46
We stopped at my house before going to the motel. Stuart said we would do better if we had a picture of Larry. If he didn’t use his real name to sign in, there was a chance the motel clerk would recognize him and agree to help us.
“What are you doing home?” my mother asked as Debbie wrapped herself around my legs. “What’s wrong?”
“Too much to explain,” I said, trying to pry Debbie off me. “And little pitchers have big ears. But L-A-R-R-Y is trying to blackmail me.”
“Blackmail?”
“To quit the campaign.”
I could see the gears turning in her head as she put two and two together that something had happened with Michael. Then she nodded. “Rosa can watch Debbie. I’m coming with you.”
“Stuart is in the car,” I said. “He’s coming with me.”
“Stuart hates you.”
I chuckled humorlessly. “It’s been an interesting morning. Besides, I need you to pick Robbie up at lunch.”
“I go with Gramma!” Debbie declared proudly.
I knelt down and drew her in for a hug. “You do, you big, big girl.” Then I went to the living room and took a framed family picture that I had left out for the kids off the bookshelf. I stopped back in the kitchen and riffled through the junk drawer to make sure I had read the matchbook correctly. Sure enough, it was royal blue, with a white silhouette of the motel, the lettering clear as day. A little more digging produced a notepad and pen from there as well.
I didn’t even notice my mother looking over my shoulder, observing the paraphernalia, her mouth pressed into such a tight line that her lips disappeared. We exchanged a look, and she squeezed my arm in support.
“I’m a phone call away if you need me,” she said.
I kissed her cheek. “Thank you, Mama.” She nodded once and then took Debbie out to play in the backyard.
On the one hand, Stuart was the smarter choice because he was a lawyer and much more physically intimidating than my mother if it came down to that.
On the other, I would love to see anyone try to argue with my mother and walk away the victor. In my twenty-seven years on this earth, it hadn’t happened yet.
We pulled onto the property, with a central two-story building, adorned with columns to fit the colonial name, and rooms branching out like arms on either side. Daylilies lined the drive leading up to the swimming pool at the front of the property. I had passed it every time we went to the club. The evidence I needed to secure the kids and fight whatever Larry planned to do to sabotage Michael had been hiding in plain sight all along.
“Give me the picture,” Stuart said as he pulled into a parking spot. “You don’t need to come in.”
But I shook my head. “Let me try talking to them first.” Stuart looked skeptical. “One of us is slightly more charming than the other.”
He smiled sardonically. “Thanks.”
“If I can’t charm this guy, then we’ll do it your way.”
Stuart nodded, and I looked at him, seeing him through new eyes.
“Whatever happens in there,” I said, “thank you.”
He put a hand on mine for a second, then removed it and opened his car door. “Let’s do this.”
I did the same and, gripping the photograph of my family, followed him into the icy blast of the air-conditioned lobby, where a mustached man in his late forties or early fifties sat reading a newspaper, sweat stains creeping out of his armpits despite the frosty temperature of the room. He looked up at the sound of the bell on the door and set down his newspaper, then flipped a page in the large book in front of him, uncapping a pen.
“Room for the night or the afternoon?” he asked.
I recoiled involuntarily. It hadn’t occurred to me, despite Stuart’s comment that I couldn’t be seen going there with Michael, that the motel clerk would assume Stuart and I were having an affair.
“Neither,” Stuart said, nudging me forward slightly.
I gave myself a mental shake and flashed my brightest smile. “I was hoping you could help me,” I said, moving forward toward the desk. “You see, I caught my husband with another woman, and he’s making divorce proceedings ... difficult.”
The man shifted in his seat uncomfortably. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know how I could help though.”
“I—we—would like to look through the sign-in book,” I said, my fingers brushing against it.
He moved it away from my hand and out of my reach. “I can’t do that,” he said.
I glanced back at Stuart and saw his jaw tighten. I held up my hand below the counter, indicating for him to wait.
“I understand,” I said delicately. “But maybe you can just tell us if you’ve seen him here? I found a matchbook, a notepad, and a pen, but that’s not decisive enough for court.” I held out the photo, studying the clerk’s face as I did.
He blinked twice. Then said, “I’ve never seen him before.”
“You’re sure?” Stuart asked. “He’s clearly been here if they had all that in the house.”
“I’m sure,” he said. “Besides, people leave matchbooks places. Other people pick them up. He could have come to the bar for a drink and never checked in.”
My shoulders dropped in defeat. Worst-case scenario, if the clerk had confirmed that Larry had checked in with someone who wasn’t me, Stuart could have testified to that, even if the clerk wouldn’t go to court. But with him saying he had never seen Larry, we had absolutely nothing.
“Thank you for your time,” I said. Stuart looked at me, and we held each other’s gaze, his clearly asking if he should intimidate the clerk to get another answer. But it was what Larry would have done. I didn’t want to do that, even if it meant my short career had just ended along with my marriage.
I turned to leave, and Stuart begrudgingly did the same.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you, Mrs. Diamond,” he said as we reached the door.
Stuart and I both stopped walking and looked at each other again. Then we slowly turned back to the clerk.
“I never told you my name,” I said.
His eyes widened as he realized his gaffe, and he ducked as Stuart lunged at the desk. But Stuart wasn’t going for his throat; he was going for the book, which was now left unguarded.
The clerk protested as I flipped it open, but Stuart loomed over him menacingly, and he made no move to stop me.
I turned the pages, seeing an awful lot of George Washingtons, Abraham Lincolns, and the odd Harry Truman before—
There it was. Clear as day. “Mr. and Mrs. Larry Diamond.” Again two pages earlier. And again a few pages earlier. I lost count somewhere after eight.
Then I looked up at the clerk. “How many different women?” I asked.
“I don’t kn—”
Stuart grabbed him by the collar as the man looked up at him, terrified.
“Two? Maybe three. I don’t know.”
“Let him go,” I said. Stuart did.
“We’re taking this,” Stuart said, gesturing toward the book that I now had clutched to my chest. “We’re going to make copies of a few pages, and then we’ll return it.”
The clerk started to protest again, but Stuart held up a finger. “I’m good friends with the DA. And running a brothel is illegal in Maryland.”
“It’s not a brothel!”
“You willing to gamble your whole livelihood on none of those women getting paid?” Stuart asked.
The man blanched and whimpered something that sounded like “No sir.”
Stuart gave me a little nudge and said we should leave. Then he looked back to the clerk one more time. “I’m going to be back with the book tonight. And if Mr. Diamond returns, you never saw us. Is that clear?”
He nodded.
“Good,” Stuart said. “Because one call to the DA, and you’re finished. You hear me?”
Another nod.
“Let’s go,” Stuart said to me, and he held the door.
I didn’t remember crossing the parking lot to the car. But once I was seated inside, I opened the book again, running a finger over the familiar handwriting that said his name and mine.
And then, for the first time in my adult memory, I was crying. Not just tears, but full-out sobbing. I hadn’t cried when Larry showed up with those pictures, nor when he threatened to take the kids. Not even when my grandmother died when I was fifteen. My eyes were a well that I thought was dry but that had refilled without my knowledge. And once I started, I couldn’t stop, crying out all the pain of the life I had lost, the embarrassment of having been so blind not to see what was happening under my nose for so long, and the fact that, because we had kids, I could never truly be rid of Larry even after our marriage was dissolved.
Stuart, to his credit, didn’t panic at the sight of tears, the way so many men did. He simply took the book from my lap and let me cry, eventually passing me a stack of Montgomery Donuts napkins from the glove compartment in lieu of tissues.
I don’t know how long we sat there before I was composed enough to apologize.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” he said.
I looked at him, trying to see how far back that extended. But he smiled tightly at me, patted my shoulder awkwardly, and said he would take me home.
“Thank you,” I said as we turned onto my street.
He shook his head. “You’ve been a pain in my ass since the day we met,” he said. “But you’ve also been right about almost everything. And no one deserves to be treated like that. Especially not someone like you.”
It was the closest to a compliment I would get from him. And when he stopped the car in my driveway, I startled him by wrapping my arms around his neck in a tight hug.
He removed my arms. “What if the PI is still on your trail?”
“Then the judge will think Larry and I are both awful people,” I said. I released him and opened my car door, leaving the book on the front seat for him to make copies and return. “But don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone your secret.”
“My secret?”
I smiled. “That underneath that tough exterior, you’re actually a nice guy.”
He raised an eyebrow and shook his head. “Call the office if you need anything.”
I said I would and watched as he pulled away.