The Craigslist Murders (25 page)

At first, her husband had objected to the idea of seven custom-made closets. “Dear God, darling,” he’d stammered over his second bourbon old-fashioned. “This is a recession, we’re in! No woman in Cincinnati needs seven closets!” But just like his objections to the Toto toilet (which he now admitted was a pretty “neat” invention), he had eventually surrendered.

She was working on the jet now. She’d launched her campaign during their honeymoon in Europe. George had fumed at every airport as they trekked through endless lines and waited to board delayed flights. (He had insisted on flying American carriers only. “It’s patriotic, darling,” he’d said.

“The least we can do, you know?”) But American flights were notoriously late. Seated in their first class seats, he’d also complained about the service. “What the hell happened to those young, smiling stewardesses?” he’d blustered.

“It’s worse than fucking Aeroflot.” George never swore.

He was the only child of one of Ohio’s richest families, old-fashioned American industrialists. Unlike Vicky and Phil Phil whose fortune had dwindled and shrunk to next to nothing during the cataclysmic ups and downs of the real estate market (and how Charlotte had gloated over that delicious bit of news in the
New York Times
), George had always been cautious with his money. He was so cautious he had modestly confided that his own portfolio was down a mere 15% percent. Nevertheless, even when they’d been bumped off a flight from Paris to Rome, he’d said that a jet was simply out of the question.

“It’s so showy, darling. So conspicuous. And the fuel costs! Good lord! We’d be busted.”

She’d had wanted to kill Laurie and Ned when they’d come over for dinner and tittered about last summer’s $12,000 NetJets fare from New York to Nantucket. She, of course, had no interest in NetJets.

What was it Vicky had said to her after she and Philip had flown to Paris for the first time on the G-5? “Listen, darling. I don’t mind sharing my feelings. But I’m sure as hell not going to share my jet!” Charlotte giggled at the memory. Their jet was probably gathering dust in some hangar at Teterboro with a for sale sign plastered on the cockpit window. George could pick it up for a song.
And wouldn’t that just be perfect poetic justice?
she thought. Zipping around the skies in Vicky’s favorite travel toy?

Last week, she’d surprised George at breakfast with the catalogue from Gulfstream instead. “It’s just for fun, darling,” she’d said. “To see how the other half of one percent lives.” She then began to skim through the Styles section in the Sunday
Times
.

Actually, she called it the
smiles
section. On one exceedingly boring Sunday morning, she’d counted the number of smiles per page. When she got to 74 and realized she was only on page eight, she’d quit. That was when she’d also seen the photo of Anna and Pavel, holding hands at a benefit for the Costume Institute. The taste of bile rose in her throat as she crumpled up the newspaper.

Unlike others who subscribed to the
Times
in far-flung cities, she knew that the socialites pictured had nothing to smile about. They were all either discreetly addicted to antidepressants and painkillers and locking themselves into panic rooms to scream and cry or flat broke.

Stranded here in Cinci and seeing that photo of Rita hiding under a baseball cap and visiting Abe down at the Tombs had her laughing so hard, George had come galloping in from the library to thump her on the back. My God! Genial, affable Abe. The biggest swindler of all time. The kind of sweet old Jewish man everybody wished was their grandfather. It was unbelievable.

Standing sideways in front of the mirror, she grinned at her reflection and ran her hands over the small bump in her belly. She tried to forget the slobbering wet kiss that she’d had to endure when she gave George the news. The pregnancy had been his biggest birthday surprise. When the cramps had started again, she’d seen a local gynecologist. The sonogram of her abdomen had been quite a revelation. Not only did she have gallstones (“You’ve probably had them for years,” the doctor had told her) and two large cysts on her right ovary (one of which had resolved itself), she was also three months pregnant.

Sighing, she dumped her underwear in the hamper,
spritzed her blonde hair with a mist of Joy (
That’s right, Joy
, she thought. Her mother’s own signature scent.) and played her old “what if” game. What if she hadn’t left her coat and cell phone in the hospital? What if she hadn’t run into John on the street? What if Abe hadn’t opened that small starter fund for her in the Caymans? Five grand wasn’t much but it had been just enough to cover her getaway. She remembered how her shrink used to laugh at her for reading the
Post
, too. Poor Dr. Greene. She wondered if he’d ever forgive himself for turning her in after overhearing her confession on the cellphone. Anyway, after reading that piece in the
Post
about the business of identity theft in the Baja, it had cost her a measly $2,000 to become Elizabeth Gordon. Bet, for short. The rest: the work on her face in L.A., the hair, even the switch involved in becoming a perfect trophy wife, had been easy.

There were moments, in fact, when it was so easy, when the role felt so remarkably
natural
, she caught herself wondering who she really was. A week ago, she’d started trawling through the List, again. Just for fun, of course. But still … It was amazing. The kind of stuff women were selling off during the recession! And they were the lucky ones. George had caught Charlotte chortling in bed one morning. She had been reading Page Six, a paragraph about men trudging into Madison Avenue boutiques with shopping bags. It seems they were returning everything their wives had bought that still had a price tag on it and pocketing the cash.
Tough times
, Charlotte thought, as she smiled and slipped into a peach silk dressing gown.

To the seventy-eight editors/publishers who turned this novel down. Without them, I might never have found such a happy home at Melville House. Thanks also to the believers, to those whose faith (blind as it might have seemed) kept me hoping … To the Almighty Wolcott (a/k/a James) and Laura Jacobs, writer and friend extraordinaire. To the agent, Yfat Reiss Gendell, who took this book on as her very first project at Foundry Media and whose phenomenal success since has had nothing to do with me. To Brendan Bernhard who opened the door at Melville and my sister, Rachel, and reader Akiko Busch, both of whom loved Charlotte even in her fetal stages. Last but hardly least … Huge thanks to my husband, Richard, and to Jack and Nora who lived with a murderous mother for as long as it took to get Charlotte, her fire poker, and her yoga mat out there.