The Perfect Wife(76)

We heard Tim promised Mike during the lunch that, once the honeymoon was over, he’d get right back to touring investors and raising more capital. And he did. We soon had enough funding to iron out the glitches and develop new, more cost-efficient ways of manufacturing the shopbots.

Throughout all this, Jenny kept her own counsel. We still had no idea whether she’d heard what Tim had said about her.

At least she and Mike got to go to the wedding. None of the rest of us did.





60


You’re still thinking about Danny and what you saw at Meadowbank when the front door intercom buzzes. “Who is it?” you ask cautiously.

“Detective Tanner.”

The cop who was so unpleasant to you at the station house. You go and open the door partway. His big, threatening body fills the frame, and you’re reminded of the time he blocked you from leaving the interview room.

“Can I come in?” he says brusquely.

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

He doesn’t react to that. “I hear there are legal moves to have you destroyed.”

You stare at him haughtily. “We’re fighting them.”

“Good luck with that.” He stares right back at you. “You remember what I said to you, last time we spoke?”

“Of course. You told me you still had it in for Tim.”

He shakes his head. “I said I wanted justice for Abbie. And that if you could help me, you should. For her sake.”

You don’t reply.

“Look,” he says urgently. “Time may be running out for you. And therefore, for her. If you know anything—if he’s said anything that could help us get to the truth—you need to tell me now. Before it’s too late.”

After a moment’s thought, you pull the door all the way open. “All right. Come in.”



* * *



—

You’ve no intention of telling Detective Tanner anything, of course. But it’s occurred to you that this might be a good opportunity to find out what he knows.

“Here’s the deal,” you say. “I’ll tell you what I discover, if you point me in the right direction.”

“What do you mean?” he asks warily.

“There was evidence that wasn’t produced at the trial, wasn’t there—you hinted as much, when you spoke to the media after the dismissal. And those articles speculating about Abbie having affairs—none of that stuff even got mentioned in court. There must have been a reason for that.”

“There was,” he says after a brief pause. “A couple of reasons, in fact.”

You wait.

“First, the prosecutor wanted to avoid any suggestion of victim blaming. Juries hate that, particularly when the victim is an attractive young woman. Better to let them feel we’re on the side of the deceased—the good wife, the saintly mother. Then they become angry on her behalf.”

“And the second reason?”

“The second reason was that Abbie’s sex life didn’t provide a motive to kill her.”

“Why not? If she was using those websites…” Then you realize what he must mean. “Tim knew? They had an open marriage?”

Tanner’s expression doesn’t change. “So his defense team claimed. She’d been in a polyamorous relationship before they met, apparently, and the two of them agreed she could continue that lifestyle after the marriage, if she chose to.”

“I don’t believe it,” you say immediately. You’re quite certain Tim would have hated Abbie to have taken other lovers. Tim never shares anything. Besides, there was nothing about it in the prenup. It seemed unlikely that a document detailed enough to determine what the penalty was for putting on three pounds in weight wouldn’t cover something as unusual as polyamory.

“Me neither,” Tanner says. “But it was enough to muddy the waters and make the prosecution wary of using it. And while plenty of women came forward after his arrest to allege he’d tried it on with them over the years, we were never able to find a single man she’d actually hooked up with.” Tanner pauses. “There was something else they didn’t bring before the jury. Something that in my view was much more likely to be relevant.”

It takes a moment for what Tanner’s just told you about the other women to sink in. So Sian wasn’t the first. But of course, she wouldn’t be, not if Tim was conforming to the pattern described in that book. Where such men love, they cannot desire, and where they desire, they cannot love. If all the women who weren’t Madonnas were whores, that still left an awful lot of whores.

And you—is that the real reason Tim didn’t give you genitals? Not because it was too difficult, or because of what people might say, but out of some almost primeval, patriarchal obsession with female modesty? Are you simply the modern-day equivalent of all those untold millions of women throughout history, mutilated to disable their threatening sexuality? To shame them, control their desires, stop them from being fully human?

Tanner’s looking at you expectantly. You drag your attention back to him. “What?”

“I said, Abbie’s drug counselor had reported a child protection issue.”

“What kind of issue?”

The detective grimaces. “That was the frustrating thing. State law requires drug counselors to report any issue affecting the safety of a child. But it doesn’t mandate that they have to be specific about it, or give any follow-up information. So the way many of them balance the law with client confidentiality is to make an initial report, then clam up. Abbie’s counselor was no exception.”