The Wife Who Knew Too Much(31)
Further investigation indicated that, by the time Connor ended his leave of absence and returned to college, Lissa had dropped out. According to the college records office, Lissa never returned, and never filed the request for her transcript that would have been needed had she transferred elsewhere. The conclusion was that she had not finished college.
Eight years after she left college, Lissa was reported missing by her landlord in New York City. The investigator determined that Lissa had been living alone in a small studio in a large Manhattan apartment building. The date of birth and Social Security number matched—this was definitely the same girl who’d dated Connor in college. When Lissa failed to pay her rent, the real-estate company tried to contact her, but her cell phone was out of service. They inquired with the doorman, who said he hadn’t seen her in weeks. The building super then entered her apartment with a master key, and what he found was eerie. It was as if Lissa had vanished into thin air. There was a coat of dust on the furniture, clothing hanging in the closet; Lissa’s wallet and keys were on the kitchen table. The landlord contacted the police, who opened a missing-person case. The police followed up with the employer Lissa had listed on her rental application, an import-export firm called Protocol Shipping Solutions, with a Midtown address. But the address turned out to be a mail-drop, and there was no evidence that the company actually existed.
Lissa Davila was a ghost.
The police tried to find Lissa’s family, without success. Her adoptive mother, who’d lived in Maryland, had died years earlier. And the Maryland Department of Human Services was unable to locate Lissa’s file to provide a birth certificate or the names of any living biological relatives. The only lead was that the doorman reported seeing Lissa with a visitor shortly before she disappeared—a man, tall and good-looking, with dark hair. There was no security camera in the building, but the police were able to pull footage from a camera mounted on the exterior of the bank next door. They found one grainy surveillance photo that the doorman said looked to him like Lissa and her visitor. That photo was included in the file.
Nina stared at it.
The man and woman walked hand in hand. The woman’s face was a white blur, visible only in profile. The man’s face wasn’t visible at all. She studied it for a long time, gazing at the man. At the set of his shoulders, the tilt of his head, the texture of his hair. It was quite like Connor. Enough that it could be him. She leafed through the rest of the folder looking for more photos. There were none, not even a yearbook photo of Lissa, or any photo that showed her face. That seemed like an omission. Then again, Hank’s original smear dossier hadn’t included a photo of Lissa, so maybe there just wasn’t one. If there was, you’d think Hank would’ve come up with it. While it seemed odd in this day and age, the truth was, not everyone had a social media presence, or even a driver’s license. Some people left very little trace.
The lack of a photo bothered Nina. So did the name of the import-export firm where Lissa had worked. Protocol Shipping Solutions. She’d heard that name somewhere before, she was certain. She pressed her fingers to her temples, chasing the memory, but it remained stubbornly out of reach.
Did it matter, so long as there was an innocent explanation? Nina turned to the final page of the report, bearing the heading “Lissa Davila Possibly Living Overseas.” The page summarized the findings of a second private investigator, hired by Mark Barbash to follow up on the information in Hank’s dossier. That investigator had discovered evidence of a woman with the name Lissa Davila, and the correct birth date and Social Security number, working as an office manager for a company in Dubai called Gulf Ex-Im as recently as two years ago. There was no explanation for how Lissa had ended up in Dubai, or how the investigator had found her. The investigator had attempted to reach out to Lissa at Gulf Ex-Im in order to establish conclusively that she was the same person, but was unable to make contact. The business appeared to have closed. Still, the investigator wrote, given the identical birth date and SS number, the evidence supported the conclusion that it was her, and that therefore, she’d been alive and well and living overseas after going missing from New York.
Well. If it was good enough for the PI, it was good enough for Nina. Connor wasn’t a killer. That was just a Hank smear, designed to control her, and interfere with her happiness. And she was happy. Happy in a relationship for the first time in her life. Happy with things just how they were. So, why change anything? Why—specifically—get married?
After Edward died, Nina thought she’d never marry again. Not because she was so grief-stricken. Oh, she put on a show of grieving, but the fact was, Edward had treated her like shit for most of their marriage. She stayed—and stayed faithful—for the money. Her prenup said that if Edward left her, she got a hefty settlement. But if she left him, she got nothing.
She worried constantly that Connor would cheat on her, like Edward had. That worry was based more on her past experience than on anything Connor had actually done or said. And it was possible she was being unfair to him. Maybe Connor wasn’t like Edward. There was no way to know for sure. This was early days. Connor was on his best behavior. And besides, they’d been together nonstop since meeting at her July Fourth party, so he’d had no opportunity.
But summer was coming to an end. In the fall, they’d return to New York. He’d go back to work at Levitt Global, where Lauren was still head of PR. Lauren, whose divorce from Hank was now final, and who had a vendetta against Nina. Lauren believed that Nina had stolen two men from her. That wasn’t true, but truth didn’t matter. Lauren believed it, and what better revenge could there be than luring Connor back?