The Sound of Broken Ribs(5)

“Are you fucking my husband, Mel?”

“I’m sorry—what?”

“Are you fucking Dan? Are you fucking my husband?”

“What are you talking about?”

“ANSWER ME!”

“Bee, I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you fucking call me ‘Bee’, you goddamn whore.”

Belinda heard the click of Melody hanging up on her. She pressed Call again without removing the phone from the side of her face. Melody didn’t answer. Belinda knew that the office phones had caller ID and doubted the woman would answer the phone again as long as she knew it was her. She pressed end, reared back, and threw her cell against the refrigerator as hard as she could. The phone exploded. Pieces landed everywhere: in the sink, on the floor, on her shoes.

She thought the damage resembled the current state of her life.

Before she’d even thought about what she was doing, she had her shoes slipped on and was out the door and taking long strides toward where her car was parked in the driveway.

She wrenched open the door and dropped into the driver’s seat. She started the engine and slammed the door. Backed out through a fog of smoking rubber. Shifted into drive. Gunned the accelerator.

The rest of her drive to Dan’s office was a blur. She could have driven over a toddler in a crosswalk and not noticed.

The closed sign hung from the glass door of Walsh Real Estate. Melody had locked up. How fucking nice of her.

Belinda stood in front of the door, slamming her fists into the glass, screaming at the top of her lungs for Melody to let her in. What the hell was the home-wrecking bitch thinking, not letting her in. Belinda’s name was on the lease too, for Christ’s sake. She’d helped Dan build his business from the ground up. She had a stake in everything he owned. Everything he owned was theirs. Not his. Definitely not Melody’s.

Some part of her knew that Melody was not to blame here—that her husband had acted alone in his ruse. But a larger part of Belinda didn’t want to hear that. She wanted to destroy something. Someone. And if she couldn’t find Dan, Melody would do in a pinch.

Panting like a dog in hundred-degree weather, she reeled away from the door and stormed around the side of the building. Melody’s Kia was gone. Belinda thought maybe she should have checked that first before bruising her hands banging on the front door.

Cussing, Belinda returned to her car. She hunted through the junk in the console and glove box for her phone for a good two minutes before she remembered throwing it against the fridge.

Fuck.

Okay. She had to calm down. She had to relax. Had to figure out what she was going to do. There was no telling where Dan had run off to. He could be anywhere, headed any place. Fucker could be on his way out of the country, for all she knew. But to do that, he’d need money.

The bank. He’d need to go to the bank. He’d also need the credit cards.

If she had her phone, she could call and report the Visa and Discover stolen.

Fuck.

She glared through the windshield at the front of Walsh Real Estate. There was a phone inside. She could call the bank and the credit card companies with that phone. Yeah. Why not?

Belinda flopped into the driver’s seat and pulled her purse from the console and into her lap. She rummaged inside but could not find the office key. Had the sly motherfucker stolen that from her, too? And if he had—why? What possible reason could he have for not wanting her inside the office? But, the more she thought about it, the more she remembered putting the key on top of the fridge at home. Why? Again, she hadn’t a clue. Maybe it would come to her, eventually. Maybe it wouldn’t.

Frustrated, she threw her purse into the passenger seat.

She reached into the foot well and popped the trunk. Out and around the car, she tore the multi-tool from where it was hidden in the spare tire compartment.

And then she proceeded to bash the ever-loving-fuck out of the glass door.

Walsh Real Estate was a standalone building on a busy street in the middle of Bay’s End, Ohio. If you were looking at the front of the building, there was a coin operated car wash on the right, and a veterinarian’s office on the left. While there was a car in front of the pet doctor, there was no one at the car wash. No one outside of either place. And, while there was traffic scrolling by, no one stopped to see why a crazy lady with a tire tool was trying to break into a real estate office.

When the glass was significantly smashed, Belinda used her foot to kick the glass the rest of the way in. Once inside, she used the phone on Melody’s desk to call her Visa’s customer service line.

She didn’t need to talk to anyone. The available balance on the card was nine dollars.

She tried the Discover card next.

Available balance: $14.69

Both cards had limits of $10,000.

Both cards were all but tapped.

She called the local branch of her bank. The nice woman on the phone informed Mrs. Walsh that their account balance was fifty dollars, but that amount must remain in order to keep the savings account open. Their checking account, on the other hand, had been emptied just this morning.

The nice lady on the phone was sympathetic to Belinda’s plight, but there was nothing she could do about the missing money. When Belinda told the woman that there’d been over $40,000 dollars in their savings and another $9,000 in their checking account, the nice lady expressed her sincerest apologies.