Chapter Thirty-Two
JILL SITS ON the sofa, hugging the cashmere throw around herself as if for protection.
Lara has gone. She stares at the spot in the bookshelf where they’d discovered the camera the day before.
She’s been so traumatized by it, and by the second one they’d found in the kitchen, that she no longer feels comfortable anywhere in her own home.
She feels violated, betrayed by her beloved brownstone.
She hears Ted come in the front door and hurries to greet him, the throw still wrapped around her like a cape. ‘Did you talk to him?’ she asks. She feels sick with anxiety.
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘It was him,’ Ted tells her. He walks past her into the front room and collapses into his chair.
She follows him and kneels down on the floor beside him, urgently looking up into his face, trying to read their future in it. ‘What did he say?’
‘He says he wants four million and he’ll return all the digital files to us.’
She feels her face drain of blood. She’s dizzy. ‘So he admitted it.’
‘Yes.’
‘The fucking bastard,’ she says with venom.
‘I knew it was him,’ Ted says viciously. ‘He’s a fucking criminal. He got one of his criminal friends to plant the cameras for him.’ He looks down at her. ‘He told me we got them all.’
‘We can’t pay him,’ she says, looking up at Ted in fear. ‘He’ll never stop asking.’
‘I told him it would be a one-time-only payment, that’s it.’
‘Telling him won’t do any good,’ she says.
‘I know that.’ He looks down into her eyes. ‘I’ll take care of him, Jill. I don’t want you involved.’
Her heart is pounding inside her chest. She knows what he means.
And she doesn’t want any part of it. Once was enough.
But she’s involved in this no matter what.
They sink or swim together. And she’s worried that Ted might fuck it up.
He should tell her what he plans to do. Two brains are better than one. ‘How will you do it?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘You’ll let me know, though, won’t you? Don’t do anything without running it by me first. It has to be foolproof.’ He’d screwed up when he hadn’t considered the possibility of cameras on the boat.
‘I know.’
‘How much time do we have, before he wants the money?’
Ted tells her, ‘I tried to put him off till the money from the estate comes through, but he wants it as soon as possible.’
‘Then we will have to figure something out, fast,’ she says.
He watches them in real time, on the live feed to the smartphone.
It’s all being backed up to a memory card.
They missed the second camera in this room, so cleverly hidden, and the one in the bedroom too.
Technology is so good these days. This is better than watching reality TV – much more gripping.
And revealing too.
Nadya, having been sent home from the Westcotts’ that morning, spends her unexpected Wednesday off cleaning her own home. She has to keep busy, because she’s anxious.
She thinks now that perhaps she hasn’t been ambitious enough in her life, and that’s why she’s stuck here in this crummy house, cleaning other people’s beautiful houses, viewed with contempt by her only child.
Maybe she hasn’t been such a good role model for her son after all, despite her hard work.
She should have gone back to school, made something more of herself, but there was a child to raise all on her own, and bills to pay.
And it took her such a long time to learn the English language.
And now her son might have got himself into trouble. She sighs heavily, gets up off her knees from scrubbing the kitchen floor. She must talk to Peter, but she is dreading it.
It’s hours later when at last she hears his key in the door and then his heavy step as he walks down the hall toward the kitchen, where she waits for him. She rises to greet him. She’s glad to see he’s sober. Or sober enough.
‘Peter,’ she says, ‘I need to talk to you.’
‘About what?’ He goes to the fridge to look for something to eat.
‘I’ve left something for you, you can reheat it.’
He takes it out of the fridge and puts it in the microwave.
She waits for the noise of the microwave to stop and for him to sit down at the kitchen table facing her with his food.
Then she says, careful to keep her voice neutral, ‘My employers spoke to me today – the Westcotts.’ He looks up at her, interested, chewing.
‘They have found cameras hidden inside their house.’
‘Really?’ he says, as if surprised.
‘They accused me of putting them there.’
Now he looks concerned. ‘Why would they accuse you?’
‘Because I have a key and know the security code.’
‘That’s bullshit. Did they fire you?’
‘No.’ She leans forward. ‘I didn’t do it, and of course I denied it. They seemed to believe me.’
‘That’s good,’ he says, looking down at his plate, taking another mouthful of pork and rice.
‘Peter,’ she asks, ‘did you have anything to do with those cameras?’
‘What?’ He drops his knife and fork. ‘Of course not. Why would you ask me that? I had nothing to do with any cameras.’
She nods, relieved. ‘I know you wouldn’t do anything like that.’ She watches him resume eating and muses aloud, ‘I wonder who it was?’