Here She Lies (18 page)

“Can you
please
just tell me where the card was issued? What state?”

“I am very sorry.”

I took a deep breath and managed a polite good-bye, reminding myself that this was not Mary’s fault, that eight thousand dollars could probably feed her entire extended family for a year and she should be commended for managing to keep her disdain to herself.

Bobby swiveled to face me. “Done. Equifax has the fraud alert and they’ll share it.”

“Good.” Then I repeated my conversation with Mary. As I spoke, whispering, Bobby seemed to search my face. Then his gaze settled on my right ear; he was staring at my earring. He lifted a finger and gently touched it.

“These are round,” he said, “and isn’t this platinum?

I wonder how many carats they are.”

“
Zero
carats, Bobby. And it’s silver, not platinum.

They’re
fakes
.”

His hand fell to his lap and he stared at me, thinking something over, weighing the decision to speak his mind. Bobby was not the kind of person who made idle accusations and yet as soon as he started talking I knew what he was thinking. When Mary had described the earrings, I’d thought it too—she was describing
my
earrings—except for one crucial difference: mine were fakes and they didn’t cost eight thousand dollars. They were a gift from Julie and obviously she had nothing to do with this. Why would she? And anyway, Julie had bought
two
pair, one for each of us, and this charge was for only one pair. It took all my strength not to tell Bobby to save his breath. He had been very patient with me, forgiving in the extreme, and the least I could do was hear him out.

“Those accounts and those charges start appearing about two months ago,
before
your wallet was stolen, right?” he asked.

“Right.”

“About the time of the other charges, the ones on our real accounts.”

“The Lovyluv charges,” I said.

His jaw ground a little at that.

“Okay, the bogus charges I
thought
were gifts for Lovyluv.”

“Exactly. Which were made around the time of the e-mails that we both agree were fake,” he said. “Right, Annie?”

“Right, though I don’t get how such personal e-mails
can
be faked, you know? That’s what I can’t figure out—”

“Annie!”

“But it doesn’t make
sense
.”

“It doesn’t make sense to me either, but they’re obviously connected to all this. Don’t you agree with that?”

“Yes. Yes, I do, Bobby. It’s just …” I could see how frustrated he was getting with me, but my mind was stuck on the e-mails. I agreed that they were connected to the bogus charges; I believed that because it was logical. But
why
was this evil e-mailer of Bobby’s trying to ruin
me
? My attempted replies to Lovyluv had bounced back, but surely they could be traced to a real person, and maybe this person (who knew so much about Bobby’s body) had sown this havoc in revenge. Maybe he had broken up with her when he realized I might really leave him;
that
was logical, too. Bobby had spurned his lover and she had gone berserk.

“It’s just that … the description of your birthmark on your lower back, Bobby … the nickname … the description of you making love—”

“I think Julie wrote those e-mails!” He blurted it out just like that.

“That’s
ridiculous
!”

“I confronted her about it last weekend—”

“Are you saying Julie was your lover?” Even as I said it, I couldn’t believe it would be true.

“No.”

“Then
why
would she send the e-mails?” His neck had thickened and his face was red; he looked like he was tamping down an explosion. And then it just burst out: “Because she
wanted
to sleep with me. She tried to seduce me and I turned her down.”

“What?”

“It’s the truth.” He shook his head slowly as if he himself could hardly believe it. “I didn’t want to tell you. I knew you wouldn’t believe me, I know how close you two are, and things were hard enough between us, so I kept it to myself.”

He was right; I
didn’t
believe him. “If you make that kind of accusation, Bobby, you better be able to back it up. Because it is way way
way
out of line. You’re talking about Julie, my twin sister—”

“I realize that, Annie. She’s like a part of you.”

“No. She
is
part of me. We are
one
person. What you’re saying cannot possibly be true.” He tried to take my hand, but I pulled it away.
No.

Our voices had risen again and now everyone in the cafe seemed to be watching us, but I didn’t care and evidently neither did Bobby. His tone was firm as he persisted in trying to convince me of something I found unbelievable.

“It was last Thanksgiving,” he said. “When you were pregnant. She wasn’t subtle about it.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true.”

“I
hate
you.”

“It’s still true.
Think
about it, Annie.” But thinking was impossible. I was engulfed by blustery hot feeling that told me Julie would never seduce my husband and that if she had (which she wouldn’t!) I would have known about it. Somehow I would have sensed it.

“It’s a lie,” I said.

“I think she sent the e-mails. I’ve thought so all along. I mean, she’s seen me in a bathing suit; she knows what I look like enough to fake these descriptions.”

“Then why didn’t you say something to me?”

“For this very reason. Because of
this
—your reaction. I was afraid of exactly what’s happening right now. I mean, my God, if I criticize her hairstyle you take it personally.”

Even as he spoke, even as I hated him for what he was saying, I knew he was right about the predictabil-ity of my reactions when it came to Julie. Bobby had never been allowed to critique so much as a hair on her head; I had made that perfectly clear from the beginning.

“And when you confronted her over the weekend?” I could see them sitting together beneath the weeping willow, the look on his face caught by my camera: vexation. “She denied it, didn’t she?”

“Of course she did,” he said.

“Then why did you bother asking her?”

“I don’t know. I guess I was hoping she’d admit it and tell you and we could put an end to all of this. I wanted you to come home with me.”

“So you thought if Julie came to me and said, ‘Oh, don’t worry. I sent those e-mails,’ I would have just said, ‘Oh, okay, that solves that,’ and then I would have just packed in all my plans and gone back to Lexington? You actually thought it would be that simple?” He didn’t answer.

“And you honestly think Julie made all those charges to our accounts and took out all those new credit cards and bought a
car
on our dime? You really believe that? Julie, who earns more money in one year than either of
us
will ever see in a lifetime?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Well, I
don’t
believe it.”

“But it could be true.”

“Then prove it.”

“We’ll have your earrings appraised and then—”

“No way, Bobby!”

“What could you lose by getting them appraised?

It’s cold, hard information.”

“Cold and hard. That’s right.” I stood up. “I’m going to get my stuff and I’m heading back to Great Barrington.”

“Annie, you have a bond that says you can’t leave the state.”

“Well, I
am
leaving the state. I’m going back to see my daughter.”

I grabbed my purse and stalked out of the cafe with all those introverted eyes watching me. Well, now they really had something to write about! Outside, I hailed a cab and told the driver to take me to Fifty-sixth Street. All the way back to the studio, I fumed. What had I been thinking? How had I imagined it would be so simple for me and Bobby to get back together? And why would I want to? The suggestion that Julie could have had anything to do with the nightmare that had swallowed me today—had been swallowing me, it turned out, for
two months
—was outrageous, insulting, ludicrous, unbelievable,
so
off the wall that I didn’t think I could ever talk to Bobby again. I stormed around the studio, packing, then went downstairs to walk the two blocks to the garage where I had stowed Julie’s car (
an Audi
, I wanted to tell Bobby,
that she
bought with her own money
).

It was dark out and chilly. The city was eerily quiet at almost five in the morning. My heart raced when a taxi revved around the corner. I felt safer when I passed an all-night deli in which the counterman was deep in conversation with a woman dressed like a hooker—no, it was a man dressed like a woman dressed like a hooker. I kept walking, grateful for the constant shafts of artificial light against which darkness failed to assert itself. Almost inevitably as I walked, pulling my suitcase, I thought about Zara Moklas. How she had looked like me and Julie; how easy it would have been for anyone to mistake her for us in the dark. And then something really disturbing occurred to me: Could Bobby have gone that far in his delusion about Julie?
Could
he have tried to kill her, coming upon Zara instead? Had he thought that if Julie was gone everything would just stop and I would come home? That I would be heartbroken and run back to him?

Could he possibly be guilty of Zara’s murder after all?

I walked faster now. The red-and-white PARKING

GARAGE sign was visible down the block. My suitcase’s wheels made a racket when I broke into a jog. The streets felt unsafe to me now and I wanted to be inside the garage’s office, in the warmth, paying (with Julie’s card) and making my way back to safety … to my sister … to my baby girl.

When I turned into the garage the smell of gas fumes was familiar and even a little reassuring and I felt a warm rush of relief. But then my insides jumped.

There was Julie’s car, engine running, and there, standing next to it, was Bobby.

“Get in, Annie.”

I looked around. I didn’t see an attendant anywhere.

“Please get into the car.”

“I can’t. You said so yourself: the bond says I can’t leave the state.”

“I spoke with Liz about Lexy and how we can’t reach Julie, and she made a call. The judge agreed to modify your bond so you can travel to Massachusetts; he’ll have the modification filed first thing in the morning. You just have to check in with the Great Barrington police when we get there. Come on,
get in
. We’re wasting time.”

His tone was clear: he wanted to get to Lexy (and so did I!
So did I!
) because she was alone with my sister, whom he now openly distrusted. I knew he was overreacting; Lexy was safe and sound with Julie, who loved my little baby almost as much as I did. It was Bobby I was worried about now. I hadn’t realized his thinking about Julie had grown so extreme. The gas fumes inside the garage were strong and I felt a little queasy. My body wanted to get into the car, to hurry back to Lexy, but only because I missed her. I just wasn’t sure about going with
him
. I had to say what I was thinking, to find out.

“
Did
you kill Zara?” I asked.

“Are you serious?”

“I’ve never actually asked you, so will you just tell me?”

“No,” he said.

“This is really it, Bobby. Everything’s getting said tonight, so just
tell
me.”

“I said
no.
”

And then I realized he had never refused to answer the question; he had answered it now twice.

He reached into the car to pop the trunk, then took my suitcase and put it in. Without deciding anything, I got into the passenger side, pulled the door shut and buckled up. Bobby got in next to me and drove us out of the garage and through the city streets to the West Side Highway. He was a fast, able driver and soon we were in the outer fringe of suburbia where it mingled with the last brick high-rises of the Bronx. We settled into the dark, the green, the quiet and the hum of the car on the road.

We didn’t speak. The things we had said to each other tonight still burned a hole between us, but it hardly seemed to matter; our accusations were minor compared with the other seismic currents that had stunned us today. We could apologize to each other later (if we wanted to), but in my exhaustion I couldn’t see how we would overcome the mystery of this woman’s murder in the new context of my identity theft, my arrest, his accusations about Julie. My body sank into the leather cushions, exhausted, and my mind ground away at all the fresh, grisly problems.

As we drove north Julie’s GPS system electroni-cally illustrated our progress; we were a little red dot that shivered forward on a jagged blue line. The image was strangely reassuring to me. Between the system’s interactive mapping and Bobby’s speed and precision as a driver, we would reach the house quickly. Bobby had once told me that when we were driving together and I was at the wheel, which was rare, he never felt he could close his eyes in case I veered off in the wrong direction or, worse, didn’t notice a potential accident, and so he was always alert at my side. I had never suffered such vigilance when he drove and tonight, staring at the quivering electronic blip, I became hypnotized by our quiet and the drone of the road. Before I realized I’d closed my eyes, I was asleep.

The driver’s-side door slammed shut and I opened my eyes. It was eight in the morning and we were parked outside Julie’s big red barn-house with its wraparound lawn, pale salmon rhododendron bushes and neat curb—a picture postcard whose perfection seemed to distance it from the murder that had taken place right out front, on the street, now rain-washed clean of Zara Moklas. Bobby was halfway across the lawn to the kitchen door. My rental car, which Julie had been driving in my absence, was not in her usual spot in the driveway; in its place was a gardener’s pickup truck loaded with landscaping equipment. As I crossed to the house I caught the bright scent of freshly cut grass.