The Wife Who Knew Too Much(77)

I nodded. The fear must’ve been plain on my face, because Hagerty broke into a pep talk.

“Buck up. Keep your head down, watch your back. If things go south, trigger the emergency alert. We’ll come and get you out. All right?”

I nodded.

He swatted me on the arm in what I guessed was supposed to be a gesture of encouragement. Then he was gone.





35





I was supposed to be looking for evidence. Steeling myself to betray the man I’d loved into confessing a terrible crime. But all I could think of was taking a hot shower, crawling under the covers, and crying myself to sleep.

The master bedroom was cold and dark. I turned on every single light before going to stare at Nina’s portrait. It looked like a death mask, reminding me of how much was at stake. In the bathroom, I ran the hot water until steam poured from the shower stall. My clothes stank of the jail cell. I wished I could burn them, but I couldn’t even get them off my body. I yanked my jeans down until they got stuck on the ankle bracelet. How could I shower with this monstrosity attached to me? Was it waterproof? Or would it electrocute me the second the water hit it? Screw Ryan Hagerty for not cluing me in. I turned the shower off, pulled my pants up, and went in search of a plastic bag to cover it.

Gloria sat at the kitchen table with a bottle of Dewar’s in front of her. She jumped up when she saw me.

“Sit. It’s okay. I could use a drink myself.”

I took a glass from the cabinet and grabbed the bottle. She glanced at my stomach, then raised an eyebrow at me.

“Seriously?” I said, my voice thick with tears as I sank into a chair across from her. “I’m five months pregnant, okay, and I just spent the night in jail for a murder that I didn’t do. Don’t judge me.”

“I don’t judge anybody.”

“You probably think I did kill Nina, so I could live in her house and have her money.”

“I don’t think that.”

“I don’t care about any of that. I wish I’d never seen this place. I wish I’d never met Connor Ford.”

I took a gulp of scotch. It burned going down, setting off a pain in my chest that told me this was wrong. My life might falling apart, it might even be over. But my baby’s was just beginning. I got up and dumped out the scotch in the sink. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t hide. Getting drunk wouldn’t help. I caught sight of my reflection in the window. My face was as gaunt and ghostly as Nina’s in the painting. I was going to suffer her fate, I could feel it coming. Maybe I deserved it. Hot tears rolled down my cheeks. I bent over the sink, sobbing.

“I tried to tell you,” Gloria muttered, behind me. “She’s her father’s daughter, all right.”

I turned on her, struggling to get words out, my body heaving with sobs. “Her father’s daughter? Who are you talking about?”

Her big, dark eyes took my measure.

“Gloria, if you know something, please, I’m begging you. Tell me before it’s too late.”

“The police really think you did it? Because that’s not right,” she asked.

I was sobbing so hard, I couldn’t get any words out, so I just nodded.

“Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be back in a minute,” she said.

She left the room. Collapsing into a chair, I cried until I felt hollowed out and drained. I was still trying to catch my breath when Gloria returned. She glanced over her shoulder, put a finger to her lips, then came up beside me.

“Go upstairs now,” she whispered. “I left something for you, under the pillows on your bed. Nobody can know about it, and they can’t know it came from me. But it’s gonna help you. You shouldn’t pay for something you didn’t do. That’s wrong.”

“What is the thing that you left for me?”

“Lock the bedroom door, and you’ll see. Make sure you hide it good when you’re done, because if they find it, they’ll destroy it.”

I sat there with my mouth gaping. She shook me by the arm.

“What are you waiting for? Go, before they come home.”

I got up and ran back to the master, locking the door behind me like Gloria had said. Under the pile of pillows, I felt something hard, and pulled out a package wrapped up in a towel. Unwrapping the towel, I found a book bound in rose-pink leather, with the initials “N.L.” embossed in gold on the cover, closed with a brass clasp.

Nina’s diary.

There was something stuck inside. I saw the edges protruding. The clasp opened easily when I pressed it. A manila envelope had been folded in half and tucked inside the front cover. It was marked CONFIDENTIAL on the front. I’d get to that in a minute. My eyes were drawn to the first page, where a scrawling, left-tilted hand had noted the date. July 4.

Nina wrote this on the day she died.

I’m writing this to raise an alarm in the event of my untimely death. This is hard to admit, even to myself, let alone to the world. My husband is planning to kill me. For obvious reasons. He’s in love with someone else. And he wants my money.



Was she talking about me?

Fighting tears, holding my breath, I read obsessively to the bitter end, my eyes racing over the pages. The good news was, I wasn’t the woman whom Nina had accused of conspiring to murder her. And the bad news was, I wasn’t the one. It was somebody else. Somebody much too close for comfort.