The Ex(20)

Once I was off the phone, I summed up the other side of the conversation for Charlotte. “He didn’t make any promises, but at least he’s on notice not to erase anything. A picture of the woman would help. It would show that Jack’s not making this whole thing up.”

“I can do a lot with a picture. Pop that baby up on the Room, and the armchair detectives will go nuts. We’ll have Madeline’s identity in no time.”

Charlotte was so busy outlining her plans for a photograph we didn’t have that neither of us noticed a third person lingering in the entrance to the kitchen. Buckley was staring at us, a laptop in her hands, Daisy the pug trailing her feet. “You guys are making this way too complicated.”

“How much did you hear?” Charlotte asked.

“Enough to know that there’s a much simpler explanation.”


BUCKLEY SET HER LAPTOP ON the island while she explained. “You said no one could have known all the details unless they were actually at the piers that morning. But that’s not true. They just needed access to his e-mail.”

She tilted the laptop screen in our direction.

FROM: [email protected]

TO: [email protected]

DATE: June 6, 2015 11:47 PM

Subject: Weird thing

Hey. Too late to call, and I don’t think I’d tell you this anyway unless I wrote it all down. Weird thing happened on my run today. Saw this woman at Christopher St. Pier. She was wearing a strapless gown and had a picnic basket to herself at 6:30 in the morning. She was carefree, sitting on the grass and reading a book, which reminded me of Molly. And she had long dark hair and was drinking champagne right out of the bottle, which reminded me of—well, you know who, but don’t like it when I mention her name.

My point is that I’m lying here in bed 18 hours later and am still thinking about her. You always remind me that there are—what’s the number? 2.2 million age-appropriate women for me within New York City alone? I am starting to imagine the possibility that at least one of them might be worth meeting. Maybe you can even help me set up an online dating account. JK—don’t you dare.

Oh, and get this: smooth operator here was wearing that T-shirt B gave me for Christmas. That’s right: World’s Okayest Runner. How can the ladies resist me?

Anyway, no matter who I might end up with in my life, my favorite women will always be you and Buckley.

“See?” Buckley said. “It’s all right there. Like you said, Dad’s the perfect fall guy. If they hacked his e-mails, they’d have everything they’d need to respond to the missed-moment post.”

Buckley was sounding awfully proud of herself for coming up with a theory I had missed. I suspected it had something to do with her father’s mention of someone from his past with long dark hair. I fit the bill.

“Told you she was smart,” Charlotte said. “Now we just need to find out who was snooping in Jack’s mailbox.”

“You might want to start by taking a look at that.” Buckley gestured toward the open laptop.

I blinked twice before speaking. “You’re telling me this computer is your father’s?”

Buckley didn’t blink. “Yeah, I picked it up when the police weren’t looking.”


EINER SHOWED UP AT CHARLOTTE’S front door twenty minutes later. Just as his first and last names would suggest, Einer was half Swed ish, half German, making his puffy red hair all the more surprising. Though Einer’s coif was always slightly Bozo-like, the day’s humidity had left it looking like an oversize, carrot-colored Q-tip abandoned at the bottom of a suitcase for too long.

Charlotte and Buckley were with me in the entryway when I let him in, but he didn’t bother with introductions. “Are you trying to get us both fired? Don’s been riding my ass all day, asking me where you are, making me promise to loop him in. I don’t know what you’re working on, or why Don’s pissed, but I feel like one of those little kids caught in the middle of their parents’ divorce.”

Coming up for air, he registered the presence of a teenager and the small dog smelling his pant leg, and looked at me as if I’d led him into an Ebola outbreak.

He followed us into the kitchen, where Jack’s laptop was awaiting his magic touch. “I need to know if someone hacked into an e-mail sent from this computer.” According to Buckley, Jack primarily used the desktop computer in his home office for writing. He generally used his laptop for research and e-mails. The idea was to associate one computer exclusively with his manuscripts to avoid online distractions. For now, we were assuming that Jack used his laptop to e-mail Charlotte about the woman in the grass.

Einer took a seat and started clicking away, his fingers flying across the keyboard, his brow furrowed. He threw me an annoyed look when Buckley got a little too close, peering over his shoulder.

I decided to distract her with a discussion I’d been postponing until now, hoping that Charlotte might be the one to raise it first. “So, Buckley, are we going to talk about why you took your dad’s laptop while the police were at your apartment with a search warrant?”

Even though her expression was fixed, one second she looked like an anxious little kid, the next an angry, defensive teenager. Her pale, thin face and wide, light eyes were so hard to read.

“You would’ve done the same thing,” she finally said. “I mean, you’re a famous lawyer; if I did something so wrong, you wouldn’t have Ronald McDonald here doing his cyber thing.”