Chapter 22
EVANGELINE
The bed has two thousand thread count.
I know this because the housekeeper at Margot's said it twice over coffee this morning, the way Margot's housekeepers always say a thing twice when they want you to know that the woman of the house has chosen well, and I lay on the sheet last night for a count of an hour before I let myself slide between the layers.
I did not sleep.
At seven I got up.
Margot's penthouse has a view of the foothills.
The foothills are not the foothills above the cabin. They are the foothills above the city. The city is Boise.
The penthouse is Margot's husband's, and Margot's husband is in Jackson Hole until Sunday, and Margot is in the kitchen at the long marble island in a silk robe with a coffee in front of her and a phone face-down beside the coffee, and Margot has not asked me a single direct question yet.
Margot Wexler.
Margot from the bathroom on the third floor at Miss Porter's, the year I was sixteen and cried over a boy named Henry, and Margot found me, and Margot brought me a sandwich without asking. Margot at my wedding, the only one of them who said Eve, are you sure, before the music. Margot. Someone I know cares about me, but I didn’t know how to reach out to her.
Until I had to. Until I had nowhere else to go.
Margot has not asked me a single direct question yet.
I walk into the kitchen at seven-twenty in a borrowed silk robe and a pair of her cashmere socks.
The light off the marble is the light of a kitchen where nothing has ever burned.
The coffee is in a small white cup on a saucer beside a small silver pitcher of cream and a small silver bowl of brown sugar.
The fruit is in a bowl. The pastries are in a basket.
There is a single yellow tulip in a glass on the island.
"Sit," Margot says.
I sit.
"Eat."
I eat half of a pain au chocolat.
I do not taste the pain au chocolat. I taste her mouth on my neck in a lamp-warm bedroom at midnight. I close my eyes. Margot does not say anything.
When I look up again Margot is looking at her phone.
"Eve."
"Yes."
"You showed up at one in the morning in mens clothes that are too big for you.”
"I know."
"With nothing else."
"I know."
"You will tell me when you tell me, but I’m just asking in case you want to tell me now.”
I don’t say anything.
“OK, In the meantime."
"Yes."
"There is a detective in Redwater City who would like to speak to you.
There is a person from your husband's firm who would like to speak to you.
There is a man from the insurance company who would like to speak to you.
There is a journalist who would like to speak to you.
There is, also, your mother-in-law. All of these people contacted me when you went missing.
The list is on the table on a piece of paper.
I was prepared to be a stop-gap on this list until you turned up, and you have turned up, and now I am done being the stop-gap. "
"Margot."
"Darling. I'm not pressing. I'm informing you."
I should have known that caring for me wasn’t enough.
I am quiet.
"And in the meantime you are going to make a decision about which of these people you are going to call back, and when, and from where. But someone should know you are alive.”
I drink the coffee.
The coffee is good.
I put the cup back on the saucer.
"I want to call the detective."
Margot looks at me.
"All right," she says.
She slides her phone across the marble.
---
I do not call from Margot's phone.
I call from a phone that Margot keeps in a drawer in the office down the hall, a phone that is hers in a way that is not on any account anyone is looking at, because Margot Wexler at thirty-four is the woman she always was at sixteen and at twenty, which is to say the woman who makes sure the door is closed before she lights the cigarette.
I call a man in Reno.
The man in Reno is a man my husband used many times for things he did not tell me about, and once for a thing he did tell me about: a building in Sacramento that needed to not exist anymore.
It did not exist by the following Thursday.
It burned to the ground. I know his number because I watched my husband dial it many times, and I have a memory for numbers.
My father taught me that. A number you can look up is a number someone else can look up too.
I dial.
He answers on the second ring.
“Hi, I’m Evangeline Clark. Daniel Clark’s wife.”
There is a pause. I know he is still there I can hear him breathing.
“Go on.” His voice is gruff and to the point.
“There is a building on the east industrial spur in Redwater City. Brandon’s. I need it to burn to the ground. Can you make that happen?”
He laughs. His laugh is hard and empty.
“Darlin’,” he says. “I can make anything happen. It will cost you, though.”
He tells me the amount and I tell him I will wire it.
I tell him the specifics I want with the fire.
The funny thing now is I have access to a lot of money.
We had a lot of money, Daniel and myself.
But I never would have dared use any without asking him.
Now I can use what I like. I can go on Margot’s Mac and get on my internet banking, go to our joint account and just wire him a vast sum of money.
The call is four minutes. I hang up.
I have arranged a man in Reno to burn a building.
I have done it to destroy the records that put Max Hale's name anywhere near the Clark fire.
I have done it knowing what she did.
I have done it because I am completely and irrevocably in love with her.
My hands do not shake.
I take out this list of Margot’s.
I dial a number. The number is a Redwater City exchange. The voice that answers is a woman, and the woman puts me through in a count of three to a woman who says, "Detective Warren."
I close my eyes.
The cabin in the woods does not exist on any list a detective has, and the cabin in the woods is not going on any list a detective has, because Chief Valentina Mercer drove from the city last night to make sure of it.
I am the only person on this call who can put the cabin on the list.
I am not going to put the cabin on the list.
"Detective. I am Evangeline Clark. I believe you are looking for me.”
"Mrs. Clark." She sounds surprised.
"Yes."
"You are alive?”
"I am. Very much so.”
"I am very glad to hear your voice, Mrs. Clark. Where are you calling from?”
"A motel."
"In what city."
"I would prefer to not say."
"Mrs. Clark."
"I am scared, Detective. I have been scared since the night of the fourteenth.
I climbed out of an upper window of the house onto the roof and I climbed down a fire escape and I walked to a road and I got into a truck with a man who took my money and drove me as far as Twin Falls.
I have been moving since. I have been alone.
I have not contacted my husband's firm or my mother-in-law or the insurance company or anyone in Redwater City because I do not know who set the fire, and I am not coming back to that city until I know who I can trust.”
The line is quiet for a count of three.
"Mrs. Clark."
"Yes."
"You climbed out of an upper window."
"Yes."
"You did not require rescue."
"No."
"I climbed onto the roof. The window opens onto the loading-bay roof. The roof has a fire escape at the back of it. I climbed down."
“Did you see anyone at the property or anything suspicious Mrs. Clark?”
“I did not.”
I keep my voice level.
"I would also like to tell you, Detective, that I overheard an argument between my husband and one of his business associates two days before the fire.
The associate is a man named Frank Vaccaro.
The argument was about money, and it was about a property in Twin Falls, and the associate said, in my hearing, in the kitchen of our house, that he was going to put my husband in the ground if my husband did not do what he had been told to do.
My husband laughed. My husband told the associate that he was a small man and that he should leave the kitchen, and the associate left the kitchen.
That was Saturday the twelfth. The fire was on the fourteenth. "
"Frank Vaccaro."
"Yes."
"You have not mentioned this until now, Mrs. Clark."
"I have been in hiding, Detective. I have been afraid I would be the next person Mr. Vaccaro put in the ground."
"All right."
"That is what I am going to tell you. That is everything I am going to tell you. I am not coming back to Redwater City. I am not at a number you can call me on. I will call you on this number again in seven days. I would like you to please write that name down."
"Frank Vaccaro."
"Yes."
"Mrs. Clark."
"Yes."
"Are you safe."
I look at the foothills.
"I am safe."
"Where are you actually."
"Goodbye, Detective."
I hang up.
I sit at the desk in Margot's office in the silk robe and the cashmere socks with the phone in my hand, and I look at the phone, and I take the back off the phone, and I take the SIM card out of the phone, and I bend the SIM card in half, and I put the SIM card in the small dish on the desk where Margot puts the orchids when she trims them, and I put the phone back in the drawer.
Frank Vaccaro is real.
Frank Vaccaro is a man I have heard my husband say goodbye to on the porch six times in the last two years and I have hated every time.
Frank Vaccaro did not threaten my husband in my kitchen on the twelfth.
Frank Vaccaro and my husband had a quiet dinner on the twelfth and Frank Vaccaro left at ten and Frank Vaccaro is, to my knowledge, in a courtroom in Reno this week on a different matter and is not in the state of Idaho.
I have just put a name into the mouth of a Redwater City detective.
I have just put a name in the mouth of a detective who is going to write the name down on a yellow legal pad and pin a string between the name and the house and the body in the house and the missing wife, and the string is not going to come back to Max Hale.
I have just lied to a police officer.
I have just protected the woman who set the fire that killed my husband.
I have just done it knowing she did it.
She killed my husband. She kidnapped me. I love her. All these things are true.
I get up.
I walk back to the kitchen.
---
Margot is on the terrace.
The terrace is glass and steel and there are heaters above two leather chairs and a small table with a second cup of coffee on it for me. The foothills are at the level of Margot's hair. The city is below us in a grid of grey and gold. The wind is light. The sky is the colour of clean laundry.
I sit in the leather chair.
Margot does not look at me.
"Done."
"Done."
"You all right."
"Yes."
"You want to tell me?”
"No."
She nods.
I drink the coffee.
The coffee is good.
I miss her. Max.
I sit in the leather chair on the terrace of a penthouse in Boise and I think about her finding the note.
I left her a note.
I do not know what the note said when I wrote it.
I was upstairs in the bedroom in her sweater and her wool socks with the chief downstairs in the front room and the cab coming up the road, and I had a piece of paper from the small notebook by the bed, and I wrote four words, and I put the paper under the brass dish, and I put the ring in the dish, and I went down the stairs.
I know what you did.
It is the only thing I could write.
It was true.
It is still true.
Margot puts her cup down on the table.
She looks at me for the first time since I sat down.
"Eve," she says.
"Yes."
"Whoever he is."
I do not turn my head.
"Whoever he is, Eve…”
“Um.. he is a she.” I give her the first bit of honesty I can and my eyes meet hers. She raises an eyebrow.
“She,” she says as though testing out the word.
"You do not look like a woman who has escaped from someone, you look like a woman who wants to run back home to someone.”
I do not answer.
The wind in the foothills has not changed. The sky over Boise is the colour of clean laundry. The chain is in my pocket.
I close my eyes.
I count to four.
I open them.
"No," I say. “I didn’t escape. I don’t really want to talk about it. But there is a she and I do not know what to do with missing her.”
Margot does not answer.
She puts her hand over mine on the arm of the chair, and she leaves it there, and we look out at the foothills, and the foothills do not move, and the sun comes up over the back of them, and the back of them is where she is.