Dead to Her(86)

“And now,” Marcie finished, “I think I’m done with answering your questions.”





52.

Mama. Mama had been on the news cussing her out, that’s what the guard had said, gleefully. As if it would hurt Marcie somehow that she couldn’t even rely on the support of her own blood. As it was, Marcie wasn’t surprised. Mama was still no doubt pissed that Marcie—Savannah—had disappeared into the sunset with most of Jonny’s injury payout and life insurance and never looked back. It hadn’t even been that much money. There was no way she’d been going to share it with Mama and her latest deadbeat boyfriend. That money had been her way out after all the crap flung her way after Jonny’s death. A cheap drunk whore, sleeping around as her crippled husband struggled to cope. Left him there to die alone in a stinking trailer, probably heartbroken. Always trouble, that Savannah Cassidy. Like mother, like daughter.

Marcie scratched at her scalp. Her hair was greasy after a night of crying and raging and sweating against the scratchy pillowcase. How had she ended up in this position again?

She hadn’t answered any more of Anderson’s questions. Maybe that made her look guilty, but it seemed the detective was already convinced of that. She had too many questions of her own. Were Keisha and Jason still in custody too? Were the police playing a game of eenie, meenie to decide which of them to charge? What if they found the syringe in their house? Who would they blame then? Her or Jason? It would be her, of course. She was the trailer-trash murderess, even if she’d never been charged, and Jason was a proven thieving liar. Mud always stuck.

She was pacing the cell again, thinking of the yearbook and the tip-off about Jason, about who hated them enough to do all this, her head an exhausted mess of half-thoughts, when Anderson’s sidekick, Washington, came and unlocked her cell.

“You’re free to go.” His drawl was deep and slow, a Mississippi-in-summer voice, and the words were so unexpected that she didn’t move.

“What?”

“You’re free to go,” he repeated. “Come on. I’ll take you to collect your things. We’re finished at your house, so you can return home.”

“You’re not charging me?” She still hadn’t moved, as if half-expecting the officer’s words to be some kind of cruel joke.

“No plans to at the moment. So unless you want to start paying rent on this cell, I suggest you move.”

“What’s happened?” Marcie scurried after him. He took the stairs two at a time and her stiff legs struggled to keep up even as her heart soared. Free to go. “Have you charged someone?” Jason or Keisha?

“Not yet,” he said. He pushed the door open and nodded at the woman behind the caged desk, who gave back her purse and cell phone, and then he led her out to the side entrance, ignoring her further questions.

“Marcie!”

She squinted in the sunlight at the call of her name. “Elizabeth?” Of all the people who might have turned up to take her home, Elizabeth was a surprise. Virginia maybe, after some gossip, or Iris out of kindness, but Elizabeth? No. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Turns out Ms. Glapion saved you.

“Thank you, Detective Washington,” Elizabeth said. The large black man nodded in reply and gave a half-wave before turning back inside. “We should get in the car,” Elizabeth said, opening the driver’s-side door. “There are news people around the front.”

“What did he mean, you saved me?” she asked. Elizabeth looked tired. This must have turned her world around too. Did she even have a job anymore? Probably not. The kind of assistance William was going to need was likely to be somewhat more specialized than Elizabeth could provide from now on. More bedpans than trips around the world.

“It was the coconut water,” Elizabeth said as they pulled away.

“What about it?”

“I asked the police if all the cartons in the refrigerator had been injected with coolant or just the one William drank from that morning. Turns out they were all poisoned.”

Marcie frowned. “How does that affect me?”

“Because it means you couldn’t have done it.” Elizabeth looked across at her. “At the party, you were in the corridor looking for Jason to say you wanted to go home when I found you and then we left. We spoke and then I drove you to your place. You couldn’t have gone to the kitchen.”

“It’s been a long night, Elizabeth.” Marcie’s brain was still blank.

“The coconut water was fine then, because William went and got one as we were leaving. Remember? So whoever did it, it was after you left.”

An image came back to Marcie. The last time she’d seen William normal was as they drove away. He was in front of the house, and yes, he’d been drinking from a carton. Her heart thudded in relief.

“Anyway,” Elizabeth continued. “Once Detective Anderson confirmed that, she wanted to make sure you couldn’t have come back to the party without anyone knowing—which, given the masks and the number of people, was possible. But it turns out that your neighbors across the street had an attempted break-in a couple of weeks ago and installed security cameras. They don’t catch your house, but between theirs and some on a property farther down the block they could see that you didn’t go out again that night.” She paused, navigating the streets while Marcie let it all sink in. “So whatever terrible things you may or may not have done in the past, Marcie or Savannah or whatever your name is, you didn’t do this to William.”