The Real Mrs. Price

by J. D. Mason

  “Nice. I like it up there.”

  “Maybe you can visit,” she said teasingly.

  He raised his brows in surprise. “You’d invite me up?”

  “I enjoy your company, Roman, when it’s not all death and destruction about falling off the wagon.”

  He smiled. “Well, I’ll work on that.”

  “I don’t have the job yet, so if you wanted to stop by from time to time for some moral support, I wouldn’t mind.”

  “Yeah, I like your moral support. It’s soft. And warm. And juice—”

  “Stop.” She blushed.

  “I’m just saying.”

  She turned back to the television. “What do you think is going to happen with her?”

  “She could get off, Lucy. They’ve got bullshit for evidence. Marlowe’s been tried and convicted in the media based on nothing but sensationalism. What she needs now, more than anything, is a lawyer. A good one.”

  “A good lawyer,” she murmured. “I think I know a good lawyer, and he owes me. Big.”

  She picked up her phone and dialed a number. “Lawrence. Hi. It’s me.” She smiled. “Remember that time when you were in high school and you snuck off in Dad’s car to go to that girl’s house?” She waited. “Yeah, it was forever ago, but you promised you’d pay me back for not telling. Yeah. I’m calling to collect. I need a favor. And I need it fast.”

  Be Well

  THE GOING RATE FOR TAKING out a lowlife like Ed Price was half a million dollars. The going rate to recover and return funds was 5 percent of said funds. Plato had completed half of his job, recovering access to his client’s funds of $47 million. He’d just made the other half of the $2.35 million promised to him by his client, the first half of which had already been deposited into an overseas account when Plato had accepted this job. He’d promised his employer that he could accomplish both tasks—get back the money and kill Price. They had their money; now he needed to get Price’s head on a platter. It was really just cleanup work at this point. Price was an impotent rodent who meant harm to no one.

  Except to her.

  Plato was staying in a hotel on the edge of Clark City, a county over from Blink. News of Marlowe’s arrest had gone national, with the local authorities making it clear that they didn’t believe that she had committed this crime on her own. They hadn’t named Plato yet, but he knew that it was only a matter of time before they would, if for no other reason than to find him.

  Cockroaches scurry when the lights come on. Price was no different. He lay low during the day but scavenged at night. Marlowe’s house had been ransacked. Plato knew that it was Price. He went there not sure what he was expecting to find, but when he got there, he was greeted on the porch by a frail-looking older woman wearing dark, round-lensed shades and close-cut, cropped silver hair. Marlowe’s cousin, the woman from the restaurant, also appeared, standing behind the old woman like her tiny, senior-citizen ass was some sort of shield.

  “Whatchu want?” the older woman asked unapologetically.

  “To look around,” he stated simply.

  “Ain’t nothing here for you to look at.”

  She wasn’t looking at him directly. The angle and direction of her head told Plato that she wasn’t looking at him at all. The old woman was blind.

  He took a step up to that porch, and she had out a tiny, bony hand covered in silver, gemstones, and gold. It was as if she’d worn her entire jewelry collection all at once.

  “Don’t you even think about it,” she warned him.

  And without understanding why, he stopped.

  A sliver of a smirk spread on her thick lips. Her skin wasn’t brown or even black. It had a red hue to it, a golden undertone to it, making her look almost as if she weren’t of this world.

  “You think I don’t know who you are.” She nodded knowingly. “She told me ’bout you, but I saw you comin’ first. I saw you long ’fore she did, but I couldn’t say nothing ’cause Marlowe don’t listen. All she had to do was look at you, and she was under your spell. Am I right?”

  This shit was eerie, but Plato nodded.

  “Say somethin’!” she snapped. “I can’t see you. You need to talk.”

  “I guess so,” he said tentatively.

  What the fuck?

  “First she married that one fool, then she fall for another one, right after that,” she grumbled.

  He felt as if he should’ve been offended. “Who? Me?”

  She smacked her lips. “Who the hell else you think I’m talkin’ ’bout?”

  Fool?

  “You know she can’t help it, Shou,” the other one said sympathetically. “You know how she is.”

  How the hell is she? Plato wondered.

  Plato had almost forgotten why he’d come here but then concluded that he needed to get past these two and get on with his business. He took another step up those stairs. That old woman tapped her cane against the wooden porch, and a bolt of pain shot through his midsection, causing him to stumble back off those steps.

  “I warned you,” she said coolly.

  It took several moments for him to catch his breath. The old lady waited patiently while he did. The other one chuckled.

  “What the fuck did you do to me?” he demanded to know.

  “Nothing, compared to what I’m gonna do to you if you bring yo’ ass back up on this porch.”

  He couldn’t believe this shit. It was scary enough listening to Marlowe talk sometimes, but this … this was … it was …

  “Fuckin’ crazy,” the old woman said as if she were finishing his sentence for him. “You got yo’ weakness, devil. Pride. Beauty. Lust. Marlowe.” She whispered Marlowe’s name. “You done scented her, and now you can’t get her off yo’ mind. She ain’t yo’ concern no mo’. So you get on. And you keep gettin’ on. And don’t think ’bout lookin’ back, or I’ll do to you what somebody did to me and put yo’ eyes out.”

  Had he really just met his match in a five-foot-tall, eighty-year-old blind woman? He left, practically with his tail tucked between his legs. Yes. Yes, he had.

  * * *

  Plato drove away reminding himself that he didn’t believe in that hoodoo shit. He reminded himself all the way back to that hidden road that crossed behind Marlowe’s house, where he parked. He could see the back of her house across that field, and he imagined himself as Ed Price, watching it, staring at it, especially at night when the lights were on and he could somewhat see inside. On this particular occasion, Plato saw that old woman stepping out onto the back deck with the other woman, gathering small potted plants and putting them into a box. Plato looked down the road leading into Nelson. Up ahead, about the length of a football field, he spotted something. The closer he got, he realized that it was trash, fast-food wrappings with a logo and a name on the outside of the bag. Betta Burgers.

  Plato got in his car and continued on that road until he arrived in Nelson, and he drove down the main road several times looking for a Betta Burger restaurant. He saw nothing. He stopped, pulled out his phone, and did a search. Betta Burger was just off the highway on the other side of town, and across from it was a budget motel. In that moment, he realized that he might’ve found where Price had been staying.

  * * *

  Medlock was packing up his car to leave when Plato arrived.

  He spotted Plato, shook his head, pulled his keys out of his pocket, and reached for his car door. “I’m outta here, man,” Medlock said. “It’s been a pleasure,” he said sarcastically.

  As he pulled his car door open, Plato pushed it shut. “I think my feelings are hurt,” he said. “You don’t even know why I’m here.”

  “I don’t want to know,” Medlock said bitterly. “I’m heading home. My work is done.”

  “Not quite,” Plato said indifferently.

  “What part of either kill me or leave me the fuck alone don’t you understand, Wells?”

  “I’ve found Price.”

  Roman suddenly stopped acting like a scared
bitch and paid attention.

  “Well, I think I’ve found him,” Plato corrected himself. “But I’ll need help wrangling that bronco,” he said in his best exaggerated cowboy accent.

  Roman sighed. “Why would I help you?”

  “You wouldn’t be helping me,” he reminded him. “You’d be giving Lucy ‘Boo Thing’ Price a reason to sleep peacefully at night.”

  That got him to thinking. Women. Women always got men to thinking. Whether men wanted to think or not.

  “He might not ever set foot in Boulder, Colorado, again,” Plato reasoned. “Or he might. But I think she’d prefer knowing that he was gone and that he wasn’t coming back.”

  The words wasn’t coming back stood out like a flashing neon sign as he made peace with what Wells was really telling him.

  Under normal circumstances, Plato wouldn’t need help, but Price had the advantage in that he’d gotten pretty good at skunking around in the weeds with snakes and slithering on his belly in the mud. He needed to be wrangled, for real. He needed to be herded like an animal to a place that made him easy to catch. Roman needed to keep an eye on him, both eyes. Plato would do the rest.

  Let Us Wander

  THE MEDIA HAD GONE into a frenzy when they found out that Lucy’s brother, Lawrence, had represented Marlowe at her bond hearing. He’d impressed the hell out of Marlowe with all that legal talk that made her sound like she was being railroaded into taking the fall for a man’s murder simply because the local police force was stupid. But his argument fell on deaf ears since Quentin’s second cousin was the presiding judge. Bail was set at $2 million.

  “I don’t know what’s going on between you and my sister, and I don’t want to know.” Lawrence handed her his business card as they prepared to take Marlowe back to her cell. “But call me if you need anything or have any questions.”

  She nodded and humbly whispered, “Thank you.”

  * * *

  Marlowe lay curled up on her cot, knowing good and damn well she wasn’t going to be able to come up with the money to make bail. But two hours later, it was made for her.

  “Do you know who paid my bail?” she asked the clerk as she was being processed out.

  “Sign here” was all the woman would say before handing Marlowe her things.

  Marlowe’s first thought was that Lawrence had paid it, but why would he? He didn’t even know her, and he certainly didn’t know her well enough to want to pay her bail. Shou and Belle didn’t have that kind of money. Lucy? She doubted seriously that Lucy would’ve paid it either. But someone had done it, and because they had, Marlowe didn’t have to spend another night in that jail, at least for now, and that’s all that mattered.

  * * *

  Belle picked up Marlowe, who came out of the jail wearing the robe that Quentin had arrested her in, and drove her back to her house, but when Marlowe opened the front door, the negative energy was so overpowering that it nearly knocked her over.

  “I can’t,” she said, backing away with tears in her eyes. “I can’t go in there, Belle.”

  The last thing Marlowe had wanted to do was to bring her drama into Shou Shou’s house, but that old woman was prepared, coming out onto the front porch as soon as she heard Belle’s car pull up in front of her house. “I knew you was comin’,” she said, smiling and ushering Marlowe inside.

  Shou Shou’s home smelled of lavender, mint, and eucalyptus incense. Sunlight seemed to flood in from every window, and Marlowe’s mood immediately began to change. She felt lighter, more peaceful, and she took a deep breath and inhaled calm.

  “I got fresh flowers in every room,” she said proudly. “Opened all the windows and cabinets and clapped and hollered ’til my throat hurt. Walked through each room with incense making the sign of King Solomon’s five-pointed star. Even the foul mood you walked in here with don’t stand a chance.”

  And she was right. Marlowe’s appetite even came back.

  “I cooked enough to last a week,” Belle announced.

  Inside the refrigerator were containers filled with roast beef and chicken, vegetables, soups, and desserts.

  “Girl, I’m hungry enough to eat all this in a day,” Marlowe said, grinning and licking her lips.

  Before she could dig in, though, her phone rang. It was Lucy.

  “I heard you made bail,” she said, sounding genuinely happy for Marlowe.

  “Thank you for Lawrence,” Marlowe said reservedly. “But I didn’t make bail. I don’t know who paid it.”

  “Yeah, well, he owed me.” She paused. “He said he didn’t do too well, though.”

  “It went as well as it could go under the circumstances,” Marlowe said with resolve. “People down here have their minds made up about me. Lawrence could’ve been Jesus Christ flying in on a cloud, and they’d have shut him down.”

  Lucy laughed. “Well, I’m glad him being there helped. It was the least I could’ve done, Marlowe. Lawrence is a good lawyer. Keep in touch with him. Okay?”

  “I will.”

  “You take care, Marlowe, as best you can,” Lucy added.

  “Thank you, Lucy,” she said before hanging up. “And you be careful.”

  * * *

  Marlowe and Marjorie had shared this room when they were little girls because they were both afraid of the dark and couldn’t sleep without each other. Marlowe marveled at just how small it actually was now that she was a grown woman. But to those two little girls, this room had been more than big enough.

  It was well after midnight. Belle had gone back to her place hours ago, and Shou was asleep, snoring loudly enough for it to shake the walls in this tiny house. Marlowe was tired, and she could easily fall asleep, but it wouldn’t be a restful sleep. Lately, none of them had been. Marlowe would close her eyes, fade into a dark place, lie still and heavy like a stone, and then wake up feeling as if she hadn’t really slept at all.

  She had never had any fantasies about Plato and the fact that he was never meant to stay in Blink. He wasn’t even meant to fall in love with her, but she had come to believe that he at least cared about her on some level. Not love. She didn’t know if he was even capable of feeling love or being loved. But she thought she’d seen something in him, in his eyes, that last time they were together—vulnerability, wishful thinking, something that she mistook for longing for her.

  “You like that romantic stuff,” Marjorie used to say, teasing her.

  “So. Ain’t nothing wrong with romantic stuff,” Marlowe would argue.

  “It’s stupid. Ain’t it stupid, Shou Shou?”

  Shou Shou would smile. “You only think so ’cause you ain’t felt it, Marjorie. Once you feel it, it ain’t stupid at all.”

  And she was so right. It wasn’t stupid when you were feeling it, but then again, Marjorie was right, too. It sure made you feel stupid when it was over. She’d twisted the purpose of who he was and what he’d come here for in her mind. She’d twisted the warnings that came from the bones and her dreams into what she’d wanted them to mean.

  The spirit of everything he was had been buried so deep inside her that she felt marked, branded by Plato. And she’d loved every minute of the time she’d spent with him. She’d gotten drunk on him, on the flavor of him, and the sensation of him inside her. Plato was supernatural, and the effects of him on her, in her, were otherworldly. It scared the shit out of her that she had let him get that close to her. But he had always been waiting for an opportunity to get what he had truly come here looking for—that money and Eddie—biding his time with her until it presented itself to him and he could take it. Marlowe was a casualty in this war of his, nothing more than bait, and she had no choice but to come to terms with the fact that he never gave a damn about her.

  She’d wasted herself on him just like she’d done with Eddie.

  “No more, Marlowe,” she vowed quietly to herself. No more making a fool of herself over any man. No more giving. No more trusting. No more sharing her body, her soul, her innermost self with any o
f them bastards.

  Learn something, girl. For once in your life, Marlowe. Learn from this and never let it happen again.

  Heartbreak was a mean lesson, but a convincing one.

  A Sacrifice

  PRICE WAS IN NELSON, TEXAS. He’d searched Marlowe’s house while she was in jail and had even gone through her car looking for that drive and of course had come up empty. Plato counted on the fact that Price still held on to a belief that Marlowe knew where it was, but with her being formally charged for his murder, Plato knew that Price was running out of time. If she was convicted, then he was shit out of luck, and he’d never find it. Marlowe was his only hope. She was everything for a desperate bastard like him.

  “I think I see him,” Roman said into Plato’s earpiece. “Is it him?” he asked.

  “Yes,” the woman answered shakily in the background. “Oh, God. Yes. It’s him.”

  Lucy Price must not have left town after all, Plato concluded.

  “He’s getting into a silver Corolla,” Roman explained. “I’m on him now.”

  All the key players were here, strategically shuffling places on the game board. Some men become ghosts before their deaths. Plato was going to have to write that one down. He’d just come up with it, all on his own, out of nowhere, and he dug it. That shit was profound.

  Price was a ghost to be ghosted. Dead man walking and all that.

  Plato could’ve walked away and left Price to his own devices. He’d recovered the money, and ultimately, that was all that mattered. He could’ve left Price to die a slow, agonizing death, like a plant that was never watered, a dog that wasn’t fed. But Plato had a debt to pay, and he always paid up.

  His phone vibrated again. “He’s back at Marlowe’s,” Roman reported in. Long pause. “Looks like he can’t get in. A key. He’s trying to use a key and can’t get in.” Rustling. “Fuck!” Roman growled in a low whisper. “Is that a snake? There’re fucking snakes out here, man.”

  Glass shattering in the distance.

  “He broke the window.”

  “Where are you?” Plato asked.