“You’ve got that book in you.”
“Maybe. They say to write what you know, and I find myself going back there all the time, metaphorically speaking. No one wants to hear sob stories about absent moms and jailbird dads and being so poor that breakfast is stolen rhubarb from the neighbor’s garden and dinner is saltines.”
“I disagree. That’s provocative stuff, Lucy.” She looked doubtful.
“I had to get out. See something besides the backside of a mountain. Gain some life experience, so I have something else to write about besides the shit I was trying to escape.” She turned on him, like she’d flipped a switch. “Your turn now. Did you always want to be in the family business?”
“No. I still don’t, but here I am.”
“Then what do you want to be when you grow up?” Lucy asked, adjusting the heater in his Cadillac and removing her coat.
“To be left alone. No expectations, no drama.” Murray frowned. Chasing good times had cost him dearly. His future was more uncertain than ever.
Hours later, after they’d tangled the sheets in the master bedroom at the cabin and were having a soak in the hot tub, Lucy revisited the topic.
“What about your sister? Can’t she run the business?”
Murray, who was stroking her bare spine, paused. “My parents would spin in their graves if I handed Tallulah the keys to their kingdom. They didn’t want her to have it. They only left her china and silverware.”
Murray remembered the look on Tally’s face at the reading of the will…she’d have been happier if they hadn’t mentioned her at all.
You’re goddamn right about that.
Lucy relaxed back against Murray. “No offense, but from what I’ve seen of her I can’t say I blame them.”
“She wasn’t always like that. Tally’s had a hard go of it.”
“If you say so.”
“Seriously. She was a bit of a mean girl in school, the prettiest, the smartest.”
Lucy snorted, combative eyes on his. “Poor baby…”
Murray climbed out of the hot tub and started to dry off. “When the bandwagon turns on their ringleader, it’s ugly.”
“She clearly means a lot to you,” Lucy conceded, her nipples puckering as the cold air hit them. “I wish I could see her through your eyes.”
Murray wrapped a terrycloth robe around her and led her into the cabin’s small kitchen. He reached for the tea kettle. “Our senior year she went with a group of friends to Black Mountain. They take Halloween very seriously up there…haunted houses, spook walks, stuff like that. Tallulah had been messing around with a friend’s boyfriend on the side. They were several miles out of town when all of her friends turned on her, and once they’d said their piece they kicked her out of the car and left her there in the dark.”
“Jesus.” Lucy wore a sour expression.
“It gets worse. She walked for an hour before anyone would stop for her. Then finally, a van full of thugs pulled over. When they finally tossed her onto our front lawn the next morning, she wanted nothing to do with her friend’s boyfriend anymore…or any guys for that matter.”
“Did they ever catch the guys who did it?”
“No. Like you, she didn’t report it to the police.”
Lucy looked away, blowing the steam off her cup of tea. Murray wondered then if the reason Lucy didn’t want to report it was because she was manufacturing the entire situation, perhaps for attention. He was not sure why she’d do something like that, but he couldn’t understand why she wasn’t more concerned about it.
He could totally understand why Tally hadn’t gone to the cops. That, he got.
At the pawn shop the following morning, Murray let Lucy haggle the price. She wanted to, for her writer’s “been there done that” list, and he was too distracted to argue. Lucy walked out of the pawn shop with three times what he would have taken, and he took it as a sign.
Lucy was his perfect partner in crime.
Murray caught his breath, holding Lucy tight as he pulled out of her.
He never imagined he’d do it in the morgue, especially not with a body present. Lucy could be mighty persuasive when she set her mind to it.
Murray was still pulling up his pants when Lucy wandered over to the autopsy table, dressed in nothing but heels. She pulled the sheet back.
Tallulah had done a good job on the kid. You couldn’t tell he’d hung in his closet for hours before being discovered by his unsuspecting mother. He just looked like a rosy-cheeked man-child, asleep on the couch after overindulging on Thanksgiving dinner.
“Does it ever get to you?” Lucy sounded childlike, timid. “Seeing things like this day in and day out?”
Murray pondered. “I don’t know any different.”
“That’s not an answer.” She didn’t even turn around when she said it.
“This is all I’ve got. I’m too old to start over.”
“You’re not old.” She turned and wrapped her arms around his neck. “If you could do anything, what would you do?”
He brushed the tip of his nose against hers. “You.”
Just then the lights flipped on, and Murray heard a tray of instruments clatter onto the concrete floor. He didn’t want to turn around, but he made himself. If looks could kill, Lucy and Murray would have been as dead as the kid behind them.
“Out!” Tallulah shouted, her voice echoing off the floor and the steel wall of drawers that had Lucy’s handprints and ass prints all over them. Rage emanated off Tallulah in palpable waves.
Murray froze, blocking Lucy’s nude body from her view. He heard her scrambling for her clothes. “Tall—”
Tallulah marched past them and whipped the cover back in place. When she spoke again, it was through gritted teeth. “Leave now, Murray. Get out of my sight.”
The inevitable happened the following week. Murray was surprised it had taken that long for Tallulah to muster
