage only lasted a few months. She understood loneliness, but unlike him, she’d found a way to embrace and even relish hers. It wasn’t until Marjorie died that she found that hollow place in her soul. Her twin had passed away three months before she’d met Eddie, and without realizing it at the time, she was looking for somebody to fill that space. He just happened to show up at the right time.
“What about other family?” she’d asked. “Parents? Brothers, sisters, nieces, and nephews?”
“My parents died ten years ago in a car accident,” he’d explained. “I was the only kid they had.”
Marlowe had been a fool, and the penalty for it was costing her more than she’d bargained for, and she didn’t know how much more of this she could take.
It was just past eight in the evening, and all she wanted to do was close her eyes and sleep, but a knock at the door let her know that that wouldn’t be happening, at least not yet.
He stood there, looking like some oversized kid holding a large pizza box and a six-pack of beer, with a stupid smirk on his face.
“You gotta eat,” he said matter-of-factly.
