“How many more were there?” I snarled, scrolling through the smartwatch, cursing the teeny-tiny screen. “Rosie, Oakley, Beatrice, Tits, Likes Butt Stuff—was Brooks cheating on me with half the town?”
A YouTube video tutorial helped me access the threads of deleted messages, which let me find Rosebud in Training, Thick Thighs, and Fat Pussy because Brooks was nothing if not revolting.
Maybe that was why Marius had been so upset that morning. He was furious about Brooks—what he’d done to him—and he was hurting.
“It doesn’t matter; he walked away from me.” I took another long swig of cognac, to the yowls of irate and hungry cats, then furiously dialed each of the numbers of the women Brooks was sleeping with.
“Hello?” Rosie aka Rosebud In Training said. I recognized her voice.
“I know you slept with my husband!” I shrieked at her. “Homewrecker! And I’m destroying that bracelet.”
“Emmie? What the—”
I hung up then punched in the next number and the next and the next.
Tits informed me that yes, she’d known Brooks was married, and no, she didn’t care. She hadn’t even wanted to sleep with him, but he’d helped pay her rent, and by the way, I owed her seventy-five bucks.
“My Christmas charity doesn’t extend that far.”
When I punched in the last number, Fat Pussy’s, I almost thought I’d drunkenly mistyped because the name that came up…
“That can’t be right.” I shook my head. The noisy cats were giving me a headache. I stared out into the dark empty café. “Oh my God—I need to get out of here.”
Feeling woozy, I hauled myself up. It took me several tries to unblock Marius’s number on my phone.
“Pick up. Pick up,” I muttered as I grabbed my purse, not bothering to fix the strap as I thrust my arms into my jacket. I made sure the back door to the kitchen was locked then scuttled to the front door, phone glued to my ear. “Pick up.”
Ring, ring!
I froze as a ringtone echoed in the empty dining room.
Out of the corridor that led to the bathrooms, Marius slowly walked toward me, hands up.
Cora was behind him, holding a shotgun.
“Put that fucking phone down, Emmie,” she spat, “or your boyfriend’s going to be the second person to die in this shop.”
“Don’t do it, Emmie.” Marius’s voice was unnaturally calm for someone with a gun to his head. Probably all that courtroom training. “You hate me, remember, Emmie?” he said, giving me a crooked smile. “I was mean to you this morning. Just save yourself; I’m not worth it.”
“Shut up!” Cora screamed, cocking the shotgun. “Get on your knees, and throw away that goddamn phone!”
Marius knelt down slowly. I dropped the phone and kicked it away.
“That’s right. You took something from me, and now I’m going to take it from you,” Cora said. Her voice had this creepy, unhinged lilt.
“I—what? Brooks wasmyhusband. You were sleeping with my husband,” I argued while Marius mouthed at me to shut up.
“No, he wasn’t. He was mine first. We were together in high school. Brooks said,” Cora sobbed, “that I wasn’t as hard a worker as you, that he didn’t want some gold digger. But…” She gasped. “I know,I knowhe loved me. I gave him my virginity. He had to love me.”
“Are you sure? Because I’m sure this pattern of cheating behavior didn’t just pop up out of the ground when he was in his midtwenties,” I argued. “Brooks was probably juggling you and five other women. You and I are both victims. Just put down the gun. I’m sure we can work it out. I’m sure you didn’t mean to kill him.”
“You’re not a victim. You’re a villain. The only reason he’s dead is because of you,” Cora spat.
“Emmie didn’t kill him—you did,” Marius said, earning a rap of the gun on his ear.
“I may have pushed him off the ledge, but Emmie put him there,” Cora snarled. “He was going to marry me.” Her voice caught. “He said the other women didn’t mean anything, that he’d made a mistake. But he could never just make a clean break. I just wanted to make him sick. I didn’t mean to kill him. I just wanted him to realize that Oakley and all those other women wouldn’t stick by him through sickness and in health. He wasn’t supposed to die.”
“What about Beatrice?” I asked.
