Chapter 16 #4
“I accept that,” he said. Then, very seriously, “Why are you asking, hon?” He pried her out of his arms to study her face. “Is it because you’re keeping something from me?”
Diane frowned, and for the first time got her head out of her own drama enough to realize that her Harry was worried. “Oh, honey, no! Not like you’re thinking. It’s just stuff with the girls. You know, we’re going through a lot together right now. It’s things only women our age would understand.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.” That and murder. “You don’t have a thing to worry about.”
He sighed in relief and as he lay back down, he said, “There is one other thing I haven’t told you. It’s…embarrassing.”
“You can tell me anything, babe. I love you to my bones.”
“I um…I’m having some trouble…down below. Things that used to happen aren’t happening.”
She nodded. “I thought that might be the case, so I’ve done some reading on the subject. I was hoping you’d bring it up so we could talk.”
“You…were?”
“According to the medical research, Erectile Dysfunction is the canary in the coal mine for heart disease. Those tiniest arteries are clogged with plaque, preventing efficient blood flow. That means there’s probably similar plaque in other arteries, including those around your heart.”
“Holy… That’s scary as hell,” he said.
“That’s why you’re going to get a full workup. I’ve already made the appointment. There are dietary changes that can help, too. We’ll institute those starting tomorrow.”
“What would I do without you?” he asked, and she knew he meant it. She hadn’t trained her husband to be able to get by without her. She knew that was something she had to begin doing now, because if she and the girls were ever caught, he might have to get by on his own.
“You’d curl up in a corner and die,” she replied. “But we’re gonna work on that, too. In the meantime…” She opened her nightstand drawer and took out a small blue pill in a cellophane packet. “Dr. Parker says this is safe. I called and checked.” She handed him the pill.
He took it in his hand, looked at her. “Yeah?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
He wiggled his eyebrows up and down and unwrapped the pill. They made out like teenagers for a nice, long time, and then they made love like an old couple who knew how.
“My goodness,” Jeff said when Christine came through the glass doors of her lake house after midnight. “What kind of mischief are you and the girls up to these days?”
“We hit the clubs,” she said. “I’m only home now because I ran out of singles for the strippers.” The second part was a lie. But maybe next time.
Jeff rose from the white sofa, where he’d been sitting. He’d been eating cookies from Frosted, on Main Street. The box on the coffee table was open, and there were several obviously empty spots.
She shook her head.
“Oh, come on. I only had two.” He closed the lid on the box.
“The doctor told you no more saturated fat. Those are full of it. Read a label, for God’s sake.
” Biting her lip, she realized he did not deserve her trying to take care of him.
He never had. “You know what? Go for it, Jeff. Eat all the cookies. I give you my solemn vow that I will never give you shit about it again.” She’d only done it that time out of habit.
“Really?” he asked.
He got up and came toward her and she willed herself not to cringe away from his touch when he ran his hands down her arms from shoulder to elbow, three times, like he might do if she were cold and he was trying to warm her. “What brought that decision on?”
She smiled at him. She’d been a drama club kid all through high school. She could do this. Acting is just pretending. Drama coach Miz Salducci’s passionate voice rang in her mind as clearly as it had her freshman year. So pretend.
How did some memories stick so perfectly for so long?
She pretended to be a woman in love with her husband and blind to his true nature, and then she pretended to have a headache, and then she pretended to fall asleep.
But she didn’t fall asleep. She waited until her idiot husband was snoring hard, due to the twenty-five extra pounds he was carrying around thanks to his terrible eating habits and stubborn refusal to change them, and then she slid out of bed.
She took his keys out of his pants, and tiptoed through her beautiful lake house, out the side door, into the carport that held his sporty little car, the only place besides his office that she hadn’t yet searched for proof of his depravity, and maybe his secret burner phone.
First, she checked the obvious spots, the console, the glove compartment. Then the less likely places, down in the creases of the seats, and underneath them.
Something shiny was under the passenger seat. She reached under there to pull it out. It was a little girl’s ponytail holder, two pink plastic spheres on an elastic loop. It was proof that his involvement had gone beyond paying for the performances. He’d had a child in this car.
How could she not have seen this? How could she have let him hurt a little girl and not even known? She sank into the passenger seat of the car, the shock of it all nearly too much for her.
Every encounter she and Jeff had ever had with young girls played back through Christine’s mind. Every overly friendly, too helpful gesture, every too easy smile, every slight dip of his eyes, every accidental touch of a shoulder or lower back took on new meaning.
God. Oh, God, how long…?
She closed her eyes, told herself to pull it together. She had to find proof, and then turn him in. He had another phone, somewhere. She had to find it.
“Christine?”
Jeff had come out of the house, into the carport. She closed her eyes, palmed the pony-tail holder. “I was just thinking how long it’s been since you took me for a ride,” she said.
“You were, huh?”
“Yeah. But not tonight, not tonight. My head’s pounding so hard it woke me. I don’t know, I thought I’d sit out here in the air for a bit. See if it helped.”
“Has it?”
“Not really,” she said. She got out of the car and closed the door—gently, so as not to piss him off. She had his keys, but he didn’t need to know that. The car hadn’t been locked. She needed to get the keys back into his pocket. “Maybe a snack would help,” she said.
She wished she knew whether Dangerous Dan had told Jeff that Bonnie had killed Mr. Terrence. Dan had known about Bonnie’s family, about Rosa. Had he known about her and Diane too? And how much had he told Jeff?
Was Jeff’s newfound interest in her just his way of trying to find out what she knew? Was he trying to learn whether she was onto him?
She could not give anything away. She had to play nice until she found evidence. Proof.
“We can take a drive tomorrow if you want,” he said. “We can talk.”
“That’ll be nice. Maybe it’ll be warm enough to put the windows down.” She moved past him into the house and said, “I’ll keep you up all night with this headache. I’m gonna finish the night in the guest room.”
“Okay. Can I get you anything? Drink? Medication?”
“I took something already.”
“All right, then,” he said. And then he came to her, leaned down, and kissed her forehead. “Night, Chrissy.”
“Night, Jeff.”
He went to bed. She went into the guest room and sat upright in bed, wrapped in a comforter, waiting for morning.
When Bonnie got home late that night, the house was silent. A light came from underneath the door of the den. Sam was still working in there. The twins were asleep, though.
She headed through her dark house and quietly up the stairs to her bathroom with her large teal and yellow beach bag. She took the small Tupperware from the bottom. It had been there the whole time because she didn’t dare leave it out of her sight. Now, it was no longer needed.
She removed the lid and looked for a moment at the perfect, fat, deadly muffin. She’d really outdone herself. Oh, well.
Using a rubber glove from the box of them she kept under the sink for cleaning, she broke the muffin into smaller pieces and flushed it down the toilet, the safest method to dispose of it that she could think of. Diluted in the septic tank, the toxin would become harmless.
She rinsed the Tupperware bowl and her gloved hand, then put both bowl and glove into the small wastebasket and tied its liner bag into a knot. She’d take it to the trash bin herself later.
The second thing she did was take a shower that should’ve been hot enough to stop her shaking.
Why was she still shaking hours later, then?
The weight of what she and the girls had done, and what she’d done before, were heavy. She’d been feet away from her son the detective at her own crime scene. But those were not the reasons for her nerves. She was trembling in anticipation of what she still had to do, and to whom she had to do it.
Her own son. She had to get one last look at his notes. How had he known Mr. Terrence and Dangerous Dan were connected? What had he thought when he’d gone into that suite to question him and found him dead?
At four a.m., Bonnie woke. No alarm necessary. It didn’t matter what time she went to bed; she always woke up around four. She enjoyed the early morning hours, often used them to sit on the porch sipping her first cup of coffee—decaf, but still.
Not this morning. This morning, she had another mission.
She’d been awake when Sam had gone to bed, two hours ago. He ought to be well asleep by now, so it was time.
She sat up in bed, pushed her covers back, and swung her legs around.
Then she waited for a few seconds before sliding off the bed and stepping into her slippers.
She pulled on her robe, because her nightgown was her lightest, most comfy cotton shift—ivory with pink roses like something out of a Victorian tearoom.
The robe clashed. Red and green plaid flannel—a gift from the grandkids that had come with a big teddy bear wearing the same robe. Teddy slept on Mark’s side of the bed. It felt a little less empty that way.