The Widower's Wife: A Thriller (11 page)

Sophia scanned the wine shelves. She was looking for animals. Thank goodness that game amused her.

I sat on the edge of my chair. Too eager. I forced myself to lean back into the fabric as I tried to convince my mind to adopt the same laid-back demeanor.

“Well, you know Tom.” I faked a giggle. “He babied his wine and he certainly took care of these bottles. We have a temperature-controlled wine cellar, custom built by a design firm that did many of the boutique shops in Manhattan. And, of course, the house has a generator, so it never lost power.”

Vincent’s tongue dragged across his top lip. “I could give you three hundred dollars for the Pingus.” He put the bottle in front of me and checked out the other one. “Maybe two hundred dollars for the Gaja. Say five hundred dollars for both.”

Half the value. Tom would be furious. “I could do better on eBay.”

Vincent shrugged. “You could try. But I doubt it. People would be too worried that they weren’t the real deal without inspecting the bottles. You’d be surprised the things people do: take out the corks, fill the bottle with cheap swill, recork it, and try to sell it as the real McCoy.”

“These are authentic.”

“I don’t doubt it.” He placed both elbows on the desk. A half smile cracked across his stony face. “You get a read on people in this business. Whom to buy from. Whom to sell to. Who’s a repeat customer looking to build a relationship with the store and who is just running in for a quick bottle of anything to bring to a party. You have your kid here. Tom hasn’t been in for an age. You strike me as an honest woman trying to sell off her husband’s collection for some extra cash.”

He grinned, the satisfied expression of a swindler psychic sure he’d convinced his target of his extraordinary abilities. He wasn’t
that
good. I was just
that
obvious.

“Unfortunately for you, people won’t get any read online.” He folded his arms across his chest. “And wine buyers don’t trust anyone they can’t look in the eye nowadays.”

Five hundred beat nothing, but my parents needed a thousand. If he only gave me half the worth of the best bottles, what could I expect for the six midpriced vintages in the bag? It wouldn’t be enough. Could I try another wine store? Would the salesman there take me for a con artist?

Vincent removed the other bottles from the bag. He frowned at the labels, forced to look at inferior swill that he’d undoubtedly sold to my husband at more than one hundred dollars a pop. “These are mostly California Cabs. Some decent bottles, sure, but nothing that commands a high price. I get the—”

“Mommy.” Sophia tugged my shirt.

“Yes, honey?” I answered her without thinking. A Pavlovian mom. Paying attention to my daughter was a reflex.

A flustered sigh escaped Vincent’s lips. Good. He’d enjoyed his monologue too much. Sophia pointed to a high shelf on the bookcase behind Vincent’s desk. It only contained one bottle in
a glass case. A white equine was etched into the dark glass. “It’s a horse,” she whispered.

Vincent grinned. “Not just any horse. A ghost horse. Those bottles are very rare. That one is worth more than fifteen hundred dollars.”

The silver stallion in Tom’s cellar. “We have a bottle of that.”

Vincent’s body language changed. The cocky trader left. “I didn’t sell Tom that.”

I settled back into the chair. Time to play my part: Rich housewife helping “rid” her husband of a hobby. “Tom belonged to several wine clubs. What would you pay for a bottle?”

“It depends on the vintage.”

“Assume it’s good.”

“I’d really have to see it.”

I collected the Pingus from the far side of the desk and returned it to the duffle. “Okay, then. Thank you for your time.”

“I would be interested in the Ghost Horse.”

“I understand that one is valuable. Unfortunately, it’s not easy to come to liquor stores with my daughter.” I slipped the bag’s shoulder strap over my arm. “I believe Christie’s auction house would send someone to survey the conditions in our cellar. And they might be willing to buy the larger collection, as well.”

He held up his hand. Calling my bluff or biting?
Please don’t call my bluff
.

“If the Ghost Horse is on the table, I could do, maybe, eight hundred dollars for this lot.”

The silver stallion bottle was beyond my reach, literally and figuratively. But if I could get more than a thousand for the bottle, how could I not try?

“Well?” Vincent licked his bottom lip. The man was salivating at the idea of having two of the famed bottles.

“If we make a deal now for these bottles, I’m inclined to return with the Ghost Horse,” I said. “Though I’m sure I couldn’t part with it for less than a grand.”

A checkbook landed on Vincent’s desk. “To whom should I make it out?”

13

November 24

R
yan drove past the Bacons’ French-style McMaison with his headlights off, hoping to spy signs of life in the house before Tom could pretend that no one was at home. The gray day had darkened into evening, raising the risk of a driver clipping his unlit vehicle. Fortunately, the Bacons’ house was tucked in the middle of a quiet residential street, the kind of place that forgave bending the rules.

A car sat in the driveway, blocking one of the home’s three garages. Ryan sucked in his breath and pressed the brake. Part of him had hoped Tom would be out. He wasn’t prepared to confront a grieving widower about his dead wife’s possible infidelity. But he needed to know Tom’s suspicions about Michael before confronting the guy about hiding the true reason for Ana’s departure.

Lights shone through windows beside the front door. A male figure walked through the dining room, toward the kitchen. Ryan parked across the street and limped up the driveway. Tom must have seen his slow approach. He answered the front door before Ryan had a chance to ring the bell.

The extra week of grieving had done little to mar Mr. Bacon’s groomed appearance. He was showered, shaved. And if Ryan’s chilled nose didn’t deceive him, Tom was wearing cologne.

“Mr. Monahan, are you here with news?”

“I have some more questions.”

“Oh?”

“Some concerning information has come to light.”

Tom scratched his neck as if Ryan’s words irritated his skin. “I can’t imagine what.”

Ryan steeled himself. There was little point easing into this one. “An affair.”

A sarcastic smile cracked at the side of Tom’s mouth, as if he’d known this conversation was coming. He shook his head. “Well, come on in, I guess.”

Tom led the way through the foyer past a grand spiral staircase leading to the second floor to a descending stairwell tucked behind it. Ryan thought he could hear the sound effects of animated characters having accidents on a TV.

“Just eat it, Sophia.” A woman’s voice clanged like an angry cowbell from the kitchen.

“I don’t like beans, Auntie Eve,” Sophia whined.

“It’s what I made.”

Tom froze as he heard the exchange. He waited for a moment, an animal caught by a floodlight. Hearing nothing else, he continued down to the house’s lower level. Ryan waited until his feet hit the basement’s tile floor before mentioning the female visitor. “Sorry to interrupt when you have guests. Your sister?”

“I don’t have siblings. A family friend comes by to help take care of Sophia.”

Tom spoke without looking over his shoulder. He led Ryan through a well-organized playroom and past a gym, complete with rubber flooring, treadmill, and a weight machine. He pulled back a metal barn door at the end of it and entered into a dark room.

Ryan followed him inside. A disorienting moment later, blue LEDs revealed a home bar worthy of a bustling Manhattan lounge. A floor-to-ceiling glass wine-storage container with underlit shelving dominated the facing wall. The adjoining back wall featured ceiling-mounted black cabinets flanking long, lit wall shelves for liquor bottles. A zinc-topped bar extended in front of the display. No barstools. Standing room only. The
adjoining home theater featured two rows of black leather recliners, mounted atop a carpeted, tiered floor.

“Get you anything?” Tom walked behind the bar. Ryan peered around it to see a back counter with enough stainless steel appliances beneath to rival a top-of-the-line kitchen.

Ryan considered the selection, more for his mental inventory than anything else. Whiskey and cognac bottles dotted the wall shelves, but many were empty, or nearly so. The wine storage container was basically bare. He revised his earlier opinion about the space belonging in a fancy Manhattan club. Tom’s bar was going out of business.

“Nothing for me, thanks.” Ryan took off his barely lined pea coat and draped it over the back of a theater chair before heading to the standing bar.

Tom pulled the glass stopper from a curved bottle of Crown Royal. He grabbed a short glass from inside a cabinet and poured. Whiskey neat. Not many people had the stomach for that.

“Hope you don’t mind.” Tom took a long sip. His lips smacked together before finishing his thought. “I think I might need one for this conversation.”

Ryan did mind. Alcohol was a contributing factor in more than 40 percent of murders, let alone physical assaults. Hard liquor heightened anger. He would have preferred having a nice, sober conversation within earshot of Tom’s “family friend,” someone who could make Tom control himself if things got heated.

He pointed to the ceiling, reminding his host of the witnesses in the house. “So, your friend is helping with the cooking?”

Tom lowered the glass to his hip. “You said something about an affair. In case you’re getting any ideas, I’m not sleeping with her. She’s just a friend. A lot of friends have been coming to help since Ana passed. They’re concerned for Sophia.”

Tom was already on the defensive. Ryan tried to keep his tone nonconfrontational. “I’d like to talk to Ana’s friends. Maybe she would—”

“No.” Tom flashed a tight smile. “She didn’t come over to be interrogated. I’m talking to you.”

Ryan’s host took another long sip of whiskey. He leaned on the back counter, a bartender feigning interest in a client. “So let me guess. Someone misinterpreted my relationship with one of our friends and told you that I must have been cheating. And now you think that Ana found out and jumped overboard, thereby violating the suicide clause in her life insurance policy and letting your company off the hook. Am I right?”

“It’s not that.”

Tom didn’t seem to hear him. “I’m telling you, if you go the suicide route, my lawyers will make sure that your company ends up paying double in damages.” He looked into his drink and sighed. “First off, I wasn’t sleeping around. Second, even if I had been, my wife wouldn’t kill herself. She’d never do that to Sophia or her unborn child—not to mention her parents, whom she’d pretty much supported since fourteen. I mean—”

“These rumors are about Ana.”

The blue light from the bar highlighted the dark shadows beneath Tom’s eyes and the bulge of his brows. He placed his whiskey on the counter. “What?”

“Someone at Ana’s old job suggested she might have been seeing her boss.”

Ryan watched Tom’s face for flickers of rage and recognition, but the man didn’t tense up. If anything, he relaxed. His shoulders shook with a chuckle as he reclaimed his whiskey. “Michael’s an ass, but he wasn’t having an affair with Ana. Though, I’m sure he would have wanted to. Who even is this source of yours? Michael himself?”

“An employee.”

“And this employee knew my wife?”

“Not exactly.”

He pointed a finger above the rim of his glass. “My wife was loyal.” He looked down at the liquor in his glass. A small, sad smile sneaked onto his face.

Ryan examined Tom’s stance. Either the man was an excellent actor or he honestly believed it impossible that his wife had slept with her superior. In Ryan’s experience, few people could completely cover genuine anger. If Tom knew that Michael had destroyed his marriage and driven his wife to kill herself, there’d be hatred in his eyes or clenched teeth behind his smile, not the resigned expression before him.

Still, Tom’s demeanor didn’t mean that Ana hadn’t had an affair—just that her husband couldn’t imagine it.

A yawn swallowed Tom’s face. “It’s like I’ve told you and countless other people. She’d been sick all vacation. I left her sleeping on our balcony to go to the pool for a bit and—”

“You swim?” Ryan asked to avoid hearing Tom’s impossible explanation for his wife’s fall for the umpteenth time. Repetition had a way of turning fabrications into facts. He couldn’t risk Tom convincing him of his crazy story.

“What?” Tom looked into his glass. He rotated his wrist, spinning the alcohol inside his tumbler into a cyclone. “No, not really. Ana was the swimmer.”

“Ana didn’t want to swim?”

“Like I said, she was sick all trip. She wanted to lie down after the beach, so she went back to the room and I went on to the pool.”

Ryan caught the inconsistency. “Wait, I thought you went back with her to the room before you went to the pool.”

Tom’s head snapped up from his drink. “What? Yeah.”

“You just said you ‘went on to the pool’ like she went to the room and you went straight to the sun deck.”

He coughed. “No. Look, I’m tired, all right? I
went on
to the pool, after dropping her in the room. She got settled in the lounge chair on our balcony and then I went up to the ninth deck.” He rubbed his temple with his free hand. “If I’d just stayed . . .”

Ryan felt suddenly guilty for jumping on Tom’s word choice. He was starting to feel bad for judging him so harshly at their first meeting. So what that Tom had remained presentable after his
wife’s death? Maybe he was someone who needed to go through the motions in order to manage his grief. Getting a haircut and shaving didn’t mean the guy wasn’t torn up about losing his wife. It didn’t make him a jerk. A cocky guy would have thrown a fit at the suggestion that his wife had boinked her boss, maybe even taken a swing at the man doing the suggesting. Tom had remained calm, almost collegial. Ryan couldn’t picture the man as a callous wife-beater like Ana’s parents claimed.