The Widower's Wife: A Thriller (4 page)

He cupped my cheek with his palm. The gesture warmed like a good memory. I wanted to lose myself in it, spend time in
before
, when we were happy.

My eyes closed a moment longer than a blink. When they reopened, Tom was staring at me, jaw set tight.

“I want to take out a life insurance policy,” he said. “Then I want to fake my death.”

3

November 16

T
he traffic light switched from green to yellow. Ryan slid his foot off the gas and let the Dodge slow to a roll. He could have gunned the six-cylinder engine and, in all likelihood, made it through the intersection before the light turned red, but he didn’t take idle risks. Twenty-five percent of accidents resulted from running a red. Another 23 percent were blamed on weather conditions like the tire-stamped slush on the road.

Goons gambled with their safety. And though many of the investigators that Ryan had met were little better than goombahs with gun permits, he wasn’t one of those. Ryan was a numbers man. Part detective, part mathematician. He prided himself on his ability to make informed decisions, to calculate the odds of potential outcomes, drawing from the encyclopedia of stats that he recalled with such ease. He figured he had a touch of Asperger’s syndrome, though he’d never been tested. He
did
have the symptoms: fixated interests (statistics), an inability to read body language (a problem he’d solved with countless hours researching and analyzing behavior), and relatively low empathy (very much an issue, if you asked his ex-wife).

The light flipped red. Ryan scanned the sights of downtown suburbia as the car idled. A sprawling two-story school building extended from the side of a modest church. A café sign hung above a converted train station beside snow-packed tracks. Not much to see—just as with his case.

Tom hadn’t given him anything to indicate that Ana had been depressed, and probably wouldn’t if he could help it. Ryan needed to find someone without a financial interest in Mrs. Bacon’s psychological condition.

Ana’s parents in Brazil might know if she’d been suicidal. But they also had too great a stake in the insurance benefit to come clean about it. Though Sophia was Ana’s primary beneficiary, Anna had set aside a small portion of the death benefit for her parents’ care. Moreover, Ana had made her folks Sophia’s secondary guardians. If anything happened to Tom, then Ana’s parents would gain control of the ten million and Sophia. Still, Ryan would have to talk to them, if only to check a box on his report.

A horn interrupted his thoughts. The light had changed. In his rearview, a woman gesticulated as she yelled. Ryan pressed his foot on the gas, a touch too hard. The Dodge lurched into the intersection and then skidded several feet on the icy ground. Distracted drivers caused more than 40 percent of accidents. He flipped on his right blinker and turned into town.

Gray snow, piled a foot high by plows, pressed against the curb separating the tracks from free street parking. He stepped out of his car and into an unavoidable inch of salty slush. Boots already wet, he took the direct route to the café’s side door, clambering over the snow median and limping through the accumulation on the abandoned railway.

A bell jangled when he entered the coffee shop. Two women were eyeing a row of pastel macaroons behind a display case. Ryan asked if they were in line. His question wrested the slightly taller woman’s attention from the sweets. Although she wore what appeared to be gym clothes, thick navy eyeliner encircled her dark-blue eyes. Her forehead was near reflective, a sign of too much Botox. She mumbled something affirmative and pulled her companion a few steps closer to the register.

When it was his turn to order, he requested coffee, skim milk, no sugar, the way Leslie had gotten him to order it after years of nagging. He pushed the thought of his ex-wife out of his head and looked for a spot to sit. The women ahead of him had taken their
drinks to one of two bistro tables pressed against a picture window. As good a thinking spot as any.

He paid and brought his drink to the empty table. Silver light struggled through a chalky film covering the glass. It would snow later. He’d need to get back on the road before it started.

Ryan plopped down on the stool and then pulled his cell from his pants pocket. He opened his e-mail and started a new message. His own address went in the
to
field. The subject: Ana Bacon.

Suicide wouldn’t be easy to prove. It was rare for women to take their own lives. Only about five in one hundred thousand American females killed themselves each year, and most of those were either terminally ill or recently divorced. Still, suicide was more likely than the alternative. Of all the unfortunate ways to die, falling off a cruise ship was one of the unluckiest. The odds? Exactly 1 in 2.31 million. A person was twice as apt to be struck by lightning. Plus, nearly all “accidental” falls were due to intoxication. As a pregnant mother, Ana hadn’t been drinking, at least not according to her husband.

Tom had blamed illness for Ana’s death. He’d told news crews that his wife had suffered from a bad combination of morning and motion sicknesses. On the day that she died, he’d left her sleeping in a lounge chair on their balcony to go to the pool (where he’d been seen by multiple people). She’d been exhausted from vomiting on and off all afternoon, leading Tom to believe that Ana must have gotten sick over the side of the boat and lost her balance. Fellow vacationers had supported his story, claiming that Ana had been ill during dinner. Tom’s alibi and the anecdotal comments from cruise-goers had been all the BMA had needed to claim “no evidence of foul play.”

Ryan sipped from his coffee cup. He tapped the sides of the cardboard, pounding out the pins and needles from his thawing fingers as he tried to imagine the scenario Tom had envisioned. He pictured the attractive woman in the news photos leaning over the railing, her thin frame, made thinner by the inability to keep down food, extending too far over the side of the boat in a
vain attempt to avoid splattering the boards beneath her with sick and then, somehow, tumbling over the forty-two-inch railing.

Ryan pressed his eyes shut. It just didn’t make sense, and it would never fly with his bosses. His job was to get ISI out of paying ten million dollars, not explain how a five-foot-seven woman could, from the force of vomiting alone, propel herself up and over a large wooden bar set just below her sternum.

He typed “suicide” into his notes. To prove it, he’d need to know more about the Bacons’ finances and marriage—especially their marriage. Men took their lives because of money problems. Women did so because of relationship issues. If he could prove both existed in the Bacon household, even better.

Where to start? Investigating rule of thumb: people grumbled about work at home and about home at work. He would speak with Ana’s old coworkers at Derivative Capital. If the Bacons’ relationship had been on the rocks, Ana was more likely to have complained to an office pal than to a neighbor.

Ryan took a long sip of coffee and stared outside the salt-splattered window. The street was as empty as a Hopper painting, though there were surely people in the shops. Ryan noted nail salons, hair salons, Pilates studios—establishments catering to well-to-do women. A less affluent suburb might have fast food restaurants, but here, if both parents worked, they probably employed a housekeeper or a cook.

Tom Bacon didn’t appear to have help. But he didn’t come across as a stay-at-home-dad type. The guy didn’t even know how to get his kid a snack.

Ryan typed himself an instruction to track down any current or former workers in the Bacon home. Nannies. Housecleaners. Service people are great sources. Stay-at-home moms confide in their staff, as they are typically the only other adults around during the day. Women who work in others’ homes are also experts at blending into the background when needed, enabling them to witness arguments.

Tom wouldn’t just volunteer the name of any mommy’s helper, not if she’d seen anything relevant. Ryan had his work cut
out for him. He looked up at the women beside him, now chatting between sips. “Excuse me, misses.”

Botox Queen liked his choice of prefix. She smiled at him, blank face prepared for a compliment.

“I recently came to the area. Are there any cleaning services that either of you could recommend?”

The edges of her plastic smile pulled in without crinkling the skin. “Did you buy in town?”

He ignored the question. “If we wanted someone to clean a large home . . .”

“Sorry. My nanny cleans while the kids are in school.”

The friend sat up straighter. “We’re thinking of getting a service to come in once a month.” She turned to her gym buddy. “I think Madeleine straightens up more than really scrubs, you know? And the kids are always tracking in the salt from outside. It’s ruining the floors.”

“Which service are you thinking of?” Ryan asked.

“Robomaids. Everyone in town uses them. They come to your house like an army with mops and brooms. Done in a few hours, then on to the next house. And they’re like the mailman,” the woman giggled. “Neither rain nor sleet nor nor’easter.”

“Well, the problem with having an army is you don’t know who is really in your house.” Ryan imagined that Botox Queen would have frowned at her friend’s suggestion, if her muscles hadn’t been paralyzed. “A lot of these services are staffed with illegals, so if they steal something, they can just disappear.”

The other woman waved off her criticism. “They have so many clients. I can’t imagine they have a problem with things going missing. Reputation is everything.”

Ryan smiled broadly and thanked them before rising from the table. He took his coffee with him. Now that he’d opened the lines of communication, the women might want to chat. He’d enjoy the drink more in the car. Besides, he had work to do.

4

August 11

T
he lap pool beckoned at the edge of the property, a sapphire sparkling in the darkening sky, set in a square of tarnished grass. Blades crunched beneath my bare feet as I crossed the lawn to my oasis. My escape from my husband.

I couldn’t argue with him anymore. The alcohol had been talking, not Tom. I’d said as much when he’d tried to outline his ludicrous plan to collect on an insurance policy that we didn’t even have.
You’re insane right now. Go sleep it off
. My swimming would give him time to stew and then simmer down. Once sober, he’d realize how silly he’d been. He’d apologize.

My black racing suit hugged my curves as I strode to the pool. Too often, clothing hung from my narrow frame, bypassing the inset of my waist to make me appear as rectangular as a Lego figurine. But the Speedo accentuated my hips. I wondered whether Tom was watching me from the kitchen window. Would he find me sexy? Did sex even cross his mind anymore, or was he too despondent from his job loss?

Prickly grass gave way to smooth stone. I dipped my toes into the water. It was cool, not cold. Still, shivers ran down my back as I lowered myself into the pool. I submerged my face, an ostrich burying its head in the sand. I screamed.

Yelling is silent underwater. I could wail until my face turned blue and all anyone would see was a tiny disturbance on the surface when, beneath, a furious sea fizzed around my eyes and
nose. How could Tom just fall apart like this? I understood that for type-A men, losing a job was akin to the death of a loved one. I’d expected the anger and despair, even the drinking. But irrational fantasies?

Lack of air squeezed my temples. I tossed back my head and gasped. I felt sick. Screaming wasn’t good enough. I needed to swim.

I grabbed the silicone cap that I always left to dry at the edge of the pool and tucked my hair inside. I pulled the goggles from my scalp onto the bridge of my nose. Ready, I scrunched like a spring against the cement wall. My thighs shot forward. My right arm extended straight, fingers flat. I pulled my hand in. Pounds of water pushed behind me.

I owed Tom for this release. If not for fear of losing my fiancé to baby bulge, I would never have dragged myself to the YMCA in the first place. I wouldn’t have started swim classes and learned to shed tension in the water.

The lane line beneath me turned into a T. The wall loomed within a stroke’s length. I folded at the waist. My legs flipped over my head. My feet hit tile. I propelled forward, kicking the water into froth. Swimming, rather than sniping, drained my anger. Tom needed an outlet other than drinking.

Without warning, my right leg seized. Lights exploded in my vision as my calf contracted with labor-like pain. I thrashed in the water, trying to rub out the cramp while floating. Too much lactic acid. Not enough water. Tom’s fault. Had he not gotten me so upset, I wouldn’t have wasted precious hydration on tears.

I drilled my thumbs into the spastic muscle. After an excruciating minute, the pain subsided. Aftershocks ran through the leg. I pulled myself up onto land and extended the injured limb above the water.

A minute later, I limped to the gate. Tom leaned on the other side of the iron finials. A frown, highlighted by the lights beneath the shimmering water, drew down his face. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Charley horse. How long have you been there?”

Tom shrugged. “I brought you a towel.” He tossed the white, fluffy fabric over the fence. It waved like a flag of surrender in the air.

I caught it. “Thanks. I forgot to bring one down.”

“Are you coming to bed?”

“Right after I rinse off.”

The night air no longer felt warm as I rubbed the towel over my extremities. I pulled off my cap and shook out my hair, trying to look like a swimsuit model, trying to make my husband want me.

Tom’s eyes glazed. He watched something in his mind, a scene from the past or hope for the future.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“You’re not going to tell anyone about what we discussed?”

Our ridiculous dinner conversation hardly qualified as a discussion. “No. Of course not.”