San Diego Noir

“I don’t either,” Terry said. “That’s why it’s beautiful. A man in my position, with my reputation, would never make up something like that just for an alibi. It’s too embarrassing. So everybody will believe it. I’m still important enough in this town to keep it quiet, but the people who need a story—a few detectives, a prosecutor or two—we’ll give them a story they’d never imagine was a lie.”

“You killed her.” I was slow, but I wasn’t impenetrable after all. “You fucking killed her for the insurance money!”

“I guess you weren’t with him for his brains,” Terry said.

“Not hardly,” Lacie agreed. “To be fair, that wasn’t what he saw in me, either.” She squeezed her arms together, popping her breasts out. “It’s all about the jugs, isn’t it, Mike?”

I scraped my chair back, stood up fast enough to knock it over with a loud crash. I picked it up, then realized I had put my fingerprints on it. They were all over the house. I’d never be able to wipe them all. “You make me sick!” I said. “Both of you!”

“We’re not particularly interested in your opinion of us, Mike,” Terry said. “You were meant to serve a purpose. You’ve served it. Now, you either go to prison for Sharon’s murder, or you alibi us and we alibi you. Sharon goes into the unsolved files, and everybody’s happy.”

“Not everybody. Not me. I didn’t kill anybody.”

“You stay out of jail. We’ll help you out financially, of course. Say, fifty thousand when the insurance check clears. Another fifty in three years, if you’ve kept up your end of the bargain. Not life-changing money, but a pretty nice little bonus.”

I buried my face in my hands, paced the kitchen, scratched my head, my arms. Everything itched. How could I have been so stupid? I wondered. Then I looked at Lacie, and remembered.

She had been straight with me in the beginning. She’d told me she did what she needed to do to get money. What made me think that fucking me was any different from fucking Terry?

And that face I’d seen in the window one day, behind a sheer curtain. That had been Sharon, who had known, even then, that something was happening around her. She could have called out, could have told somebody. Was she a willing accomplice in all this? Knowing she wouldn’t die but couldn’t really live, wanting to let Terry get the big paycheck?

That was what I told myself when I finally agreed to Terry’s plan. I kept telling myself that through the investigation, the hours and hours of interrogation. When it was over, when it didn’t look like I was being fired because of suspicion, charges never leveled against me, Gold Shield cut me loose. The fifty grand came in handy then, and I was barely able to stretch it for the three years until the next fifty.

When he brought me that second fifty, a surprisingly small bundle in a reusable Ralph’s grocery bag, Terry looked worn out. His face was blotchy and lined, his hair unkempt. Dark half-moons drooped from his eyes like a crying woman’s mascara. We had become something resembling friends over the past three years, meeting at bars every now and then, or at the Cove, watching the seals play, talking about our lives. Mostly me talking, him listening; many of my friends had drifted away after the murder, losing my job. I didn’t have people I could talk to who really understood what I’d been through, except him.

But not this time.

He sat in my living room, on a Goodwill couch, slouched forward with his arms on his knees, doing almost all the talking. “I never should have married her,” he said. “That’s when it all started to go wrong.”

I’d seen the wedding in the newspaper. His wife in the grave just over a year, some had clucked about it but he’d said life goes on, it’s what Sharon would have wanted for him. A detective named Givens had stopped by the next day, asked what I thought about it. I told him they deserved each other, and left it at that.

“Wrong how?”

“She’s a captivating woman, don’t get me wrong. Well, you know that already, don’t you? But she’s only interested in one thing, really. When it comes down to it, it’s always been the money for her.”

“I thought that’s what you wanted.”

“She gets under your skin.”

“Tell me.”

“But no matter what she says, whatever we do, I always know it’s the money she’s doing it for.”

“Life sucks,” I said.

“I’m worried, Mike. She made me sign a prenup, but it’s all in her favor. If I die, she’s a rich woman.”

“I guess you’ve been investing more wisely.”

“I’ve made some good plays, I don’t mind saying. That insurance money saved my ass.”

“And now she wants to kill your ass.”

“That’s what I think. We’ve got to kill her first, Mike. It’s the only way out.”

“We?”

“I’ve still got the goods on you. I could bury you with one phone call. Not just Sharon’s murder, but the ongoing blackmail.”

“Blackmail?”

He kicked the grocery bag. “You think there aren’t records of these big withdrawals?”

“If I’m being accused of blackmail, I might as well ask for more.”

“You’ll have it, don’t worry. Help me get loose of Lacie, and you’ll have plenty.”