The Wife Who Knew Too Much

by Michele Campbell

  “Just checking.”

  Nina hesitated with her hand over the flap of the envelope, throwing Juliet a meaningful look. The assistant grabbed her bathrobe and phone.

  “I’ll give you some privacy. Text me when you’d like me to return.”

  Once alone, Nina opened the envelope. Her hands were shaking. There were two files inside, one labeled INVESTIGATIVE REPORT, the other PRENUPTIAL AGREEMENT. She opened the file containing the report.

  The first page was a summary, stating that the investigator had verified Connor’s involvement with a young woman named Lissa Davila during his first two years of college, and Lissa’s subsequent disappearance under mysterious circumstances eight years after their relationship ended. No evidence was found linking Connor to her disappearance. While the police case remained open, and the NYPD considered it unsolved, the investigator had uncovered new evidence suggesting that Lissa Davila had moved overseas, meaning that her “disappearance” had an innocent explanation.

  Nina breathed out in relief. Everything was fine. She could have stopped reading right then. But curiosity got the better of her.

  The next item in the file was a transcript of an interview with Lissa’s college roommate, Sharla Jenkins. Sharla described Lissa as brilliant but troubled. Lissa had grown up in foster homes and had finally been adopted in her teens. The adoptive mom had died, and Lissa had no other family that Sharla knew of. Sharla stated that Lissa and Connor had an “obsessive” and “unhealthy” relationship that interfered with Lissa’s friendships and schoolwork. When Connor dropped out of school, Lissa attempted suicide. She was hospitalized and withdrew from school. Sharla tried to keep in touch, but Lissa cut off contact.

  Further investigation indicated that, by the time Connor ended his leave of absence and returned to college, Lissa had dropped out. According to the college records office, Lissa never returned, and never filed the request for her transcript that would have been needed had she transferred elsewhere. The conclusion was that she had not finished college.

  Eight years after she left college, Lissa was reported missing by her landlord in New York City. The investigator determined that Lissa had been living alone in a small studio in a large Manhattan apartment building. The date of birth and Social Security number matched—this was definitely the same girl who’d dated Connor in college. When Lissa failed to pay her rent, the real-estate company tried to contact her, but her cell phone was out of service. They inquired with the doorman, who said he hadn’t seen her in weeks. The building super then entered her apartment with a master key, and what he found was eerie. It was as if Lissa had vanished into thin air. There was a coat of dust on the furniture, clothing hanging in the closet; Lissa’s wallet and keys were on the kitchen table. The landlord contacted the police, who opened a missing-person case. The police followed up with the employer Lissa had listed on her rental application, an import-export firm called Protocol Shipping Solutions, with a Midtown address. But the address turned out to be a mail-drop, and there was no evidence that the company actually existed.

  Lissa Davila was a ghost.

  The police tried to find Lissa’s family, without success. Her adoptive mother, who’d lived in Maryland, had died years earlier. And the Maryland Department of Human Services was unable to locate Lissa’s file to provide a birth certificate or the names of any living biological relatives. The only lead was that the doorman reported seeing Lissa with a visitor shortly before she disappeared—a man, tall and good-looking, with dark hair. There was no security camera in the building, but the police were able to pull footage from a camera mounted on the exterior of the bank next door. They found one grainy surveillance photo that the doorman said looked to him like Lissa and her visitor. That photo was included in the file.

  Nina stared at it.

  The man and woman walked hand in hand. The woman’s face was a white blur, visible only in profile. The man’s face wasn’t visible at all. She studied it for a long time, gazing at the man. At the set of his shoulders, the tilt of his head, the texture of his hair. It was quite like Connor. Enough that it could be him. She leafed through the rest of the folder looking for more photos. There were none, not even a yearbook photo of Lissa, or any photo that showed her face. That seemed like an omission. Then again, Hank’s original smear dossier hadn’t included a photo of Lissa, so maybe there just wasn’t one. If there was, you’d think Hank would’ve come up with it. While it seemed odd in this day and age, the truth was, not everyone had a social media presence, or even a driver’s license. Some people left very little trace.

  The lack of a photo bothered Nina. So did the name of the import-export firm where Lissa had worked. Protocol Shipping Solutions. She’d heard that name somewhere before, she was certain. She pressed her fingers to her temples, chasing the memory, but it remained stubbornly out of reach.

  Did it matter, so long as there was an innocent explanation? Nina turned to the final page of the report, bearing the heading “Lissa Davila Possibly Living Overseas.” The page summarized the findings of a second private investigator, hired by Mark Barbash to follow up on the information in Hank’s dossier. That investigator had discovered evidence of a woman with the name Lissa Davila, and the correct birth date and Social Security number, working as an office manager for a company in Dubai called Gulf Ex-Im as recently as two years ago. There was no explanation for how Lissa had ended up in Dubai, or how the investigator had found her. The investigator had attempted to reach out to Lissa at Gulf Ex-Im in order to establish conclusively that she was the same person, but was unable to make contact. The business appeared to have closed. Still, the investigator wrote, given the identical birth date and SS number, the evidence supported the conclusion that it was her, and that therefore, she’d been alive and well and living overseas after going missing from New York.

  Well. If it was good enough for the PI, it was good enough for Nina. Connor wasn’t a killer. That was just a Hank smear, designed to control her, and interfere with her happiness. And she was happy. Happy in a relationship for the first time in her life. Happy with things just how they were. So, why change anything? Why—specifically—get married?

  After Edward died, Nina thought she’d never marry again. Not because she was so grief-stricken. Oh, she put on a show of grieving, but the fact was, Edward had treated her like shit for most of their marriage. She stayed—and stayed faithful—for the money. Her prenup said that if Edward left her, she got a hefty settlement. But if she left him, she got nothing.

  She worried constantly that Connor would cheat on her, like Edward had. That worry was based more on her past experience than on anything Connor had actually done or said. And it was possible she was being unfair to him. Maybe Connor wasn’t like Edward. There was no way to know for sure. This was early days. Connor was on his best behavior. And besides, they’d been together nonstop since meeting at her July Fourth party, so he’d had no opportunity.

  But summer was coming to an end. In the fall, they’d return to New York. He’d go back to work at Levitt Global, where Lauren was still head of PR. Lauren, whose divorce from Hank was now final, and who had a vendetta against Nina. Lauren believed that Nina had stolen two men from her. That wasn’t true, but truth didn’t matter. Lauren believed it, and what better revenge could there be than luring Connor back?

  Nina watched him around the women they’d interacted with in the past two months, trying to gauge how susceptible he was. With Juliet, he was polite and friendly. With Dawn, her yoga instructor, who traveled with them, and who for some reason had taken a dislike to him, he was distant. With Nina’s friend Anna, whose castle they’d stayed at in Scotland, and who was a terrible flirt, he’d been flirtatious. In each instance, the woman’s conduct seemed to determine Connor’s response. That wasn’t very reassuring.

  After what she’d been through with Edward, Nina would lie awake at night, watching Connor sleep, imagining him in bed with other women. She told him that if he ever cheated, they were thr
ough. He claimed he never would, but all men said that. How could she keep him faithful? Her mind kept coming back to the prenup Edward held over Nina’s head for years.

  She opened the second file now and read what her lawyer had drafted. Upon divorce, each party took from the marriage only the assets they’d brought to it, with the following exceptions. If Nina divorced Connor for any reason within the first five years of marriage, he got a one-time ten-million-dollar payout. After five years, he received an additional five million dollars for each year they remained married up to ten years. After ten years, the marriage vested, and Connor would receive half of Nina’s assets upon divorce by Nina. But—if Connor initiated the divorce, or, if Nina could prove that he’d been unfaithful, or lied about a relationship with another woman, he forfeited all payouts. He got nothing.

  The prenup was much more persuasive than a mere threat to end the relationship. It contained incentives and disincentives. It attached numbers—a cost—to leaving, or cheating. It was one thing for him to think, If I get caught doing this, she might kick me out. Another entirely to say, If I cheat, I lose ten million dollars.

  Yes. The prenup just might work. The only problem was, you only signed a prenup if you were getting married.

  Nina texted Juliet to return to the stateroom. When she got there, Nina handed her the investigator’s report.

  “Destroy this. Don’t read it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Nina went back to the master, where Connor lay tangled in the blankets, fast asleep. She threw off her kimono and got in beside him, her hands snaking under the covers to find his naked body. His eyes opened, and he smiled drowsily.

  “Hey, gorgeous,” he said.

  She stroked him under the covers until he got hard. He grabbed her and pulled her underneath him. The sex was intense, like always, and she was sad when it ended. Life would feel empty if they weren’t together. She relied on him—in her bed at night, walking into a crowded room, muting the phone on a conference call to make fun of something somebody said. Her long, difficult marriage had made her unsentimental about love. She didn’t quite believe in it. Yet, here she was, in love with Connor.

  “Hey,” she said, nuzzling against his neck, breathing in his scent. “You remember that song you sang to me the night we met?”

  He raised himself on his elbow, brow furrowed. He didn’t remember. How was that possible?

  “Oh, yes, right,” he said, nodding.

  He’d scared her there for a minute, but now he started to hum the tune into her ear.

  “The one about the carpenter who asked the lady if she’d marry him? That one?”

  “Yes. I love that song.” She paused. “So, what do you think? Should we get married?”

  16

  July 4—two years later

  Nina sat at her dressing table in a black silk robe as her beauty team prepped her for the party.

  “You asked to see me, Mrs. Levitt?”

  Steve Kovacs, her security consultant, stood in the doorway of the dressing room. He was a six-foot-four ex-marine, ex–NYPD officer with a flattened nose, who’d worked for her on and off for years. She expected three hundred guests tonight, so Steve had brought in five off-duty cops to work security. They’d check invitations and keep out trespassers, but now she had a more delicate assignment for Steve. She wasn’t sure she trusted him with it, but she had no choice. She needed backup or she wouldn’t feel safe.

  “Take a break,” she told her hairdresser and makeup artist.

  When they’d gone, she got up and checked the adjacent bedroom. Connor had been avoiding her all day and was still nowhere to be seen. He must sense what was coming.

  There was no one moment when Nina discovered that Connor was cheating—in violation of their prenup, and every promise he’d ever made to her. The knowledge of it filtered through her skin like osmosis. She knew him so intimately. Everything about him—his body, his turns of phrase, the way he made love. She didn’t need to read his private emails or mistakenly receive a text meant for someone else. She noticed every subtle change. The faint whiff of a strange perfume as he took off his shirt. A new rhythm to his speech. An echo of another woman in the way he touched Nina’s body. This other woman haunted Nina like a ghost. She had to run her to the ground.

  Lauren was the obvious suspect. They had a history, and maybe it wasn’t exactly over when Connor and Nina got together. Connor’s current position as vice president for North American development for Levitt Global required regular consulting with the head of PR. His meetings with Lauren always seemed to get scheduled for late in the day—too late to travel back to Windswept, where Nina slept. He’d wind up staying at the apartment in the city. Did he think this was her first rodeo? Nina had to sell her old apartment to get rid of the stench from all the women Edward brought there, on nights when he supposedly worked too late to make it home to the East End. She’d bought a new apartment for herself, and she liked it enough that she made sure to put safeguards in place. The doormen and the housekeeper were paid to report on Connor, whenever he was there without her. So far, he hadn’t brought anyone there. That didn’t mean he was faithful, just that he was careful.

  Maybe the other woman wasn’t Lauren. Nina’s attention had shifted to a second suspect, one who cut more deeply. Dawn. The person on earth to whom Nina felt closest, after Connor, based on years of practicing yoga together, which to Nina was something intimate and spiritual. Dawn was beautiful enough to turn any man’s head. Willowy, long mahogany hair—she looked like a ballerina. Early on, Nina had worried that Connor and Dawn would like each other too much, but then it had been the complete opposite. They openly feuded and mistrusted each other. Connor claimed Dawn’s schtick was just a bunch of woo-woo nonsense, that she was a bad influence, sucking Nina dry with a charlatan’s efficiency. Dawn said even worse things about Connor—he was a fraud, after Nina’s money. Was it just a cover? The investigator hadn’t been able to substantiate anything between Connor and Dawn. That didn’t mean it wasn’t happening.

  Unsatisfied with the answers she was getting, Nina fired that investigator and hired a new one to root out the truth, and it turned out to be more than she’d bargained for. The new person had proved much more effective than the one from two years ago who’d cleared Connor of involvement in his girlfriend’s disappearance. That was either incompetence or a whitewash—probably the latter. There was a conspiracy underway against her. She didn’t know how far it went, but it was going to end tonight.

  “I know you have your hands full with the guests,” she said to Steve as she shut the door. “But something has come up that I need your help with. It’s confidential, and rather delicate.”

  “Any way I can be of service. Confidentiality is a given. If you don’t want to take my word for it, I signed an NDA when I came to work for you.”

  “Right. What I’m about to share with you is covered by that, obviously.”

  “Of course.”

  She unlocked the top drawer of her dressing table and handed him the investigator’s file.

  “Read this. It’ll give you the background.”

  He sat down on the bench and opened the folder. His face slackened with surprise as he read.

  “This is true?” Steve said, looking up at Nina with shock in his eyes. “Jeez, you think you know people.”

  She looked away, not wanting him to see the shine of tears in her eyes.

  “I thought so, too. But I’ve learned that a woman in my position can’t trust anyone. Not even the people closest to her.”

  “But … why? What’s their play?”

  “The obvious. They want my money. They want me out of the picture.”

  “Tell me what you want me to do,” Steve said.

  “I’m initiating divorce proceedings against my husband, and I’m going to need your assistance with safely removing him from my property.”

  He got to his feet. “I’ll go grab him now. Throw him out before the party starts.”


  “Just—hold on a minute. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  The dressing-room window looked over the terrace, where a tent had been set up in case of rain. The band must’ve arrived already. Nina couldn’t see them, but she could hear them tuning and doing mic checks. The guests would begin arriving any minute. Some were actual journalists. Others had big Twitter followings, or just big mouths. Nina had spent twenty-five long years getting humiliated in the press by Edward’s infidelities. This split was going to happen on her terms, which meant quietly.

  “The timing of the investigator’s report is unfortunate,” she said. “Now that I know, I have to take immediate action, and yet, I don’t want a scene. I’d prefer to go through with the party like nothing is wrong. Once the guests have left, that’s when I’ll confront Connor, with you present. In the coming days, I’ll have a publicist make a discreet announcement that we’ve separated.”

  “Due respect, ma’am, that’s not smart. From what the report says, this has been going on for a very long time. They knew each other from way back—”

  “Exactly. This has been going on for years, so why make a move tonight, with hundreds of people around, including you and your team? All I ask is that you keep an eye on him. As soon as the guests are gone, you escort him to my office. My lawyer gave me the divorce papers. I’ll ask you to serve them, then you’ll escort Connor off the property.”

  “If that’s how you want to play it.”

  “It is.”

  Steve looked troubled.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “I need you to understand that it may not be possible to monitor him every second.”

  “He’s not going to attack me in front of a crowd.”

  Steve shrugged. “My expert opinion is, people do crazy shit. But this is your call, ma’am.”

  “I’m not worried. I have everything under control.”