four
Baron Dolce
“Really?” Mabel asks. “He gets an apology, and I get an interrogation? Where’s my apology?”
“Maybe you can get one when you stop fucking lying,” I say.
“I’m not lying,” she says. “I already told you, I’m not. All I ever did was set the men up. I thought you were killing them.”
“Pretty convenient, isn’t it?” I ask. “Every man you went out with ended up dead, and as soon as someone’s watching you, the killing stops.”
“I told you all this last summer,” she says. “Why are you bringing it up again?”
“It was always a little too convenient,” I say. “But it wasn’t putting us in danger once you stopped, so I left it alone and focused on our new life together.”
“I don’t believe that for a minute,” she says, crossing her arms. “You’d never have just taken my word for it. You know it’s not me.”
Her face is still splotchy, and angry red handprints ring her neck, already starting to turn purple. Still, she manages to look fierce, regal somehow, like the queen she is.
“Fine,” I say. “I knew you weren’t with the men when they died. At least some of them.”
“How?”
“I know where your phone is,” I say. “I have a trace in it.”
Her brow arches. “Just my phone?”
“I don’t have one in your body, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“And that’s supposed to make me trust you?”
“I respected your autonomy,” I point out.
“Maybe I left my phone at home.”
“I had cameras in your apartment too.”
She nods, no trace of surprise discernible in her features. At least not to me. Duke is expert on reading people.
“I didn’t kill them,” she says again. “And, if I believe you didn’t, then neither of us are the killer. I guess we can move on and focus on our new life together after all.”
I narrow my eyes at her, trying to puzzle what she’s not telling me. “You’re just going to ignore the fact that someone has been following you around, killing every man you fuck?”
“Why would that bother me?” she asks, cocking her head. “They deserved to die.”
“Uh, maybe because we’re fucking you?” Duke asks.
“And you’re still alive,” Mabel points out. “Which would lead anyone to believe one of you is the killer.”
“But we’re not,” he says, then looks up at me. “Right?”
“I told you that,” I snap.
“You did kill that one guy,” he points out. “And then Mabel stopped fucking around, and guys stopped dying.”
“Exactly,” Mabel says. “Obviously, if she was going to get you, she would have.”
“Who the fuck is ‘she’?” I demand, resisting the urge to grab her again.
“I don’t know,” she says. “The police think it’s a woman. You don’t call a male a black widow. That would be a widower. Besides, men don’t kill with poison.”
Duke and I stare at her for a long minute.
“What the fuck?” he asks at last, pushing away from her and standing. “It is you, isn’t it?”
“Stop accusing me,” she protests. “I told you the truth. You can choose to trust me or not. I’m not answering again.”
“It’s that Ingrid bitch, isn’t it?” I demand. “That’s why you’re so familiar with her.”
“I’m familiar with her because we worked together a couple summers,” she says.
“She has an hourglass tattoo on her thigh,” I point out.
“Like a black widow,” Duke says, nodding.
“I think she was part of that motorcycle gang,” Mabel says, pushing up from where she sat against the wall at last. “They all have hourglass tattoos.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“No,” she says. “She’d just freak out and hide whenever they came into the shop. I think she left the gang or something, maybe ratted them out. Pretty sure she’d just gotten out of prison two summers ago when we both started there. We trained together.”
“You never hung out outside of work?” I ask.
She shrugs. “We went to the bakery a few times. She liked looking at my pictures of Seeley, and she thought it was funny that I’d get tea instead of coffee. She said I was an old soul. No one ever called me that before.”
“You liked her,” I say. “You never asked what she did on the off-season? You didn’t want to visit her at Christmas?”
“Not really,” she says, slumping onto the edge of the bed. “I mean, I do like her. She’s…”
She trails off, touching her neck and wincing.
“What?” I press.
“She kept to herself,” she says, wrapping her hands around her knees. “She didn’t ask about my past, so I didn’t ask about hers. I don’t care if she did time, or what it was for, or what she did when I wasn’t around. She was nice to me, and she didn’t make me feel like a freak. She’s my friend.”
“She’s a ghost.”
Mabel’s eyes widen, and her voice comes out faint. “She’s dead? Did you…?”
I shake my head. “She was always a ghost. She died a hundred years ago.”
They both stare, dumbfounded.
Finally Duke speaks. “I don’t think they had pink hair dye a hundred years ago.”
“Not an actual ghost, you idiot,” I say. “Lay off the Alice. It’s frying your brain.”
“You made it for me.”
“ We made it,” I remind him, not letting him downplay his contribution. “So we could double-team girls in high school. Not so you could spend your whole life high.”
“Better than low,” he mutters.
I turn back to Mabel, who sits silent, digesting the information.
“So she used a fake name,” she says at last. “Maybe she wanted a fresh start when she got out, like me.”
“She’s not your friend,” I say, not caring if it’s harsh. “You don’t even know who she is.”
“I know who she is,” Mabel insists. “A name is just a name. She knew me as Dahlia. She still knew me.”
“Then you know she could be a serial killer,” I say. “She could have followed you to Tennessee every fall when you left.”
“That’s highly improbable.”
“Is it?” I ask. “You don’t even know what she did time for. I can tell you a few things about her you probably didn’t know. Like she has no prison record. I found a marriage record, though. Some kids. No death certificate, which is probably why she stole her identity.”
“It’s not illegal to change your name.”
“It’s illegal to steal someone’s social security number,” I point out. “Even if they’re dead.”
“So she probably killed someone and went to prison,” Duke says. “Then she got out, and now she’s the Black Widow Killer.”
“And she’s stalking our girlfriend.”
“She’s not—”
I cut Mabel off. “Did you know she never picked up her last check at the ice cream place? Didn’t leave a forwarding address for it either.
They were pretty pissed, though. Apparently she just never showed up to work one day.
Funny how that happened not too long after we left.
You know what else is funny? There’s no record of her getting a new job anywhere, either. No bank accounts, credit cards…”
“She didn’t believe in credit cards,” Mabel mutters. “She was anti-establishment.”
“She didn’t rent an apartment anywhere,” I go on, ignoring her excuses. “Or enroll in school. She just disappeared into thin air, like she couldn’t live without you, Mabel.”
“Are you saying I made her up?” she demands, covering her ears and rocking forward and back.
“That you pretended you saw her too, and made this whole line of questioning, and now you’re going to tell me you faked the whole thing, and I created a whole person in my head just so I could have a friend?
I’m not crazy. You can’t make me think I am. I’m not. I’m not!”
“Whoa, calm down,” Duke says, drawing her hand down. “No one’s saying you’re crazy.” He gives me a significant look. “Are we, Baron?”
“Of course not,” I say, scowling. “You didn’t make up anyone. What I want to know is, why are you protecting her?”
“She’s my friend,” Mabel says, like she’s trying to convince herself more than us.
“Your friend, who you worked with for a few months, had coffee with a few times, and who didn’t even tell you what she was in prison for. But she probably followed you halfway across the country and killed every man you so much as went on a date with,” I say. “You don’t see a problem with that?”
“She didn’t hurt me ,” Mabel points out.
“Yeah, well, I have a huge fucking problem with it,” I say.
“Why?” Mabel asks. “She didn’t hurt you, either. We’ve been together for months. If she was going to get rid of you, she would have. She must know I want to be with you, so she’s leaving you alone.”
“She has a point,” Duke says. “She knows we’re not some weirdos trying to get with little girls. We love Mabel. We’re good for her. If she wants what’s best for Mabel, that’s us. Kinda cool, when you think about it. We got the Black Widow Killer’s stamp of approval.”
“It’s not cool,” I growl.
“Why?” Mabel asks, narrowing her eyes at me.
“Are you planning to do something terrible to me again, and you’re afraid she’ll come after you then?
If you’re right about her, which I still don’t think you are, but if you are…
If you’re not planning to hurt me, why do you object to someone protecting me? ”
“Because that’s our job,” I snap, turning to pace the room.
I can’t decide which one irritates me more—the thought that someone else is watching over Mabel, and might see us as the enemy, or that I can’t tell if she’s lying.
If someone is really watching over her, they’d have struck already.
We may love Mabel, but we don’t show it in a way that most people would recognize.
Mabel recognizes it and understands it, but an outsider wouldn’t.
They’d have seen what we do to her, and they’d have killed us already.
It makes more sense that Mabel is the killer.
She stopped because we’ve been there, preventing her from going through with the schemes she was doing before.
It’s too fucking convenient to believe that she was innocently dating these men, and they just happened to all die within weeks of their date with her, no matter that she chose a different alias each time, a different VPN from which to contact them.
If she’s not doing the killing, she’s definitely coordinating with the person who is.
So how did I miss their communications?