The Trophy Wife Exchange

by Connie Shelton

  Mary nodded. Was it really going to be this easy?

  Debbie stood up and walked out the door, heading toward the showroom. The letters still sat in the tray. Without a second thought, Mary pulled her phone from her pocket and put it in camera mode. She quickly removed the contents of the top envelope, a letter of credit from a bank. Zooming in with the lens, a snap. The page went back into the envelope. Same with the statement from the brokerage firm, where it appeared Clint had liquidated most of the investments. For good measure, she photographed two more documents, although she wasn’t sure of their significance.

  She replaced the envelopes exactly as she’d found them and tiptoed to the door. No voices in the hall. None from the showroom. She scurried across the room and out the door, feeling like a character in a spy novel—or like a sneaky ex-wife who’d just betrayed someone she’d once loved.

  Chapter 24

  Clint Holbrook stood at the window of the small office Tong Chen Enterprises owner, Rudy Tong, had allotted him for the duration of the job. He’d visited the work site within hours after arriving in Shanghai, felt the excavation work was moving along slowly and had a come-to-Jesus meeting—or come-to-Confucius or whoever it was they talked to over here—with the phase-one foreman.

  The office here in the Laogangzhen high-rise was a nice perk—a couple of furnished rooms including a locking door to separate his own space from that of a secretary. He’d envisioned being stationed in a trailer or mobile building on the jobsite and, as wet as the damn weather was proving to be around here, a leaky metal building was no treat. If the rainy season didn’t end soon, he could see the construction stretching out far longer than anticipated.

  So far, Tong had provided secretaries, a different one each day, Chinese women who were fairly adept at English. When he could make himself understood, the women had proved helpful in showing him the ropes—how to work the ultra-modern coffee maker, for instance. He’d not asked them to type correspondence, and he had no intention of letting them touch his computer where it would be too easy for someone who was being paid to spy to get hold of his financial data.

  He turned away from the view—miles of nearly identical high-rises—and glanced at his laptop on the desk. He’d started it up when he arrived, but it was taking forever this morning to get an internet connection. He needed to verify that a payment from Tong Chen had reached his construction bank account, then he wanted to move it quickly—to a new account he’d set up days before leaving the U.S. He clicked his browser button and was pleased to see a connection. Rudy Tong had assured him all online equipment in the entire building was completely secure, so he logged onto his accounts.

  With the funds transfer complete, next he visited his insurance company to take care of a few details, then on to place an order for lumber to build the foundation forms. A ping sounded and he clicked over to his email. The new message came from Kaycie.

  Will you be free for lunch, HB? Heard of a great restaurant we should try. xoxo

  She’d added some dippy little smiley faces, the kind that made him cringe.

  Lunch with the wife. He couldn’t seem to get her to understand he was here to work. What had he been thinking when he suggested she come to China with him? Hot sex—that’s what he’d been thinking. Kaycie and her lingerie collection in a hotel in a foreign country. They’d gone at it like rabbits the first two days, until he’d absolutely had to spend time at the office. The client wouldn’t keep paying him unless they saw him actually working.

  He typed a quick reply: Sorry, baby. Swamped here at the office.

  He hit Send before he realized maybe he shouldn’t have admitted where he was. She might pick up some box of exotic who-knows-what and show up, determined to feed him. That was another thing—finding a great steak had so far been impossible in this city. What was it with all the food being freaking Chinese? The place was supposed to be a mecca of international business. Did everybody eat this vegetable stuff all the time?

  He grumbled a little and closed the lid on the laptop. If he beat it out of here quickly, he could legitimately be at the job site when and if Kaycie showed up at the office. As he jammed the computer into its leather case he looked out the window again. Across the way he saw the shimmer of wet leaves on the trees in the median and realized there were raindrops on his window, as well. Shit. More rain.

  He grabbed a slicker, a crappy lightweight, baby-blue thing the job foreman had given him the first day. The man had seemed amused Clint would arrive in China without rain gear. Didn’t the guy have a clue that people who live in desert climates don’t even own such things? Clint slung the flimsy plastic jacket over his arm and picked up his computer bag. He should get the secretary du jour to order him a car. Waiting on the curb for a taxi, he discovered, was usually frustrating.

  Another new girl sat at the desk, her back partially toward him. She was a tiny thing just like most all these girls here. The striking difference was her hair, which she wore pulled away from her face and tied with a cloth band at the crown of her head. He’d not seen any of the Asian girls with such curls. These looked like the natural, springy curls of someone with black or Mediterranean heritage.

  “Hello …” he said tentatively, with no clue how much English she spoke.

  “Hi,” she said in a perky voice. She turned and looked up at him. “You must be Mr. Holbrook?”

  “You’re American. Well, you sound American.”

  “I am. San Francisco, born and raised.” She gave a dazzling smile full of lovely, even teeth.

  Too bad about the heavy-rimmed glasses. He would have loved to see those dark eyes more clearly.

  “I … I’m heading out to the job site and need a car. Do you know how to order me one?”

  “Certainly, Mr. Holbrook.”

  “Clint. You might as well call me Clint, since we’re the only two Americans in the place.”

  The smile again. No comment.

  She picked up the desk phone and punched a series of numbers. “Qǐng sòng chē qù Zhōngguó wáng yīsìwǔ.”

  The only word he recognized in the exchange was Zhōngguó, the name of the street.

  “The car will be here in ten minutes,” she told him.

  He couldn’t think of a witty response that wouldn’t come out in a schoolboy stammer. “Thanks. You’re very good at that. I’ll just wait downstairs. Um, will you be here later?”

  She gave him a coolish look.

  “I just meant they’ve given me a different secretary each day, and so far you’re the only one I could actually understand.”

  She graced him with another dazzling smile and one petite shoulder raised slightly. “I don’t know. The agency just gives me an assignment each day. I can ask, though.”

  He felt the goofy grin on his own face. “Yeah, if you could, that would be great.”

  He stood straighter and sucked in his stomach while he told her he would be at the job site if anyone needed him. He provided his cell number, which she dutifully wrote on a small scratchpad.

  She pretended not to notice when he bumped into the doorframe on his way out. He caught himself whistling that old Tony Bennett tune as he rode the elevator to the ground floor.

  Chapter 25

  “It was so gross,” Amber told Pen and Gracie that evening. “I mean, seriously, the guy could be my father and I swear he’s looking straight down the front of my shirt. And that smile of his is so … so … smarmy. Ick.”

  Pen felt a wave of horror, even though Sandy’s nightly message had included startling double news. One—Mary had brazenly walked right into Holbrook Plumbing the previous day, and two—according to her pal the bookkeeper, the shine was coming off the boss’s new marriage. She supposed she shouldn’t be shocked at his attitude toward Amber, but she felt a grandmotherly, protective wave of affection for the girl.

  “The good news is I learned Clint gets assigned a secretary from among Tong Chen’s employees and I gather it’s been a different woman each day. I figu
red out enough Mandarin to tell today’s lady she wasn’t needed, so if I need back in there I think I could easily come and go.”

  Pen filled them in on Sandy’s news from Arizona.

  “Should she have done that?” Gracie asked, open-mouthed at Mary’s boldness.

  “I don’t know about should,” Pen said. “The bottom line is she did come up with some new information.” She handed her tablet over to Amber, who looked at the pictures Mary had snapped.

  “Hm, this is a new bank,” Amber said, “not one of the ones I found before. Having the account number and balance will help me get into it. I mean, when the time is right.”

  “What’s this letter from an insurance company?” Gracie asked. “They’re talking about assets and such.”

  “He’s probably being required to carry some kind of a construction guarantee policy. If something happened so that he didn’t complete the project, the policy would pay the cost of having another contractor finish,” Pen said as she stared at the photo, although it would have been a very unusual way of doing it. Normally, bonding companies handled that sort of thing.

  Amber had plopped onto the sofa in Pen’s sitting area and was tapping away at her iPad.

  Gracie started to say something, but Amber held up her tablet with the screen facing her friend. On a plain notepad screen she had typed: We need to talk outside the room.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” she suggested. She closed the cover on the device and stood up.

  With umbrellas in hand, they rode the elevator in silence.

  “I don’t want to say too much in the rooms,” Amber said, once they were on the street. “The government could be listening. I found a bug in the office the Chinese gave Clint,” Amber said.

  “What?”

  Amber gave Gracie an indulgent smile. “Why do you think his client offered him a free office? Had to be so they could keep an eye on him.”

  “I’ve been wanting to get out and walk anyway,” Pen said. “So, where can we talk?”

  “Realistically, probably anywhere. We’re of no interest to the government. We just need to keep in mind that we don’t have an expectation of privacy over here, not like we think we have at home. And since we’re actually spying …”

  “On Clint? Do you think he matters to the Chinese government?” Gracie asked.

  “You never know. I think they definitely take an interest in Americans doing business over here.”

  They followed the tree-lined boulevard, watching at intersections for the scooters that dashed everywhere with their silent electric motors. It would be easy to be bowled over.

  “What are they monitoring?”

  “Everything. Well, that’s my guess. Somewhere in that building somebody knows about every phone call he made and every time he went online.”

  Amber pointed to a small park where they could pause, away from the throngs of people on the sidewalk. “While I was observing Clint’s computer in his office, I spotted the digital fingerprints of some other entity who was also watching.”

  “Wait a second. You could actually see what Clint was doing on his computer?” Gracie seemed fascinated. Pen looked concerned as they walked a pathway that led past a modern-art sculpture.

  “He got an email invitation to lunch with his wife, which he turned down, and he received a four-million-dollar payment from Tong Chen. The money went into the account we discovered—Redwing Holdings. Redwing didn’t hold it very long, though. Clint transferred the money to an account in the Cayman Islands right away.”

  Gracie stepped gingerly around a pile of dog droppings. “I wonder … at this stage of the construction project that’s most likely money Tong Chen has paid as a deposit to cover materials. The contractor usually gets payments in increments, with the bulk of his profit coming upon completion. It seems like an unusual move to take it out of his operating account.”

  Amber sent a sideways glance toward her.

  “My dad was a builder,” said Gracie with a shrug. “I guess I absorbed some of this stuff through family osmosis.”

  “So, why did he move the money?” Pen murmured the question.

  “Maybe to get it out of reach of the Chinese?”

  Amber shrugged. “We might figure it out if we had a way to watch what’s going on outside the office.”

  “He and Kaycie are staying at the Grand Plaza Peace Hotel, correct?” Pen asked. “I think I may have another avenue to reach him.”

  Chapter 26

  Pen strolled into the lobby of the Grand Plaza, dressed as befitted a well-off American tourist in a foreign country. She’d waited across the street in a curio shop until she saw Kaycie Marlow Holbrook approach the entrance. Her target was alone. Pen dropped the silk cosmetic bag she’d been pretending to admire and stepped outside, dodging a phalanx of motor scooters and crossing the busy street. By the time she stepped inside the lobby, Kaycie was entering the hotel bar, a faux-English pub called The Brown Duck.

  Pen crossed the white marble floor, with its rococo gold light fixtures and intimate furniture groupings, at a leisurely pace. She couldn’t let Kaycie realize she was being followed. Sure enough, by the time Pen entered the shadowy room the blonde had taken a seat at the long bar and the bartender was placing a heavy glass with about an inch of amber liquid in front of her. He turned to Pen.

  She ordered a glass of Chablis, pretending to be busy with her wallet when she glanced toward Kaycie.

  “Oh—hello,” she said, putting just the right amount of puzzlement into her voice. “We’ve met somewhere, haven’t we?”

  She held up a hand. “Don’t tell me. It had to either be the Phoenix Little Theatre gala or the Arizona Broadcast Awards.”

  Kaycie extended her hand and smiled her classic television smile as they shook. “It had to have been the Broadcast Awards. I’m sorry I don’t remember …”

  “Penelope Fitzpatrick.” Her name was familiar enough in Arizona social circles it was entirely possible for their paths to have crossed. She only hoped Kaycie wouldn’t pin her for details of the event.

  A nano-second’s uncertainty crossed Kaycie’s face, but she was social animal enough not to admit she didn’t recognize a member of the hometown glitterati. “Of course, Ms. Fitzpatrick. So good to see you again. What on earth are you doing in Shanghai?”

  “Purely vacation for me,” Pen said. “Of course, I might ask the same. It’s unusual to meet another Arizonan this far from home. And how is Channel Three getting along without you?”

  The bartender set her wine on the bar but Pen didn’t sit.

  “My husband’s a contractor with a big job here. I thought it would be great to see the city and do some shopping. Thought we would get out more and enjoy the nightlife, but Clint’s work keeps him pretty busy.” She downed half her drink in a long gulp.

  “I’m rather on my own today, as well. My friends had plans. Look, if you aren’t meeting anyone right away, would you like to get a table and just chat?”

  The rest of Kaycie’s drink disappeared and she ordered another.

  “Yes. I’d like that.” She picked up a tiny pink purse from the bar and slid off her stool to follow Pen.

  The hour was early enough the pub’s tables were nearly empty. They chose a small one in a dim corner.

  “It’s just kind of lonely here,” Kaycie said. “I pictured doing everything with Clint all day. Not that I’m not a perfectly independent woman, you know. Well, back home I am. I’ve got a career and friends and all. I just thought I’d meet more women here who speak English. A little hard, you know, conversing with the hotel maids.”

  Pen nodded, sipping her wine while Kaycie continued to talk.

  “We’ve been married almost two years, and it’s been great. We had a smallish wedding—like, a hundred people or so, and they were mostly from the station and my friends. But then we had a fabulous honeymoon on Barbados. Oh my god, Clint knows how to treat a girl to the fine life.”

  Pen thought of Mary. A homeless shelter.
A tiny, by-the-week apartment.

  “I suppose you get to travel a great deal then?” Pen asked.

  “Well, yes and no. My schedule restricts me a bit, so we usually only get away for long weekends and that kind of thing. I took a leave of absence to do this trip.” She took another hefty slug. “Do you think my boobs are too small?”

  Pen sat back slightly. “What?”

  Kaycie giggled. “Sorry. Silly question to ask a woman. I just … I’d look better on camera with a little …” She jutted her chest outward. “Not to mention, Clint would love the result.”

  Pen sipped her wine to avoid having to comment.

  “So, there’s this really well-known clinic here in Shanghai. I’ve got their brochure here.” Kaycie slipped a tri-fold color sheet from the small purse. “Seems really reasonably priced for what you get. There are recovery suites where you can hide away until your bruises are gone. That’s appealing—not having Clint see me all … you know.” She wrinkled her nose. “Plus, you get pampered a lot in the process.”

  “Is surgery what you really want to do?” Pen asked.

  Kaycie tossed the brochure aside and sighed. “What I really want is for me and Clint to have a baby. I mean, can you see a little boy, a tiny version of Clint? Or a little girl—she’d have to be completely adorable.”

  Pen didn’t have children and part of the reason was because she was well aware that in addition to being adorable they were noisy, messy, smelly and basically took over a person’s life for a minimum twenty years. But she was here to pick up clues from Kaycie, not to talk life-choices to her.

  “Anyway, so far no luck getting pregnant and Clint’s sure not pushing for it. Says he could get along just fine without kids.”

  “It’s a big commitment. Good idea to have both partners in agreement, I should think.”