Deconstructed(57)

“He stole it all.”

I hesitated, trying to decipher what that meant, before giving up and asking, “Who stole what?”

“Scott. He’s emptied our savings accounts. He’s cashed out our retirement.”

“He did what?” My mind reeled with what she was telling me. Her husband wasn’t just bopping the tennis pro. He was screwing Cricket, too. In the worst possible way. What an enormous asshole. “How?”

“After overhearing him with whoever that was tonight, I couldn’t stop thinking about what Scott was up to. He asked my mama to invest in something and no doubt hit my father up this evening. So after he went to bed, I snuck down to the office. I don’t usually look at our accounts—well, not the savings and stuff. I pay all our expenses like the mortgage and health insurance out of our personal account. And I have mine for the business, of course, but Scott manages all the rest of our money. I mean, he’s a banker, so I never thought about double-checking him.”

“Okay, so how did you discover this?” I asked, walking to the fridge and pulling out some wine I had left over from a few nights ago. I uncorked it and poured two glasses, setting one in front of Cricket. Maybe she needed wine more than water. I knew I did.

“Well, he changed his password on his phone, but he’s predictable. Julia Kate’s birthday and the dog’s name was my third try, and it worked. I found his password list and then got on my laptop and accessed our accounts—all of them. When I saw that he’d cleaned out our savings and retirement, I couldn’t deal. So I pulled on what I could find in the laundry room and called an Uber because I’d had a lot to drink, so I couldn’t drive. But I couldn’t stay there. I thought I might actually kill him. I was so mad I couldn’t even see straight. And we have some really sharp knives in our kitchen block. I didn’t trust myself not to snap.” She picked up the wineglass and tossed back the contents. Slamming it to the counter, she looked at me, tears rimming her lashes. “Ruby, he stole our money.”

I didn’t know what to say, but I knew exactly how she felt. Because the same sort of thing had been stolen from me—not money, but years of my life. So I was mad as hell for her. “Okay, we’re going to figure this thing out. You want to stay here?”

“I can’t.” She looked down at her hands clasped around her glass. “I can’t let him think that I’m any different than I was before. I have to play the part he believes of me. Or none of this will work. But now it’s harder. I have to figure out what he did with the money before I file for divorce. I’m afraid he invested it. If he did, I have to make sure I’m on the account or something.”

I reached out and clasped my hands around hers, even though I wasn’t a touchy-feely sort. “We’re going to figure it out.”

Cricket looked down at our hands and then back up at me. “You make me believe that we can do it. Thank God I have you, Ruby.”





CHAPTER FIFTEEN


CRICKET

“Ouch!” I said, swatting my hand at Ruby as she jabbed another bobby pin into my hair. “That hurts.”

“You want this thing to come off?”

I scrunched my face in irritation, squelching the need to rub my poor head. “No, but I also need my scalp to, you know, cover my skull.”

Ruby huffed. “Well, if you don’t want this to come off, you’re going to have to let me secure it properly. Stop whining.”

“I’m not whining,” I said, as the points of the short, dark wig covering my blondeness swung forward. Ruby had netted my hair flat against my head and might as well have used a staple gun with the amount of jabbing she was doing.

I sat on a stool in the kitchen of Printemps late Monday morning, looking so not myself in a tight Cannibal Corpse T-shirt, a pair of faded jeans shredded at each knee, and clunky black lace-up Doc Martens. But I guess that was the whole point—I wasn’t supposed to look like myself.

Ruby had begrudgingly agreed to help me disguise myself because she felt guilty.

Well, she should. She was the one who had recommended her worthless cousin as my private investigator.

Because Juke had proven to be as useless as teats on a boar hog, which was such a disappointment to me because I needed someone to be in my corner, someone who could get some incriminating evidence. But that hadn’t happened. Because when I went to his office early that morning, I had found him drunk. Off. His. Ass.

Which had put a damper on the determination I had set jauntily on my head that morning as I breezed out the door to ensure that by the end of this week, Scott would be out of the house.

After I had come back from Ruby’s early Sunday morning, I had washed my face, pulled on jammies, and slid in bed beside a snoring Scott. I hadn’t even tried to strangle him. So that was a good thing. For him.

That morning I had risen early, snuck into his office, and snapped pictures of his schedule for the week, sending them to my phone. I erased any evidence of my snooping the night before, even zapping the history on his phone just in case he decided to go crazy and check. I would absolutely have to be more careful now that he knew someone was watching him. Then I went to the kitchen and made blueberry waffles, bacon, and a fresh pot of Scott’s favorite Blue Mountain Jamaican blend. I even turned Alexa to eighties soft rock and sang along like I was the happiest bluebird in the bush.