Turning the Tide (Eastern Shore Swingers, #5)

by Phoebe Alexander

  And with that, she stomped down the hall, surprisingly fast for someone with her medical issues.

  “Where are you going?” he called after her. “I thought we were discussing what I was doing tonight.”

  He was this close to just telling her he was, in fact, fucking one of his nurses.

  As of a few hours ago.

  Not for ten years, not after dozens of illicit affairs, but after a decade of her manipulation, gaslighting, neglect and emotional abuse. Not to mention stealing his money.

  “I’m leaving,” she announced, whipping back around in the middle of the hallway right outside her bedroom. “I’m going back to DC.”

  “Are you planning on returning or are you going for good?” He was finally able to muster up a calm voice.

  “You know what? It’s none of your goddamn business where I go or what I do. You haven’t been honest about your whereabouts and affairs for years, so why should I be?”

  When he failed to argue with her, she stepped over the threshold and slammed the door.

  For the first time in the history of all their arguments, he felt like he had won.

  Maybe.

  He pulled out his phone to send Calvin Sr. a message and let him know Barbara was leaving the shore. He wasn’t sure what he’d be able to do if she was three hours away.

  Send me the addresses of anywhere she goes or stays over there. Also, my son is outside your house working his magic on your wi-fi. I’ll have him follow her when she leaves. Will that be soon?

  Luke messaged back that he had no idea how long it would take her to pack. And after he hit send, he received a message from Connie:

  I’m still tingling.

  He couldn’t prevent a smile from usurping his face. There was just something about that woman who made the sun shine even on the darkest day.

  I confronted her about the money. Sorta. And she accused me of cheating. Sounds about right, doesn’t it? he texted back.

  Typical defense mechanism BS, she answered. So now what?

  She says she’s going back to DC. And she threatened my relationship with our kids and my job and reputation. As usual. But this time she seems more committed to it. It didn’t sound like a hollow threat.

  Connie didn’t reply right away, so Luke put his phone down. His stomach was beginning to growl, and he was hoping his wife would pack her stuff and get out of the house so he could invite Connie to dinner. It was getting late, and he’d worked up quite an appetite.

  He filled Alfie’s food bowl, changed his water, and did the dishes Barbara had left in the sink all day. She had declared herself incapable of doing dishes several years ago now, due to the fact she had a hard time bending down. Once he had the dishwater started, and she still hadn’t emerged from the bedroom, he began to wonder if she was actually leaving.

  It was tempting to just leave the house himself. Why do I care about her leaving first? he asked himself. A few weeks ago, he would have waited because he didn’t want to endure her endless questions or suffer her wrath when his answers weren’t what she wanted to hear. But now, what was there to worry about? She had threatened him for the last time.

  It was time for her to put up or shut up. He was done with her bullshit.

  By the time he heard back from Calvin Sr., he and Connie were already well into their second margaritas at Tequila Mockingbird. She left, but she didn’t go that far, he said.

  Where did she go? Luke texted back.

  Delaware, he answered. I’ll send you an address shortly. Trying to figure out who owns the property.

  The state line was only minutes from where they lived, so depending on where she was, it might not be that far at all.

  “Delaware, huh? Maybe she confused DC and DE?” Connie joked before lifting a forkful of rice to her mouth. “Oh my god, this is really good, and I’m picky about Mexican after all those years in California. We had some of the best Mexican restaurants.”

  “I think she has a girlfriend up there,” Luke theorized. “Maybe she plans to stay there tonight and then leave for DC in the morning? She usually doesn’t like to drive at night.”

  “But you haven’t heard from her?” She cut into her enchilada and savored a bite of that as well.

  “No. I didn’t say goodbye, either.”

  “Maybe this is just the end, then,” Connie wondered out loud, and there was no mistaking the hope coloring her tone. “I mean, it sounds like this has been coming for a long time.”

  “I don’t trust her,” Luke said. “We probably shouldn’t be out in public together, to tell you the truth. There’s no telling what she might do.” As the wild notions of all the pain Barbara might try to inflict upon him and those around him filled his head, he grew more and more nervous. He suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to protect Connie, along with his other friends and coworkers: Jim, Cap, Beverly—anyone he trusted to stay loyal to him. She would go after those people. He could just see it.

  “You’re probably right. We need to stay on the downlow both in and out of work. You don’t think she is having you followed like you’re having her followed?” Connie questioned. “Do you?”

  Luke sighed. “Let’s pay our bill and get out of here. I need to figure out how to keep you safe.” He raised his hand to flag down their server.

  “Don’t worry about me,” she assured him. “I can take care of myself.”

  “I don’t think you understand the level of crazy we’re dealing with here.” His eyes bore into hers, hoping she would pick up on the danger and fear he was projecting. He felt like up until this point, they’d been treating her as sort of a funny wildcard, but the way she’d gone from perfectly placid to raging bitch in a matter of seconds earlier that evening demonstrated how her demeanor could turn on a dime. If her demeanor could shift that fast, her actions probably could too.

  “You made her out to be emotionally abusive and manipulative—probably narcissistic,” Connie said, “but once she finally decides to leave you, won’t that be it? I mean, yes, you’ll have the usual messy divorce stuff, but then after that, it will be smooth sailing.” She paused as her focus bounced between his eyes, watching his facial expressions as he soaked in her words. “Won’t it?”

  He heard the sudden apprehension in her tone loud and clear. He hated to make her worry, but he was just now getting the full picture of what his wife might be capable of between the unexplained money transfers and the way she’d set him up for an attack earlier in the evening. The waitress came over to drop off the check, and he plopped down the exact amount plus tip from the wad of cash he’d withdrawn at the bank when he’d opened his new account.

  “Come on.” He reached out to take Connie’s hand.

  Her brows were furrowed, and the expression on her face seemed to ask what have I gotten myself into?

  “You don’t think she’s just going to go after your money?” Connie reiterated as she rushed toward the door and out into the warm night air. Summer was knocking on the peninsula’s front door, promising sultry temperatures were just around the corner. He could feel it in the mugginess sweeping in off the surf.

  Luke shook his head as he pressed his key fob to unlock the door. He kept playing their interaction from earlier through his head: her eerily calm tone at first, her vacant facial expressions, the exact words of her final threat. She knew something. Something had changed, and telling her he knew about the missing money was likely a grave error on his part.

  He waited until Connie had climbed into the car and buckled her seatbelt. He then started up the engine before turning toward her and resting his hand on her thigh. “I’m afraid she’s out to destroy me—and everyone I love.”

  ELEVEN

  Betrayal is the only truth that sticks. – Arthur Miller

  Three days passed, and nary a word from Barbara was heard. Things were surprisingly routine, though Luke had informative but mostly unremarkable meetings with both his accountant and lawyer. He didn’t breathe a word about his affair or his w
ife’s threats, either. He simply said he felt like a divorce was imminent and needed to prepare financially.

  Work felt like work. He and Connie managed to avoid suspicion as much as possible, though Luke feared Beverly had caught them talking a little too closely in the staff lounge. Jim had been in surgery at the hospital most of the week, so Luke had hardly gotten a chance to say hello, let alone have a meaningful conversation. He felt like he should give his partner a heads up that he and Barbara were having issues.

  He didn’t want to be selfish or put anyone in an awkward position. He just wanted, for the first time in his life, to figure out that precarious balance between making himself happy and keeping everyone else he cared about happy too. He was certain this was an achievable goal—not a pipe dream. Other adults have figured this out, right?

  Luke went home at night after work and took care of Alfie. He thumbed through the mail, setting his wife’s aside, though part of him wondered if any strategic advantage could be gained by opening it. He watched Jeopardy at 7:30 and was in bed by ten. He and Connie spent the evenings texting, but they had decided not to see each other until the club on the weekend. Strangely enough, it seemed like a safe place to rendezvous.

  Thursday night his phone rang from a private number, and his heart skipped a beat as he fumbled to answer it.

  “Hi, Luke?” came a voice like melting chocolate. Calvin Mitchell, Sr.

  “Yes, hi, what’s going on?” He tried not to sound like he was hanging on the edge of his seat, but he was afraid he’d failed miserably.

  “Do you have any time tomorrow to talk? I’ve found a few things, and I wanted to show you in person.”

  There was silence over the line as Luke contemplated his Friday schedule. He often had Beverly clear his appointments on Friday afternoon, especially during the summer months. That’s when tourists began to flood into Ocean City, and it was always best to get the heck out of Dodge before that happened.

  “I could stop by tomorrow afternoon, if that works for you?”

  “Sure, that’ll be just fine. Have you heard from your wife at all?” he asked.

  “No. Not a word. I haven’t tried to contact her either,” Luke shared. “Did she ever go to DC?”

  “Nope,” Calvin answered. “That’s why we need to talk. I think you’re going to want to hear this in person.”

  His heart skipped a beat as his mind scrambled to make sense of Calvin’s prognostication. “Uh oh. That sounds ominous.”

  “Just lay low; don’t do anything different from your normal routine, and I’ll see you tomorrow,” he advised.

  Luke hung up the phone, his hands trembling as he considered what in the world the detective could mean. Maybe Barbara was capable of something even more underhanded and backstabbing than he’d imagined.

  And his imagination was pretty damn good.

  “I think I should go alone,” he whispered to Connie, hoping beyond all hope that all the tile in the men’s bathroom wasn’t amplifying their sound. He’d pulled her inside because, with Jim out of the office, there weren’t any other men around who could walk in on them during their private moment.

  “But I want to know what’s going on too!” Her eyes flickered with a mischievous glint that made him want to turn her around, force her up against the tile, spread her legs and have his way with her.

  They hadn’t had sex since Tuesday night in her apartment, and it was now Friday.

  Compared to the ten years he’d been celibate prior to Tuesday night, it was nothing. In comparison, it was the blink of an eye in a millennium. But now that he’d had her, each day, each hour, spent apart from her felt like a year.

  “I know you do, but I’ll tell you about it tonight at the club,” he promised. “Are you coming to the workshop?”

  “You think I’d miss it? I am hoping they ask for volunteer subs,” she said with a wink.

  “That reminds me,” he broached a delicate topic he’d been thinking about all week, “are you going to have any issues with me interacting with other women?”

  She scoffed. “Are you asking if I’m the jealous type? You’re the one who’s still married.”

  His face fell. He wanted to keep this conversation upbeat. He was hoping it would culminate with a smoldering kiss or at least a grope under her scrubs. He probably should have waited to bring this up later, but he felt like it needed to be addressed before Bry and Tam used him as their training guinea pig. He had no idea what they had in store for him.

  “I know,” he said. “It’s not ideal. I hope it will change soon, but what isn’t going to change is that I agreed to do these workshops. And I want to make sure you’re okay with that.”

  A small smile tilted her lips. “I’m glad you’re concerned like that, but really, you’re not beholden to me. You don’t owe me anything.”

  Most men would be thrilled with that sort of arrangement, he realized, but something tugged his heart downward. He was hoping she’d care a little bit...maybe be a tiny bit jealous.

  “I’m not going to have sex with anyone else,” he resolved. “Touching and discipline, yes, but I’m not fucking anyone else.”

  She shrugged. “Anyone besides me?” Her eyes lit up.

  “Sooner rather than later, I hope.”

  “If I have my way, it’ll be later tonight...”

  He pulled her into his arms, pressing her body flush against his. He nuzzled into her neck, hoping she felt even a tenth of the desire that coursed through his body for her. “I don’t know if I can wait that long,” he warned her.

  “You can,” she said confidently. “I can’t wait for you to learn some tricks at this workshop you can practice on me.”

  “Is that so?” A single eyebrow arched.

  “Yes, sir,” she whispered in his ear before wrapping her arms around his neck.

  He didn’t bother to answer. He was too busy claiming her lips with his own.

  Luke found himself in the cold metal chair in Calvin Mitchell, Sr.’s office only an hour after his tryst with Connie in the men’s restroom. Calvin had the air conditioning cranked. They were starting to have their first very warm days of the season, eighty-plus degrees. Ordinarily, Luke would be dreading the heat and humidity and all the things it brought to the Eastern Shore: tourists, mosquitos...tourists—really the two weren’t so different. But this summer he was actually looking forward to being outside and taking Alfie on romps on the beach. All the bikini-clad bodies. Especially Connie’s. He was embarking on the type of summer he remembered from when he was growing up—all blue skies and sunshine, shimmering with possibilities.

  “How’s it going?” Calvin asked as he settled in. He had his trusty legal pad in front of him, and he appeared to have scribbled pages and pages of notes.

  “It’s going. What do you have for me?” Luke cocked his brow as he tried to make out a few words on the upside-down scrawls, but he wasn’t able to decipher any of it.

  “You know a James Thompson, right?” Calvin asked, flipping the notebook to the second or third page.

  “Yes, of course. He’s my business partner. We own Atlantic ENT, LLC.” Luke couldn’t imagine what Jim would have to do with any of this.

  “Does he live in Delaware?” Calvin looked up from the legal pad, his dark eyes meeting Luke’s.

  “No, he’s in Maryland. He lives in Salisbury, I think. Well, actually out in the country between Salisbury and Parsonsburg. He has a pretty nice spread out there.” Luke’s head tilted in puzzlement. “Why?”

  “Does he own property in Bethany Beach?”

  Luke scratched his cheek as he reflected on whether or not his partner had ever mentioned owning any property in Delaware. “He might have a beach house there. To be honest—” Then it hit him. “Oh, his wife’s family had a house there, I think, but then her parents died, and I think Jim and his wife bought her siblings out.”

  Calvin’s face remained expressionless. “That’s where your wife was the other night when we tracked her to Dela
ware.”

  “Oh,” Luke said, frowning. Barbara wasn’t particularly close with Jim or his wife, Helen. She only saw them at company get-togethers. Christmas had been the last time he knew of. Why would she go to their beach house when she was in a fight with him?

  “And...” Calvin said, pulling out a tablet from a drawer in his desk, “she’s still there.”

  “Really?” Luke couldn’t help his skepticism. It didn’t make any sense at all. Calvin handed him the tablet, which featured a picture of his wife’s car in a driveway. He scrolled through the photos, and the next one was a close up of her Maryland license plate. The next was a photo of the beach house, a two-story aqua-colored home with white shutters and trim. He noticed a two-person swing and a potted plant on the spacious porch. Following that was a close-up of the house number.

  “You’re sure she’s actually there? Inside? Staying?” Luke leaned in to study the screen. He’d reached the end of the photos so he began to scroll through them again.

  “Yes. My son is trying to hack into the wi-fi there, but it’s proving challenging. Whoever set it up knew what they were doing. It’s a VPN. I don’t know what that means exactly, but Calvin assures me it’s a roadblock unless he can get physically inside the house. We’re working on a plan for that, by the way.”

  Luke was still stuck on what this could mean. “Do they rent the house out? Is anyone else staying with her?”

  “They don’t rent it out that I can tell, and I don’t think we’ve seen anyone else come and go from the house. As a matter of fact, she hasn’t left since she arrived.” Calvin shrugged before glancing down at his notes. His eyes danced over the blue lines, maybe searching for any clues that could neutralize his client’s shock.

  “So, my wife is holed up in a home that my business partner owns and hasn’t come or gone in three days. What about phone stuff? Anything?”

  “I looked through the cell phone account that you provided me info for, and she doesn’t appear to be using it except to communicate with the numbers you gave me: your son, daughter, and in-laws. Maybe she has another phone?”