The Ex(58)

I hit End and then snapped a picture of Sharon Lawson’s license plate. The frame around the plate was one of those freebies from the dealer, a place called New York Universal Auto World, which, according to the print on the bottom half of this rickety piece of plastic, catered to “good people, bad credit.”

When I looked back at Sharon Lawson’s house, the curtains were closed. I had no idea if she was a good person or not, but I was certain she knew more than she was letting on.


CHARLOTTE TURNED THE STEREO VOLUME from stadium blast down to regular-person loud when I got into the car. “You know she’s lying, right?”

I reached over and hit the Power button. “I need to figure out how to prove it.”

For the next ten minutes, I did my best to block out Charlotte’s chatter about all her plans—more money for Emin to wear a wire, blanketing the waterfront with minions armed with photographs in search of witnesses, bribing or blackmailing Sharon for the truth.

She was right: we needed Sharon to come clean. Even if she didn’t know who hired her, we’d finally have a narrative: dream woman in the grass, missed-moment post, the “meet me at the football field” e-mail, the shooting. Beginning, middle, and end. It was a complicated, fascinating story—the kind that jurors love. How many times had I heard jurors say after an acquittal that the defendant’s version sounded too bizarre to make up? “Did you notice that?” Charlotte was saying.

“Huh?” I had tuned her out.

“I said she looked like you. Sharon-slash-Helen. She looked like a younger, thinner, hotter you.”

“Love you, too, Charlotte.”

“No, I’m serious. Kind of interesting that Jack’s dream woman looks like you, not Molly.”

“And the other day, you said Tracy Frankel looked like a younger, more strung-out me. I’m pretty sure you think every straight girl with black hair looks like some version of me.”

But as I listened to her continue to rail about her certainty that Sharon Lawson was lying, I leaned back in my seat, closed my eyes, and pictured myself barefoot, drinking champagne on the waterfront at the crack of dawn, flirting with some nice-looking, harmless jogger. His dream woman did seem more like me than Molly.

By the time I returned to Jack’s apartment, I was exhausted. As soon as Jack saw my face, he said, “I’m afraid to ask.”

As I delivered the news about Sharon Lawson, Jack fell into the sofa and stared up at the ceiling. I launched into my usual spiel—all the time left before trial, we were only just beginning to investigate, etcetera—but Jack cut me off.

“I gave a writing class at a prison a few years ago. One of the inmates wrote an essay about why, after fifteen years of maintaining his innocence, he planned on telling the parole board how remorseful he was about his crimes. Turns out you don’t get parole if you don’t accept responsibility, so if he needed to be contrite for something he never did, that’s what he was going to do. He said to me, In is in, and out is out. I just want to be out. I want this to be over, Olivia. I can’t go to prison. I was only in jail for a few days, and I thought I was losing my mind again. I won’t be able to make it. Promise me you’ll do whatever you can to help me.”

“Of course,” I said quietly. This conversation wasn’t making it easy to break the other piece of news. I told him about the call from Jan Myers with Eyewitness News. When I mentioned the gun inside the picnic basket, his eyes flickered with confusion.

“They’re waiting for ballistics,” I said.

“That’s insane. How is that possible?”

I walked him through the explanation I’d been selling to myself since the reporter’s phone call. Madeline’s e-mails had instructed Jack to bring the picnic basket to their meet-up. For all we knew, the shooter had been expecting Jack to stick around longer than he had. Maybe the plan was to shoot Neeley and then shoot Jack, too, making it look like a murder-suicide. But when the downpour started, Jack had left. The shooter may have figured it was now or never. When he left, he saw Jack’s picnic basket and slipped the gun inside.

As I laid out my theory for Jack, I realized what had been bothering me about Sharon Lawson. Charlotte had told Sharon that we knew about the gig at the waterfront with the champagne and the basket. But when Sharon denied being the woman in the video, she said she knew nothing about a “stupid picnic basket.”

Were there other kinds of baskets? Maybe not, but it seemed like a strange detail for her to add. Or maybe I was grasping at straws.

As I left Jack’s building, I pulled out my cell phone and looked at the most recent photograph: a snapshot of Sharon Lawson’s license plate, complete with the name of her car dealer. I called information and asked for the phone number for New York Universal Auto World.

And then I got really, really lucky.


AT EXACTLY NINE O’CLOCK THE next night, my cell phone rang. It was the doorman; Helen was coming up. I had no idea what Sharon Lawson’s skills were as a hooker, but so far she earned five stars for promptness.

I rose from the sofa and straightened Don’s tie on instinct.

Einer swatted my hands away. “Jesus, Olivia, he’s a grown-ass man talking to a prostitute, not some kid going to the prom.”

Don pulled the tie off and threw it on the coffee table. “I’m not even a real john, and you two still have me feeling like a letchy old man. Are you sure we couldn’t have figured out some other way?”