The Wife Who Knew Too Much(78)

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NINA’S DIARY

July 4

I never suspected her, not for a single second.

How could I be so blind??

I don’t know how I can ever trust again after this.

I’m so angry!!!!

Deep breath.

Okay, I didn’t know about her, but I’ve known Connor was cheating on me for a while now, since at least Memorial Day weekend. Edward’s behavior left me feeling so insecure that I would’ve worried about cheating in any relationship. With Connor, it was even worse, because of who he was. A party boy. A player. Somebody who likes the finer things but doesn’t want to work for them. I knew those things about him. I saw the danger and married him anyway. Because he made me happy. Because I loved him. But I wasn’t stupid. I made him sign a prenup that gave him nothing if he left me or cheated on me. And I hired an investigator, a former cop named Teddy Bruno, who was recommended by Steve Kovacs.

Steve. I trust him. I think. I’m certainly relying on him to keep me safe tonight, so I’d better be right. But if something goes wrong, well—the authorities should look at him, too. I’m writing all this down. The good, the bad, and the ugly. The ones who lied, the ones who hurt me, the ones who might even be willing to kill me. If the worst happens, they won’t get away with it.

Anyway, I hired Bruno right from the start because Hank, who wanted to stop me from marrying Connor, gave me this file on Connor’s ex-girlfriend. Her name was Lissa Davila, and she’d gone missing about two years before Connor and I met. Hank claimed Connor was a suspect in her disappearance. I didn’t buy it. Maybe I didn’t want to. But there was also the fact that I didn’t really trust Hank. He was the king of the hatchet job, the smear campaign. I thought he was making it all up. So, I hired Bruno to get to the bottom of the allegations. When Bruno came back and said there was nothing to it, that Connor wasn’t involved, I was so relieved that I put him on permanent retainer.

Big mistake.

Bruno was either incompetent, or complicit. Either way, he was wrong. Connor knew everything about Lissa’s disappearance. Including where she is now. Who she is now.

I started suspecting something was amiss this past Memorial Day weekend, when Connor went up to New Hampshire without me. He told me a parcel of land had come on the market, at the lake where he’d spent his summers as a kid, and that it was a prime candidate for development. I immediately smelled a rat. Things had been rocky between us. The timing seemed bizarre—a business meeting over a holiday weekend? And Connor is in the middle of some of the biggest real-estate deals in the world right now. Why would he waste time on some country club in New Hampshire? So, as a test, I said fine, Hank has a place up there, let me ask him if you can stay. When he gave me a hard time about staying at Hank’s place, I knew something was off. Either he had some rendezvous planned, or he was worried that I’d spy on him there. Which—yes, I would have, except Bruno turned out not to be available.

I had no eyes on Connor that weekend. He went up there, and something happened. I didn’t know exactly what. But he came back different. Dreamy. Distracted. Like he’d been with someone and was still with her in his mind. I could feel her, clinging to him, haunting us both, like maybe he was in love. And it hurt. A lot.

I wanted to know what I was dealing with. So, after that weekend, I set Bruno to looking at the obvious suspects. Lauren. Dawn. A few other women at Levitt Global whom Connor had contact with. Bruno came back empty-handed, and I knew that was wrong. There were more rocks to be turned over. But it wasn’t just the lack of result that bothered me. Bruno told me I was being paranoid, that I had no evidence to justify continuing to monitor my husband. Like he knew Connor better than I did. Right. He’d obviously lost confidence in the mission, so I fired him.

And that’s when the truth came out. It took the new investigator to show me what was right in front of my eyes all along.

This time, I didn’t ask Kovacs for a recommendation. I didn’t ask anybody around me, because by that point, I knew better than to trust them. Instead, I asked a woman I know from a museum board, a lawyer, who’s very smart. She recommended a guy named Kendrick Charles, another retired cop, but this one was actually good at his job. I gave him all the material I had on Connor, including Hank’s original “Lissa” file, and everything Bruno gave me, and I asked him to start from scratch. He went and he worked and he didn’t come back until he had answers—including a photograph of Lissa.

Julissa is her full name. Julissa Maria Davila.

The photograph showed Julissa sitting in Connor’s lap, looking into his eyes, her face bright with young love. It was so surreal that I wouldn’t’ve believed it if I wasn’t holding the proof in my own two hands. Because Julissa Davila was Juliet Davis.

I looked at that photo, and the bottom fell out of my world. The two of them have been lying to me for years. An elaborate con. Juliet came to work for me right after Edward died, nearly three years ago now. I was a fool for not vetting her more intensively, but I’d lost my assistant at the very moment I took on new responsibilities at Levitt Global, and I was desperate. Juliet seemed perfect for the position. So unremarkable, so bland and efficient and unthreatening, exactly what I looked for in an assistant. Her references checked out, though now I realized she must have faked them somehow. I hired her, and once she was in, she turned around and reached back for Connor.