The Real Mrs. Price (4 page)

“Why would he? You haven't told anyone this but me. Right? You haven't even told the police.”

She shook her head. “He kept asking, how'd I known? How'd I known?”

“About Harris?”

“I don't think he was asking about Chuck. He was frantic, determined to find out how I knew about … something.”

“You think that he believed you knew about the money?”

“Yes,” she said after a long hesitation. The wheels in her head were spinning too fast. Lucy had to convince him to take this job.

Medlock sat back, absorbing all this. “So you want to contact Marlowe Price.”

“To talk to her.” Lucy shrugged. “The media is starting to speculate that she killed him. Maybe it's not so much Ed that I'm asking you to investigate,” she reluctantly admitted. “Maybe it's that other woman, and maybe she knows more about Ed than I do. If she killed him, then I can finally come forward with what I know. And Chuck Harris's family can find some closure. I have so many unanswered questions. Why'd he marry her? The police said that he married this other woman seven months ago. I confronted him about Chuck a month later. I can't help but wonder if she knew what Ed was up to and if she was in on it, too.”

“If she killed him, you don't really expect her to confess to me, do you?”

“I don't know what I expect, Mr. Medlock,” she admitted. “I don't think it's what she tells us, so much as what she
doesn't
tell us that will give me the answers I need. If she can offer insight into Ed, things that I don't know, then maybe that's enough.”

*   *   *

Lucy stared out the big picture window in her living room at the beautiful views of the Flatiron mountain range she'd fallen in love with when she and Ed found this house. Roman Medlock had agreed to go back to his office and at least start to toss around ideas for what could be done, if anything, to determine if visiting Marlowe Brown was worth his time and Lucy's money.

Finding out about that other woman had struck a nerve in a way she hadn't expected it to. Ed had terrorized Lucy before he'd left, making the kinds of promises she'd never expected the man she loved to make to her. He'd literally threatened to kill her. When she'd heard the news, Lucy immediately concluded that Ed had to have been insane. How else could anything he'd done since they'd been married, maybe even before she married him, be explained?

Had Marlowe been in on this whole money-laundering scheme with him? The police had told Lucy that the two of them had met when he attended a conference in Cancun. Lucy's imagination had been running wild with speculation over Ed and Marlowe's relationship ever since she'd found out about it, and for some unknown reason, she needed to know who this woman was to her husband and what role Marlowe had played in his crimes and in his death, if in fact he really was dead.

As the sun finally set, Lucy turned off all the lights and checked to make sure all the doors and windows were locked. Since Ed had left, she'd had the locks changed and a security system installed, with cameras all around the outside of the house. Lucy had even thought about buying a dog, a big, mean one, anything to keep him away from her. She went upstairs, showered, and crawled into bed. Ed's life insurance policy wouldn't pay until it was determined, conclusively, that the body in Texas was his. In the meantime, the savings account was dwindling, and Lucy was barely managing to scrape by on her teaching salary, and she'd been giving some serious thought lately to selling this place. The memories of this house had been poisoned, anyway, so it was starting to seem like a good idea. She could sell it and start over again someplace else, but first things first. Ed needed to be dead, and Lucy needed to find that missing piece of the puzzle, a piece he could've very well left with that Texas woman.

 

To Be Well

M
ARLOWE AND HER TWIN SISTER,
Marjorie, had been raised by their aunt Shou Shou after their mother took off. Their mother would come home every now and then, but she'd never stay. Shou Shou claimed that her sister, Merrilyn, was haunted.

“How can a person be haunted?” Marjorie had asked once. “Houses are haunted. People ain't haunted.”

Shou Shou had just smiled. “People are made up of bodies that house a soul. Ain't they? Of course we can be haunted. And Merrilyn always has been, by a restless spirit that won't let her sit still.”

Them Brown girls … it was never easy growing up as a Brown girl in Blink, Texas. It probably wouldn't have been easy growing up anywhere. Shou Shou had told them that they were descendants of
filles
à
la cassette,
or casket girls, sent from France by nuns to marry French soldiers in Louisiana's French colonies. According to her, the casket girls were guaranteed to be virgins by the Catholic Church. Whether that story was true or not was anybody's guess. Shou Shou had a way of making things up that suited her fanciful notions of what she wanted to be true at any given moment.

The kind of courage that it took to live in a small town and to be one of them Brown girls was enormous. And being Marlowe Brown was a particular challenge. Marlowe had been an outsider her whole life, ostracized and criticized for everything from how she dressed to her beliefs. Friends had been few and far between, and she'd always felt more like that stepcousin on your momma's stepsister's side that no one ever invited to anything. Blink citizens might've ignored her in the daylight, but they were her biggest fans after sundown, coming to her door for spells, potions, and readings. The best thing she could've ever done for them was to give them the gift of starting her own website. Now she could accept and fulfill their orders from the Web and have them delivered anonymously to their doors. Secretly, they loved her for it.

*   *   *

“They painted this on my house the other night,” Marlowe said, leading her friend and contractor, Abby Rhodes, around to the side of the house.

She and Abby had been friends since grade school, and despite the warnings from all the other kids on the playground, Abby dared to be friends with Marlowe and Marjorie, anyway. They weren't as close as when they were kids, but Abby eagerly came to her aid when Marlowe put out the call.

The words
Killer-Niger-Witch
were sprawled in large letters on the side of her house in red paint, along with a few upside-down crosses for good measure.

Looking at that mess almost brought tears to Marlowe's eyes, but she fought back the urge to cry. “The fact that they couldn't spell kind of lessened the blow,” she said dismally.

Abby shook her head. “I'm so sorry, Marlowe,” she said with remorse. “I swear, it feels like we're going back in time instead of forward.”

“Can you get it off?”

Abby put her arm around Marlowe's shoulder and hugged her. “I'll have Ward come over here with some emulsifier. That should work. Worst comes to worst, we can paint it, but then we'd have to paint the whole house. It's hard getting spray paint off brick.”

Marlowe felt nauseous. “How much to paint the house?”

Abby smiled. “A tarot reading, some of that foot cream and body lotion that you gave me for Christmas, and one of Shou Shou's caramel cakes.”

Marlowe laughed. “Deal.” Marlowe took Abby by the hand. “Come on inside and have some tea. My own personal brew. Does wonders for the skin.”

Abby had been able to cross Marlowe's barrier spell because Marlowe had invited her across it. That was the only way a person could get past it. The uninvited were stuck on the other side, most without realizing that they were unable to progress any farther.

As the two of them were about to go inside, Abby stared across the yard and muttered under her breath, “Giiiirrrrllll,” and stopped.

Marlowe froze at the sight of him.
Be mindful of me. And watch …
The words from her dream came back to her.

He crossed the street and the yard in long, effortless strides that made him look like he was floating. It was him, the ink-black figure from her nightmare. The one the bones warned her about. Everything about this man was supernatural, and—

“Ladies,” he said, stopping just outside her barrier.

“Hi,” Abby said, sounding like she was a high schooler instead of a woman with a master's degree in engineering, capable of building a house from scratch with her own two little hands and a nail file.

He stopped short of the invisible line separating him from the two of them. Marlowe was safe as long as that barrier held. Sometimes she had her doubts about some of these spells, but this one was like a repellent to unwanted creatures, and she would have to remember to make up a little of it to carry in her purse from now on.

And just when she was about to gloat a little bit, Abby went and did the unthinkable.

“Abby,” Marlowe said, reaching for Abby's arm to stop her, but Marlowe was too late.

“I'm Abby Rhodes,” she said, holding out her hand across that line for him to shake.

He immediately grabbed hold of it. “You can call me O.P. or Plato, like the philosopher,” he said, glancing at Marlowe and casually stepping inside the sanctity of Marlowe's protective barrier.

Since she had invited Abby in, Abby had transferred that invitation on to him. If Marlowe didn't know better, she'd have sworn that he knew it was there and how to get past it. He turned his attention back to clueless Abby.

“So very nice to meet you, Ms. Rhodes,” he said cordially.

“Yeah.” Abby grinned, still holding on to his hand. “You too. Boy, is it nice.”

She looked absolutely smitten, before finally coming back to her senses and turning to Marlowe. “So I guess I'm going to take a rain check on that tea, Marlowe,” she said, excusing herself, turning to face Marlowe so that the man couldn't see her. Abby mouthed the word
Damn!
to Marlowe.

Everything Marlowe wanted to say caught in her throat all of a sudden.

“I'll send Ward over this afternoon. You gonna be home?”

Marlowe nodded, but Marlowe was locked onto him.

“I'll be here,” she absently muttered.

“Look for him at around three,” Abby said, walking past the tall man, admiringly looking him up and down. “It was nice meeting you, for real.”

When he didn't respond, Abby shrugged and left.

Marlowe stood paralyzed, left alone at the mercy of this devil.

“Mrs. Marlowe Price,” he stated. Dark eyes raked over her from head to toe and then back again, and a chill flooded her veins. His essence was as overwhelming now as it had been when she'd dreamed him. “It's a pleasure to finally meet you face-to-face.”

People say things like “It was only a dream. It wasn't real,” or they'll tell you that monsters don't exist. Marlowe knew better, standing here with a monster in the flesh.

“Forgive me for not calling first,” he said as if he actually had her phone number. “Is this a bad time?”

He had made love to her in the worst and best ways in that nightmare. He had seduced her like no other man possibly could. There was magic in this world, good and bad. Spirits transcended the physical confines of flesh and bone. And he had done that. He'd done it today.

If Abby were still here, she'd tell Marlowe that she was being silly and acting crazy. She'd try to convince Marlowe that the dream she'd had was just a dream and that it probably meant nothing and that this man was simply a man and nothing more. But Marlowe knew better than to ignore spirit warnings and intuition, especially ones as powerful as she was having now.

“I've been hired to find your husband,” he explained casually in a low and velvety voice that rose from deep in his core.

He said it as if Eddie had simply taken a wrong turn somewhere and lost his way. “Some interested people have sent me here,” he explained. “They'd like to get in contact with him as soon as possible.” Without even trying, he'd cast out a warning, a threat. “Mr. Price has a debt that needs to be paid.”

A breeze brushed past him and carried his scent to her. Without realizing, Marlowe inhaled deeply, relishing the masculine fragrance that was him.

Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground
. The biblical verse of when Lucifer was cast out of heaven came to memory. Nothing was by chance. There were no coincidences.

For the first time, she noticed the tattooed markings on his arms. The ink was only slightly darker than his skin, but the art was beautiful, sensual, and fluid. His biceps were larger in diameter than her calves. And the close-cut, salt-and-pepper beard highlighted an impressive and powerful chin and jaw.

“Mrs. Price?” he asked, taking a step closer. “Did you hear me?” His voice rumbled from deep in his center. It was thick, deep, and rich, stirring something ancient inside her.

She'd heard him, all right. She'd heard him and felt him and remembered him and inhaled him.

“It's your husband that I'm looking for,” he said. “The police believe that they've found his body, but I'm not necessarily convinced that it's him. Are you?”

Marlowe found the presence of mind enough to finally speak. “They say he's dead. I say he ain't here,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.

“They still haven't identified that body, and it's been a month,” he continued. “If it's Ed Price's, then that'll be that and I'll be on my way, but if it's not him…”

From the look on his face, she could tell that he suspected that there was something she wasn't telling him.

“I'm not protecting Eddie,” she murmured defensively. “The police say he's dead. That it's his body they found burned in that car.”