The Widower's Wife: A Thriller (17 page)

Ryan was relieved to get back to the case. “He could have figured Ana would keep returning to the well until her husband got back on his feet, which, according to Michael, wouldn’t have been any time soon. And she was pregnant. We won’t know until we see the video, but if Michael raped her, the baby might have been his. A baby certainly makes it difficult to tell the wife that nothing happened.”

Vivienne reclaimed her lunch. She eyed the remaining quarter of the sandwich with disappointment, as though it had challenged her to finish it and won. “So we’re heading to the restaurant.”

Ryan grabbed his cell. Vivienne’s theory had readjusted his priorities. “Soon. First, we need to see Michael’s secretary.”

*

Ryan loitered outside the glass tower housing Derivative Capital and other firms aspiring to become it, waiting for Fernanda to emerge. As it was, folks were eying the man in the leather jacket leaning against the side of the skyscraper. A
large security guard had taken a particular interest. The man glowered at him from beside the building’s revolving door, as if trying to determine whether he had explosives packed into his pants pockets.

No one eyed Vivienne, though a few men turned to look at her. She didn’t acknowledge the attention. For someone like her, the stares of men had to be like sunrays: something that happened in daylight and not worth noticing unless overly hot or oppressive. He wondered whether she’d ever caught him looking.

The revolving door rotated. Fernanda exited the building doing her best impression of an incognito celebrity: full-length black coat, wide brimmed hat, black sunglasses. She stood out for trying not to stand out. Her head moved right and then left, looking for him. He didn’t wave. She’d freak. He was obvious enough anyway.

Apparently, she spotted him. She nearly brushed him with her shoulder as she strode ahead. He followed her around the corner of the building and down the block, losing ground thanks to his limp. Vivienne kept better pace, but Fernanda didn’t realize the woman was also following her.

Fernanda ducked into a cupcake shop across the street just as Ryan reached the intersection. Vivienne waited for him to cross.

Ryan found Fernanda seated in the back of the shop, head buried in the steam rising from a coffee mug. A box of minicupcakes sat on the table. She’d removed the shades. The gray hat remained, pulled low over her brow as though she was the monochrome version of Carmen Sandiego.

He slipped into a chair across from her. The scent of the shop warmed his insides. It smelled of sugar cookies and hot butter. Fernanda gestured to a box of minicupcakes. “Michael’s kids like these. If I bring back a box along with his Starbucks order, he’ll think I took the extra time to be thoughtful.”

“He’s back?”

“Yeah. But not to see you,” she said. “At least, not today. It will be too obvious that I talked to you.”

Ryan nodded agreement and waved Vivienne over from her post, hovering behind the line of baked-goods buyers. “I want you to meet someone.”

Vivienne took his signal and walked to the bench beside him. Fernanda glared at his female companion. “You didn’t say there’d be anyone else.”

“My partner, Vivienne,” Ryan explained. He caught Vivienne smile out of the corner of his eye. “She’s with the NYPD.”

Fernanda gave a curt nod and turned toward Ryan. “NYPD.” She paused between each letter, letting her anger ring out. “You were supposed to ask Michael questions about sleeping with his employees to scare him straight, not freaking get the NYPD involved. If he’s arrested, I’m out of a job.”

Vivienne answered for him. “We’re trying to get to the bottom of a young mom’s disappearance. And from where I’m sitting, your boss looks as though he might have had a hand in it. I’d be worried about your safety, not your job.”

“My job is my financial security. That is safety.” Fernanda turned back to Ryan and gave him a conspiratorial eye roll, as though he, too, should be annoyed. She pushed a couple folded sheets of paper across the table. “You asked what Michael was up to the week Ana was on the cruise. Here you go.”

She grabbed the box of cupcakes. “If you get anything on him, I didn’t help.”

Fernanda hurried out of the shop. Ryan didn’t watch her go. The papers in front of him consumed his attention. The first was a printed screenshot of Michael’s August calendar. Fernanda had highlighted a row of dates in yellow.
August 28 through 31: “Michael Away.”
He’d gone on a vacation the week that Ana was on the cruise.

Ryan handed Vivienne the first page, exposing the one behind it. It was a printed JPEG of an e-mail receipt for something called “luggage forward.” Michael had sent his bags to a Miami cruise terminal. The baggage receipt had a ship number and four accompanying words: “Final Destination: Grand Bahama.”

Just like Ana.

20

August 22

T
he letter from the insurance company puffed from the mailbox, blocking the bronze tin from closing. Its thickness obscured the handful of postcard-sized late-payment notices, which I knew the postman had dropped off along with the adjuster’s decision. Pretty soon, our creditors would stop mailing and start sending collectors.

I pulled out an ISI package addressed to me and then sifted through the remaining white envelopes for something similar addressed to my husband. Only one other piece of mail bore the insurance company’s elaborate stamp. Tom’s envelope was a standard A7 size, hardly big enough to hold more than a folded sheet of paper. Could the company have put both our policies in the large package and sent supplemental documents in a letter? Why address one to me and one to Tom?

I sifted through the rest of the mail as I reentered the house. PSE&G had sent a “notice of discontinuance.” I hadn’t paid the electric bill for the last couple of months, though I had long stopped air conditioning the house. I’d have to send them something or else they’d shut off the power.

“Tom,” I shouted up the back stairs. “The insurance letters are here.”

Sophia’s head popped up from her seat at the kitchen table. She looked around for her father and then, not seeing him, returned
to coloring in a well-worn workbook. She’d done the page before. Now she filled in purple over the panda bear’s white belly.

I scratched her head as I dumped the mail on the table. “No black and white?”

“Purple is prettier.”

“It’s purplicious.” I quoted the second book in her favorite series. Pinkalicious. Purplicious. Silverlicious. Adding “licious” to the end of any word made it sound sweet. I smiled to myself. We have mail. It’s fraudulicious.

My husband thumped up the basement stairs. He wiped sweat off of his forehead. He must have been working out. The basement always remained at a cool seventy-something, regardless of whether we ran the air.

Tom scanned for the mail. “Already?” he asked.

I pointed to the stack beside Sophia’s workbook. A greedy smile crept onto my husband’s face. He ripped open the thick envelope like a dog tearing at a package of rawhide and began devouring the documents.

It had taken just two business days for the policies to issue. Tom had requested an expedited decision due to our “impending vacation.” He’d talked so much about a trip that we’d probably have to book something and cancel it before the charge hit.

“There it is, babe.” He slapped the stack of papers with the back of his hand. “Five million on you for the low, low price of a hundred and eighty-five bucks.”

Sophia laughed, trying to get in on whatever joke had filled her father with so much glee. “Why you happy, Daddy?”

He patted the top of her head. “Because things are looking up.”

What a way to characterize an impending fake death. Sophia would not see the bright side of Daddy’s disappearance, even if I told her the secret that he was really in Florida, waiting for us.

Tom continued to examine the policy, pacing as he flipped pages. His smile grew with each line of digested text. My stomach turned. I took a seat beside Sophia.

“Now I just have to make sure that we don’t do anything they can argue is negligent. No alcohol, nothing at dinner.” He
muttered to himself, already thinking about parts of his scheme that I wasn’t privy to.

“Does it say anything about you in there?” I asked.

Tom turned back a page. “Nope. That would be in my policy. I’m sure they’re identical.”

“There was only the one thick envelope.”

“Mine will get here tomorrow then.” Tom still didn’t look up.

“You got a thin envelope.”

His forehead became crosshatched. I picked up the mail addressed to him and held it out. My policy landed on the table. He claimed the envelope between my fingertips and withdrew the contents: a single letter.

The smile on his face remained, but his eyes changed. They became fearful. Frantic. “This can’t be right.”

He’d been denied. My stomach fluttered with the twisted offspring of dread and relief. If Tom couldn’t fake his death, we couldn’t become criminals. But without that money, what would we do? What would my parents do? I’d wired the eight hundred to my folks, but the gangs might not accept it. They might still punish them for not having the full payment or demand more interest.

“They denied your policy.” My voice squeaked as I stated the obvious.

“It doesn’t make sense. They said my family has a history of suicide.”

“Does it?”

“I don’t . . . I . . .” The letter fell to the table. He clasped the back of his neck, as though trying to keep his head up. “I don’t know what they’re talking about.”

“Do you think you can get them to change their mind?”

“They’d just refuse payment later by arguing that I’d killed myself.”

I exhaled: part relief, part staving off tears. “Well, it’s probably for the best.”

Tom grabbed the back of a kitchen chair. His whole body vibrated as though an electric current ran down his back. His legs
gave way as he pulled out the seat. He landed on his knees. My husband, former master of the universe, on his knees.

I abandoned my chair to crouch beside him. “It will be okay. We’ll get through this.”

“I can’t believe they denied me.”

“It wasn’t the best plan, anyway. I’ll get another job. We’ll move.” I was the cheerleader of a football team down fourteen to thirty-five in the fourth quarter. Anyone could hear that I tried to convince myself as much as I did Tom. I’d never rooted for the underdog.

“They didn’t cover me.” Tom gestured toward the documents on the table. “How could they not cover me? And they covered you.”

The words rang in the air like a preacher calling for the choir’s response. The insurance company had given me the policy denied to my husband. My life was worth five million dollars. My “death” could save my family. Can I get a Hail Mary?

Sophia stared at her father as though he’d morphed into a monster. “Daddy?”

Her voice triggered something in him. Tom rose from the floor, face suddenly stoic. He began walking from the room, stiff, expressionless, a man about to face a firing squad. For the second time in a month, I feared my husband could hurt himself. His inability to provide was killing him. If he couldn’t fix it—if we couldn’t fix it—he wouldn’t have the strength to go on.

Sophia sensed the change in his behavior. She flung herself on his leg. “Daddy, don’t go,” she yelled.

He kept walking, powering through her grip on his leg as though he had a purpose that heaven or hell couldn’t pull him from. If I didn’t do something, my daughter wouldn’t have a father. I wouldn’t have a husband.

“I’ll do it,” I said.

The words stopped Tom’s death march from the house. “I can’t let you. I’ll . . .” His body shuddered, an engine sputtering on empty.

“I can do it. We’ll cash in my policy.”

“How?” He croaked the question. “You don’t drive the Maserati. It’s stick.”

“I’ll think of something.”

Tom bent to pick up Sophia from around his calves. He held her close against his chest and buried his face in her hair. His shoulders shook. He walked toward me and placed our daughter at my feet. “Thank you,” he whispered.

The words didn’t convey his gratitude as much as they expressed his faith in me. My husband believed I could pull this off. He thought his administrative assistant wife was capable of tricking a major corporation out of millions of dollars. He trusted that I could save our family.

So I would. Somehow, I’d fake my death—or die trying.

*

The idea came to me in the pool, somewhere between lap ten and lap fifteen. We would take that vacation. Nothing fancy. A weekend jaunt to the Bahamas on a cruise ship departing from Port of Miami, the extreme budget version of the trip I’d recently booked for Michael and his wife. Tom and I would get a nice ocean-view room. We’d swim. Sunbathe. Snorkel in the Caribbean Sea. And on the last evening, soon after the boat departed Grand Bahama Island, just as it passed the smaller landmasses on the map between the Bahamas’ main port and Miami Beach, I would fall overboard.

I laid out my idea while in bed with Tom, discussing it as though I were outlining the itinerary of any normal vacation. We would leave within the month, taking advantage of off-season, $99-round-trip specials from New York to Miami. Ships left on short trips to the Bahamas every day. We would book the cheapest one with an ocean-view balcony on the lowest possible floor. During the cruise, I would complain of motion sickness to anyone willing to listen. Then, on the return trip, I would pretend to vomit over the side of the boat and dive into the ocean.

I’d expected Tom to protest my plan, or at least demand more details. Instead, he seized onto my half-cocked mission like a
drowning man would clutch a life raft. Within minutes of sharing the scheme, he was chiming in with ways he could play the grieving spouse. He would leave the room to establish an alibi when I fell and then return a half an hour later, giving the boat plenty of time to leave the scene of my “accident.” By the time he alerted the crew that I was missing, I’d be halfway back to the Bahamas.

“It’s perfect,” Tom said, cupping my cheeks in each palm. “You are a genius.”