The Widower's Wife: A Thriller (20 page)

Michael patted the air for his lawyer to sit. When the man settled into his chair, he whispered into his ear. After a beat, the
attorney began parroting Michael’s defense. “My client didn’t assault anyone. His secretary courted his advances, apparently to manipulate him into giving her money, and then viciously turned on him, as evidenced by her behavior on the video.”

“Blame the victim,” Vivienne muttered, resuming her seat.

“You did give her money, didn’t you?” Ryan asked.

Michael again conferred with his lawyer, keeping his hand over his mouth. The attorney gave Michael some signal: a head nod or blink of an eye. Michael answered the question with a single word: “Yes.”

“And you gave her this money because she threatened to tell police about you trying to rape her?”

A sly smile parted Michael’s lips. He adjusted in his chair. “Nothing like that. It was charity. She was hard up. Depressed. Confused. I felt bad for her.”

Vivienne’s hands clenched beside Ryan. She must have wanted to pop the guy.

“How much?” Ryan asked.

Michael shrugged and rolled his eyes. “I don’t remember. Not much for me.”

Ryan was tempted to reveal the fourteen-thousand-dollar check, but he kept his mouth shut. He couldn’t alert Michael to the fact that FCU had been digging through his personal accounts—at least not yet.

Vivienne leaned forward, her full mouth pursed. “You expect us to believe that you gave money out of the goodness of your heart to a woman who kneed you in the balls?”

Michael smirked. “I’m a forgiving guy.”

“So Ana was hard up. Yet she went to the Bahamas on that money,” Ryan said. “Did that make you angry?”

Michael brushed his lawyer’s hand off his shoulder. “If I’d suffered financial ruin like the Bacons, I wouldn’t go on a cruise.” He shrugged. “But the Bahamas is a great place.”

“You go often then?”

“Yes. And before you ask, I visited the Bahamas the same weekend Ana disappeared. But I wasn’t on the same boat. I was
on the Emerald.” He crossed his khaki-clad legs and folded his hands over his knee. “Gorgeous vessel.”

“But you both went ashore at the same time?”

“I have no idea. My wife and I got off briefly to go shopping somewhere. Our main destination was Paradise Island.”

“So you never saw Ana?”

The lawyer cleared his throat. “He’s made that clear. Ask another question or we’re done.”

Ryan exchanged a glance with Vivienne. It was time to go for the jugular. “Who is Charles Pinder?”

Michael’s smile vanished. He sat forward in the chair and leaned over to his attorney. Ryan couldn’t make out what was said, but the whispers were more vehement. The lawyer nodded along, his expression growing increasingly grave with each bob.

“You searched his financial records,” the attorney said.

“We have a subpoena,” Vivienne responded.

“Personal and corporate?”

“Just personal.”

“My client wasn’t notified.”

“It’s in the mail.” Vivienne’s new partner piped up. Ryan guessed he was being earnest, but it came out sarcastic, as though the NYPD had never intended to let Michael know that they’d scanned his recent expenditures. By law, they had to. But they had a few days’ grace.

Michael stood and walked to the door.

Ryan pressed his hand into the chair arm, helping himself stand quickly on his bad leg. “Who is Charles Pinder?”

Michael flung open the door and stormed out of the room, faster than Ryan would be able to follow.

“This interview is finished,” the attorney said.

“Who is he?” Ryan called after Michael. “Is he the man you paid to kill the woman blackmailing you?”

“It’s time for you to go.” The attorney moved toward the exit. He gestured like a butler for them to head through before him. “All future contact with my client should go through me. He won’t answer your calls.”

Ryan followed the lawyer to the front entrance. Vivienne and David trailed behind, taking advantage of Ryan’s slow gate to survey Michael’s home, showing his attorney that they weren’t intimidated by his client’s money. Once at the entrance, the lawyer again warned them all not to contact Michael directly before shutting the door behind them.

They walked to the car without speaking, aware that Michael might have cameras monitoring the driveway. Vivienne broke the silence after the Dodge had peeled away from the curb. “The mention of Pinder set him off.”

“Did it ever,” David chimed in from the backseat. Ryan caught him grinning in the rearview, a happy puppy that had caught a scent.

“Where to now?” Vivienne asked.

Ryan shifted to a faster gear. “I think you should meet Ana’s husband.”

24

August 24

M
y doppelganger, only younger with pockmarks beneath her makeup, sat at the desk in front of Michael’s office. A black cap-sleeve dress, fashioned out of a fabric akin to Ace bandages, wrapped around her slim figure. The neckline cut in a deep V to show slivers of cleavage. In no world did that dress qualify as business attire.

I strode past her. She hopped up just as my hand hit Michael’s closed glass door. My ex-boss appeared to focus on his monitor, no doubt scanning my notes on the California Public Employment Retirees Fund. They were his ten thirty meeting. He wasn’t expecting me, but I hadn’t needed to be on his schedule, thanks to his apparent failure to deactivate my work badge and alert security to my termination.

“Excuse me. If you’re the ten thirty, you’re going to have to wait. You can’t just go in there.” The girl was chewing gum. A glance over her shoulder revealed an open Facebook page on her computer screen. Did she even know who CalPERS was? The managers of a $230 billion fund could do whatever they wanted, including show up thirty minutes early for a meeting.

“I’m sure Michael will want to see me.”

She stepped to the side. My familiarity indicated that I knew her new boss far better than she did. I deliberately left the door open behind me. The presence of another person in the room stopped Michael from scanning the document in front of him.
He shot up from the chair. Flinty blue eyes met mine. Once again, I owned his attention. “What do you want?”

I thought of Sophia at home with her daddy, missing me as I ran an “important errand.” I steeled myself. “What does everyone want? Money.”

He dismissed me with a wave. “You’re not getting any. As I already—”

“You explained why the police might not believe me.” I deliberately spoke too loud. I wanted the whole office to hear: Rick in marketing. Fadi in accounting. Jeremy in legal. All the administrative assistants. I wanted Michael’s entire fifty-person office to know that I’d been fired for my integrity, not for insubordination or mistakes or whatever lies he’d spread in my absence. “I’m here to explain why your wife definitely will believe that, as I screamed, you pulled up my—”

He rounded the desk and slammed the door shut behind me. My heart raced, but I planted my legs, refusing to allow my flight instinct takeover. I’d come here for a fight. Michael was going to pay to keep me from singing to his spouse, something to the tune of fifteen thousand dollars, the amount my parents had thrice paid coyotes to smuggle them into the country. The amount was, undoubtedly, less than he spent on a weekend away. It was certainly a bargain compared to the millions he’d lose in a divorce.

He resumed his seat behind the desk and then motioned to the opposite chair with a sweep of his arm, a welcoming gesture performed for anyone peering through the glass walls. I glanced behind me before accepting a seat. My replacement made guilty eye contact. No one else stood in the hallway.

“You really think you can blackmail me?” Michael smiled a wide Jack Nicholson grin that bared his upper teeth all the way to the fangs. “My wife isn’t possessive in that way. We have an understanding.”

I knew all about the
understandings
that guys like Michael thought they had: keep the wife in a lavish house with fancy clothing and a generous staff, fund her lunches, support her pet projects and charities, and then go do whatever, and whomever,
you want. Undoubtedly, some men did have such arrangements. But I highly doubted that my boss had a half-open marriage. Jessica and Michael had married at age twenty-five, before Michael had made it. Rich women did not
understand
.

“You forget that I know your wife. We’ve talked on the phone often while you avoided her calls.” I stared him down, reclaiming the power I’d lost the prior week. “She won’t simply accept you trying to bed your secretary, not when she could take half your money in a divorce, maybe even half your firm.”

The mirth faded from his expression. “She won’t believe you.”

“I think she will. I spoke to my husband. You have something of a reputation.”

Michael’s smirk finally vanished. His arms folded across his chest. “I won’t be blackmailed, you little bitch.”

The curse brought me back to that night. If I closed my eyes, I would be trapped in that private bar again. I forced myself not to blink. “Then don’t think of it as blackmail. Think of it as the settlement of an unlawful termination suit. I worked hard for you: more than ten hours a day, five days a week, some weekends. I never missed a day. I didn’t deserve to be fired.”

“You had family emergencies.”

Was that his official excuse for letting me go? “I left early once, with your permission. And I worked late the following week to make up for it.”

Michael mumbled, “Not late enough.”

“I think your wife will agree that it was plenty late.”

Michael drummed his fingers against his desk. He sighed. “Well, I can’t justify not compensating you for services rendered. Pick up your last check from Linda on your way out. She’ll make sure it includes earned vacation.”

I had a week of unused leave. That added to my days worked would equal just about three thousand. “That’s not nearly enough.”

Anger darkened Michael’s pale skin to a reddish tan. “You listen to me. You’ll take what an axed employee gets and not a cent more. You think you’ll have a chance to share your allegations with my wife? My attorneys will gag and bind you like a BDSM
hooker. And if you think your husband is unemployable now, wait till I get through with him. Believe me.”

The threat to Tom erased my fear. Michael had tried to rape me and now he was going after my family.

“No.” My voice didn’t sound like my own. “You wait till I get through with you. Jessica and I will be having lunch with her half of your money. Your kids will hate you. Believe me.”

Michael sneered a response. He didn’t look as confident as he had moments before. I leaned over the desk, tempting him to lash out, to strike me right beneath the eye socket in a place that would show up real nice for my meeting with his wife or in a tabloid photograph. “And you don’t just have to worry about your wife. After I tell her, I’ll tell the media. The financial crisis has vilified Wall Street. Folks are eating up stories about bad bankers. My story will be a Thanksgiving feast come early.”

Michael’s eyes went wide. “What do you want?”

I wanted enough to keep my house and stay afloat for another year, but there was no way Michael would cough up a hundred thousand dollars, or even twenty thousand. I needed to ask for an amount that wouldn’t be noticed missing from Michael’s personal accounts. An amount he could “gift” to a needy coworker without explaining anything to his accountant or his spouse.

“Fourteen thousand,” I said.

Michael lowered his chin. “Ten, and only because I don’t feel like putting my wife through any conversation with a whore.”

The name-calling emboldened me. “Fourteen—or my second call after your wife will be to the
Daily News
.”

Michael looked at the clock on his desk. We’d argued for five minutes, at least. His big pension fund appointment would be here soon.

“You’re not worth it, but my time is.” A drawer opened. He slammed a checkbook onto his desk, scrawling the figure across the paper so violently that I thought the pen might puncture the carbon copy beneath. He tore it from the book and slid it across to me. It was made out to cash.

Fourteen thousand dollars. Enough for the initial payment to secure my passage with the coyotes plus something for my family to live off of while we waited for the insurance to pay out. I grabbed the check.

“Now get the fuck out. I have an important meeting.” He nodded in the direction of his assistant. She didn’t notice. His hand flew to his intercom. “Fernanda, escort Mrs. Bacon to HR. Now. She quit and has to fill out her exit paperwork.”

The girl jumped from her chair. She flew to the glass door. It only took her a second to reach it, but I already stood outside. Water churned in my stomach. I needed to vomit. One thing at a time. I swallowed the bile in my throat. First, I had to cash this check.

Fernanda looked at me bug-eyed, unsure of where she’d been instructed to take me. “Linda is down the hall,” I said.

25

November 28

R
yan opened the Dodge’s passenger door and grabbed Vivienne’s calf-length coat from the backseat before David could slide it forward. She shivered in the cold but still waved the garment away.

“He’s not one for hospitality,” Ryan cautioned. He held the coat open so Vivienne could slide her arms in.

The car door shut, announcing that David was joining the conversation. “What do we want with Tom?” David asked.

“I’m hoping he’ll clarify the timeline, make it clear that someone else could have been in the room with his wife,” Ryan said. “You guys might help him remember things more clearly.”

“If he knows we’re looking at Michael for his wife’s death, he’ll want to tell us everything,” David said.

Vivienne jostled her arms through the coat sleeves. “Let’s not reveal our suspicions right away. We don’t want him manufacturing facts.”

Ryan led the way down the Bacons’ long driveway with David flanking him. Vivienne lingered a few steps behind, apparently checking out the neighborhood. The Wu-Nosek clan could afford the million-plus suburbs. If Vivienne ever had a kid, she might acquire her own starter castle someplace like this, maybe even in this exact town.