CHAPTER 1 #3
The first shoe to drop was his embezzlement from the college.
The interim president discovered suspicious receipts in Paul’s desk, receipts that he had been careless enough to leave sitting in a drawer.
An audit was hastily done and the results discreetly fed to her.
Paul had been submitting fraudulent expenses as far back as they could trace, in excess of two million dollars.
Where in the world had he been spending all of this money?
At first, Maggie wondered if Paul had a gambling problem.
As she pored through the college’s audit, however, it became very clear that the money was being spent in one location: Scottsdale, Arizona.
And another fresh hell was born. She would never forget that day, last September, when she had summoned the courage to uncover the identity of the other woman.
Her short flight had been turbulent, and wedged into a middle seat between an overweight man with a dripping nose and a sprawling teenager; she was queasy by the time they landed.
Taxiing to the gate seemed interminable.
She snatched her carry-on from the seatback in front of her the moment they came to a stop, and shoved past the teen, jostling the woman in the seat across the aisle as she attempted to stand up.
“Getting a bit claustrophobic in there,” she muttered in a half-hearted apology.
The woman huffed and fixed Maggie with an icy stare.
She didn’t care what anyone thought; she needed to get off of that damn plane.
The line in front of her inched along to the door.
Why in the hell were people so slow and clumsy with their luggage?
Why did they insist on stuffing bags into the overhead bins that they couldn’t handle on their own? Just breathe deeply, she told herself.
The rental car was waiting for her. Thank goodness for the perks of being a frequent traveler.
She settled into the seat and turned the air conditioner on full blast. Maggie fumbled in her purse for the report the private investigator had given her.
She double-checked the address, but didn’t need to; it was seared into her heart.
Maggie punched it into the GPS system, adjusted her mirrors, and began her journey.
It was only ten o’clock in the morning, but near-record temperatures were predicted and heat waves shimmered off the highway.
The GPS was reliable, and she was close to the address in under thirty minutes.
Maggie decided she needed something to drink and turned into a convenience store to get a giant diet cola and a bottle of cold water.
No one was behind her in line, so she took her time fishing out the correct change.
Now that she was here, she wasn’t so sure she wanted to pick at this scab.
She lingered over the rack of tabloid magazines by the door.
What was the matter with her? She was just going to drive by a house.
She probably wouldn’t even see “her.” She had come all of this way—she needed to hitch up her britches and do this thing.
Maggie coiled herself into the now oven-like car and burned her hands as she grasped the steering wheel.
She took a long pull on her diet cola and set off once more.
She drove slowly as the ascending street numbers indicated she was getting close.
Undeniably a swanky neighborhood, she brooded.
Nicer than ours. Spacious, new stucco homes with red-tile roofs and soaring arches.
Intricate iron gates and ornate light fixtures.
Manicured lawns tended by efficient landscapers.
No signs of life on this oppressive day. Everyone was safely tucked away.
And there it was. Bigger than the rest—or was she imaging that?
It was unquestionably the nicest house on the street.
Bile rose in Maggie’s throat. If you had lined up photos of all of the houses on that street and asked her which one Paul would have selected, Maggie knew it would have been this house.
More grand than their home in California.
Maggie drifted across the centerline and caught herself before she hit the other curb.
Thank God she was the only car on the street.
She needed to get hold of herself; she didn’t want to get into an accident right outside the other woman’s house.
How cliché would that be? She was acting like a stalker, for goodness sake.
No one could ever know she had done this.
She turned around in a driveway five houses down and drove past to view it from the other direction.
It looked even better. That bastard. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel and turned the car around again, trying to find a shady spot along the curb where she could discreetly watch the house.
A couple of palm trees provided the only shade available, and she pulled to the curb.
The air conditioning was no match for the midday sun, and she felt like one of the ants that her brother would fry under a magnifying glass on the sidewalk when they were kids.
Why in the world had Paul done this? Why hadn’t they just divorced?
Was he that concerned about the effect it would have on his career?
Divorce wasn’t a stigma anymore. And he evidently had plenty of money, so splitting what they had in California wouldn’t have posed a problem.
Surely he knew that she would never have gone digging for more.
Or was he addicted to the thrill of living a secret life?
She instinctively knew she had hit the mark dead center.
Her soda was long gone and she was taking the last swig of water, chiding herself that it was demeaning to be sweltering in a rental car outside of the other woman’s house—then she appeared.
Maggie crouched over the dashboard, the air conditioning blasting her hair out of her face, and focused on the other woman like a laser.
Tall, thin, and pretty—with shoulder-length blond hair and long, tanned legs—she was laughing with two school-aged children as she herded them into her Escalade.
She pulled out of the driveway and glanced in Maggie’s direction as she turned to say something to the children in the backseat.
Maggie clutched the steering wheel as nausea overwhelmed her.
She tried unsuccessfully to choke it back and grabbed frantically for the empty soda cup and heaved violently.
Sweating profusely, she fumbled in her purse for some tissues and a breath mint.
The tears she had been holding back for months now broke free.
This had been a stupid, crazy thing to do.
Why had she expected it to turn out differently?
She was a mess. Vomit on her cuff and in her hair.
The last thing she wanted to do was spend the day here and get back on a plane later.
To hell with the one-way drop-off charge for the rental car.
It was only a six-hour drive. She’d be in her driveway about the same time as her scheduled flight was supposed to land.
And she wouldn’t have to see anyone or talk to anyone along the way.
She swung the car around and set her course for home.
The minute she uncovered the Scottsdale connection, Maggie had a gut feeling about what she would find.
Paul had supported a second family there.
The investigator found that the two children weren’t Paul’s, thank God.
But it had been a long-standing relationship and by the looks of the financial records, he had been supporting her handsomely.
The most difficult part of Maggie’s situation was bearing this knowledge alone; she dared not confide in anyone she knew.
Paul had been acting strangely after he took the post at Windsor College eight years ago.
And Maggie had done her best to contrive an innocent explanation and rationalize Paul’s odd behavior.
But everything now made sense: the weekends away, when he was ostensibly too tied up in “strategic planning sessions” to call home; his trendy new wardrobe and haircut; and his younger, more “hip” vocabulary.
When Susan pointed this out, Paul laughed and passed them off as his way of relating to the student body.
He had also become increasingly critical of Maggie’s blossoming consulting business as a forensic accountant.
At first, she believed he was genuinely concerned she was taking on too much and spreading herself too thin.
He was emphatic that he needed her by his side for the numerous social engagements required by his position.
Somewhere along the way she realized that he resented her success and her growing independence from him.
Paul loved to tell his amusing little story about meeting the shy, studious, plain girl in college and turning her into the beautiful, polished, accomplished woman she was now; that their love story was a modern-day My Fair Lady.
Ugh! She might not have been a sophisticate, but she hadn’t been a country bumpkin, either.
Even Eliza Doolittle outgrew the tutelage of Professor Higgins.
The turning point in their relationship was that horrible fight about the black-tie fundraiser he wanted to chair.
He would turn up at the event in his tuxedo and make a nice podium speech, and she would work tirelessly on it for almost a year.
She had begged him not to volunteer, told him that she simply didn’t have the time, that just this once she needed to focus on herself first. She was about to land a lucrative expert witness engagement she had worked so hard to get.
It was a fascinating case and would demand all of her time.
And would undoubtedly lead to more such work. She simply could not turn it down.