Lies She Told(32)

“I always meant to ask what happened with Kyra. But I wasn’t sure you wanted to talk about it.”

I’ve already heard the story. Manhattan is a small town of eight million. A friend with a son in Trevor’s daughter’s pre-K class shared that there’d been a scandal with a mom trading her husband for another parent. The drama had coincided with Trevor’s separation.

Trevor scratches his scalp and shifts in his chair. His wounds have not healed. “I’m not sure that I know what happened, really. Maybe she got bored. She started picking at everything, saying I didn’t do enough around the house, give her enough attention. My head was always buried in a book.” The hand that had fussed with his head falls to his tray table. “Anyway, not long after we separated, she shacked up with one of the dads at Olivia’s school.”

I try to act surprised, dropping my jaw and shaking my head, mimicking how Trevor performs shock.

“She swears nothing happened beforehand. Still, there’s emotional infidelity, isn’t there?”

I squeeze Trevor’s hard shoulder. The gesture is a common platonic show of support. It’s supposed to be safe. But the truth is, I don’t feel safe around this man anymore. His confession—or maybe the show of vulnerability—stirs something in my subconscious. It’s as though he understands me in a way that no one else has or ever will. Part of me aches to tell him this. The other part of me knows that I’ve consumed too much wine, am pissed at David, and am on a cocktail of hormones.

“Want me to kill her off in a book?”

Trevor smirks, a devilish half smile that sets fire to his eyes. “Well,” he chuckles, “somebody always has to die.”

*

I don’t see Trevor after check-in. He has multiple panels to moderate, more famous authors to ply with alcohol. I, on the other hand, am not expected anywhere until my three o’clock slot at the signing table. How to kill the time?

A check-in packet lies on my hotel bed. The spiral-bound book weighs as much as Trevor’s maligned novel and includes a twenty-page outline of the various author discussions happening every hour, on the hour, for the next several days. I don’t look at it. After a decade, the panel topics are all choppy remixes of the same ol’ tunes. Most veteran authors tour the city until called upon for their own promotional activities.

I pull back the long blackout curtains and look outside. The view is of downtown New Orleans, though not the famous French Quarter. That section of town, with its painted buildings and wrought-iron balconies, is too small to host a gathering of MWO’s size. The convention hotel is on the waterfront, between the city’s main expo center and a warehouse selling Mardi Gras supplies. If I press my head to the glass and look left, I can almost see the Mississippi.

The buildings beyond look far away. Foreboding. The king-sized mattress, on the other hand, appears inviting, made up with bleached-white linens and mint chocolates on the pillows, penned in by the four walls surrounding it and the door to the en suite bathroom. My laptop rests on the nightstand. A pink chaise sits to the right of the bed. I angle it toward the window and grab my computer.

I write for several hours, sobering up from the plane ride all the while. A phone call interrupts me as I am cutting words from a scene where Beth is getting ready to go out. Readers, I’ve decided, will not care what color lipstick she chooses for her revenge date.

I think David is finally getting back to me and am surprised when I don’t recognize the New York number. Likely, a telemarketer has obtained my information. I answer anyway. It could be my gynecologist. “Hello, this is Liza.”

“Sergeant Perez. Sorry to phone on a Sunday, but a friend got back to me with some news, and you’d seemed so upset before . . .”

A tingling sensation pricks my fingers, as though they were wet and touching the end of a battery. “Yes. Thank you for calling.”

“Your husband reported Mr. Landau missing when he didn’t show up for work that Monday and he couldn’t get in touch with him. According to the detectives on the case, the last person to report seeing him was a bartender at a local cocktail bar near Mr. Landau’s apartment. Some fancy French-styled place.”

A mental image of the bar Christine described flashes in my head. I can see the red-cushioned French chairs and gilded mirrors.

“The bartender said that Nick came there that Saturday night with another man. They had several drinks. Apparently, shortly after they left, a woman asked about him. He remembered because she seemed angry and left before finishing her drink.”

“Did the bartender see what this woman looked like?” I ask.

“He said she was good-looking.”

I think of Nick’s exes. They were all attractive women, albeit a bit severe in appearance. Did he break up with the wrong one? “Did she have short hair, by any chance?”

“No. Why?”

“Nick’s past girlfriends all had short hair.”

“Oh.” The sergeant’s tone seems surprised.

I realize that, if Nick had dumped this girl, she might have changed her look. Women did that after bad breakups. “Did she have blonde—”

“Unfortunately, I can’t provide any more details without compromising the investigation.” Sergeant Perez clears his throat. “So as you already agreed to, none of this gets written up. I thought you and your husband would feel better knowing that detectives don’t suspect Mr. Landau’s disappearance had anything to do with a hate crime or that case against the city. They’re leaning toward some kind of romantic spat.”