“I reached her sister, who promised to stay with her son for the night,” I tell the nurse, even though the sister sounded drunk and I didn’t feel good about leaving Ronny Lee with her. Of course I didn’t say that part. There really weren’t any alternatives. I was lucky to recall her sister’s name—Lacy had mentioned it one time—and reach her at all.
“Well, poor thing gained consciousness after she arrived at the hospital, so she’s just sleeping now,” the nurse assures me. “You might want to let her sleep through the night and come back tomorrow if you want to visit with her.”
“What did she say happened to her?”
“A motorist found her lyin’ on the side of the road out there by Adelia Grove and called it in.”
I know where that is, I think. It’s out near the strip club.
“She didn’t have much more to tell us,” the nurse continues. “Says she couldn’t remember really—that a car musta come out of nowhere. That’s about all I know.”
The portly women pushes some buttons on the machine Lacy’s connected to and then says, “Don’t look like no hit and run if you ask me.” She gives Lacy a pitying smile and shakes her head.
“I’ll stay just a while longer if that’s okay,” I say, and the nurse nods before dimming Lacy’s room lights and closing the door softly behind her.
After an hour, I decide to message Collin and tell him what happened. I attach a photo of the shape she’s in, seizing the opportunity for him to see that I am where I say I am even if the explanation sounds a bit far-fetched—an anchor of truth in my sea of lies.
Jesus Christ! Joe Brooks’s handywork? he texts back.
They say it was a hit and run. I’ll update you more when I get home. XXOO
I doze off in a vinyl chair next to her bed, and wake to Lacy, propped up with pillows, sipping a miniature box of orange juice.
“Hey.” I wipe a streak of mascara off my cheek and stand at her side.
“Hi. What are you doing here?” She talks with difficulty through her split lip.
“You had my number on you, so they called.”
“I’m so sorry you had to come all the way here and deal with this. So embarrassing. I’m fine.” Her words are quiet and strained.
“You’re not fine. I’m happy they called. Your sister is taking care of Ronny Lee. Is there anything you need? What the hell happened?”
Silent tears stream down her face. I already know what happened.
“I was walking over to Lucky’s on my break. I guess I didn’t see the car coming down Landry.”
I look at my feet and take a slow, deep breath. She watches me, my doubt in her story evident. She touches the blue rings above her collarbone when she sees me looking.
“Well, sounds like they’ll discharge you tomorrow. I can take you home then, if you want.” I trail her to the door. She looks at the ceiling with her chin quivering and tears welling.
“He came to the club,” she says, and waits until I walk over and sit down for her story. “I saw him with a woman—someone I had never seen before. It was a few days ago in town.”
“Who?” I ask eagerly.
“I don’t know. Brunette with nice shoes.”
My heart is racing when she says this and I’m greedy for more information, but I wait.
“He grabs at my stocking when I pass him at the club, tries to get my attention and I ignore him. I’m mad. But you can’t ignore Joe Brooks. It’s his worst trigger. He tries again later on—tries to buy a lap dance in the back room, and I turn it down. Girls can always turn down those requests. I had a break, and walked over to the truck stop ’cause I remembered I had to get bread and milk for Ronny Lee before I went home later. He followed me out, I didn’t know.”
“Jesus. Lacy, you didn’t tell anyone? The nurse or anything?”
“You still don’t understand. There’s no point. It will get worse.” She tenses up trying to raise her voice, then whimpers in pain, settling herself back.
“I’m sorry. I just—how is this possible? How can he get away with this? It’s insane.”
“It happens all the time. Not just me.”
“So all because you rejected him.”
Her answer is in her silence.
“I shouldn’t have fought back. He woulda just gone back inside, but I hit him back, and that last blow, he bent my wrist and got a good shot at my face, that’s when I got knocked out. He’s usually careful not to get a hospital involved, but he just left me there. Some guy driving past called the police, I guess.”
I hand her a tissue from the bedside table.
“I don’t even know what I can say. I’m so sorry, Lacy.”
“Worst part is, he’ll be back. He has to apologize now. That’s how it goes.”
“Did the woman you saw him with—did you see what she drove?”
“No. Why?”
“Did you get her name, or if she was from out of town?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen her around. Why?”
I tell Lacy everything I’ve learned, about the photo linking Val and Joe, about the blackmail, about the flimsy alibi and what Cinnamon said about him being there that night. I tell her that I think he’s working with Luke’s ex-wife for the inheritance money, and I need to find out more. If I can prove an involvement between them—messages that are damning—I can...expose them. Something. Anything. She sits still, shocked by all of this information I’ve unloaded on her.
“Well, shit, I can get into his computer. I know the password,” she says.
“What?”
“Yeah, he thinks I’m too dumb to notice probably. The password is his birth date. And he stays automatically logged into his email and stuff. I could help you find out.”
“No. No way I would put you in a room with that sociopath on purpose.”
“Look, you helped me. Besides, he’s gonna call until he can apologize, so there’s no avoiding seeing him again. Only thing is, if he saw me do it, he’d...” She doesn’t have to say he’d kill her. I can tell she’s thinking over the details of how it could work. “It would have to be at his place because his computer is there, but I’m never allowed to stay the night at his apartment, so I don’t know how I’d do it.”
“I have an idea,” I say. “This will work. I’ll pick you up when you’re discharged tomorrow, and we’ll talk about it. Yeah?” I place my hand carefully on her arm and squeeze. She places her hand over mine. It feels like a secret handshake we are creating, a bond of trust somehow.
“Yeah,” she agrees.
She trusts me, and I can’t let one more person in my life down. This has to work.
27
I HAVE WAITED FOR the mailman for the last three days since I dropped Lacy off from the hospital, peering through the living room curtains between one and three, his usual times, just to make certain that the package I’m waiting for doesn’t get dangerously intercepted by the kids or Collin.
At the library, right after dropping Lacy off and agreeing to our plan, I went again to use the computer anonymously. Even on a public computer, I didn’t want to chance an extensive search for which kind of drugs will knock someone unconscious, or leave a trail of clicks from shady websites, so I typed in a name I’d heard before on an episode of Dateline: flunitrazepam. Tasteless, dissolves easily in a drink, takes thirty minutes to knock someone on their ass.
Cinnamon told me to “get him.” I knew she would help, so I got her number from Lacy. The girls weren’t exactly covert about their cocaine use, so I wondered if she might know where to get other things. After she explained to me three times what the dark web was, she gave up and gave me instructions detailing how to order what I wanted online.
It was easier than I expected. The only real hassle was having to first go and buy a prepaid debit card with cash so there wouldn’t be a trail. And if th
e drugs are discovered, I can always claim they’d gone to the wrong house. After all, the sender refused to put my name on the envelope—it will say only “Current Resident.” I didn’t even give a name at all, just an address, and the service promised the utmost discretion. This is great news for me, but incredibly alarming to know how easy it is for all the Joes of the world to obtain and use these roofies.
A few days later, after the mailman has dropped a handful of envelopes into the metal box on the front porch, I wait until he’s walking up the Millers’ front stoop and out of sight before I open the door and flip through the pile to find a surprisingly tiny package resting between a piece of junk mail and a utility bill. As promised, it says only “Current Resident.” I leave the rest of the mail in the box and go inside. I open the package carefully and drop the tablets into my palm, then slip them inside the zipper pocket in my wallet. They just fit inside the narrow, otherwise useless little pocket.
I call to tell Lacy we’re set.
“It’s about time,” she complains on the other end of the line. “He sent flowers and won’t stop calling. I can only get him to let me go to his place when he’s still in his apology phase, so we should do it tonight.”
“Tonight. Okay.”
“Let me text him back and tell him I’ll stop by if he wants, but that I can’t stay long. He should say yes, the way he is right now, but I can’t be sure. If he says to come over, I’ll just text you a time, and we can meet beforehand.”
“Okay, sounds good. You sure about this? I don’t want you to feel—” But Lacy cuts me off.
“I’m sure. Gotta go.” She hangs up, and I wait. I pace the kitchen, then take out a bottle of Lysol and spray a mist across the countertop and scrub at it with a scouring pad, trying to keep myself occupied. I wonder how it’s possible that the person guilty of a murder could be the one investigating it. Does he get his pick of who he decides to pin it on? If that’s really the situation, and he could plant evidence and find someone who would be a perfect candidate to blame, I wonder if it’s been decided that that someone is me.
He’s always liked me. He’s even wanted me. Maybe just in the past, but I have come to learn that he gets what he wants, and I rejected him once. A long time ago. Too long ago for this to be revenge, but the thought flits across my mind, and his current flirtations are not lost on me.
Two hours later, the counters sparkle and I’ve even pulled the stainless-steel garbage can out on the front lawn to power wash before I finally get the text back that says, 8 PM. I text back to meet in the parking lot of a Shell station a block away before she goes in. It’s set.
I need to attend a parent-teacher conference at Ben’s school at six while Collin picks Rachel up from JV basketball practice, her new obsession since she decided she hates dance. Ben is chatting away in the backseat after the conference, and I give intermittent “oh, reallys” now and then, only partly listening. We stop for takeout at a Mediterranean grill and get home in just enough time for me to drop off dinner and head out to meet Lacy.
“Go wash up, bud,” I say to Ben’s back, but he’s already halfway up the stairs, knowing the drill. The house is eerily quiet.
“Anyone home?” I call, but I saw Collin’s car, so I know they’re here. Collin is standing at the kitchen counter when I round the corner and put the take-out bags down.
“Hey. It’s quiet in here. Where’s Rach?” I ask, used to the TV blaring and kids perpetually arguing or asking for something. At the very least, blaring music from their rooms at this hour. His face looks fatigued, his eyes dark.
“Rachel’s in her room.”
“Why? She okay?”
“Yeah, she doesn’t want to talk to anyone, and she’s skipping dinner, or so she loudly announced.”
“What happened? Wha—”
“I don’t know, like I said, she’s not talking to anyone, but I can only guess it has something to do with the fact that our daughter became a woman today...so I hear.”
I don’t quite absorb it at first because it’s such an odd thing to hear Collin say.
“Uhhh. What?” I ask, daftly.
“Please don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Pretend not to know what I’m talking about. I can’t take watching you lie right now.”
I feel my face go hot and numb. I know she would never tell him about her period in a million years. He must have heard us.
“I, no, I mean yes, you’re right, but she wouldn’t want you to know that, I—”
“Now you’ve dragged our child into, I don’t even know. Whatever this is.”
I look down and see the disposable phone on the countertop in front of him. I back away from him instinctively.
“Why?” he continues. “What reason could you have for owning this—and hiding it? I can’t come up with one reason in my mind when I see this. I sure as hell know it’s not the nonsense you tried to sell Rachel.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I was just—taken off guard when she...” But I trail off; there’s no hiding, I feel my face flush.
“So what’s it for?” he asks, doing little to mask his accusatory tone. When I decided that there was no scenario in which Collin would look inside a tampon box for anything, I never dreamed of this. But Rachel’s at that age, so I should have. I should have thought of it, but since it’s never come up before, it just wasn’t a scenario that ever crossed my mind.
“It’s...it’s not mine, actually. I know it looks really strange.”
“Yeah, it really does.” Collin takes a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet and pours the brown liquid into a glass, waiting for my lie, which comes quickly. It’s getting easier and easier to spin these tales with only a moment’s notice.
“Gillian and Robert, you know—they’re on the rocks. She thinks he’s cheating, so she hired a private investigator.”
Yes, I think. This is a story he can’t ask them about to double-check because it’s too sensitive. I rest my hip on the stool next to the counter to try to signal that I’m relaxed, not nervous.
“Okay?” he says, impatiently. “So?”
“So, she uses this to communicate with the guy—the investigator—to be careful, ya know. She worries about not getting anything in the divorce if he can accuse her of something, I don’t know, so when we met she asked me to keep it. She didn’t feel safe keeping it at the house.”
Collin turns and fills his glass with ice from the fridge door. The loud clanging makes me jump. He sits down, calmly. He takes his time, and I’m tormented by the long silence.
“So, why would you hide it, then? In a...”
“Oh, well, no, it’s just...she gave it to me like that. We were at her place and she shoved the tampon box at me with the phone inside. I guess that’s where she hid it, so I just thought I’d leave it there. Out of sight, out of mind.”
“Right.” He studies my eyes. I receive no indication from his if he believes me or not.
“And she asked me not to tell anyone, of course.”
“Of course.” He smiles, but it’s just his lips that curl up at the ends, his eyes don’t match the forced look, and I feel like I could vomit right here. I’m irritatingly aware of the time, and I can’t be late to meet Lacy. Who knows what rage Joe might have in store if he’s kept waiting by the likes of Lacy Dupre.
“I’m so sorry. I have to meet Lacy in ten minutes.”
At least he has empathy for what she’s going through and knows that I planned to go and bring Lacy dinner and help out while she heals. He can’t be mad at that. If it were anything else, I’d stay. I’d make him feel sure, secure. But I have to go.
“Go, then,” is all he says, and I kiss him even though he barely reciprocates.
“I won’t be long. Promise.” But he doesn’t say anything. I turn and go.
As I back out of the driveway, I s
ee him, still at the counter, sitting with his elbows resting on either side of his whiskey. I can’t afford the time, but still I wait a couple moments, watching through the window to see if he’s okay, if he’s accepted what I’ve said, shaken it off, but he doesn’t move. He just stares down into his glass.
28
I’M LATE. I SCREECH into a parking spot at the gas station across from Joe’s apartment building. Lacy is sitting in her car. She crushes out the end of her cigarette and jumps into my passenger’s side.
“I’m sorry,” I start, but she gets down to business.
“You got the pills?”
I hand them to her in the corner clipped from an envelope, taped at the top.
“I already crushed them up, so all you have to do is puncture the paper and pour it into his drink.”
“You sure he can’t taste it?”
“Yes, positive. And here.” I hand her the pepper spray I’ve had in my purse for years. “Just in case.” She looks down at it, and I can tell she’s probably second-guessing this whole bizarre plan.
“Thanks,” she says, nodding, sliding it into her bag.
“So, listen. Call as soon as he’s out. FaceTime me so I can see the screen as you go through the computer and we can look together. We screenshot anything we can use.” I drop her at the door to his building and tell her I will be just feet from the front door with the car running if she needs me.
As she walks to the door, I watch her enter a circle of fluorescent light and push some numbers on a metal box to ring up to him. She props open the front door with a rolled-up newspaper as I instructed, in case she needs me. She charts the stairs just inside the door, and when her feet hit the sixth stair, she’s out of my sight line, and I mumble soft pleas to God for this to end well.
If we find anything useful, I don’t know if I bring it to his sergeant, as an anonymous tip that one of their own is hiding a secret and needs to be investigated himself? Or do I hold on to it awhile?
Such a Good Wife Page 22
