No One Will Miss Her(26)
Now her face was on a half dozen cameras all over town, something she should have thought of earlier. If the police came knocking, if they decided to snoop, would they be able to track her movements? Would they think to look more closely? Her stomach lurched at the prospect, and she swallowed hard. She wondered how long it would take for them to match Ethan’s prints, which were all over the house at the lake, with the ones they’d taken two years back. It was a stupid, showboating arrest that went nowhere, but that little bit of damage was done: he was in the system now, his fingerprints permanently on file. And despite her confidence that morning, all that bold bravado—We are so close to finishing this, you just have to let me handle it—she knew that “we” would not be doing anything. Ethan wouldn’t be talking to anyone; if the cops showed up before they could run, it would be Adrienne who met them at the door, offered them coffee, answered their questions. Her husband would have to make himself scarce; even if he kept his mouth shut, one look at his guilty face was all it would take for them to realize the truth. And when they asked where she’d been since Sunday night, she would need to sell the lie.
I don’t know nothin’ about no murder, Officer. I’m just the beautiful wife of a wealthy financier, having a normal weekday.
Normal: a trip to the salon, a run to the bank, a meeting with the financial planner, and . . . dammit. Because she’d already screwed it all up, hadn’t she? Rick said it himself: her visit was “an unexpected surprise.” Adrienne hadn’t seen him in years, and he’d shuffled his schedule, maybe even canceled other clients, to accommodate the appointment. Not normal. Not normal at all.
She’d have to be more careful. She should stick to her routine. Do the kind of thing women did when they had nothing to hide, and they had all day, every day, to do whatever they wanted. She should buy a green juice for fifteen dollars. Get a manicure, a pedicure, or both. She should go to the stupid SoulCycle class after all, spend an hour riding to nowhere as fast as she could, post a picture of her glistening décolleté and hashtag it #SweatIsGold.
“Excuse me,” she said, suddenly, hoisting the bag into a more secure spot on her shoulder and darting through the pedestrian crowd. She had an idea: there was no SoulCycle in sight, but there was a coffee shop on the next corner. She made a beeline for it, slipping through the door and falling into line behind a gaggle of college-aged girls who were ordering pumpkin spice lattes. She asked for the same. Skim milk, one pump, no whip. The barista picked up a cup in one hand, a Sharpie in the other.
“Name?”
“Adrienne,” she said, stressing the last syllable like always, because people never seemed to get the spelling right. “With two Ns and an E.”
Five minutes later, she picked up the steaming latte and found a seat at the countertop, resting her feet on the gym bag as she settled into position. Her phone in one hand, the cup with her name on it in the other. Something had gotten lost in translation—the cup read adrinenn—but that was all right. The photo was what mattered: she opened the front-facing camera and scrutinized the screen as she brought the cup to her lips, turned so that the shop’s logo could be seen, and widened her eyes above the rim. She tilted her head, and the rose-colored waves fell lightly alongside her face. She selected a filter that brought out the richness of her hair, and captioned the picture: Sugar, spice, everything nice. #fallhairdontcare #pumpkinspiceseason #caffeinejunkie #afternoonpickmeup
Even without whipped cream, the latte was cloyingly sweet. She managed to drink half of it before it went lukewarm, forcing herself to sit, wait, watch through the plateglass window as people passed by. A few of them glanced her way, their eyes skating past hers, but nobody approached her. For a moment, she was cocooned once more in that luxurious sense of having already disappeared, of being nobody at all.
On the counter, her phone buzzed briefly. She picked it up, punched in the code. The picture she’d posted had a smattering of likes, and one new comment.
It said: Privileged bitch.
She laughed in spite of herself, a high, hysterical giggle. A few heads turned, but that was all right. Adrienne was used to being looked at.
It was, after all, just a normal day.
Chapter 11
Lizzie
She really was a privileged bitch, you know. Adrienne Richards, née Swan, the heiress to a modest fortune made by a great-grandfather who owned a furniture company. The family had its roots somewhere south, near the Blue Ridge Mountains, and even before she married rich, Adrienne was definitely one of those girls. Private-school-educated, Southern debutante, sorority darling, a card-carrying member of the NRA. The kind of woman who still talked about going to college for her “M.R.S.” degree. I learned all this the same way everyone else did. It wasn’t hard to find; you’ve probably heard the stories, too. There was the splashy magazine spread on her million-dollar wedding. Or the time she insisted on building a basement spa, complete with plunge pool, in their hundred-year-old town house on the Green—when Adrienne told a local reporter that the neighbors who complained about the noise were just “jealous haters.” There were the rich-lady start-ups, from organic perfume to a line of vegan leather handbags to astrology-based interior design, all blithely abandoned when Adrienne’s attention span ran out and she discovered, to her horror, that running a company required actual work. There were the legendary tantrums. The obnoxious Instagram account. And then, eventually, there was the sleazy husband who made a billion dollars ruining people’s lives, people for whom Adrienne Richards couldn’t seem to muster a shred of sympathy, not even to save her own skin when the press came calling and their friends demanded answers.