“Sounds lonely,” she said.
“Yeah, now that you mention it, I have been lonely,” Owen said, and realized that right this minute, here with Maggie, he wasn’t lonely at all.
They got to talking about his work. Owen loved his job. He was the senior detective on a joint state-federal narcotics task force, and the work was thrilling—half high-level investigation, half cops and robbers on the street. He’d just taken down a Salvadoran gang that had cornered the meth trade in Brooklyn and Long Island and had thirty murders to their credit. But as much as he loved it, the work was dangerous, the hours he kept on the task force were brutal, and his kids were suffering. He tried to get time off, but his boss was old-school, an ex-marine now with DEA, who thought your wife dying didn’t make your kids his problem. Nothing could fix that except a new job, preferably one where Owen didn’t answer to anybody, which was why he applied here. Chief’s jobs in wealthy college towns with a salary like this one didn’t come along too often, and even if it wasn’t a perfect fit, he should probably jump on it.
Owen looked up at the clock and saw that nearly two hours had passed since they started talking. The second bottle of wine was down to the dregs. He’d been running on and on about himself—though, hell, that felt great—but he hadn’t learned a thing about her.
“Long story short, I’m here because I’m looking for a fresh start. But I’ll stop talking about myself now. Tell me about you.”
“Me? Well, I could use a fresh start, a second chance. Or a third or fourth. I’m not sure what chance I’m on, come to think of it. Nothing ever quite works out for me.”
“Looking at you, I find that hard to believe. You must have the world at your feet.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, but no. My mother died of cancer when I wasn’t much older than your kids are now. I never had the guidance I needed after that, and I guess you could say I went astray. I screwed my up life pretty badly. Maybe I would have done better if I had a father like you. Caring and strong. Your kids are lucky.”
“I try. But it’s hard. It must’ve been hard for your dad, too, raising you alone.”
“Oh, he wasn’t alone, and he didn’t really raise me either. I had a succession of wicked stepmothers. Well, two of them anyway. They hated my guts. The first one divorced my father after less than a year and took a boatload of his money. The second one, Victoria, she was my stepmother when I was a teenager. We butted heads constantly, you can’t imagine.”
“I think I can,” he said, envisioning Maggie as a teenager. She must’ve been a magnet for the boys, with that face, that body, that voice. You’d have to lock a girl like that in a tower to keep her out of trouble.
“It was partly my fault that Victoria and I didn’t get along,” Maggie said. “I realized that eventually, and I owned up to it. Victoria died of cancer about a year ago. I was really sad when it happened, which surprised me. I guess I’d finally grown up enough to understand how hard I was on her.”
“Did you tell her that?”
“Yes, I went to see her. We had a talk, and made up—well, sort of. I blame my father for playing us off against each other, so I apologized, but I wanted her to acknowledge the role he played. She wouldn’t go there. She was his loyal retainer to the end.”
“So he’s the bad guy, your father?”
“Oh, yeah. Classic bad guy. Cold, harsh, distant. Always gets his way. He was never available when I was growing up. He messed me up big-time.”
“And let me guess,” he said, leaning toward her. “You married a man just like him.”
She looked down at her left hand. “Married? Oops, did I forget to take that damn ring off?”
“You’re not married?” Owen asked, his heart leaping.
She laughed. “Just kidding. Usually when a married woman cozies up to a man in a bar, she takes off her ring. If she’s smart, that is.”
“Is that what you’re doing, cozying up to me in this bar?”
“What do you think?” she asked.
Under the table, her feet snuck in between his.
“I hope so,” Owen said, looking into her eyes, his pulse racing.
“We get a pass, don’t we, because of the storm? If two people were marooned on a desert island together, they’d be allowed to console each other until the rescue helicopter came.”
“I agree completely.”
Normally Owen was circumspect in these situations. But here in this place, so deserted and intimate, with the rain lashing against the window, and the light outside fading, he felt so close to her. In the candlelight, he took her hand, and turned it over to look at the stars.
“I used to have a big diamond, but we had to sell it,” she said, taking her hand away. “Times change, and all good things must come to an end. Though, when it comes to my marriage—” She sighed, and threw her head back against the banquette. “It’s not so easy to end that, I’m afraid. I’ve been trying to get away from him for years, but it never happens.”
“Why not? You have kids?” he asked.
“No.”
“You own property together?”
“No. Not anymore.”
He shrugged. “So leave him, then. Sounds like you could if you wanted to.”
She leaned forward and looked at him from under her lashes. “Listen to you, Chief, encouraging me to leave my husband. And we’ve only just met.”
She leaned closer, and their fingers intertwined again.
“I’m just saying. Life is short. If you’re unhappy, you should make a change,” he said.
“Oh, but you don’t know me. I’ve always been unhappy.” Her voice was breathy and low, and he seemed to hear it deep inside his head.
“Always?” he asked.
“Not now, not right this minute, but that’s because I’m distracted. You’re a pretty good distraction, you know?”
Her lips were parted. He was desperate to kiss her, and there was nobody here to see. He pulled on her hand, and as if by magic, she came around to his side of the booth and slipped in beside him. He took her face in his hands, and they had a kiss straight out of his teenaged wet dreams. Mouths open and hungry, tasting of red wine, their hands exploring each other. It wasn’t until he started to unbutton her blouse that he remembered where they were, and pulled back. Her eyes and her mouth were blurry with lust, and he had a raging hard-on. He’d never cheated on his wife (though this wouldn’t exactly be cheating), and he’d never slept with a married woman. But even if what they were doing was wrong, he didn’t want to stop.
“I’m staying at the inn, right down the street. Come back to my room with me,” he said, and his voice sounded strange and thick to his own ears.
But before she could answer, in one of the worst instances of timing in Owen’s life, the lights came back on. They sat back, blinking in the sudden brightness, their hands falling to their sides. Maggie rearranged her clothes, and moved back to the other side of the booth. He felt abandoned.
“I don’t know, Chief. Maybe we shouldn’t,” she said, smoothing her hair.
The waitress walked into the room, exuding cheerful efficiency, and broke the mood for good.
“There you go, folks. Power’s back on. Not too bad an outage, huh? Give me a minute and I’ll be right back for your food order.”
Somebody pounded on the plate-glass window. Owen looked up and saw a man standing there—a good-looking man of about his own age, slightly disheveled, with blond hair wet from the rain. He was staring at Maggie, and he looked angry.
“Oh, that’s my husband. I’d better go,” Maggie said breathlessly, and grabbed her bag.
She started to slide out of the booth, but Owen stopped her with his foot. He saw something in the man’s eyes that troubled him, a glint of rage, of hysteria almost.
“Hey, will you be okay? Is he—does he get violent?”
“No. That’s not his style, and he’s caught me in bars with strange men before. He’s more the sulk and guilt-trip type.” She
looked at Owen wistfully. “Hey, sorry I have to run. But you should take the job, move to town. Belle River could use a man like you.”
The man banged on the window again. Maggie slipped out of the booth. And then she was gone.
Owen did move to Belle River. He gave up his high-powered career, sold his house, packed up his kids, and took the helm of this small-town police department. And the whole time in the back of his mind, he imagined that he’d get a blazing-hot affair with Maggie Price out of the deal. He knew that if he found her again, he wouldn’t care about his position, or the risks. He’d want to be with her, to kiss her again, to distract her from her unhappiness.
When she didn’t materialize, when fate didn’t throw them together walking down College Street at high noon, he went looking. He searched for her in every registry and every database at his disposal. When there was no Maggie Price, he thought maybe she’d given him her maiden name, and he started looking for Maggie Anything, or Margaret. Turned out there were quite a few Margarets in Belle River. For every one, he took the time to pull a driver’s license photo if there was one, or to scour the Internet for a picture that would rule the woman out. (He could’ve gotten fired for some of the things he did, if anybody had known.) Owen was a busy man. A single father, in a new job, with the eyes of the town upon him. But he worked his way through every Margaret in Belle River between the ages of twenty-five and fifty (he put her age at mid-to-late thirties, but he was casting a wide net) before he threw in the towel. At some point it dawned on him that she’d given him a fake name on purpose—he remembered that moment of hesitation when they shook hands—because she didn’t want to be found. Still, he didn’t quit until he was forced to, by virtue of running out of Margarets.
And now, after all that fruitless searching, she’d turned up on his watch. Some jogger had found her washed up on the riverbank a few hours back, at a location that fell within Owen’s jurisdiction to investigate. Owen regretted not asking for her number, not taking her back to his room, not becoming her lover, her friend. He remembered her wistfulness that night, and her glamour and her breathy charm. He remembered their kiss, and the feeling of her breasts under his hands. And he remembered her husband, standing outside the bar, staring at her through the plate glass with rage in his eyes. Owen could have saved her, he was certain, but it was too late now. Now all he could do was figure out what happened, who did this to her—the husband, presumably—and bring that piece of shit to justice.
21
Griff woke to the sound of pounding on the front door. He groaned and rolled over onto his back, struggling to open his eyes through the crud that crusted them shut. He’d spent the last two days and three nights on the white sectional in the living room, in his boxers, surrounded by crushed beer cans and an increasingly empty bottle of Absolut. He was in no condition to receive visitors, so he pulled a sofa cushion over his head and waited for whoever the hell was at the door to give up and go away.
More pounding followed, compounded by the incessant ringing of the doorbell. He felt like his head was about to explode.
“What the fuck … get lost!” he shouted, clapping his hands over his ears.
“Mr. Eastman!” a deep voice yelled through the door. “Open up, police. We need to speak with you.”
Police? Shit. As if they hadn’t done enough damage to Griff’s life already.
He sat up and peeked through the living room blinds. It was afternoon already, what time he couldn’t say. Dead leaves blew down the street in a stiff breeze. The sun sat low and weak in the sky, but the light of it on his burning eyes was still enough to make him wince. Two people stood on the front steps. A tall guy with dark hair who looked vaguely familiar, and a young black woman in a trench coat. They were both in plain clothes but they looked like cops right enough. He thought about whether to get off the couch and find out what they wanted with him. Once upon a time, Griff’s father had a clever lawyer named Burt Lippmann, and Lippmann had offered Griff this piece of advice: You were not required to let a cop in without a warrant, but you should probably do so—unless of course you were sitting on piles of evidence that needed destroying. Otherwise, it was smarter to play nice, or the cop would get the warrant anyway, and come back looking to screw you over for the inconvenience.
Griff knocked on the window, and the cops turned to look at him in unison.
“Just a minute,” Griff mouthed, holding up a finger.
He cast around the living room for clothing, and found none. It was damn cold in here. He’d forgotten how much he disliked this godforsaken climate. There was a bathrobe, he remembered, hanging on the hook on the back of the door in the moldy downstairs bathroom. He went to get it, stopping to splash some water on his face. Griff combed his hair with his fingers, and it felt stiff and dirty to the touch. He was forty years old, life as he’d known it was over, and it was feeling increasingly like a hassle to carry on with things. He looked green and ill in the harsh light. His eyes were bloodshot and yellow. Drinking your dinner for three nights running was not the best thing for the liver. He needed a shave. There was a bruise on his left cheek, and his lip was puffy. He probed it gingerly with his finger, and winced. Using his tongue, he poked around his mouth and found that the entire left side of his jaw was tender.
At the front door, he hesitated. Did he really need to let these bloodsuckers in? He decided to compromise, opening the door but leaving the chain on.
“Can I help you, Officers?” he said, through the chain. A bitter wind swept through the gap, and Griff’s eyes began to water.
The man stared at Griff intently, which naturally made him uncomfortable, given that the guy was a cop and Griff was in a bathrobe and bare feet in the middle of the day.
“Do you know it’s after two o’clock?” the cop asked.
“Right, Officer. Is there something I can do for you?” Griff said.
The man pulled a leather wallet from his jacket pocket and flashed a badge.
“Chief Owen Rizzo of the Belle River Police Department. This is my colleague, Detective Keisha Charles. Are you Keniston Eastman?”
“No,” Griff said.
“Is Mr. Eastman available?”
“No.”
“When is he expected to return?”
“Mr. Eastman doesn’t live here. He owns this house. I’m the tenant,” Griff said.
“Oh. Mr.—?”
“Rothenberg.”
“Mr. Rothenberg, do you mind if we come in?” the officer asked, glancing at the chain lock suspiciously. Nobody in this one-horse town so much as locked their doors. Griff must look paranoid, but he had his reasons for hating cops.
“What is this about, Officer?”
“This is in reference to a Katherine Eastman,” the police chief said, and Griff’s stomach dropped to his feet.
“What about her?”
“You know her?”
“Yes.” Griff was using the Burt Lippmann approach to talking to cops. Say nothing, or say as little as possible.
“How about if you invite us in, and then I’ll explain. It’s damn cold out here.”
Griff was leery of letting cops into his house, but the mention of Kate’s name had an effect on him, as it always did. Maybe it would be a foolish move to let them in, but he needed to know what they had to say.
“All right. Come in.”
Griff stepped back and removed the chain. A wintry draft blew into the hallway along with the cops, making him pull the bathrobe closer. He watched with mingled amusement and embarrassment as they took in the surroundings.
“Cleaning lady’s day off,” Griff said.
That was an understatement. The place looked like the health department should pay a visit. Griff and Kate had done nothing to fix it up in the months they’d lived here, other than moving in their sleek New York furniture, which looked ridiculous in the dilapidated rooms. Neither of them could bear to think that this Belle River misadventure was anything but temporary. And of course, Kate was
above doing housework. They’d never had to get along without help until recently, but at least Griff tried—for a while anyway. Lately, not so much.
“Is there somewhere we can sit down?” the police chief asked, with a dubious look at the living room. It was like a frat basement in there, the floor studded with beer cans and pizza boxes.
“The kitchen. I can make some coffee if you like. I could use a cup myself. This way,” Griff said, trying to sound accommodating.
In the kitchen, the cops took seats at the table while Griff puttered around gathering the coffee things. He needed a minute to clear his head before he talked to them. He caught the girl cop glancing at his laptop, which sat out on the kitchen counter. She could search it all she wanted and she wouldn’t find anything interesting. Just some porn and a few pathetic relics of his useless job search. Griff had given up on finding work months ago. Big surprise—nobody wanted to hire a financial consultant whose father was locked up for a notorious financial crime.
Griff started the coffeemaker and took a seat across from the two cops. Their names had gone in one ear and out the other. All he remembered was that the man was chief of police, which worried him. If the chief of police was paying a house call, that must mean something big. Plus, it was bothering him—where had he seen the guy before?
“You asked about Kate. Did she do something I should be aware of?” Griff asked.
The cops looked at each other.
“So she went by Kate?” the chief asked, looking pained as he made a note in a spiral notebook.
“Yes.”
“Kate Eastman?”
“Yes.”
“And what was your relationship to her?”
“She was my wife.”
“Was?”
“Is my wife. Kate Eastman is my wife.”
“Eastman. Not Kate Rothenberg?”
“No. She never took my name.”
“Ah.” The chief was silent for a moment, taking Griff’s measure. He made a motion toward his own face. “What happened to your face, if you don’t mind my asking? You look like you took a punch.”
It's Always the Husband Page 19
