The Perfect Wife(66)

“If you thought Abbie was wrong for Tim,” you say, “who would have been right?”

Megan’s smile fades. “Pygmalion fell in love with his own creation. Because only his own creation could truly live up to the ideal inside his head. Not to mention, remain untainted by all the weakness and vanity he perceived, or thought he perceived, in flesh-and-blood women.” She points an elegantly manicured finger at you. “Frankly, I’d say you’re a far better match for Tim Scott than the real Abbie could ever be. He just hasn’t realized it yet.”





52


You’re heading back to the city in another Uber, thinking over what Megan told you, when Tim calls.

“Where are you?” he wants to know. “Is that traffic I can hear?”

“Just doing some shopping.” An idea occurs to you. “For tonight. I’m cooking something special. Can you be home by eight?”

“Hmm—sounds intriguing. I’ll try.”

After he hangs up you pop open the SIM holder and remove the card. You don’t want Tim going on Find My Phone to check your whereabouts.

“Change of destination,” you tell the Uber driver.



* * *



—

There’s a customer in the phone shop, so you wait for her to leave before going in. As soon as Nathan sees you, he comes out from behind the counter and locks the door.

“I was wondering when you’d show up again. I’ve unscrambled some more material.”

“First things first. I want a burner phone.” You’d meant to get one before, but the argument over whether Nathan could look at your code had distracted you.

He raises his eyebrows. “Know all the lingo, don’t we? What sort of burner?”

“What have you got?”

“That depends on whether you need international roaming.” He starts describing different models. But you’re not listening.

You’ve had an intuition—a flashback, almost. You were here once before, buying a secret phone, just as you are now.

Which, when you think about it, makes perfect sense. This is the nearest phone shop to the house on Dolores Street. It’s only natural that this is where Abbie would come.

“Well, you tell me,” you interrupt. “Did I get international before?”

You stare him out.

“Yes,” he says, dropping his eyes. “You got one of these.”

He passes you a small blister pack containing a cheap flip phone. It would have looked dated even back then.

“It comes with data preloaded,” he adds. “And you can use it anywhere in the world. You were very insistent about needing that.”

So is Abbie abroad now? Your instinct says not. Your instinct tells you she wouldn’t have trusted Nathan, just as you don’t. She wouldn’t have wanted to give him even the smallest clue of where she might be headed. So she chose the phone that narrowed it down the least.

Something else occurs to you. Not a memory this time, but a small leap of logic. “I bought the iPad here as well, didn’t I? And I bet, later, she asked you to wipe it for her. Only you didn’t do it properly. Just like you never told anyone about the secret phone.”

“I respect my customers’ privacy,” Nathan says uneasily. “Some women, they buy a burner for dating, so they don’t have to give out their real number. If they’re married…well, discretion becomes even more important. So I don’t ask questions. Just like I’m not asking you why you need that.” He points at the flip phone.

You think. You’d assumed Abbie had just been following the instructions on the website by getting the burner phone. But if she was having an affair, maybe she had one already. As Nathan said, a married woman had to be discreet. “When was it that she bought the phone?”

“November. I remember because it wasn’t long after I’d started working here. I don’t get many customers who look like she did, believe me.”

Almost a year before Abbie vanished. Yet another thing that suggests she was cheating on Tim.

“And the iPad?”

“A couple of months after that.”

“You’d better show me what else you’ve found on it.”



* * *



—

He takes you into the back room. Again, there’s a printout waiting, tucked into a see-through plastic binder. His laptop and a cable, neatly coiled, lie ready on the workbench.

You think of him preparing for this, getting everything ready for you, like some disgusting parody of a date.

He hands you the printout. You start to read. After a moment’s hesitation, his hands go to your waist, looking for the ports.





53


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