“But she might hand it over, thinking all the juicy stuff has been erased,” Gracie added. “Little does she know we have an expert hacker in our midst.”
Mary leaned forward in her seat. “I wonder if she would listen to my story. I’d bet money Clint never told her a darn thing about how he left me, financially. If she has a clue he’s up to the same old tricks … Well, it might make the difference.”
Sandy sighed. “I think Pen’s right. We take it slowly and see what her reactions are. This will take some finesse.”
Chapter 56
Kaycie wadded the letter and tossed it into the kitchen trash. What the hell was going on? A demand notice on their mortgage? No way was the condo payment four months in arrears. She missed Clint with a stab of pain so physical it made her heart ache. He would have handled this. He always managed things so well.
“I’m Kaycie Marlow. I smile on camera and give out science fair awards and show up at celebrity gala events. Clint handles the money.” A sob welled up in her throat.
Someone at the bank would straighten this out, but it was going to be up to Kaycie to make the call and point out the error. She picked up the crumpled letter and smoothed it against the granite countertop. Why me, she thought with a sigh. I really need to go back to work, get my mind back to my career.
The phone rang and she picked it up without looking at the caller ID.
“Kaycie, hello. It’s Penelope Fitzpatrick.”
Fitzpatrick? Oh. The woman she’d met in Shanghai and confided in. A thousand years ago.
“I’m in your neighborhood and wondered if I might stop by?”
“Um …”
“A quick visit. I’ve been so concerned about you since China. I’m just five minutes away, if this is a convenient time.”
Kaycie remembered the older woman’s reassuring manner. Not to mention her connections here in Phoenix. Maybe she would offer a simple answer—an inside contact at the mortgage company, some easy way to make the problem outlined in this letter go away.
“Sure, just buzz at the front door when you get here.”
Kaycie flipped through the rest of the mail. The sympathy cards had dwindled to nothing. Nowadays she received only bills and letters in long white envelopes. She didn’t want to deal with any of them. She tossed the stack into a corner by the microwave and walked into the master bathroom to check her hair in the mirror. The door buzzer sounded sooner than she would have believed possible. Geez, had the woman literally been sitting in the parking lot when she phoned?
When she opened the door she was surprised to see two women standing there—Penelope Fitzpatrick, looking elegant as ever, and someone she didn’t recognize. Red-blonde hair in a cute pixie, cut a little spiky on top, a sprinkling of freckles across her nose and very little makeup. About five-three, athletic and muscular in gray stretch capris and a hot-pink tank top, she appeared to be in her thirties, but Kaycie thought she was probably one of those lucky ones who just looked young for her age. There were a few tell-tale wrinkles at the corners of her eyes.
Kaycie realized her long appraisal of the woman was being returned.
“Hi, Kaycie. I’m Mary.”
Kaycie almost said no way, but stopped herself just in time. This was not the woman Clint had described as dumpy and fat, had told his new wife how badly the old one had let herself go. Even in photos she’d seen of the younger Mary, she’d dressed conservatively in muted colors and had a timid look about her.
Kaycie glanced toward Pen. “You two know each other?”
Pen nodded. “May we come in?”
Kaycie stepped back and held the door wider. “Um, sure. I’m not clear what this is about.”
Pen reached for Kaycie’s hand. “It’s as I said a moment ago. I wanted to stop by and see how you are doing. But there is something more. I felt I needed some help in telling you.”
“Telling me what? I don’t—”
“Perhaps we could sit down. Mary has a story to tell you.”
The two visitors walked past her and Kaycie had no choice but to pretend she’d invited them into her living room. She took her favorite corner of the couch before one of them could reach it, the little nest she’d made for herself since being here alone so much.
“Maybe we should start with Pen’s story,” Mary said from a straight chair near the fireplace. “There’s a lot to this.”
“Yes,” Pen said. “No doubt you are wondering whether our coming in contact in Shanghai was coincidence or not.”
Actually, so many questions zipped around in Kaycie’s head right now she couldn’t seem to put them in order.
“The answer is, somewhat. Two friends and I were there, but it wasn’t a pleasure trip. We’ve been investigating your husband, on behalf of Mary.”
Mary took it up from there. “I don’t know what Clint told you about me, but I can guess. While I was away, caring for my elderly parents, it seems he gave people the impression I had left him. Abandoned him to run the business on his own, and that he alone made a success of it. Because of my so-called abandonment, he filed for divorce and hid our mutual financial assets. I received a heavily mortgaged house and no means to pay for it. I ended up broke and homeless.”
Kaycie had an idea where this was going. “Money? This is all about money, and you think I owe you something now?”
A flicker passed over Mary’s face which told Kaycie she had hit the mark.
“Well, good luck with that. I’m not giving you anything. Clint dumped you and he loved me, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” She tossed aside the pillow she’d hugged to her chest without thinking. “You can just—” She rose from the sofa, her beautiful face strained in anger.
“Kaycie, calm down a moment, please.” Pen remained in her seat and smoothed her skirt across her lap. “Mary isn’t here to ask anything of you. She—we both—want to tell you something very important.”
Mary was sitting back in her chair, arms crossed over her chest.
“Initially, we began watching Clint’s activities in hopes we could get some financial help for Mary—that’s true. But—” Pen held up one index finger to stop Kaycie from approaching Mary. “We discovered some interesting things about his financial picture and, more importantly, about his recent activities.”
“My husband died on a boat trip. Have you not heard about that?”
“We have. One of the friends who is working on our team was with you when you received the news.”
Kaycie felt the world shift slightly. Team? The moment when Derek Woo arrived to inform her of Clint’s accident—she’d been at the clinic in Shanghai with clinic personnel.
Penelope nodded toward Mary and the ex-wife got up and went to the front door. She opened it to admit three other women. One—a fifty-ish blond in a beige business suit—seemed vaguely familiar, but the shocker was the taller woman with long brunette hair. It was Gracie, the American representative from the Beautiful Life Haven clinic. The third looked like a college kid with wild dark curls that could do with a good conditioning treatment. She held a laptop computer under one arm.
“Who the hell are you people?” Kaycie demanded. “How did all of you get in here?”
She backed toward the sliding doors to the terrace, feeling cornered.
Again, Penelope took charge. “We’re friends, and we have no ill feelings toward you, Kaycie.”
She introduced Sandy Werner, who admitted she’d met Kaycie a couple of years ago at the bank. Next was Gracie Nelson, and the young one was an Amber Zeckis. Kaycie barely acknowledged them.
“I’ll ask again—what are you doing here and what business do you have spying on me and my late husband.”
The three newcomers exchanged looks.
“You haven’t told her?”
“Told me what? I’m getting frustrated with all of you. Tell me what you want.”
Mary stepped forward, getting right in Kaycie’s face. “Stop with the wounded little widow act, Kaycie. Clint isn’
t dead.”
The words echoed in her head, bouncing off the marble flooring and stone fireplace. Kaycie felt her vision become a bright pinpoint in a dark tunnel as the white floor came up to meet her.
Chapter 57
“So, I think we can safely say she didn’t know about Clint’s fake death?” Amber said it with a grin as she leaned over the back of the sofa and stared at Kaycie on the floor.
The others nodded.
“Shh, I think she’s coming around,” Sandy said. “Can someone bring a glass of water?”
Kaycie had fallen, almost in slow motion, and Mary had reached out and lowered her to the fluffy white rug in front of the sofa where she lay now.
The blue eyes fluttered, rolled briefly upward, came back to focus on the faces around her.
Pen, at her side, spoke first. “Oh dear, I’m so sorry I didn’t give you a bit more warning about the news.”
Kaycie blinked and rolled to her side, pulled herself to a seated position by grabbing the arm of the couch.
“Want some water?” Gracie offered, holding out a glass.
Kaycie shook her head and flinched. “Whoa. Dizzy.”
“You blacked out so quickly after Mary told you … did you actually understand what she said?”
“Clint? Something about Clint.”
“Yeah,” Mary said. “He’s not so dead after all.”
“That’s not possible. There’s a death certificate. And an insurance man came by …”
“To question you and see whether you were in on the scam,” Mary said.
Pen gave her a small nudge. “One step at a time, ladies. Let’s help Kaycie up to the sofa, please.”
With a couple of helping hands, they parked her in her favorite corner. Gracie draped an angora throw around her shoulders, as their hostess was now shivering.
“From the beginning,” Pen said. “Mary, please.”
Mary went over the parts Kaycie had disbelieved earlier, describing how Clint had promised to make the mortgage payments on their home but instead let it go into foreclosure, forcing her into a homeless shelter. About the day she’d walked into Sandy’s branch of the bank, trying to figure out how long she could live on her last two hundred dollars. How the women, beginning with Sandy, had banded around her to help, hoping to find evidence of where the couple’s assets had gone and a way to get Mary a fairer settlement, at least enough to live on until she could establish a career and support herself.
“At least you’re lucky,” Mary said to Kaycie. “You already had a career independent of Clint, and you can go back to it.”
“What do you mean? If he’s been found alive, he’ll come back home soon. Well, unless he has to stay in China awhile to finish his project over there.”
“You’re not getting it,” Amber said. “There is no more China project. Derek Woo and his cousin pulled some kind of run-around to get the job started with Clint’s help, but they don’t need him anymore.”
She sat beside Kaycie and placed her laptop on the coffee table, opening the lid and pressing a key to start it.
“Clint skimmed money from everywhere he could,” Amber said, typing a name in her browser. “He moved money from the jobs he actually completed, mortgaged everything he pretended to own, even leased the furniture in his downtown office.”
“Most likely, you don’t own this condo any more than I owned the home I’d lived in with him for eighteen years,” Mary said. “Three mortgages.”
“He has a maxed-out line of credit, and at least six credit cards near their limits. He was, as the old saying goes, robbing Peter to pay Paul and neatly juggling every bit of cash he touched into hidden accounts.”
Kaycie listened intently, her blue eyes sharpening.
“So, you’re saying he was getting ready to skip out on me too?” Gone was the flighty little television persona. “Is Derek Woo in on this? Did he talk Clint into it?”
“We don’t think so. Derek may have supplied some contacts in the Far East, but the disappearance seems to have been Clint’s idea.”
“I talked to Bradley Muggins, the insurance investigator, quite at length,” Pen said. “It’s a strange phenomenon known in the insurance trade as pseudocide, where a person fakes his or her own death, to the extent of obtaining official papers to prove it. Sometimes a real body is identified by a cohort—oftentimes, it’s an unclaimed corpse in a morgue—and they’ll go so far as to have an autopsy and a funeral. In some countries, paid mourners will show up and wail away for a camera which is there to document the event. The spouse, or sometimes a new lover, is often in on it, waiting in the wings to collect a huge insurance benefit. The plan then is to stay apart for awhile, then meet up somewhere and enjoy the money.”
“The fact Clint had recently purchased a new policy for a million dollars sent up a dozen red flags to the insurance company. He should have been more patient and waited at least three years,” Amber said.
Kaycie’s mouth hardened. “I’d been wondering if there was someone new. I didn’t want to see the signs so I ignored them. And to think I was about to have surgery, just so I could impress him and keep him.”
Gracie patted her on the shoulder. “He’s not worth it.”
“Why do you suppose Clint was so obsessed with amassing all this money?” Pen asked. “He had plenty, if his idea was to go off and live on some remote island or something. Why take the risk with a new insurance policy, especially knowing it most likely wouldn’t pay out.”
Mary and Kaycie exchanged a glance.
“If I had to guess,” Mary said. “It’s because Clint is the kind of guy who can never have enough. No amount of business will satisfy him, no amount of money will be enough. I didn’t see that about him in the beginning. He was just a solid, hardworking guy—the kind I’d always wanted to find.”
“I saw a bit of it,” Kaycie said. “When I met him he was all Mr. Charm. Loved to buy me expensive gifts, take me places, spend money on me. It was a lot of flash.”
She looked over at Mary. “Sorry. I really don’t mean to rub salt in the wound.”
Mary waved it off. “Success really did go to his head. I noticed it even before the big deals came along. I thought our success in the plumbing business just meant we’d worked extra hard and were seeing the rewards of it. For him, obviously, those triumphs were seen as stepping stones to something even bigger.”
Gracie, always the practical and organized one of the group, paced into Kaycie’s view. “Okay, so here’s the way I see it. Mary’s barely living on the edge, with nothing to show for the years of hard work she put into making Clint a rich man. Kaycie, you’re sitting here in your beautiful condo on your beautiful furniture, and chances are you owe a ton of money—more than it’s worth. You can go back to your job in television, but there’s no way you earn enough to bail yourself out of the debt he created.”
All expressions turned sober.
“Our original mission remains the same—we get that money back for you.”
“Yes!” Amber said.
Sandy and Pen nodded agreement.
“So, all we need to know now—well, two things—where is Clint, and where did he stash the money?”
“And that brings us back to the real reason we decided to come here today,” Amber reminded. She turned to Kaycie. “Do you have the laptop computer Clint took with him to China?”
Kaycie slowly shook her head. “I have no idea where it is.”
“One possibility remains,” Pen reminded them. “His lawyer, who has been involved so deeply in Clint’s business. Could he have taken it?”
“I can find out,” Kaycie said. She picked up the phone. Within two minutes she’d been connected to Derek Woo.
“Derek, it’s Kaycie.” A short pause. “Better, I think. It’s difficult. Yes. Yes, I know. Look, I’m calling today because I realized I didn’t make it home with Clint’s computer. All our pictures from China are on it.” She let her voice break a little at the end. “Those are my final
memories of Clint and I’m so upset I don’t have—”
The Ladies waited, hardly breathing.
Kaycie remained silent while the lawyer talked. Eventually, she shook her head and ended the call. “No luck. He says he doesn’t have it.”
Chapter 58
Kaycie’s announcement solidified their belief. Clint had planned his disappearance carefully but there was one piece of his old life he couldn’t leave behind.
“Technology may end up being the downfall of more than one guy,” Amber said.
“Can you find it?” Gracie asked.
“No idea. It could be he took it so he could dump it over the side of the boat, which would definitely cut all ties to his past. Let me think about this.”
Pen spoke up. “One thing Mr. Muggins said to me during the rather candid part of our chat was oftentimes men who disappear like this will leave the broadest of clues. Mary, or Kaycie—did Clint ever make a statement to you about his dream life? Something along the lines of, ‘if I could ever drop out of society, I’d love to …’ Fill in the blank. Did he have a dream spot he would go?”
“Golf,” Mary said. “He always wished there was more time to play, to improve his game.”
“That could encompass thousands of places. Anything more specific?”
Mary shook her head.
“He loved the place we went on Barbados,” Kaycie said. “Several times, when we talked about future vacations, he said he would go back there in a flash.”
“A tropical escape features high on many men’s lists, apparently,” Pen said. “The guy I talked to who ran the bait shop in the Philippines told me he’d left the crazy life of the city to be there.”
“So, we start with tropical locations that have golf courses,” Sandy suggested. “Yeah, I realize that’s not exactly a short list.”
“I’ll call the resort on Barbados,” Kaycie offered. “Maybe it’s simple enough to think he just went there.”
“And who do you ask for? He’d be a fool to be there under his real name.”
The Trophy Wife Exchange Page 22
