Art/Penny: Something is very much not right.

I know I've done wrong by Liz, but never in a million years would I do what the police seemed to be suggesting today. I know they were mostly trying to put a scare into me, maybe get me to shake something loose that maybe isn't even self-incriminating, but perhaps something that I didn't even know I knew, but, man, the implications of what they were suggesting.

Remember how I mentioned last week that Liz and Ray eloped? It appears that they never made it to Vegas. Nobody knew this, however - their families put in a call to the Cambridge P.D. when the pair didn't come back on the day their note said they would, after conducting their own little amateur investigation. Liz had apparently allowed her parents to use her Expedia account on the rare times they traveled, so that they could rack up some sort of rewards points faster, and they checked it out to see that Liz had booked a trip to Vegas. When they called the hotel, though, they were told that Liz and Ray had never checked in. That's when they called the police, who found out that they'd never gotten on the plane.

At least, that's what I think was the case. The detectives might have been fudging the details, trying to catch me in a lie. I'm apparently some sort of prime suspect, because the neighbors reported that Liz and Ray had been fighting about a woman in the days leading up to their disappearance, and someone (Zoey, I'll bet) gave them my name. Normally, they say, it's not a jealous girlfriend they suspect in cases like this, but looking at you...

I stop them there, asking what they mean by "cases like this". That's when they start the "you must have some idea, Ms. Lincoln. There was blood found in their apartment..."

As you might imagine, this was the point where I started getting scared, and by "scared" I mean "terrified". I'm innocent, of course, but I must have started behaving like a guilty person. I started wondering, had I acted like I knew the layout of Liz's and Ray's apartment, even though I told them I'd never been in there? Was I too familiar with other details of their lives in a way that would point suspicion at me? Will they dig up things like intimidating "Arthur Milligan" or two times Penelope Lincoln had disappeared off the face of the Earth without adequate information or tossing away a promising career in television to move cross-country to take a decidedly less glamorous job?

I probably did a really shitty job live-blogging and reporting on the game tonight, which might not have been noticed except that people are going to want to read about Nomar Garciaparra's return in the papers tomorrow. Heck, I was excited about this one, since the A's were my hometown team two lifetimes ago. But, instead, I'm generating scenarios in my head about how I could wind up in jail because of this. There are times when it really doesn't pay to be a writer, especially one who's been trying to plot crimes interesting enough to read about for the last couple years: My mind has been going crazy coming up with this stuff, including a hellishly circular bit where the very fact that I've been researching crime makes me more of a suspect.

I'm probably worrying too much, I know - even with the blood, two adults who had been planning a trip disappearing probably won't be at the top of the cops' list. But it's sure as hell freaking me out.

-Art/Penny