Free The Real Mrs. Price by J. D. Mason Page B

me. You know my whole family. How could I have done something like this?”
    â€œI’m trying to get to the bottom of this, Marlowe,” he said, sounding more like a father than a detective. “It’s not about what I believe. It’s about getting to the truth.”
    â€œI’ve told you the truth,” she said, resting her elbows on the table and leaning in his direction. “I ain’t never lied to you, Quentin. Never had a reason to, and I don’t have one now.”
    It wasn’t until someone from the media wrote up an article published online about a missing man named Edward Price that Quentin had connected Marlowe Brown to him by a marriage license discovered in Vegas. Quentin was the one who told Marlowe about that article, and that was how she found out about Lucy. Less than a week later, the police had come across a body, and as soon as reporters put the whole story together, Marlowe Brown-Price was suddenly suspected of murdering her bigamist husband in a jealous rage.
    â€œForensics is trying to see if Ed’s dental records match the victim’s,” he told her. He leaned back and sighed. “When was the last time you saw your husband alive, Marlowe?”
    The knot she already had in her stomach grew even tighter. Quentin had asked her this question before, not long after they’d found that body, and that was the one and only time that Marlowe had lied to him. He was asking that question again, because he probably suspected that she hadn’t been truthful.
    â€œMarlowe?” he said, staring at her like she was his own daughter caught in a fib.
    Before, she’d told him that the last time she’d seen Eddie was when he’d left the house at four in the morning to drive to the airport in Dallas. Quentin had her. She could tell by the look on his face that he knew it.
    He waited for her to start.
    â€œI was at Shou Shou’s with my cousin,” she reluctantly began. “We stayed there until about midnight, and then she drove me home.”
    All of a sudden, Quentin looked disappointed, like he was hoping that his assumption about her had been wrong.
    â€œIt was Shou Shou’s birthday,” she continued hesitantly.
    â€œWhen was this?”
    Eddie had told her that he’d be home on Saturday. “Wednesday.”
    â€œThe Wednesday before the body had been discovered?”
    Reluctantly, she nodded.
    Quentin tossed his pencil down on that pad of paper, leaned back, and sighed.
    â€œI didn’t know he’d be home,” she added, like a schoolgirl trying to justify why she’d ditched class. “He told me that he wouldn’t be home until the weekend.”
    He picked up his pen again and starting writing something on that pad of paper. “You say your cousin drove.”
    â€œYes,” she said, so softly that she barely even heard herself. “Belle.”
    â€œWhy didn’t you drive yourself to Shou Shou’s?” he asked suspiciously.
    â€œBelle offered to drive,” she said simply, meeting and holding his accusatory gaze. “Since she had to pass my house, anyway, to get to Shou’s, it made sense.”
    He had handed her the rope. Marlowe had turned it into a noose and put it around her own neck.
    â€œSo Belle pulled up in front of your house at midnight?”
    â€œGive or take a few minutes,” she murmured, “yes.”
    â€œAnd you saw Price’s car when you pulled up.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhere was he?”
    She shrugged. “I assumed that he was in the house.”
    â€œWere the lights on in the house?”
    She had to stop and think about it. “No.”
    â€œYou assumed that he had gone into the house and hadn’t turned on any lights?”
    When he put it that way, of course it sounded silly. “I didn’t think about it. I just saw his car, and since he wasn’t in it, I figured he was inside.” Marlowe