Chapter Twenty-One
“Mari!”
I’m yelling her name as soon as I slam my car door. I run toward her cabin, hoping she can clear up all the confusion swirling inside me.
I bang on the door. “Mari, open the door!”
“One second!” I can hear her rustling around inside her house. The floorboards creak as she makes her way to the door. When she finally opens it, I’m met with a look of shock.
“Petra?” she whispers. “You look like a drowned rat. Come inside, honey.” She steps aside, but I don’t enter her house. I don’t trust her, or Louie, or Saint, or even myself right now.
“Saint,” I say, breathless.
She raises a brow. “Did you burn his dinner?” she asks.
“No. No, I just need to know I’m not going crazy.” I wave a hand toward the road. “That night . . . when the man . . . in the road . . .”
“When he killed himself?” Her response is blunt. Almost harsh. But it brings me a huge sigh of relief that at least she knows what I’m talking about.
“Yes! It happened, right?”
“Of course it happened.” She tilts her head, a look of concern spreading across her face. “Are you okay?”
“No. I don’t know.” I begin pacing her patio. “I was at the gas station, and Louie didn’t know what I was talking about and it’s not in the paper and they said he wasn’t a detective and—”
“Slow down, honey,” she says, stepping out onto the covered patio with me. “I think you need to take a seat.”
I shake my head. I don’t have time to sit and chat with her.
If she’s about to confirm that Saint does exist and Louie just has dementia, then I still have to contend with Saint coming over tonight, and I never even made it to the grocery store to buy the ingredients for the recipe Mari gave me to try.
“So he’s real, right? He’s a real detective. I’m not going insane.”
Mari’s eyes flicker from mine toward the driveway. The sound of an approaching vehicle becomes evident over the sound of rain hitting the roof. I turn around, and we both watch as Louie pulls into their driveway.
“Shit,” Mari says.
“He doesn’t remember,” I say, turning back to Mari. “Louie has no recollection of Saint ever coming to talk to you guys about what was happening that night.”
“He’s a . . . heavy sleeper. I may not have woken him up.” Mari smiles and pats my shoulder. “Okey dokey. You better get back. You’ve got company coming tonight.”
Louie has exited his truck and is making his way over to us. Mari looks nervous. It makes me instantly uneasy how she’s trying to dismiss me. Someone isn’t being honest.
“Mari?” I say to her.
“Mari!” Louie yells.
“Shit,” Mari mutters.
Louie is standing next to us now. He points at me while looking at Mari. “Did she ask you about it?”
“About what?” Mari says.
“The police chase.”
“Oh. Yes.”
“Mari remembers,” I say to Louie.
“Remembers what?” Louie says, his attention still on his wife.
Mari looks very uneasy. “It was nothing. Just some cops asking about an incident that happened a few weeks back.”
“Petra said someone died. And you didn’t think to tell me about it?”
“Mari, you told me that two cops came and spoke to you and Louie about it.”
Louie’s hands move to his hips, and he tilts his head at Mari. “What in the hell have you gotten yourself into this time?”
“Nothing,” she insists. Every single inch of her is screaming that she’s lying.
Louie throws up his hands as if he knows this too. “I don’t want to know. If there’s a body, I don’t want to know.”
“There wasn’t a body,” Mari says to him defensively. “Not a real one.”
Not a real one?
“Yes, there was,” I said. “You told me you saw it.”
Louie grabs the front door and opens it, but before he walks inside, he looks at Mari with a very serious expression.
“I’m going in the house. I want no part of this.
But whatever it is, you better tell this woman the truth, because we need that rental money and I am not getting sued over whatever wacko stunt you’re pulling. ”
Stunt?
Sued?
“Louie, wait!” I say, pleading. But he disappears inside and slams the front door. Now I’m just out here with a very guilty-looking Mari.
I’m on the verge of tears. “Tell me whatever it is you aren’t telling me,” I say to Mari. “If you don’t, I’m calling the police, and I’ll ask them myself.”
“What would you even ask them?” Mari says.
With that question, she takes a seat in one of the two rocking chairs that flank her front door.
She looks up at me, and it’s as if her entire demeanor changes right in front of my face.
“You going to ask them if the man you’re having an affair with actually exists? ”
The way her response so easily spills out of her makes me shiver. “Mari, please. I feel very scared right now. Please just tell me what the hell is going on.”
Mari sighs, and then gestures toward the other rocking chair. “Sit. This might take a minute.”
“I don’t want to sit. I want you to speak.”
“Sit and I will.”
“Just fucking tell me!” I yell. I can’t take this another second!
Mari’s eyes widen in response to my outburst. “Fine,” she says. “Okay. Well . . .”
My body is trembling so much, I have to fold my arms over my chest to give myself some sort of anchor. But I’m not sitting down in this crazy woman’s chair until she tells me what the hell she knows.
“I apologize for what I’m about to tell you. I really do. But you have to understand how bored I get sometimes. Louie pulled me away from Los Angeles out here to the middle of nowhere, and nothing fun ever happens. I could sit in my chair for two solid weeks without speaking to another—”
“Get to the point, Mari,” I say. I can’t take a second more of her rambling.
“Fine,” she says, huffing. “He paid me off.”
My mind takes a moment to wrap around those words and what all they could mean. “Who paid you off? For what?”
“Saint. Cam. Whoever he is. I caught him out there in the road that night he told you there was a police chase. There was no police chase.”
A tear spills down my cheek. I wipe it away angrily, upset that my sadness is breaking through my anger.
“At first, I saw the police lights and thought something actually happened. I almost woke up Louie, but decided I’d just go outside and walk down toward your place to have a look for myself.
And that’s when I saw the guy. He was setting out fake police lights in the road.
There weren’t any actual cops. No body. Just lights.
He had some on his car. He put a couple on a tree out by your house. ”
I finally concede and decide to take a seat. I plop down in the rocking chair, afraid my legs won’t hold me up for another second, as I listen to her continue.
“I confronted him. I’m not scared of people, and he was on our road being suspicious, so I asked him what the hell he was doing.
I caught him red-handed. I told him I was going to call the cops, and that’s when he came clean.
Said he knew you, and reassured me that he was just playing an innocent prank.
I didn’t feel comfortable with that, so I demanded to know more.
He showed me the lights and offered to show me his identification.
Told me he was just there because you’re a writer and that you work better if things happen to you that you’re writing about.
Hell, it sounded like a reasonable explanation, and he didn’t seem to be threatening.
Promised I could wait out by the road until he left to make sure he didn’t kill you.
He said he was just there to give you inspiration for your book. That it’s something you two worked up.”
“He said I knew about it?”
Mari nods. “Yep. I mean, he didn’t go into detail about how much you knew, but he said you asked him to scare you.
And like I told you before, I know how it is to be an artist. Sometimes we gotta do things to get the juices flowing.
I just figured it was some kind of kink, or a fetish that was between the two of you.
I tried to mind my business, but I also wasn’t going to just let some stranger kill you. I did wait until he left.”
I rub my temples with my fingers, attempting to navigate everything she just said.
That night was the first night I ever met Saint.
He pretended not to know I was a writer.
But if what Mari is saying is true and he already knew who I was .
. . he’s been lying to me this entire time.
This stranger has been lying to me and fucking me, and I have no idea who the hell he is.
“Why didn’t you call the police? Or tell me about it?” I am so angry at Mari, but the majority of my anger is with Saint. Or maybe myself. How could I have been so stupid?
“I threatened to. Trust me. I told him to get the hell off my property. But then he went and made an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
“An offer?”
“I believe I told you the first time I met you, before that night even happened with him, that I take any acting job if it pays. He offered to pay me to keep my mouth shut and just go along with his story if you asked me about it.”
I feel like crying. Screaming. “You took money from him? To lie to me?”
“Well, it sounds bad now,” she says. “But that night, it was exciting. And it’s not like I just walked away. I stood there while he was at your place, and he wasn’t there for very long. I made sure he didn’t kill you before I took the money.”
“So generous,” I spit. I am so angry with her, my head is throbbing.
“He paid me to pretend. It seemed like something a writer would get a kick out of, so I didn’t think it would harm you in any way.
I love pranks, but I love money more than I love pranks, and when you put the two together with a man that good looking, how do you expect me to turn that down?
” She’s looking at me like she’s expecting my forgiveness. My understanding.
“You have no idea what you’ve done,” I say to her. Another tear falls from my eye, and she actually looks remorseful.
“It’s why I came by the next day,” she says. “I did feel bad. I wanted to check on you, but you seemed fine. And then you kept inviting him over. You told me you kissed him and you seemed happy about it, so I figured you two do this sort of thing all the time.”
“I don’t—” I shut up. I owe her zero explanation. She owes me a million apologies.
“I had no idea you were married. And it’s not my business, but I did find it interesting when your actual husband showed up.
But again, I stayed out of it. Just came over because I was curious and wanted to see what the three of you had going on over here.
Your husband didn’t seem to know about him, though, and I didn’t know if that was part of the act. But like I said. I stayed out of it.”
“Who is he, Mari?”
“Who? Saint?”
“Yes. If he isn’t a real detective, who is he?”
Mari shrugs. “Now that’s probably where I went wrong.
I should have taken a better look at his identification.
I was being honest when I said I stay away from the authorities in this town, so I wouldn’t recognize any of them.
I don’t know anything about the guy, or if he’s even a police officer at all. I’m just an innocent bystander.”
“No, you’re a guilty participant, Mari!” I stand up, exasperated. Hurt. “I can’t believe you would do this. That you allowed it. It’s . . . cruel. It’s cruel and dangerous, and you should honestly be so ashamed of yourself.”
I feel so stupid. So betrayed. I wipe the rest of my tears away with my shirt.
“For what it’s worth, I am sorry. I hope you didn’t get hurt, or taken advantage of, at least.”
I can’t stand being here with her anymore. I want to shake some sense into her. “You allowed a complete stranger to walk inside my cabin at five in the fucking morning, Mari! Of course I got hurt! Of course I was taken advantage of! By him and by you!”
“Now, Petra. I can see why you’re mad, but you can see my side of it, right?”
“Don’t even try to get me to play devil’s advocate. You’re an awful person. You can go fuck yourself, you absolute fucking . . . doozy!”
I’ve started to walk away from her when she says, “That’s not really how that word is used, but . . .”
“Oh, fuck off, Mari!” I open my car door. “I want a full refund!” I slam my car door and put my car in reverse. I glance back at her as I’m pulling onto the road, and Louie is back out on the patio. They’re arguing.
Not my problem. I still have a few hours before Saint is scheduled to show up, so I’ll figure out all the pieces Mari couldn’t put together for me. I also still have time to pack and get the hell out of here.
I floor it and head straight for my cabin.
I need my laptop.