The Other Woman (34 page)

****

RITCHIE

I meet with Scarlett’s father, two attorneys from his law firm, and a man called Samson at a local coffee shop. I’m sleep deprived and exhausted from the heavy-duty fucking I’ve been doing with Rival,
and
from visiting Bradley and Scarlett in jail. Luckily, my girls are with Liefie, so I know they’re taken care of.

Scarlett’s father, Milton Smyth, is an arsehole in a well-tailored suit. “This is fucking bullshit!” he snarls at the flustered lawyers accompanying him, his face puce, his eyes bulging. “She should not have spent a night in this shithole, you pricks! What the fuck kind of lawyers are you?”

He spins around and looks at me. “Who’s the big oaf following us?”

Oaf
?

“Oh, he’s Mr. Murdoch’s investigator, Mr. Smyth,” Samson says. “He’s Ritchie MacMillan.”

“He reliable?” His eyes drag over me, a sneer on his face.

“Mr.
Murdoch
believes he is,” Samson says.

Milton’s granite eyes bore into me. “What have you discovered? Speak.”

I don’t answer.

“You deaf or something?” he asks.

“Fuck you!” I say.

Confusion and disbelief flicker in his eyes. “What?”

“I said, go fuck yourself , you dumb, puny prick.”

“Do you know who
you’re
talking to, you…you… imbecile?”

I take a step toward him. “Listen, you little arsewipe, don’t confuse me with your other side-kicks. I’m not on your payroll. Get it? You want my help, change your attitude or I’ll walk, and good luck with finding someone you can trust. Someone who won’t sell this story for a song and humiliate the shit out of you
and
your family.”

His jaw hangs.

“And show these men some respect, or I’ll put my foot up your bony arse on my way out. It’s Sunday. They left their wives and their children to help out your daughter, and you publicly humiliate them like that? You need to check your ego, or I don’t doubt they will find a way to let your daughter rot in jail.”

I don’t know who looks more shocked – him or his three suits. Doubt his men ever heard someone talk to their boss like that before.

Milton surprises me by raising both hands in a motion of surrender. “I apologise, Mr. MacMillan. I’m stressed. My
daughter
is in jail.” He gives me a need-I-say-more? look.

I’m a little disappointed that he’s suddenly humble. I would have loved to teach him a lesson. But I have my friend to think about, so I nod.

“Can you
please
share your findings with me? Scarlett seems to think Murdoch’s ex-wife is behind all of this.”

“Yeah, I can,” I say, then spend the next five minutes presenting him my carefully prepared story. “I understand what Scarlett is saying about Bradley’s ex-wife, but she’s been in a mental institution for months and she’s—”

“—Retarded? Yeah, Scarlett told me she’s a fruitcake.”

I clam up and stare at him. Not the words I was looking for. My dislike for him has just gone up a notch or two. “Well, she…she doesn’t strike me as being
crafty
enough to orchestrate something so complex.
If
someone has framed Bradley and Scarlett, they would have to be extremely shrewd. Criminally minded, too.”

“Mm.” A thoughtful look crosses his face.

“I mean, Scarlett, with her genius IQ, taken in like this?" I shake my head. “I’m baffled.” Even though I try to keep my voice neutral, anyone who knows me will know that I’m mocking his daughter.

When Milton nods, I relax a little.

“I’m having her checked out as we speak,” Samson interrupts.

I was not expecting that.
Shit
!

“The fruitcake,” Samson continues. “I also enlisted the help of a computer genius to help with the timeline of ad placements – other technical stuff. Anything that can show evidence of them being framed. We’ve used him before. He’s good. He’ll get to the bottom of it.”

Shit! Shit! Shit!

Milton looks at me.

“Well, I have to pick up some papers I left at Bradley’s,” I say, trying to maintain eye contact with him. “When I get there, I’ll quietly check things out too.” I have to say this. Whoever is watching Rival will see me entering the house. Or may have
already
seen me leave this morning.

As you can imagine, by the time I leave Milton Smyth, my heartburn is back.

Rival, baby, you’re in big shit.

Rival’s smile is smug when she sees me. “Thought you said you couldn’t ...” Her smile suddenly vanishes. “What’s wrong, Ritchie?”

I motion for us to talk in private.

“Girls,” she yells over her shoulder, her eyes still locked on my face, “go play in the TV room so I can give Uncle Ritchie Daddy’s…files.”

When the kids leave the room, I sit Rival down and fill her in on Milton and Samson – their computer expert.

Her response is a shrug.

“Rival! Do you understand that this is serious? You need to stop…
whatever
you’re doing right now?”

“Yeah, yeah. I will.” She looks at the ground, her forehead lined. “I will, yeah…”

She looks up at me. “What time are you picking up Scarlett tomorrow morning?”

“Ten.
Ish
. Why?”

“Can you do me a favor?”

“What?”

"Can you text me the
moment
she enters your car and—”

“No, Rival no!”

“—then delay them a little? Say, fifteen to twenty minutes?”

“What the hell for?”

“Please do it. Please? It’s too late for me to abort my plans, Ritchie. Just this once. Please!”

I sigh and run my fingers through my hair. “Fine. Just this once. Never again after that, deal?”

“Deal!” She smiles. “Now kiss me.”

“No!”

“C’mon, just one tiny kiss?” She holds her thumb and forefinger slightly apart. “Pretty please?” “Fine.” Like a total pussy, I wrap my arms around the woman who is causing me to develop a stomach ulcer and kiss her.

*****

RIVAL

Ritchie just saved my hide by telling me about the computer expert. Now I will have to do most of my damage tomorrow morning, between the time Scarlett is released from jail and the time she arrives home.

In the meantime, there’s a lot I can still do. Excited at the thought of how much damage I still have to do in my plan to bring down Scarlett, the moment Ritchie leaves, I scour the place for USB sticks and portable hard-drives Scarlett might have used to back up her book files.

After much searching, I locate a few on the main computer. Then the arduous task of going through every one of them and searching for any of her book-related files. After an extensive keyword search, I find plenty.

Of course I don’t delete any of them, as deleted files, from my memory of watching
CSI
and
Law and Order
(and
Forensic Files
, and
FBI Files
, and…) can be easily retrieved.

Instead, I simply gear up to replace content like text and pictures.
Tweak
them to make them interesting.

In the meantime, I nose around the mess left by the search warrant. I go into her main bedroom and eye the mattress ripped apart by the cops looking for stolen property. What a pity – the place looks violated.

I rifle through her personal stuff, her closets, the boxes of different vibrators, butt beads, harnesses, mouth gags, blindfolds, fruit-flavored sugarless lubricants, and other sexual accoutrements that I had no idea existed. What an arsenal. Bet the cops who searched the place had a lot to talk about back at the precinct.

I check out her toiletries. Thirteen different designer perfumes, and a ton of Chanel, Dior, and Sothys.

Her closet is overflowing with designer outfits, shoes, lingerie, and accessories, and many of them, to my surprise, with their price tags still intact.

As I look around at the place I plan to return to, to my absolute surprise and dismay, it no longer feels like home to me. It does not in any way resemble the haven I remember leaving behind. In fact, it feels like I’m visiting a grave.

Now that the excitement has worn off, and the adrenalin over the arrest has dissipated, I find myself edgy and almost paranoid. All those portraits of Scarlett – all seventeen of them on the walls – gives me the creeps. It feels like her ice-blue eyes are following my every move.

I have to accept the reality; this is no longer my home. It is my property, sure, but it’s not home anymore. A lump forms in my throat and my eyes burn.

Nevertheless, I refuse to grieve over this piece of chattel. I have far too much going for me right now to lose focus. Quickly, I round up my kids, get them into Scarlett’s fancy gunmetal gray four-seater Porsche, and head to a local restaurant.

****

SCARLETT

Monday morning has finally arrived, and it is with utter relief that I walk out of jail. Finally.

My eyes burn from a lack of sleep, my body aches from sleeping on a hard bench, and there is a terrible stench that follows me around. You would feel the same way too, had you spent the weekend with a creative assortment of fucks.

I’m desperately in need of a long, hot shower with industrial strength shower gel to scrub away the putrid stench that clings to me. The adrenalin over my arrest has worn off, and I’m fuming. It has to be Rival behind all of this. If not her, then who? Who the hell has the gall to fuck with me? Which imbecile dares to believe he (or she) can get away with humiliating my husband and me like that?

Is she aware of my intelligence quotient? (Yes, it’s a
she
without a doubt.) Make no mistake; I will flush her out, then down the toilet.

Ritchie picks me up in his cheap two-year-old Jeep, then stops at the men’s jail to pick up Bradley. The retard takes his time, so I bake in a hot oven for more than thirty minutes in front of a building full of nefarious criminals.

Finally, I see my darling husband who was wronged and disgraced emerge, his clothes creased, dark circles around his bloodshot eyes, and his shoulders stooped – his demeanor one of defeat.

I brace myself for his hug, his apology for me having experienced what I have, and a promise to keep me safe in the future.

To my utter surprise, Bradley grunts a greeting at me, gets into the front seat with Ritchie, and doesn’t speak to me the entire trip home. What the fuck? Wasn’t I also arrested? Shouldn’t he be enquiring how I am? Could he actually be mad at me for the arrest?
Blaming
me? He’d better not be blaming me for something I didn’t do. Because Ritchie is around, I say nothing, but simmer quietly in the back seat.

As we pull into our driveway, I gear myself up for my shower, but stop dead in my tracks when I see Rival at my front door, unashamedly flaunting herself before my husband in skinny jeans, a green top that strains across her measly breasts, and black heels. Heels in the middle of the day? She never wore heels in the middle of the day. What happened to her usual velour sweat pants and jacket? What happened to the sneakers and hooded tees she wore all the time?

Oh, and eyeliner, lipstick, and mascara? Oh, those nude colors, that barely-made-up look does not fool me – she’s wearing concealer, foundation, and probably mineral powder. For who?

And her hair – it’s curled, but tousled. What happened to her ponytail?

It irks me to see her eyes clear and shining, and her smile as bright as the sun I haven’t seen for days. The bitch looks like she’s just had fifteen hours of sleep. Shouldn’t she have left by now?

Then Bradley and Ritchie get out of the Jeep and walk into the house without either of them opening the door for me. I’m stunned. What is wrong with these men? Irritated, I get out of the Jeep and follow the men inside.

What is that delicious aroma emanating from the kitchen? She must have ordered take-out. Of course I haven’t eaten a thing while in jail, and my stomach is beginning to eat itself.

“Hey, Bradley,” Rival says in a syrupy voice. She doesn’t look at me, greet, or even acknowledge me.

“Hey, Rival,” Bradley says.

“I made you Irish stew. Mum’s recipe. Thought you’d be hungry.” She smiles and tucks her hair behind her ears. “From scratch.”

“My mum’s recipe? You serious?” Bradley rubs his stomach. “Oh, man, I’m starving. Thanks, Riv. Appreciate this.”

“My pleasure.”

Riv
? Seriously?

“I need a shower first,” Bradley says. “Then only can I eat. The kids at school?”

“Yeah. They’re both fine.”