The Real Mrs. Price

by J. D. Mason

  Roman thought for a moment. “Either he was with him or maybe he was there looking for him. Ed wasn’t planning on leaving town the day he left you. It’s likely that he didn’t tell Tom that he was leaving. If they were partners in this, then it could’ve caused a problem.”

  * * *

  Roman insisted on coming back to the house with Lucy and even did a cursory walk-through to give her peace of mind. She walked him to the door when he’d finished.

  “Lock it up tight,” he told her, standing less than a foot away from her. “I think you’ll be fine.”

  Maybe she would be fine, but she certainly didn’t want to be alone. “I wish you’d stay.”

  Roman looked uncomfortable all of a sudden. Then he looked like a sucker who’d fallen for the wide-eyed-batting-pouty thing that she’d learned to do to get her way when she was five.

  “I could sleep on the couch,” he said, staring over her shoulder at the sofa.

  Lucy sighed, relieved. “No, I’ve got a spare room.”

  “No. The couch is fine.”

  She didn’t press him, and she didn’t want to make it as big a deal out loud as it really was. “I’ll get blankets and a pillow,” she said, quickly hurrying up the stairs. A few minutes later, she returned.

  “I really appreciate this, Roman,” she said anxiously.

  “No problem.” He smiled.

  Her emotions had her on edge. Lucy was a barbed-wire mess of fear, anxiety, dread, and panic. Suddenly, she lurched at him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him, then drew back just as abruptly and took a step back.

  “Sorry,” she said quickly. “Sorry.”

  To say that she was embarrassed was an understatement, but all this pent-up crap inside her had just exploded all over that man, and he looked absolutely dumbfounded.

  “I’m just…” Tears welled up in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Roman.”

  Roman took a step toward her, cradled her face in his hands, and lowered his lips to hers for a much tenderer and more affectionate kiss than the one she’d assaulted him with. Lucy melted in his hands, sighed, and pressed her body to his. When he finished, both of them were speechless. He had turned a deep shade of red, and he stepped back away from her like she had the cooties.

  “Good night, Lucy,” he said without looking at her.

  She backed away slowly before turning and going upstairs to bed.

  * * *

  We admitted that we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable.

  * * *

  Roman recalled the first of the twelve steps from the Narcotics Anonymous program to mind as he lay on that sofa, trying not to think about that kiss. He had admitted, privately and openly, that he was powerless over his addiction and that his life had become unmanageable a year ago. It had taken him losing absolutely everything for him to finally admit that he needed help—his wife, home, job. His kids.

  It was easier to make it through the day without feeling anything, without connecting to anyone, without remembering. Lucy was a beautiful woman, and she was tempting. Roman’s daily practice consisted of dismembering himself a little each day, removing himself from anything that threatened his stability, his routine. He was a robot, but it worked for him. That kiss threatened to derail him. He’d failed and given in to the temptation of it, and it left him shaken and off balance. And the last thing he needed was to ever be off balance again.

  Emotion was the enemy. It left the door open for opportunity to creep in and give him some excuse to slip up and go back to his old ways. He lay there, listening to the sound of the water running in the shower upstairs, trying not to think about her naked and wet. Roman hadn’t been with a woman in a long time. Lucy’s mouth was warm, her breasts, pressed against him, soft, and he would’ve cut off an arm just to be able to lie in bed next to her and just hold her. His sobriety was too fragile, still, to pull someone else into his life. And she had more than enough crap to deal with right now. She didn’t need his. But that kiss was lovely. Damn, it was.

  Evil Coming Through

  PLATO HAD TAKEN HER to get something to eat, to buy her something to wear along with those extra things women need to take care of themselves, and then he took her back to his hotel room and told her, “Daddy’s got to go to work,” as he kissed her lightly on his way out. Price had obviously been watching her for quite some time, which meant that he had been closer than close this whole time.

  Plato drove to her house. The police had finished doing their thing, and there were no signs that anyone was inside. But had Price seen them checking this place out? If so, then he might be worried that they’d found his thumb drive. Or he might think that if they hadn’t found it, Marlowe had it in her possession, which meant that he’d have to come after her again. Plato had only gotten a glimpse of Price, who looked more like a wild animal than the picture of choice of that clean-cut professional that the media liked to flash of him.

  Plato wasn’t a fan of snakes, and as far as he knew, they didn’t care too much for him either, but he had to see what was on the other side of that field behind the house. He walked for at least half a mile before coming to a dirt road. Across from that was a lake. Price had likely parked here when he’d watched Marlowe’s house. He’d been parked here last night. So where did the road lead? And how the hell did you even get to it?

  Plato went back to his car, pulled up a map on his phone, and started driving until he saw what looked like the beginning—or the end, depending on your point of view—a few miles south of Marlowe’s house. It started out looking more like a trail than anything you could actually drive on, covered mostly in weeds. Plato took the turn and painstakingly followed the pitted path that eventually widened and placed him on the other side of that field behind her house, where he spotted a pile of empty food wrappers and half-smoked cigarette butts where Price had been camped out. He kept driving, thinking that the road might lead back into town, but then it took a curious turn, which, forty miles later, landed him in Nelson, the town he’d found near the crime scene.

  Price was in Nelson, or at least he had been. Plato pulled over and parked on the main vein cutting through the city. A man’s got to have a place to lay his head after a long night of terrorizing wives, Plato concluded. He pulled up a list of budget motels in the area and found four. Sometimes, his job really was just this tedious. He sighed, started up the engine, and headed to motel number one.

  Sitting in the parking lot at a motel in Nelson, waiting to get a glimpse of Price, gave him time to entertain some of his most recent and fondest memories, most notably the one from the previous night between him and Marlowe Price. She’d given up the goods, finally, and he’d have thought that getting a taste of her the way he did last night would’ve been enough. It wasn’t. And now she was pretending to shut down the shop. For his sake, she needed to. Plato couldn’t afford the distraction of that woman now, and he did need to shake her off and let it go. There wasn’t room in his world for her. Marlowe had a house and a garden and family—all the shit and none of the shit he wanted. The connection between them was hard and fast and real, but not practical. He knew better. She was going to have to know better, too. And the only way to make that happen was to finish up this job and get the hell out of this little shit hole of a town.

  Distance was the only way to get her out of his system. Plato was going to need lots of it because the magnetic pull of that woman was powerful. This was where logic kicked in, and willpower meant everything. One look at her, one kiss, and he’d be back where he started, flooded with thoughts and feelings that didn’t sit well with him.

  With Plato following, Roman drove to two more motels, sat in his car for several minutes at each, and then got out, went inside, and again stayed no more than a few minutes in each of them. Plato didn’t know for sure, but he doubted that Medlock was checking in to these places. Eventually, the man drove back to Blink and pulled into the parking lot of the same hotel where Plato had been sta
ying.

  Medlock had barely taken two steps away from his car when Plato grabbed hold of him by the collar and slammed him facedown onto the hood of his car.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” he growled in Medlock’s face.

  “What the—who the hell are you? What do you want?” he yelled, struggling to get free.

  “Why’re you here?” Plato demanded to know.

  “Get off me!”

  “Why the fuck are you here?”

  “Let me go, man,” he retorted. “I’ll tell you if you let me go.”

  “You tell me and I’ll think about it.”

  “Hilliard,” he said, grunting. “I’m looking for Tom Hilliard.”

  Plato eased his grip on Medlock and reluctantly let him go. Medlock spun around and glared at Plato, then suddenly looked as if he recognized him.

  “Who’s Hilliard?”

  Medlock raced to catch his breath. “A lead.”

  Was this fool really going to dole out wood chips for answers? “A lead to what?”

  “I don’t have to tell you,” he said, shaking his head.

  Plato stepped toward him. Medlock lowered his stance and shot a quick right, then left to Plato’s midsection. Medlock was quick, but Plato managed to brace himself just in time, and then he delivered a blow of his own to Medlock’s stomach. Medlock dropped to one knee.

  Plato knelt in front of him. “I’m going to have to hear more about this lead, man.”

  * * *

  “Roman?” Marlowe’s voice came from over the railing, and she hurried down the stairs to the parking lot. “What’s going on?” She looked from Plato to Roman. “What are you doing here? Is Lucy here, too?”

  He shook his head. “She’s on her way.” Glaring at Plato, Roman then asked, “Who the fuck are you, man?”

  “He’s looking for Eddie,” Marlowe blurted out.

  Medlock’s disappointment showed.

  “Ever heard of Tom Hilliard, Marlowe?” Plato asked.

  She shook her head. “No. Who’s that?”

  “He was a friend of Price’s who went missing a few months ago. I think he may have something to do with Price’s disappearance.”

  “Eddie’s alive,” Marlowe blurted out. “Did Lucy tell you?”

  He nodded. “She told me. I think he might have something to do with Hilliard being missing, too.”

  “I’ve never heard of any Hilliard,” she said again. “Eddie never mentioned him.”

  Medlock glanced over at Plato. “Is he your bodyguard or something?”

  “Or something,” Plato responded dryly.

  “Manners, Plato?” Marlowe asked, raising a brow.

  “What about them?” he retorted, glaring at Medlock.

  “Maybe we should go inside?” Marlowe offered. “For all we know, Eddie could be watching all of us right now.”

  Creepin’ In

  “HILLIARD’S CREDIT CARD has shown up in Nelson, Texas, and Moffett, Louisiana,” Roman explained, sitting at the small table in his hotel room. Marlowe sat on the sofa, and Plato stood at the door looking like a big old sentry. He had never had any intention of sharing this information with this O. P. Wells, but he wasn’t doing it for him. Medlock wanted to help Marlowe and Lucy. If what Marlowe said was true and Price did attack her, then both she and Lucy were in danger.

  “My guess is that the two men were involved in the money-laundering scheme together and were on the run, and that Hilliard’s the dead man.”

  “Do you know why he attacked you, Marlowe? What’s on that drive?”

  She looked at Plato. He stared at Roman.

  “It could have something to do with the money,” Roman continued. “Price was smart. He skimmed off the interest that the money earned and not the principal. It was easier to miss, but it was a considerable amount of money because of how much was invested and reinvested over dozens of accounts.”

  “Penny stocks?” Plato asked.

  Medlock nodded. “Primarily, and then filtered through various bank accounts and small businesses, which is where Hilliard came in. He knew how to make transactions in such a way to keep them under the radar of the feds.”

  “Lucy’s coming back to town?” Marlowe asked.

  He nodded. “She wants to talk to you in person. She’s scared.”

  “She should be,” Marlowe said.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s on that drive, man?” Roman asked Plato. “I’ve given up everything I know. I think it’s only fair that you return the favor.”

  “Fair is for kids. What do you think this is? Kickball?” Even his sarcasm was dangerous.

  The sonofabitch was some kind of mercenary or assassin, and his kind didn’t play well with others.

  “Price is obviously sticking around to try and get his hand on that money. He’s likely killed two men over it. I’d like to stop him before he kills two women.”

  “Bunch of numbers,” Marlowe volunteered, ignoring the glare of the big guy. “Some symbols. But nothing that makes sense.”

  “Could they be PINs?” Roman asked with reserved excitement.

  She looked at Plato again. “Maybe? Why?”

  Now it was his turn to keep quiet. Let Bigfoot over there know what it’s like to get the silent treatment.

  “She asked you a question,” he finally chimed in.

  “What do you think this is?” Medlock responded callously. “Jeopardy!?” Dumbest comeback ever, but it was the best he could do under pressure.

  Gargantua took a step and a half across the room, grabbed Medlock by his shirt, and raised him off the bed. “Answer the gotdamn question,” he growled, spraying spit in Roman’s face.

  In a weird way, Roman was enjoying this. Private investigator work, in and of itself, was boring as hell. You look for things and people on the computer and then you spend a whole lot of time in your car, driving, watching, waiting, and driving, watching, and waiting some more. This shit was epic. He was about to get his ass kicked by an international assassin, or maybe just a national one, but it didn’t matter, because this was the stuff that sent adrenaline rushing through his veins, made his heart pound like a fist inside his chest, and scared him back alive.

  “Fuck you,” he snarled.

  Plato grabbed him by the waist of his pants, lifted him off his feet, and slammed him hard on the floor onto his back, then dropped that massive body of his down on one knee, planted firmly in Roman’s chest.

  Somewhere in the background was Marlowe’s voice yelling, “Plato! Stop it!” or something like that.

  “You talk or I crush your heart,” he threatened.

  An ugly image of that giant’s knee crushing his sternum flashed in Roman’s mind. As exciting as this shit was and as alive as it made him feel, he wasn’t quite ready to die yet.

  “Account numbers,” he finally said tautly. “Lucy has account numbers given to her by Chuck Harris before he was killed. He told her that they were accounts that he suspected had money that Price was laundering. What was missing were PINs. I think Hilliard had those.”

  Plato took his time getting up off Roman.

  “Price has the account numbers?” Plato asked.

  Roman pushed himself up off the floor and sat back down on the bed. “Yeah. I think that’s how it worked. Price held the account numbers. Hilliard was the keeper of the PINs. They needed each other to access that money. My guess is that one or both of them got greedy.”

  “Where are the account numbers?” Plato asked.

  “I don’t have them,” Roman said quickly. “They’re with Lucy.”

  “Get her on the phone,” Plato demanded.

  “She’s in the air, man.” Roman didn’t like the look on this dude’s face. Not that it had ever radiated friendliness, but he looked a bit more menacing than he had two minutes ago. “I can’t call her.”

  “This could be proof,” Marlowe said suddenly. She looked back and forth between the two men. “If we turn over the account and PINs to the police, then they
could see what Eddie was doing, and they’d know that I didn’t kill him.”

  She was right. Those accounts provided some damning evidence against Price. All of a sudden, he wouldn’t be viewed as a victim anymore. He’d be a potential murderer on the run.

  She stood up and walked over to Plato. “That would work, right?” she asked desperately. “We could turn over all this account stuff, and I wouldn’t be a suspect anymore.”

  Plato wouldn’t even look at her.

  Marlowe turned back to Roman. “I have to go in for more questioning tomorrow,” she said, sitting next to him. “When does Lucy get in?”

  Roman glanced at Plato. He couldn’t tell her that.

  “She could go with me,” Marlowe continued. “We could take the account numbers and the PINs and tell them everything we know. They’d believe both of us, Roman. And they could check those accounts, and they’d have to believe us.”

  Roman shrugged. “They’d have to reconsider their stance on this murder thing,” he assured her as best he could. “They’d have to.”

  Marlowe looked like the weight of the world had just been lifted off her shoulders. “This could be over,” she said, relieved. She kept looking to Plato for some kind of acknowledgment, but he was coming back empty, like the woman wasn’t even in the room. “It could be over.”

  Over? Sure, Roman concluded, staring at her oversized boyfriend, but probably not in the way she’d hoped.

  The One You Need

  SHE HADN’T BEEN ABLE to sit still after Roman left.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he told her. “Let’s ride.”

  Marlowe hadn’t missed Plato’s lack of response to the suggestion of turning over those account numbers and PINs to the authorities. So he wasn’t happy about it, but it was the only thing that they could do. That money was illegal, and Eddie had broken the law. He was on the run because he’d gotten caught.

  “I keep thinking that Tom Hilliard might’ve been that man that I saw Eddie kill in my yard,” she said introspectively.