Mona Liza Lies

5 | The Dead Aren't Gone

It was a fine Sunday, so Mona slept in. Well, she tried to.

The loud bangs on the door weren't exactly friendly. She groaned, got up, and looked around for her mulberry coat. When she finally found it, the knocks seemed to get more urgent.

"Coming!" She yelled, running to the door.

Without looking through the peephole, she opened it and was met with several uniformed men.

The stoic one at the front gave her a judgemental look and though she couldn't blame him because she was tired and messy, she'd still have preferred a warmer glance.

"Is there any pr-problem?" She said, yawning.

"We need to search your house, step aside ma'am." The same officer informed. 

"What the-?" She looked around at the five or six of them. "Are you all strippers?"

"Excuse me?" Another tall, lean fellow asked, looking like she threw a plate full of spaghetti at his face.

"Strippers? Bet this is new for you." Mona's words felt like jelly. She might be a bit too hungover. "You lot like to catch your customers by surprise. The first time someone's clever enough to-"

"Miss, we aren't hired by anyone." The brown-eyed stoic one interrupted, showing his badge. "We need to see your apartment. Now."

Mona didn't move, but they brushed past her. She wondered whether she accidentally murdered anyone last night, but decided to ponder about that later. When the last person got in, she stared at his backside. What a shame he's not a stripper, she sighed, then went after them.

***

Dennis burst into the precinct like the protagonist of a bad 80s action movie. 

Everyone in the room sent him awkward glances and he nodded apologetically, finding his way to the help desk.

"I want to see Mona. Mona Rubins." He tapped on the desk urgently.

After getting the directions, he headed over to the waiting room, where Mona sat with a drink in her hand, looking like she went through hell. Dennis was relieved to see she wasn't in handcuffs or under supervision because that must mean the cops had no reason to do them. Everything might have been a misunderstanding.

"When you said you were here, I thought you were arrested." Dennis slid next to Mona's chair.

He was alarmed to see the tears in her eyes. She stood up furiously.

"Your dead girlfriend was a bitch." Mona said, loud enough for the entire room to hear.

"Sit down," he hissed, pointing towards the chairs. Mona looked like she might resist, but sat down begrudgingly. 

"What happened?" He asked.

"I was sleeping in when the cops burst in my house to search for something." 

"Why? Did they have a warrant?" He asked seriously.

"No, but I thought it was a misunderstanding. They don't need warrants if you give them permission to search your house. They said something about Liza's room." Mona kept her hands on her forehead.

"And?"

"They didn't find anything suspicious." She explained slowly like Dennis was three.

"How come you're here then?"

"Turns out, there's been a lot of overdose cases in the last few weeks," Mona answered, wiping off her tears. "They wanted to ask me some questions and I didn't have any plans to look guilty so I came along."

"That doesn't explain why you look like someone stole your Netflix password."

Mona glared at him, so he made a gesture of zipping his mouth shut.

"Before I came down here, one of the cops found a journal under her bed." She said sharply. "I said it's mine and that I left it there. I didn't know why, it was a gut instinct."

"Well, what did it say?" 

Mona took out a paper from her jacket pocket and handed it over. Dennis snatched it and read the one sentence etched in Liza's handwriting.

My roommate gave me all the drugs.

Dennis felt himself shrinking. He looked at her with wide eyes and raised eyebrows. He left like he was holding a murder confession so he shoved it back to her which she then pushed back into her pocket. Dennis was silent but he might as well has been punched in the guts. 

"You said she never mentioned the drugs before." He said through gritted teeth.

"She didn't," Mona replied.

"Then how come she wrote it in her journal?"

"Because it was her journal. People usually write private stuff in there, not just cooking recipes."

"They don't lie in journals," Dennis whispered.

Mona folded her hands and looked ahead. "I did not give her drugs. I did not know about the drugs."

"How did you even have a "gut instinct" that the journal might have given you trouble? Why didn't you give this paper to the cops instead of tearing it off?"

"Because they'd throw me in jail!" Mona said as if she couldn't believe he even needed to ask the question. "The journal was full of her poems and articles and her job. Diary entries. Then after a lot of empty pages, there's this. It's suspicious, it's like-like-"

Dennis waited.

"Like she wanted to set me up." Mona spat out the words and closed her eyes. "Or even just scare me. She must have known ink in a page alone can't be evidence for the supposed blood in my hands. She knew I wouldn't actually get in trouble-"

"You can't be serious."

"You do believe me, don't you?" Mona's voice cracked for a second, making Dennis's doubts falter. "I wasn't her supplier. Tell me you trust me."

"Of course, I do." He whispered, then had an inner battle with himself, wondering why he did. He knew Liza more than the woman in front of him. 

"Good." Mona smiled gratefully. "That's pretty much it. The detective in charge of the narcotics department asked me to wait here, we can leave soon."

"Hey," he struggled to come up with what he wanted to say. "Liza was Liza. Even if she might not have been a good person, I'll never think she was a bad one."

"What are you saying?"

"There might be more to the story than we know." He leaned back against the chair. "And thank you for texting me first."

"I didn't have anyone else to be mad at," Mona shrugged. He scoffed.

"If they're questioning everyone close to Liza again, don't you think I'll be called soon?"

Mona nodded, "Bet we're gonna see a lot of each other."

"Does that mean you'll make that famous pie soon?" Dennis asked, trying his luck. Mona laughed.

"No."

Dennis rolled his eyes.
He thought about how much it made sense that Liza used to speak so highly of her best friend. Mona could be cold and impassive, or warm and straightforward. She could be friendly, or she could be the devil incarcerated. In the cold room with trouble in all corners, he realized he liked having her around. Grieving was not so lonely when he had her by his side.

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