22. Marius
22
MARIUS
“ I know,” I said to Grayson as I walked to Girl Meets Fig to meet up with Zoe and Emmie after hurrying to finish the work I’d been neglecting. “I owe you those markups. But it’s fucking insane here.” I lowered my voice. The town had ears, and they loved to gossip. “There is a list of murder suspects as long as my arm, and everyone seems to be sleeping with everyone, and get this—one lady is faking a pregnancy.”
On the other end of the line, there was a pause then a sigh. “I just think—Lexi, dammit.”
Grayson’s girlfriend came on the phone.
“What the frickety freak, Marius. That is crazy! I’m making popcorn right now. We want updates. All the updates.”
“I want him to finish reviewing that contract—”
Lexi cut Grayson off. “Someone is faking a pregnancy with a fake belly and everything. Grayson, dude, you have got to live a little. This is gold! Small-town drama is the best drama. Maybe we’ll get interviewed for the Netflix true crime special! Carry on, Marius!” Lexi chirped at me. “And give Moosey a kissy from me!”
The cat on my shoulder meowed at Lexi’s voice.
Shaking my head, I stepped into Girl Meets Fig.
It was too early for the dinner rush, and Zoe and Emmie were sitting at one of the many free tables, heads together. The restaurant’s decor was so different from when I used to work there back in high school. Less swamp witch meets HGTV and more upscale casual.
I was grateful for the change.
Though being with Emmie had taken the edge off of being in a small town, all the bad memories were bubbling up despite my best efforts.
Emmie looked up at me, eyes bright. Her lip caught in her teeth, like she was wondering if I was going to try to keep her a secret. As if I wasn’t going to kiss her in front of everyone.
She melted into me as I tipped her head back to kiss her, maybe harder than I meant to, but I would happily say “Fuck it” to this murder investigation and spend the rest of December with her.
“Hi,” Emmie whispered when I released her, my hand lingering on the back of her head. “Did you talk to Abbott?”
“Don’t you have anything better to focus on than this mystery?”
She blushed as I stared at her. “What did you have in mind?”
“No!” Zoe slammed her glass on the table, making Moose hiss. “We’re about to toss this Christmas wreath of cheaters into the fire,” Zoe declared. “You guys can go hook up in the woods like teenagers after you clear your name, Emmie.”
Emmie rubbed her hands together. “Oakley has a baby shower coming up. I think that’s the perfect time to pull back the curtain and reveal that the wizard is a lunatic who lies about being pregnant.”
“Didn’t she just have a baby shower?” Zoe scowled.
“That was the family shower and the subsequent-close-friends shower. Apparently, this is the shower for third-tier people in her life.”
“So we confront her then and put it all over the Facebook group?”
Emmie nodded. “We have to do it in a public place, or she’ll just deny it.”
“It’s safer to wait for the baby to never appear. She won’t expose her lie then. If,” I warned, “she is actually faking it. She could just be drinking while pregnant.”
“She’s lying,” Emmie said firmly.
“It’s just an insane thing to lie about. I mean, she’d get caught eventually. She has to know that.”
“Maybe she was going to steal someone else’s newborn,” Emmie suggested. “Oh, Cora was visiting Beatrice in the hospital with her granny. Maybe she has some insider knowledge.”
“Tell her to come over here, and I’ll give her free drinks and snacks if she tells us everything she knows,” Zoe urged.
Emmie texted then set her phone down.
“Cora and Beatrice must have been plotting to take down Oakley. I bet that’s what was going on in your café,” Zoe said. “Oakley knew Beatrice was about to go all Game of Thrones on her, and she sent lover-boy Abbott to do the deed.”
“We need to call her out now. We can’t wait for baby shower number three or the birth. Someone else could get killed.” Emmie looked concerned.
“Oakley was cheating on Brooks with Theo and is cheating on Theo with Abbott.” I rubbed my chin. “There’s no way Oakley is attracted to Abbott,” I said, trying not to think of that fall in high school. “He must have something on her. She’s not sleeping with him because she wants to.”
Emmie nodded. “Maybe Abbot was rooting around for any detail he can put in his next article and came across evidence that implicated Oakley.”
“But you said she was doing her happy-drunk dance. That’s not what you do if you’re having blackmail sex with the creepy town reporter,” Zoe argued.
The bell over the door chimed.
“Sorry,” Cora said, rushing over. “He followed me here.”
I winced as a flashbulb went off.
“Do you have a comment, Emmie, about what you’re doing to keep people from being killed in the Santa Claws Café?” Abbott asked loudly.
The reporter took one look at me and blanched.
Emmie kicked me under the table. I knew she wanted me to talk to him.
I put on my best lawyer face and slowly stood up, buttoning my suit jacket.
“I did actually want to talk about the case with you, Abbott, if you have a moment.”
“Well, sure,” he said, fumbling with his camera and his bag and loping after me to an out-of-the-way table.
I was trying to find a way to broach the questions Emmie wanted me to ask, since apparently, the only way I was going to get to have her again was if she felt like progress was being made on the mystery.
The dinner rush was gearing up. More diners were arriving. Zoe was going to want the table soon.
I glanced to the door. Maybe I could stall and not have to revisit the past. I did a double take.
“Shit monkeys.” Abbott’s mouth opened comically, almost triangular.
Zoe zeroed in on her two newest customers, grabbing two menus as Oakley and Theo walked arm in arm into the restaurant.
Oakley had one hand on her lower back and one on her enormous belly.
“I, um… I actually have to go.” Abbott tried to slide out of his seat.
I grabbed his shoulder. “What kind of reporter runs from a big story?”
Zoe and Emmie where whispering. Cora was standing awkwardly near the bar.
I didn’t need a voodoo doll to get back at Theo and Oakley. My revenge had been delivered fresh from Santa’s workshop and wrapped with a big red bow.
“In fact…” I raised my voice, projecting, like I was in a courtroom with half-asleep jurors and a hungover judge. “I would say this is the biggest story in Harrogate right now. Get your pen ready, Abbott, because it’s going to be a killer of a news article. It’ll be featured in every major news publication from here to Seattle.”
The diners, happy to be getting entertainment with their meal, turned their chairs around to watch whatever was unfolding.
I paused for dramatic effect.
Oakley was the only person in the dining room pretending I wasn’t there.
“What was the plan, Oakley?”
There were gasps from the crowd.
“You’ve been sleeping with Theo.”
There were cries of surprise.
“I won’t call it having an affair, since cheating on a married man is really just a pattern of poor behavior.”
“Hear! Hear!” An elderly woman having an early dinner raised her wineglass.
Emmie grabbed Cora’s wrist, watching me in horrified fascination.
“I’m here as her lawyer and a friend,” Theo blustered. “I would never betray my best friend like that.”
“Really? Because you seemed awfully concerned when you were notified of the last-minute change of his will. Did Brooks know you and Oakley were plotting against him?” I asked.
“Lies! Slander!”
“What I don’t understand,” I said, speaking over him, “is what was the plan? You pretend to be pregnant, Oakley, and—”
“You’re not pregnant?” Cora screeched at Oakley. “You lied to Brooks about his baby?”
“What kind of sociopath are you?” Zoe added.
“There is a baby,” Oakley said hotly. “I have a baby right here.” She gripped her massive belly.
“In order to keep the house, the car, and the jewelry, you had to have a baby,” I said. “And it had to be Brooks’s. Surprise! Guess he didn’t love you after all.”
“I’m surprised you weren’t digging up his corpse in the moonlight!” Zoe hollered, “To try to scoop out whatever was left of his rotting sperm to steal my best friend’s house.”
“You had no right to my house. What’s worse is you weren’t even trying to do right by your unborn child—you were just stealing from me. You and Brooks!” Emmie raged. “You plotted and schemed behind my back. You fed him poison about me.”
“I just made him wake up and see you for who you really are—a dumpy, boring, piss-poor excuse for a woman and a horrible wife!” Oakley screeched at Emmie. “I’d say you were a horrible mother, but I know you can’t get pregnant. You’re defective. That’s why your husband left you. That’s why he didn’t want you. You can’t do the one basic thing any woman should.”
“Brooks didn’t want you either!” Emmie raged, tears in her eyes. “He was sleeping with at least two other women, probably more! You weren’t special to him. He didn’t like you, Oakley. He didn’t love you. He didn’t want a future with you. He was just using you for sex. The fact that he needed other affair partners tells me that you weren’t even any good at it.”
Oakley jumped up. “Shut the fuck up! I’m not you. I don’t get cheated on.”
“Admit it! Admit you murdered Brooks. Admit you faked the pregnancy. Admit it!”
I grabbed Emmie around the waist before she could lunge at Oakley.
“You and your fake baby!”
“Someone call the police! A pregnant woman is about to be killed by the cupcake murderer!” Theo bellowed to the crowd.
This was out of control. I should have had more self-discipline and not taken a match to this stick of dynamite.
“You ruined my life.” Emmie was sobbing in my arms as I tried to restrain her from going after Oakley.
Moose darted through the crowd and launched himself at Oakley’s belly.
Theo yelled obscenities, swatting at the cat with his napkin as Moose sank his claws into Oakley’s belly. Instead of screams of pain, Oakley cursed as the pregnancy belly started to slide down her hips.
“It’s the devil!”
One man fainted.
Theo was red-faced.
“Proof!” Emmie raged. “This is proof that Oakley is a murderer. And you’re in on it, too, Abbott.”
“No, I—”
“We saw you. Marius and I saw you two sneaking off into a cabin to fuck. You have proof of the murder—I know you do. Give it to me, Abbott.” Emmie threw me off. “What do you have on Oakley?”
Abbot raced to hide behind me as Emmie chased him around the dining room while Oakley, shirt torn, tried to disentangle Moose from the fake pregnancy belly.
“Okay, okay!” Abbott said, breathing hard.
“Wait—you have proof Oakley murdered Brooks?” I asked, unable to keep the shock out of my voice.
Abbott squirmed. “Well, no… but I do have proof of the fake pregnancy.”
Moose was now dragging his kill proudly through the dining room, tail held high as several people told him what a good cat he was, yes, he was, and so handsome too.
“We don’t need proof. I already know she’s lying about the pregnancy,” Emmie said, fixated on him. “We need proof of the murder.”
“How about estate fraud?” Abbott winced.
“Don’t you dare,” Theo warned. “What he’s about to say is lies, and furthermore, I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Yes, you did!” Oakley screeched. “It was your stupid plan!”
“They needed a baby,” Abbott explained, “and so I said that my parents didn’t want to take my druggie sister’s preemie because they already had five of her kids, and Oakley could adopt the baby then rehome it once she had Brooks’s money in hand.”
“But the paternity test…”
Abbott’s shoulders sagged. “The newspaper isn’t doing all that well. Print media is dying. I had to get a part-time job at the local lab. Svensson PharmaTech hires night contractors because they have a backlog of tests from a company they just purchased. Including paternity testing. I could fake the test results.”
“For a price, of course,” I murmured.
“Yeah!” Abbott was excited. “I told you way back when that the girls liked us, didn’t—”
Theo fortunately cut him off. “None of what happened was a crime. No money changed hands. My client doesn’t have any comments.”
“No comments?” Emmie screeched, still incensed. “Well, I have a comment. You’d better get yourself and all your used condoms out of my house by the end of today, Oakley, and I’m going to enjoy all of my money. You won’t see a dime of it. I’m getting all the life insurance, and yeah, it’s a one-point-two-million-dollar policy, and I’m cashing it out, baby. Looks like the only person who came out on top of the cheater tournament is me! Joke’s on you!”
Oakley and Theo ignored her, heading for the door.
“You had to have sex with Brooks for six months, and you got nothing! Not a cent! I get everything. You lose!”
“Emmie.” I rested a hand on her shoulder. “It’s over.”
She turned to me, something sharp and dangerous in her face. “No, it’s not. She needs to pay, just like Brooks did.”