23. Emmie
23
EMMIE
“ I guess we shouldn’t have had all those celebratory drinks,” Zoe said later as I was groaning on the couch and sipping coffee.
Marius wasn’t answering when I drunk dialed him.
“I think you freaked him out,” Zoe told me and tried to feed me nibbles of flatbread pizza.
I loved arugula and goat cheese as much as the next girl, but when you were drunk and whiplashed, going from the greatest sex of your life to your dead husband’s affair baby being fake, you just needed cheap, greasy pepperoni pizza to soak up the booze.
“I’m a rich bitch,” I mumbled, trying to drag myself off of the couch to search for my phone. “I’s a millionaire, and I wants a pizza.”
“They don’t deliver out here, remember?” Zoe said. “Because the horny seniors kept trying to flirt with the poor delivery boy.”
Mrs. Roberts floated in, wearing a gauzy caftan. The old decor from Girl Meets Fig littered the walls of the small apartment in the retirement community.
“How were we supposed to know he was underage? Every male looks the same when they’re under thirty-five, with those baby cheeks.”
She inspected her reflection in the antique mirror on the wall.
I tried Marius again.
Emmie: I’m sorry I scared you.
Emmie: I’ll suck your dick if you bring me a pepperoni pizza.
Emmie: Extra-large.
Emmie: That’s how I want your dick too.
“Garlic knots,” I mumbled, adding the request to the text message chain.
“Maybe a salad,” Mrs. Roberts said pointedly.
“Marius didn’t text me back,” I flopped down. “So no salad or garlic knots.”
“Marius! Now, speaking of jailbait, he did grow up into someone handsome, didn’t he? I remember when he was a pimple-faced busboy. I gave him this special cream for his skin. Remind me to give you some, Emmie. I see you breaking out at your hairline. Weren’t you two friends with him back then?”
“He was a grade or two above us, I think,” Zoe told her grandmother as she hoisted my torso back onto the couch.
“And transferred to that fancy Connecticut private school.” Mrs. Roberts drew a fake mole on her cheek. “After what happened to him, I don’t blame him for leaving.”
“Wait. What?” I asked.
Mrs. Roberts applied more lipstick.
“Oh.” She smacked her lips. “He had bullies. They played some mean trick on him and his little friend Alfred. Mousy little boy. I’ll always remember—I had come in Girl Meets Fig late that night, and Marius was there. He was so angry; he was washing off in the mop sink. I asked him what was doing there so late at night. He just looked at me and said, ‘I’m going to kill him one day.’ Then walked out, and I never saw him again. Heard he went to that boarding school.”
That sobered me up.
“Kill who?”
But Mrs. Roberts was already drifting out the door. “I’m off to a séance, girls. We’re communing with the Lady Alice’s ghost that lives in the community theater.”
Séance…
“Lilith. She said Marius killed Brooks.”
“Grandma, wait—we’re coming too!” Zoe yelled.
“Hurry along, girls. The spirit realm waits for no mortal.”
“Marius couldn’t have killed Brooks,” I said as Zoe and I tugged on boots and coats. “He’s not a killer, right?”
“The cards said you would return.”
The seniors were pregaming with holiday sangria in the foyer of the community theater.
Lilith drifted like a ghost past us, face obscured in the dim candlelight.
We followed her into the dark theater. The doors thudded behind us.
“Now they want to know the secrets of the doll,” Lilith whispered in the dark.
“Voodoo isn’t real,” I said.
“Then dig up your husband’s corpse and remind him.”
“Marius didn’t kill Brooks,” I said without much conviction.
“The will of a man with a thirst for revenge is unstoppable,” Lilith said in a whisper. “It can topple nations. Surely it can snuff out the light of someone as weak as your deceased husband.”
“Marius isn’t a killer,” I repeated, but I wasn’t sure if I believed it.
“Anyone is a killer when they’re pushed far enough.” Lilith went silent.
I was suffocating in her dark eyes.
Like a snake, her hand whipped out, and she grabbed my wrist and pressed something cold and hard into my hand.
I looked down to see a little black stone cat.
“A talisman against evil men.”
He doesn’t look like a killer, I thought when I returned, shaken, to the senior living center.
Lady Alice did appear at the séance. She asked that the pigeons that were roosting in the bell tower be removed and said she didn’t like the new neighbors—at least, according to Lilith and her Ouija board.
Marius capped his pen when I sat down across from him.
Though I’d been on a roll, confronting the potential murderer, this was the only time I’d felt nervous or afraid. I was very aware that we were alone in the room.
A log popped in the fire.
I flinched.
Marius’s eyes narrowed.
Moose sat like a statue on the end table next to him.
Marius leaned back in the wingback chair, looking like the villain of a Victorian gothic novel. “Ask your questions.”
It was like he knew, like he’d been waiting for me.
I licked my lips, wishing we could just forget all of this and he could just kiss me until we were willing to chance an encounter on the couch.
“Zoe’s grandmother said…”
His eyes were unblinking.
“She said you, uh, threatened to kill someone a long time ago. She believed you meant it. Just tell me—was it Brooks? Did you kill Brooks with the voodoo doll?”
Marius set the Scotch he was drinking on the table. “Are you accusing me of using the occult to murder a man, Ms. Dawson? Do I look like a warlock?” He spread his hands.
Yeah, actually, he did.
“Lilith might be a witch,” I croaked.
“I didn’t kill Brooks, but he deserved what happened to him. I’m not sorry he’s gone,” Marius spat.
“What happened?”
Marius didn’t answer, just looked at the fire.
I held my breath.
“Brooks had it out for me the minute he met me in kindergarten. No matter what my father and mother suggested—turning the other cheek, trying to fight back, ignoring him, trying to befriend him—it didn’t work. I was his target. It got worse the older we got. Brooks with his little lackey, Theo, did everything and anything to make my life miserable.”
I wrapped my arms around myself.
“Abbott was their other target. We hung out together for survival. I thought Abbott was my friend.” Marius blew out a breath. “That is until that night. Abbott was all excited, told me that he’d been invited to a party and I could come too. I told him it was a bad idea. He insisted it was fine. That this girl Beatrice said she liked him. He thought he had a shot. He said her friend Oakley thought I was hot and wanted to hang out. We got there, and there were tons of people. Oakley acted like we were her best friends, the only people she wanted to see when we arrived. She gave us drinks, wanted to show us around, said she and Beatrice wanted to hang out with us, that they were tired of shitty jocks.”
My hands were cramped from clenching them.
“Beatrice was waiting under this big oak tree. I was two steps away from her when I felt the ground start to give. I pushed Abbott out of the way as the ground collapsed, and I was buried in garbage. I thought I was going to die. The weight of it, the smell, was suffocating, and they were just laughing and laughing.”
He shook his head. “I was so stupid. It was a setup, and Abbott was in on it. He was whining to Oakley and Brooks that he didn’t think they were going to prank him too. They called him a—well, never mind.”
“That’s horrific!” I cried. “Your own friend betrayed you?”
“One thing you learn,” Marius said coldly, “from seeing people during some of the worst moments of their lives, is that everyone has the capacity to betray the person they supposedly love. I’ve heard stories about people taking a hit for a friend or lover, but I’ve never actually seen it in person. It’s human nature. Abbott fucked me over and got fucked over in return. Like Brooks and his pack were ever going to be friends with him.” He stared at the fire. “It was fucking humiliating. And it shouldn’t even matter.” His anger was so tightly wound and controlled, just waiting to be released.
“Theo’s been publicly humiliated along with Oakley. Abbott is a failure. Brooks is dead, for God’s sake. I made it. I’m better than them. And it doesn’t even matter. I’ll never get over it.” He stood up, brushing me off. “So yeah, I have motive to kill Brooks. I wish I had, honestly. But I didn’t.”
“That sounds awful.” My voice was small. “Do you want me to kiss it and make it better? Or maybe you want to go have a drink get something to eat?”
“No. I should never have spent this much time here. I’m behind on work. Good night, Ms. Dawson.”