Chapter Thirty-One
Thirty-One
There hasn’t been a single browser in the men’s fashion department for three hours. Margot doesn’t blame anyone for staying away. It’s too damn hot to shop. No one wants Dougie Millings when they’ve got pit stains like a hobo.
Her boss excused himself two hours ago. “Just stepping out”—something he had a habit of doing when the shop was quiet. Margot knows “stepping out” involves a bag of golf clubs and several jugs of Long Island iced tea. Still, it means she has the place to herself.
She moves behind the counter and takes a seat on the stool, humming along to the Lovin’ Spoonful on the speakers.
Back here there’s a stash of Look magazines that she keeps for quiet days just like this.
She idly picks one out and thumps it on the counter.
It’s a few years old. Jackie Kennedy is wearing white gloves, a pink coat and a stunning black headscarf.
Jacqueline Kennedy Inspires the New International Look.
Margot runs her fingers across the cover line, down to the picture, as if she is feeling her way back through the years, along the threads that link them together: the politician’s wife, the Hamptons socialite, the widow.
Margot was a dedicated wife to Stephen when they’d first got married, blindly accompanying him to rallies and dinners and galas, where he’d speak from the stage for what seemed like hours.
Margot would wait stageside, cigarette in hand, and pretend to listen intently.
If he returned late from an event, with a headache, a thirst for Johnnie Walker and an axe to grind for a fellow candidate, she’d pour him a drink, rub his shoulders, make the right noises.
She was accomplished at keeping quiet, but she could be a songbird, too—always the centerpiece at their parties, the convivial hostess, the woman who danced on tables, hollered for more.
It wasn’t long into their marriage when Margot began to suspect that Stephen was having an affair.
It was hardly unlikely. He was a handsome politician—what did she expect?
He’d become shifty, secretive and cold. When he returned from a late night at the office and slid into their bed in the small hours of the morning, he no longer wanted to talk, her head resting on his chest, or to make love as the sun came up.
Instead, he’d withdraw, mumble that he needed to shower, pull himself out of their tangled sheets.
She’d roll over, confused, reaching an arm into that empty space.
Eventually she would doze off. By the time she opened her eyes again, he’d already have gone, leaving behind nothing but the scent of shower soap and dirty clothes in the wash basket.
This routine had been playing out for a while when she found the bloody footprint by his car. Now, that she had not expected. Lipstick on his collar, a pair of panties in the back of his Rolls-Royce, a whiff of some other woman’s perfume? Sure. But not this. Not blood.
She toyed with asking him about the footprint, the one the exact size of his boot. Instead, she resolved to watch him. She needed to see what he was really doing when he stayed out of their house until four in the morning. She needed to trail him. It’s what any self-respecting woman would do.
A few evenings after Margot found the footprint, Stephen announced that he had a late meeting with his campaign manager.
She kept her face still, kissed him goodbye, watched from the window as he got into his car and steered it smoothly out of the driveway.
Then she sprinted out behind him and slid into her Porsche.
On the main roads, she was careful to stay a couple of cars back. She usually took great pains to make herself distinctive, but this was one occasion when she wanted to blend in, to be lost in a blaze of reflections.
When Stephen pulled his car off the main road, she turned her steering wheel hard and followed from a distance. After a while, the road grew narrower and was flanked on either side by an ever-thickening layer of trees. There were no other cars, the night outside the Porsche still and quiet.
Someone else might have been surprised that Stephen was driving in the opposite direction of the downtown area where his alleged meeting was taking place, but Margot was no fool.
She’d known for a while that Stephen was lying to her.
Now she just needed to find out what it was that he was covering up.
The forest around them was expanding, growing denser and darker, and Margot began to see glimpses of water between the trees.
It was black and opalescent, the light of the low-slung moon glancing off its surface in diamond fractals.
As the road was otherwise empty, Margot made the decision to switch off her headlights.
She wanted to know what Stephen would be doing if no one was watching, why he really came out this way in the dark.
She could still see his taillights some distance ahead, and she watched as he took a right-hand turn, the car swallowed up by the trees.
She decreased her speed, hung back, so he would not notice another car pulling in behind him.
When she finally reached the turnoff, she saw that it was marked with a sign—Silver Lake Lookout.
She’d heard of the beauty spot before, but she couldn’t quite place the context.
It was certainly not somewhere Stephen had ever mentioned.
He had never taken her here. Goddamn it, she would have his balls if this was where he was meeting his mistress, like some horny teenager.
She turned the wheel and pulled the car off the road, joining a gravel path that stretched toward the lake, a pool of oil in the distance.
She could no longer see Stephen’s car, but she kept driving anyway, gravel crunching under the tires, until the path opened out into a space the size of a football field.
There, she could just make out the Rolls-Royce parked up at the far side.
She could not see Stephen walking around, so she assumed he was still in the driver’s seat, watching the water.
Margot slammed on the brakes and switched off the engine. She still had no lights on, so she was hidden from Stephen’s sight. But from here she could watch his car and any other vehicle coming down the path.
The night was hot, so she cracked a window and lit a cigarette, the low queries of hidden owls sailing in from the pines. She turned in her seat and checked the back footwell for the baseball bat she always kept stashed in the car.
Then she waited.
Stephen did not leave his car.
Margot grew increasingly frustrated by his lack of action, by the fact that no other cars arrived.
So she got out.
The velvet night took her in its embrace.
She crouched low to the ground and crossed the gravel track covertly.
Her heart was a noisy accompaniment, its thudding audible to her above the rustle of the trees and the soft water sounds of the lake.
As she neared the Rolls-Royce, its black paint job slick and gleaming under moonlight, she got on her hands and knees and crept closer.
She knew what she was doing was ridiculous—if he saw her, how would she explain it?—but Margot was not a woman to be dissuaded by ridicule. So she approached the back of the car and peered in through the rear window.
Stephen was in the driver’s seat, reclined.
His eyes were shut, and to her horror, she saw that his trousers had been pulled down around his thighs.
She paused at the window, unsure if what she was seeing was correct.
Stephen was touching himself, his hand moving rhythmically in the stillness of the car.
Margot ducked, her mind spinning. Why the hell had her husband driven miles out of town to sit in a parking lot and jerk off?
She stood slowly and squinted through the glass. In that instant, Stephen froze, and then he suddenly shot up in his seat.
She turned and ran as fast as she could, hoping the darkness would shield her.
She couldn’t look back, couldn’t risk it, waiting for an inevitable hand to seize her shoulder.
When she made it to the Porsche, she pulled the driver’s door open and jumped inside.
Panicking, she turned the key in the ignition and drove, steering wheel jammed to the left, pulling the car wildly off the path and into the space between two trees.
She made it just in time before Stephen’s car sped past. She half expected it to stop some yards up the track and then reverse with a slow crunch of gravel, but it didn’t.
His car continued until the two taillights were out of sight and Margot felt safe enough to make her way slowly out of the forest.
Stephen never came home that night.
When Margot arrived back at their house, shaken, their bed was empty and his car was not in the driveway.
It was only when she had crawled into bed, taut nerves dulled with scotch and her brain sifting through every memory she could locate, that she realized where she had heard of Silver Lake Lookout before.
It was last year. There were headlines on the news.
She remembered the images, the faces, she saw as she flicked through the channels on the television.
Two teenagers, high school sweethearts, had been killed while parked up at Silver Lake Lookout.
The boyfriend had been shot in the kneecaps and then his throat had been slashed, some distance from the car, as he’d tried to escape.
The girl was found tied up on the back seat, where she had been strangled before her throat was slit, too.
The killer had never been found, and the police could find no motive.
Why, Margot thought, her body crushed by dread, was Stephen visiting the site of a double murder? Why was he jerking off in his car at that lake? It would be another two weeks before she found her smoking gun.
The sound of the store’s revolving doors shakes Margot from her stupor. She quickly closes the magazine and springs to attention, flashing a megawatt smile at whoever is dumb enough to shop when the sidewalks are melting.
A man glances up, barely acknowledging her, but as their eyes briefly meet Margot feels something scratching at her skin.
The man is disheveled—his hair an unkempt mess, his skin lined, his eyes underscored by those dark pools that only the hardest of drinkers collect—but, although Margot can’t really explain why, he also looks smart, like he could catch you off guard if he wanted to.
She watches him from under lowered eyelids as he makes his way to the very back of the store and thumbs through the leather jackets. Leather? In this heat? She clears her throat quietly as he approaches the till, a George Harrison bomber slung under his arm.
He places it on the counter. The man reeks of whiskey.
She takes the jacket, folds it and runs the numbers through the till.
“Not too hot for leather?” she risks.
“Ah, I only come out at night,” he deadpans.
Margot scoffs drily, and the man’s eyes travel up to hers. He pulls his mouth into a tight, sarcastic smile.
Margot grabs a bag, stuffs the jacket in. She can feel him watching her, the familiar sensation of a man trailing his eyes down her body.
“My usual one got ruined,” he says on a bored exhale. “So…” He shrugs, gestures toward the bag.
Margot represses a smirk. His usual. Only the most uninteresting men feel the need to cultivate a “thing” by dressing like the Beatles.
The customer hands over his American Express card, and Margot reasons that he can’t be a bum if he uses a credit card.
Her eyes flick to the name. R HESTON. She’s sure she recognizes it.
She swipes the card through the imprinter, hands over the carbon receipt.
He takes it, and she notices that his hands are covered in fading scars.
Maybe he’s a manual worker, then, Margot hazards.
Whatever. He’s certainly someone in need of a shower.
“Have a good day.” He nods as he turns and exits the store. Margot watches him leave, allowing herself to relax only when he’s slipped out through the double doors and back on the street.